Okay, hey, this is Stefan Kinsella. As most of you know, normally my podcast is just repeat of my appearances on other podcasts. Rarely do I do original shows, and I guess this one is no different. So, a libertarian friend, JM, do you want to go by your full name or just JM or what? Jesse. Jesse had been texting me asking some questions and wanted to do an interview. So, do you have your own channel or are you just, Jesse? I started my own channel under the assumption that I'm going to continue doing things like this in the libertarian or philosophical sphere. So you would be episode one if this thing comes off the ground. So I think you did an episode one with with Michael Malus. Is that right? Yeah, he had he had his show. You're welcome on a previous network and he was switching to the gas digital network and I was going to New York that weekend. So he asked me to come on for his first episode. I'm going to be pausing on occasion. I just got COVID so I'm coughing a lot. So it's my first post COVID interview. Don't worry, you can't catch it over the over the airwaves. We sure about that. There's viruses and computers I've heard. That's true. Where's your channel going to be by the way? Is it YouTube or what? It'll be on YouTube. Okay, YouTube channel. Do you want to give it out? Yeah, it's called This Time I'm Curious. Okay. Okay, you just wanted to talk about a hodgepodge of issues and I'm okay with anything. So you take it from here. Cool. So yeah, I've been watching your stuff binge watching your stuff for years and reading articles and things. And I remember thinking this guy's been asked every philosophical question under the sun. But if he ever came down to Austin, which is where I'm at, I'd love to have dinner and drinks and maybe pick his brain about some not only philosophical things, but maybe your aesthetic preferences and little quirks and opinions about things. But I would never forgive myself if I didn't ask you some philosophical questions in this. So maybe we get the heavier stuff up front. By the way, you know, I'm in Houston. I go to Austin on occasion. Do you ever do the Bitcoin stuff there or any of the libertarian stuff?  Yeah, there's a Bitcoin meetup I've been meaning to go to on occasion. But yeah, next time I'm there, I'll let you know there's a bunch of libertarians that came and met Anthony Samaroff when I was there last time and it's a pretty healthy community. But go ahead. And you know the readers are going to say, would you say you go to anarchist meetups and play D&D? They're going to say, but of course you do. Yeah, I'm not a total dork at all. By the way, have you played D&D since you're considered an Uber dork? I played when I was like once or twice when I was 14 or something, but I didn't like it. I didn't like the unstructured nature of it. Maybe I didn't have a good dungeon master. For me, it was like a bucket list thing. This was my first campaign. It was started about a year ago. And I remember thinking that's things that kids did in the 80s in movies. I didn't think that human beings actually did it. And I got invited to this thing is like, I don't know the rules. It sounds super complicated. We roll dice and we tell stories and stuff. And I'm enjoying it. But to get to the questions. I've been in NCAP since around 2003. And I didn't meet one in person for 10 years. And when I met one, it felt like a long lost brother. We didn't stop talking the entire night. And again, it felt like a family member. You have been in the movement since the 80s when it was unbelievably obscure. And now it seems like it's finally reached public consciousness. Like Michael Mallis was interviewed on Jordan Peterson podcast where they talked a little bit about it. Joe Rogan, Lex Friedman, Chris Williamson, it seems like they're all, they're not immediately dismissing the question. And to me, that's way different than it used to be. Do you think that we're hitting some sort of inflection point or are you maybe more pessimistic? Inflection point for what for like mass adoption? Yes. No, I don't think it's coming anytime soon. I do think that the numbers of libertarians has gone up by maybe an order of magnitude. So something has changed. I have my suspicions. But I've, so I think what happened was the original, you know, before my time in the in the 50s and 60s it was very small like maybe a dozen or something right. And then, or a little bit more maybe with people that are quiet but just reading. And then in the 80s, 70s, 80s, maybe 90s it was getting bigger and more established, right? But still it was really small compared to the way it is now. I think the libertarians back then, my impression is the way I came into it was from reading. You know, I ran economics and political theory and all this. And I think that was primarily who it drew drew like smart grad student types, academics. So they seem to be less radical than we are now like fewer anarchists like anarcho capitalists were like a much smaller percentage of libertarians are more menarchists and constitutional types, but they were also more principled and more well better well read. I think so on Rand and Milton Friedman and those guys were the primary influence that drove it. What we think of as a modern literary movement. And then I think Ron Paul happened and that drew in waves and waves more but so he tended to draw in younger college student types, but mostly activists people that were activists you know they won't they thought you could make a change by voting or the electoral system. And they were also newbies so they they just came in because they heard his message and it resonated but so they weren't the well read types of the intellectual types. But because he was connected to the Mises Institute and Austrian economics, the new crop of libertarians that sort of came from that wave, I think they're less intellectual and well read, although a lot of them have read some of the basic stuff in Austrian economics. But they tend to paradoxically be more anarchist and more are more favorable to anarchist views and more anti war, more anti fed and more pro Austrian economics so you have a larger group now. Not quite as intellectual or well read as the past but but in a way better libertarians because they're way more cosmopolitan. They're more pro technology, you know, and in a little bit more radical, that's kind of my take on it I don't know if other libertarians share that take but that's what I've seen and I've been seeing this about 1982. Because, you know, I go back and watch the videos from the 70s and 80s Murray Rothbard, you know, speaking and other luminaries like that. And it was very technical and very historically detailed, you know, like for new liberty and the ethics of liberty. I think a lot of people, even modern libertarians would have trouble plowing through that but they can listen to a podcast where someone explains it simply to them. And that's fine. Correct. I don't mean I don't mean to be critical of these people it's just it is a difference. The only part time is frustrating for me is when I'm talking to someone, and they ask these questions, or they try to reinvent the wheel with complete lack of awareness that this whole this entire debate that they're getting into has been covered 15 ways by people like 18 years ago. And they haven't read it, and they're not even aware of it, and they don't even think to try to find it and look into it before just hauling off and trying to reinvent the wheel on their own, which they're almost never able to do because they don't have the equipment to do it. And all that's even fine is like if they would just be humble and say listen, I'm dipping my toe into this or people who know more than me, I'm going to ask a question and if they would take a pointer and say okay you need to go back and think about this and go read ABCD. And half the time they'll say, Oh, well, don't give me a reading assignment. Do you want to learn or not, you know. Yeah, for me I find the most frustrating aspect of it is, you know, if I think someone is worthy of a discussion and they have the capacity for changing their mind, like what if someone doesn't I just avoid them, they're just going to waste my time maybe feel the same way about that. But I, I'm often surprised at their lack of curiosity, like instead of saying, I can't imagine how a voluntary law society would work, and it's difficult for me, but could you maybe give me some ideas, they immediately go to conclusions which is like correct. Like I had a friend that said, Look, I just don't support pitchforks and torches like I just don't like it when people.  Like, we've been friends for years, and I tell him I'm really passionate about this idea I've looked a lot into it. And for him to have no curiosity about it is is frustrating. It's like they want to find an easy way to dismiss it so they're just trying to get it over with quickly because they they sort of sense that there's a whole body of stuff out there. That's too daunting for them to approach. So they don't want to have to feel like they don't know. I don't just so if you're if you're even a budding libertarian or interested you're already adopting a view that's really minority and out of mainstream. You're making some risks in a sense, you're already kind of made yourself a little bit of a pariah. So, why would you even do that if you're not interested in the truth I mean you have to have a little bit of this desire to learn the truth to be willing to buck the social, you know, stigma of bucking the trends. And so when you meet someone who obviously knows more than you or at least a sincere and seems to have a different perspective. I would not just ask a real question or listen. The one thing I don't put up with is loaded questions. Now that comes around two thirds of the time because people are just not trained in systematic arguing and rational thoughts so they don't really realize we're doing it. They will do things. They'll ask compound questions which is a legal term but it is I see why it's an evidence log. If you're the attorney grilling someone on the witness stand. One objection is compound question. What that means is you hit you just you hit the you hit the witness with three or four questions. So they don't know if the answer or like if they answer which one are they answering. So you have to ask a single question. So that's one thing otherwise you get mixed up and it's not clear what you're asking me to answer so you don't just say well what about this and what about this and what about this and what about this is like okay which one are you asking me. So that's one thing no compound questions that means concise coherent clear which the way to wisdom right if you don't know something you need to approach it one thing at a time. And also no loaded questions that's the worst part I think people do that unintentionally, but if I call it to their attention and they won't stop and think about it they're not even they're either not smart enough they're not honest enough to to to not want to engage in because that's not the way to truth, just assuming your conclusions is not a way to truth. So, or for our sarcastic rhetorical question like, Oh, well how are artists supposed to make money that it's like, they're not really asking me artists are supposed to make money. What they're saying is in a snide sarcastic way. I don't think that artists can make money under your system and that's not acceptable to me so I reject your system and so copyright is needed. I don't know what the argument is, but they don't want to argue it that way because that would be transparently false or flawed argument they don't want to found a whole argument. So if someone is doing that I don't waste time with them because they don't want to learn. I don't have anything to learn from them obviously. The only reason I engage with them is because there are lurkers who listen, and they might, they might start realizing God them everyone who approaches can sell about this topic.  So there must be something they don't have a good argument. So I'm doing it for others to learn. Exactly. And I'm also struck by oftentimes the average let's say the average person, they've never been confronted with a coherent non contradictory set of principles before they they think, and they've been taught. They've been taught from public schools and from society that it's just got to get more and more complex like politics you need to know these branches of government and when this law happened and and this is what the taxes are, and they build complexity as opposed to going down to the route. And a lot of people are uncomfortable going down or extreme upstream and they can't and they're used to ad hoc thinking they're just used to patchwork of thinking. They can deal with only concrete things at a time and kind of an isolation, which is why when you point out a contradiction in the thought they don't know what to do. You say well you say this but you also say this and those two are not compatible. You need to choose one of them, and they're like, I want both. Some people, it seems like a personality type they find consistency and rationality very freeing. Like I've heard the analogy, you know, once you put the sun at the center of the solar system, all of this erratic behavior that made no sense and had needed ad hoc explanations.  But I guess my question would be, like, do you have some syllogisms or clincher arguments if you're in a very short if time is in a short supply and you're debating with someone. Do you have a list of things in your head that you pull from that are clincher arguments. It just so it depends on the context and I try. I try to make one piece of progress when I can, you know, like, I just have to see what they where they're rational and go with that. And usually that involves trying to find a common premise that we share, you know, a common value or something we all agree on like, okay, do you agree that Earth is round at least, you know, do you agree that we know that there is a common or really in ethics I'll say, Okay, listen, do you think it's wrong to hit people who don't deserve it or do you think it's wrong to murder people. You can we at least agree on that. And we don't want you to establish a shared premise. Now, there are some misanthrobes out there. Now I'm not usually talking to these people serial murders and total sociopaths. You have some people that are sort of contrarians and argument and they will pretend like they're sociopath like they'll say, yeah, I just want what's good for me. It's like, well, if you're really serious about that then you just declared yourself to be my enemy, because what you're saying is you'll use me as a means to your end if you need to. So you don't respect my rights. So if it comes down to it, you and I are enemies. So this conversation is purely strategic for both of us. So I'm just going to keep an eye on you. Like you're not going to be invited to my house.  But these people are usually serious they're just trying to be gadflies or provocative you know they don't want to concede that they really do value I mean they do value peace and knowledge if they're having a conversation with it they don't want to concede that because they're trying to concede something that they be trapped that we trapped by the truth I don't know why people are afraid of being trapped by the truth but so I can't think of any kind of go to knock down argument. But when I see when I go for it I'm not afraid to I know a lot of these left libertarian types that that type tends to you know the kind of respectable mainstream incremental moderate libertarians that you know the utilitarian some ones with no principles. They seem to think that knock down arguments are coercive right because they trap you and all this kind of stuff is like well sorry. It's the same kind of person that says something like well there are no absolute truths whatsoever I'm like what about what you just said. Right and they all that but for some reason that retort never works they always look at you and say well you're just being silly it's like well but okay I just showed you logically a flaw in what you just said and they just don't care. You know, you know in my early days, getting into this, I would notice that my email debates would go paragraphs after paragraph after paragraph I would have to unpack historical context and things like that. And I've noticed over time. The arguments have become a little bit more efficient where someone would type, you know, a page of garbage, and you just call out the contradiction and the thinking there and all it would take as a sentence or three. And I find that that helps with the stamina of it and most people will concede the point or give up the conversation. I'm a boxer with who's very smooth, as opposed to just throwing punches all the time, and having to know everything about everything constantly. Cool thoughts on. Sorry to keep this philosophical, but I can't help myself. Now I know that this is not a priori either way or some people might argue it but is voting defensive or should an anarchist not vote. What's your thoughts on that. And that's a difficult issue. I guess I don't have a, I don't have a strong opinion about that. I certainly don't think voting is necessary, or it's, I don't think it's immoral not to vote. Personally, I go back and over the years I've gone back and forth my first vote was 84. I voted for Reagan. I voted for Democrat because my dad from Louisiana my dad said we're Democrats and like, okay, because we're for the we're for the little guy and I didn't know what the hell that meant. But he was always voting Republicans so that so I voted Reagan my first time and then ever since then I voted libertarian, except this last election. And when I voted but there was many years I just don't vote because I think voting is futile, right. So on the other hand, I have this theory of causation right where you, one of my articles causation and aggression you have to. We have to identify who is responsible for acts of aggression so because libertarians were ultimately opposed to acts of aggression. And one one type of aggression is that committed by the state which means institutionalized aggression or the force of law. And the state the state's apparatus enforces that so you can say the state's responsible what we as individual as libertarians we have to look for an individual so who's responsible really. It's a bunch of people you know it's the president it's the governors it's the legislators it's the judges it's the jailers, the cops. Since in the in the in the American system in the Anglo system, where there's a jury trial system the criminal system. I almost think like the most responsible person for for for an active state aggression is the juror, because the juror has like the ultimate discretion to do whatever they want, because you can vote to convict you can vote not guilty or innocent. You don't have a trial of someone who's convicted of a of a of a of a victimless crime. You don't have, you don't have any. You don't have any pressure, or you don't have, you don't you're not required to vote guilty. So if you vote guilty that's on you so I almost think the juror is the most responsible person in society, when people are imprisoned for non for non libertarian crimes. I mean, because, yeah, you could blame the police or the jailer or the judge, but are the or the legislator but if you fire them they're just going to be replaced by the same kind of person. Right. So, in that same vein you could also blame the voters because the legislators are going to be there if they're voted in by the voters. So it's really not the legislators fall leaders the voters, but the nature of this sort of prisoners dilemma game theory system we have with democracy means that even the voters. At a certain point, you have no choice would try to fight for your slice of the pie because it's a war of all against all that's what democracy causes. So, I don't know if there's a really moral, we're almost in a state of war against all we're not in a state of peace because of democracy. So I don't know if peace is possible which is sort of a precondition for rights. I mean, I tend to think as a good person you should try to aspire to your ideals and try to vote for libertarian stuff, even if it hurts you personally, you know, like my libertarian half my libertarian friends are getting PPP payments right now, because of COVID, they're enjoying getting the free money. They can even argue they're entitled to it as restitution because they're the they're the most victimized people in society. So should they vote to end PPP payments. I guess they should, but would it hurt their interest. Yeah, I mean, I'm a patent lawyer. I want to abolish the patent system. Should I should I just be quiet and accept the money I get the free ill got money I get for the patent system and not criticize it even though no it's wrong. So you have these dilemmas. I don't know how the best way to answer them in a systematic way. I'm not a comprehensive ethicist. I just go by common sense intuition and I've learned some things about how they they intersect with and they they stem off of political ethics. So, in the end, my view is, if you vote, you should vote, you should vote for the better, the least bad candidate, and I do think that you could call that defensive voting. And I think in that case, if your motive is to elect someone who seems to do the least harm that even if that person you elect ends up doing evil, I don't know if you're exactly responsible. Wendy McElroy is a good friend of mine argues the opposite. She thinks you respond. I think she argues that she says she has an article why I would not vote for Hitler. I'm sorry why I would not vote against Hitler. It's pretty easy to defend the first, the first proposition. I think she argues that you're responsible for whatever the person does that you help put power. I think that the causal connection is so tenuous you can say no, it's really more important what you say I think because what you say has a more has more of a causal connection because voting is binary, you know, if I vote for for Biden and he doesn't win that I didn't cause him to get elected. And if I vote for Biden and he does win, then my vote didn't cause him to get elected either. But it's the incremental effect of that signal, like, oh, Biden Biden got one more vote. So that means he's got more support so that has an effect. But speaking out has even more of effect, you know, like putting a bumper sticker on my car or telling people go vote for Biden. To me that's even more that's even more costly responsible so you have great nations of responsibility. When I was a grad student type you know we would salivate over the idea of we us coming getting victory someday and having a libertarian Nuremberg war crimes tribunal and rock barred and can sell and hop would be on it we would we would send it some people to the to the to the gas chamber and to the to the guillotine and send some to prison, you know, kind of these stupid fantasies. Of course, I think that you'd have to have a spectrum of responsibility just like they did Nuremberg, you know the guards or one thing and then the top commanders or another. I think ultimately if we can achieve victory we just call it even let everyone go try to live a peaceful life going forward except for maybe, you know, Donald Rumsfeld and those types, but not school teachers who voted for Biden. Exactly. Yeah, it's interesting. I wonder if our whole job moving forward is to just continue to bring the conversation forward in the most coherent and respectable way possible, because of course, you know, we've all met libertarians who are just happy to insult you, you know, right off the bat and immediately go into the against me argument, which do you mean, what do you mean by that explain that one. You'll see certain people that immediately go to oh so I should go to jail. So you want me to put be put in jail for doing something for not paying taxes or something like that. And I think there's a valid place to put that argument but it comes a little bit later. If a person still is unwilling to to to go to reason to go into the against me argument. I think what they're doing is they're trying to deflect because they're putting it in an uncharitable or an or an or an emotionally fraught way. The better way to put it would be. So you're saying that I'm, I'm condoning or participating in an act of aggression, which is unjust and I would say yes, that's what I'm saying I think aggression is unjustified unjustified, and you're condoning it you shouldn't do that stop it. And then they say oh so you want me to go to jail. It's like well, I'm trying to say that we should aggression is unjustified and you shouldn't support it. What how you should be treated if you engage in it is a second question we go into that but really I'd prefer you not do it you know what I mean. Right. So there's obviously gray areas for any society. And there's again, no perfectly a prior way to answer all these things. Do you have a list of things that you consider gray areas of let's see in libertarianism. Yeah, I think there are some tough issues or difficult issues. I think this slightly off point but I think Bob Murphy on his podcast recently he did a three part series. I don't think concluded yet but it's something like things I've learned. And he went through things he he changes mind on. I'm thinking about doing that myself, because there's really not that many. So, I'm thinking about doing one on like things I think I've made a contribution for like just I highlight the things I think I've found little nuggets of thing where I've advanced the theory a little bit, just to highlight and identify them then help me remember and maybe I can work on more of them. And I'm also working on like this talking to the pork fest was on the libertarian constitution, and I'm so I'm trying to think about coming up with like a systematic comprehensive but but conceptual statement of libertarian principles. And in that I want to identify with one of the more the black letter issues or the step the, the issues that really are not that debatable that are established or that I think are, are clear. And then that would require identifying the gray areas right so like some people think intellectual property is a gray area or as a area of debate I don't think so at all I think it's clear. I understand some people don't understand it yet but I think, if you, I think it follows. I think the drug war and intellectual property or actually the two easiest and clearest issues of all among libertarianism, those two follow most directly from the non aggression principle and from our property rights principles. And there's just simply no argument for the drug war and ultra priority law. All the other big things that we think are evil as libertarians like war taxation government schools the Federal Reserve. What am I missing welfare taxation. There are some arguments for all of those now principle libertarians especially anarchist libertarians don't agree with any of those either. You could say that well war justified in the case of an attack on the nation, if it's purely defensive right and taxation is necessary if you're a minarchist because you have to have some funding for this minimal state. And you need a Federal Reserve because of some hierarchy and theory you know some come some of them the Milton Friedman type theories of how economics works the money supply works. So there are some arguments I think they're all flawed but there are some arguments and they're not, they're not dishonest arguments, but IP and drug war, there are just no arguments that really are putting someone in the cage for adjusting a substance you don't like it's just, there is no argument for that. Okay. Now what about other issues so I think the abortion issue is one that is a continuum issue, at least, and also, I don't know if you call it a gray area but it's something that's in terminal it's really difficult to decide. Walter block tends to try to what he encountered he hates these these gray areas so what he does is he calls them continuums. But I don't know if they're all continues I think some things are just beyond the beyond the realm of law. You have to at some point just say, so like for abortion my solution, I mean I have my own opinions about abortion. I do ultimately approach choice, but like reluctantly because as a as a human who values life and as libertarian who opposes aggression. I do think that at a certain point humans reached the point where we attribute rights to them and, you know, hurting them as aggression, and not only a moral but murder, or homicide. But I think we can reasonably say that that happens somewhere late term in the in the pregnancy, not just after the baby's born. However, to police that and to make it illegal would require such intrusiveness into a private domain of the family and the woman and the mother and her body. And also, as technology goes on day by day it's going to become increasingly impossible to police it because, you know, a woman might be in a cabin, pregnant for nine months no one even knows and she has a robot in her basement that has the abortion no one even knows. So, it's just a private thing this no one's business. Furthermore, I think the problem is going to disappear over time because, as we get richer and more humane and more advanced on all the stigmas from being from sex are going to go away and the being pregnant it's not going to be a stigma. And the market for adoption will be high. I think women will just stop having abortions because if you get pregnant on accident, you either have a very very early term abortion or, or you just you take it out of your uterus or three months and put it into an incubator and you give it to someone else I mean, I don't think it's going to be a problem in the long run. But what I would say so my solution is the jurisdiction over that. Yeah, let's call it homicide a late term abortion let's say it's homicide. I'm not sure it is but let you can make an argument for that. I think that that in that case we just say the jurisdiction over that is the mother herself or the family. That's where the jurisdictional unit is and that that's compatible with anarchy which is sort of decentralizing things down to the individual unit. So, because of its nature, it's the thing where the community it's none of the community's business, right, although you could see extreme ostracism and shunning effects if people are aware of someone who is a horrible person who is just routinely aborting eight and a half month old fetuses when they don't need to. I mean they're going to suffer severe reputational effects if nothing else. I don't know if people know about it. So that's kind of a take so abortion maybe is one great area. Some of the some of the things that were the property rights are difficult to to to identify and establish like airways and the in the air ocean navigation rights, water rights and rights of roving animals rights over fleet fleeing underground where you have the the different rules about whether you can take minerals out from someone your neighbor's property or whether they share in the pool. Things like that are difficult. But my solution to all these is is like yeah you can dream up scenarios where the answer is difficult to deduce from our armchair as libertarian theorists, and maybe there is no solution. However, it could just be a case of a situation where peace is not possible and there's going to be tragedy tragedy is possible. And in any case, the question is a relative one like, okay libertarianism can't solve the problem of two guys on an island, or two guys in the desert with one bottle of water between them. Libertarianism can't solve that problem, but how would socialism solve it, how would fascism solve it how would theocracy solve it need need just adopting a different political philosophy can't make another bottle of water that solves the problem. So these criticisms libertarianism have to be taken in context like just because libertarianism can't do everything doesn't mean that it's flawed. Libertarianism is simply considered well thought out sincere response to the question in a world of scarcity, where there's potential conflict where humans want to live among each other because they benefit from it, but where there's a danger from living with each other because of conflict. We need to assign property rights to things so that people can live in peace when they want to try. And we have to do that in the most reasonable fairway possible and libertarianism attempts to do that. Anything more than that cannot be asked from a political philosophy. Yeah, when I say difficult parts or gray areas for libertarian philosophy, that does not obviously imply that the government is the best way to solve that it's just given our framework here the things that we just can't decide and Well, I guess the market would decide and what better solution than the market for these things. Let me add one more thing one more thing would be a punishment theory which I've written on. So I actually think punishment and retaliation itself revenge. I think it is justified. I think that is what justice can mean in some cases in theory and principle right so I think that if someone commits a severe active violence against you, or your family member that person. It would be just for that person to be punished, even executed in some cases. That said, I think a realistic practical world system in society for doing that is extremely unlikely and difficult because that is for it to be institutionalized if a family member or a victim goes goes dirty hairy and just takes the guy out and act to vigil any justice. You know that's going to happen from time to time and I think society is going to just they're going to kind of not their head and let it pass they're going to say okay he took out the trash. The guy might get ostracized for doing that if he does it too much he's going to become a loose cannon. Even though he's a victim he's he's also not following the law which is to bring it dispute to your peers and let the system handle it so that you're not biased you're not a jury you're not a judge in your own case you don't over punish because you know you're making all that you're the judge jury and executioner. All these things make it make self help dangerous. I think self help would always be an option for for actual self defense, which it even is in today's state dominated legal system right in the common law. Everyone admits that you have the right to use lethal force in self defense when the police can't be called you know when it's too late. So in that case you're acting as judge jury and executioner but what else are you going to do, you know. So, I think that in the real world, you would tend to have a restitution system and an ostracism system, because the cost of implementing institutional punishment system is so high, because there's no benefit and there's all cost. There's no benefit because no one benefits from this except the victim psychologically benefits but who's going to pay for who's going to pay for the elevated costs of the, you have to have a higher burden of proof you have to satisfy to kill someone rather than to take money from them, like beyond a reasonable doubt instead of preponderance to the evidence. You have to have lots of insurance standing by because what if you punish someone who turns out to be innocent later now you've committed aggression. So I just think because of this, no one's going to get involved in this business in an institutionalized way. I almost have come down to the view that jail or prison should be almost abolished in any society. And it should be reserved only for the East. Like, basically if anyone deserves to be imprisoned they should just be killed, like if they're so bad that they deserve to be in prison.  And in that case they should just be sent to Australia or Coventry as Robert Heinlein described it, or dropped in the middle of the ocean or just killed. I mean, but other than that I think give people a chance to reintegrate back in society pay their debts, or they're going to be shunned and they're going to live, they're going to be left as outlaws and sort of a marginal problem. So those are difficult issues. There's no deductive or priori answer to this, but it's a guess based upon our knowledge of the way the law works now, the way things have been done in history and our knowledge of libertarian principles. That's what I think would and should happen in a free society. Right and establishing an institution where a person can get into power, police officers, guards in prisons and soldiers in war have an opportunity to be unbelievably cruel to people. So removing the opportunity to be unbelievably cruel without any sort of consequence would be step one. Cool. And just the last thing on the gray areas is I've always wondered about the the animal rights question and it's I was about to say that yeah I was about to say animal rights is another one. Yeah, unbelievably difficult but as you mentioned before technology sometimes can solve these problems for us and maybe it was you that mentioned this, but I think it's really interesting the idea of synthetic meat that yes, you know if I had to pay triple the cost of meat or triple the cost of meat to get a synthetic one that wasn't from an animal that was killed I would definitely do that. And if I was a billionaire if I was Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk or Bill Gates, I would, I would give $10 billion to research and growing synthetic meat. And a lot of people say ooh that's so gross, like something cultured in a lab. Well, what's grosser than a slaughterhouse excuse my language.  I think animal rights is more of an ethical question than than a political question although the animal rights question is interesting. So I personally think that rights have to have some connection to our capacity for rationality. I'm prone towards Lauren Lamasky's view of what he calls piggybacking which is why we say that not fully functioning humans also have rights like people with dementia or encomas or vegetables or children, or babies or infants. Why do we attribute rights to them and he has he says well we extend our rights in a social way from the normal functioning adult case, or even even someone to take it a nap someone sleeping you know or someone who's in during surgery they're they're knocked out. We attribute rights to them, but I think that that just can't go to animals. Now in principle animals could have rights if they develop enough rationality like, I think basically is reciprocity, if an animal can respect your rights then you can respect his. I think Leonard Peacock one time said someone said why don't mosquitoes have rights and he said well when they petition for them they can have them, you know. And I think there are some animals that probably could evolve into into sapiens like cetaceans and maybe some apes. If we would let them we probably not going to let them, we're probably going to short circuit their evolution. I don't know. I don't know how that works dinosaurs maybe have may have evolved by now if the meteors had wiped them out. And there may be there may be life in outer space that is sapient and they would have rights to so humans have rights but by human we just means sapient creatures and so far as we know we're the only ones that have that. But there are some animals that come so close, you know, that I think it's so it'd be like aborting a baby at three months, you know, you might have a right to but it's kind of icky. It's a potential life and when if you're a parent you start seeing that my views on abortion did change a little one.   But on the on the ethics issue I totally agree I think that if we could. It's a little bit of an elitist first world view though what you said like oh I would double I would pay twice as much. I would and I would I think you can expect poor people in India, or Africa or whatever to do that not yet. But yes if you could afford it, and you could stop the suffering and misery of animals and also probably better for the environment everything right. And the, I assume the meat would be better eventually right, it'd be uniform, you could you could clone the best one have the, the, the wagyu beef, super beef prime. I imagine that's coming someday.  But we should be humane and all that so I agree with I used to be a hunter I quit hunting because I hated killing animals, I just didn't enjoy it. I don't think it's immoral to eat them for food, but it would be nicer if we could, if we could have meat without killing animals.  Yeah, yeah. Cool. All right, let's move a little bit more into the bizarro territory and aesthetic questions and so on. And you just let me know when you have to go. So do you think AI at a sufficient complexity will actually have consciousness, subjective of consciousness. I think it could. And that's an interesting question for I talked to Walter block about this before. In my theory, which is drawn on hoppers about rights. So there are two types of property rights one is the property right in your body and one is the property right in other things. And they're different because you have to own your body and be an actor be a human being that can move around the world to homestead other things. So you homestead you own other things in the world by by using them first and by by by putting a border or boundary around them somehow to denote your ownership, but you can only do that if you already own your body.  I think the reason you own your body is because of your you have. So the what's what's in common with all the theories of ownership is that it's whoever has the best link to the thing, the best objectively demonstratable connection to the thing that they could show other people so they could say I have the best connection to this thing so you should respect my property rights in it so we can have peace and avoid conflict. So in the case of external things the first link the best link is the first person to use it for first obvious reasons because we can't survive unless we use things which means someone has to be the first one to use it so they have to have permission to use it so it's not unethical. So it's permissible, which means that the first use is something special so that's the that's why that's the best link. But in the case of your body, I think the best link is your direct control over your body. I'm the only one who can move my hand I so I have a direct control over this body that gives me a special connection to this body that separates me apart from everyone else who claims to own my body. And everyone else who claims to own my body also directly controls their body. So they're relying upon this premise to in their assertion of their self ownership rights so it's sort of like an undeniable thing that everyone is presumptively the owner of their own body because they can control it. Now if that's the case if we had a computer system. Let's say I own a computer a mainframe computer at my house which is running a program and AI program. I own that hardware, but if I program a program on there that wakes up someday and becomes self aware and is intelligent and conscious and has what we call sapience and therefore has rights. Then that computer has now acquired ownership of that of that body that computer so now I owned that computer and now the ownership has been transferred to that to that robot. Just like my baby like if I'm a mother and as a baby in my body, they say one month old, those cell tissues are in my body they came from my body, I own those. But at the point where the fetus has rights he sort of wakes up and he, I won't say homesteads but he acquires ownership of those products so the mother loses ownership of those cells that were in her body that she owned the day before and now they're owned by the fetus or the baby. Same thing with the robot. So now as a technical matter, I'm extremely skeptical of AI. I certainly don't think real AI is anywhere around the corner I'm thinking 50 years from now something like that I could be wrong. I also believe that it's impossible to program AI. I think the only way to get AI is for it to grow. So I think you could you could someday manufacture a synthetic neural network. A digital electronic neural network with sufficient complexity and neural structure on the order of complexity of the human brain. And then you can design it so that it can start learning patterns and maybe it could evolve consciousness.  So we could map the internal goings on of this neural brain better than we can map the contents of our wet brains. And then we that would give us psychological and other neuro psychological insights into the way that this artificial brain works. We still we would still have to have some philosophy of mapping all this, which I think is not a hard science and never will be. Unless we have an AI that's so hyper intelligent that it can figure it out for us. My other thoughts on AI is that I don't know if super intelligence is possible. I do think artificial intelligence is possible but I don't know super intelligence possible I do think there are probably limits to intelligence because just like we can only hold so many concepts in our mind at one time before we just become psychotic or fall apart. I think that's just the nature of a conscious system. So I think that if you had an AI brain, it could be smarter than us, because it's faster, like you can run it 10,000 times or a million times the speed of our brains.  So maybe maybe these things go insane after a microsecond. I don't know. So I think you would just slow the clock down so they run near our speed. So you're going to have AIs that are as smart as us, they probably have better memories, access to bigger memories, but I don't know if they're going to be that much smarter than us. But I do think that they could have rights and that's going to cause some problems because what if the internet wakes up? Now that means this new Skynet owns the entire set of computers and hardware and transmission lines all around the world, and now we're in a pickle. So I think we have to be careful putting too much faith in our ownership rights and dead resources that might someday become the body of a waking up super robot. But I think this is 50 years down the road. Right. So I'm skeptical of the idea that computation can create subjective consciousness. And so that sort of sidesteps the question of will these things have rights because if they don't actually have a subjective experience and they're just complex enough to do unbelievably great problem solving. Why are you skeptical? Why do you think computation, I mean, our brains, that's what our brains do is computation, right? It's wet computation. Right. So I, I've been looking into Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff's theory of consciousness, which you may be familiar with, but their theory is that consciousness is due to the collapse of the wave function at the quantum level.  So in a sense that they believe in panpsychism, which is the universe has a proto consciousness across all things. And our brains are conscious, not because they're computational. Now they happen to have computational aspects to them, which allows us to have a coherent strategy into the world. But just because we replicate complexity in transistors does not mean they have subjective consciousness because there are no microtubules to have a subjective experience with. And the reason I bring this up is if we truly believe that AI is subjectively conscious, and we send a robot to Mars, and then it runs out of power, we just killed something of astounding intelligence or whatever. So I'm saying we really need to have a conversation about will AI have subjective consciousness. And if it doesn't, we can actually sidestep a lot of the ethical issues. Yeah, I agree. And if Penrose, I've just read a little bit into this stuff. It's interesting. To my mind, this is not real science. It's like Omni Magazine stuff. Partly because at the edges of these science things, they become basically unverifiable or untestable, I think I could be wrong. Maybe there's ways you could do it. I mean, there's this book by John Horgan, the end of science about 15 years ago, which is fascinating. He talks about how like you're getting to the point where it's so hard to test something like string theory and these multi dimensional theories. There are nice ways of framing and thinking about it, but at a certain point it's like, it's not really true or false. It's just a way of organizing the data. I'm personally skeptical of all this kind of stuff. Partly because I'm skeptical of quantum physics itself. I'm an electrical engineer. I know there's quantum tunneling and zener diodes and that kind of stuff. But I just think that's the way we describe what's happening. I don't believe in quantum computing. I don't believe in quantum phenomena. I'm more of a realist and a causal realist and even more of a randian on this stuff. I could be wrong. But I'm deeply skeptical of the idea of randomness and quantum, the way we interpret what is it called the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics. I think there are some dissident physicists who also disagree or they used to. So I'm skeptical of this whole, this entire quantum framework. I don't believe in parallel universes as a philosophical matter, because I think to exist means to have an effect on other things. So if you posit a dimension or a realm that in principle is not detectable or has no effect on us and vice versa, it doesn't literally, it literally does not exist. It's like when you tell a story. Oh, Jack in the Beanstalk. I mean, that's just a story. So if you say, okay, there's another universe next to ours, but we can't see each other and we exist in parallel. That's just a complicated way of saying it doesn't exist. I think now that's my philosophical way of dealing with it. And this, this field, I am reinventing the wheel a little bit being a crank, but that's because everyone I read, I'm dissatisfied with. I'm dissatisfied with physicists who plays philosopher like free job Capra that ridiculous the Dow physics and other physicists who try to get philosophical and their amateurs at it. Or they haven't read what I think is the right stuff.  So I'm at a pickle is what to believe but I tend towards a real realist view of things where I believe in causality and I do not. I'm skeptical deeply skeptical with quantum stuff. So I see no reason why you couldn't have an AI computer, unless consciousness requires analog and not digital. But maybe you could make an analog electrical digital analog electronic neural network. Right. But I don't know I am deeply skeptical of AI. I guess I agree with you to a study said I don't think you can program it. So I would say that any program is just, it's just a, it's just a program following the rules of its creator it's not really conscious. Cool, cool. Yeah, I see people conflate the two concepts of extremely powerful AI is necessarily conscious and yeah, I just want to hear your thoughts on that. Let's keep going down the rabbit hole just weird things. What do you think of UFOs aliens you think they visited us. No, I do not. I think we're probably I think we very well could be alone in the universe. I think when people say it's likely there's life in outer space I don't think I know what they're talking about. I think they don't understand probability. All we know is that we exist. And that that fact is is compatible with life being extremely unlikely, or life being common. So, the fact that we just tells us nothing about which one is likely.  And I'm informed in this by sort of my appreciation for aspects of Iran's theory of concept formation and epistemology and validation of knowledge, especially the way David Kelly presents it it is great 1980 series which I have on my, my YouTube channel I have a playlist. I think it's called the foundations of knowledge. I'm blocking my code call call from everyone home. It's sort of a way of looking at what certain knowledges and what knowledge in general is. And in particular just talk on skepticism, like most people have this kind of simplistic continuum theory like oh we can have. They're almost empiricist right. And I have with the modern atheists. I'm an atheist but I'm not their type of atheists like these modern secular atheists like Dawkins and Hitchens and Sam Harris. These guys all tend to just be empiricists like they'll say well, there's no evidence yet for God so we're 99.9% certain there's no God. I don't think they have a sophisticated theory of concept of knowledge. That's not how you approach things. I think that's totally wrong. I think that the Randian view is correct like if someone makes an assertion about something that's possible, even that is an assertion of knowledge about the way the universe is and that requires some reason or evidence. And you can't just say well anything's possible because not, we don't know that anything is possible right. I think we can have contextual certainty in the in this in the assertion that there is no God for several reasons number one. The term is never defined accurately enough to have any current content so it's a meaningless assertion. It's like saying blah exists. The statement blah exists is not true because it's not saying anything. That's one thing. Anyway, there's lots of arguments like that. So the closest I found to a rational discussion of his George Smith but even he is has something wanting so how do we get on the God issue. So we were talking UFOs. Oh UFOs. So I so it so it gets to the probability of UFOs. And as I understand my understanding of science and and and astrophysics, I mean, it's, I don't know if we'll ever colonize the galaxy, much less the universe because it's just so difficult to get off just to get to the moon. And, you know, these systems have to be more and more and more and more complex to do more and more things and the more complexity or the more chance they crash.  It's just, I don't know. And I think it's just ridiculous I think if life in outer space had been here by now you have a lot of it and we know it. So no, I don't believe any of it. I don't I don't think there's ever been life in outer space that's been here. And I think all the reports of the best explanation is either we don't know, or it's just some natural explanation. That's that's my take on it, but I'm, I'm, I'm a deeply non typical libertarian and that I'm, I almost have like a, a constitutional aversion to, to conspiracy theories and things like that. Unlike most of my libertarian friends. So, no, that's my view of those. What do you think I would not put my interest in UFOs at the same level of coherence as my anarcho libertarian theories but having really dived into a lot of the multi people experiences and a lot of the nuclear bases that everyone reports the exact same thing there was a during their it shut down the entire base that I tend to believe that we're being visited by something that is not openly trying to interact with us and may have some sort of somewhat slightly economic interest in our survival, whether it be they sometimes pull our DNA and use us or they at least don't want to destroy us or they don't want us to destroy ourselves but I don't think those theories are crazy. I think they're actually possible. I just think that we can't be sure of that until we have good evidence. I just think the best. The question for me is an Occam's razor thing. What's the best explanation for these, these reports and these sightings. Is it a theory like yours for which we have no really no evidence or is it, is it just we don't know or, or what because it just seems to me. There's so many problems with your theory that we would need a lot of evidence to really be at all sure of that but that would be my take on it. Yeah, that's cool. You know, again, I wouldn't put it on the same level as the philosophical certainty of individual freedom and liberty and stuff but I think it's interesting. I would, I'd be interested in having a conversation with you maybe five years from now and see if you've changed your mind on this. And maybe you're not interested. No, my mileage I use look when I was a kid I was interested in all this stuff I pyramid power you have you know UFOs. I tried I tried black magic and stuff you know I was a teenager and I was interested in all this stuff. Until I read random became a hyper rationalist robot. Yeah, I rarely meet objectivists. I don't know if their influence in the community or popularity is is is going down or not what are your thoughts on that. Yeah, along the lines of our earlier talk. I think that, like I said, I think probably a good two thirds of all libertarians now, or just not that well read in our origins right so yeah I meet people all the time who astonishingly are not that familiar with iron rand. Not that I think she's essential, but a lot of her thought has permeated lots of the foundations of libertarianism and when you go through that you read her critics and her responses and people she influenced. You realize the deep tapestry of stuff that we figured out, you'd be more aware of things that have been already hashed out and discussed. So I think it's important for I'm not saying I'm not even saying I'm not even I think I would be a Randian by her original abstract statement of what objectivism is which is just four principles, right reality. I believe in that egoism self interest. It's hard to disagree with that capitalism which I think all libertarianism and let's see other one. Well, so we can know reality and then there's reality that exists that those kind of things. I agree with all that, but I disagree with her application of her politics like I think it means anarchy not not men are key. And it means no IP, not IP. And that kind of stuff. But I don't think you need to be a Randian really, I think I think basically for libertarians is important to be rational and to be a realist. That is believe in reality, and the efficacy of reason, and to believe in the libertarian principles, right the basic non aggression principle. Let me get your thoughts about some other more contemporary popular thinkers or at least podcasters so what are your thoughts on Jordan Peterson. If any almost have you read Have you read The Fountainhead by and Rand. I did a long time ago. There's a line in there. This is a little bit too snarky but there's a line where the main character Howard Rourke who's under siege from all these collectivists in society. He meets up with his arch enemy elsewhere to use this evil newspaper editor. And he meets Rourke on a bridge and he says tell me Mr Rourke what do you think of me. No one's here listening tell me what you think of me it works as, but I don't think of you. I mean, I'm not that interested in Peterson to be honest.  He's a smart guy. He doesn't think like I do he's all over the world all over the map with his metaphors and his neandering explanations. I guess it's good he wrote a self help guide saying things that are should be obvious to anyone who's grown up in the world and who has a bit of sense like make your bed that kind of stuff. That is Russell who I like in many ways and like personally. I think he's very critical of Jordan's knowledge of postmodernism, which I don't know a lot about but but Russell's critique seems to be solid. So I don't know if I agree with all that all this stuff about the Old Testament and you know having 17 hours of lectures on one sentence in the Old Testament.  I like his daughter a lot actually and I like some interviews I like some of Jordan's interviews I like the guy personally. I think it's good he shifted slowly towards the liberal libertarian is direction. I just don't think he's a systematic coherent very rigorous thinker. Overall, but I would take him in a second over the left. Yeah yeah I mean I have a lot of thoughts thoughts about him. And you know he's an astounding intellect or whatever so who am I that to criticize him but you know the fact that he doesn't argue from first principles. Politically makes it a little bit difficult because now he's in a very abstract world of symbols and what the archetypes exactly. Well it's not just that so the arguments are rigorous because so like you are talking all these symbols and metaphors all the time. You can never really establish anything solid and you can't really criticize it either because it's just a way of looking at things you know it's like, you know. But I find it interesting but it's all again it's almost like reading on the magazine or something. But I'm being too critical of him but I'm just put it this way I think he's good for lots of people. I just don't.  Wait, who are these, who are these people. I can't even, and they would say I'm lumping people together the neo, the neo reactionaries, the, the alt right types, the, the guys that believe in the.    I could, I could care less. To me it all to me it's all just a complicated jumbled way of saying my favorite aggression in these cases for this reason.  Fine, because I'm a libertarian.  Okay, all I see is someone who says I believe that your rights should be invaded because of this reason, which is just what a criminal says and just what a dictator says. They always have a reason for being willing to violate your rights. You know, it's funny. It's just window dressing. That's great. To me I'm almost more willing to forgive a standard Democrat Republican for their contradictory beliefs, because they don't, they don't have any principles on which they rest but you talk to a minarchist or something and they, they will claim to have principles and then vociferously not apply those principles that they claim they have consistently or whatever so it's almost less forgivable for a person really close to the thing but not at the thing. Okay, and I've noticed now I've noticed a shift like say 1015 years ago, like I would sometimes, sometimes half jokingly but not quite.  They get so upset. Oh, statism means this so they get pedantic you know they get about so yeah but okay definition of status doesn't mean someone who believes in a minimal state.  I almost, but I've noticed that like nowadays if you, if you criticize menarchists is just being totally incoherent and principled libertarians. I think of the pushback used to get you know everyone sort of knows we're on I think we anarchists are on the rise with our moral fervor and our certainty and our, and the coherence of our arguments. I think menarchists, they criticize anarchists for being utopians but they're the utopians because they believe in having a monopoly of agency with a monopoly on violence, using it properly. So everything we know about human nature game theory and monopolies shows you that what's going to happen is what has happened, and there has, there have been thousands of governments in the world, and there's a couple hundred right now. There's never ever in history been a minimal state. That's why they lie and they portray the founding fathers generation the original American system they portrayed as being almost perfect, which is completely bullshit.  And not only that even the poor whites didn't I mean you know this was the revolution was done for the benefit of the white rich white male aristocratic landholders, who basically stepped into the shoes of the king of the of the of the British kings place they stepped into their place.  And they basically set in motion a centralizing government which we have now the biggest government in world history, they achieve what they wanted to do. You know it was a coup. It was a centralizing coup. I don't know how. So, so the point is, there has never been a menarchy in the history of the world and the American founding generation was was no nothing near libertarian. There were a few statements they made in their in their propaganda to get people to accept it that sounded vaguely libertarian.  But the Constitution was to constitute or to make up a new government, and it was a threat to rights and because people were afraid of the threat. They said we're going to put some limits on what it can do so that this new thing we're creating doesn't become a threat to your rights. So to call that whole endeavor and attempt to protect rights is ridiculous.  You know, anyway, that's great. So I think menarchists are, I feel like I'm being generous when I include them in the umbrella term libertarian so they should they should be grateful. You know, I know probably a lot of us maybe you included. We're on that part of the fence. And all we needed was a little bit of rational debate to get there so obviously I think a little bit of patience and forgiveness is acceptable but absolutely. But if it spends a decade arguing against it then they're almost more contemptible in my eyes. I totally agree. I mean there's a joke that's a what's the difference between a menarchist and anarchist and the answer is about six months. Now it took me about. It took me about 86 years but that was because that was 1982 as a high school student and then in law school in 88. Finally, I, you know, I was trapped in objectivism for so long. And finally, when I read the free David Friedman, the market for Liberty and the Tanna Hill, I'm sorry the market for Liberty by the Tanna Hills and David Friedman, machinery of freedom and Rothbard's stuff on anarchy and Robert Nozick even even though he's not an anarchist. When I read that stuff I finally was willing to go all the way. But nowadays there's less there's much less of an excuse because there are so many of us that are anarchists and the arguments so loud and persuasive, and you know that it's libertarian. I don't think there's much of an excuse to be a menarchist for very long anymore. Right before the Internet.  Mary Ruhart healing healing the healing the world. Yeah, that was that was probably the first one that really changed my mind and most people say I ran and to me. I got through Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and stuff and to me I would just prefer her nonfiction articles and argumentation like I don't need a story to embed something maybe some people do. Oh yeah some people some people definitely do or they did. And by the way I would say that in my the fountain has the first book I read that started changing me, but in retrospect I don't really know why because the fountain head I think is a horrible. It's not libertarian at all. Atlas Shrugged is another matter Atlas Shrugged is magnificent and great. A few deviations on IP and stuff but it's great. It's even quasi anarchist. But the fountain head is about a guy that is a weird narcissist.  He's a loner.  And then he becomes an intellectual property terrorist by dynamiting someone else's property because he they violated his intellectual property rights. So I'm still mystified as to why that made me libertarian I just think there's a one aspect of it is it teaches you the virtue of independence and like, following your views no matter what society says. And that maybe can inspire a young, a young high school student like me, living among people who are not still share some more things. But I don't think it's libertarian at all. Atlas Shrugged is one of the founding libertarian works but it is fiction and some people don't need that or like that. And but some people really are inspired by that kind of stuff, I think. Interesting, right. I never I never read I've never read real arts book. That was kind of after my immersion exposure to libertarianism and I've never read it I've talked to her. I've read a couple excerpts. I think I want her to make it more anti IP in the next version. But, but I had I know that book has influenced some people. Yeah, my, my original copy was all warped because I would read it in the bathtub. I would read it. I would read it in the bathtub so my copy is like all warped and yellow and stuff like that. And then the internet happened. And I could go to Lou Rockwell. I could go to strike the route. Did you ever write for strike the route? I've published on there. I had long debates on there with that guy John Kennedy and these other I don't remember if I had an article in there but I used to say things provocative just to piss them off and they would just like one time I had this thing is funny. You can look it up. When I was writing on Lou Rockwell I wrote something like it was kind of tongue in cheek but I said something like, if we have to have driver's licenses you should have a license you have to you should have to have a license to breed. And my point was that it was really an ethical thing like you shouldn't have children unless you're emotionally and financially able to take care of them and I really still believe that. I think it's immoral and irresponsible for all these people to run around having kids when they can afford it and then they need to get on welfare if they need support, you know, have kids and they complain about the cost of tuition.  So I said maybe we should have a license to breed. Now I kind of said that knowing was going to set these guys off and they went crazy. They said oh cancella thinks she should have a license to breed he's not a libertarian. Of course I was kind of joking right I don't really think the government should require it but what I meant was that you can even argue that there's a positive obligation on the part of parents to take care of the children which I do believe even a legally enforceable one although that's not feasible in most cases but I think technically you violate your kids rights when you don't care for them properly when you have when you have the ability to do so you should.  Have a kid when you're ready plan these things out be irresponsible grown up adult and if you don't do that I think you can make a case that you're kind of infringing the kids rights or at least you're being a bad parent. That was only my point you know that. So there was that debate on there there's others. Why do you ask us to track the route. I was just talking about my early days and how difficult it was to find these ideas I didn't, you know, I didn't know where to go. But Lou Rockwell existed strike the route existed. There were very few places on the internet where I could find this information then of course Mises Institute started putting everything online, and I think that's where I first read your stuff. What does it feel like to have been there at the early days and to have known Rothbard and still know hoppa and to have contributed significantly to the foundation, especially with the IP stuff like that must feel amazing. Yeah, it's odd. I'm kind of slow in the uptake sometimes to reflect and realize things because I'm 55 now. And just now I still feel like I'm 25 years old sometimes like being naive and because I, I'm just realizing some things now like I didn't plan out my my my my legal career, or my family career exactly, or my intellectual sort of application. But it's worked out great because I just dedicated myself to it and I think I was lucky in some ways. I enjoy my position, and I enjoy being part of it I've always I've always wanted to I think this is what I aspire to when I was younger. Like even in high school I kind of I was in a rural Louisiana. I was bookish I like philosophy and ideas and all this stuff and I just like intellectualism and I didn't know what I was missing I mean I, if I had known then what I know now about say New York and these areas I would have I would have been miserable knowing I wasn't part of all that. I probably would have aspired to do that in college like I just went to LSU because it was a school down the road but I went to engineering, which I never practiced so I probably would have done something different. But I just kept applying myself to it I just really enjoyed it because, and being a lawyer actually from Louisiana has helped me coincidentally, because the Roman law stuff I learned contributed greatly to my unique ability I think to analyze the law. I realized that just in the last few years like I've become more confident what I say because I realized I'm not. When you're operating without a net and you're, you're kind of conservative like I am conservative and that means tentative in in in advancing things you're not certain of, and you I always want to kick the tires and make sure I've read all the possible literature I can to make sure that there's something someone else discovered. I'm always incremental in what I do so that that's why I think my stuff has been good is because it's incremental and it grows in an organic fashion, but it's part of a systematic nature because I'm careful about putting the next block into it. So, in law school, you know I read as much as I could and I used to think everyone had read everything I'd read. So over the years when I would run into someone said well there's a law review article in 1974 on this. I thought everyone had read all this. I thought everyone was doing what I done but now I realize I'm, I'm kind of unique, or I'm, I'm, I'm in the minority on this kind of stuff. So now I'm more confident in saying things even when I'm operating without a net because I know there's no one else who knows more because I know so I know what everything's I know all the stuff that's out there. I'm just confident no one, I would have found it if someone had done this already and solved all these things. Unless this is some, you know, PhD dissertation hidden in a basement somewhere which I have stumbled across but I think you would have heard about these things. So I met Rothbard 94 one time right before he died like two months before he died. And that was great. We, we had a great conversation. In retrospect I see now what happened was, you know, I wrote a wrote a long essay about Hoppe's thing I was starting to get into my rights theory and law school and then after law school. I published it in a law review I sent it to Hans and so Hoppe and Rothbard and these guys were excited, you know, because at the time the movie was still pretty small so they found a bright young lawyer rising through the ranks, who was a potential another voice also kind of on their side and into theory. So I went to this, this John Randolph Society meeting they had in Crystal City, Virginia in November of 94, and I was living in Philly at the time. And I went there to meet Hoppe really. And I met Rothbard and the Rockwell David Gordon Walter these guys in person. And I met Rothbard we Rothbard and I spent about 30 minutes alone in an auditorium before for a talk and we talked chatting chatting chatting. And of course, I wish I had known he was about to die because I would have done more. But I think he was interested my argument, my, my, my astopal argument which is like my argument for rights which is similar to Hoppe's argumentation ethics which I had sent Hoppe the article about, because I'm pretty sure Rothbard had read it by then it was mildly favorable, because he had already endorsed Hoppe's argumentation ethics. He must have been aware of my complimentary argument so I think he would have welcomed it with open arms, which leads me to believe that if he had just lived another couple years because I was about to publish my first anti IP stuff like in 1994 95. I am confident Rothbard would have said, Oh yeah, I slightly went off off the rails on copyright in ethics of liberty can sell us right I think he would have totally joined us on that one. Because I'm trying to put words in his mouth or bend him to my service but I really know this stuff really really well I've read his stuff in detail. I'm certain he would have because number one, his entire contract theory, the core of his property theory and his comments on defamation law are all incompatible with what he said about copyright by contract. And what he said about copyright by contract is just confusing based upon the history of copyright law, and, and, and the way IP law works, I think he just didn't know a lot about it so he made some missteps there. Furthermore, he was on a panel with Rothbard in 19, I mean to with Hoppe in 1988 when Hoppe was asked an IP question and Hans immediately said that you can't own ideas because they're, they're not they're not a means of action their knowledge that guides action. So Hans got it right right away by applying praxeology, the praxeological framework very carefully. And Rothbard sat there and didn't object. And I think he would. So I don't think he disagreed. I just don't think he took it anywhere. I think if you said now Rothbard you just agree with Hans on this you understand that that means what you said about copyright and ethics of liberty is a little bit wrong. He probably said yeah yeah I need to revisit that he just didn't have time to get around to it. That's my guess about that. But so then, because Rothbard died January of the next year, Hans became the chief at the only editor of the JLS journal return studies and the co editor of the quarter journal of Austrian economics so Hans became the editor of the JLS for 10 years.  And he said, Cancel, would you be the book review editor said okay so I started doing that I started going to Mises conferences and presenting my papers at their Austrian scholars conference. Just 15 minute 20, 25 minute presentations of a paper and almost all those turned into articles which I think are kind of my some of my significant contributions like causation theory contract theory, intellectual property theory, legislation and law, that kind of stuff. So gradually over time it just became my intellectual home, and I just felt natural to me at the time I never saw it. Attention, I was always humble it's still humble. Over the years, I realized I only have gone to places when I got invited to after that initial set of stuff.  I just go people invite me just like my podcast. My podcast is just where people invite me to go on their show, and I put it on my feed. But in the last couple years, I've enjoyed. So every time I go to a conference, I've been invited to speak and it's always stressful to me, although less so in recent years I've gotten more comfortable speaking. I used to be nervous now I'm not nervous because I know I feel so well, and I'm just more comfortable speaking now, but just practice I guess. But it's always uncomfortable when you go to talk a conference because I'm always stressed out before I speak and I'm always preparing to the last minute. And as soon as I get my talk then I can enjoy the conference. So, the last couple years I'll sometimes go to a conference just as an attendee, like most people do. And I enjoy that so much because I just go there with a sigh of relief and I just get to enjoy myself and I'll have to speak, don't prepare. So it's kind of a mixture now and my son is just going off to college this summer. So I'm finally going to be an empty nester, which I'd never even thought about before. And I'm going to miss him, but now I'll have the, and I'm basically mostly retired I only work about three or four hours a week. So I have all this time and freedom to do whatever I want my wife is cool with it. So I'm going to start traveling to more and more conferences just because I enjoy it I enjoy hanging out. So, Bitcoin conferences and libertarian conference I just went to porkfest. You know I went to a Bitcoin thing and in Austin, I went to the Bitcoin thing in Miami. I'm going to go to hoppers thing in September. I'm going on. Next month I'm going to Alaska on a bike riding trip and e bike with three, three, three libertarian friends with Trek travel. So I've been enjoying the hell out of it. And I got off on the tangent but that's, I enjoy being part of I enjoy discussing libertarian theory and, you know when I go to when I go to events, you know, I've, I guess I've become a libertarian and I never intended to. Although I kind of resent the terms libertarian because in the beginning that term. I've never heard that.  But then there's a group of us who are known because of our libertarian theory contributions, or our place in prominent institutions like you know Lou Rockwell the founder of the Mises to people like that. So I'm, I am, I am what's Robert Borks word I am. I forgot the word he uses for. I'm pleased that people can talk with me about recognize some of the red have read some of the stuff I've done and we can talk about it. I don't really, I consider myself to be standing on the shoulders of giants and part of an incremental development of ideas. And everyone is part of this everyone is seeking truth someone someone to walk into me at a conference they'll say oh thank you for writing that book and I'll say well thank you for reading it because that means we're all trying to think about ideas and service of liberty and truth. And I just love being part of it. And I love that there's more people you can talk about now. I love it all I've enjoyed the hell of it. And now I'm realizing as you know a lot of people when they get to retirement age I mean I'm only 55 but I'm getting into those years. A lot of people when they retire, they're left with a vacuum they don't know what they're going to do their kids are gone. They, they've been spending a life on their careers and they don't have any hobbies and the outside interest. I've always had this application on top of my vocation. That's my I have seven seven or eight books I want to write and I'm working on I can work on that forever. And I can keep staying involved in things like this. So I'm not worried about retirement for me retirement just going to give me more liberty to do things like this. So I guess it's sort of inadvertently led me to a perch I can land on and rely on in my, in my, you know, in my last 30, 30 hopefully 30 years. I've enjoyed being part of it. That answers your question. That's fantastic. Yeah, to what greater pursuit than the pursuit of the deepest questions about society and, and rights and right and wrong. And so that's the, that's better than probably fishing. Maybe a little bit better than go fishing. I've been one of these sort of in what I've used an insecure type who always has to try to elevate their way of doing life and because they feel a little bit insecure about it they criticize the way everyone else does it. I don't believe that at all.  And that's what gives me a gratification. That's where I'm like for Robert Burke use that word in his sort of consequentialist view of things like people have gratification. So we need to maximize gratification. I would say I was gratified by that. But this is one reason I've never been much of an activist and I've been skeptical of that and also I've always been immune to or not impressed by people that say, Oh, can sell a the way you just presented that was too rude or too harsh or that's not a way to sell your ideas to people. And I'm like, I'm not trying to sell my ideas to people. I'm trying to advance libertarian thought, primarily for me. It's me it's like a big puzzle. I want to figure it out. I want to figure out that's why that's why I think I've made progress because I have a sincere personal ambition and drive to solve this. This gap, this lacuna this confusion I saw in libertarian thought, like on intellectual property or like on causation theory or like on contract theory. I figure, Fuck, it's a big gap there. It's a low hanging fruit. I think I'm equipped to possibly do it. I'm going to do it. Just because I like contributing to thought. So when people say, Oh, well, your ideas aren't making much progress. I'm like, they're making progress for me. And the people that read it. So I'm almost, I'm almost an inherent of Albert Jay Knox view of the remnant, which is that look, we're not going to change the world by passing out pamphlets to our uncles at Thanksgiving dinner. We're going to keep the ideas of Liberty alive in the remnant so that when society finally achieves an advanced state, because I think we're still in a primitive state, even though we have space shuttles and lasers. We're still, we're still just kind of primitive monkeys tribal monkeys superstitious tribal monkeys. When we finally reach an advanced state the ideas of Liberty will be there for people to draw on sort of like we rediscovered Justinians code of Roman law after after 800 years or whatever it was lost and we rediscovered it or Aristotle's works. It'll be there to help develop things. But I don't think that libertarian ideas are the cause of Liberty. I think Liberty has to emerge naturally. But I just enjoy advancing libertarian theory because I'm contributing to something that I think is important. And I don't think my role is that momentous I think it's, I think it's been significant to a certain degree. Of course I've been lucky to have been born where it was advanced enough to have a solid foundation, but, but primitive enough to have work work left to do. And I've identified low hanging fruit and I've worked to, I've worked to develop my knowledge and skill set so that I could contribute in a meaningful way to some things without being a total crank. So that's all I do, and I enjoy it and but I think everyone plays a role in their own way, even if you're just a quiet listener.  Cool. I've almost taken two hours of your time. And you've been unbelievably generous and answering these questions. Could I ask, yeah, I got 15 more minutes 15. All right, let's do it. Here's some stuff that's not necessarily philosophical but just to get to know you the guy. So do you fall down any rabbit holes and YouTube. I mean they could be intellectual rabbit hole just wasting wasting your time. Yeah, I watched like wealth by slaymen you know some of these couples prank videos. Prank videos. Go ahead. Yeah. What were you saying?  No, that's not really that wasn't really prank that was one of his memes was going around and my wife's an engineer we're both engineers.  I was just listening to something on YouTube. Oh, no, it was it was I've been reading Blinkist. Tom Woods recommended it. I've probably read 60 books on Blinkist now or I've listened to audio versions of the book summaries of 60 books. And one of them was the one by Daniel Kahneman I just read it yesterday is called thinking fast and slow something like that. Because I mean, I'm interested in psychology lately ever since I've recently learned a lot about alcohol last year I quit drinking eight months ago. Oh, wow. And it's been amazing and my life is so much better. I've learned so much about it in coming in that process. And I've learned about psychology and doing it so interesting psychology. But he had this brain he's there was an example between the intuitive process, the instinctual process, the fast thinking and the slow thinking the rational process and so there's I'll give it to you. See what you think. You have a forgot what the items were. Like there's a candy bar and a marble or something like that. And you buy them and they totally they cost $1.10. But one of them is 10 cents more than the other. So what are the relative prices. Like what's your instinct to say one of them is 10 cents more than the other. Yeah, so it's $1.10 total ones 10 cents more than the other. So what did each item cost. Maybe one is 55 cents. Okay, so you're thinking rationally. So the answer is the instinct your instinctual answer will be oh one's a dollar one's 10 cents. Right. That's your instinct. That's your fast thinking brain. But that's wrong. It seems like that so you're fast and the slow thing if you think about it, it's a dollar it's a dollar five and 90. It's a dollar five and five cents. Wow, I got it. Oh my God. It's easy to understand if you think about it rationally but the point is that your brain tries to the most efficient way first which is your instinct. Another question in that realm sorry to interrupt but is the Monty Hall problem with yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. I have an explanation for that doesn't rely on fractions and math. And I've brought it to really rational people like a lawyer for example who literally doesn't agree with the true. The probability thing about opening the doors and the goat and all that. Yeah yeah so you're on a game show. You have three doors behind two doors as a goat behind one is a whole bunch of money. You choose a door and the host says all right before you open this door you have the chance to open what I will open one of the other doors and he'll reveal a goat on the other door do you stay. Do you switch doors or does it not matter. Correct. Yeah I actually I actually have the original Maryland most of all column on that when it came out she posed the question I remember I was reading this is like 20 years ago. And I got the answer right and then all this you get this she gave the right answer and all the readers went apeshit and they saw sent these letters and saying how she was wrong. And, but finally she persuaded most of them know this is counterintuitive but you're wrong. And I think I'm curious what your take on it is but most of the contrarian answers on that they evolve changing. They involve going outside the question and changing the nature of the question like, like, changing the premises of the question like well in a real world if this really happening maybe she's doing this or something like that. But if you take it for what the most reasonable statement of the problem is the answer is you should switch right. You have a chance that you have two thirds chance to get in the car if you switch. And I think a lot of people forget the hidden assumption which is the host is obviously not going to reveal the money one. He's got to keep the game going. So he's of the two remaining one he's going to obviously show you the goat not the money. So that's a sort of hidden variable there.  Then it's a little bit more correct, then you can't just assume your original assumptions or what you assume because I just think that means the problem is more ambiguous than you're not stating all the exact presupposition that you need to know to answer the question I agree with you. And I think the way it's originally stated is there's a reasonable interpretation of the question. Right.  Well, I watch a lot of television I watch a lot of prestige TV like Lucifer, you know, handmade tail, that kind of stuff. I like romantic comedies. I remember I asked Hans when like Hans hop out when I asked what kind of stuff do you like romantic comedies to Hans is a sap. He's sort of a sap. What's the right word for a. He's a romantic. He's a soft. Yeah, you know stuff and I looked like a little month of comedies. So I like romantic rom coms. I cry. I cry easily movies and things like that. You're going to get personal on the Internet. I read Drudge Report. I read Slate. I read a lot of things all my conservative and Trumpy friend they freak out about you know, I can't believe what's in it. I can't believe you read the New York Times can't believe you listen to slate. I listen to a lot of slate podcasts slate podcasts like the political gap fest and the culture gap fest. I know they're left leaning but you know I enjoy their take anyway. And at least I can tell their leftism when it rears its head and I can just discount it. Tons of podcasts I have so many I can't get through them all anymore Tom Woods. I think my number one podcast with Tom Woods. Bob Murphy some libertarian podcast a lot of Bitcoin podcasts, some culture broadcast some alcohol podcast. That's increasing I'm always frustrated with YouTube channel so I like podcasts better but all this all the all the what do you know, see the beat generation what do you call the modern generation millennials post millennials Gen X. They all like they all like YouTube instead of podcast now which drives me crazy. So YouTube channels, the prank videos. Oh, I like the scammer like it bogey where he scams these Indian scammers.  It's just a wonderful sense of civilian justice. And I watch a lot of these five minute things from like Dave's Dave Shapiro Ben Shapiro like debunking the left, although it gets a little bit tedious over time.  Can you believe this woman would not kneel for the flag. The rage porn on the GOP Republican side, my mother is addicted to it, and she visits my house on occasion and we don't have cable news or anything and I have to set up a computer so she can watch Fox News so that she can get her injection of rage. Yeah, it's exhausting. Yeah, I had my, my, my, I love my brother in law and my sister love love dearly they're both hyper conservative libertarian leanings. They live with us for several months over Christmas. And, and every time I would have seen in on they would freak out. You know they got to have Fox on. Yeah, but then, but then my son and their daughters are all like modern, they're all cool kids my son is libertarian leaning but he's a.   And they're like, they're a little bit disgusted with Fox News and I can kind of understand I'm seeing it through their eyes now you know like they walk in the house you got Fox News on all the time.  And my dad recently my dad. I hooked him up with YouTube TV and he can't find a weather channel and he's begging me to hook him up the weather channel like why he just wants to sit and watch the weather all the time this what all people do I guess. Like, just open up an app and you'll see what the weather is he wants to watch these live reports all the time. I guess that's better than Fox News. It's maybe like their version of meditation app. Yeah, yeah, they're worried they're always worried about the weather for some word worried about that worried about the weather, but without the hate. Okay, so I've only got a couple minutes with you go ahead go ahead I got some time. Any musical. So let's say guilty pleasures now a lot of people respond to the question of milk guilty pleasure say I don't feel guilty about anything. No, what I mean by guilty pleasures is things that you think other people would not understand or respect, or maybe looked out down upon you for listening to. I don't know. I mean, I, I don't know if I'm alone in this I think a lot of people get stuck in their musical tastes in a certain era, like I've like some bands since my the heyday when I got interested music. I'm stuck in that era where I learned to love it and so there's some bands I listen to over and over and over again for like 3040 years. So rush is my rush used to be my all time favorite band but slowly over time Pink Floyd is overtaken so Pink Floyd is by far my favorite band in the world, and I listen to them repeatedly over and over and over and over again. I love the cult, I love Iron Maiden, I love Triumph, Saxon and Riot, and Igui Momstein, those are like my favorites and then some others are a little bit softer like Boston and journey and those guys, but I also live like Madonna and Gwen Stefani and this kind of stuff. I just love it. I love that kind of fun stuff you know the catchy stuff heart. But lately some classical I've been listening to space music and some of that chill music that ambient and my friend Juan Carpio in Ecuador he's in the ayahuasca he got me into that ayahuasca music things called Spongle. Spongle. Listen to that. I know it. Spongle.  Do you play guitar or something like that. No, I wish I learned I started learning piano briefly with when I got my son Suzuki lessons the teacher maybe take lessons for three months and I thought about learning piano in my, in my retirement years but I had just too many other interests. So I never did learn an instrument. Last couple, last couple songs about music. Is there a song that you have a negative association with it's not that you hate it. It's that just you don't like it because of where you were at the time. I don't really think like that. A lot of times my son will ask me a question like what's your favorite color and I'll say I don't think like that. Right, probably because I'm a hyper Austrian subject because I don't think it. What does it mean to have your favorite color.  What so what does it even mean it's like a meaningless statement I think. It doesn't want to wear a blue shirt. Do you ever wear a white shirt. Yeah. So, so how can you demonstrate your preference blue. So, I can think of one song that I would say triggers me because it was, I got to be delicate here. It was a song that evokes memories of a past part of my life where things that happened were painful about it later. Like a romantic kind of thing. So yeah, there's a song I don't really want to hear because it would bring back painful memories baby. Do you want to mention it or it's by it's by the group Century and the album is and soul it goes and so you L it goes. It's kind of obscure it's a European band. I can't remember which song it is on there I know when I hear it though. Yeah, I will look it up. Let's see here. Your first. No, let's go. Let's go here. Do you have any dreams recurring dreams where you're like why am I having a recurring dream. Yeah. It hasn't happened lately but like I said I stopped drinking alcohol eight months ago actually eight months today it was November 4 because I remember I got drunk on election day November 3. The last time I've ever drank and I think it's last time I will ever whatever learned about alcohol. So, I just I wanted to stop drinking because I was drinking to well, I say I was drinking too much but it was harmful. It was harmful to my health and other things and so I struggled trying I struggled to quit because when you drink it's hard to quit for a lot of people and that's because they're addicted because alcohol is addictive. I don't think the word alcoholic is coherent but I think alcohol is an addictive drug so when you try to quit it's hard to quit. And you have to realize why it takes an intellectual journey and I finally did that. That's why I got in psychology.  When people try to quit the rational mind is saying this is bad. I want to quit or I want to slow down and they can't and they don't know why they can't. The reason they can't is their subconscious mind is at war with their rational mind you have you have like a dissonance. The only way to stop really without white knuckling it and doing willpower is to erase the false beliefs in your subconscious and there's a process you can go through to do that is called liminal steps.  But ever since I was in college, I still have these dreams where I show up to class. I miss the class have or I show up. I show up unprepared or I step through the test. I still have those dreams that I wake up in a panic, or I meant, or the other one is this recurring for me. I used to work at a law firm. So when I got out of law school. I worked for big law firms for 10 years. And that's, and then I worked as general counsel for a high tech company for 10 years and then for the last 10 or 12 years I've been a solo lawyer I do patent law for private clients so I've had three sorts of phase in my career, big law firms general and now solo. And the big law firm thing I loved it I learned a lot, but it's kind of almost a brutal but it's one, one negative aspect of it is you have to bill hours every 10th of an hour you have to account for every six minutes you have to account for and bill to a client and keeping track of those time sheets can be a nightmare. And I went in house to get to get out of that. So I still have these nightmares that three months have gone by and I haven't wrote down my hours yet and I have to get up and do that after reconstruct the last three months of hours and I'm just, or I forgot to I didn't do work.  So I still have nightmares about that. Awesome, awesome. All right, we are at exactly two hours. So maybe we do a follow up, you know, months or years later, because I have so many more questions to ask you but this has been an absolute delight. Yeah, maybe we can even break this one up into two parts or I might at my end, because I noticed people don't like to our podcast or maybe some people do, I don't know. Great. So, yeah, we'll be happy to do a follow up anytime. Fantastic. I'll let you know when I've got my questions compiled and maybe we'll do another one and we'll connect after this by email or something. Okay, thank you, Jesse. Have a good Sunday. Have a good July 4. You too. Bye bye.