Welcome to Free Thoughts. I'm Trevor Burris. And I'm Aaron Powell. Joining us today is Robert M. Wapels, a research fellow at the Independent Institute, co-editor and managing editor for the Independent Review and professor of economics at Wake Forest University. He is the editor of Pope Francis and the Caring Society from the Independent Institute. Welcome to Free Thoughts, Robert. Thanks for having me on. In 2015, Pope Francis issued his second encyclical, which I'm probably gonna butcher this Laudato Si. Laudato Si. Laudato Si. What did he say in that encyclical? So the encyclical is widely known kind of as the Pope's environmental encyclical, but if you dig into it, it's at least as much about the poor and the rich and economics as it is about the environment. But if there's a big picture, it's that we're of using the environment and it has to do with the fact that we're also abusing each other. The richer are abusing the poor and the rich are missing out on their true calling and in the process the environment is being turning into a giant pile of filth. So that's kind of the brass knuckles picture. So before we dig into your critique of the Pope's views on these matters, I want to ask a dumb, non-Catholic question, which is what is an encyclical? Yeah, so an encyclical is like this document that is meant to be read, especially by other people in the church, but also by the laity and people outside the church. It's kind of a position paper, if you will. This is what follows in a long train of ones on social teaching. They date back to the late 1800s, Rerum no Verum in 1890s, kind of considered the first one of those. And this follows in that tradition, where we're trying to explain to society what problems are and think about how we can turn our lives around and help solve it. I know that in Catholicism, there's a lot of distinction between official church doctrine and these official church doctrine, is that the Pope speaking as the conduit of God, or I don't know the right term? Yeah, he's definitely speaking from his position of authority as the Pope. You have probably heard of this Catholic teaching of papal infallibility. That is a doctrine that says the Pope can speak with infallibility on matters of faith and morals. That's actually only been officially said once by a Pope, since that doctrine came around that this is an infallible teaching. So this encyclical is not meant to be an infallible teaching. In fact, it's much more meant to be a dialogue. He uses the term dialogue in there something like 20 times. And basically, he wants to dialogue with everyone in the world, all the faithful on these issues. Does that mean that it's, I guess, as a Catholic, is he trying to open up a dialogue with other Catholics who might disagree with him? Is it an invitation to say, here's what I think, but within the broader Catholic community, there might be disagreement? Actually, I think what he's trying to do is not aim so much about disagreements, but actually finding common ground among Catholics, but also people of all faiths and non faiths. There's a train of these, you mentioned, going back to 1891. And is this one unique in its positions on markets and environmentalism? What did, for example, John Paul II or Benedict, did it diverge from those? And so it's unique, I think, in that it's focusing to such a degree on environmental questions, but it is in a very long and broad tradition of Catholic social teachings on issues like this and a set of teachings that goes back through the Middle Ages and all the way back to Christ a couple thousand years ago. And so if you look at that long tradition of social teaching, I guess the best word is it's broad. And it isn't a set of strictures that the economy must be set up exactly this way. No, it's an overriding set of principles about human, how human action should be. And then we can kind of try to, well, we are gifted with the ability and the duty of trying to live out those teachings in setting up our lives and setting up our own societies. And so that tradition is broad enough so that at one point, it was okay with monarchies and it's also okay with democracy. In recent years it's kind of said, democracy is the way you should go. It's also historically been moving over toward the direction of close to socialism but not socialism and in other times closer to free-or-market capitalism. And you mentioned, Pope John Paul II, and I think if you read his encyclicals, you'll get over toward the side of the river that's toward free-or-market capitalism being something that really, really works well. But now I think Francis is moving us a little bit over on the other side, not toward socialism per se, but much more toward government having a role in regulating that capitalism and structuring that capitalism and questioning and critiquing and not just government but everyone. Over the longer stretch of history, how has the Church generally viewed issues of free markets and private property? I mean, as it was a player in Europe as capitalism and merchants spread out throughout the continent? I'm not a scholar of that but my reading of it is that the Church has been always very adamant about the importance of private property. After all, it's in the Bible as being important, as far back as, you know, that shall not steal. Thomas Aquinas, if you read him, you know, writing in the 1300s, he's talking about something like an economist could really dig into why private property works better and talking about incentives and talking about like if everybody owns it in common, nobody's really going to take care of it very well. If you own it yourself, you do. In that encyclical I mentioned, Rerum Noverum from 1890, the Pope goes as far as to say that private property is invaluable. He doesn't mean no strings attached, you know, that private property doesn't have to answer to anybody. But he's basically saying that you just can't steal people's property from them. And he was pretty strong in denouncing socialism. And part of the dialogue nature of Pope Francis' encyclical that then you put together this edited volume of people entering into that dialogue on different issues. But I mean, some of it is, most of it is highly critical. One of the contributors, Andrew Jungert, I think is probably how you say it, I thought why he had differentiated it from other encyclicals in this way. He wrote, I know of no other social encyclical going back to Rerum Noverum by Leo XIII in 1891, in which the truthfulness and motives of any party were questioned as relentlessly as the honesty of businesses and market advocates is impugned here. I haven't read the encyclical, but it doesn't have that sort of not just saying markets are bad, but it going after the people who advocate and work in markets or build them. I think that's a pretty fair summary that it shows a hostility that hasn't been shown in earlier ones, but it's not overboard. So for example, here is a line from LaDate Si, from paragraph 128. It says, business is a noble vocation directed to producing wealth and improving our world. It can be a fruitful source of prosperity for areas in which it operates, especially if it sees the creation of jobs as an essential part of its service to the common good. The broader objective of helping the poor should always be to allow them a dignified life through work. How much does Pope Francis' background, his upbringing in Argentina play into his views, markets? Yeah, I think that they're really crucial in understanding, just as John Paul's background was crucial in understanding where he was coming from. John Paul, of course, raised behind the iron curtain, saw communism and how it suppressed human dignity and how it just didn't work in satisfying people's material needs and said about some of the strongest things that have been said about the importance of business and freer economies and entrepreneurs and that kind of stuff. But of course, Francis was raised in Argentina, and if you want to kind of look at the 20th century's most dismal economic performance, Argentina began the 20th century as one of the most prosperous economies in the world. So just kind of GDP per person, it would have been up there in the top handful. And then its relative ranking fell and fell and fell. Of course, absolute standards of living rose because there was worldwide economic growth during this period. But Argentina's relative status just kind of slipped further and further and further down. And most economists who study Argentina, I'm not an expert on it, say they made a series of policy choices that led them into that path. And it was, you know, the moving away from markets, the moving toward the Peronist, corporatist kind of model where the government takes more and more control in the market. And the markets become more and more crony capitalism instead of what you and I would consider to be actual capitalism. And so Francis was raised in that environment, seeing that the market to him, a free market to him means, I think, what he saw in Argentina, which is, you know, not a very useful kind of market economy in the minds of most economists. He also, of course, is from a Jesuit tradition. And I think that probably colors a lot of his views on these things. And there's a quote that I give in my introduction that he says something to the effect of he developed an allergy for all things economics that he got from his father, who was an overworked accountant. So a lot in his upbringing and his Argentine experience, I think can kind of explain some of his hostility and also some of his, I'll say, misunderstandings of how a market economy can work effectively. Before he was Pope, which this I did, I found this to be very interesting that he wrote a book or that was called Dialogos Entre Juan Pablo II and Fidel Castro dialogues between John Paul II and Fidel Castro when John Paul II went to Cuba. And in that he wrote, no one can accept the precepts of neoliberalism and consider themselves Christian, which is a pretty big, strong condemnation. Yes, that is very, and so I think that when somebody, when he says that or when somebody on the left says that, they just have a different picture of what neoliberalism means than somebody who's more a fan of free markets. They consider it to be just kind of this soulless thing where the businesses run amok and corrupt everything. So in that sense, then how should Catholics, not being Catholic myself nor Aaron, how should Catholics view markets? Or I mean, it seems that it's important if they pull you away from God or if they direct you toward human suffering, then Catholics should not be for markets, it would seem. And so my answer to that would be that Catholics should view markets the same way they view everything else on earth. And that is something temporary that is going to be there to either help or hinder us in a longer term goal, of course, which is eternal, which is getting to know and love God and to love your neighbor as you love yourself. And so what's the best way to do that? This capitalism have a good track record and getting us to know and love God better and getting us to love our neighbor better. And so the first one is hard to answer, but I'm going to return to that. But the second one, I think most people who are fans of free markets would say, in fact, we'll look at the track record of capitalism. It's pretty good at people trading with each other, giving mutual gains to those trades. And so as I'm pursuing my quote unquote self-interest in the same time, I'm actually helping my neighbor. And so we can grow prosperous together, unlike happened before societies adopted the kind of capitalism that we have today. Does it matter to them? Yes, but the motivations, does that matter? I mean, that's a big part of looking at actions and deciding whether or not they're good. I think in the Catholic tradition, so if someone is pursuing profits... It's not from the benevolence of the... Yes. And then Adam Smith, it's not from the benevolence of the butcher or the baker. Is that problematic? If it directs you toward bad things? They see it as problematic, but again, there's a very broad Catholic tradition that doesn't see it as problematic at all. And so I have not read the dialogues between John Paul and Fidel Castro and seen what was said in that. But if you look at broader Catholic teaching throughout the years, you'll have people like the Michael Novak's of the world, and he wrote the forward to the book, that talk about to have a flourishing society you need to have a flourishing culture and you need to have a democratic political system, and you need to have a market economy to allow people to actually do those kinds of things that are going to help one another. There's a chapter in the book that talks about charity and points out that people have more and more resources to give to their needy brethren. You're in a market economy because the market economy just generates so much more wealth that then you can share and many many people have shared that wealth, including people who were considered malefactors during their life. John Rockefeller's of the world and he ended up giving away most of his wealth for the incredibly worthy causes of eradicating diseases and all these kinds of things. So wouldn't be able to do that without a flourishing market economy. I'm curious about the role of, I guess, non-Catholics in this because it's one thing to issue statements about how Catholics ought to live their lives if their goal is to tee up eternity and get closer to God and so on. But when you're talking about something like whether we should have markets or not, whether capitalism is good or not, you're talking about, I mean, that stuff that has an impact on an extraordinary number of people and the quality of their lives and most of those people, given that the world is not mostly Catholic, are not going to share the goal. So they're not going to say, well, yet markets might lead me away from God, but they're going to say that's not a problem for me because that's not my goal in the first place. And so should that factor into how someone like Pope Francis approaches these questions, that most of the world does not share his goals in the purpose and direction of life? And so in writing an ethical like La Datta, I think he does consciously try to speak to both audiences, also tries to convert those who aren't Catholic and those who are non-believers to the position of pulling them in. And I think there's a lot of that consciously going on here, especially in what he was saying about the environment because now there's these environmentalists who probably aren't Catholic and maybe not even Christians who are going to be reading this, seeing that the Pope has the same, that the church has many of the same goals as them and maybe kind of pull them in under the tent as they become more and more interested in it. But going back to your question, one of the things you said about, you know, might not share the same goals. And I think that almost everyone around the world whatever faith they are, shares a goal of eradicating absolute poverty or a goal of allowing people to be prosperous enough to lead flourishing lives. And so he definitely shares that goal. I think any reader of that will share the goal. And so then the debate becomes what's the best way to eradicate poverty? And I think the economist that we had in our symposium mentioned that the Pope has a number of blind spots in this area and continues to at least rhetorically say that absolute poverty is on the rise when in fact the numbers strongly suggest that it's on the decline and that we as economists have had lots and lots of research papers and books written that show that there's a link between freer market economies and that, you know, elimination of poverty that a free market is one of the things that is going to be most strongly correlated with generating all that kind of wealth. But actually let me go back to the other part of your question, which was what if you don't share the Pope's view at all about, you know, that first goal, which is to know and love God. I guess the key point there is that the Pope is arguing. And so let's see how you respond to this argument. The Pope is arguing that in many ways capitalism for the rich has been a victim of its own success in that it's generated so much prosperity that the rich, and that would include probably most people in this country by world standards, has been so successful that the rich just kind of gets sucked up into what he calls this whirlwind of consumption. And all they're doing is leading these lives of frantic consumption. Gotta buy this and get it and get rid of it and buy the latest newest thing. And that is distracting. Those lesser lights are distracting people from the true light, you know, the light of the Trinity. If I was personally responding to that, I guess I would take two approaches. The first would be to say, well, you know, if they don't share his view that the true light is the Trinity, then that objection is not going to carry much weight. But the second one on the former point of it's they're bound up in consumerism and that that is somehow a less fulfilling, less virtuous life. I'm in general skeptical of those kinds of arguments. You know, like we like to say consumerism, but I think a lot of people are critical of consumerism don't really have a clear handle on what they mean. They generally, I think what people tend to mean, critics of consumerism tend to mean is there are people out there buying things that I personally am not interested in. So it's, you know, when the person who buys hundreds and hundreds of records, I'm looking at Trevor or I'll keep looking at Trevor, you know, buys lots of guitars and guitar pedals, they find that fulfilling in the same way as the person who buys lots of books. But to some put to the outsider that looks that could be that's just consumerism. He can't stop buying the records. It's like consumed his life and it's all, you know, that's interesting. Consumerism consumes. The Pope talks about this almost as an addiction that we have that we just can't turn away from it.  It's odd that there's that parallel, which is, and I, and that parallel is sort of undergirded by both for the socialist and the Catholics to some degree is that an idea that the world is run by false values and that things that are moving toward false values are not actually enriching. And so one point the Pope makes is that every purchasing decision is moral. It's a moral decision, not simply an economic one. And I think that's actually useful for us all to think about whether or not you are religious or not. So one of the goals of the Pope writing this is to, you know, prick people's consciousness and get them to think more deeply about every action they take in their lives. And one of the contributions by Gabriel X Martinez, he kind of, it's in the volume, it's the most least critical in its own way because he sort of says that, well, the way I read it, because he says that the actual quote is, the Pope does not mean to criticize rising prosperity and economic liberty in general. What Francis criticizes and said is the use of a theory to justify indifference, the view that eventually the poor will be all right if we just leave them alone, the market will take care of them. And then he quotes a Bill Clinton quote, which just sort of struck me as kind of anodyne about how markets help poor people kind of thing. And do you think that's an, do you agree with that character? You don't have to agree with everything in a book that you edited, but having edited a few books myself. And what's actually interesting about that particular chapter is that Gabriel himself is from South America, like the Pope, he's Ecuadorian originally. The quote you've got is one from Bill Clinton. Yeah, we have to reaffirm unambiguously that open markets are the best engine we know of how to lift living standards and build shared prosperity. Bill Clinton saying that. I mean, and that's totally true. And to be like, this is, that's an example of the kind of attitude, the politics of indifference to injustice. He writes that the Pope is criticized, not necessary prosperity. This all makes me wonder, that Pope Francis ought to try reading some Deirdre McCloskey. Yes, I agree. But it strikes me as, I think he's criticizing more than that as you point out. I mean, Pope Francis for having read the book, but not the encyclical in the sense that we were discussing that it's deeper, it's about, it's almost an alienation from our true selves kind of argument and that includes the environmentalist aspect of it. And so going on to that, back to that point about the indifference that can sometimes creep in. The Pope goes back to one of the parables in the Bible, the one about Lazarus, who's this poor man and sits outside the door of this rich man. And the rich man never, you know, gives him a scrap of bread or anything. Poor Lazarus, who's like lame and can't send for himself.    But what Pope Francis says is that we're like that nowadays.  They don't even notice the people outside who are poor. They live inside gated communities. They do that kind of stuff that he's warning us that we're turning into those Lazaruses and that we can't be indifferent to the poor because like the poor, you know, we are all children of the same God. It strikes me then that, I mean, I am more sympathetic to that argument than I think a lot of people might be. And I do think that there can be a tendency to think that the proper way to live within a free market is the, we'll call it the caricature of rugged individualism, which is the, you know, what's mine is mine and the best thing for me to do is just do whatever is immediately in my interest and to not feel a connection to other people or a responsibility to them or the burden of helping them. And I tend to reject that. And, but it's interesting because that's not to me, that's not like the response to that is not to attack capitalism and markets because it's capitalism and markets that will provide us with the resources should we choose to live a different way and should we choose to try to help the poor directly, it provides us with the resources to do that in a meaningful and effective way that it's, so there's, it's almost like there's a, there's a deep confusion of the economic system for the cultural system setting aside the issue of how widespread that, that call it sick cultural system might actually be. I think we tend to, we tend to imagine it's much more widespread than it really is. And so many of the authors in the book, as you know, rightly make a point very similar to that and say that, hey Pope Francis, you're missing the fact that this economic system we've set up has benefited the poor immensely. It's allowed us not only to benefit them through their, just their economic interchanges with everyone else and earning higher wages, but also if they are truly needy and they're this person who just could not offend for themselves, we're wealthy enough now to take care of people like that. And we have an immense amount of charity that we do are successful people in the economy. The Pope though would go one step further and he would say that's not enough. It's, you know, money isn't the only part of the issue. He uses this word frequently of encounter that we need to encounter each other. We need to encounter people who are on the margins of society and just be physically close to them, talk to them, live with them, let them know we care about them, let them get to know us, let us get to know them so that we have this kind of sympathy for one another. And so much in our modern society and our capitalist system kind of breaks down that. Yeah, it's interesting because there's a parallel there between two Herbert Spencer, which I imagine that Pope Francis would not think himself a fan of Herbert Spencer. But that kind of goes the question of when Herbert Spencer is criticizing forced charity, that the biggest thing you're missing in forced charity is the actual care and interaction with there's a part of and I think social statics where he talks about how much forced charity will sap the soul and you know someone like a Ebenezer screwed walking past will say, you know, I gave it the office, are there no workhouses kind of thing as opposed to actually looking people in the eye giving charity. So how should in that light Catholic's view redistribution forced redistribution as a method of quote unquote charity? Yeah, that's a very good question. And again, I think there's a wide range of opinion. There are people who lean toward the more libertarian end of Catholicism. And they go that, you know, if the government's pointing the gun at my head and saying fork this money over or else, and welfare state, that's not real charity. The only real charity is if I'm doing it myself. But then of course, there's many over on the other side who don't know that is a legitimate form of charity. So I think a lot of debate about that. And of course, the pope would be over on that other side where he seems to be quite a proponent of the welfare state. And I think in an expanded welfare state, and even maybe in globalization of such things. In terms of the environment, there's a chapter in the book about why Pope Francis mischaracterizes the effects of markets on the environment. Where does he go wrong with that? Yeah, and I think our main point of not just that chapter, but other authors in the book is that again, a blind spot of the pope is that he just doesn't understand how property rights can be so crucial in solving economic problems. In fact, there's many economists I know who say that any environmental problem you have is due to a failure of property rights. And so he just he seems to have a view of property as when somebody gets property, they say it's mine. I'm not going to share it with anybody else. But instead, most economists have a view of it's my property. I'm going to try to put it to its highest value to use. And therefore, it's going to benefit much of the rest of society. One of the authors gives kind of the classic case of the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, which you can see from the sky as you're flying in that on one side of the border, things are pretty brown looking. And the other side, they're much greener looking. And it's over in Haiti, where there's been lots of corrupt governments for many generations and very, very insecure property rights that people knew that if I've got some thing valuable on my land, some freeze might be that some friend of the government that comes and just cut them down.  On the other side, where we got the secure property rights, I know that nobody can get away with that. And so I'm going to husband my resources. I'm going to nurture them. And the value will continue to be there rather than turn it into one of these tragedies of the common. And so a really important message about what property rights mean and how they get people to look toward the future and the conservation of their resources just seems to be missing in so much. The insights of someone like Eleanor Ostrom just seem to be missing in Laudato Si and the Pope's vision of these things. You mentioned earlier that there's the argument that every purchase is to some extent a moral choice and that morality plays a large role in the decisions and how we should approach things and how we should think about things and what we should aim at. And so given the not just the errors in the reasoning here or the lack of knowledge about there's actual evidence and studies and lots of scholarship on these questions and that should have informed what he wrote, but also that the very people, the very areas of the world that are most Catholic, where the people are going to be most inclined to listen to what he has to say about markets and capitalism and the environment and so on, are those areas that are most desperate for and in most need of free markets and capitalism to the areas that have been most damaged by the lack of it. So throughout South America, for example, and so what obligation is there for like the moral obligation to get this stuff right on his part? Well, very well put. Just as you said, every consumption decision is a moral decision, but also our decisions about what to to learn and what to pay attention to our moral decisions. And I think you're entirely right that he could have listened to some other voices when he was putting together this encyclical. And if you look at some of the, you know, folks have all these advisory boards on science on, you know, all this that kind of and they have the economist on the advisory boards. And so they're historically people like Gary Becker have been on these advisory advisory boards. But I think that this particular hope just, I don't know exactly who's on his board at this point or like, and so whoever whoever he's listening to just isn't getting the message that most economists understand so well across to him. And in your introduction, you sketch out how Pope Francis due to his views about the harms of consumption has to be kind of pushing back or worrying against some fundamental assumptions of economics, especially the one that consumption, when consumption is undertaken freely, the both people are better off and that even occurs up the curve, you know, more good is always better in the non satiation. But you kind of seem to you seem non committal on whether or not that's that might be true is the way I read it. You don't actually come out. I mean, they said this is this you describe Pope Francis's views. But I mean, could it be possible that our views of non satiation are incorrect in some way? Yeah. And so I will put my opinion on the line here. And that is that I do agree with the Pope on this, that the well being can and often does go down when consumption gets too high. And so I think if you look at lots of different data like a happiness, there's debates about these things, but it definitely slows down its increase and maybe even plateaus once you get to a certain point. But a deeper one than that, just on the mere material level is that as a about Catholic, I see a lot of evidence that as we get richer and richer, we care less and less about these eternal things. And society has gotten richer and richer and the role of religion and the importance of religion and people's lives seems to wane as societies get richer. And so I think maybe we've passed the bend on that curve. We've gotten too rich for our own good and producing more is a wonderful thing. But then we consume more and it seems to be like that consumption pulls us in the wrong direction. And so my little graph was kind of like we could be better off individually if we gave away more of our wealth. It's not an argument toward us not being producing as much, but it's an argument toward us using our wealth wisely. We could eat too much. Yes, we could fill in almost any blanket type of consumption too much. We could just consume in general too much. And I think there are many times where many of us do that. And so we could be better off if we divested ourselves of some of these things. That makes me wonder then how we deal with particular sorts of trade-offs in this area. So how should, from within a Catholic perspective, should think about a situation say where we generally agree that it's better for a society to be wealthier than poorer, that you have access to more options and your life is longer and healthier and less violent and so on and so forth, and that all of those things can enable those people who want to pursue the eternal say, want to live the prescribed lifestyle of Catholic or of any other religious faith to do that in a easier, more meaningful, more successful way. But at the cost of some people, maybe it's these, as you described, the wealthy people who over-consume or whoever else, or the people, it's going to slightly turn more people away from this path, that's going to happen and that there is no way to create that degree of wealth without instituting the mechanisms that will also cause those results to turn away from God. To turn away, should, I guess, so does one trump the other? How do we think about weighing them? Yeah, the tension here is kind of this, right? Having a budget constraint that's further out is awesome. It allows you to get more of everything and to pick the things that you think are really important. But having that budget constraint that's further out, when everybody does it, and everybody consumes more, maybe warps our preferences in some way and so that we end up making consumption decisions that aren't in our own best interest. And so if that's true, in other words, if people can be fallible and maybe are sinful by nature because of the fall, if those things are true, then we do have a lot of really hard decisions to make about the best way to order our lives and to order our societies. And I'm over in the direction of having somebody forcibly tell me what I should be doing in a situation like that is not a good idea because they're sinful and fallen just like I am. I'm going to have to make those hard choices by myself. Does that make sense? Yeah, this might have been related to Aaron's question too, but if from the church's standpoint, it would seem to me that at least some Catholics would think that moving towards God is more important than alleviating poverty if that's an actual trade-off. Because if people turn away from God because of institutions that are alleviating poverty, let's just say that that's Norway. Stipulate that relationship there where they're satiated, they have false idols, every sort of thing. And so the religious levels of a place like Norway, which is just shockingly low, and in the Catholic tradition, those people can't be saved. So is it a trade-off that a Catholic would say, okay, well, if this alleviates poverty but turns people away from God and therefore puts them in the bad place, then we should choose God over poverty alleviation. And so I think I guess there's two levels of the answer to that. One is on an individual basis and then the other is on a societal basis. And so I think just about any Catholic would say that yeah, it's getting riches pulling us away from God. Just stop worrying about alleviating poverty if it's actually so much given our current levels of wealth because it is leading people away from God. But then what do you do at the societal level? Are you going to impose those things on other people? And so the first one seems pretty clear the answer. The other one then there's a huge amount of debate. So what do you hope people will take away from the book or especially if they're Catholics? The book is a reply to the pope's call for dialogue and the very act of us writing it is part of that dialogue. The very active people then reading it, they have this other part of the dialogue. You have an internal dialogue in your head as it goes on. We have a had a dialogue with each other now. And so what we're really hoping to get out of it is people to think about the importance of these issues, but also to maybe have somebody in positions within the church to listen to this, to understand that economists have learned a lot of things about how to arrange incentives so that we actually solve many of the problems that the pope has pointed out here to maybe pick some of these things out of the pope's blind spot or the church's more broadly blind spot so that they can move away from maybe some traditional misconceptions about the market toward that are understanding how the market can't help solve so many of these problems. Free Thoughts is produced by Tess Terrible. If you enjoyed today's show, please rate and review us on iTunes. And if you'd like to learn more about libertarianism, find us on the web at


Hey everybody, this is Brian, and welcome to, wow, what are we up to, 109. Cute tutorial, 109. Before we get into it, be sure to visit my website, voidrums.com. I've got all the tutorials, and most of the source code, you can help out if you're watching one of these tutorials and the source code is missing. Well, I was on a server, the server crashed, the company I was paying never took a backup, so some of the files are now missing. So if you're watching along and you're doing one of these tutorials, like let's say we're just doing any of these, and you notice the source is missing, go ahead, type it out, zip it up, and I'll review it, and if it looks legit, I'll post it up here for everybody else. All right, let's dive right in here, and we're going to say enums. The power of enums. What are enums? Well, enums are enumerations, so we're going to add a new class here. I'm just going to call this test, we're going to hear it QObject. We're going to break apart from the standard enum tutorial. I mean, everybody at this point should know what enumeration is. If you don't, well, go read a C++ book. Actually, I think I have a C++ tutorial on that. All right, so include, and we're going to include QMetaEnum. What in the world is that? Well, Qt's gone a long way to add metadata. What is metadata? Data is data about data. For example, a string. Well, how do you know what a Q string really is? Well, a Q string is a wrapper for blah, blah, blah. You understand that, but QMetaEnum actually allows that to happen.  So we're going to add a macro in here, and we're going to call it QEnums. Whoops. How if I actually spell it right? And we need to give it a parameter. So our parameter is actually going to be an enumeration. We're going to call it Tester, and we'll call it Tess. Now we need to actually make our enum. Now if you remember from all your little C++ classes that we've been taking over the years here, an enumeration is quite simply just a list of things. So we're going to say test1, actually let's do all caps, test1, test2, test3. So we've got three different enum items here. Now we need to actually make something happen. We'll call it doTest, QString, command. So we're just going to make a simple slot. We're going to define that. Now what's going to happen is someone somewhere out there is going to take our class and they're going to throw a string at us. We're going to actually switch on that string. That's right, the switch command. Now anybody watching this is going to go, whoa, hold the phone. You can't switch on a string in C++. Well, that's true to a degree. That's why the QMeta enum is out there. So what we're going to do first is we have to actually get that metadata. So we're going to say QMetaObject. And we're just going to call it MetaObject, real classy there. And we're going to say this static MetaObject. So what we're doing is we're getting the Meta information about this object. So we're getting information about it or data about data. Now we're going to get the MetaEnumEnumerator. And we're going to call this QMetaEnum. We're going to call it MetaEnum. And this is going to be the MetaObject. And we're going to get the Enumerator. So we're getting data about data and we're getting the Enumerator. And we're going to say MetaObject index of Enumerator. There it is. So we're getting the index of the Enumerator. And notice how it's taking a const care pointer to name. So it's getting a constant care. So what we're going to give it, of course, is, well, the name of our Enumerator, which was, if I remember right, we called it Tess. Let's jump back here. Yep, Tess. So what's going on? What are we really doing? This is all confusing. All right, let's jump back into the code here. We're getting the, let me end that correctly, we have our class. When the class is first loaded or compiled, I should say, we're building MetaData about it. We're saying QEnum, which is a macro. And we're calling ourEnum of Tess. So we're saying build MetaInformation about this Enum. This Enum has three items in it. Don't get hung up on this just yet. We have a slot. In that slot, we're saying get the MetaObject, this static MetaObject. So we're getting data about this object. And then we're getting the MetaEnumerator, meaning we're getting that Enumerator. Now, it seems all confusing, but I promise you, it's really not that bad once we get down to the nitty gritty of it. Really, all you need to understand at this point is that we're getting data about data and that we're going to get data about our index of Enumerator, which is Tess, our Enum object. Whew, that's a mouthful. If it sounds confusing and complex, it's because it is confusing and complex. But we're gonna make it simple. So, now all we wanna do is we wanna be able to switch. So let's actually add in our trusty old, oops, include Q to bug, and we're gonna actually switch on this. So we're gonna say, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, you guessed it, MetaEnum, keys to value is what we want. And you notice how that returns an int. That's how we're able to switch this because C++ cannot switch on a QString or even a QMetaEnum. It needs an integer. So we're gonna actually convert that string into an index. So we're gonna do keys to value and we're gonna say command to Latin one. Why? Because it wants a, I haven't actually tested that. We probably could just pass a QString, but it wants a plain old boring C++ type string. So we're gonna say case and there's our enums. And we're gonna say Q to bug. Okay, kitty, I'm telling you, every tutorial this cat is right here. We'll say do something for test one. And we're gonna do our break. And we're just gonna do this for each one of these enum items. We had one, two, and three. And then it's always good to, when you're working with these, to do the default. And we're just gonna say unknown command. Whoopsie, I'm trying to type while my cat's nuzzling up against my arm. Let's fix these up a little bit. Two and two, three and three. Whew, all right. That's quite a lot of work that we're doing here. All right, let's go into here. Say include, we're gonna include our test class. Say test, say test, do test. And we're gonna give our QString, so we're gonna say QString. And we're just gonna give it invalid data. We're gonna compile this. And sure enough, we got our default unknown command. So we can tell the program's actually working here. Now we're gonna say test one. You can see once again, unknown command, because of course C++ is case sensitive. So if we actually do the uppercase, run this again, do something for test one. So now if you were writing a program and the user enters some input and you wanna switch on it, you know how to handle that. Now, a real easy way around this whole case sensitivity of course is just to go in here and say, oopsie, two upper, two Latin one. And then it simply won't matter. See, do something for test one, ta-da. So let's recap real quick because this can be kind of a confusing topic. First off, why do you need this? Well, it makes life a little simpler. People use enums for case, you know. You get in the car, do you drive to A, the store, B, the movie theater, C, somewhere else. So it makes life easier when you're doing conditional statements, AKA you're using a switch. Well, if you're working with strings, you cannot switch on a string. Therefore, you've got to use Q enums to gather the meta, or I should say create metadata about this enum. Then you can actually retrieve metadata from the static meta object and then get the index of the enumerator and then switch on that as it were an integer. Neat, huh? Well, that's all for this tutorial. Thank you for watching. I hope you found this educational and entertaining. I look forward to your feedback.


This year you will publish a report on the Czech experience, can you give us an overview of the report? We are especially keen to give details about cases of good decision making on progressive drug policy and the Czech Republic is a very good example of that, especially given that they came out of many years of Soviet occupation and found a way to go in a direction that was respectful of the rights of drug users, especially their right to health services. What happened in Czech Republic was what happened everywhere. After the fall of the iron cart and the drugs arrived, I mean other drugs, new drugs arrived, specifically heroin. We had an open drug scene for a short time here in Prague in the very center of the city, which was not very usual, which attracted a lot of media attention. There's one thing which makes Czech Republic definitely distinctive and that's methamphetamine. We are the only country in Europe where methamphetamine is the major problem drug, major injected drug, where the majority of people who are addicted to illegal drugs are addicted to methamphetamine, which is locally called peritone. After 1990, after the fall of communism, it was probably a part of the general liberalization of the society when there was the abolishment of the death penalty, when there was the abolishment of homosexual intercourse under 21, I think, and a couple of others. And that's probably as part of this quite huge social move. Also the possession of drugs for own use was completely decriminalized. The Slovak Republic seemed to go back to a more Soviet kind of policy in some ways that's changed a little bit over the years. Whereas the Czechs held fast to a policy that really was concerned about distinguishing minor from less minor drug crimes and keeping people in contact with health and social services. We started hammer-reduction, almost before the revolution, but in small quantities. After the revolution, this topic was opened up and we first started to change the three-way line, the system in the Czech Republic was created, the system P-CHE, the system hammer-reduction, the system poradensky, the system substituent, the whole spectrum that made it clear that more than 70% of drug users are in contact with some medical or poradensky institution. In other criteria, the current situation is that after some age, the age category, or those drug users who want to be old, that means that young people who don't have access to it, are very few HIV-positive, which is a very important number. The Czech officials also stayed very true to the idea that scientific evidence can help in policymaking, so they actually invested in a very important study about whether criminalization would actually do what its proponents said it would do and reduce the number of drug users, which it didn't do. Every single study I'm aware of, or I did myself, says there's no impact of drug policies to the levels of drug use in the society. What you directly influence with the drug policy are harms. I mean, it's not like if you make it more strict, the use goes down, if you make it more legal, the use goes up. That's one thing, the other thing is it's always quite interesting which type, which patterns of drug use you speak about. Do you speak about experimentation? Do you speak about injection drug use? What we do have is one of the highest prevalence in lifetime use in the school kids, several times higher than Netherlands, almost as high as the United States, which is also interesting because they have anything but not deep criminalization or decriminalization. If you look at it from the point of view of public health or public security, it was extremely successful. I mean, we have one of the lowest HIV rates. More countries do have it around. We have one of the lowest rates in viral hepatitis C. This is not the case in the countries around. We have almost the lowest rate of overdoses, deadly overdoses, the poisoning with drugs. We have very little drug crime in terms of the secondary drug crime. Civil society in the Czech Republic played a key role from the beginning in all of this and that's something I want to underscore. The police have also been very active in these discussions and they don't spend their time chasing down the smallest crimes, which I think again speaks to some good sense about how they use their resources. The press jumped on the change in the law in 2010 as though I think the headline said Prague would be the new Amsterdam and things like this. In fact, the change in the law at that point was relatively minor. What really happened is that we have very specifically defined the amounts which if you possess them are still misdemeanor and if you are over them they are a crime and that's it. The prisons are not overflowing with people who are convicted of minor crimes. People have a chance not to have their lives ruined by criminalization for minor crimes and I think that's maybe the most important indicator. I don't understand why an activity which might endanger you and only you should be subject of criminal law. That doesn't make sense. As a doctor, in terms of addictive use, so far we do believe addiction is illness. How we could even think about to punish people because they are ill.


So I want to talk about a trend that we see every single year in the month of June rainbow washing and to me, this is really irritating because What's happening and this is not like uncommon in a late-stage capitalist society but what's happening is we're seeing the co-optation of pride by large multinational corporations and it's irritating because like to me as an out-and-proud member of the LGBTQ plus community Maybe I want to change like the humanist report logo to the rainbow flag or something like that But I feel like oh if I'm if I'm doing that I'm virtue signaling to the extent that large multinational corporations are and I want to be more substantive of that But I mean like these little gestures. I think are important like the rainbow flag is something that we should be Proud of but yet these large corporations. It's like they hijacked it and to me There's something so inherently gross about that and I'm seeing more and more members of the lgbtq plus community speak out against this because It this isn't their thing They're very clearly trying to cash in on pride because it's trendy now When they wouldn't say anything when gay people were actually fighting For equality during the 2000s. You'd never see Levi's or Whatever this company is or AT&T speak out in favor of gay rights But now that it's socially acceptable Well, they do it because they know they can make money off of it and the worst part about all of this Is that conservatives use this this rainbow washing as evidence?  I reject this. We don't accept you being a fake ass ally So nathan plays of the independent rights wal-mart amazon and mcdonald's have all donated to members of congress who voted against the equality act According to insider Comcast ups and AT&T have each donated over two million dollars to anti-gay politicians According to forbs the list goes on and all of these companies have declared their support for pride This month we'll be celebrating and highlighting the people within our mcdonald's family that embody the spirit of lgbtq plus pride mcdonald's tweeted on june 1st Happy pride month. Here's how we're celebrating the lgbtq community across our organization Comcast tweeted on the same day forbs also listed six other corporations That it says have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to anti-lgbt politicians home depot general electric that acts ubs Verizon and fizer all six of these have voiced their support for gay rights as well a spokesperson for amazon defended the donations Saying the retailer engages with policymakers and regulators on a wide range of issues That does not mean we agree with any individual or political organization 100 of the time on every issue the company explained And this includes legislation that discriminates or encourages discrimination against the lgbtq plus community Separately fizer defended its donations to republicans as well The decision to contribute to these elected officials was made based on their support of the biopharmaceutical industry and policies that protect innovation incentives And patients access to medicines and vaccines just say deregulation and patent protection The company told forbs in no way does our support translate into an endorsement of their position on any social issue Ups made a similar case for its own donations Few policymakers agree with each other or businesses 100 of the time Nor do we agree with 100 of the congressional members opinions it told forbs meanwhile the rainbow logos continue to shine Yeah, so this is irritating to me because they very clearly want to have it both ways On one hand, they want to continue to fund anti-gain anti-trans politicians because they want their tax breaks.    She also says what a fun pride display But what's not fun is that american airlines donated 46,617 to mitch mcconnell's 2020 campaign while he was actively blocking the equality act from becoming law And last one here. She says att donated 56,295 to mitch mcconnell's 2020 campaign while he was actively blocking the equality act But what a great pride twitter banner. So I love the sarcasm there.  I mean with friends like this Who needs enemies now? That's not to say that some companies aren't trying To do a good job, but still You can't sit with us to quote mean girls.    I absolutely unequivocally reject this rainbow washing


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Ableton on Air is a member of the National Academy for Television Arts and Sciences, Boston, New England Chapter. Welcome to this edition of Ableton on Air, the one and only program that focuses on its needs, concerns, and achievements. I've always been your host, Lauren Seiler, and on this show, before we get to our topic for today, we would like to say special thanks to Washington County Mental Health, our sponsor, Green Mountain Support Services, and many others, including the partners with the Vermont Division for the Blind and Visually Impaired, the Vermont Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired, and the Montpelier and the Sustainable Montpelier Coalition, and many, many others. We would like to welcome our guest, Garrett Washburn of Washington County Mental Health, and today we're going to be talking about summer camps and mental health and the importance of recreation. Welcome to Ableton on Air. Thank you for having me. Okay, what are the missions and goals of Washington County Mental Health? Sure, so I can speak for Choice Academy, which is part of Washington County Mental Health Services. The mission and goal of the summer program in particular is a non-academic space where the kids can work on group goals together with staff and then also be outside away from electronics, things like that, so that we can really focus on mental health outside of the classroom. So explain what the Academy, you mentioned Academy, so what is the Academy? Sure, so Choice Academy is one of the schools that's an umbrella of under Washington County Mental Health Services, and it is its own building. All the teachers and the staff are in one house, I'm sorry, under one roof, and all of the academics happen in there. The teachers shift from room to room so that kids don't have to go all over the place, and it's a great program. Choice Academy is for kids that are 10 to 22, and we have everything right in Southbury. Okay, why is it so important for people who have mental illness or mental challenges to have recreation and talk about that? Sure, and I don't even think it's mental health or mental illness. I think everyone should have recreation outside. It's just great, you get the fresh air, you get exercise outside, a lot of our clients and our students, even our staff, they need to be outside. Having that outlet is I think it's extremely important, whether it's sunny or for out biking or if we're just doing a walk or playing disc golf, all those things are so beneficial to mental health for everyone. What is disc golf in this case? Yeah, so the disc golf is fun. It's like a frisbee and you're throwing it into a basket. It's just a lot of fun. It's kind of like the ball golf, except it's with a frisbee. Any questions you want to ask? Yes. Sure, so we have three different classrooms basically. We have a middle school for the younger kids, we have a high school, and then we have individualized programs and those are one-on-ones. So in the middle school, I have 14 students. The high school, I have 10 students and individuals, I have three currently. So I hear you said from what age is it? 10 to 22. What happened? Now I'm going to ask this question. I hope you don't mind and I hope it doesn't hurt you all. What happens after age 22? Is there a program for them within your program? Yes, so it wouldn't be our program, but we do have adult services and if they still need our help or anything like that, they shift into the adult side. So they can still stay within Washington County. It just wouldn't be Choice Academy. Okay, so what other activities, so you said disc golf and what other activities are you doing? Yes, so with the kids, it's a lot of swimming. I want them away from screen time, so TVs and video games and their phones. No tablets. I know the tablets. I want to get them away from that because they had so much. Absolutely. And they had way too much of it during COVID anyway, so we wanted to get them away from it. So a lot of swimming, hiking, we set up Choice Carnival is what we call it and it's we have like water slides that we have their obstacle courses that the kids can run through in games and things like that. Board games too. So that way they're using their minds for something else than just watching a screen. Chess, checkers, all that kind of stuff. And I have a lot of kids that like to play Magic, the Gathering or Pokemon. Okay. Dungeons and Dragons. There is that too, yeah.  How and why? Yes, so when COVID first hit, it went into totally online for about two months, I would say.  The students weren't participating as much because they didn't know how to either log in or they didn't have the means to log in or there was no one there right there with them, holding them accountable. So we had a lot of numbers drop off and then as soon as we got to go back in person, which thankfully for us was only about two, two and a half months, our numbers started to go back up, participation increased. So we did find that our students needed to be in person more so than remote. So this is, is this like an alternative to medication, being outside and all of that? Are there, you want to add to something like that? Sure. I mean, I think, you know, having that natural outside release could be an alternative to medication. We do have students that are on medication. I hope it's not the wrong question. No, no, no, I think that's fine. I think it's a great stress reliever, which could cause different things. As long as it's something that's calm, it could be nice for someone with anxiety. So yeah, I mean, I think it could take away some. Do you think there's gonna be, do you think as COVID goes on, hopefully it doesn't go on too much longer? But, but do you think this, do you see more expansion to your camp and how, how will that play out? Yeah. So we actually, we added on an entire week. Our camp is eight weeks long. So we added an extra week in just to get more time with them, not in the classroom, because that was a struggle getting them back into and actually adding the week in was better. So we might keep it longer. So why was it a struggle? Is it because of COVID or staying indoors? COVID, for the most part, and because they'd been away from us and they could kind of had like free rain. So they were going outside or they were just sleeping and staying up late, late, playing Dungeons and Dragons till one and three in the morning and then didn't want to wake up until noon or one next day. So this is not sleep away. This is. So this is just a day camp. Yeah. Do you see it expanding to a sleep away type of camping situation? We've never done it before. But I would never say no to anything. Through Choice Academy, the students have a chance to earn an end of the year trip. And we actually take them, and that's an overnight thing for about four, four days. But we've never done it for summer program. Okay.  Sometimes it might be hard to work with some groups. You want to add to that? Sure. I think a lot of the misconceptions are that everyone needs help and they need extra. And, you know, a lot of the places that will go to like the state parks or any of the bigger places like that will always try to be more accommodating than what we even need. So I think that they're overcompensating. What is that exactly? I think that their perception of what our students need is more than what they actually need. Because if you were to go out to one of the state parks and you saw our group there, you wouldn't be able to pick our kids out, which is great. Because some, like for example, even though I don't deal with a mental challenge, several palsy with me, you can't pick it out.  You know, unless you come up to me and ask, then you're not going to be able to pick it out. Some disabilities or challenges are silent. Is that the same thing with mental challenges? Yeah, absolutely. And then if there is, you know, a student that's struggling with anything else, even if it is like a physical disability, our staff is so great with altering whatever the activity is. Say they can't kick a soccer ball, then we'll change what they're doing to something else that they can still have fun with the group and still participate. Any other questions? Of course, you've got plenty of questions. Go ahead. What's the difference between a challenge and an illness in terms of... That's a... Yeah, that's a tricky question. I guess I don't know how to answer that one. We take every kid individually and we work on what their plan is and then whatever they're struggling with, that's what we're going to try to focus on helping them the most with. So, I guess I don't take the challenge and the illness, you know, they're their own things. Because there's been a lot of, if you don't mind me asking, they're saying there's been a lot of stigma around people with mental illness or mental challenges. Oh, right away, because years ago they were putting, people were putting, there's two that type of thing. So has stigma changed since way back? So, honestly, I think the good thing that came out of COVID was that more mental illness got the awareness that it needed because people were on lockdown, they weren't used to being home alone and not having the social, you know, connection with people. So, I think that was one positive that came out of COVID. So, I do think that there's more awareness now about everyone. So, what more in terms of recreation, how many more expansions are you going to do or activities? So, we just finished week five. So, we have three more weeks left. Like next week, they're going to go to two different state parks. We're going to have another obstacle course carnival at the school on campus. And then their big trip is what they work for toward the end of the year or the end of the summer is going to Six Flags as a group. And that's what they look forward to like the most. So, that's what they're kind of working for for the entire summer. So, it's like the big thing at the very end. Do you have anything, well obviously you want to add more, but is there anything that we haven't covered so far that is vitally important about your camp? I just think it's a great way for these kids to get out. It gives them something to do, keeps them out of trouble. They get to work on group activities which a lot of times they don't have that opportunity to do on their own. So, this is really a great time for them to be with their peers, work on group interactions, but also work on what their individual needs are as well. Now, you mentioned Washington County. Choice Academy is a school. How, let's get into that a little bit in the education. How is it a school? Is it a special school for people with mental challenges? Yes. So, it's a fully accredited school and the students that come to us are through an IEP or a 504 through the public schools. So, they have to get referred into us. Individualized education plan. Exactly. And they are able to graduate with a Choice Academy diploma that would be just equivalent as any of the high schools. Okay. How so? How is it equivalent to being in high school? Because it's from 10 to 22. So, I know when I was, we were in New York, or I mean, I went to a regular high school, but there is some special ed programs, special education programs. At age 21, they age out and they go off to other programs. What happens after age 22? Sure. Yeah. So, if they still need our services, Washington County Mental Health Services, we have the adult program which they can shift into and they would help with housing, they would help with jobs. College, maybe? Yeah. A lot, to be honest, a lot of our students don't end up going to college. They usually go right into the workforce. We have had a couple go to trade schools, but we haven't had very many go right into college. Okay. Now, how has, in your opinion, how has media, when we talk about mental challenges, how has media perceived people with mental challenges, has it changed, has it gotten any better or worse? I would say it's gotten better. I think that there's more light on different mental illnesses. More studies are coming out, more research, even with depression, which I know isn't full on what we're talking about here, but I feel like everything's coming more to light. Anything you want to add? Okay. Knowing that we're in a new administration because services get cut all the time, possibly. How is mental health services changing because we have a new administration? How do you see it, especially for the future? I haven't seen any changes personally. We're still able to work at the capacity that we have and still incorporate newer students and staff. Hopefully, I mean, everyone always needs more money and more resources, so hopefully that's the direction that we're going in currently. How is it with the ratio of working with your students? Like, special ed classes are usually three or four, or they have a power professional, so they have three or four students and a teacher. How is it structured here? Sure. It's all different depending on age, but on average, there aren't more than four students in a classroom with one teacher and one BI, behavioral interventionalist. And what exactly is that? So they would be like a para educator, in a sense, but also like a little bit more focused on the behavior side than the education. So if a student has a problem with his or her behavior, then that person would step in, correct? Yes. Okay. In terms of mental challenges in children, have you seen differences like in terms of the activities now you mentioned that you can change the activities around for the person in the household? Yeah, so if there was someone that struggled with the activity either physically or mentally, we can alter what's happening. So if we're going out swimming and there's a student that just doesn't want to swim, we have other activities built into that day too. So if they wanted to just, if they wanted to read or if they wanted to play a game that wasn't swimming, we have different options that they could choose throughout them. But no movies, no TV? I try to stay away from those. If it's a rainy day, they might get lucky with a movie. And is it just because you don't want them involved with it in front of a screen, right? A lot of the time, yeah. So as soon as they leave the school, that's pretty much their outlet as they go and they play their video games or they watch TV or they're on their phones or iPads or anything like that. So I rather just keep the two separate and give them some like actual people contact. So what do you do? I mean, this might sound funny, but so what do you do? You take their phone away from them when they come in? So they do have to check their phone in when they come in in the morning. I know, we're mean. So yeah, so they turn their phones in and then they get them back at the end of the day. If we're going somewhere that's really far, a lot of students will use their phones as coping skills. So they'll get to have them on the car ride there that way, you know, they're at least comfortable. Yeah, I mean, it's gotta be hard. Now, what are some of the challenges that you face as Director of the Camp? Knowing you have to take the phone away from the kid or, you know, obviously there's challenges with working with people with mental challenges, but what are some of the challenges? Um, pros and cons. Is there pros and cons? There's always pros and cons. If I'm asking the wrong question. No, no, that's a good question. As far like the phone thing, anytime you can give someone heads up is great. So the more lead time we have, quick changes are never usually good. So we always try to have our backup like our rainy day plans where people can see them.  What are we going to do instead? They already have an idea of what the day is going to look like. Weather is a big con to a summer program because we don't always have the space to have something inside. So if our day was planned for outside, we have to shuffle a little bit to accommodate. No, yeah. Well, since we say pro and cons, um, are there reasons why people sometimes don't want to work with people with mental challenges? Why or why not? Um, I would say there are people that, yeah, I'd say there are people that don't want to work with, you know, our population because they're not informed enough. How so? They're not used to it. They've never seen a kid with behaviors before. They don't know how to deal with them. They don't have the language to talk to them or talk them down. So I think like the unknown is a scary thing for a lot of people. So that would be a reason why they would not want to work with our kids. The summer program I set up is built around fun and that's no phone. That's the only non-fun part. No phones. Does that mean staff have to check their phone? I make sure they're not on their phones, but they have to keep them for emergencies. But I wish some of the staff would check their phones. Um, but yeah, so I built around fun. So it does draw staff in that want to work with our population because they see the things that we're doing and then how good it is actually for the kids. And it's, you build a lot of memories and relationships with the kids, which is great that lasts for well beyond the school year. Yeah. So they make friends. So how important is friendships in this case to people with challenges? I think it's very important. Physical and mental. Yeah. So the kids that build the bonds with the other students is great because they can actually, the students get along with each other. They understand each other and they, some of them have been where the other ones been before. So it's, it's a great bond to see when two of them actually get together and they, they're like best friends now that they never had. No question as far as the camp. Hello, you there? Yeah, yeah. As far as the camp, like do they have like a specific day? Like let's say a couple of people are having issues, challenges. Do you have like a counseling session with them? Or do they have like psychologists or a counselor on staff? How does that work? Yeah. So we do. We have clinicians and we have currently four clinicians and they each have their own caseloads. So they're assigned different students and the students to them. So if there is any kind of issue, they're always in house or they come to some of the activities with us. So they're built in. They can go reach out to their clinician at any time. They can talk things through. Now I'm aware that there's a program that I'm aware of called Brattleboro Retreat. Is your camp, well, a camp is a retreat nonetheless. Okay, I see if I'm doing this right way. Compared to other camps for people with special needs in terms of retreats, how is your camp different? Ours is more or less for I would say students that are in, you know, the proper homeostasis for them to be in. So they're homeostasis. So like they're well balanced, you know, as far as like they're, I don't know how you want to say like they're zen. So like they're calm. They're able to participate. You know, they can function enough to with us. Whereas, you know, sometimes those other ones like Brattleboro Retreat will send people there so that they can work on the things that they need to things like that. So, you know, our summer camp is for the kids. Most of the time it's the kids we already have in our schools. So we had them all school year now it's summer time. So we're already familiar with them. We know what some of their behaviors are, how they interact with each other and staff. And then there's no education. So no more teachers, no more books. So it's just the fun. Well, fun. I mean, if a child wants to work on some of their educational skills during camp, isn't that fun? Like, I remember when I was a kid, I went to a special needs summer camp sleep away. They had an educational situation where they work on math, they work on computers, they work on different things. But you said no computers and no phones. So well, it is funny you said that because we actually this summer we have the most readers that we've ever had before. And we have that built in so they we created space where they could read as many books as they wanted to and we created an incentive plan around that and how many they wanted to read. But instead of playing give them a library card? Yeah, so it could be a library card or it could be like purchasing that book, the next one in their series or something like that. And we have our own library on campus that we really refill it all the time. Yeah. And now, because I know like movies are based on books and those kids might be interested. Yeah. What is the future since we only have a couple minutes left? What is the future of the camp and of recreation?  I mean, this is a every summer thing. I've been with the camp and Choice Academy for nine years. And it was there well before me too. So I mean, it's not going to go anywhere. I think if anything, it'll just get bigger and more activities and slight changes. It changes every year based on the students that we have because I want to cater. Is it based on, no, based on theme also like the camp would have a theme for that year? Oh, we've never done that. But I do like that idea. Because example in terms of recreation, I remember the camp I went to, there was these specific days like they would take the whole camp and if instead of, I know you said no TV, but what they would do is kids favorite TV shows, like one part of the camp would be Sesame Street and then they would have characters then or Batman or like the old Batman series, that kind of thing. But that would be a good idea to have a theme. That is a good idea. Bringing the TV away from the kids, but they would have like a costume party or something along those lines. Yeah. During the school year, they have their spirit days. So once a month, they all have pajama day or crazy hat day or inside out clothing day. That's strange. Yeah. I don't know if I want to have inside out clothing day or you know, you know, that would be a little strange. But like for example, you got a pineapple on your shirt or something, SpongeBob day or something along those lines. Yeah. Now, in terms of recreation, I know you said no video games, but do you have educational computer games that a kid might want to play? Yeah. So those stay with us throughout the school year. So they actually do access those during the school year. Not so much in the summer, but they are available if we did have a student that wanted to. Any last questions? What was that? Repeat that? Yeah. Is it free or is it scholarship for those that can't afford it? How does it work? So it's built into their IEPs. I don't understand in terms of that. Go ahead. So it is free for them. They don't have to pay extra because that's already kind of like in their their contract per se through the school. Yeah. So all that stuff is in. So we have, you know, our funds where we pay like the state parks and things like that. But the student would never have to. Okay. So like example, if you're going on a trip and it requires an admission fee to go somewhere, Washington County would pay that fee. Yes. Okay. And then but then the kid, the child or the participant would be responsible for paying for their own food or? No, we provide lunch. We have a kitchen at Choice Academy and we do bag lunch all summer every day. Okay. Well, now if you're going to amusement park and the child wants a specific key, they would have to bring money for that. Yes. If they wanted, like the bag of cotton candy or something like that, then they would have to provide that money. Okay. Well, we would like to thank Garrett Washburn for joining us on this edition of Ableton on Air. For more information on Washington County and their services, you can go to www.wcmhs.org. The emergency number for Washington County is 229-0591. That number once again is 229-0591-802-229-0591 and www.wcmhs.org. Thank you, Mr. Washburn. Thank you for having us. Joining us on this edition of Ableton on Air, we would like to say special thanks to our sponsors Washington County Mental Health, Green Mountain Support Services and many others, including the Vermont Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired, the Division for the Blind and Visually Impaired, and many others, including also the Sustainable Montpelier Coalition. I'm Lauren Seiler. I'm Lauren Seiler. See you next time for the next exciting edition of Ableton on Air. Ableton on Air is sponsored by Green Mountain Support Services, empowering people with disabilities to be home in the community. Washington County Mental Health, where hope and support comes together. Media sponsors for Ableton on Air include Park Chester Times, Muslim Community Report, www.thisisthebronx.info, Associated Press Media Editors, New York Parrot Online Newspaper, U.S. Press Corps, Domestic and International, Anchor FM and Spotify. Partners for Ableton on Air include Jihad, New York and New England, where everyone belongs, the Orthodox Union, the Vermont Division for the Blind and Visually Impaired, the Vermont Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired, the Montpelier Sustainable Coalition. Ableton on Air has been seen in the following publications, Park Chester Times, New York Parrot Online Newspaper, Muslim Community Report, www.thisisthebronx.info, and www.h.com. Ableton on Air is a member of the National Academy


When completing a loan estimate, where should a licensed mortgage loan originator include an estimate of hazard premiums? That's going to be prepaid. Boom! Let's get it. Yes, sir. Trid requires that charges paid by the consumer to the creditor such application and processing fees are to be recorded with what section of the closing disclosure? Closing costs? Closing costs. Origination charges. Origination charges. No problem, man. Not a problem. What can I do for you? Okay. So I'm looking for a realtor. You don't want? Yeah, I think so. Which unit you got? It's a 32. Yeah, I'm real familiar. Just get up together? Yeah, sure. Yeah.  Oh, that 30, that would work out super. Morning, and we'll just visit for a second and go from there. Okay, Rick, I appreciate that. Yeah. See you, bud. I wanted to sign up yesterday. Wow, so your team got in a tiff with each other and then they decided to leave? Literally. Okay. These are the best of them. See ya. Love you more. Yeah, two and a half. Within a few days of receiving an initial loan estimate, Rick needs to add his wife to the loan application so he can use her income to qualify for the loan, which of the following is true statement as it relates to lending, providing, and revised LE. Boom, bam. So as you can see, I'm here studying for my mortgage test, and let me tell you, this one is a doozy. I can tell you that I passed my real estate pre-license course and test the first time to get my salesperson license as a real estate agent. I passed my broker's test two years later the first time. Then when I went to get my Florida real estate license, I had to take the 40-question law test in Florida, and I passed that the first time. And honestly, the very first real estate test I took, I studied really hard for it. I'm guessing it was 20 years ago, but I'm guessing that it's real similar to what I'm dealing with here. So I can't say that this is harder than what it was when I took my first real estate test, but I can tell you that I'm 20 years older and that it seems incredibly harder. Now, if you talk to people, they'll tell you that the mortgage test is way harder than the real estate exam. But I'm working hard, and you guys know I'm a dedicated person, and I'm going to do everything I can to pass this test the first time. I do not want to take this a second time or even a third time. I want to pass this the very first time. So I just wanted to check in with you, let you know how I'm doing here, wish me luck. I have been paying attention to the earnings reports coming out. We had Compass yesterday, we had Airbnb, and we've got RealG, I think, is reporting today at some point. So there's a lot of cool stuff in the news. I've been reading a lot of articles and stuff in between studies here. You know, guys, listen, I'm just kind of a nerd when it comes to this. I really enjoy seeing these earnings reports coming out. I really enjoy watching these companies as they grow and learning all the ebbs and flows of this business and this industry. Super interesting to me. As we move forward and I continue to make these videos on my own, I'm going to bring you more breaking news type videos with company information and different stuff like that. So I'm excited to do that as well as continue to do blog style videos like I've been doing here a lot lately. So anyway, you guys keep crushing it. Let me know what I can do to help you and we'll see you guys soon.


You win you get 10 free leads if you and you get to keep your header box if you don't Better deal though because you're leveraging 120 bucks, and I'm Giving you free leads or winning the money. Okay, that makes sense. We can't wait. Yeah You either either get 10 leads and get to keep your money I get to keep your money Oh Yes All right, so we got double heads or double tails.  Flip it on there right you call Again Many one of these stress bars Two out of three We'll just keep it heads each time All right now for the final one who's gonna win Let me add you Always a gamble


When did the Lord effectually call him by his spirit through his grace? It was on that very same day on that very same day when Jesus Christ opened his eyes to the truth Paul was dumbfounded, right? The Bible says that Paul was astonished Jesus Christ opened his eyes Delivered him showed him the truth rescued him from bondage to his sin through faith in himself in other words As soon as Paul was conceived As soon as Paul was conceived he was marked out for this very purpose that I might preach him among the Gentiles From the womb Paul was separated to the gospel of God


Wel gymno toffi TV, ydy'r matriachion Everton 1, Crystal Palace 1, un oedd e'r pôr perfformans o Gwldersun Park, un oedd e'r disypwyntant perfformans o Gwldersun Park sy'n wneud. Yn oed, Everton, at ymatech ychydig i'r gwein, mae'n ddysgu'r stori o'r syniad, mae'n ddysgu'r amwnt o'r bwysig, mae'n ddysgu'r allan o'r syniad, mae'n ddysgu'r allan o'r syniad. Crystal Palace com tonight, we started the game okay, and we've had opportunities tonight, particularly, well in both halves really, to wrap the game up when we didn't take them. Palace were bright on the counter-attack, it was a hard, always a threat, Ben Teche was a bit of a handful, and Esi, who thought was one of Palace's better players tonight, carried the threat, but Everton have had really good opportunities. Dominic Alvalewin passed up the first one, great ball from Mason Holgate, all Dominic Alvalewin's got to do stinking over the keeper and it's 1-0, and I tried to hit it under the keeper for some reason when a little bink gives us the lead. And then Natalis and Mist through absolute sitters, and that was kind of the story for Everton tonight, missing the two lads, we rely on the two lads, we needed to be informed tonight, we're out of form, and that's the reason why we haven't won the game basically. Dominic defended them against Benly, even though we missed three or four good opportunities that day, but today I can't defend them, the two chances he's missed tonight, two absolutely guilted opportunities, would have basically put us out of sight. You know, like I said, Palace did carry that threat into the second half, it doesn't come out with a lot better in the second half as well in control of the game, you know, and we got in front, the keeper, Gwata's made three or four brilliant saves tonight, well, more probably, made a good save, Ball in from Nicodin, really good save from Guilffy Sigurdd and Schott, blocked it, avoided Calvalloon sliding in, can Coleman pulls it back and it was swept home by Hammers, right foot, brilliant finish from Hammers Rodriguez, and then you did, then Palace were there for the taking, were the ones who were chasing something, they've got nothing to play for, they're not in any danger of being relegated, they're not too far behind to get into Europe, so for them it was just, you know, putting a professional performance, but they were there. And Everton, one of the best bit of football, pieces of football we played all night, got Dom and the Calvalloon in with Gwata, if he just did it straight, it's 2-0, tries to go across from him and the keeper makes a save, and that was the moment, really, where the game should have been killed off, we would have had half an hour to play 2-0 up with the game over and he misses a really good chance, and Everton did that thing they tend to do, which is just get deeper and deeper and we know you ain't inviting on pressure, inevitably, we're going to concede. Robin Olsen made a couple of good saves to keeper of 1-0, the manager made a couple of changes, which I don't know why he made, and Ben Godfrey come on at right back when I thought Colman was doing really well, was in no threat, you know, when he dangered offensively, he was fine, I thought he caught with the hard quite well, and as he down that side he put Godfrey on, which caused a little bit of confusion, I think at the back end, then he brought John Felipe Obama on as much as it was great to see Obama coming on the pitch, the substitution for me should have been trying to put the game beyond them, it should have been either Calvert-Lewin or Retialerson, and would have put on Josh King and said, you know, he could have even finished with 3 and pushed Chris Leiphalas back, because what was happening in that instance for me was we were getting further and further back, had he put King on and gone at them, who knows, a chance might have felt to Josh King and he might have taken it, because Retialerson and Dom had an off night again Retialerson, the ball in, this is for Tune, he'll knock down perfectly, hit it into the floor, go at the saves it again, when he really should be scoring, from then it would have been game over less than 10 minutes to go, they brought on, they played their cards, strikers on, batswide come on, and one opportunity, Michael Key, let them run off and ball in behind them, and Godfrey tries to get back hands and it's in the back of the net, 1-1 with 5 minutes left then, that's the frustration, that the game was there for Everton to win, Palace, like he said, carried a threat on the break, no doubt about that, but Everton have misguilted opportunities, which would have put the game and would have had the points, and now I personally, and it might just be being reactive after the game, but I don't see any way we get into Europe, because we can't beat teams that we should be beating, oh, we perceive ourselves as should be beating, and I'm not trying to be disrespectful to those clubs, but when you're chasing something, they're the games you have to win, and we can't do it, we simply can't do it, we're no good at home, and I don't think you do anything with a terrible home record, and that's whatever and I've got, the manager doesn't seem to be able to find the right mix to win games at home, and the squad isn't good enough, essentially, so I think we'll come up short, which is really frustrating, because we were in a position with 10 games to go, we're still being in with an outside chance of getting in the top four, but it'll be very difficult to finish in the top seven, and all the teams above us seem to be able to win these games the stronger than us, they seem to be able to get the wins, now everything cut quite easily, go and win three games on the run and be right back in it, and I'll look a bit cheaper to stand on here, but that's just the way it feels at the moment, I just think that once too many games are blowing, Benly yn palas yr om am y troch o poeit ar ydym, daty mi, doesn't say Europe in football, so it'll be bitterly disappointed if we don't get it, and I hope I'm massively wrong, but that's how it feels tonight. Manad y match, for me, shame is Coleman maybe, or Hammers Rodriguez, Hammers Rodriguez, he scored the goal, he was the little bit of class at times showed some lovely pass and a love, thought Mason Holgate had a good game, some fantastic pass and as well, and like you said, I thought Coleman done well, but Hammers Rodriguez, manad y match, not a disappointed night at Goodersham and what more can you say, four wrong games to go, and it's going to be four difficult games aren't they, that's here, let me know what you think in the comments section below, see you later.


An ideal gas is a theoretical gas composed of many randomly moving point particles whose only interactions are perfectly elastic elections. The ideal gas concept is useful because it obeys the ideal gas law, a simplified equation of state, and is amenable to analysis under statistical mechanics. In most usual conditions for instance at standard temperature and pressure most real gases behave qualitatively like an ideal gas. Many gases such as nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, noble gases, and some heavier gases like carbon dioxide can be treated like ideal gases within reasonable tolerances. Generally, a gas behaves more like an ideal gas at higher temperature and lower pressure, as the potential energy due to intermolecular forces becomes less significant compared with the particles' kinetic energy, and the size of the molecules becomes less significant compared to the empty space between them. One mole of an ideal gas has a volume of 22.71094713L that standard temperature and pressure is defined by IUPAC since 1982. The ideal gas model tends to fail at lower temperatures or higher pressures, when intermolecular forces and molecular size becomes important. It also fails for most heavy gases, such as many refrigerants, and for gases with strong intermolecular forces, notably water vapor. At high pressures, the volume of a real gas is often considerably larger than that of an ideal gas. At low temperatures, the pressure of a real gas is often considerably less than that of an ideal gas. That's in point of low temperature and high pressure, real gases undergo a phase transition, such as to a liquid breath solid. The model of an ideal gas, however, does not describe or allow phase transitions. These must be modeled by more complex equations of state. The deviation from the ideal gas behavior can be described by a dimensionless quantity, the compressibility factor, Z. The ideal gas model has been explored in both the Newtonian dynamics as in kinetic theory and in quantum mechanics as a gas in a box. The ideal gas model has also been used to model the behavior of electrons in a metal and the Drude model and the free electron model and it is one of the most important models in statistical mechanics.