All right, Revelation chapter six, I'll begin at verse one and I'll read the verse eight and we'll get into our study. I chose to entitle this installment and so it begins. Beginning at verse one, now I saw when the lamb opened one of the seals and I heard one of the four living creatures saying with a loud saying with a voice like thunder come and see and I looked and behold a white horse he who sat on it had a bow and a crown was given to him and he went out conquering and to conquer when he opened the second seal I heard the second living creature saying come and see another horse fiery red went out and it was granted to the one who sat on it to take peace from the earth and that people should kill one another it was given to him a great sword when he opened the third seal I heard the third living creature say come and see so I looked and behold a black horse and he who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand I heard a voice in the midst of the four living creatures saying a quart of wheat for denarius and three quarts of barley for a denarius and do not harm the oil and the wine when he opened the fourth seal I heard the voice of the fourth living creature saying come and see so I looked and behold a pale horse and the name of him who sat on it was death and Hades followed with him and power was given to them over a fourth of the earth to kill with sword with hunger with death and by the beasts of the earth so we have a very cherry Bible study that will be going through today as we begin to look here at the breaking of the seals let me give you a brief introduction and develop my opening and then we'll move into our study the Bible teaches that we are moving towards a final war it's really a series of or campaigns but is referred to Armageddon we see that in Revelation 16 you see instead of the world moving towards a time of peace and prosperity the opposite really is true the world is continuing its slow movement to greater evil and continual war Paul wrote that the time before Jesus's return would be difficult it would even be violent he had written in 2nd Timothy 3 verse 1 know this that in the last days perilous times will come the word perilous speaks of that which is difficult even speaks of violence and so we know that that is true dangerous times will come we see this in our day right now we see a transitioning right before our eyes of the nation that many of us have been born into and grown up in a nation whose morality continues to decline we know that very often in people's thinking morality is often determined by what is legal I'll give you an example since 1944 California law permitted a judge to decide if a man should be placed on the California sex offender registry if he had had physical intercourse with the minor the intercourse was between a man and girl who was between 14 and 17 and the man was no more than 10 years older than the person but just this last September a bill was signed into law by governor Newsome permitting homosexual men to have consensual intercourse with a boy between 14 and 17 years of age did you know that some of you didn't the promoter of the bill said that this would bring equality to LGBTQ young people but critics recognize this as a bill essentially legalizing pedophilia you see in Philippians chapter 3 verses 18 and 19 Paul said like this he said for as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears many live as enemies of the cross of Christ their destiny is destruction their God is their stomach and their glory is in their shame their mind is on earthly things their glory is in their shame people have forgotten how to blush they don't have a standard as to what is right what is acceptable what is moral and so because many Americans based their morality on what is legal that's why you have people arguing with you concerning smoking pot and and things like that you know pornography they'll argue with you if it's legal it's okay well because of that we have seen a decline in the morality of the United States and all of that and evil is becoming more and more acceptable remember when Jesus was asked what will be the sign of your coming and the end of the age well when he was asked that question in Matthew 24 he went on to list various signs that would point to his return in Matthew 24 verse 7 it says nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom there will be famines pestilences and earthquakes in various places in verse 9 of Matthew 24 he went on to say they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake and then in verses 11 and 12 of Matthew 24 he said many false prophets will rise up and deceive many and because lawlessness will abound the love of many will grow cold Jesus said there'll be increasing famines pestilence earthquake and an increase of hate and the hatred he said will be especially targeted at his followers again in Matthew 24 9 remember it says they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake now today many preachers disregard the obvious need for the church to wake up they do not call people to repentance they're not calling people to follow the Lord instead of calling people to repent and serve Jesus they they are giving what is called a watered down message it's similar today is similar to the time of Jeremiah the prophet when God warned Israel of coming judgment God told Jeremiah to speak out against them the message is being preached to the people Jeremiah 6 14 it says God said they speak in a false prophets they have also healed or heard of my people slightly saying peace peace when there is no peace you see the false teachers didn't preach a message that would clean out the infection when he says they are healing my people slightly it's a way of saying that they're not cleansing the wound they're allowing it to continue with the messages that they're giving peace peace they're saying but God said there is no peace you see this kind of message of peace will be preached by false teachers in the last days there'll be a message of peace that is finally possible conflict will finally cease look at us today right now here in the United States where people are saying we need more peace look at the riots look at the wars look at the things that are going on people want peace but the Bible in 1st Thessalonians 5 3 says when they say peace and safety then sudden destruction comes upon them as labor pains upon a pregnant woman and they shall not escape is this true is the world finally going to get along and live in peace with one another well as we read our Bible God's word seems to be clear in the last days there will be escalating judgments on the world now this time of judgment the seven-year period in Scripture is is there are various words used to to speak of it you have Daniel's 70th week it's also a time of Jacob's trouble it's referred to as the tribulation and it's also referred to as great tribulation this time of God pouring out his wrath now when we are in chapter 5 John introduced a seven-sealed scroll a book which was the title deed of the earth now here in chapter 6 the first six seals of the book are broken and as we see this each of the seals represent judgment that's coming upon the earth now the events that unfold before us as we're reading our events that were still in the future to both John as well as to us the break-in of these seals precedes and introduces judgments to come after the rapture the picture of the church in heaven has already been revealed in chapters 4 and 5 we saw in chapter 5 how the 24 elders which represent the church of the 24 elders had had sung a song of the redeemed that is a song sung by the church so as we go through chapters 6 through 19 we see that the church is not found in the tribulation the church was prominent in chapters 2 and 3 but will not be seen again until chapter 19 the church is reintroduced at the second coming of Christ mentioned in chapter 20 and is mentioned again in chapter 22 verse 16 now when we first moved to this place I received a letter from one of the neighbors and they basically said I wish you weren't here that's what they said and so I told Marie you didn't have to tell me that in a letter you could have come and told me face-to-face but they did they wrote it it was like two or three page letter and it said we I wish you weren't here before you came here we had peace in this neighborhood and now we don't have peace I'll never forget that well the bottom line is the the writer of that letter didn't see the value of the church didn't see the value of the church in the world for them we disturbed their peace we were non-essential but is this true are we simply unnecessary for the people of the world we need to think of what the church actually does the church evangelizes the church disciples the church cares for people the church reveals God's grace God's love God's truth you need to remember that we are the only organization that has been created specifically to care for the needs of other people in Philippians chapter 2 Paul said it like this he said in verses 14 and 15 in everything you do stay away from complaining and arguing so that no one can speak a word of blame against you you are to live clean innocent lives as children of God in a dark world full of crooked and perverse people let your lives shine brightly before them you see we exist for a variety of things including the reason to restrain evil from completely dominating the world the church exists to restrain evil as Jesus surveyed the world he saw it in a state of moral decay he saw it in spiritual darkness so to influence the world for Jesus his disciples needed to know who they were so in Matthew 5 13 and 14 he said you are the salt of the earth but if the salt loses its flavor how shall it be seasoned it's then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men he went on to say you are the light of the world a city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden when you look at that and you read that and you develop that and you look at the tenses in the Greek language you'll see that Jesus is saying you are the only salt and you are the only light that's the purpose of the church so the people today may think that we are not necessary that we don't need to meet together that we shouldn't worship together they think that's no big deal they think that we're not essential but Revelation 6 through 19 gives us a glimpse into what happens when the church is no longer present now remember in chapter 5 the lamb in the midst of the throne took the scroll out of the hand of the father and when opened the scroll reveals a future of planet earth and it's a time of unparalleled judgment we see seven seal judgments and the seven seal judgments lead to seven trumpet judgments and the seven trumpet judgments culminate in seven bowl judgments and those judgments as mentioned are escalating in severity we know that the number seven is often a picture of completion so these judgments numbering seven represents total judgment and so that's what we're looking at so in verse one of chapter six I saw when the lamb opened one of the seals and I heard one of the four living creatures saying with a loud voice like thunder come and see this introduces the tribulation chapters 6 through 19 give detailed account of this period of time now earlier Jesus was revealed as a one who is worthy to open and loose the seven seals so the lamb opens the seals and introduces the time of judgment the tribulation and the first seal is open he says I saw when the lamb opened one of the seals I heard one of the four living creatures saying with a with a voice like thunder come and see a voice like thunder so when first seal is open John hears this voice and a voice like like thunder is a symbol of a coming storm we see that in Exodus chapter 9 verse 23 where Moses stretched forth his rod toward heaven the Lord sent thunder and hail and the fire ran along the ground and the Lord reigned hail upon the land of Egypt so that's a symbol of a coming storm and that begins the seven-year period of God pouring out his wrath on a Christ rejecting world you see in the beginning of the tribulation it will eventually lead to what is called the great tribulation in Jeremiah 30 verse 7 it says alas for that day is great so that none is like it and it is the time of Jacob's trouble in Matthew 24 21 Jesus said then shall be great tribulation such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time no nor ever shall be and so we're seeing the opening of the tribulation that leads to the great tribulation and he says I saw the lamb open one of the seals and in verse 2 it says and behold he says I looked and behold a white horse and he who sat on it had a bow and a crown was given to him and he went out conquering and to conquer in the opening of the first seal we're introduced here to this horseman there are many who think this rider is Jesus but Jay Vernon McGee some of you know him and know of his name Jay Vernon McGee said it like this it would be pretty difficult for the Lord Jesus who's the one opening the seals now to make a quick change mount a horse and come riding forth other believe that others believe that he symbolizes the conditions that give rise to the Antichrist the other riders symbolizes force symbolize forces like war famine and death this rider would symbolize peace the worldwide false peace that exists under Antichrist notice the rider on the white horse he has a bow and a crown he goes forth conquering we know that there'll be a peace time of peace and we know that Antichrist will go forth and he will appear as the Messiah and he will initially conquer peacefully he'll do it through deception which results in a false peace in the world notice he has a bow but he doesn't have any arrows this will be a bloodless victory at the beginning he's given a crown now the word crown here speaks of a victor's crown it's not a king's crown it's a victor's crown that speaks of conquering victory that isn't a crown of a king it's a crown given for a triumph and he's given a crown because he's made world peace possible and I can't help but wonder if this is speculation it doesn't say it here but when I read that and was studying that and preparing to study I I saw prize a peace prize I wonder if he's going to be somebody who's like that people who have won the Nobel Peace Prize he's going to be somebody that people will follow and initially he's going to be conquering in a peaceful way notice again I pointed this out he has a bow it has no arrows that's a bloodless victory he's going to conquer through a false message preached by false teachers and false prophets you see in the days before the rapture the church has already become increasingly influenced towards a posse see after the rapture it's going to be fully possible for many much many more people to become apostate or to reject the message of Christ remember I mentioned a moment ago that Matthew records a question that was asked of Jesus and that question had to do with events that would take place before his return in Matthew 24 3 through 5 it says as he sat on the Mount of Olives the disciples came to him privately saying tell us when shall these things be what shall be the sign of your coming and the end of the world and Jesus answered and said to them take heed that no man deceived you for many shall come in my name saying I am Christ and shall deceive many what is the sign notice that he didn't say they didn't say what are the signs Jesus goes on to give many things but they asked a specific question what is the sign and Jesus answered very specifically deception what is it it will be deception deception will increase it negates the place of the church as the disseminator of truth you may or may not realize that as a Christian but truth is is deposited in the gospel and the church is supposed to be disseminating or giving that out you see in 1st Timothy 3 verse 15 that that verse refers to the church is the pillar and ground of the truth but in 2nd Thessalonians chapter 2 verses 9 and 10 Paul said the coming of the lawless one the antichrist will be in accordance with the work of Satan displayed in all kinds of counterfeit miracle signs and wonders and in every sort of evil that deceives those who are perishing they perish because they refuse to love the truth and so be saved a refusal to love Christ who is the truth and his message of truth so how is this going to happen this bloodless victory well through deception through deception and atmosphere of false security and peace will exist and much of this deception will actually come from within the church itself in Jeremiah chapter 14 verses 13 to 15 it says then I said oh Lord God behold the prophets say to them you shall not see the sword nor shall you have famine but I will give you a short piece in this place and the Lord said to me the prophets prophesy lies in my name I have not sent them commanded them nor spoken to them they prophesy to you a false vision divination a worthless thing and the deceit of their heart therefore thus says the Lord concerning the prophets who prophesy in my name whom I did not send and who say sword and famine shall not be in the land by sword and famine those prophets shall be consumed and so it begins first through deception a false message and then in verse 3 he opened the second seal I heard the second living creature saying come and see another horse fiery red went out and it was granted to the one who sat on it to take peace from the earth and that people should kill one another and there was given to him a great sword and so the second seal is opened and a succession of wars will break out these wars are symbolized by the sword early in the tribulation world peace will actually lead to world conflict the false peace that has been established by the antichrist will not last long man's attempt at world peace will never succeed it's always short lived notice how this second horse is fiery red fiery red is the color of fire and blood it represents war and violence and this rider this rider takes peace from the earth he says people kill one another and that's a great sword that he's using the word sword here is the is the short stabbing sword that was used by assassins it's called a great sword because it speaks to of the extent of the warfare so the antichrist will resort to war to maintain his power and control the world and the Bible makes it clear that the antichrist will be an extraordinary military ruler in Daniel 8 verse 24 it says he'll become very strong but not by his own power he will cause the astounding devastation and will succeed in whatever he does he will destroy those who are mighty the holy people so he's going to be an extraordinary military ruler the peace that is established that people begin to cry out oh it's a time of peace that won't last that long this is all taking place within the first three and a half years of the tribulation and so there'll be wars that began because his peace won't last Jesus said that escalating wars would occur before his return again in Matthew 24 verses 6 and 7 he said you will hear of wars and rumors of wars see that you're not troubled for all these things must come to pass but the end is not yet nation will rise against nation kingdom against kingdom there will be famines pestilences and earthquakes in various places wars before Billy Graham went to heaven Billy Graham said that out of 5,000 years of history there has been 4,000 years of war in the first portion of the 20th century millions died in two world wars it is estimated that 16 million military personnel died and 37 million civilians died in world war one world war two accounted for an estimated 75 million deaths including 40 million civilians and the world has gone through this before and the world even now is poised for war we see this all unfolding even as I'm reading this to you at this time there are 30 countries in which nuclear power plants operate only France Belgium and Slovakia use them as primary source of electricity according to the world nuclear association over 30 countries are giving serious consideration to introducing a nuclear power capability including Iran the United Arab Emirates Vietnam and Jordan Belarus Bangladesh and Turkey are at the forefront at this time there are nine countries designated nuclear weapons states China France Russia United Kingdom United States India Pakistan North Korea and Israel Belgium Germany Netherlands Italy and Turkey are NATO nuclear sharing states third world nations with aggressive plans are increasing terrorism is on the increase and the stage is already being set and so as this continues on verse 5 when he opened the third seal I heard the third living creature say come and see so I looked behold a black horse and he who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand and I heard a voice in the midst of the four living creatures saying a court of wheat for denarius three quarts of barley for denarius and do not harm the oil and the wine escalating wars with escalating wars famine hits the world food supplies will be destroyed again in Matthew 24 7 Jesus said there'll be famines pestilences and earthquakes in various places in verse 6 the pair of scales symbolizes rationing with famine always comes inflation a court of wheat barely feeds one person in a day and barley will provide very little for families a person's daily wage barely provides low quality food enough for a small family is what he's saying there but notice in verse 6 how he says harm not the oil and wine oil and wine are necessities in many places but are also considered luxury items so it could very well be a picture of how the affluent the rich will survive but the poor don't it's always been true that though there are those who are who can be very rich there are some very generous and very kind and believing people are rich I'm not knocking richness at all but bottom line is there are quite a number of people who who have positions of power authority and finance that really don't concern themselves very much with those who don't have that so he can be told don't go out and eat you need to stay home and we have our governor who goes here we go shouldn't have done this but we have a governor who goes out and spends $350 a plate think about that for a minute I wonder how many of you remember knew that maybe you do that's what he did he told us stay home he said don't celebrate Thanksgiving but anyway I won't go there don't worry you already are there I'm just kind of letting you letting that percolate for a moment the poor become poor and the rich get richer that's usually how it works the rich you say to others don't be concerned with your daily food you don't need to be well they're rich and they have money so they don't have to be concerned it's not that the poor should be always worried about it but there's a fact of life that that when I when I don't have any money I certainly do have concern for my family and myself of course they do and so this is a picture not only of the fact that there'll be an incredible inflation but it's also a picture of a fact that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and so there goes the word harm not the oil and wine harm not the luxury items because the affluent will survive but the poor don't and verse seven you see and when he opened the fourth seal I heard the voice of the fourth living creature saying come and see so I looked and behold a pale horse and the name of him who sat on it was death and Hades followed with him and power was given to them over a fourth of the earth to kill with sword with hunger with death and by the beast of the earth a pale horse it's interesting the word pale you'll recognize it when I tell you the word in the Greek is chloros chloros it's where you get the word chlorine from the word pale is it is yellow it's a yellow green yellow yellow green one commentator pointed out is used as a picture of the color of a corpse the dead body becomes a pale yellow green this is a picture of death it may be and I'll develop this with you for a moment it may be that this death that is being pictured here comes through an infectious disease death and Hades speaks of dying and the abode of the dead which actually completes the picture now at first death and destruction will be limited to the quarter to a quarter of the earth's population the world population clock 2020 says there are 7.8 billion people worldwide right now so in this say it were to happen in our time this means that almost 2 billion people are going to die almost 2 billion people are going to die to give a way to measure this according to the European Center for Disease Prevention and control as of December 3rd 2020 there have been 1,495,000 deaths due to COVID-19 death on a large scale is the natural result of wars and disease John says that these deaths will occur in various ways notice he said sword which is the war famine death the word death there is a general word general word speaking of pestilence and through natural disasters which he speaks of as being animals now to some this seems to be exaggerated perhaps this man was riding with just dramatic imagery the fact is these kinds of things have existed in the past famine in 1959 through 1961 it was reported that 30 million died of starvation 30 million died of starvation in northern China the World Health Organization estimates that 3.1 million children die of hunger yearly he speaks of pestilence in 1918 and 1919 it is estimated that about 500 million people or one-third of the world's population became infected with the Spanish flu virus the number of deaths was estimated to be at least 50 million worldwide with about 675,000 occurring in the United States my aunt and my uncle died of the Spanish flu at that time my mother's older older brother and older sister both of them died of the Spanish flu in 1918 and 1919 worldwide there are over 400,000 malaria deaths a year the World Health Organization says at 1.5 million died from tuberculosis UNICEF says yearly over 800,000 children died of pneumonia when I was in the Philippines a number of years ago I had an opportunity while being in Manila to meet a pastor who had a church that he with his hands he built the building in a dump there called the Tundado and when I went there to go and see what his ministry was there in the slum in a dump a literal dump in Manila I'll never forget the impact that had on me because we went into this dump and it's just it's very it's very large it's a lot of a lot of well there are people who live there they actually go to the they go to the trash and they dig out cardboard or pieces of wood that's been thrown away and they build houses there they build houses they live in the Tundado dump and so we went into the dump and and this pastor had been scavenging through all the trash and he had found a lot of plywood and various things and he took us to his church and we walked into this little church that he had built that would see it maybe 60 to 80 people and he had his his his pews that he had built out of discarded wood and there were lopsided and all and you know just pieces of wood that he had hammered together so people could come and they could hear the gospel I'll never forget as I was walking through this particular area little boys there was one little boy who ran past me could have been about seven years old and he had a can an empty can and he had tied string through it and it was and he was running with it as it was hitting the rocks and things making noise and I'll never forget this little boy running past me as I saw the can bouncing in him he was laughing and having a great time and I'm looking at him my heart's touched by these things I see two three other little boys who have found a ball that was it was flat it had it couldn't hold any air but they had built themselves a little basketball hoop and they were shooting baskets with this deflated ball and I've seen this one thing after another after another the poverty was unbelievable and there's this man's church and he's reaching to these people and wanting them to know Jesus Christ and he had a little girl heard she was she was 12 years old she was 12 years old and I thought she was seven she was so small she's a little girl and she became my guide and I was walking with her and she reached up and took me by the hand and held my hand as we walked through the dump and I was just touched by her I was moved by this little girl so stinking sweet such a beautiful baby I just I just fell in love with her and a few months later I got word that she died she died of measles she died of measles who dies of measles she did she did I've spoken to the church on this way in this way many times God has been gracious for me to go places to see things that not everybody has the chance to see this the manila so many areas in this beautiful city that is well people are building houses on on sidewalks in front of other people's houses and they're building them out of cardboard or plywood to go to India to be in Bombay and and to arrive in an airport where they have double-pane glass because the smell of rotten decay is so intense that even seeps through double pain then you step into the humidity and this and the smell and and you drive to the hotel they're taking you to and there are people who have built little structures on traffic islands and they're living on that island that's where they live the poverty is unbelievable and to know that when the monsoon season hits in Bombay there are more rats on the street than human beings to know that and to see that and then to go to a temple to see what they're doing there and to watch children begging for food in front of the temple well the people going into the temple don't give the children food they give it to rats that are there in the temple to see that it impacts you it always will I've seen a lot of that and I've seen the pestilence I've seen the result of it and it breaks your heart it breaks your heart you see when you look at this I want you to notice it speaks of animals they're on the list of causes of death and and people might say why animals are you saying that they're going to come running out of you know dogs will chase you down the street and bite you no rats have been responsible for millions of deaths we know that in the 1300s the black death the black plague was passed on by fleas and during that time between a quarter and a third of Europe's population was wiped out through these animals I actually looked up this this information and there's a site called pest world can you believe that pest world but according to pest world rats and mice are known to spread more than 35 diseases and so what you're seeing here are judgments that are going to come one after another after another after another this lamb that John saw when they had he had heard the words that that the lion has prevailed and he looks and behold there was a lamb this lamb this lamb that you and I think of as Jesus Christ that's who he is the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world we we see him as gentle and we see him as loving because he is we see him as merciful and kind because he is we see him as he ministers to the blind as you read your gospels you you see how Jesus provides food for the hungry you see how Jesus heals the sick he cleanses the leper he casts out demons from the demonized people you see this and he's he's righteous and he's glorious and he's kind and he's warm and he's so approachable that you see his cousin John who's willing who's able to put his his head on the chest of Christ the warmth and the love and the tenderness of this man and and the love they have for one another I've always thought that the picture of John placing his head on the the bosom of Christ is a picture of a tender loving act of relationship of communion because John having his head on Jesus's chest can hear the heartbeat of God and there's just something amazing about that thought and that's the man that we love Jesus Christ the lamb the lamb of God the one who went to the cross the one who died the one who prayed father he said forgive them they know not what they do that one that Jesus the one who was buried in the third day that he arose he arose from the dead that one who ascended to heaven 40 days later that one don't get a mad because we see him as the lamb but as I was sharing with you the lamb is a lion because there are flashes of the holy wrath of Christ that we see in the gospels we have a tendency I think of of seeing him as he is loving gracious kind a woman has been caught in sin he doesn't condemn her we see these things forgives people loves people but he also goes into the temple and cleans it out twice my father's house is a house of prayer you've made it into a den of thieves he fashions a whip and he drives them out turns over their tables we think that he won't do that again but he does John points it out this lion this lamb well the lion is pouring out his wrath he's pouring out his wrath and as he does so the judgments begin to flow there are greater and even more terrible judgments that will come we're going to be seeing this leading to trumpets what are called trumpet judgments then we're going to see them as they lead quickly to the ball judgments and they're going to come through Jesus Christ because he's going to reveal himself as holy and true and when these things come to pass those who have rejected Jesus as their savior are going to see him in his wrath in Hebrews 10 31 the writer said it's a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living god you see this is sure this is the word of god this is sure this is going to happen this isn't some fanciful tale some mythological fable of some sort this is pre-written history this is god saying this is what is going to take place we see it already we're seeing how the world is primed right now we see it primed right now for a world leader somebody who can can stop the wars between so many countries who could put a time of peace who will set up a peace treaty and the people will say this is amazing and the antichrist says we'll see it's going to do that there'll be peace treaties and things that are set up and people say this is an amazing man this is an amazing warrior who can make war with him who can stand up like him who can stand against him who is like him the antichrist popular people will love him i've already seen how how we can be deceived by a smile and a promise america can be deceived has been for a smile and a promise and none of it's going to take place but eventually there'll be one who comes a man referred to in scripture by various names the willful king the antichrist the beast and he's going to strike a deal they'll be saying peace but when they cry peace peace sudden destruction will come upon them like a woman having birth things so what's the key guys this is going to happen what's the key for me i can tell you it's very quick and i'll say it quickly in my conclusion here get right with god get right with god jesus his word is true he doesn't lie he's returning and he's going to be mad that's a fact that's a fact these things we're seeing unfold in front of us we're seeing the conditions they're already set up we're seeing it before our very eyes how people will wonder and follow after a leader who makes promises we've seen it already we've seen how quickly people will follow those orders they follow them quickly and even will get mad at you if you don't we see it now it's here it's happening it's happening and the church is we're seeing it we're seeing it it's just the beginning we're being preconditioned we're being preconditioned no i'm not a doomsday prophet i'm just telling you the truth we're seeing it i wondered for the longest time how is that possible you need to remember that in my age i've seen a lot of changes i've seen a lot of changes a lot of changes from what it was like in the 50s when i grew up where you wouldn't even have lucile bar said this before lucile ball and desi arenas and i love luci they didn't sleep together they had separate beds and yet somehow they had little ricky i never figured that one out and we saw things that were innocent that's the point i'm making how innocent we were as a nation where we have people today saying you shouldn't say merry christmas it's offensive to who the antichrist you can't say that say happy holidays what holiday what are you talking about and i grew up in a time when jewish comedians like jack benny and others would actually have christmas specials and guess what they weren't upset they weren't upset but if somebody whines and cries long enough and pouts like a four-year-old then everybody shuts up oh i don't want to offend you well guess what uh i've been i've been not go there you already know you already know i did uh oh i might as well say this added to facebook live the other day that some of you might have seen got good response praise the lord don't i don't read the comments because there are a lot of trolls out there but i said it listen we have mr obama lecturing me as a hispanic i don't like to use the word hispanic it's a general term i'm mexican but i as a hispanic he's lecturing me that the reason i voted for trump which i did surprise surprise is because because trump had made promises on he's he called us hispanic evangelicals some of you perhaps heard him hispanic evangelicals he said that's the reason he was voted in i and i wrote i said mr mr uh mr obama one presidents who are past presidents normally fade away but you you don't seem to want to shut up that's the one thing uh two well that's true get mad at me it's okay um but i said you know i didn't vote for him because of what he says i voted for him for what he's done he's done some good things and and that's what i that's why i voted for him that's why i voted for him and i said you know it's just it's just a good idea for us to um to not be boxed i said to be honest with you i i feel an insult that you're insulting me because you're trying to categorize me no it's not because i want to cling to my guns and my god it's because what i've seen him do has been good for this nation that this is a man who gave up his salary every year he gave up his salary to charity where you mr obama uh you came into office with 1.3 million dollars and you now have 40 million how did you get that how did that happen you see guys we're living in a time where people like me saying this there'll be people who won't be back next week all right god god bless you you know somebody's got to speak truth and isn't the preacher supposed to do that aren't we supposed to do that we are you know and i'm seeing this take place guys and i'm concerned i'm concerned for those who are being deceived i'm concerned for pastors who are forgetting to preach the gospel because they're afraid of offending sensitive hearers guess what the gospel is offensive it is offensive if that's what it is when it's actually preached when it's actually taught it is offensive but guess what when you when you come to faith in christ your life is your sins are forgiven your life is transformed your blessed by god you go to heaven so we preach the gospel god can change lives and jesus christ is returning this this lion this lamb this lamb is going to return as a lion and there's going to be a time of wrath but you can escape it it as i just read is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living god and if there's anything that is a symbol of a person who doesn't know god the bible says it this way there is no fear of god in them there is no fear of god in them i don't want to i'm not one more thing might as well there are words that you do not hear on tv they will not they're they're they're banned words and we all know those banned words and those words shouldn't be used but the same program that will not use this banned word uses god's name in vain and i see that and god said i will not hold him guiltless who uses my name in vain that's the one thing he says i will not hold them guiltless he who uses my name in vain and yet we will use his name in vain but we won't use other words that's the twisted morality of the nation we live in where you blaspheme god but don't offend this person over here we gotta i'm not saying be mean let's close with joy i'm not saying be mean god knows anybody who knows me knows our church knows my heart knows my tenderness that i love people god knows that you do too most of you do i love people but i'll tell you the truth because love means you tell the truth and i am i'm trying to be honorable before god i stand before him one day how did you treat my gospel he could ask me and i want to say i did my best to remain faithful to it lord and to your message because jesus jesus is coming there are no other there are no other prophecies that need to be fulfilled the next one is the rapture of the church and when the rapture of the church when the church is taken to be with him oh hell breaks loose on her and it begins slowly but it picks up steam we're going to see this as we go through these these verses one thing after another a layer after another after another after another and then it finally culminates we'll be seeing that as we go through the book of revelation


Trevor Burrus. I'm Matthew Feeney. Trevor Burrus. Joining us today is Peter Van Doren. He's a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the editor of Regulation Magazine. Welcome to Free Thoughts Again, Peter. Peter Van Doren. Thanks for having me. Trevor Burrus. I think this is your fifth time on the show. Peter Van Doren. Currently I'm on the top of the hit list. Trevor Burrus. That would be the most of any guest. Today we're going to be talking about kind of environmentalism and how it intersects with public policy and science. So the first question is sort of the big question I'm going to be discussing today which is why are environmental policy conflicts so intractable? Peter Van Doren. That's, as with all or many intellectual thinking, that's not how I thought about this when I first tackled the problem and instead I was puzzled by the following stylized facts, which is if you're libertarian or if you're market oriented, I found it puzzling that science was invoked by both sides of the political spectrum in policy conflicts but it had little to do with anything in markets. So the following, so think about whole foods. Think about organic lettuce or organic anything. If you're libertarian, should you have to justify your preferences as being based on something that is scientifically true, so for example, does it matter to the owners of whole foods whether or not anything they sell actually improves health or life expectancy or anything else that the customers imagine such consumption does? The answer is no, nor do the consumers think that it is true but do they have to show studies to the owners of whole foods that if they take fish oil or if they eat organic lettuce or if they can see the picture of the guy who raises the eggs that they consume, do they have to show evidence from a scientific journal that that has been shown in a clinical trial or by econometric methods that that consumption does something good for the person who consumes it? So there's another way of saying that is to say that whole foods existence is not justified by whether or not it's scientific claims are correct. If you're a free market type, at least generally speaking, its existence is not justified by whether or not it's correct about its scientific claims. And in fact, not only that, there's a fair amount of scientific evidence that the health effects of so-called natural medicines or the homeopathic remedies, non-Western medicine, whatever, that there's no, that there's a surprising lack of evidence that those things actually matter for anything. But it doesn't stop people from buying them. It doesn't stop producers from producing them. It doesn't stop anybody from making gains to trade. So even though right-of-center people may be dubious of certain claims about the consumption of organic produce or meat or whatever, it doesn't stop those transactions from occurring. And left-of-center people who may, and I'm using stereotypical correlations that may or may not be true, but if left-of-center people believe these things and they have a market that provides them, they don't have to provide any evidence that in fact that is true. It's the same for psychics, right, or tarot card readers or all those people. And certainly in a neoclassical economics framework, economists just start with preferences. We don't start with, we don't say you need scientific evidence that X works before you can buy it. Well, no, that's like, that's just not, it doesn't come up. In contrast, in public sector debate, both sides, both the left and the right, invoke science when it's convenient for whatever they want as the appropriate adjudicator of whether one's preferences, and here's where I'm going after sort of economic and or libertarian thought, I want to argue, isn't it weird that right-of-center people say preferences can be served by market forces and can flourish in market settings, but once you enter the policy arena, we now want to make sure that what you're asking the public sector to do has scientific basis and both sides do this in different realms. Left-of-center people invoke sound science when they want to talk about climate change because they argue and believe that something called science and scientists are on their side, whatever, and we can discuss what all these words mean. But right-of-center folks in the same, in the environmental policy arena, also invoke sound science when it comes to conventional air pollution, and they argue that there are many, many studies that show that long-term exposure to X, and you feel like particulates or SO2 or whatever does not, that is, we're in a laffer-curve way of thinking about things. We're beyond the point of marginal, we're in the point of diminishing marginal returns, if you will, in ozone and particulate matter and SO2 reductions. We've cleaned up our act enough and we're now reducing things to the point that the gains in health, whatever they are, are very hard to find and, footnote, aren't worth it. They exceed the cost per life saved, maybe, and it's like, hmm, isn't that so? Both sides want to invoke something called science as the priesthood that adjudicates whether your preferences are legitimate or not. Whereas, again, if you're libertarian, it's not clear to me that, let's say, I just want the environment to be cleaner, just like I want, can't you just want the environment to be cleaner? Does that mean you're not libertarian? Well, no, it's just a preference. So should one have to scientifically justify one's preferences? I think most of us would say, no, well, no, I mean, strangely, we're schizophrenic. We sort of invoke it in the public sector, and there are parts of Cato that talk about sound science all the time. And today I want to talk about why I'm not sure that's the right way to think about things. And whereas in the private sector context, we would never ask anyone to justify their preferences to be scientifically justified. So I want to explore where I think all this comes from and provide what I think is an economic explanation of why environmental policy conflict is so intractable and talk about the role of science in that, and then talk about the Coase theorem in economics as a way to give us insight about what this conflict is about. But isn't it the fact that when we're talking about environmentalism, externalities are sort of central to a lot of these conversations? So if I think I have good scientific basis for buying fresh fruit and vegetables, and someone else thinks, I have good scientific evidence that I should buy ice cream and pizza and just eat that, I can go about saying, well, I'm going to continue buying fruit and vegetable and you can do what you want because it's not hurting me. But the difference, I think, when you're talking about environmentalism is, well, it does matter if the factory is polluting and if the person running the factory doesn't think that it's actually polluting. So there seem to be externalities at play here. And do you think that science should play a role in determining how damaging these kind of externalities are? Well, let me separate those two questions and say they're different. You've hit on something that's very important, which is the key to market provision of things and why we don't require and why we don't even think it's culturally legitimate to ask people to have a scientific basis for the purchase of whatever weird thing they want to purchase is that your purchase of something, even if I find it disgusting, it doesn't rise to the level of conflict because that's why we have the term private goods, private consumption. We have cultural stigma attached to people who are too nosy about other people's stuff. And although those walls are decreasing with urbanization. But... Well, generally, you need some sort of reason to be able to take over someone's choices that it has to do with some sort of... Right. Matthew's point reminded me of there is, I think, the fruit durian. Are you familiar with the fruit? The fruit durian? Yeah, it's called durian. It's the smelliest fruit on the planet and there are laws about not being able to eat that. It's like the gooey center of a melon. It's a Southeast Asian thing, but you need the smell to be able to interfere with someone's basic choice of what fruit they want to eat, whether it's not scientifically or not. So both of you have hit upon an important difference that is joint consumption, public goods. The trying to figure out what level of and what kind of public consumption to have requires conflict adjudication between people that doesn't exist with private goods. And you point out if the factory is consuming its... What it thinks is the appropriate level of environmental amenities, which is not many, the neighborhood disagrees, then how are we going to... What do we do about that conflict? But again, an economist would say, right, and here's where the Coase theorem comes in and things like that, which is, let's talk about property rights, who has the right to what, and then when do rights interfere, and then if we disagree, can I buy out your right to do whatever it is you think you have the right to do? And the insight of Coase was that if there are markets for trading in nastiness, then it doesn't matter who has the right to impose something on somebody else. What matters is that that right exists, that it exists, that it is recognized as legally tradable, and that then the trading can begin. And if you don't like something, you can buy out someone's right to do whatever it is they're doing that you don't like. Well, let's review that just for those who have not listened. We have some other episodes with you where we talked about the Coase theorem, but for people who have not listened to those episodes, and we'll put those links in the show notes, but to use an analogy of two neighbors or with either loud music or runoff from someone's yard or something like this where you have an externality, the idea here is that they can bargain, and it doesn't matter who has the right initially that they can bargain about, this is how much it's worth it to me to play loud music, and I'll pay you and everyone's happy, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter who actually has the right to play loud music. That's basically Coase's point, correct? That if rights exist and they're easily tradable and the initial assignment of rights is not such a large portion of one's wealth portfolio that the demand for and or the supply of that right alters one's willingness to pay that as long as the thing in question is at the margin and not it doesn't change everything, then it doesn't matter who owns the initial rights for the eventual efficient equilibrium, how much noxious whatever is present once we come to a final bargain. All that matters is that if you have rights, you are wealthier than if you don't have rights, i.e. payments flow from the person who doesn't have rights to the person who does have rights or in the alternative it flows the other way around, but in the end the same amount of odor of melancholy or sparks in the air or music you don't like or whatever that's publicly consumed in the environment, that equilibrium outcome of stuff is identical. That's the strong version of the Coase theorem. Again, it's not a claim, it's not a positive claim about how the world really works, it's rather a logical exercise so that if the real world doesn't seem to be that way, you then can infer that you must be violating one of the assumptions of the Coase theorem and therefore instructs you as to what's going on. Let me give you an example of where sound science that were initial rights didn't matter and the eventual outcome was the same and it was a policy struggle and no one commissioned Cato or Brookings or anyone else to find out what science said was the right initial allocation. Before the current digital cell phone system there was a duopoly in every city so very early cell phone technology was expensive and bulky and there were only two franchises per city, two. The rights, believe it or not, the rights to those franchises in each city were given away by the FCC in a lottery. They're about the electromagnetic spectrum rights, is what you're saying, some portion of the spectrum. There were two right, there were two franchise frequency rights per city pre-1990 and the rights to those were given away in a lottery run by the FCC and anyone could participate.  So like Mrs. Ann Mabel from Des Moines, Iowa could participate. Just like the Powerball. Exactly and some non-telecom entities won initial rights. To the FCC, to these duopoly cell phone franchise rights in major cities. But no one then invoked sound science to say that oh my god that will cause, that will alter the fate of human history and we won't have cell phones because we've just given the rights to operation of this thing to someone who doesn't know how to operate a cell phone company. The people who won, who weren't companies, you know what they did? Sold them. They sold them to the companies. So that's an example of the Coase theorem working where government decided initial rights randomly and then allowed transfers and the market worked and we had cell phones. One person was wealthier and the telecom company was poorer and there's some rent seeking that goes on to try to rig these initial, well now we have auctions and now there's sometimes there's little set aside. So there's a little politics left but basically now we just have cell phone auctions and people bid and grandmas don't win the bids. It's just not worth their time to try to, right? So contrast that with anything in the environment like should we drill in ANWAR or should we whatever? Should we have a CO2 tax or not? Or any of these conflicts? Now notice there are conflicts. Most people don't realize they're actually about the initial allocation of rights to do stuff. And I think, and here's where the positive part of my talk comes in. This is Peter's explanation of why conflict or across policy venues. The venues that has the most intractable conflicts are those that where some aspect of the coast theorem is violated. And the one thing that I think is violated in the environmental area is that the participants believe that whoever gets initial rights then won't trade them. Well I can imagine a lot of environmentalists at this point in this discussion thinking, well no amount of willing donations to some sort of environmentalist fund will ever be able to compete with BP or ExxonMobil. If they discover oil in a beautiful part of a rainforest, they're worth billions of dollars. No amount of environmentally friendly ten dollar donations are going to add up to compete with outbidding rights to that area. So what's the response here? You're right. I mean, well what you've discovered is that the good student always figures everything out before I say what it is. And the public, we're back to joint. So the whatever deal, so remember the Trevor's initial discussion of the coast theorem was a two person discussion. There are no public good characteristics to the bargain if only two parties are involved. If many parties are involved then we have the classic, so the cozy and bargain in that context itself has enormous public good characteristics. If you didn't contribute to the fund for the purchase of the rights from the entity that you wanted to purchase the rights from, if you didn't contribute but the bargain still took place because lots of other people gave to a crowdfunding source and raised money to buy out the Koch brothers or whatever. If all of that took place and you didn't contribute, you could still enjoy whatever benefits ensued from the bargain without paying. And since everyone in equilibrium- It's the non-exclusion element. I mean, even for now there are benefits of like just knowing, I mean, it's there. Aside from clean air, which you could have real benefits from. But now people think- But you can exclude whatever benefits arise from any true changes in exposure that make your health better if it's intentional or no environmental damages from CO2. If you don't participate in, as Matt said, if you don't give to the fund, but the fund still raises enough money to buy out some refineries rights to produce fossil fuels, you still benefit from that bargain and that's the free-riding problem. So what I'm trying to do here is hone, make everyone much more precise about what it is that we need to think about an environmental policy, which is, hmm, so we just need to have a more robust market for the trading of stuff. But recognize that even if that exists, only those with intense preferences who are willing to pay and hope that others benefit and they don't mind. In other words, they want the world to change so much that they're willing to pay even though they know they're righters. But notice the same thing is true now. Think of political contributions. So the fight that could be an explicit rights trading regime in a Peter world, instead of directly having a regime in which strong environmentalists and strong pro-pollution people, if I could describe them in that, in effect use their extensive wealth to buy out the rights of the other that they don't like. Instead, they all now contribute to political campaigns to have the same struggle. Yeah, I think hearing this. Even though the benefits that Tom Strayer, is that his name on the pro-environmental? Tim or Tom. And then people on our side for the opposite point of view, whatever world they create with their political contributions, you and I get to enjoy without, I've never contributed to a political campaign, but I get to enjoy or not like whatever world is created by that political fight. And so I'm, again, the economist in me says that libertarians instead of having this proxy political fight over what is a distributional wealth matter, just have rights exist and have them traded even for public goods. Because the freed rider problem exists. But I mean, if you take it seriously, I don't know why there are any political contributions. Right? In what way? Because... I thought you just explained why there would be political contributions. No. Because they can't... In other words... Oh, because everyone can free ride. They're very wealthy people supporting both the left and the right. But only sizable political contributions. I mean, a lot of people can free ride on sizable political contributions. So there'd be... I can free ride on Bernie Sanders. So if Bernie Sanders wins, I will consume whatever policy outcomes he creates even though I have not given to his campaign. But when you said you didn't know why there are any political contributions, I mean, on one level I thought we explained... In a very econ public goods oriented way of looking at the world, it's not clear why people give to things where the enjoyment of the benefits cannot be restricted to those who are giving. Well, let me rephrase this. Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but... So one thing I took from the question that Matthew asked about the fear of what would happen if the oil people were allowed to just drill wherever, is that one way you can interpret this is one of the reasons why environmentalists that are perhaps want to move something from a market question to a political question is basically because they think they'll lose the market question. Well, they think if... The following. Jerry Taylor and I once wrote an op-ed about why not give Anwar to the Sierra Club? Yeah. Give it. Just... But they own it. They have property rights to the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge. Why do the... Why do people on the right say, oh my God, that would be just horrible. Don't do that, Peter and Jerry, you're crazy. We got lots of hate mail on this. We said, that means you think they won't ever trade off any initial ownership of anything they view as sacred for any amount of money at all. Then flip it. Make them choose, basically. And flip it, which is let's have... Oil companies have property rights to Anwar. And if people are that serious...  The Kickstarter. Whatever. Crowdsourcing to raise money. And if a small contribution from enough people, Bernie Sanders style, can raise a lot of money, right? If everyone kicks in. But you're right. Both sides think... Well, at least the environmentalists who might have politicized this first, I mean, in some way, I guess the initial allocation was, but they think that they would lose. Right. And so, then they choose a different method of distribution that they think they have more influence over than a pure market distribution, be the political method of distribution. And then they give contributions because they think they can influence that more than being able to buy it out. Even though to Matt's point, both politics and raising money to buy out rights, both of those have public good characteristics. That's all I... They're free writers, as you're saying. One for the can be. Non-participants consume whatever outcome happens regardless of whether they gave or not. So is this... It does seem like environmentalists in particular speak about... I mean, it kind of kind of upset economists. They speak as if things have unlimited value and that they don't want to participate in any sort of trading because the act of trading commodifies the world and all these things like this, which is just aggravating from an economic standpoint and then they're really just using political power to try and advance their purposes. How much they want to participate in politics is their own trade-off. You say, look, how much do you really like, Antoine? You've never been, you're never going. Wouldn't you sell off some of the rights for money so you could do... You could create an endowment for environmental causes as opposed to having no money and just a mission. There is one... The Audubon Society did own... There were private wildlife bird refuges. Refugees. It's not refugees. That's it. Wildlife areas in Louisiana. We will look up the correct pronunciation afterwards. They owned... There were privately owned bird and wildlife environmental provision and they then also quietly sold drilling rights to natural gas producers in Louisiana.  Which is very unfortunate. You thought I might say that they were willing to sell, publicized because of the outrage of their primary core supporters. They found that economic-style trade-offs, a whole lot of money for a little bit of our land in return for money, the major constituents of the Audubon Society were outraged by this and shut it down. So that does not bode well for my dream of... Let's explicitly have trading of public good emission rights and let things fall where they may. Well, so I'm glad that you brought up birds because before this podcast I was thinking about environmentalists particularly concerned about this particular species and of course species move. So whales and birds migrate thousands of miles and I do hear sometimes that these sort of questions have to be answered internationally that a skeptic might think of the Vandoren solution as impractical because how could property rights be allocated among whale pods and flocks of birds and things like that. So if I want to save the whales, how does Peter Vandoren help me? Well, there are ITQ. There are fishing quota rights regimes but they are run by nations but these nations Iceland in particular has the most famous they have 200-mile zones but that's for fish that are catchable not for fish that are no that are deemed to have what's the right word characteristics as humans value so much that there's that there's strong normative shunning if you will if you like dolphins or something like that. Sealed killings by native Canadians and also Japanese whale hunts. Being cute is a very good adaptation in that regard because jellyfish don't get a lot of supporters but dolphins. No more insects. Yeah, no more insects for that matter. But I'm not surprised that we shouldn't so the but yes, Matt's right that is certain things that transcend nation states then create then you need the UN to have but again, no one wants to have the right amount of whales and then kill the right. No one's talking. I mean it's just so but for commercial fish there are nation state regimes with where biologists determine the quote optimal harvest each year given what they think they know about reproduction rates and sustainability and then those fishing rights are owned by people and then they can be sold in secondary markets and then once the catch is once you taken your catch then the fishing stops and the race to the commons is ended and overfishing ends and things. So certainly regulation my journal has published many articles on fishing transferable quota regimes and how they do and don't work. The United States is rather backwards in that regard. Iceland is the primary. Your last comment made me think well wouldn't fisherman know a thing or two about overfishing and allowing fish to reproduce so or are fishermen just particularly short-sighted? Well it's not that there's a comm. It's that take as much as you can. New England cod fishery is not of if you think that through voluntary normative behavior within a small community that could restrain the fishing to equal reproduction possibilities the data don't seem to support that. The cod are gone and they've appealed politically to when Barney Frank that was his district he represented the Fall River fishermen and he was always trying to make sure they weren't hemmed in by these kinds of schemes that I've describing and then finally it all just played out and now they're no more they're gone. I wanted to go back to the science question because we're talking about why and when should science enter public policy debates. So I'm so here's again a positive claim by me so I've asserted that what I observe is that science is invoked as an adjudicating thing in those policy conflicts where I think the parties believe that initial allocation of rights as you've said determines the eventual outcome and they and thus instead of having an explicit discussion about the distribution of wealth and who ought to have it and why instead have a science discussion which is a backdoor way to not talk about wealth and outcomes. A different way of saying so maybe we're saying the same thing but I've always thought that especially when it comes to environmental preferences that you have a very interesting problem of throughout the world preferences will butt heads. Someone will say I like tigers this much and I like tigers as a beautiful thing running through the forest and someone else as I like tigers as rugs on my floor and then the question of how do you adjudicate these disputes now one thing that we often do in public policy debates is we try to make other people's preferences our own in some way we try to say or try to change their preferences to our own and so we try and say well because on one level if you just say tigers are cool and that's like saying red's my favorite color and so you say well that doesn't really work so I need something more than tigers are cool if I want only if I'm the only person on the planet who thinks tigers are cool so I'm trying to fight against the whole rest of the world and people are killing tigers for rugs I'm the only one who thinks they're as cool as they do but I don't have that much money to actually pay or get people to be convinced to preserve the tigers so even if I try to put my money where my mouth is I can't save the tigers so my next thing is to try and change their preferences for tigers like this is how important tigers are they're not they're not just cool animals they're really important to biodiversity they're the whole world will suffer if there's a problem because they're the apex predator and there will be a problem in the food chain so other things that you care about will be undercut unless we protect tigers and now and so and my next goal if I can't act as myself in the market is to act politically and then override try and override all their preferences in some way and that's where the science can come in well it's a change from tigers are cool to tigers are really important and here's my science for why that is are we saying the same thing about the initial property rights it's it's 500 years ago kings and queens had had wizards and priests that wizards really or whatever I mean Peter is the smartest person I know so he tells me wizards existed I want to go back to that they had they had entities to whom they asked advice and expertise about when to go to war and when to do X and when to do Y and we invoked God as a reason so elites need things to get masses to go along with whatever it is they want to do and in my view science has become an opaque thing that most people don't really know how it works it's important it was the courses that they didn't do well in in high school or college and so if following two stories which is environmentalist tries to raise money to buy out the rights of fossil fuel producers to produce story number two scientists say as you said we are doomed if we don't stop this wow those are two different narratives same result my right the econ way sounds slimy and weird and we don't like them and why should we have to buy out blah blah blah and I'm saying in the FCC auction it was pretty weird who got the rights but we didn't no one said let's invoke science to say grandma shouldn't have initial allocation of telecom rights and therefore we shouldn't have to buy her out so I'm just struck as an observer that we have these different normative moral criteria about what is or isn't slimy depending on the policy venue and I'm intrigued by that then my normative prescription is I think we could lower the temperature and I also think this misuses I think science has nothing not nothing but it is a necessary input but never a sufficient input to any policy question of any kind in the end everything is costs and benefits it's well that's still why are we doing no I mean science is I am if we continue to emit in this way life expectancy will go down by three years is that a how do I want to think about that well if whatever I'm doing is really so think of smoking to many people smoking makes no sense to smokers now some smokers regret right but many smokers say I'm going to reduce my life expectancy but I actually get something out of this or it's worth it so the demographics the David Bowie's death and then other rock I mean it looks like the worst thing the worst occupation to go to if I'm a parent what don't you want your kids to do rock star rock and roll it's better to burn out than fade away it's better to burn out than fade away but you see what I'm saying so talk about the thing that reduces life expectancy the most if I read the newspaper correctly lately it's not anything it's everything that stereotypical movies about the 50s and 60 the parent the blackboard jungle the movies were right this is going to lower your life expectancy by a lot okay no one invokes I mean you see what I'm saying which is so I think the answer to everything because I'm hyper econ-oriented is to have rights for everything and to have trading for everything including things that have public good aspects to them and then the conflicts direct IE we are fighting over what collective outcome we are enjoying and that's not do it through politics let's in effect try to see how much everyone can raise to have what kind of environment and so I want the right to make the planet dirtier as well as cleaner and then let have people put their money where their mouth is and the diversion of all this money into pot to having political fights as an indirect way to create our future which is what level of pollution do you really want I just find odd and frustrating what's your take on what I sometimes call the the ignorance narrative which is people who are pro-environment will often say because you've discussed preferences is that people can't make a accurate decision about their preferences because ignorant if someone says well look people don't know what high fructose corn syrup really does to them people don't know what smoking cigarettes really does to them if I was able perhaps the legislation to inform people then we could maybe have a discussion but the fact is that people are ignorant and don't know enough to make the right choices um it's not it's a good I mean I I could go into a rant but I won't it I should take I mean I feel free no no no you are correct that that it is a common comment then we're back to we're back to science having to adjudicate what one's preferences are and actually let me give you I'm thinking on the fly here kip fiscusi right is is doctor risk he spent his entire life his dissertation was about risk is he's the guy he's the Vanderbilt he's he was at Harvard law school and now he's the professor of everything at Vanderbilt and he has spent his entire life he's the person who created what we now call the cost per life saved metric and literature that follows we've talked about that and podcast so I won't basically he infers from risky job data how much people need to be paid to accept known risks and then infers from that what how much the government should spend on publicly provided risk prevention ranging from guardrails IE very cost effective to certain kinds of OSHA things in the workplace where we reduce exposure to things that really probably don't change life expectancy IE cost per life saved of billions of dollars so you end up with this number which is it looks like from market data that people value a statistical life at somewhere between 8 to 10 million dollars so Viscusi is then interviewed we know from epidemiological data what the life reduction is for smokers we know it's somewhere in the order of 4 to 6 years then Viscusi has interviewed smokers what do you think what's the consequence of your behavior the average estimate from smokers is 20 years so they really like cigarettes is what we can pursue well yes so we've had what since 1964 my entire lifetime I've been exposed to smoking public service so we're now down to a population of smokers that is rather residual and clearly they are intensely into it because there's social negatives to do it and all that and yet they still do it so when they're interviewed by people like Viscusi that's what they come up with they think the consequences of their behavior are actually much more destructive than they are and this is on average there's a huge variance so some smokers die of 50 and some smoke and my wife's uncle was 84 and smoking in the hospital and he smoked since he was 16 I mean it doesn't imply that anywhere near the population average but big variance so if there's a at least an anecdotal policy venue where the claim that people involved don't understand how dangerous the thing is that we need to protect them from if anything they seem to be overly concerned whenever I hear this I think these people seem to imagine that people have a goal to live a zero risk life and the fact is that people like smoking and like eating the occasional donut and like playing dangerous sports and all the rest of it and that even fully you know even fully informed people can make a bad decision well subjectively my judgment would be that bad decisions we did have a I ran an article in regulation several years ago on not externalities but internalities the internalities of smoking I'm going to guess at this one treating future selves as different people that you're putting costs on that you're not familiar with about what that future self is that's because that's super philosophical and it's nifty and I like that Peter's nodding Jonathan Gruber, the health economist at MIT the famous Obama calculated that the appropriate tax on cigarettes was a dollar I'm going to I can't remember a dollar a cigarette that would make sense right yeah much much pretty high very high or was it a dollar no it has to be a dollar a cigarette I have to go back and look at the article there's twenty bucks a pack maybe we'll put that in and we had Gruber and then we had response by Viscusi and then we had Tom Fiery who was trained in philosophy the managing editor of regulation respond about what Matt's saying and Trevor which is the younger self that's risk-taking and then people of my age who are saying oh when I was young I was stupid so with the older self want to impose on the younger self some wisdom that younger self didn't exhibit and then Tom wrote about which is truer should older selves have any rights over younger selves even the same person yeah and that's outside of my league but that does get us into the question which this would be a different podcast and we have actually done an episode on this with Bill Glatt as a philosopher on libertarian paternalism but I think that we're getting very close to this not to open up a huge back of worms as we've come to the end here but basically one of the science things and maybe this tells us a lot about actually where public policy is now new paternalism which is now to tell you that your preferences are wrong because I have now sort of scientific explanations for why your preferences are wrong and saying that everyone says they want to quit and they don't actually quit so therefore we infer that they really do want to quit even though revealed preferences say that they're not quitting so now we're going to do things to them to engineer their choices to make sure that they quit smoking or eating cheeseburgers or exercise more or donate their organs or all these sort of things that seems also like an element of science in this that could be useful for public policymaking and so early because I'm so into economics what you the reason I sort of huffed initially at Matt's question was because everything in my bones say you you start with people's preferences now behavioral economics of course is is the whole raison d'etat the French word right the whole guts of behavioral economics is exactly what Matt said which is it looks like in the variety of settings venues whatever that people don't seem to know what's good for them they can't maximize the financial markets they think they are dealing with risk but they don't have life insurance they just make bad investments so let's help them out smarter people need to help them out whatever that is and so people like me say oh man no that's just we don't do that but it's not a good we need to deal with that in a whole other discussion but it is true Peter sitting here in this chair visibly quakes when you ask him about anything that says there may be preferences aren't the real preferences which I do too and so it does seem very paternalistic but I have to admit that the anomalies that the behaviorists have discovered I have to admit exist as a positive scientist I can't say oh wow savings rates are really high no they're not so just as I say nothing comes from science I think nothing comes from behavioral economics in the following sense there's no policy therefore which is for savings therefore what well then we need separate normative discussion about whether changing the default condition of a 401k sign up which I mean basically in the hallway if you ask me is there anything wrong with making people automatically sign up for saving and then they have to opt out if they don't is there any horrible mischief in that and the answer is no probably not that's okay but something else yes we'll have to we'll book right now our future episode with Peter Vandoren about behavioral economics but to wrap up this episode and finish up on the environmental question what's the takeaway here do you think well I just the so my messages is that whenever one hears sound science being invoked I want you to realize that that to me indicates the possibility of large gains to trade when one when a side says my study show what you want to impose on me is way too expensive relative to what it's worth Peter says haha then it doesn't then okay then buy them out whenever someone says they've got scientific studies on their side you just open up your checkbook and you say if you imposed your regulations on me because of your sound science it would cost me a gazillion can I pay you anything less than a gazillion to go away and be happy that's what that's the bottom line I want people to think of from from our talk today free thoughts is produced by Evan Banks and Mark McDaniel to learn more find us on the web at www.libertarianism.org


What is going on guys? Today I am back with another Destiny video and today I'm going to open 18 Treasures of the Ages packages. Now these have cost me that real life money money. I mean I brought 15. I've grinded this week for the three you can receive for three. But I brought 15. Now I know a lot of people are going to be like well why have you spent your money on this shit? It's because I want the loot. I want the loot. I'm obsessed with getting absolutely everything and I just need it and I can't wait for weeks in weeks after we have to grind. I just want, you know what I really want? I want the exotic Nolan Beyond ornament. That's the one thing I want from these 18 packages. If I don't get that I will never purchase another thing from that damn bungee store ever again.    To be honest I actually had silver left over from before which I don't have to pay like a five pound to get more two bodies packages. Probably a little bit more but still. Who cares? Who cares? Give me that Nolan Beyond ornament. What's that? I got a shader.  You can actually, well what's in my fucking, my thingy there. I got nothing full so what's this? This must be an emblem or something. What's going on here? I got another shader, Sea of Tears.  Let me get some of these as well because they're not needed. I can pick them up whenever I want. I'm not going to delete my future war cult one though because future war cult for the motherfucking win.  I'm going to apply that to what it looks like.  What's all that bullshit? Get rid of these. Get rid of that. Now let's have a look at what this is. Let's have a look at how this motherfucker looks. Let's see. Sea of Tears. Sounds good. Oh, I like it. I like it a lot.  It's like a metallic blue.  Okay, so let's go on to my, my, my, my packages. Please give me, what is an Olamian ornament called now? I can't even remember. I can't remember what it's called.  Okay, so I've got the Greaves of Triumph. You know what? To be honest, I want to open these on my hunt tab because I want this gear on my hunter. Put this on. Let's see what this looks like. I see how it looks pretty good and this is chroma shit, innit?  Yes, it is indeed. Now I'm going to open this last package. Actually, what else did I get then? Didn't I just get a sparrow? I'm pretty sure I just got a sparrow. Let's have a look. Is this a new sparrow? Is it an old sparrow? I don't even know. Whatever. Okay, so I'm going to open this last one and I'm going to switch these 15 over to my hunter, then open them on him because I want the gear on my hunter. I want the armor on my hunter.  Kickstands, there's an ornament and silver dust. Anything in my postmaster? No, there's not. That's pretty bad. That's pretty shit, to be honest. So yes, I'll transfer these over to my hunter and see you guys back here in a quick second. Okay guys, so I am on my hunter and he's looking sexy. As you can see in that Glowhoo Shader. Okay, so let's get into these packages. Let's see what we can get. Hopefully I get the armor, which I probably won't know in my look. It's pretty bad, but I want the no-lambion ornament as well. Blessing of momentum, bad dream and silver dust.  I mean, like, it's not like they're cheap.  I don't mind that.  I need, I need the ornament for the no-lambion. That's what I need. That's what I want. You at least give me armor. Please game. Please game.  Who do? Why is that for bad juju?  Is that all I got then? Is that all I got then?  These are a rip off. 13 to go. The Vowels of Moons.   Have I got my necrochasm here?  Oh, it's on my wall. Let me just quickly grab that at my boat. Right, it's not in my vault. Right, let me go on to gear manager.  Switch it across so we can see this in all its beauty. There we go.  Let's go. Let's go. Let's have a look at this bad boy. The Vowel of Moons.  It looks so badass. I meant to use this weapon to be honest, but I am looking forward to using it. Next week there's Reset.  Okay, so I'm happy with that. I've got the necrochasm on. That's pretty good. Now give me the no-lambion wonderlies. Special ups. Special ups what's that for? Me that multi-tool.  What else did I get then? It's giving me this bullshit, lad.   What does that do?  Just make space. I'm not thinking my postmaster didn't get anything else there. Oh what's this? Oh I've got a...  Oh god, badass. He looks dope. Okay, so let's go. How many packages we've got left? 11 is it? 10? 10, 11? 11. Here we go. Here we go. Shimmer. Silver dust. A flight of shadows. Come on game. Let's have a look at that fucking... It's a glow who's the only shadow I could find. That looked good. We're half decent with what I'm wearing. Let's see what we've got here. Oh I like that. Probably not good with the chrome and my future war coat gear. Probably changed that to blue. But it's still pretty decent. Let me just delete some of these to make space. Valentine's. No one likes deleting that one. Sunglow. There we go. Let's see now. I'm going to... From the 8th package is this? I think it might be. A knife. Oh I've got the helmet.   Let's see that helmet. Let's see that helmet. When does it come out at a 3? At level 3? Hey, hey, hey. You can't really see it because of my cloak. Let's put that on in a minute. Yeah, let's keep it on. Just in case. Just in case.  Is that all about?    And you get a one chroma for it. Kill me now game.  I can't believe it. Are you kidding me game? No. Not even looking.  Shock hazard is for the Zelo Supercell, but I got the ship. Let's have a look at that. You know my one's the best in the game, the slip and misfit. Let's have a look at that. The order theory.   Let's have a look at that gas.  I'm keeping it on because it's that bad.  At least see you get five silver just for that. I mean I just don't get it. And you get one chroma for that?  This game hates me. I ain't gonna get that gear now, but please give me the... No I'm going to ornament. No game.  Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me?    You know what happens, isn't that silent?   It's going to make them so mad. But I mean like it's just giving me silver and an emote. A blue emote. Not even a legendary. Not even a shader with it.     Oh man. These packages.  I mean look at that. I mean like you get into... If I could just get another emote.   These are a scam. Oh I got the grasps. I got the grasps on my last package. What am I gonna get?  I've got so much silver dust.  Shockhazard, which I don't need to have got. Special ups I don't need to have got. Hadoom, I don't need to have got.    I should have listened to easy now. I mean like he told me that they were just a scam. But Jesus, Jesus they're bad. They're really bad. And to be honest guys this is a lesson. If you haven't purchased these but you're thinking about it. Don't do it.  Do not purchase these. I mean... I said in the video ages ago that when these were first showcased on stream. Because of the contents and the amount of content you can obtain from these.      I mean I haven't spent a lot of money which I plan to do but I ain't doing it no more.  I would just have to wait for that no-lambion ornament. Wait for Zer to bring it as an exotic bundle. That's when I'll get it. But other than that guys, that is it. A lesson learned today's video.  Bullshit treasure at the age packages. Hope you enjoyed the video. Do smash that like button. I'd appreciate the support. Subscribe for daily destiny. Press that bell notification next to that subscribe button so you never miss a video and I will as always catch you on that motherfucking next one.


Yes, firstly I'd just like to say thanks for International Telecommunication Union because of invitation to be a part of this very important event. It is important because we all know that the ICT is a very, very important issue in every society in every country and every society has driven through the ICT. It is a chance to us to be with others, with representatives of the governments, of the ministers, of the regulators and the national statistic agencies and to exchange some information, knowledge and new projects in the field of measurement of the data and so on. It is so important because in Bosnia and Herzegovina we're collecting some data in relation with the several aspects. It means that we're collecting some indicators for the market analysis and for creating other analysis and maybe regulation such as mentioned Mr. Zava Zava, friendly investment regulation for the future. In Bosnia and Herzegovina we relate because there are no 4G new technology in the mobile telecommunication. It is because of some political issues. I don't like to comment that but Bosnia and Herzegovina is a merging market and we recognize that for example indicators or analyzing data, data is our future because we have big data area, we have the new aspects for the economic and digital issues and so on. The capacity is the most important for the development, all aspects in our life. For example, for the health, for the education, special education because education is the future of Bosnia and Herzegovina and other, for example, e-government, e-health and all other aspects or industries is connection with the collecting data and with the ICT measurement data and so on. Of course, because our region is an emergency market and tomorrow we will be part of the European Union, I hope.


What's up everyone it's your girl Kenzie here from Layton sports cards and I'm ripping a personal for Justin s We've got two twenty twenty-two leaf pro set metal football hobby boxes All right. Good luck Justin lots two of these in the shop. Here we go Sticking some time for himself Taking a break away It's doing all right though. That's awesome Andrew That's awesome. We love to hear hear stuff like that Congrats All right Here we go up first here for you Justin. We've got orange of Chris Rodriguez, Jr That's gonna be two out of five on the orange wave nice Next we've got blue jacquan brisker on the blue mojo that one is 13 out of 20 Jacquan brisker red white and blue cracked. I think put this down just a tad Jalini Woods Colts rookie there two of five.  Sorry seven of 30 Tyler baby And this one's sick. I haven't seen this one lit. I like that Matt Corral That one is seven of 25. Yeah, I have not seen that parallel.  I Like it. All right solid first box there now time for the second one. Good luck Nice one to start off the top. Wow Up first, how about it Anthony Richardson? Nice hit there Justin 14 of 35 One of the first couple quarterbacks predicted to be taken in this upcoming draft Kind of a blue color match there too with Florida. Thank you Nice way to start this box. Then we've got pro set prospector main Johnson the second Five out of 50. Oh, yeah For sure pac-man. Uh black parallel Xavier Hutchinson 10 of 20 Sick, how about a silver mojo tanner mckay? 23 of 25 We've got orange cape on tibet oh five out of 10 This one there looks like he signed with a sharpie on that one on that sticker And the last one here for you Justin redemption. How about a chrysalové?  So good luck on that Alrighty Justin, that'll do for your two boxes there. Congrats. Thanks so much and we'll get these right out to you