I'm really pleased to be here and to see this very large group of attendees that we have, and I'm looking forward to a very interesting and stimulating week. I think that maybe it was implied, but Dr. Thornton, I'm sure, meant to say that in the course of the week, during mealtime or during social hour at other times, feel free to go up to any of the instructors for our week-long seminar and any of the questions you have, problems you have, things that you'd like to discuss, that's there would be a time to bring them up. Now I'm going to be talking about Ludwig von Mises, his life to an extent, his work. I've been involved with Mises's work ever since high school when my buddy George Reisman, who was I think 16 years old at the time, maybe brought up for a line of 14, had finished reading Human Action and was very enthusiastic about it and introduced me to this to this thinker and a smaller or larger degree have been involved with Mises and his thought ever since. Now many years ago, when William F. Buckley Jr. was at the beginning, many years ago, the beginning of his career of lecturing at colleges and then he went on to other groups and in the days when he was somewhat more tolerant of libertarians than he is today, he used to begin his talks by writing two names on the blackboard in those days. One was the Defender of Democratic Socialism. I think it was John Kenneth Galbraith, it could have been Lasky or John Dewey, was recognized at most of those present. He was trying to sort of incarnate the great world historical debate between socialism and the private enterprise system. So that was the Democratic Socialist and almost all the students had heard of, I think it was probably Galbraith, so they raised their hand. And then Buckley would put on the blackboard the name of Ludwig von Mises, who was entirely unknown to them. Needless to say, this situation has not basically improved since then except perhaps in the sense that many college students now have heard of William F. Buckley Jr. Now, how has it been possible that the great majority of economics and social science students at fine colleges and universities are totally unfamiliar with Mises? At the time of his death in October 1973, even the New York Times, in its notice, in its obituary, termed Mises one of the foremost economists of this century, unquote. And Milton Friedman, you'll hear something during the week about the differences between Milton Friedman and the Austrian school, but even Milton Friedman, for a totally different tradition of economics, called Mises, quote, one of the great economists of all time, unquote, I think typically generous tribute on the part of Friedman. But actually, Mises was even more than a great economist. Throughout the world, among knowledgeable people, in German-speaking Europe, in France, in Britain, in Latin America, in Japan, in our own country, Mises was famous as the great 20th century champion of a certain school of thought, a school of thought that could be said to have a certain historical importance and maybe even intellectual respectability. The school of thought that began with Adam Smith, David Hulme, Mitergo, included Wilhelm von Humboldt, Bentham, Benjamin Constan, Alexis de Tocqueville, Acton, Berenbauerk, William Graham Sumner, Herbert Spencer, Alfredo Pareto, and many others. The tradition of classical liberalism. Mises was understood to be the great representative of classical liberalism in the mid-20th century. Offhand, one would have thought that this acknowledged position alone would have entitled Mises to being presented within the pluralistic setting of left liberal American academia. And then there were Mises, Mises' scientific achievements, which were extraordinary. And most or maybe all of our instructors could address those questions much better than I could, but let me just mention his pioneering work in monetary theory and in the theory of the business cycle, his profound work in the methodology of economics and the a priori derivation of economic truths, his systemizing of all economic theory and his magnum opus human action. But let's take another example. It is conceited on all sides that the whole discussion revolving around the viability of the system of central economic planning, in this discussion, Mises played the key role. Now, socialism in that sense is dead, it's over with, but it shaped the larger part of the 20th century. And so therefore it's of great historical importance. Now, quite possibly the great intellectual scandal, still unadmitted of the last century, has been that the vast international Marxian movement, including thousands upon thousands of professional thinkers in all fields, famous names, was for generations content to discuss the whole issue of capitalism versus socialism solely in terms of the alleged defects of capitalism. Capitalism is responsible for everything. I mean, it's just just the beginning of a litany you can find in the communist manifesto. And it was responsible for contradictory things also was responsible for undermining the family was responsible for promoting the bourgeois family. It was responsible for destroying religion on the view of many conservatives. It was also responsible for propping up religion. But whatever it was, capitalism was responsible. The question of how and how well a socialist economy would function was avoided as taboo. It was Mises great accomplishment and a sign of his superb independence of mind. To brush aside this pious one just doesn't speak of such things and to have presented comprehensively and arrestingly the problems inherent in attempting rational economic calculation in a situation where no market exists for production goods. Anyone familiar with the structural problems with which all the more advanced communist countries continually faced will understand the significance of Mises work in this one field alone. It was in fact the irrationality inherent in the socialist system that finally brought communism down. It was not having forced them to spend more on defense because of the of the Star Wars system that the U.S. was undertaking. It was something that had been going on from the very beginning because of the of the deep-seated entrenched irrationality of their economic system that became totally manifest, impossible to avoid when the information revolution came around and people in the Soviet Union could see on television and in video cassettes in all the new on the Internet for that matter, the difference between the way of life of people in the Soviet Union or in the East zone, satellite states and the people in the West. It just became too much of a burden of lies to maintain at that point. But the root cause of this was their irrational economic system. As a man named Robert Heilbruner, who wrote an influential history of economic thought that was used in many undergraduate courses. And he was a socialist or democratic socialist and he refers in an article in The New Yorker from 1990 to this debate on the feasibility of socialist planning. He says in the 1930s when I was studying economics, a few economists had already expressed doubts about the feasibility of centrally planned socialism. One of them was Ludwig von Mises, an Austrian of extremely conservative views. Right, he's another Jesse Helms or Jim Sessions or something who had written of the impossibility of socialism arguing that no central planning board could ever gather the enormous amount of information needed to create a workable economic system. Well, that really wasn't the whole argument. The whole argument was basically based in terms of property rights and price system. Our skepticism was fortified when Oscar Lange, a brilliant young Polish economist who would become the first post-war Polish ambassador to the US, in other words, a member of the Communist Party, wrote two dazzling articles showing that a board would not need all the information that Mises said it couldn't collect. All that such a board would have to do than Lange said in these dazzlingly brilliant articles was to watch the levels of inventories in its warehouses. If inventories rose, the obvious thing to do was to lower prices so that goods would move out. So he knows that much. And if inventories were too rapidly depleted to raise prices in order to discourage sales. That really sounds like the recipe for a dynamic, entrepreneurial, innovative economy, doesn't it? You just watch the warehouse and look at the inventories for the goods that you have on hand and follow this rule. Fifty years ago, it was felt that Lange had decisively won the argument for socialist planning. Well, you can imagine what that means in terms of the state of the profession in those days. Okay. And then, and then, Brunner, Robert Heilbrunner says that it turns out, of course, that Mises was right. Oh, really? The Soviet system has long been dogged by a method of pricing that produced grotesque misallocations of efforts. And then he says they had some spectacular results. The dams and mills in entire new cities of 1930s astonished the world. Right. Fellow travelers were taken on trips of Potemkin villages. But listen to this. As did the Chinese Great Leap Forward of the 1950s, which performed similar miracles from a still lower base. The miracles consisted in hundreds or tens of millions of Chinese peasants trying to smelt steel in their backyards. Decentralization of production and every little communist mind adding to the process of production. And he thinks that the world was astonished by this Great Leap Forward. I was around for this Great Leap Forward of the 1950s. Some of us were also, and it wasn't the world that was astonished. It was communist fellow travelers who talked up the thing. Well, in any case, he says that Mises was right. So what's the result of that? Well, you just have to say, oops, sorry, we were wrong about the feasibility of socialism. But these intellectual mistakes were taken out of the hides of the people of Soviet Russia and then out of the hides of the people of Poland and Hungary and other countries. So that when the communist system was overturned, huge demonstrations in the streets, Russian cities, 75 years on the road to nowhere. 75 years of deprivation because the world's intellectuals thought that the communist argument was basically sound. So, how do we account then for the fact that those who lionized men like, I don't know if you even know these names, but they were world famous intellectuals, considered liberals by the way. Lionized men like Raymond Aaron, a very banal Cajun, and Isaiah Berlin, pardon me, Sir Isaiah Berlin, a high level popularizer of ideas, who lionized them seriously as important social philosophers, somehow could never bring themselves to familiarize their students with Mises or familiarize themselves with that matter, but to show him the marks of public recognition and respect that were his due. He was, for instance, a never president of the American Economic Association. His salary at NYU was not even paid for by the university. It wouldn't even pay, I mean all they did was provide him with a room for his seminar at NYU. It was paid for by the Volcker Fund, a libertarian leaning foundation in those days. However, Mises did produce a handful of PhD students. They include names like Israel Kursner, Hans Den Holtz, and George Reisman. But similarly to Mises' situation, Hayek's salary at Chicago was paid for by outside sources. His salary at the Committee on Social Thought, where he was my professor, since Hayek could not get a job in the Economics Department of Milton Friedman and George Stigler. He was not a real economist in their view. That's exactly what they held against him. He didn't deal with empirical data and empirically falsifiable theories. So, part of the answer to the great neglect of Mises, I think, lies in what Jacques Rouf, a famous French economist of his day, in a warm tribute called his intransigence. Mises was a complete doctrinaire, not a dogmatist but a doctrinaire, a relentless and implacable fighter for his doctrine. For over 60 years he was at war with the spirit of his age, with every one of the advancing victorious, modish, collectivist political schools left and right. The times that he lived in Central Europe, I try sometimes to imagine what it must have been like for him. There was nobody who could remotely be called a liberal east of the Rhine. There were some semi-liberals in France and Britain and even in America. But he was all alone and he had to face the socialists who considered him some bourgeois apologist, some class enemy, as well as the right wing and especially the Nazis, the rising Nazi movement who attacked him as a Jew. And it never phased him. I mean, George and I knew him when he was still about in his 70s or something, very spry, very alert, all his faculties about him. And he never displayed any trauma, right, any psychological wounds from what would have been, or would have been other people that had been a very daunting early years experience. Decade after decade, Mises fought against militarism, protectionism, inflationism, every variety of socialism, every policy of the interventionist state, and through most of the time he stood alone or close to it. The totality and enduring intensity of Mises' battle could only be fueled from a profound innocence of the truth and supreme value of the ideas that he was struggling for. This, as well as its temperament, one might say, one might admit, produced definite arrogance maybe in its tone or apodictic quality. As some of us in the Mises seminar at NYU called it, using one of his own favorite words, that struck others as very inappropriate. Such arrogance and sense of superiority was the last thing academic left liberals and Democrats could accept in the defender of a view that considered only marginally worthy of toleration to begin with. This would largely account, I think, for the somewhat greater recognition that has been accorded to Friedrich Hayek even before Hayek received his greatly deserved Nobel Prize. Hayek was temperamentally much more moderate in expression than Mises ever was. Hayek preferred, for instance, to avoid the old slogan of laissez-faire. Hayek has said it many times, and people keep saying he was a defender of laissez-faire capitalism and so on. Time and time again he rejected the laissez-faire. He said there's no need to go back to that old extreme point of view. And it is hard to imagine Mises making such a gesture as Hayek did in dedicating the road to serfdom to socialists of all parties. It would be like I ran dedicated Atlas to thugs of every description. But the lack of recognition had deflected Mises not on the least. Instead, he continued his work decade after decade accumulating contributions to economic theory, developing the theoretical structure of the Austrian school, and from his understanding of the laws of economic activity, elaborating, correcting, and bringing up to date the great social philosophy of classical liberalism. I want to mention something that is sometimes forgotten about Mises. He was all his life an ardent student of history. And people think that because he based his economics on an a priori methodology, he had no interest or little interest in history or that history was irrelevant. Nothing could be further from the truth. You know more history than the whole Chicago school put together. But history was not the way to establish the principles, the theories of economic science. But history was very valuable in other ways. And it was his understanding of economic principles that enabled him to penetrate to the heart of crucial historical questions. And I'll give two examples. A question that has occupied economic historians in recent decades is a question of what is called the European miracle. Why did economic growth occur in the West and not elsewhere in the world? There's an enormous literature devoted to this nowadays, enormous literature. And in one of his essays, it's almost a throwaway line. One of his essays, not even one of the books, Mises identifies the underlying reason for the growth of development of economic welfare in the West compared to the rest of the world. He says, the idea of liberty is and always has been peculiar to the West. The East lacked the primordial thing, the idea of freedom from the state. It never called into question the arbitrariness of the despots. And the East, he means from the Middle East all the way to the Far East. And first of all, it never established the legal framework that would protect the private citizen's wealth against confiscation on the part of tyrants. Now, as I say, there are many economic historians who have developed this economic, this European miracle idea. Rosenblatt and Birdsall and how the West crew were rich. Douglas North won a Nobel Prize, made me for his work in economic history of this kind and many others. And again and again, they point out there are different causes that Europe had favorable geographical position in many ways. However, the root cause and the root difference between Europe and other civilizations was the limitation of the predatory taxation and confiscation policy of governments. The sort of thing that was in the Ottoman Empire, in Persia, in India, in China also, for instance, through long periods, that was standard. The right of, or ancient times in ancient Egypt, the right of the ruler to take private property at will. There were reasons why Europe was different having to do with the feudal system, having to do with the international church and other things. But the fact is that this is what eventuated in Europe, limitations on the predatory taxing and confiscating power of the state. And what I'm saying is that there is this vast literature and it's very interesting and very elaborate, but Mises got to the heart of the matter in just a few sentences. Or take the question of the Industrial Revolution. As Hayek wrote, the myth of the emissary of the working class in the Industrial Revolution is a supreme historical myth of socialism. Hayek edited a little book called Capitalism and the Historians, which is still in print after, I don't know, 50 years or something. University of Chicago Press. And there are a number of good essays there and Hayek has this essay on the historians in capitalism. On history and politics. And he says that this, people, you'd think that people would get their political opinions from philosophy maybe or from economics, certainly. But what seems to be the case is that they mainly get it from history, filtered down from philosophy and economics. But historians then deal with the different periods of history. And they typically approach it in an anti-capitalist way. You consider your own background in history. We had a period that was called the age of the robber barons, didn't we? When you had unfettered capitalism and it went wild and crazy and they stole everything from everybody. And but thankfully the progressive movement and progressive presidents came in and there's a statue of the Federal Trade Commission in Washington. Do you have ever seen them? It's a kind of a hard relief of a man taming a wild horse or a big fierce horse. Why is it the Federal Trade Commission? Because that's government regulation taming unfettered capitalism. And so that's part of the interpretation of American history. And then somehow again we had unfettered capitalism in the 1920s and it brought about the Great Depression. And thankfully, there's a God that looks over the fate of the United States of America. We got Franklin Roosevelt and the Great Depression was cured and capitalism was fettered again. So my point is that this is a basic view that people have of American history and that more than anything else really colors their view, their approach to political questions. Now, and I could say that the greatest of all of these was this myth of the Industrial Revolution and how because of unfettered capitalism, the working class was practically enslaved and reduced to terrible conditions. I don't think that I could work that, that looks complicated. So let me give you some figures. This is the population of England. In 1750, population of England in Wales was 6 million. It had never been more than 6 million in all the history since the time of the ancient Britons. By 1800, the population was 12 million. By 1850, the population was 24 million. By 1900, it was 42 million. And Mises points this out in the similar population figures for most of the West, not France, but for most other countries. The question is, well, first of all, why did this come about? Well, demographers are not sure. There could be various reasons. But certainly one of the consequences was that people had to face the problem. These new tens of millions of people are going to live. And Mises says the solution was the Industrial Revolution. The solution was the factory system, the industrialization of the West that created jobs for all these tens of millions of people. And then, of course, there was a tremendous downward pressure on wages, but they didn't go down as much as they might have and sometimes didn't really go down at all. Simply, there wasn't an increase during certain years in wages. But the end result was that then the working class was in a position to begin enjoying things by the end of the 19th century. Western workers in oil countries, let's say England, for instance, were better off than workers that have ever been in history. They could eat and drink at will. Famines were a thing of the past, although they had existed just a few decades before in England and in other countries. They had insurance policies. They own their own homes sometimes, own their own furniture, savings accounts. And what does this do to? Well, the history books will tell you it's due to the unions. Somehow the unions came in, which were a minute part of the labor force in any western country except Germany, but England, which didn't have the highest economic growth for working class people. But they were a minute part of the working class in England, certainly in the United States. Oregon benevolent government came in and somehow raised living standards, but that doesn't stand up to elementary economic analysis. That's not how real wages are increased for a whole class, for tens of millions of people. And the famous economic historian T.S. Ashton said, if you want to see a country that has experienced a population explosion of the kind that England did, but no industrial revolution, go to Calcutta. Or you could say just go across the channel to Ireland. Right? Ireland didn't have any of these terrible dark satanic mills. Right? They're fouling God's green earth where you might have thought that Jesus warped in the Blake poem. And when the potato crop failed, people starved or immigrated. I'm not saying that the Irish shouldn't have come to America. That's a whole different question. We don't have to get into that. But my point is it's here, you know, people spend so much time talking about this. And here Mises pinpointed what was involved. Industrial revolution took place against the background of an unprecedented population explosion, which explains why it was a benign thing. You don't have to go as far as I did. She was after all a novelist and poetic person. Working people should get down and worship these smokestacks. But what you were saying essentially was true that it was a solution for the survival question of working people. Now, let me just say something a moment. Since I mentioned the treatment before, we're talking about Mises character. I'm going to say something about Mises fabled intolerance. I have a great deal of respect for Milton Friedman. I was at the London meeting of the more tolerant society a few years ago, when I think they just invaded Iraq for the first time and the first George Bush. And not apropos of this in particular, but they had messages or in some cases in-person appearances from their stable of center-right Nobel Prize winners. Gary Becker, Kose and I guess some others. And a recorded statement from Friedman who made it a point to warn against the erosion of civil liberties in any wartime situation. These others, they couldn't be concerned about anything but reducing the capital gains tax, which is an important point, but question of war and peace is at least on the same level. But Friedman was concerned about that. He warned against the rush to war. So as I say, I have a good deal of respect for him. But he has gone on record as saying some very foolish and indefensible things about Mises in connection with Mises methodology. Mises intolerance, allegedly, was due to his methodological doctrine of praxeology. Friedman says, his fundamental idea was that we knew things about human action, the title of his famous book, because we are human beings. As a result, he argued we have absolutely certain knowledge of the motivations of human actions. That's not what Mises said at all, motivations of human actions. And he maintained that we can derive substantive conclusions from that basic knowledge. Facts, statistical or other evidence cannot, he argued, be used to test these conclusions. That philosophy converts an asserted body of substantive conclusions into a religion. And he's not using religion in a favorable sense. Friedman posits this. Supposing two people, Friedman says, who share from Mises' praxeological view, come to contradictory conclusions about anything. How can they reconcile the difference? The only way they can do so is by a purely logical argument. One has to say to the other, you made a mistake in reasoning. And the other has to say, no, you made a mistake in reasoning. Supposing neither believes he has made a mistake in reasoning. The only thing left to do is fight. I don't know what to... Now, Mises, I mean, Friedman said this in some popular article in some libertarian journal. But I'm afraid that he has also repeated this in public. I was on a panel with him years ago at Stanford on the welfare state where, for some reason, these kids from Stanford never heard of Mises. Friedman launches into an attack on Mises' intolerance on this basis. So I don't think it's unfair to hold him to it. So this is one of the problems. Friedman's theory would predict the occurrence of incessant, bloody brawling among mathematicians and logicians, right? Since they maybe don't agree and they would have to fight. But the non-occurrence of which falsifies the theory in Friedman's own positivist terms. Friedman's position also entails that no religious person who felt certain about his religious beliefs could have any principled reason to respect the conflicting religious beliefs of others, which is absurd, which the talk by my friend Laurence Vance should convince you of. Finally, Friedman's explanation of Mises' alleged personal intolerance, even if we want to accept that as a fact, fails to account for the personal tolerance of other practitioners of the a priori method. So that's a really unfortunate episode in Friedman's career as far as I'm concerned. A much more veridical view of Mises' character, you can find on the Mises.org website and their archives. It's an article from the free market from July 2004 by Lou Rockwell called Heart of a Fighter. And that gives you, I think, a much better idea of Mises' character than you'll gather from Friedman. Now, Mises went through a certain personal crisis, not depersonal in the sense of any to do with his personal life, but in his mind because of the world situation and how it conflicted with his own vision. And also he thought out how it has to in the modern world, not just happens to but how it has to. Now, what is the role of economics? Well, he says the people must eventually decide we have democracy no way around that. It is true economists have the duty to inform their fellow men, but what happens if these economists do not measure up to the dialectic task and are pushed aside by demagogues or if the masses lack the intelligence to understand the teachings of the economists? Is the attempt to guide the people on the right road not hopeless? Especially when we recognize that men like John Maynard Keynes, Bertrand Russell, Harold Lasky and Albert Einstein could not comprehend economic problems. I like that typical Mises' touch of Keynes not being able to comprehend. But he does mention Einstein. Remember reading a pamphlet by Einstein years ago, just a pamphlet entitled Why Socialism? And Einstein's basic reason for socialism is that socialism puts profits ahead of people. As some Mises says, if Einstein can't get any deeper than that, what can you expect from the masses of people? This is an expression of the despair that assailed Mises at the time of the First World War. By what conceivable means could the masses in democratic societies be won for the principles of private property and the free market? This is a problem as the world entered the age of democracy from the middle of the 19th century on that claimed the attention of liberals, in fact, earlier from the time of the French Adilogues at the beginning of the century. Richard Cobden was a great English liberal, a German liberal leader, among those who followed these French writers, the Adilogues, in proposing to use the public education system to instill the principles of sound economics in the masses. Right? I mean, that certainly worked out that way. More generally, it was supposed to be this task of all true liberals to foster public enlightenment in order to forestall popular acceptance of disastrous economic and social policies. I mean, if the majority were in control of the government, what would prevent them simply from confiscating the wealth of anybody richer than they were? Thinking that, you know, so what? So what if they'd followed that principle of confiscating the wealth of any reasonably affluent person we would still be living in grass huts, as Camille Paulius said about something else. You can't have civilization without private property. You can't have civilization on the basis of confiscating the wealth of anybody. It stands a little above the average. Mises considered this problem about using public enlightenment. But he says, we are badly deceived to believe that more schools and lectures, popularization of books and journals could produce the right doctrine. In fact, false doctrines can recruit their followers in the same way. The evil consists precisely in the people's intellectual disqualification to choose the means that lead to the desired objectives. The fact that this is what I think Brian Kaplan deals with in his book, the myth of the uninsured voter. The fact that facile decisions can be foisted upon the people demonstrates that they are incapable of independent judgment. This is precisely the great danger. Mises says, I thus arrived at this hopeless pessimism that for a long time had burdened the best minds of Europe. Mises means by this the best mind, Jacob Burkhardt, called Manger and Max Weber. But what is enlightening and exemplary is how Mises dealt with this pessimistic conclusion. There's a good deal of Albert J. Knox, Isaiah in his response. It must be on the Fee website. It's a great essay by Albert J. Knox, Isaiah's job. Isaiah's job is to not to convert the whole world, but to find and inform the remnant. Mises says, it is a matter of temperament how we shape our lives and the knowledge of an inescapable catastrophe. He mentions that when in high school he chose a verse of Virgil as a personal motto, you can see it all over the institute, do not yield to the bad but always oppose it with courage. It's not clear psychologically what led Mises to this change of mind, to turn them towards a great positive work to which he devoted the rest of his long life. He said again and again I face situations from which rational deliberations could find no escape, but then something unexpected occurred that brought deliverance. What seems to have happened is that Mises became possessed of an interior courage and led him recklessly and against all odds to fight for the good cause as he saw it. He said I made heavy personal sacrifices although I always foresaw that success would be denied me, but I do not regret that I attempted the impossible. I could not act otherwise. I fought because I could do no other. An obvious self-conscious deliberate echo of Martin Luther's, here I stand, I can do no other. The outcome of this powerful inner resolution is described by Mises. I would not tire in professing what I knew to be right and so I decided to write a book on socialism, which I had contemplated before the war. I now set about executing my plan and the result was his book Socialism. It is a landmark in 20th century social science, a landmark in history of thought. You can find this book in a nice Liberty Press edition with a new essay by Hayek, and the book found it's remnant. Hayek explained in his introduction. When socialism first appeared in 1922, its impact was profound. It gradually but fundamentally altered the outlook of many of the young idealists returning to their university studies after World War I. A number of my contemporaries, who later became well-known, but who were then unknown to each other, went through the same experience. Wilhelm Röpke in Germany, Lionel Robbins in England, and Hayek himself. They had been fuzzy-minded socialists, although it's hard to imagine Hayek as a fuzzy-minded socialist, but nonetheless that was their inclination and Mises turned them around. And the message was passed on through the famous Mises Seminar, or the first one in Vienna. Participants over the years included not only Hayek, but Gottfried Habler, Fritz Machlup, Oscar Morgenstern, Eric Fierglen, and others, who went on to achieve fame. Now, I don't want to give the, nobody is infallible, and I don't want to give the impression that Mises was invariably correct. I think Mises was incorrect, unfortunately, importantly incorrect when he defended British imperialism in the 19th century, because it promoted free trade. For instance, in the Opium Wars with China. So he says that that's not even imperialism. If you wage war in order to open up a market, that's not even imperialism. Well, I don't know. The United States was a protectionist country in the later part of the 19th century, and what England had been justified in attacking the United States to open up the American market, or was just a question of the fact that the United States was too strong and China was weak, and that allowed for free trade imperialism. The root of Mises' problem, I think, is his conception, antiseptic, immaculate conception of the state. For him, the state is simply the apparatus of compulsion and coercion. He contemptuously rejects Nietzsche's dictum. The state is the coldest of all cold monsters. Finally, something Mises said, Nietzsche says it's sensible. Mises says the state is neither cold nor warm. All human activity is human activity, and its goal is a preservation. All state activity is human activity, not monsters, and its goal is a preservation of society. But what if this state apparatus has a dynamism of its own? For instance, what if imperialism and the military and civilian bureaucracies it brings into being lead to state activism beyond merely assuring free trade? I see that just as Schumpeter's book, there's two essays on imperialism and social classes, are available outside. And Schumpeter wrote, The Evolution of Imperialism, created by wars that required it. The machine now created the wars it required. Which I think is a very profound statement and bears thinking about military apparatuses. Yet none of this appears to entomese his economic calculations. Nor, to take British imperialism as an example, does he consider the effect of British imperialism as a model and spur to expansionist strivings of other nations, above all Germany, with all the baleful consequences that followed it. So, Mises was not perfect in my view anyway, but there's no, I hope I've given an idea that there's no getting away from his greatness. Mises is what could be called a culture hero. Now a culture hero is somebody who has great achievements to his credit, but also a great and heroic character, a fighting character often, a Galileo is considered in that sense a culture hero, or Beethoven who fought against the restrictions on music of his time. But Mises I would say is such a culture hero for me. I've known a great many very smart people in my time, it's one of the best things that's happened to me. Murray of course, Ein, Milton Friedman, Hayek, Bob Nozick and so on, but to my mind no one had ever made this kind of impression that Ludwig von Mises did. Now what I've done is give you the briefest kind of introduction for a mere 40 bucks or so. Right? Yeah. You will soon have available a work of magnificent real grandeur of intellectual history, the life and times of Ludwig von Mises by Professor Giedor Hilsmann. This is the definitive work on von Mises. It's easy enough to find out on Mises' website all the effort Giedor put in. You went to Vienna, you went to Moscow, you went to Grove City, to gather the documents and so on. And it's a huge work also. I was happy to be able to read it in an early draft and now it's funding to come out. It'll be out probably in a few weeks. However, if you do what you're supposed to do and come to the 25th anniversary meeting of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in New York in October, then you'll have the privilege of having Giedor. You can buy the book there and you have the privilege of having Giedor sign it for you. You'll find out about this meeting, it's really going to be fine, it's going to be great. And the Schlarbaum Award, which I was the second recipient after Otto von Hapsburg, the natural progression, Hapsburg, Raco, it'll be given to Bob Higgs. If you followed his work and so on, this guy is becoming a radical. This guy makes Bob Murphy look like a neocon. And it'll be in New York at the Grand Hyatt on 42nd. Pat Barnett is arranging for a bus tour of the places in Manhattan that were important in the lives of Mises and of Murray, including a trip up to Columbia University where Murray's research library was located. And altogether it's going to be a very enjoyable time. Well, thanks very much.


This time I've been told there's actually something interesting to talk about in the latest Linux video Which is titled trying to do simple tasks on Linux and it does really seem interesting. So let's give it a go Anything is easy. If you know exactly what you're doing again, I have never watched it This is the first time but by the same token Anything can be difficult or even impossible if you lack the requisite skills Resources or knowledge or if you're not used to it. So let's see what the tasks are While the main idea behind the Linux daily driver challenge is to evaluate the Linux experience from a gamer's perspective Even the most Want to do other things on their PC like print I never game So I don't know anything about that a document or watch a video and those things need to not only be possible So with that in mind, we've set a time limit for each of our tasks of 15 minutes Oh, I love this like this kind of challenges to do very normal normal things. I love them. It's very cool In preparation for this part of the challenge I practiced using play on Linux by installing notepad plus plus and I hope that if I really need some other Windows application That's gonna come in handy. What? Before me if it doesn't I also have a working Windows 10 virtual machine that I set up using KVM Which we trained on what in a browser and often for blah blah in preparation for this part of the challenge I practiced using play play on Linux by installing notepad plus plus And I hope that if I really need some other location I actually never had heard of that if it doesn't I also here are the challenges You must surmount in whatever order you please cut and paste a file from one drive.  That's really challenging. So just like in Windows control X and I will paste it to my Kingston. That's it. It is done 3.9 gigs Wait, how the hell is this one minute and 50 seconds already? What happened? What did you cut here? playing it back Yes, I do appreciate the irony of Trying to play success.mkd and having it just be a black screen Okay, so I guess what happened is that the file didn't actually transfer Already, is that what happens? Also admire how Luke did this in 15 seconds Then Linus is already at two minutes. Nice. Oh, no And I'm following Linus because he's using KD Plasma. So, okay stuff went complete. I mean, I really didn't consider that this might Take me longer than like a couple of seconds. Me neither Just like it doesn't take longer than a couple of seconds to go to lttstore.com Check out. This is really annoying. macOS does this too. There's no refresh button in Dolphin Is there none? This is really none. Let me check. Let's go check If there is a refresh button of any sort So now, of course, you can just press F5 that that kind of like goes behind the point You need to have a button that a user would actually know about I've seen comments saying oh, but it's like browsers You should know but if I know it's it's a file manager you wouldn't expect out of the box F5 to be the shortcut to refresh and It's a very nice feature, but you can't just say you should have done that you shouldn't so is there For 13 more actions, what is it view refresh? Well, okay, that was okay That was not easy to find. I'll admit that However, that wasn't like too hard either I gotta say because it was okay. It was very hidden That's very that's where it wasn't underneath view or he had to show the menu bar Otherwise, they wouldn't be like a context menu Okay, fair enough. I mean it's three context menus inside of it, but Okay, I'll take the criticism. I understand Linus here What's next? I know what the philosophy is the philosophy is you're not supposed to need to refresh No, I mean Yeah, I guess but You can refresh if you want and you can even add the button. Let me show you again. I don't expect Linus to know this but It's not too hard either. Look at you. It's done. That's it It took less It took me less to add the refresh button than Linus to actually move that file Sometimes I do Sorry So you need to have the button Sorry. Yeah, look at here. It's done That was easy You cannot do it. It's just I'm still angry about this from like seven or eight years ago or when the file is here Okay, it works. For some reason VLC launches now. Did it just take that long to cancel the move operation? It did I am grabbing a smaller file Trying to install team viewer dot txt. I'm cutting Sorry, what is this? Oh, there's a list of tasks there Cut paste file. Okay. Digitally signed PDF. Okay. This is going to take longer than 15 minutes like for sure for sure tasting it Success only nine minutes Challenge to digitally sign this okay, so it's 15 minutes per task I have not specifically installed any kind of PDF reader So this is the default Yeah, ocular Oh Oh, this is looking promising. Oh draw a rectangle to indicate the Is let me try ocular How do I actually sign a PDF? Um, why do I always mess up with my apps? Let's take bala And then Oh, it's Digitally sign Sorry Oh, that's very nice Okay, that was a notation. But if I click on digitally sign nothing happens. It is like Draw a rectangle to insert a signature field. Okay like this There are no available Certificates Okay, so if I click here what pops up The help center, what is this from 2019 something Well, at least there's a guide to do it. So it can't be that Difficult and I hope that linux didn't have many issues with it The signature field, okay Do Signers this size is too small to read No, I'm just gonna sign it. There are no available signings. Okay. Same as me Man, I thought I was going to be done this in like one minute And she got the guide I guess I'm assuming I'm not going to be able to sign it because I'm assuming this is just a A reader Uh, is there something on here? I know what I use on Windows for this is Okay, you can get free trusted certificates from the let's encrypt Seriously where we can use the nk cert. Okay. I've never digitally signed a document But you shouldn't like that's very user unintuitive tool Come on Yes, I know Andy It's clear that this is a thing that you can do and it's something that I could figure out if I had another Half an F. Yeah, I agree with them here unless it screwed up something that I don't know about Digitally signings should be easier and honestly Opening up the let's see what it actually says here You can add digital signature blah, blah, blah You need to have proper pay pkcs Signing certificates The system why what is this like come on a random user won't be able to understand the current user home slash Dot picky eye dot n s s db like come on This won't help us. I agree with I think that delp center in general. He's not very helpful to the average user Not sorry about the help center. Is this even like updated recently? Or something I don't think so honestly. I've never seen any merge request related to the help center, but I could have missed them our an outground is not The color of the cells the black background is just an image Oh Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Okay. You just have to find exactly the right spot export as image Hey, what is he using? You just have to find exactly Yes, okay, I needed a w here and I well at least he did this one It's okay. So this is adding a new font and hopefully this should be easy. Okay, but I'm just gonna copy it to my Yes, now you click on it What just happened did that just copy to the fold? Why would it do that? I drag this onto a folder But because arc Is some completely separate application that doesn't integrate properly with dolphin It just goes it just dumps it into the folder instead of specifically on the folder. I'm dragging it to Yeah, that sounds like an issue Yeah So I have to open this folder Then copy it. Okay. I can open night zone That works at least. Sorry. What is this k font view? Oh install install. Do you want to install the font? Personal or system? System wide. Come on. Yes Did you do it? I'm gonna change my user interface to it It worked. All right. I mean I've seen that in part two He already had a weird font. So I was pretty sure he was going to do this Unless somebody else set up the font for him in the previous video. So, yeah Print that document. Okay. Hold on. Oh, is that printer? What is this? What I even have an hp printer to samsung That's gonna be whoo. Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Are you kidding me? Does it work? There it is Samsung clp 310 series. Okay Add new printer in this print. It's actually from kitty plasma or I mean kitty as a whole Or is this like a mentor edition addition? Do we have actually the printer? I'm sorry printer And At printer. Oh, it's not so bad. Okay, and then manual URI.  That's linux windows model. I actually have it saved to a folder on my server because There's no other place that I can find it or I can but it's a real chore. You have to like Extract it from some other thing like it's um, this just Worked as far as I can tell but until I actually see the page. I'm not ready It's right to it for the actual page before let's go Andy the lights flashing. It's flashing come on clp Did it work? Yeah That's very nice to hear Usually setting up printers is such a mess for me. So That's very nice to hear. I'm happy compress and send All the files on right click compress. Okay, compress Compress compress here That's it. Why is it dot zip dot u q j q q? That brings up wait, seriously Nothing, why would it put that there? Goodbye. Oh, that's not That's not a good idea is it that's uh Very bad Is there any very large file inside of it chart dot png it looks like there's none But yeah, maybe a video is very large, but I don't think so Is that that's probably uh, like uh temporary file is it to open archive not as if archive It's a you. Oh come on. It was supposed to be super simple this one Nope, it just is broken. Perfect. We're going to compress to a zip.  You know what? I think I just fell for the same thing that I said I wouldn't fall for again Compress here as dot zip It was doing it down here. Oh, come on Okay I mean luckily people don't usually have screens that large And as far as usability goes I now understand all of the messages that were sent like in the past few days in the visual design kdh chat But like I thought I mean come on. How can you not see a notification on the bottom right now? I understand But that's such a weird monitor.  You're holding it wrong Now, how could you how could we improve that? Now there are there were a couple of ds from the vdgh chat. I didn't quite follow the discussion But uh, like one of the latest that I've seen is to actually display If that's possible like progress bar on the file itself, which would be which would be of course the best But actually hard part is implementing it Um, I don't think you can that easily know which is the temporary file to display the loading into it But if it if that's possible Yeah, that's something that could be improved. Uh, but to my personal opinion, it's not like super important because again Like for real Usually people don't have that big of a screen and you can see the notification Another thing was trying to make notification a bit more visible flashing, I don't know Probably he wouldn't have seen that either so yeah notice so I guess the The six characters or whatever here Is just ran, but I mean it was like a hint to the fact that size was increasing I could have guessed I like it. Let's do that. I guess. Do you see you comic? There we go. Are these files going to compress at some point? Oh, that's why That's why he had comic sense in the previous video. See Dolphin you're embarrassing yourself. Okay. Let's try and do it in I forget what this one is called. It doesn't matter archive now to lose that now to lose Might be At least it prompts me for what I want to call it. I don't see any kind of progress Where is dolphin dolphin? We don't what's the name if we don't prompt for anything? Where is it? Take me a couple of files like these two If we compress a zip, what's the resulting file name? The name of the folder. I mean, okay. What happened? Is it really the name of the folder? I mean I'm not very pretty. Yeah, you gotta agree with him here Are you kidding me? Am I gonna fail to zip a file? This is not uploading I was kind of hoping that I was going to be able to do every single task in under this one is clearly stalled Hold on. Maybe pzips got me still Hold on. So this is this is all the stuff I copy Then I can go into downloads Is it folder 15 minutes? Yes. This is the workaround. Oh my god 10 minutes remaining to copy these files This is another thing that I definitely can do it just I mean Come on Come on That's a bit unfair Is this actually significantly faster to zip files in windows? Because that was like the only issue I've seen and If it's slow on linux If it's slow on windows as well, I mean Okay, the usability of the pop-up seeing that the progress is in progress. Okay, but Even if you do see the pop-up and it's too slow to actually finish in 15 minutes You can't blame linux. I guess he said that the task was stalled which could be but again Very large files, I guess Wait, wait No, I'm good I'm good. The the first one I did in dolphin. It's done. I think Nice. Wait No, I didn't get the point I'm supposed to send them. Yeah, maybe I can weasel my way out of this a little What do you mean by compress and send? Well, I mean, there's a 3 gigabyte file in it. So emailing it's not really practical See that's your issue I mean, of course it's going to take a while Is it actually faster on windows? Emailing it's not really practical Oh, well I mean, I already zipped the whole thing including the video because like, okay I'm giving myself the points. I could I could have emailed this to someone. I have to come on All right. Okay. Well, I can I can really cool if I search for a snipping tool It actually is like, haha. We don't have that But we do have spectacle Wait, wait, wait screenshot Spectacle screenshot capture capture utility Why would you call it a snip? I mean if you I mean, why wouldn't you search for screenshot like What did he search for again? This is really cool. If I search for snipping tool Why would you search for a snipping tool? Come on At least stop a snip when actually expect Spectacle pops up. I guess I guess you wouldn't see it But I mean screenshot and you do get spectacle It actually is like, haha. We don't have that But we do have spectacle, which is a pretty cool little screenshotting tool It's very nice. I love spectacle and then you can Drag a little thing press enter and that's it. I did it One minute Now I have to make a shortcut. Oh, man. I got just Just drag it anywhere you want that and make a shortcut. So no, I will Find another way to do that link to file or directory Wait, he's trying to do a shortcut on the desktop. Can I try to do that one sec? Why do I have 15 applications or open go away? Okay, so if I drag this here Are you kidding me? You just literally have to draw take it And drag it to the desktop. Hey, hello take it and drag it to the desktop And then click on link and that's it How did he not see that? Okay. He did create sim link. No, okay. He did right click And then create new link to file Okay, name for the link is pretty Pretty easy to say and then you can click on this button And actually select the I mean it can't fit this it can't It's too easy to do this Yes, this is a much better way of doing this. Ha ha I mean you could just drag and drop it name for new link Okay, can I copy the location? Yes, I can Ha ha did you work? Okay done I had I had an earth attack to that Copy paste the what? How did he even got the path to the file from? What is it copy copy location control alt c. Okay. Okay. That's fine. It works Uh connect to a network sure again dolphin We do have network Um, and then there's these things serverino Does it actually work for me? I don't think so Might be the old one, but I mean share folder pretty easy Is actually crazy easy because while I am using samba on my linux. Thank you. Uh nas It's a linux nas. So Yeah, so network shared folders smd Pappa pa pappa pa ladder server Oh, does it want me to like map a network share? I mean, that's not really necessary I can just add a shortcut to this Right here. See dude. I'm going to call that good enough So now every time I open up dolphin I just click linux and it will go to my share Like that. Okay Is it a SAMBA file because for those there were actually many improvements in the last year I think I've seen many patches from Nate and it's very nice that it actually worked out of the box. There's at least one thing we can safely cross out as everything went super well. Also I think links went super well here but your mileage might vary. Everything in files failed, copying failed, yeah, thanks a lot Dolphin, you suck! That was not fair, come on. Is this... No, I mean there's not really any reason to say that Dolphin did not perform badly in any way except for actually not making notifications more visible but that's not Dolphin, that's Plasma so Dolphin did everything good, ok there's not a refresh button in the plain side but honestly the refresh button news case is such a niche one that it's fine to leave it to a more slightly hidden context menu or customization so I don't think this is fair to say. Dolphin doesn't suck, I think it's a good find manager, I'm biased. Not that I ever worked on anything about Dolphin and ever touched Dolphin's code to be clear but I did, I do use it every day for years and I do work on Plasma so yeah. Set up Discord app. Discord and start open on start... That's in settings isn't it? Let's check and you can simply search for start and start up. You do get out of start and you can add, add application and then now what was it, Discord. I don't have Discord but oh I do, sorry and you just click it and that's it, come on you can do this. I believe in you. I think it might just do that by default. The first thing I'm gonna do then is just test that. I'm feeling good Andy, I got this. Okay it was even simpler than that, it was just on by default but if it wasn't or if it was on a third-party application it would have been super easy to actually add it to the start up application so very good. Okay apparently I had already configured this so another point for Linus, watch 4k content. Okay. Video.mp4, where'd it go, hello, wait it goes black and full screen? What up is that? Well we'll see. Why? Okay. I grabbed mpv media player, the official repository community version because that seemed like one. Do I have any 4k? And then I was able to immediately open a video in mpv player and boom full screen, solved. Okay. I could say I think mpv is one of the best video players out there and I also use it as you can see here and it just works, okay it doesn't have everything that we all see as but it just works. Challenge number 12, watch HDR content. As far as I can tell this is basically just James rubbing in that I have not been able to consume any HDR content this month, everyone's gonna fail. So I feel pretty good, other than digitally signing my... I feel pretty good too, I would feel even better if you didn't say that often sucks but okay. PDF, I managed to complete all of my possible challenges but that doesn't mean that the road to get here was as painless as what you just saw. I've had a very frustrating issue where any amount of Windows movement especially... Meanwhile on Mandaro KDE I've had a relatively smooth experience, I do have little complaints like that the show desktop button doesn't actually minimize anything. Okay, we keep hearing this. I think that there's some even developers that want this but okay, you can easily, very easily change to that one. Personally I prefer the show desktop but I can understand that it's very, very subjective and I don't know if it will ever change by default so easily but we do get that complaint a lot, that's true. And as soon as you grab a focus application everything comes ripping back onto the screen or that the application... I mean that's the intended use case from what I can understand is quickly grabbing something from the desktop be it a file or a widget if you need to interact one second from a widget in the desktop or take a file down and drag and drop it somewhere I guess that's what it's supposed to do but if you prefer minimize all I guess. Patient labels are underneath the window previews when you cycle through with alt tap we do want to change the task manager to be this one. I mean okay we is a very generic word there is some interest from developers from some developers to change it to this and from what I've seen I think that this will eventually succeed maybe it did already and I didn't see I didn't follow this very much I actually don't remember changing it to thumbnail so okay but yeah this complaint will hopefully fall as soon as we go for a thumbnail as we sure if we do and I think at this point we will that's what I had seen from the latest like discussions I might be wrong making them harder to read but overall if all I needed to do was run a web browser do some basic word processing I wouldn't have anything to complain about installing and managing applications on the other hand has made me wish that my popo... yeah I mean that's popo s I won't say anything experience hadn't been so discouraging Manjaro has a graphical package manager called Panac if you had been using I don't know this cover you'd be happier but okay I don't know I don't I don't know how good Pamac is but I love this cover I think it has so many nice features and there's a lot of hate for this cover but I think that lately it has improved a lot that allows applications to be installed in a couple of clicks but by default it contains only some of the things I need it can be unlocked to search for flat pack snap and a ur packages no by default it contains only some of the things I need it can be on... okay okay I understand no I don't I don't fully agree here because I still think that proposing to a user four different places to install apps from is so confusing like you can say okay I want to install this okay we're from like the official arch little repositories or from the hour or from snap or from flatpack and the user is going to go like what and I I don't think that having all of them enabled by default is a good idea it should be easy to enable them but look at here how to enable blah blah blah for beginners through pamac guai so it should be like pressing some button I guess package system blah blah blah to allow developers okay there's not actions are out of the screen but it shouldn't be too hard to do this and I don't think that it should be on by default honestly for flat pack maybe you could say that I don't want to say snap and flatbacks are bad at all but you could you could say like we should use flat packs by default and show users flat packs just but if you do have the arch Linux Linux repository by default then you shouldn't in my opinion also have snap and flat packs snap and a ur packages which dramatically yeah it was just like a button increases its usefulness but if this manjaro developers to be believed these non-official sources can result in downtime and if they do everything is working as intended and you're installing third party and trust that's why it's disabled by default you know fortunately I haven't really encountered that yet yeah I have never seen anything bad under however either but you never know I had only been at it for a few weeks but yours it's this kind of hit or miss functionality that is turned using my computer from something that I do for fun into something that feels more like work okay here's one miraculously the browser source plugin that I needed for OBS was available in PAMAC through the arch user repository but the thing is I ended up only stumbling upon that by finding a post referring to it as I was fighting my way through attempting to manually copy the plugin files into the appropriate system folders which in fairness to me was based on a guide I found and actually got me really close I was able to launch OBS but as soon as I tried to actually use that source it would crash now I understand that this is totally a power user thing to do but it's also absolutely something that a gamer particularly a game streamer yeah again we're getting to gamer stuff which I don't know anything about so is there anything else please some of my dumbest problems have been caused by my default file manager dolphin among other things it does not allow the user to copy anything into a folder that requires administrative privileges that's for security reasons and I think it's actively been worked upon with no obvious way to override it in the GUI yeah and I've run into this twice so far adding insult to injury the community responses to this user who shared my concern that not everyone wants to copy files using the terminal and that linux should allow the user to do what they want to do with their computer were some of the most painfully condescending and stubborn things that I've had the displeasure of reading throughout this challenge now I lost my link to the tweet unfortunately but I saw an interesting criticism of this series that basically accused me and luke of intentionally smearing linux and its developers because we were going to come into this with a basic windows gamer perspective and try to do things now I don't think they're doing that I've seen also this from even like inside the kd community people saying that they're doing on purpose to like mess things up and trying to do drama I don't think they're doing that personally uh I don't think it's the way that they do things well news flash guys that's most people is right I mean that's not a reason for which we should copy windows and every time the reason in vdg to do something is because windows does that we showed that down that's not a valid argument however the idea of someone coming from windows to kd plasma that should be able to understand how things work is not that far off because it is right like most people pretty much 90 of everyone coming to linux from the first time are going to be from windows of like 80 and it should be understandable and I don't think that the criticism of like bashing linux because it doesn't work like windows is fair but that's not what they're doing they're coming in and trying to do things and whenever it doesn't work it's not quite because of they're doing in the windows way but it's because linux doesn't work when popo s died it was popo s fault when whatever problem they had like the digital signature that was linux fault and more specifically I don't know what to blame exactly but the fact that arc couldn't track things into the right directory that's linux fault it's not like oh it's because he used to use windows and he doesn't understand of linux works that doesn't work to him and if you legitimately like in your heart of hearts want linux desktop to grow you need to accommodate those people he's right which doesn't mean that we should copy windows but we should make sure that the experience of people coming from windows to linux isn't shit so you can sit there and go am I out of touch no it's the users who are wrong but you are you're literally a meme at that point the only question is whether you're self-aware or not well that depends I think that the good eggs in the linux community need to understand though is that you guys are great and there's lots of you it's just that it only takes a couple of toxic gatekeepers to turn people off and that's also why I really don't like at all people gatekeeping like not even gatekeeping but fanboying kd plasma like shitting on gnome I should this were less this is video is going to get the monetized other way yeah I understand you like kd plasma I also do but that is not a good reason to go to gnome user sensing that gnome is bad gnome is not bad it's pretty darn good as a desktop environment and even if I don't use it because it doesn't fit my use case it doesn't mean that we should go out and sell them now if some user comes and say okay linux I'm trying out linux for the first time and these things didn't work for me the right approach here and hopefully I didn't fall for that in this video is not to say okay you user are stupid and you're doing things wrong because you come from windows but is to actually do some investigating like what's wrong in the approach you're taking to do to achieve something and maybe the result of that is that it is an issue but we can't quite solve it because to solve it that would mean to like to actually make the experience more enjoyable for windows user that would mean that it would diminish the experience for linux ones and maybe we don't accept that and that's fine but that doesn't mean that we should bash windows people that come to linux because of that we need to be friendly regardless even if they come and criticize linux that's the point that they're telling us what's wrong and sometimes if you use linux for years it's not that easy to understand it some things seem obvious to us and aren't and maybe those can get fixed like you gotta remember it's not always easy for people to reach out and ask for help and if a literal developer of their distro goes out of their way to type extra unnecessary words to be condescending when they could have just pointed the user to the resources that they needed it is extremely damaging to the good work that the majority is trying to do and there has been so much of that good work on display throughout this project I mean getting my windows vm which I've only ended up needing to ingest and that was it that was actually kind of interesting there were some good points I think I don't know how much like there was a lot of discussion in kde related chats on if there's anything to improve there was lots of linux is stupid don't listen to him and lots of linux sucks and we've been doing everything wrong I'm just kidding but there's been a lot of discussion about this hopefully it brings something nice and I don't think that linux did that bad in this video at all it's said that some basic use cases that could have just worked didn't but there's always room to improve again I think that digital signature is the best example of that I would have very like that yeah so about that anyway it's 40 minutes already so I think I can end this there the year and thank you for everything I hope that something nice came out of this anyway from tomorrow and on I'll get back to normal schedule of doing development and other things so see you there I guess stay subscribe that's sort of things


Top five best liminal spaces in the back rooms, in my opinion. Number five, the end. Number four, level nine. Number three, level zero. Number two, level 94. And at the number one spot, I have the pool rooms. Let me know what your top five are in the comments. If you agree with mine, then you have the right opinion.


Johnny dollar Johnny. This is Don Regal at Worldwide Mutual. Oh sure Don. I'm Chicago. Oh, no. Guess again. You've been moved Yeah, where I hope it's been a promotion. Well, Johnny I'm sitting here looking out the window of my office at the vast blue expanse of the mighty Pacific Or at least I would be at the fog where it's a doctor this afternoon San Francisco Right one of my favorite town. Go on. I'll bet you say that to every city in the United States No, I mean it. I have some real fond memories.  Let's wait and see. What's the problem man missing anybody? I might know Well, I doubt it. His name is Harvey layman and Johnny I find we have the gentleman insured to the tune of exactly one quarter of a million dollars Wow Okay, Don I'm on my way Yes radio network brings you Mandel Kramer and the exciting adventures of the man with the action-pact expense account America's fabulous freelance insurance investigator yours truly Johnny dollar submitted by a special investigator Johnny dollar to the worldwide mutual insurance company San Francisco office Following is an account of expenses incurred during my investigation of The buyer and the seller matter I don't want after a quick early dinner is six dollars for a cab out to Bradley Field and item 275 70 plane fare It was quite late by the time we set down at San Francisco international airport So item three is another six bucks for a taxi into the Huntington hotel high on famous Nav Hill Where from my window I could look out over Telegraph Hill in Chinatown Fisherman's Wharf the Embarcadero and other familiar spots of this wonderful colorful city First thing in the morning. I dropped in on Don Regal at his office right in your station KCBS That carries these reports of mine on CBS radio every week You know come to think of it the last time I was in San Francisco or a couple of a minute KCBS helping you solve an important arson case Yeah, I remember that one Johnny. Well, you stay in this trip over at the Huntington as usual Well, I hope you didn't bother to unpack your bag. Oh, why well, you may have a little more traveling to do What do you think I did to get out here have my way at pick around enjoy this time Well, no reason why you shouldn't you can come back after you've cleared up this case for us and believe me I hope you can Johnny. What's it all about down? Well, as I told you on the phone the man's name is Harvey Lehman as I also told you he's disappeared And if somebody's knocked him off, you'll have to pay a nice hunk of insurance.  I've always suspected that Who's the beneficiary? His wife, Dara, is blaming me. They've been getting along, Lauren No, to be honest with you. Oh, here we go again. Oh, no, wait a minute, Johnny Don't start jumping to any fancy conclusions. Why not? That's a lot of money there. Sure it is But Harvey Lehman is only forty eight forty nine. All right So why wait around for him to grow old and die before No, no, no, no, no, Johnny What I mean is that he has a good business going and will be worth a lot more over the years than any hunk of Insurance is now even two hundred and fifty G's even that Even if it means putting up with him Over the years? Well, any putting up with it, Johnny, I'd say is on his part How do you mean? Well, Lehman's a real solid hard-working citizen who's so well, so completely straight and decent, but Well, he's the sort that other folks often take advantage of especially his wife. Yeah domineering She's overpowering and while he's working she's spending and not on him or his house anything like that mind you But on her own selfish self. Well, then you've just opened up possibility number two that he's disappeared deliberately to get away from her Yeah, no, why not? Well, he's simply not the type and there's a well as a stubborn streak in him, Johnny And I'm sure he'd keep trying to make it go but in the hope that she'd get over this extravagance and nagging one day and Well, I just don't think he'd give up. I know he wouldn't run away. Maybe maybe not. I'm sure of it How long would he disappear? And by the way, what sort of business is he in? Well, he's a buyer, Johnny I guess you'd call him a commission buyer. No, buyer of what? Well Antiques that sort of thing.  Lehman would get it for you if anyone could or the suit of armor that King Arthur wore or Or even a whole room from some Scottish castle, you know that sort of down Well, anyhow, he left here just a week ago a week ago. Well, that means a pretty cold trail And I know he told his wife he was going down to Los Angeles to Beverly Hills to be exact to see a man Told her he'd be back the following day But he wasn't. Any reason why he couldn't have just stayed over for a while? I think Johnny, if Lehman said he'd show up at 9.16 on Tuesday morning He'd be there at 9.16 on Tuesday morning on the nose. Not a minute sooner, not a minute later. That kind. Yeah, that kind. Anyhow, Johnny, I've checked every hotel and apartment down there So the police has been a sign of them What about this man that he went to see? Well, his name is John Arthur Whittington Maynard. I've been on the phone with him The police have been on the phone with him half a dozen times. Lehman never showed up John Arthur Whitting... Yeah, you remember him. Johnny, big produced snake of a lot of big movies some 30 years ago Well, at least they made a lot of money. All of them horror films, Edgar Allan Poe and Vampire and Were, Wolfs, all the stuff Before all the science fiction type of stuff came along The old screwball made himself millions Why did Lehman say it was going on? Well, like I said, Lehman was a buyer of some pretty unusual stuff on commission And I understand Maynard has a house full of it. Wait a minute now Don isn't he the one who had an old movie set, an old capsule moved onto some property to use for a home? Yeah, that's the one. You've probably seen it in one of the picture magazines But now to get back to Lehman, you better give me a description Well, let's see. Here's the dope on him. Johnny, you all scribbled out for you. Thanks And if you want a picture without having to go to the police, his wife has promised to have one for good Because she's the one person that I want to talk to about this. Now, have you got a car I can use? No, sure you can have mine. But listen, Johnny, so far as Mrs. Lehman is concerned I thought I made it clear a couple of minutes ago Oh, okay. Let's just wait and see I'm counting over the Golden Gate Bridge and it was quite a match From the minute I stepped inside, it was plain who dominated this household The rug was every piece of furniture, every bit of decoration Everything was in the unmistakable taste of a woman Even Lehman's so-called study would have done much better as a snowman There was certainly no place where a man could open his collar, take off his shoes, put up his feet and relax And the more I talked with Doris Lehman, the more I became convinced that one of two things had happened Either he, in spite of what Donna told me, either he'd skipped out sent her to get away from her Or she had done him in for that insurance He did garages Don't ask the trouble and ask for DuPont ZX antifreeze Wintertime is trouble time for many of us who leave our cars out at night or in unheated garages So don't ask for trouble. Ask for DuPont ZX antifreeze ZX outlasts winter. It protects your car against sudden drops in temperature all winter long It won't boil away even during a warm spell And ZX has an exclusive rust inhibitor, MR8, that protects all engine metals including aluminum against rust and corrosion So for safe dependable protection, do as millions of motorists have done for over 20 years Ask for ZX antifreeze. It's made by DuPont Remember for cars left out at night or in unheated garages Don't ask for trouble. Ask for DuPont ZX antifreeze Now just a minute young man If you came out here to insult me I'm sorry Mrs. Lehman You very well should be But in my job we have to consider all the possibilities Ridiculous Do you think for one minute I'd dirty my hands with such a low-acted smooter? It's ridiculous Even for a quarter of a million? Make no mistake about it Mr. Dollar Harvey is worth a great deal more to me alive than he might ever be dead He's done very well for me and will continue to If you can find him and bring him back to me I'm sure he will Of course he will Have you considered that he might have just wanted to get away from you for a while? I beg your pardon Harvey just run off and leave me Well He wouldn't dare I wonder Well you can stop wondering right here and now Harvey would no more He wouldn't no more Yes Go on Mrs. Lehman or about he does so spot Mr. Dollar If I thought for one minute If it were possible that you were right No I refuse to believe it And if you have no better theory I suggest you get out of here and forget the whole thing If he's to be found the police can do it Have they accomplished anything yet? No They talking do nothing then They haven't accomplished a thing And those bumbling movie struck police down there in Beverly Hills are just as bad Now just a minute it just happens that Beverly Hills is a mighty fine police department I know I've worked with them Then why haven't they found him? That's where Harvey went Well how do you know? How do you know that he ever got there? Because he telephoned me from Mr. Lehman's home If you can call that a trot city a home He said that's where he was calling from? The night of the morning he left here Harvey always calls me when he gets to a destination Wherever it is I insist on it And naturally Harvey obeys I'm sure he does Did you tell that to the police?  Don't you realize they're only trying to do a job for you? Well then why don't they? Why don't they know that Harvey got there? Because you didn't tell them Why did he go to see Mr. Maynard? To collect the money due for a lot of junk he bought for him Ten thousand dollars Junk? Oh chunks from some ancient Roman ruin Artifacts out of the temple of some old pagan god And a lot of other nonsense that castle is stuffed with Maynard simply refused pay He told Harvey He should feel honored for having been able to contribute to the decoration of that Silly place And that if he didn't stop donening him he'd He'd be He'd what Mrs. Laminard? Oh I don't know All I know is that he threatened Harvey And more than once They're simply trying to collect a bill?  I don't like you It's none of your business So just leave and forget about it Goodbye Mr. Dollar I'm afraid if I lingered any longer she'd literally throw me out So I got the next bit of information and telephone number from the phone book in my room at the Huntington Then I put through a call not to her but to an old palamine But under the circumstances it wouldn't be diplomatic to give his right name So we'll just call him Brady Sergeant Brady of the Beverly Hills Police Department And 15 minutes later he called me back Johnny Dollar Brady Johnny Yeah Well as you suggested I snooped the phone company And yes there was a call to that Marin County number The same night Lamin should have arrived down here All right then Brady So maybe old Maynard called to see why he hadn't He must have known Lamin was planning to come I don't think so I don't think Maynard would have called Because I don't believe he did know Lamin was heading your way Oh you don't huh What's more was Lamin himself who made that call No way Mendy you're sure of that Yes at least that's what I was told by Yeah Johnny Well maybe I'm not sure Well if you're thinking that maybe Lamin did get here And that maybe they had a fight or something Well Johnny we thought of that too You see we know that wacky old Maynard pretty well He's a real nut And if you don't believe me just dig up some of those old horror pictures he used to make Wow I know what you mean Made a lot of the props for him too with his own little hands Anyhow just in case some of the boys and I went through that joint of his from stem to stern And Nothing zero no sign of Lamin or anybody else We even tapped on walls and took measurements looking for hidden rooms or secret panels That sort of thing nothing But you didn't suspect him Did? Yeah But only because that crazy old man just to be dramatic might try most anything just for kicks Even murder Murder so what's a murder to him I mean after all those he put on film But you know something No If that ham ever did kill somebody why Johnny he'd be the first one to ask us over He'd probably lead us right to where he'd hidden the stiff after fixing it so we wouldn't see it Just as sure was Yeah sure that's why we went over the place so carefully Even poked around in all the old suits of armor that he kept pointing out to us Brady how long you gonna be on duty Well I'm often half an hour but now listen Johnny if you think you have some idea Well I'm not sure but maybe I'll run on down there if so I'll holler Yeah you do that $83 even for a cab to the airport a jet to Los Angeles under deposit on a rental car I drove into Beverly Hills to police headquarters as I suspected Brady wasn't there nor did a phone call raise him at his home However the officer on the desk promised to keep trying gave me some direction so I took off After leaving a pleasant residential section I took a narrow third road high up the side of a mountain I could see all of Beverly Hills and most of Los Angeles spread out below me and Catalina Island over 20 miles out of the blue Pacific like a jewel fairly sparkling in the late afternoon sun I could also see the crummy castle where John Arthur Whittington Leonard lived alone among the tattered glories of his past in the film business and suddenly that wee small voice in the back of my brain spoke out loud and clear Yeah watch it dollar you may be getting into more than you bargained for so watch it dollar watch it in thousands of communities throughout the nation this is the time of year when we strive to help our less fortunate neighbors not that we don't try to help all year round it's just that now many health recreation and welfare agencies band together in a common fundraising campaign when you give just once to your united fond or community chest you help many people in your city the sick the needy the aged the serviceman and veteran so give the united way and please give generously cheer for yourself this castle wants a movie set built up among the rocks and boulders at the top of a mountain complete with gray stone walls and battlements a gallery between the towers and believe it or not even a moat with a heavy wooden drawbridge I almost expected to see the bridge thumped down and a half a dozen fully armored knights come galloping out to challenge me with lances at the ready instead as I drew up in front of it the bridge was lowered slowly there was something almost ominous about the creaking and clanking of its iron tune and then standing there the man or rather the caricature of a man the short heavy set in a way almost grotesque the ugly face the eyes of a the long black straggly hair and three or four day growth of beard the heavy beefy shoulders crunched forward I thought of course a motor with a horrible hunchback I know today welcome sir welcome to my pack rule oh how do you do uh mr. Maynard is it that's right surely you heard of me as a matter of fact come in come in it's it's not often I have visitors someone to show my place too and so few people even know of my beautiful castle my name is dollar mr. Maynard I'm an insurance investigator insurance another salesman I'll have none of it get out leave my eyes but I was an investigator mr. Maynard I'm trying to find out what happened to a mr harvey layman harvey oh yes yes of course I'm very old and very dear friend of mine come let me show you some of the wonderful things he has brought me over the year well I would like to make magnificent suits of armor regal pendants and banners beautiful atlastries pinning him down to talk about harvey layman was almost impossible but I must confess that the trip around that castle was interesting to say the least much of what he showed me deserved a place in a museum real collectors items and some of the prompts and old horror pictures that he's made were which is fascinating especially down to one of the dank dark dirty dungeons ancient instruments of torture a rack the wheel the iron maiden a metal boot to be filled with boiling oil from my pictures dollar from my pictures realism that's what I had in all of them because I was the greatest plotter of them all when it came to mystery and torture and murder get back to the layman and can you think of a better place to keep them than down here in this dusty old dungeon there yes very fitting now now I'm in here and I must show you my wine cellar there are still a couple of questions though that I went in nine years ago I laid down the wines in here that's all all that time they've been aging in here cases and cases of them rack after rack do you see them under the dust and cobwebs finest vintages of all yes all sure now mr. menard yes 29 years ago when I retired and moved into this place and I put these wines down here so you said you can tell how long by the dust in the cobwebs yes I know spider you're undisturbed for 29 years one thing more though about mr. layman though I told you mr. dollar I I know nothing nothing whatsoever about him when did you see him last oh oh most a year ago you sure about that yes yes I'm sure oh look look here this case of port but the the the finest vintage port and now mr. menard over here here and do you do you see them the cherries magnificent cherries and and the longer they lie there oh undisturbed the finer they'll be you never drink them drink them such treasure drink them indeed look at this one the color of this ancient cherry oh you're up to the light there you see Megan yes I'm afraid I do now what I see realism you said didn't you mean what looks like realism at the time we were shown on a movie screen I don't understand mr. dollar tell me the truth mr. menard these torture machines for instance in the other room and some of that armor upstairs some of that armor cost me a fortune because it's it's genuine maybe so some of it but how about the rest you mean you mean you could tell that it's only imitation stuff that was made up for some of your old movies but I made it myself I have a skill in such things I thought it was perfect it would have fooled me all right well then I don't understand even as the dust down here and the cobwebs fooled the police too didn't they huh what what when they came around here a few days ago for a look well just a minute now that's the way of showing off you dragged them down to this wine cellar too you were so sure of yourself and dollar phony cobwebs they're almost like the real thing phony all the dust what is a minute full of earth that you've scattered around you don't know what you're talking about setup would have fooled me royally if you hadn't picked up that bottle of wine and held it up the light I'm going to take a look under some of these cases no why because they cover up something you don't want me to see what was the name of that group of old pictures in which you had a man buried under a cellar floor oh I see yeah that wild silly guess the mine paid off that's right Harvey layman is just buried under your feet and you will join in there put down that gun mr. Maynard 10 back dollar you heard him Maynard put it down the police are you watching ready it was a pleasure Johnny I'm sure glad you left word for me at headquarters oh I believe me so my and he certainly fooled us when the boys and I went through here a couple of days ago but how did you ever guess the bottle of wine when he held it up to the line well he said it was final sherry my ground down here for 29 years so sherry we should have been a sediment in that bottle this thick so the age and dust and cobwebs were a fake huh and he must have moved the bottles over this spot only recently right I just took a wild guess pretty good little red pretty smart Johnny pretty smart say wild is the whole thing they seem they found layman's body buried there in the cellar expense count total including the trip back to Hartford by way of San Francisco to pick up my clothes 477 30 yours truly Johnny dollar star star to tell you about next week's story next week Savannah Georgia after one of the cleverest crooks I've ever had to tangle with join us won't you yours truly Johnny dollar written by Jack Johnstone produced and directed by Bruno Serato Jr music supervision by Ethel Huber Johnny dollar is played by Mandel Kramer also featured in our cast where Leon Jenny as Maynard Gryfford Warner as Doris layman William Redfield as Brady and Carl Frank as Don Regal be sure to join us next week same time same station for another exciting story of yours truly Johnny dollar this is our tennis speaking don't just stand there enjoy the Gary Moore show weekdays on the cds radio network


Well, it's been a long season of road construction in the Bemidji area. Tonight, our Josh Peterson shows us how projects planned for the Highway 2 corridor could impact Bemidji's west side soon. After a long summer of seeing the color orange in just about every direction, you can plan on seeing even more of that color over the next five years. In a tale of two cities, both those being the city of Bemidji and the town of Wilton, major changes are in the works for Highway 2. We know that we have a corridor behind us that's a high-speed corridor that's leaving Bemidji and it's overrepresented in crashes, right? So we need to do some changes to the corridor to help make that corridor safer. The plan is to make the stretch of roadway safer by installing RCIs, which means reduced conflict intersections. The plan is for motorists wanting to cross the highway, would need to take a right turn first, then merge left, and then make a U-turn to go the opposite direction. We're trying to meet the needs of everyone. There's over 12,000 vehicles a day on this stretch of Highway 2 that's through traffic. There's a lot of residents that live around here and a lot of small businesses. Road construction is a familiar sight on the stretch of roadway, where continued efforts to make Highway 2 safe continues to take place. Two years ago, a major road construction project here at the intersection of Highway 2 and Highway 89 left a significant impact on area businesses. Now the fear is, with the proposed changes to Highway 2, it could leave a lasting impact. For the owner of Pete's Place West, he doesn't see the need for the RCIs and fears it will no longer make his convenience store convenient. Pretty much lose most of all my truck traffic. I'll just be a regular gas station. And the biggest problem is it's a convenience store. When you make it in convenience, they're not going to come. They're just going to drive on into town to stop at the next guy. While the location of the RCIs are not confirmed yet, Mendot says they will have a final decision by the spring. In Bemidji, Josh Peterson, Lakeland News. The reduced conflict intersections are a new concept to the area. The very first one will be built next summer at the intersection of Highway 2 and 69th Avenue Northwest near the current palace casino in Cass Lake. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax deductible contribution to Lakeland Public Television.