ow to open up it usually is between mid january and mid march they have not announced the dates yet it will be announced in the usax december news brief um this is a monthly email that they send out that i highly recommend you subscribe to you sign up for and we've got a link on our website and um that you where you can do that uh and this just gives you reminders about things deadlines coming up tips and tricks um all sorts of things but it's only once a month so i definitely recommend that i will also announce it onto our e-rape mailing lists and on our website uh when they do announce what those dates are so you do have to wait for that filing window dates to be announced um this also answers the question that many people have as far as what is the deadline to submit a 470 each year how what is the last date that i can do a 470 well until we know the dates the filing window we don't know the specific dates of um deadline for the 470 because remember we got 28 days we have to wait before we can do a 471 so to figure out the deadline for our 470 the first form we take the end date of the filing window the last date you can possibly submit a 471 and back up 28 days that date is the deadline to submit the 471 the very last day you can possibly do it and still submit a 471 within the filing window uh so until we um these dates are announced we don't know the specifics um we can give a guesstimate though for years and years now they have um done it at the same time of year it bounced around a lot years ago but now it's usually mid january to mid march so most likely um if mid march mid end of march is going to be the the close of the filing window mid middle of february will be the deadline for doing a 470 so you can put that in your head right now if you want to it's like sometime in february is going to be the and most likely second half of february is most likely going to be the deadline the latest i can possibly do a 470 for e-rate for the 2024 funding year so for starting to get e-rate discounts starting in july of 2024 but keep your eyes open for the specific dates um when they do get announced later next month as i said earlier i mentioned earlier you do get an email to let you know when you've reached an allowable contract date when those 28 days has passed sounds like i mentioned these 20 days a lot and that's because it's very important uh do not jump the gun on that if you go if you do that there's a breaking a major e-rate rule you want to make sure you wait until those dates that date has passed but it will this is an email that go directly to your email address you don't have to like log in your epic account to find it it just says epic notification allowable contract date reach yay and it will say you now close you you may now close your competitive bidding process and go on to the second step which is the 471 um this notice also goes into your news section of your um your epic account as well but they do correctly send you that nice email now the 471 um access to it is right up there next to the 470 like i said right now it's not available so i can't do screenshots of i didn't i can't show how to go into that one or do it um but it is um pretty a pretty easy form you all your information is your 470 you repeated the 471 um but i will talk about the structure of it and how it works could it is um it can be a little confusing to some people so a 471 it is a it's different in multiple ways from the 470 it's a two-step process first of all um oh first of all you have to submit a separate 471 for each category of service category one and category two so your monthly internet and your construction and your category two for your equipment and everything related to the physical equipment um this is because the discount calculations are done differently for each one you know category one it's just a discount on whatever you're buying category two uses that budget you have to do a separate 471 for each category so if you have done a 470 that covers both category one and category two or you've done two 470s you've got to do two 471 so you're going to go through a 41 form 471 for all your category one things and then you're going to do a second one where you do just category two um and then once you are doing the 471 it's a two-step process to get all the information in there um you first create the funding request we created the service requests when we did a 470 now we have a funding request because we're saying here's the funding we want um and you choose whether it's for your internet access for your internal connections each piece of equipment and then you after you've created that you then have to go into that funding request and add what they call line items where you tell how much it's going to cost um and this is where people kind of lose it they get confused they get error messages it says we haven't done a line I don't think well I don't know why didn't I didn't have to do that in the first form right you don't if you and the the tip to knowing if you've done everything you need to is if you haven't entered a monetary amount tell them how much something costs you haven't finished doing your funding request and that's why you're getting errors so you'll create this funding request you'll get that little table like we saw on the 470 then you've got to click on that request and go into it and do more work to that funding request by adding in the actual cost that's what they call line item in the details um for all these forms I'll tell you right now too because you know this one does sound confusing lots of steps um I am here to help you do these forms if you need um and what I do with many libraries I can help you over the phone um step by step guide you through it or what I do more often is we'll do a session like this with go to webinar where I can you know I'm sharing my screen with you I'll have you share your screen with me and I can see exactly where you are in the form and tell you where to click and guide you through it it's much easier than trying to figure out you know over the phone where you are so I will set up a session with you and I will say click there click there upload this click there and I can take you step by step through every step of all the different e-rate forms so if you need assistance with doing your 470 right now reach out to me and we will set up a time that works and I can do that for you that's part of my job here to guide you through those forms so reach out to me if you need help and then when you get to your 471 and all your other forms the same thing after you submit the 471 you get a receipt acknowledgement um every time you submit an e-rate form you're going to see here they send you back a notice saying we got your form so there's always something that was back and forth you can also make minor changes if you need you to this if you realize you did something you know minor wrong major things you would do a new 471 you can request changes in the funding if you realize afterwards oh wait the cost is actually different but you can only reduce amounts not increase them if the price has changed as far as the service provider comes back to you and says oh actually it's this much and it's gone up you'd have to just do a whole new 471 and so this is just the notice in your news item news section the receipt acknowledgement letter acknowledging USAC has received form 471 after USAC has received your 471 then it goes into application review this is where they look over your application the PIA program integrity assurance section of USAC looks over your application and just um and sees if everything is correct this process can go on for months and months so you could submit you could submit your 471 in like January February March and not hear back from them until April May June July August September October a long time so this is where you just sit back and wait they will make sure everything's correct in the form nothing's done anything's eligible you did all you should they may reach out to you with questions if they do you will get an email saying you have an inquiry from USAC and you will then go into your epic account to answer that question if you need help answering those questions that's a good time to call me as well or contact me I can help translate your questions sometimes they get very very wordy I think I feel and again you can bog down and what they're explaining when the question was just like a small part of it so if you do receive a notification I am sometimes unfortunately I don't know why sometimes I'm copied on them and sometimes I'm not when they send you these requests if I do get copied and I notice it I will reach out to you proactively to say hey I saw this I looked at it here's what you're looking for but I don't always so if you don't hear from me and you want some help just reach out to me and I will help you answer any questions they have you have to make sure you do answer them they usually give you 14 days to respond so you have some time but you have to respond and get them their answers so they can have the full information they need to review your application after they are done doing this then you will receive your funding commitment decision letter this is what can take possibly months and months to receive and that's okay even no matter when you receive your funding commitment decision letter if it's an approval you will still get your funding back to the beginning of the funding year back to July 1st so even if you don't get this letter until September October September whatever that's just when they got to it there are so many applications they have it just take some time to get through all of them but you'll get your funding you'll get just going back to the beginning of the year so don't worry about that if you don't have the letter by July 1st just to be aware you might have to pay bills in full until this letter gets done and everything gets processed but you'll always get your credit back eventually but this letter will tell you if you've been funded or not or if they've given you reduced funding you might get more than one especially if you did multiple applications multiple like 470s or 471s you can file an appeal if you want to if you get denied I've helped libraries do that every now and then over the years so please let me know if you do get denied and feel like you want to do something like that and this is what that will look like it's an email that's sent to you so this is an email it says the funding commitment letter is available and it's actually attached so this isn't something where you go into your epic account to look at it it's actually attachment there's a spreadsheet and there's a pdf that you can then we'll open up and look at and this tells you what your next steps are working with your service provider reviewing your zipper requirements submitting your and filing your 486 the next form in the process and then your invoicing form so it tells you exactly what you need to do next steps here in the email and in the letter itself so this is the pdf this is one for a big school district obviously they got $51,000 here and there's the next steps on this letter here telling you what to do information about appeal if you want to and then the details of everything that was that you are going to be receiving so after you do your for after you receive your funding commitments that letter after you receive your funding commitment decision letter the next form you do is your 46 and you should do this immediately there is no waiting period there's no time you have to there's no like you have to wait a certain number of days there's nobody you have to wait for to tell you something to do you can immediately as soon as you get that letter that notification should sit down that same day or the next day and do your 486 and this is where a lot of people lose it in the process as in they forget to do the next step because you got a letter that says hey you've received your funding you've been approved and you say yay great I did it however you haven't they haven't actually given you the money yet what that actually means is we've approved your application the money set aside now you have to let us know if you that you still they want the money and that the services will be coming because and why would you not want it well situations can change you know you submitted this application back in you know January or February and now it's November there may be you know things have changed service provider may have changed prices drastically you can't afford it anymore they may have decided under the goodness of their heart to just give internet to free for everybody you never know what may have happened fiber may have been run to your city while you were going through all this process and you no longer need to do special construction all sorts of things to happen but you do have to so if you do want it then you do the 46 and it's also the form that most many people forget to do but it's also one of the easiest forms because all the information is already in there you don't have to enter anything new it's all the 471 is all you've you've given you sec all the info they've just approved what you said to them and now you're just doing here and you're just confirming yep yep this is what we're getting um and it's also where you do your SIPA compliance you check the box saying yes we are in compliance with SIPA so to get your 46 it's up here in the upper right as well and I'm going to show parts of this form here same thing as the 470 and the 471 of phrase six they all start the same with giving it a nickname you're going to choose the funding year that you're applying for choose your con you as a contact person and then it's going to ask you to it's going to be these searches that you can do but if you just scroll down a little bit on your screen you'll see because we said it was for that particular funding year here the funding request we had put on our 471 and you can see their status over here they've both been funded meaning they've been approved because we got that letter so we want to move these from here's the our funding request floating around up here to be we want to select them there's a selected section at the bottom so you check in the box in front of one click the add button and it pops it down and selected we could also do the second one too if you wanted to um so once they're under selected then you can continue on the form and you have your certifications here in the 46 also legal things you have to agree to there are two the two boxes you just have to check off because that's the legal stuff then there's a SIPA certifications and this is something where for some reason sometimes people check the wrong one here i don't know if it's just mistakes um technical errors it happens more often than i feel like it should but there's three choices for SIPA certification the first one is i certify that we have complied with the requirements the second one is i certify that we are in undertaking actions you have up to three years to become SIPA compliant from the first time you get e-rate and say we're doing something internet related um but you just continue with it i mean you do have to um go through with it otherwise you have to return your e-rate funding and then the third one is i certify that SIPA act does not apply because it's only for telecommunication services there are some minor types of connections because of what the service does um and that doesn't um require SIPA certification however for 99 percent of the services you're doing internet service you're doing equipment that relates to internet you have to be in compliance so make sure you select that first one unless you're in the middle of doing it in the second one the second one you'd only do if your filters aren't installed and working and you're still kind of get them working um the first one is we have filters they're installed i'm in compliance um and then we will you can preview the form so when you look at the preview you'll get a PDF just like what we were looking at for the other the 470 double check that certification the preview make sure it's the right one that is being selected if you choose the wrong one USAC will reach out to you and say with an inquiry and say so you're getting a discount on internet you said you're not doing SIPA that's not going to work are you sure that's correct and they do give you a chance to fix it but save yourself and then a little hassle and worry and just double check and make sure you get this certification correctly it gets done to wrong missed too many times i want to help people stop after you submitted your 46 you do get a letter is issued to you and your service provider notification letter letting you know an email and in your epic account that has been submitted until this has been done your service writer cannot start giving you your discounts so that's another key thing too um unless and i get people contact me and said so i got my funding commitment letter but i'm not getting my discounts you didn't do your 46 to say you wanted the money you're your service writer can't do anything until you do this there is a deadline for when you need to submit the 46 buy it is um now like i said just do it right away just don't wait to the deadline there's no reason to you want to do it as soon as you possible as you get that funding commitment letter so as soon as possible your service writer can start working on getting your discounts and your bills are getting discounts or you start receiving your service but you do have at least 120 days after the service start date so July 1st or 120 days after whenever you get that letter if you get that letter after July 1st whichever is later Friday letters that come before that July 1st date end of October is a deadline October 29th i do pay attention to this for you i will look up and see who has been approved for e-rate and if i don't see a 46 done i will reach out to you proactively and send you an email and say hey you need to do this so you can start getting your e-rate discount the final forms in the e-rate process we're almost done are your invoicing forms the 474 and the 472 this is where you tell e-rate tell us how you want to receive your e-rate funding you have two choices as i mentioned you receive discounts on your bills and then your service provider directly from your service provider if this is and we do recommend you do this if you can it makes it much easier for you as the applicant because if they are discounting you on your bills the service provider is required to submit their responsible for submitting this service provider invoice form the spy form 474 they are responsible for submitting this to usack to get reimbursed for whatever this is counting you and you're done with e-rate application forms with the 486 the last form you did you don't have to do anything more they do but if they can't do that or it doesn't work then you would do a bear form the build entity applicant reimbursement form 472 that you have to do as the applicant to get reimbursed after you pay your bills in full and there's a lot more that you do need to do related to doing it this way as well there is also a deadline to for when you can submit this it's also at the end of October it's 120 days also but after the last date of service or the date whenever you did your 46 so if it is the last date of service being the June 30th do October 28th so I also pay attention to this I check and see if you've done your 486 and at that I've gone up to that stage for a funding year and then but if I see there have been no invoicing form submitted there's no bear in the e-rate system and there's no spy from the service provider I will reach out to you and say hey I don't see any no one's requested funding as far as I can tell um as far as I those requested any funding from e-rate yet usack yet so someone needs to do something now you might be getting discounts on your bills and the service provider has just not done their 474 yet this has happened many times for some reason sometimes they they go throughout the year giving you discounts and then ask for all their money at the end of the year that's okay so check your bills if you're getting discounts you're fine but if you have not been getting discounts then you will need to do your bear form so that you can get the money back directly from usack and this is direct reimbursements only as I said they just do bank transfers they don't mail checks or anything anymore so if you are going to do bear you do also need to have done a form 498 first and this is a one-time form not an every year form uh you just as long as you're unless you're banking information changes you wouldn't have to redo it um so you will um and this is just like uh doing a direct deposit your basic banking info contact person routing numbers bank account numbers etc you also need to know your library or your city's federal id number your tax id number that's used for payroll it's going to ask for that and then there is another code number that it asks for for doing business with the federal government because this is federal funding um and this change it's a new thing this change earlier this year in may of this year they change usack change from using what was the Dunn and Bradstreet number Dunn's number to a unique identity unique entity identifier a UEI number um this is done through the sam.gov website um if you have applied for grants lately in the last year or so with us the library commission um library improvement grants uh you have had to have um had one of these numbers as well or anything else the federal government it's a new thing that the federal government actually changed from Dunn's to um UEI numbers their own numbers so everyone has to have those numbers if you want to receive any sort of monies from the federal government so this is if you're going to be doing a brand new 498 or have to modify an existing one so if you have to change banking information or something if you currently have one you should be okay for um for now and there's information instructions on the 498 website there on how to get a unique a new UEI number if you don't already have one um so i'm not going to go into that today because that's a whole another thing um but if you've have one you've already used for applying for grants like I said with us it's the same number so use that you will use that same number um for e-rate otherwise go to their website and follow the instructions on how to get yourself one of those numbers it's free doesn't cost anything you just got to go on to the sam.gov and set up um set your library up there within the so so get that number first then go and do a 498 within the 498 form you will also have to upload your banking documentation there is a page called the remittance information page so you will need to have somewhere before you do the 498 scanned an image of avoided check or a statement from your banking um from your bank that shows the bank name and the account number that you want this to go into so just like you know getting direct deposit it's going to ask for that in the 498 so where do you do this form this isn't a different place than your other forms this is not a form that you do regularly every year so it's not up here to get to your 498 you click on your library name again and you go to related actions there's a huge list of things you can do here and somewhere down there it will say create fcc form 498 if you have never done one before if you've already and if you're not sure if this has been done previously um if there isn't a choice to create one you've already done one once you've created it it removes it from this list of related actions because you you don't have to create a new one but um for the first time here we're going to say we're going to create one um you can see here just like other forums it has uh blue bar go across the top for each page in the application um give it a nickname give your basic library info here I just gave it a nickname of 498 uh the library name um this is a made up tax ID number obviously um and then you choose your business type if you're a city township county that's the choices you have you're on this pull down menu um and so this is the first page of the form and then you save and continue as soon as you go onto your second screen of the form it gives it a number this is your 498 id number that you are looking for you need this id number in order to be approved and set up before you can do your bare form this is what you're looking for now this is giving you what the number is but it still needs to be approved by USAC they have to receive this form receive your documentation and then um um you'll get noticed that it's been approved and you can do your bare form so if you're even thinking about possibly doing a bare at any point I recommend just going on and getting this set up because it'll take some time to get your you know your UI if you don't have one scan your checks or bank statement um this takes a couple of days for them to get back to you with to get this all set up and ready so it's just in there for any possible potential need um in the future if you ever need to get um reimbursement yourself directly from e-rape um the um I don't have a screenshot of it here because you know this was like me playing around and doing a demo but further along is that remittance information page that's where it will say okay click um upload into here your avoided bank check or your avoided check or your um bank statement that's a section that I was talking about after you file this form yeah within two days your should be usax says within two days you'll be notified if it's been approved rejected they have to verify your bank account info um so they say two days let's see um if you don't hear back in two days you can go in and check the status of it yourself if you go into your epic account and there's a blue bar at the top of the screen you can click on records actually I can show you here yeah records up here in the blue bar and under there you would choose there's an FCC form 498 choice once you've submitted one of these and you can look up your ID number and see if it says if it has been approved or not is ready to go once it is you have been notified that it's been approved and ready to be used then you can do your um bear form so where is the bear uh the bear has moved and this is great we um it is there's was a systems consolidation was done earlier this month and where finally all of our invoicing has been moved into epic uh previously there was a way you that was in the they called the legacy system the old version of um the previous incarnation of online um e-rate applications um but now it is finally just a link right within the system um if you want to learn more about the system consolidation you can look there on the um usac website it's up here also in the section uh up on the right um it's got its own it's over here epic it kind of wraps around e-rate invoicing is where you would click to go to do your bear so this is only if you're remember if only if you're not getting discounts automatically on your bills would you have to do this now this is two different screenshots so I don't want to be confused here I want to show you what it would look like um so this is when you get into your invoicing dashboard for doing your bear if you have and it would depend on if you have a bear that you can submit yet like is your 498 ready have you done your 46 and everything if you go to invoicing and there's a blank here at after the you know at the end of the library info you don't have a bear available yet there's nothing for you to request or um um uh reimbursement for either a service provider is done their form or your 498 is not done or your 46 isn't done whatever but if there is something to do there is there would there would be a link that says file your 494 72 bear form and we click on that very similar to other forms you can give it a nickname you can discard the form um so we're going to give this one a nickname bear funding year 2022 because it's always bears reimbursing for previous um bills you've already paid so it's going to be for a previous year um our 498 ID I hope I've just pulled on a number it automatically fills that in said yes I am the main contact person they can continue and then this gets into line items you have to choose the different um funding requests that you want to receive reimbursement for so we so it looks very similar to that 470 right and um add a line item and then uh we choose the funding year again up here and then it shows all the different ones we have now this is the example of a school district this is the training system with lots and lots of choices but we're just going to pick one and so you click on the first section here the first choice because like there's the one that's ours um and then you have to say how often were you billed if you build monthly when did it start being billed typically July 1st of the year and what was the pre-discount was the full cost of of your bills you put that there and then this is the discount amount that USAC will reimburse to you save it save it again if we wanted to add other ones we could keep going in and adding them but we're just going to do this one for this example and then you can review it to see make sure you did anything correctly it doesn't do a pdf for this because it doesn't have that much info that's necessary it just opens up a little page where it shows okay here's what you've entered is this correct is the amounts correct sure sure um then we'll go and certify it this is very similar to our other forms and this one has what I really like here I hope they do this on the other form and in big red it says check all boxes to certify gives you that prompt so here you got to check every single box this is just green to all the legalities no choices like your SIPA certification that's the only one we make a choice um square boxes means check them all and then you certify and submit are you sure you want to do this yes and then it says you have successfully filed your bear form yay and you should at some point receive the funding into your bank account you will automatically immediately receive a notification bear notification just like when you had your 470 and 471 and 486 notification like I said every time you submit a form they send you a thing saying back saying yep we got it um and you will also um receive a bear remittance statements that show um what payments have been made to you so once you receive that report it's emailed to you double check the bank account whoever wherever it went into whether it was a city's bank account or a library's bank account to make sure that's in there um and then you'll also risk so that's every time a payment's been made is made um but then you'll also get quarterly reports that will show all bear and spy activity so if you um maybe end up with a mixture for some reason but this will show you what they've sent to the service provider on those service provider invoices so compare this you know this will tell you we paid the service provider this much make sure they were discounting your bills that same amount um and that's done quarterly uh the remittance the remittance statement is done whenever they do a payment to you uh typically bear forms you pay the whole year and at the end of your request one big reimbursement you can do one every month to do it as a monthly thing if you want to go through that work every month i don't recommend it but you can i know we've had a few some libraries done that but ideally you just wait till the end of the year pay everything in full and then have a one-time thing and that is the end of the e-rate process and the forms go back to this uh slide here showing all those forms so we did our 470 we were asked for service we waited 28 days for to give you some receive some quotes and bids we did our 471 where he said yes here's who we picked then we waited for be reviewed we were approved for e-rate funding and we did our 486 immediately telling them yes we want it and then we immediately jumped into either making sure our service provider is going to give discounts and did their form the 474 or if we waited and paid for the whole year and then did our 472 to reimburse ourselves and that is the e-rate process okay we're almost at the end of our time here but that's okay we only have a couple of slides what questions does everybody have nobody's asked anything yet throughout the whole workshop that's okay but what questions do you still have i want to make sure you know i know we have just a couple minutes left here but we will not get cut off if you have questions and things you want to ask i want to make sure anything you're wondering about now i answer is there anything that was confusing that you want to go and look at again on any situation in your library that you want to ask me about right now while you have me here type into the questions section of your go-to webinar interface okay uh we have uh thank you i'll leave a comment thank you for all your information i'm sure i will have questions as starting the process yes as you are starting the process yes that's that's pretty common yeah i know if you're not already in the process right now it's hard to know what to ask and that's totally understandable i get that a lot yeah this was a lot of information yes i hope it was helpful to you though and at least showing you showing you the whole beginnings to end like i said right now you're just worrying about doing the 470 all the other forms will be done next year but you have here all of that information and i said you will have these slides and this recording available to you after um we are wrapped up here but please do reach out to me with any whenever you have any questions and whenever they come up i'm just going to do the last couple of slides we have here just some info um it said uh i do this training every year uh but usack also has their own training that they do as well and i highly recommend that you go look at it look on their website we have links to it from our e-rate website here at the library commission they do um they did a series of online workshops hour long workshops in october and november um on each step in the e-rate process as well and they also have videos a little shorter like five ten minute videos on different forms and different steps in the process so um guiding you through um screenshot you know going through live uh demos of them there are some user guides in pdf if that's a better way for you to uh learn then online things like this that you can i highly recommend looking at all of their resources um and definitely sign up for that news brief i mentioned that earlier it's monthly um so it's not too often but it will let you know deadlines coming up tips and tricks when those um for 71 filing window dates are so um sign up for that you are welcome to reach out to e-rate directly for help too you know of course i'm here for you locally but if i'm not available or it's um you just you're need to talk to them you call them on their 800 number um if you do have an epic account there is a contact us contact us link in the upper right where you can submit and um a customer service case within the epic system and reach out to them there um and this is the url for our for my e-rate website that i hope um maintain here in the library commission site page uh website so that will have resources to everything you might need to use uh the link to the department of education in nabrasca nabrasca department education page for the school lunch numbers all the forums every resource you would need um is on there so please do look there and then when this recording is available um everyone who attended all of our workshops i'll let you know but it'll be linked it'll be posted on there as well and there is my contact information call or email me with any questions or issues you have um i didn't see any other questions come in right now while i was wrapping things up that's fine um i hope this was helpful uh it's a lot of information i know um but my job my goal here is just to make sure you get your e-rate funding so please do call or email me with any questions issues you have and i will help you and make sure um you get your money your funding so go out there apply for e-rate and good luck thank you for being here today bye


Yeah, I'm very honored and pleased to welcome on Freyjaid Radio the legal expert and libertarian Stefan Kenzela. Stefan, you're very welcome to our show. Thank you. I'm very glad to be here. Okay. One of the first things I would like to ask you is that could you please introduce yourself? For those people, it may sound strange that still don't know you. Sure. Yes. I'm an attorney in Houston, Texas, United States. I'm a longtime libertarian writer and advocate and I've written a lot on the fields of intellectual property and libertarian rights theory, HAPPA, Rothbard and free markets, private property rights, but I'm also a practicing attorney here in Texas. And you've written a book, I believe? Yeah, I've written several books, some on legal theory and some on legal topics, which is my specialty, International Law and Intellectual Property Law, but also in the sort of political theory world, I've written some other books and edited books. And one of them is Against Intellectual Property and you can actually find the book online and more information about that at my website, which is stefankenzela.com, S-T-E-P-H-A-N which is an Irish originated name, which means dirty head actually, which I don't have it present. Well, we will add your website address on the Facebook page and in the broadcast information. Okay. Yeah. Sure. And I would like to recommend this website to any libertarian who is seriously in trying to ground why property rights are valid and things like that. I would like to start first with you asked to ask you, could you explain the so-called Lockean Provisio? What is it and what are the historical roots of that term? Yeah. So the Lockean idea, I mean, of course, John Locke was a theorist in the 1600s and he is one of the primary founders of thought that a lot of pro-property rights, pro-freedom, pro-liberal, pro-western people nowadays draw back on even if they don't realize it. And John Locke basically had a simple idea, which a lot of people now think is obvious, but primarily that's because of his influence. And his idea was that if you were the first person to use something in the world, some scarce resource, then you have a better claim to it than other people. You make sure labor with it. Now, he was arguing against sort of an earlier tradition, which was more monarchistic, more feudalistic in some ways. So one thing he said was that you have the right to your body and your person, and therefore you have the right to what you do with it, what you call labor, and therefore you own your labor, and therefore you own what you mix your labor with. So what he said was, there's one exception to this, and that is that if you take something from the unowned state of nature, like a piece of land or whatever, that you have the right to it unless you don't leave enough for other people to homestead as well. So that was the Locke and Proviso, so he said that you can take something that's unowned unless there's not much of it left. If there's not much of it left, then you do harm people by taking a piece of it. If there's tons of it around, or lots of it around, then you don't harm other people by taking it. Now, I actually disagree with Locke on his Proviso, but that was the Proviso. He had one exception in his theory, so he said basically there's unowned things lying around. No one can complain if you are the first person to take it and now you're the owner of that thing. But if there's only a little bit of it left, you could see why people would start complaining that you're the guy taking it. So that was his Proviso. As far as I can see, this clashes, for one instance, with the idea that as libertarians we would like to see a state where everything is privatized, like Walter Blocks says, if it moves, privatize it, and if it doesn't move, privatize it also. Well, I do agree with that, but I think a different way to look at it is this. Is that everything in the world that is potentially something that you could have a clash over or a conflict over, every legal system is going to have some rule that says who owns it, because otherwise you're just going to have struggle over it and there's no law. So the question is, who should own it? So the question is, what should the legal system say, who should be the owner of a given resource? So the question is really not who should be the private owner or not. The question is, who should be the owner? Now when you say privatize, you're sort of implying that there should be no government. But I think the answer is simply who should be the owner of a given resource and the answer is found in Locke. That is, the first person who finds it has a better claim than other people who come later, or if you contractually transfer it to someone, you sell it, or you donate it, or you give it, or you leave it by will, by a testament to someone else, then they are the owner now of this thing. So by these very simple rules, contract and first ownership, you could always identify the proper owner of a given resource. So the question is not private versus public, it's who is the proper owner of a given resource. Exactly. Yeah, of course. So when we look a little bit deeper into his appropriation theory of the Lockeian Provisio, we see that he uses mixing your labor and as far as I have understood your writings, you seem to have a problem with his labor theory. Am I correct? Yes. I mean, I think he was actually correct in his conclusion, but I think his argument contained an unnecessary step. What Locke said was that we all agree that we own ourselves. Now the word self is sort of vague and ambiguous. Yes. To my mind, if you want to make it clear, you mean your body, because your body is the only thing someone can really take from you by force.  They can't take my memories. They can't take my soul. They can't take my feelings without really doing something to my body. So the thing we're really concerned about is the body.  They're all basically crimes, physical crimes against the borders of people's actual physical bodies. So that's the primary thing we need to be concerned about. So Locke basically said you own yourself or your body and therefore you own what you do with it, which is called labor. And if you own the labor, then you own what you mix it with. I don't disagree with his conclusion, which was that if you mix your labor with an unowned resource, like a piece of land or a tree, then you have a better claim than other people. I think he's correct about that. But his reasoning is that the reason you have a better claim is because you have an ownership claim to the labor. I just think this is a category mistake because labor is an action. It's what you do with your body. So we own our bodies. That means we have the right to do with them what we want to do, but it doesn't mean that we metaphorically have the right to own the things, so to speak, emanating from our bodies, which is labor. It's okay to think of it in this way, but we have to be careful because metaphors can lead us astray. Yeah, that would be my next question. What is exactly the danger of this view that you can own your labor? So the danger is, well, number one, it led to the view which was adopted by others like Adam Smith and then Karl Marx, you know, the labor theory of value exactly property, which led to communism and the devastation of hundreds, you know, tens or hundreds of millions of human lives. So it actually literally led to death and devastation for uncountable human beings in history in the 20th century because of the mistaken view of the labor theory of value, which, by the way, is not the same thing, but it's related. So the labor theory of value says that the value of an object is some kind of intrinsic inherent quality of the thing and where does it come from? It comes from the amount of labor you put into it. Now, if you have this view of value, which is incorrect according to the Austrian school, Mises and Hayek and Karl Minger, if you have this view of labor, then you have to believe that when you have an employee, I'm sorry, employer who employs people like a capitalist, then if they make a profit, the profit almost necessarily comes from the surplus value of labor that the worker put into the project that he's not being compensated for. So you have to view basically voluntary free market interactions as a type of theft, and then you have to condemn them. And then you have to, the only way to fight that would be to have a type of statism that comes in and commands and controls the economy and prevents voluntary human relations. Or as Robert Nozick, a famous American libertarian theorist, said consensual acts among, or capitalist acts among consenting adults. Exactly. And once you prohibit that, then you open the door for fascism and totalitarianism. So that's one danger of the libertarian value. Yeah, it led to the exploitation theory of Marx, which justifies all kinds of interventions into the economy and personal lives of people. Exactly. And in political philosophy, I believe the main problem of Locke's misstep, which by the way David Hume saw through, David Hume saw that this was an unnecessary and fallacious step in Locke's theory. Locke's theory is correct, but without that step. And that step potentially leads to the idea that if you own your labor, then you own whatever proceeds from it. Well, then there's no restriction on this. This could be applied to things that are intangible as well as tangible. Exactly. If your labor leads to something that's valuable, like a song or an opera or a painting or a movie, something that's intangible, while it has value, your labor created it. And if you own the result of your labor, you should own this too. So the problem is that this mistaken step in the Lockeian argument, which was a heroic effort to improve the situation that had gone before him, but it leads to the idea of intellectual property primarily patent and copyright. The idea that we have the property right in our reputations, in songs and artistic works, and in inventions because you created it with your labor and you own the proceeds of that. So it sort of leads to a way that people can argue to validate the modern concept of patent and copyright and other forms of intellectual property. Yep, exactly. I find it very ironic that objectivists who are very anti-Marxists used that mistake, the labor theory of value, to justify their defense of IP. It is ironic. Yeah, you're right, especially because Rand was such a huge opponent of Marx, of course. Yes. But Rand bought into the same mistaken idea that Locke did, which Marx and Adam Smith and others bought into as well, which is this labor conception. And remember, I don't want to criticize these guys for where they were at the time. I mean, John Locke was an amazing... Well, he was a racist from what recent scholarship shows. But if you look at his ideas, his ideas were a huge advance in the liberal tradition. In their historical context, their deeds... Absolutely. I'm not criticizing him, but that doesn't mean his ideas were 100% correct. Exactly. And I think what happened was... So John Locke inspired the sort of liberal, rationalist revolution, which inspired the American Revolution, which gave rise to basically the libertarian tradition in the world today. Yep. And this is one reason why we can trace a lot of these ideas back to the founders. America, even though they were also hypocritical, white, racist, properitarian politicians, to a large extent. But the ideas that intertwined in between all of their writings and what was going on then can be traced back to Locke and other English and Continental writers. Exactly. You can see that in the Martin Luther King's speech. I have a dream where he cites the Declaration of Independence. Absolutely. And he then univeralizes it. Yeah, yeah, it's not perfectly consistent. So you have Ayn Rand escaping from Marxist-dominated Russia coming to the U.S. and she sees how great the U.S. is compared to what she escaped from. And she sees our Constitution and our founding documents and she thinks this is great compared to what she's used to. And she's right. She is. So she assumed, I think initially, that the Constitution and the United States founding period was this kind of amazing breakthrough in human civilization and history, sort of the culmination of the Greek and the Western ideals, and that we had finally gotten it almost right. And she could fix it, but it was almost right, which, by the way, so in the United States Constitution, it's very non-libertarian or very not perfect libertarian. It authorizes slavery. It permits taxation. It permits conscription. It permits war. It permits lots of things that we would not agree with. And in the Fifth Amendment, it seems to authorize eminent domain, which is the government taking private property if you pay a price. And I mean, I've heard, I don't know if this is published yet, but there are letters from Rothbard and others showing that when Ein Rand came to the country early on, she initially was actually in favor of eminent domain. She was. She was. And after talks with Isabel Patterson and others, she rejected the view. But in the beginning, she was. She changed to her credit. She changed her mind. But the point is that you can see that she was heavily influenced by this idea that we have an experiment that almost worked. The the early American experiment. Yeah. And she probably brushed aside, like a lot of us do, you know, the fact that we had slavery and that we were women weren't treated properly and that we were more primitive, etc. But she had an ideal in mind and she tried to build on that and improve on it, which is admirable, I think. But in the field of intellectual property, I think this is her fatal mistake and also the field of government. I think Ein Rand's two key mistakes were her foundation of rights, which was too intertwined with the idea of intellectual property under the influence of Locke. I agree. And also the idea that anarchists or or unlibertarian are not consistent with her philosophy because. And she thinks they're for chaos or that it can't work. Or it's really not clear exactly what her criticism is. You know, I studied a lot of libertarians. I've read several biographies of Rand, of Mises, of Hayek, of Rothbard. And people are always disappointed in their heroes, but there is no perfect libertarian. People are partly the product of their time and they they are subject to the limits of the time in which they have grown up, that this goes for Mises as well as Rand. Mises used to be for conscription and other things. When he came to New York in the early forties, he was the most moderate libertarian within the libertarian circles to his surprise, to his other surprise. So and people are constricted by the view in which they grow up and therefore breakthroughs like like you've made them in IP and patents are very, very valuable. Well, right. And I don't mean to be critical of Ryan Rand. She was a she's a towering figure and so was Mises, of course. Yes. What what happens on occasion? I mean, in in my case, I was really a dedicated adherent of Austrianism and freedom and liberty. But I was also a lawyer and I was starting to become a patent attorney and IP attorney, an intellectual property attorney. So my attention turned more and more to this topic because I was thinking is this stuff that I'm practicing in my practice really justified and I'm Rand's justification in her. I think it's in capitalism, the unknown ideal. I can't remember. She has an essay about the very short essay. True. But it had always bugged me. I think it bugs a lot of people because it's not complete. She didn't pretend it was complete. But she, you know, I'm Rand is a very principal thinker, for example, in the antitrust case, you know, for what you call in Europe, competition law, yeah, laws that prohibit monopolies or private companies from becoming too big or conspiring together to set prices, et cetera. You had the Sherman. Yeah, the Sherman Antitrust Act and Clayton Act over here. And I don't know what the names are in Europe, but there are similar laws around the world. I ran heroically in her her her main followers that she allowed to be printed in her books. She opposed antitrust law not on empirical grounds like Milton Friedman would, but on principled grounds like you have the right, you know, two businessmen have the right to meet together and set prices if they want to. Yep. And honestly, what's the difference between two independent companies or two companies that get bought by a bigger company and they're banded together under the same corporate structure, which is permissible legally. I mean, it makes no difference. You know, it makes no sense to distinguish between them. But the point is her defense of antitrust was primarily moral that you have the right to try to set prices. And then she would say, well, you know, empirically we don't think this is going to work. Cartels won't work and there's economic forces that will limit the bad effects of this, et cetera. In patent law, uncharacteristically, and copyright in patents, in trying to defend the existing law, she adopted utilitarian ad hoc arguments. Exactly. She was stuck trying to defend a 17 year patent term and a 50 year after the life of the author copyright term. Now, these are totally arbitrary, as is obvious to anyone. And there's no way you can defend that on natural rights type grounds. So, Ayn Rand was stuck trying to come up with a way to defend this American type system of IP law because it was part of the founding. And it sort of, it complimented her ideas of the importance of the intellect in the mind. And I think that's one thing we have to fight. We have to make clear that just because we're opposed to state-granted intellectual property law does not mean that we're not capitalist. Doesn't mean we're not pro-property rights. It doesn't mean we're against creativity in the intellect. I think it's actually the opposite way around. We have to at least make it clear, even if you disagree with us, that the reason we oppose these state grants of monopoly privilege is because we are in favor of creativity. We're in favor of freedom. We're in favor of a vigorous free market. We're in favor of individual property rights. You might disagree with us that that's the implication, but that's our basis. It's not because of communism or collectivism or hatred of profit or this kind of stuff. There's nothing to do with it. Let me ask you, for our listeners who are not up to date about IPs and patents, could you very basically explain the difference between intellectual property and patents? Yeah, well, intellectual property is a term that's used and in Europe it's called industrial property. It's not exactly the same, but it's similar. So it's sort of a term that refers to several types of legal laws or legal regimes that are related to each other. Patent is one, copyright's another, trademark is another. And there are a few others, but I won't bore you with details. What they have in common according to the people that try to group them together is that they all relate to products of the intellect or products of the mind that are intangible and that have some value in commerce, okay? So a trademark is the name of your company or your product like Coca-Cola or Mercedes or Boeing, whatever. And a copyright is a legal right to the way you express something that's creative and original, like a painting or a novel or a movie or even software in some cases or a book. And patent has to do with an innovative and practically useful idea like the way you design a machine or the way you have a chemical or some kind of technical process that produces something useful. So you basically have these three fundamental types of intellectual property, which they're called. So a patent would be a subset of the field of intellectual or industrial property. Okay, okay. And could you explain the utilitarian defense of intellectual property and also tell us what's wrong with it? Well, so if you ask someone, why do we have this? So there's two different ways of looking at it. Why in terms of historical origin, why did they arise? Why do we have these laws? And the other question is why do we need them? Which is the defense of these laws. And historically the origin is that the governments, the monarchies in Europe in the 15, 1600s, 1700s were granting these monopolies. The king would grant a monopoly to a court favorite or some guy in a town that was a popular guy or someone who was powerful. He would say, you're the only guy who can sell soap or can sell sheepskin or whatever. They just gave them a monopoly, it's called a patent. So the practice of patents arose in the form of just protectionism or mercantilism. And copyrights arose when the printing press started threatening them, the monopoly on ideas that the church and the state held sort of in combination. So they would have these guilds that would authorize which books could be printed, et cetera. And then finally this resulted in legislation which devolved to the authors but then was transferred right back to the publishers because of the practicalities of the industry. And so in other words, the authors got the copyright but then the publishing houses got the monopoly right back again because to have a book published you had to go back to the publishers. So that's the practical origin of the things. The argument nowadays for it and if we take as a classic case the United States Constitution which was ratified in 1789 about 220 something years ago the clause in the Constitution says that to promote the progress of science and the useful arts which Congress shall have the power to grant to authors and inventors for limited times the restricted or the privileged use to their creative writings or works. So the theory there and then right after that the copyright act and the patent act were enacted and ever since then the Western world has modeled what the US did more or less. So they're pretty much all the same. So the idea is that if you don't have a patent law which gives you a monopoly on your invention then you would keep secret for as long as you could your idea, you would keep it as what's called a trade secret which is a fourth type of intellectual property. And the people that are behind this say that that's a bad thing, that we want information to spread. So what we will say is we'll say listen if you disclose to the public exactly how you made your invention then we're gonna give you a 17 year monopoly on it. So you can make profits for 17 years monopoly profits but in exchange you have to disclose to the world how you did it. So that's the primary idea behind patents although most people would argue that it's something else is to incentivize invention in the first place but that's not what's in patent laws. They actually require you to disclose what you're doing in exchange for getting a monopoly. So that's the literal bargain. And in copyright it's similar but the idea is that to incentivize people to create artistic works like songs or paintings or novels, we have to let them be the only one who could sell their work for some limited time which nowadays is the life of the author plus 70 years. So it's over a hundred years in most cases, literally over a century. And it used to be by the way 14, for both these used to be 14 years, sometimes extendable for another seven or 14 years. And the 14 year term came about totally by happenstance because the idea was that if you're like a guy who gets a monopoly from the king and you have an apprentice, then apprentice terms last for seven years, right? So you need to have time to train two apprentices to do what you're doing and to keep them from competing with you. So two apprentice terms is 14 years. So this is how these terms came about. It was just totally protectionism, totally utilitarian, totally unprincipled. And as of today with our modern empirical and econometric techniques, totally unsubstantiated by any data whatsoever. The data we have nowadays, all the economic studies we have indicate that there is no way whatsoever to substantiate the claim that we need these laws to have innovation, creativity, artistic works, invention. In fact, the evidence indicates that we would have at least as much, if not more without these laws. Yeah, I would say that as well. When you look at, for instance, the music industry, you see that bands get paid very, very little per album and that they make 80% of the money they make through touring and merchandise. Yes, and whenever you bring up an example like that, the proponent of IP will just switch to another industry. Yes, they will. So they'll say, well, what about perfume? Or what about, what if I want to publish a book that's a non-fiction book? Am I supposed to go read my book to audience? So everything you mentioned, you overcome one of their ad hoc examples and they will come up with another one just to try to show that you can't solve the utopian dreams of a world where everyone gets paid to do whatever they think should be done or what the government thinks should be done. Yes, and that's always the same because when you as a libertarian try to defend the free market, they will say, how about roads? You explain the roads, how about hospitals? You explain the hospitals, how about this? How about that? And you'll be talking for hours and they're still not convinced. And that is because I think that they don't accept or get the moral defense because the moral defense makes X like a limit and within that limit of that moral defense, then you can go search for practical solutions. But first you have to accept moral limits. This is not allowed. Yeah, no, I agree with that. But I also think that if they were at least sincere, I mean, if you're just an empirical minded person and you want results and you're just, if you really were sincere about the roads question and you got a good answer, a sincere person would stop and think, okay, he actually gave me a good answer. Maybe I'm gonna stop and think about what led me to ask that question in the first place, but instead they just turn to the next question. They have like a list of 115 questions they're gonna ask. I know. And if you answer all 100, 115 questions, they have another, they can go to their friends and get the next set of questions that they will never stop. So I agree with you, but I do think even if you were an empirical minded person, I mean, look, if you were an honest empirical minded person with totally no principles, but just an ad hoc sort of idea that I'll go where the evidence leads me. Well, the evidence in the field of patent and copyright shows that countries that have had no IP have had artistic creation and they've had innovation. Okay, and we know that it's possible and there's no evidence to support it. And we know that it leads to this huge industry that we have now patent trolls, copyright trolls, censorship, $100 million in billion dollar verdicts against companies, the repression of competition, the creation of oligopolies because you have these companies like Apple and Samsung and Microsoft and Google that basically they rise to the four and they can afford to fight each other. And they waste billions of dollars to fight each other. They waste it and they pass the cost on to us. Exactly. And they don't have, less money to use for innovation, but the smaller companies, the innovators, the upstarts, they're on the outside of this wall. They can't compete with these guys because they don't have enough money to withstand a lawsuit. So it really does lead to repressed competition, reduced free markets and reduced consumer welfare. So all the things that the patent advocates pretend to be in favor of, any sober realistic analysis of the situation would lead you to say maybe in a free, maybe in a perfect world that God designs, I would be in favor of an idealistic utopianized sort of patent system, but we don't have anything near that. There's no chance of having that. We would clearly be better off by having no patent system than any patent system we can expect to have in the real world. That is what a practical pragmatic person would conclude if they were honest and serious. So even if you don't have morals and principles, if you're just really honest and sincere, then you would have to oppose the IP system. That's a very good explanation. And could you explain a little the difference between intangible property and real property and how when intangible property is protected by loss is a danger for real property rights? Yeah, and so the word intangible, I mean, I know I'm speaking across languages here, but tangible means touchable, something you can touch with your hands, right? And some people like Hardy Bouillon, who's a French writer who's written some of my publications, he's argued that a better word would be material versus immaterial, and I don't strongly disagree with him on that. You're correct. Which goes back to the idea of scarcity and non-scarcity, which really, honestly, if you wanna talk about the most coherent way to describe this and to explain it, is rivalry versus non-rivalry. It's an economic concept. What it means is if there's a resource out there in the world, something that we need to use to accomplish our ends in life, like bread or fruit or a chair or a bat or a car or a house or an apple or whatever, or land, if there's some resource, then the reason it's a resource, the reason it's used to achieve an end, and the reason we need property rights in it is because only one person can use this thing, right? So if I have an egg, you can't take my egg and make your fried egg with it and let me make mine too. Only one of us can. So this egg only has a limited use. And so if it's going to be used productively and peacefully by people that cooperate with each other and have a society among each other, we have to have some kind of socially recognized rule that says whenever you have a resource that people can conflict over or clash over, we just have to have a rule that says who gets to use it so that we can know who uses it, where the borders are, and we can live in peace with each other. And then if I don't have the right to use that thing, then I can trade with the guy that has the right to use that thing. That's the peaceful, cooperative way to do things. This is why property rights have emerged. This is why property rights are necessary and are an essential aspect of human civilization. So all property rights have to do with things that are rivalrous or scarce resources, right? So then the only question is who should get to use it? This is why we get back to what we talked about in the beginning about Locke. Locke's idea that, well, the person who first started using it has a better claim to this thing than someone who comes later, unless he gives it voluntarily to someone else and then they have a better claim, even against the first guy. So with these very simple rules, with the idea that we recognize that when there's a scarce resource, we need a rule that says who owns the thing, okay? And then the rule is whoever first owns it or who has an earlier claim to it or who has a better contractual claim to it. That's basically it. One exception would be in the case of crimes or torts. So if you do something wrong to someone, so let's say you trespass against me or my property, then you might be said to incur some kind of obligation to repay me to make restitution towards me. And in that case, some of your property now is transferred to the person that you harmed. But other than that case, so in other words, we could say there's a third rule. We can always identify the owner of a resource by asking a combination of questions. Who first owned it or who had the earlier claim to it? Who first used it, that is? Who made a contractual voluntary transfer of it or who committed some kind of act of trespass or crime which also effectively transferred it to the victim of that crime? But other than that, you don't really need anything else to determine who owns a given resource. Now, you asked about the danger of trying to assign rights in intangible things. So the point is if you assign rights in the way I described, that basically exhausts the possibility it answers all the questions of who can own a given resource. If you come up with another rule, it has to undercut one of the earlier rules. So if you say that, yeah, the guy that owns this car is the guy that created it or bought it from a previous owner, right? Unless some other guy came up with a way to tune his engine that this other guy is using too closely. So what you're doing is you're coming up with a third homesteading rule or you're coming up with another property transfer rule that basically takes the property from the owner to some third party. This is the fundamental problem. You cannot give rights in intangible things without taking things that already owned other people. So if you grant someone a copyright or a patent, you're giving them the right to go to a court to use force to tell them you cannot use your property in this way unless you pay me rent or unless you get my permission. And the problem with that is that that assumes that the guy demanding payment is the owner of the thing, but he's not. He's demanding payment from the owners. So the fundamental problem with granting rights in intangibles is the same thing is the problem with granting positive welfare rights. Exactly, I was thinking about that. Yes. Yeah, it's the same thing. It's the same thing because it corrupts the real existing rights, the negative rights in this case. Yeah, well, nothing comes for free, right? So if the government prints more money, they're not creating wealth. They're just diluting the purchasing power of the existing money held by the people. And when the government creates positive rights, every right comes with an obligation. So if you have the right to attend the university for free, what that means is that your neighbors have the obligation to pay for it. So every right comes with a price. And whenever you have them of the positive right or whatever you come up with an IP right, it always has to necessarily take away from existing established rights and scarce resources. That's very clear. IP and patents is not the only thing you have been writing about. One thing you have been writing about are Hans-Hermann Hoppe and argumentations ethics. Could you explain those a little bit? Yes, so Hans-Hermann Hoppe is a German legal, political theorist and Austrian economist. When I say Austrian, I mean he is influenced heavily by the Austrian school of economics, which is primarily Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard, an American who was Mises student. So Hoppe is a philosopher and Austrian political and economic theorist. And among Hoppe's many contributions to all these fields is his idea which he introduced in the late 80s after he moved to the United States and started studying under Rothbard, became Rothbard's chief sort of student and protege. That was in Las Vegas, wasn't it? I think initially it was not. I think Rothbard was in New York at first and then they both moved soon after to Las Vegas for about a decade. But I think initially Rothbard was in New York. I could be wrong about that. But then in the case, Hoppe was a more Kantian type of philosopher. And from what I've learned, Hoppe basically came up with praxeology, which is Mises' sort of unique twist and the most rigorous interpretation of Austrian economics out there. He came up with a version of praxeology on his own. He was raised as a leftist in Germany. He was a brilliant philosopher, grad student type and he started coming up with these theories on his own. And then he stumbled across Rothbard and Mises and he realized that Mises had basically done this already. If I may interrupt you first. Praxeology is the Austrian term for the study of human action, right? Praxeology is Mises' term for, I think he came up with it. That's his version of Austrian economics. Austrian economics is a field of economics that I think was originated by Karl Manger in the late 1800s and it started in his idea of marginalism and subjectivism, but then others developed it and Mises in a lot of people's view is the most rigorous and most individualist and the most scientific in a sense. And he systematized it and he called his method of analysis praxeology. He came up with the word, I believe on his own based upon Greek roots or Latin roots. Yep, he did. And it means the logic of action or the science or the study or the logic of human action. So it was kind of a Kantian style analysis where he said we can take as a given as an undeniable given certain things about human nature and the facts of the world, which is that humans act and that has certain implications. Human beings are actors.  We actually have purposes. We have teleology, right? In the Aristotelian sense. But because we have an action, what that means is as an actor, you view the world at a present moment and you see, you envision what you think is going to come in the future and you are unsatisfied with the direction of what you think is coming. And so you use your understanding of the world now to say what do I have it available at my disposal that I can use to change the course of action, to change the course of the future, to change the course of history basically or the future history. And so you basically utilize some scarce means or some scarce resource to try to interrupt the flow of affairs to achieve some future state of affairs that you predict will happen if you are successful that will make you happier. So that's what human action is in general and there's lots of economic implications you get from that. Now, Hoppe started deriving these ideas on his own but then when he discovered Mises and Rothbard he became quickly an inherent of Mises and Rothbard and an anarcho-capitalist in the radical American sense and quickly dropped his early flirtation with European leftism, et cetera. Although he retained some of his attraction to the Kantian framework, okay? And he came up with an idea because one of his professors when he was getting his habilitation or his PhD was a Jurgen Habermas who was a famous European lefty intellectual German. And Habermas has this idea called communication ethics or discourse ethics. Now Habermas and his associate Carl Otto Appell another German who Hoppe actually prefers in terms of the rigor of his thought they both thought that the there's something about the nature of justification when we have a discussion between two people like you and I are doing now there's something about that that has implications for what you could justify. So you couldn't, to take a crazy example you and I it would be hard to imagine is a sincere discussion between you and me about which one of us gets to own the other because we might as well just try to shoot each other or kill each other. I mean, if we're actually having a real discussion we're sort of taking some things for granted which is I have the right to my body you have the right to your body let's go from there and let's see what we can figure out something like that in a non-rigorous sense. Now Habermas and Appell thought that this had implications for social democracy and democracy in general and they thought that it meant that you had to have the right to basic housing and a living and a job and all these social democratic things. Now Hoppe when he got influenced by Rothbard and Mises thought not so fast. I think your basic insight is sound and potentially profitable but I think if you have the insights of Rothbardian political radicalism and Mazizian social theory then you have to realize that the implications of your communications ideas your discourse ethics is that the only political theory you could ever justify would be a totally other respecting type of ethic that is the peace ethic that is the Lockean libertarian ethic. So that's Hoppe's argument and that's not really the argument that's how it came about. The nutshell is that he believes that the essence of discourse is peace and cooperation and so that basically means that you could never make a coherent peaceful cooperative argument in an actual discourse to argue for something seriously contrary to that like slavery or some kind of a class system or a domination system where one class rules the other. So would you say that it works like an axiom? Well, depends on what you mean by axiom. I mean, in math axiom just means an assumed postulate and the Randian sort of Aristotelian sense an axiom. I was talking about the new Aristotelian framework that in an axiom you can't deny axiom without contradicting yourself. I think it does with one difference. So the axiom in the Randian neo-Randian Aristotelian sense is basically some kind of statement that is self-contradictory to deny, right? Like the law of non-contradiction or the law of identity or the law of causality or even some factual statements like the fact that there is consciousness like you couldn't deny that you're conscious or that you exist as an actual existing observer without contradicting yourself. So some of those get very close to what Hoppe and the realistic form of Continism that he is an inherent of. And according to Hoppe and I've come to agree with him, there are two main strands of Continism. One is the American interpretation which is more idealistic and idealistic not in the sense of having ideals but in the sense of believing that the world of ideas is paramount and that we don't have a direct connection to reality. It's more of a subjectivist or relativist interpretation. And the European interpretation of Conte which is apparently more realistic. And according to Hans Hoppe, he doesn't care which one is correct. I mean if Conte really meant A or B, it doesn't matter but the one that makes sense is the realistic interpretation which is the Misesian and the Hoppean and even the Randian version which Rand would deny. But the point is according to the realistic interpretation or use of the Conte and type of mental framework that Hoppe and Mises use, some of the arguments are very similar to the way Rand herself would demonstrate her axiomatic concepts. So she would demonstrate identity, the law of identity, the law of non-contradiction and the law of causation and other fundamental laws by showing that denying them is self-contradictory. And some of the laws Hoppe talks about are similar except they basically rely upon what's called performative contradiction. So the contradiction is not like necessarily an inherent logical contradiction. Like you could imagine a universe with no humans. In a universe with no humans there would be no human action. But Mises is correct to say that it's undeniable that there is human action because for anyone to deny it, they're acting as a human and they'd be counter-contradict. So that's a performative contradiction. So yes, I would say the Hoppean proof of rights is a cousin to at least of the Randian Aristotelian axiomatic logical proofs. Thank you. One last question I have because we're over an hour now and I don't wanna take up too much of your time but you have contributed to this kind of thought as well and you came up during class I believe with what you call the unstoppable principle and you connected it to the non-aggression principle. Could you explain that a little bit? Well, right. So this is the late 80s when I was in law school and I was infatuated with Hoppe's insights about argumentation ethics. And at the time I was learning in contract theory about the ancient principle called a stop-all which is not only a common law view, there's something similar in the civil law, the continental law, which you guys have. The basic idea is that there's something unjust about permitting someone to take two inconsistent stances in a say a certain legal proceeding. So you can't argue one thing to make gains in a certain part of the proceeding and then later on say the exact opposite. If you did that, you'd be a stopped or prevented from the judge would just say, listen, you already admitted that you're married to this woman. Now you can't say you're not married to her. It's gotta be one way or the other. So in a logical sense, you can see the origins of that or the roots of that idea is that we have to have a coherent argument, to have a serious argument, to try to get to the truth of things. You have to at least be consistent, right? And something struck me about that idea in contract law which was that there's something ultra consistent about the libertarian insistence of the non-aggression principle which is the idea that we libertarians believe that you have the right to do anything you want in the world except commit aggression. Now what does that mean? That means that you can use force only in response to force. So you can see the sort of symmetry there that force is justified only when it's in response to an initiation of force but force in response to aggression is justified because there's a symmetry there. So you can't use force, you may not use force unless it's in response to force. So if someone insults me, maybe I can insult them back but I can't punch them in the nose because they didn't use force. But if they punch me in the nose, I can punch them back. So you see a symmetry there.  You're saying when you punch someone in the nose, you're effectively saying it's legitimate for me to do this. And when you object to being punched in the nose in response, you're saying punching people is wrong. Well, you can't have it both ways. You have to choose, right? So that's the idea. And I think it's totally based upon and complementary to Hoppe's approach as well. It's just another way to look at the same idea. It's another way to flesh out why the libertarian idea is natural and intuitive and fundamental and really should be intuitive to everyone, not just libertarians, but everyone. Yeah, but what you and Hans-Hermann Hoppe do is it's just nice to say, well, this is intuitive, but when you can make it explicit, then you can really defend it, then it becomes clear. I think so. When you try to add some rigorous interpretation to it, I think, yeah, I think it has, I've tried to do that. Hoppe has tried, others have tried. And we do as good as we can to try to explain to people what they really already know. Most people already know is wrong to hurt people. They know this. This is why we have political dialogue because people are searching for justification for these kind of uncomfortable political things that they're wanting to favor. So we just have to get people to be consistent and be honest and look at the logic and the economics of what they're talking about. Well, that sounds like a real great closing note. Thank you very much for your time and your wisdom during this interview. And I'll hope we meet one day and talk again. Love to do it. Thank you very much. Okay.


The latest world inequality report is out from inequality labs and it paints a very grim picture of India. India is one of the most unequal countries in the world. This should not be news to any of us because whatever our age might be, we've seen the extreme riches and extreme poverty in India, but the numbers are still very staggering because if you look at it, the top 10% of Indians, the top 10% he owned 5 times what the bottom 50% own. And if we take the total wealth of the bottom 50% and compare it to what the top 1% own, then the top 1% own 1.7 times what the bottom 50% own. That's the kind of disparity that we have in India. And if I look at what an affluent person in the top 1% owns compared to an average person in the bottom 10%, it's almost 1000 times. It is almost 1000 times the annual earning compared to those who are at the bottom 10% of the economy. If I take the bottom 10% and compare the wealth with the top 1%, we can't because the bottom 1% actually have negative net worth because they are in debt. So let's take the average of the top bottom 20% and compare that to the top 1%. The wealth owned by the top 1% is almost 1500 times. It's more than 1400 times the wealth owned by the bottom 20%. That's the kind of disparity that we see in India and I'm talking about average wealth here. Okay, as I said that this is not new. We all know about the gap between the rich and the poor, but there's something interesting here. From 1951 to 1981, which we can call the period of Nehruvian socialism or Indira Gandhi's left turn in the 70s, the gap between the rich and poor actually narrowed. What happened was that if I take real income in today's prices, real income means inflation has been taken out of it so we are comparing apples to apples. In 1951, someone in the top 1% on an average earned about 3.6 lakh rupees per year. This is in today's prices, not in 1951 prices. Someone who was in the bottom half of the India's economy, they earned approximately about 11,000 rupees, slightly more than 11,000 rupees, about 11,500 odd. By 1981, and we know that there was planning state control of the economy, what has been called Nehruvian socialism, state capitalism and in the 1970s an even bigger left turn by Indira Gandhi at that time. The bottom 50%, their income, real income actually almost doubled. It went to almost 22,000 rupees, in fact slightly more than 22,000 rupees. The top 1% their income actually dropped, their real income dropped to about 3.5 lakh rupees, slightly more than 3.5 lakh rupees. So obviously the gap therefore was narrowing. Wealth of course still would not have, because wealth is something that you acquire over generations but still that gap was narrowing. And then in the 1980s when Indira Gandhi came back to power after being defeated in the emergency, she opened up the economy gradually with her finance minister at that time Pranab Mukherjee and there was a general trend thrust towards privatization, supporting middle class consumption, opening up the economy, reforms. So that's the beginning, not really 1991 as various economists have shown us and that process got strengthened, accelerated under Rajiv Gandhi. And if we take the 1981 to 2021 period, you see that the economic growth actually improved significantly. But what happened to the bottom 50%? Now we are going to compare the growth rates of income. As I said between 1951 to 1981, the average income of the bottom 50% almost doubled. It is a long period of 30 years. So they grew at about 2.2% per year. Their real income grew at about 2.2% per year. For the top 1% their real income dropped marginally, very slightly. So it was broadly flat, 0% growth, so no real growth. What happened from 81 to 2021? Real income growth of the bottom 50% remained exactly where it was, 2.2%. But the real income growth of the top 1% was 6.5% every year. For 40 years it has averaged 6.5% for the 1% at the bottom. And this is real income. This is after we've taken inflation out. If you add inflation, it is double digit growth for the top 1% for 40 consecutive years. And that is what happened. And that is why if you see it, what has happened because of that? In 1951 the richest 1%. I'm just going to look into my computer where the numbers are. I'm going to put them on your screen so that you can follow it up as well. The richest 1% owned 1 eighth of the nation's wealth. By 2021 it has gone to 1 fifth. From 12% now they own 22% of the nation's wealth. For the bottom 50%, what has happened? The bottom 50%, they have actually lost out sharply. Because the 50% have literally lost their control. They again had broadly about 1 fifth of the wealth. Till about 1981, in 1951 the share of wealth of the bottom 50% was approximately 21%. It continued to about that in even 1981. And now it has dropped to just 13%. So you're seeing a significant drop. From 1 fifth it has dropped to approximately about 1 eighth. That is the change we're seeing. So the bottom 50% their control over wealth and productive assets has dropped sharply. And the top 1% their control over productive assets has gained significantly. So what does that mean? That is this 1% and if you extend it to 10% then 2 thirds of the wealth is owned by the top 10%. But this 1% can actually control everything. Not just productive assets like factories, offices, mines, ports, airports, power plants. Not just them. But they can also control institutions. They with their money can control the media. They can manufacture consent. They can by funding political parties decide what politics is going to exist in the country. They can decide policies. So we've seen what happens when democracy is controlled by our nation state is controlled by that 1%. It kills democracy because the 1% moves everything towards them. They control media. They control the dominant ideologies, dominant ideas and the poor have no voice. And that is why we see that every media house, every public intellectual, every commentator says that these policies which have made the rich even richer, exponentially richer, increased inequality, these are the policies that are good. Reforms are good. Anything that helps the poor is bad and that is what is all around it. That is the core of the weakening of India's democracy. That is what has happened. And unless we realize this, unless we learn that we need to share more with the rest of India, our democracy cannot survive. That's the show today. Keep watching NewsClick. Like us. Subscribe to us.


Very welcome cyborgs. Can we do a test and see if you're the high-tech cyborgs? Yes you are My name is Mikaela Schmid, and I'm going to be the curator for this session about augmented reality I've invited two brilliant minds, which I'm so happy for you to meet and one of them It's going to be here on stage and the other one we're going to meet later on Skype and hope that turns out well I've divided this session into three main categories and I want to explore what to do with augmented reality in marketing and media and business and industry and Retail and consumption, so I want to get good examples on what to do with augmented reality and and Yes, sorry But first to talk about this session I want to start with a short three slide introduction on on on the subject augmented reality and Then I want to show some video examples from each category and then we're going to jump back and going to meet Alex Olwal, which is the first guest He's actually a Swede but he flew all this way to talk about augmented reality for industry application and I actually met him once before and he I don't think he knows it But he blew my mind talking about a kind of screen. I will perhaps tell you about later So just please say very welcome to Alex Alex with an applaud The next guest we're going to meet is called Viviane Rosenthal She's from New York and she's the owner and founder of Goldrun an augmented reality mobile platform, especially for retailers and It's going to be interesting. I hope she's going to tell us about the next launch of Goldrun Which is going to come out now in September But then the introduction There's a lot of talk about the hype cycle of new media and I just wanted to run you through the advantages as I see it with augmented reality and I think the biggest biggest advantage is that it's a simple user phase Anyone can use it if you're if let's say you're not very fly on using a computer Or maybe even don't use your mobile phone To other stuff than maybe calling sending a text message or making a call Without me augmented reality, especially with if it's an in-store solution or maybe it's In the city and on a billboard you can even then you can interact with the information That's on a screen just with gestures and and moving around so I think it's a simple user phase user interface and I actually invited Lego to come here and there's a Danish toy manufacturer from But they said actually said hi to the audience so hi from Lego and They but they couldn't come because they were too busy developing their next venture of augmented reality I think many of you perhaps have already heard of their augmented reality solution in store it's called digital box and You're going to see it later on in this presentation So that venture was really successful for them. They've tried it worldwide and are now going to develop their Venture further so that's I think it's very funny and the other very Advantage of augmented reality as I see it is that it's real-time information As you can see here in this image. It's a launch of a product camera, which is going to be now in our August It's a for you film fine picks if 600 x qr And it's they claim it to be the first camera with a built-in augmented reality function that they call landscape navigator and This landscape never get it works kind of I guess you've seen layer a mobile phone application Kind of the same that you have your camera and if you're going to a different country or city And you want to take a photograph of a long landmark You can get information on that land market that you see on the screen right onto your own screen You can also use it to find your way back to a previous place you've been visiting before so that's use of augmented reality in product And I want you also to give give you another example which is more Visual about the real-time information. So if I think this is a Concept, maybe it maybe it exists as an app too But if you imagine a screensaver a Twitter client screensaver, which is visual when a bird flying Pass you with the latest twist and if you want to read it later, you can just put the bird on a branch So so that section in an example of a real-time information So you know how fresh the information can be in this new layer onto onto the screen So the interface is simple and the information can be very updated How many in here? Went to see month's odd loss presentation about the Internet of Things. Can we do a hands-up? Yes, not all but I would say that augmented reality is kind of the same the concept within Internet of Things is that physical objects are connected to virtual information and I would say augmented reality is kind of the same although visual is visual presentation of that kind of information So as you can see here in the these examples There's lots of kinds of digital interaction going on on right now Maybe I should jump away. You see the touch screen in the right and left you can see This tapping of your mobile phone on a reader and then you get information to it. That's near field Communication you can also see the interactive surface with the girl running on to an edge and These are many kinds of interactions digital interaction user interfaces and I believe that augmented reality is one of these new media and I actually think that This is a whole new Emerging market and of course augmented reality is one of them But augmented reality alone won't hit like is it going to hit and replace all the other media? No, it won't but it's going to be one of them And I think the use of it are going to increase a lot and the real reason Why I'm here is actually I'm so excited of all the great things you can do with augmented reality both for communication for utility and for entertainment purposes so I want to give you know a couple of examples and it's nine videos and but they're short so hang on there and I did as I told you I divided them into three categories and augmented reality can be viewed on three kinds of screens So keep an eye out for three different kinds of screens in these movies So as you saw there were three kinds of augmented reality and it was web-based for your portable or stationary computer It's for mobile phones And you as you saw it was layer of vision and knew the second version of layer Which you can check into and then also you have standalone systems Which is maybe on a billboard or in-store solution or maybe you're passing by a Shopping window or something And in the next three movies movies Please check out for three ways to trigger augmented reality Or actually there are only two and the third is coming in the next movies Are you ready? Anyone Trying to highlight the fact that they are working in renewable energy Which they are and this technology the augmented reality If I taped a thing to my album and now I'm holding the 3d hologram in my hand thing I can't really see that that's going to save the world But solar panels solar panels will save the world and general electric is doing good things with solar and wind Hold on a second. That's right. Wind Gives the sun of these issues at the same time And mostly metario is concentrating on the software stack. So our Main part is building Optical recognition technologies optical tracking technologies to mainly Make a very accurate alignment of the virtual information with the real world happen The the model that's being displayed here is Huge for a mobile phone Only with HP is your PC designed and engineered And for cool Can we talk about another innovation? Design we think we have a vocabulary of design call it muse. It stands for material usability sensory And experience So as you saw here, there were two three different kinds of ways to trigger augmented reality And one is if you have a marker AR marker or an image You can have obvious recognition or movement gesture or you can also have GPS or location-based trigger so let's move now to the last three movies and for this In these movies, maybe you could check out for three criteria is making out good augmented reality Coming transmission from Autobot headquarters This is Optimus Prime. Do you read me? Cannot win this war without your help Choose which runs to follow Grabbing virtual goods and collecting rewards So that was that last one was actually the Lego in-store solution I talked to you about it called digital box and As you saw here, I think there are three criteria making out good augmented reality And that's the real-time information streamable live information criteria and it's a simple in interface and also When augmented reality uses the space when it's spatially aligned it not only Information flat on the surface, but also uses the depth of your surrounding the viewer surrounding so Let us now skip back to Alex all wall and Oh, sorry