All right, we're recording. Go ahead. Okay, so. Hi everyone. I am Rajat, a host of an Orthodox libertarian theology. And today I have one of the best libertarian philosophers with me, Stephen can sell out. Would you like to introduce yourself. Hey, yeah, this is Stefan can sell out. And yeah, I agreed to do the podcast because seems like a good thing to do why not. I'm a libertarian patent attorney here in Houston, Texas, a long time writer and I'm a student of the Austrian school of an Austrian and Rothbardian anarchist anarcho capitalist or libertarian and have written a lot on intellectual property rights theory, law and economics, libertarian legal theory, things like that. My first question to you, sir, is about like normative ethics. So how do you approach libertarianism from which kind of normative ethical theory or approach do you take. Yeah, that's interesting. I think the classical way that people think about it is, are you a the ontological. Utilitarian I think that's kind of one way people boil it down, which means do you believe in kind of an a priori natural law type approach, or natural law, or more of a consequentialist pragmatic approach. I have never thought that there's a big distinction. I think that, like as I ran said that the purpose of morals is to guide our lives to live our lives which is a practical thing in the world. So I always think that the moral is the practical, but ultimately I'm a principled libertarian, which means I believe that we have rights. So I'm a rights based libertarian I think we have rights I think we can demonstrate that with a variety of reasons and arguments. But when we talk about libertarianism, we have to identify what it is we believe and then why we believe it and then how we justify it. And I think that what we believe is basically, we believe in a set of interpersonal norms, which are laws, which are basically property rights designed to enable us to live among each other. With a minimum of conflict, and we do that by assigning ownership rights to scarce resources, which are the types of things over which there can be conflict. So that we know who the owner is so that we can avoid conflict if we want to and then we can have trade and long term production and peace and prosperity, things like that. But these rules also have to be assigned in a just or fair way. So that people could accept them as fair, because if they're just arbitrarily asserted or posited or taken by force, then it's no better than having no rules at all in the first place. So libertarianism is the is the belief system, the political philosophy which believes that the only just laws or rules or property rights are those based upon the core sort of lock in classical liberal ideas of property rights and appropriation and assignment, which is basically original appropriation, or homesteading some people call it, and then contractual title transfer because, you know, if you own something because you appropriated it from the state of nature then you can assign it to someone else so those two principles. Those are original appropriation and contract or the core principles of libertarianism. Now, bound up with that is the idea of consent because that's what ownership means ownership means that the owner of a resource once you've identified the owner. He has the right to consent or to deny consent to other people to use the resource that's what it means to own something. So that's sort of the core set of principles and then if you understand economics and history and a little bit about human nature and politics you'll understand that the state itself is inherently aggressive that is inherently criminal and not necessarily unjust. So this leads to anarchy, the anarchist, the anarchist type of libertarianism. Now, as for how you defend these principles. That's a whole different topic, but yeah, so the ontological approach would be, we can know these basic truths, their natural rights which come from natural law. It's actually like the rights based view, and then the more pragmatic or empiricist or utilitarian or consequentialist point of view is, well we just want to have rules that make everyone better off. So, now I happen to think that the, the natural rules, the natural principles that libertarians adopt in order to reduce conflict to let us live together in peace and harmony and prosperity. You could say that that is also that has good consequences, and I think it obviously has we can illustrate that by looking at history, the more closely. The more righties adhere to these principles, the more prosperous and peaceful and happy the people are. So I think they naturally go together, but I would oppose you to strict utilitarianism for several reasons because it's it's more of a consequence of following principle rules that are just rather than the basis of them. And also, there are flaws with utilitarianism. If you look at the introduction to Randy Barnett's book The Structure of Liberty, he tries to distinguish between consequentialism and utilitarianism. And I think he does a decent job there. Consequentialism just means that there are good, there are certain consequences that follow from certain actions, or certain sets of rules. And that good consequences follow from respecting other people's rights. So consequentialism I think is compatible with and complementary to a principled approach to libertarianism, whether those principles come from a natural law approach, which is deontological, or whether they come from a sort of a similar approach like Hanserman Hoppe's argumentation ethics which is more of a transcendental approach of trying to justify these principles with a somewhat somewhat different approach than has been taken by natural law proponents, but the problem with utilitarianism as sort of a subset or a type of consequentialism is that well, number one, if you can make one person better off by hurting another person, it's still wrong. Okay, so it's still just unjust. But number two, you can't know if the sum total of utility is better, is higher, greater or lower because you can't sum these things up. There are no cardinal numbers attachable to them because collective welfare is not interpersonally comparable. Value according to the Austrians is the way we describe the fact that you can demonstrate your preference for something by your actions. So value can only be ordinal that is, you can rank them, but you can't sum them up as some kind of quantity, and you certainly can't compare them interpersonally.  But if I just redistributed to, you know, 10,000 poor people, then the sum total of their utility gains is greater than that harm done to the billionaire, you can never do that because there's no numbers you can attach to these things. So there are many and there's some obviously intuitively outrageous results you would get if you applied a serious if you seriously applied utilitarianism like you could say, let's suppose we develop technology that allows us to take one eye from a seeing person and give it to a blind person. So you could you could make a plausible argument that, you know, if you take one eye from a seeing person, you hurt them, but they can still see. Okay, but if you give that eye to a totally blind person, their whole world is opened up and now they can see. So you could say that the good done to the blind person is orders of magnitude greater than the harm done to the seeing person. So then you could justify, you know, forcibly capturing people tying them down and taking their eyeballs out of their heads and I think most of us will reject that. But there's no grounds to reject it on utilitarian grounds because it would be an obvious utility gain net utility gain. So it's just ethically wrong. And it's methodologically flawed according to Austrian ism. So that's the problem utilitarian utilitarianism consequentialism is more like a pragmatic view that rules that are principled and that respect justice. And, and they reflect the nature of the world just being a world of scarce resources, where there can be conflict, and where we assign rules and in a, in a, in an honest attempt to let people live among each other in peace and prosperity and trade and harmony and all that. So that would tend to lead to good consequences because, you know, once you're secure in your possessions you can produce more, you can have long term projects, and you can trade with other people and every trade. That's a voluntary consensual trade generates ex ante gains because both sides are better off. That's why they engage in the trade. So once you have property rights respected, there's every reason to expect that this will lead to better results. And consequences will be good. And there's nothing wrong with with recognizing that if we if we lived in a kind of a chaotic evil demonic world where somehow being principled admit we would all suffer and get worse and worse than I think that we just live in a world where the expression is, you know, peace is possible. This piece is not possible in such a world. But I think we live in a natural world. I don't know if I'm Ram was right when she called it the benevolent universe premise like we live in a benevolent universe I think it's kind of neutral. But I think there's no reason to think that natural beings like us which evolved in the natural world. And we're intelligent and rational have goals and values that we can't find a system of rules among each other to live in peace and to benefit from living with each other, rather than to always be governed by just the mere fact of living among other people. It has to be better. It has to be able to be better to live in society than to have to be a hermit and live on your own which is not really possible anyway anyway that's kind of an overview of how I approach these things. That's great. That was a lot. So I want to talk about some like exceptional cases with these normative ethical theories or approaches, you know. So, for example, with rights based approach. I mean, I also like I consider myself a deontologist, you know, I also prefer the rights based approach. And like some of the exceptional cases when we are thinking about right low like for example trace trace passing like suppose in in in a hypothetical thought experiment right. You someone had to like get this one one speck of grass to the aliens or they are going to like destroy the world. And, and the owner of that land, who had a lawn, didn't know, or did not give you permission to take that grass spec. So are you justified in taking the grass spec to save the world. You know, so like what would be like your response or how would you kind of resolve in your deontological approach. Well, I think so one thing I would say is, when people dream up these scenarios, what's the purpose of the thought experiment. Is it, is it to really solve a real problem or is it to try to find holes in a theory. And I think, I think what people are trying to do is sometimes they're trying to test it just the borders are trying to try things out. And that law emerges as basically the elaboration of these basic principles I mentioned earlier so so the basic principle would be you know the first person who uses an unknown resource is the owner. And then, if he transfers it to someone they're the owner, those are the two core principles. The reason for those principles is that if there's an unknown resource, no one else can complain if some first person starts using it because if they complained about it, they would be asserting an ownership claim, but they don't have an ownership of it because it's the presumptively unowned. So there can be no objection to people using unknown things in the first place. And once you have the right or the unobjected to write to start using the thing for the first time, then you have it until you let go of it, because if you don't, then we don't have property rights at all we just were back to force. If you're searching for rules at all property rules mean that the owner is the owner, which means he owns it, compared to late comers or someone who tries to take it from him. So that means so once you establish sort of like the regression theorem and money for Mises, you can do the same thing with properties like if you believe in property rights at all you have to trace it back to the first time the resource was used when it was used. So, original appropriation is sort of a principle that it's hard for anyone to coherently object to, and then contract is a second thing once you own it. You can let go of it and abandon it, which means you no longer own it and it returns the state of nature, or you can give it to someone else with consent. Just like I can permit someone to use my body, or I can permit someone to use my car, or my home, or I can deny them that right. I can permit them to have it, not just temporarily, like a loan, or borrowing it or temporarily using it but I can give it to them forever that's what contract would be I can completely transfer the title to someone. So these are the principles of the core principles, but how they work out in society is always decided when two people have a real dispute over resource. And remember these two principles arise because we live in a world where disputes are possible. That is conflict over resources as possible. But whenever there's a real dispute in the world people in the real world have to have a real decision to decide who wins. If they don't want to solve their dispute with force and just fighting each other, then they have to go to some kind of court or tribunal or neutral third party to help decide who owns it based upon previous development of the law so over time the law develops in this way so the point is law doesn't develop by philosophers sitting around dreaming up ridiculous hypotheticals it develops in response to real problems and so over time you have more and more nuances and rules, which means that when you pose a hypothetical quite often they're, I call it armchair theorizing. So if you say well, what about the blade of grass for example the example you gave. You're sort of assuming or you're not detailing what are the background rights and understandings, you know, maybe this guy lives in a society where he owns his lawn. But he's agreed to allow it to be used for emergency uses by contract or by custom. So I don't know so so it's hard to fully specify the hypothetical to answer it so that's one problem there. The other thing is I also would do a comparative analysis.  They're just confused, or they don't understand it and they have real questions but sometimes they just are arguing tendentiously and they want to find a way to show that following libertarian rules religiously would result in bad outcomes in some in some cases we call these life boats and emergency situations or lifeboat scenarios right or the one you gave. But the thing to keep in mind is. The purpose of rights is to deal with the normal case in life and if we can't deal with the normal case in life we can't hope to deal with the extraordinary cases. I ran made a similar point. But number two the question is, well how would your, your alternative system handle this so let's suppose we have a socialist world, or a totalitarian world or a theocracy, you know or a fascist world. You can always come up with a hypothetical where the outcome is horrible like two guys are on a boat and sinking and only one can stay in the boat. So one of them has to die. So libertarianism is not going to solve that problem. Okay, with democracy wouldn't solve it either. Right. So it's not a criticism of libertarianism that tragedy can happen, and that sometimes bad things happen. Now, so in your situation to get back down to it. What I think would happen is someone would pluck the blade of, blade of grass and give it to the aliens to keep the world from being destroyed. And if the owner sued. I can imagine a few responses. Number one. What's his claim of damages because if it hadn't happened he'd be dead. So, is he claiming, you know, that he shouldn't be alive. He'd be dead of grass. I mean I'd say it's better to be alive having had one little thing stolen from you than to be dead so his damages would be negative or no number one in any real system.  Maybe what jury is going to convict the guy that stole or maybe the guy was maybe the community will just, they'll all contribute to the, to the, to the thief to his defense fund and they'll all pay that you know they'll all give the guy $1,000 each and he'll have $10 million and he'll he'll be paid for his, for his damages by the community. You know, most realistically probably the guy would allow it so I don't, why would someone not allow it, you know. So, I guess that's my approach. So my approach is that if you can come up with scenarios that seem unjust. That could be the case where law breaks down and where peace is not possible. It could be the fact that libertarianism and a just set of rules can't stop all tragedies. It could be the case that an alternative legal and political system wouldn't do any better in most cases or even in this case. And, you know, so I don't think it shows. Ultimately, I ultimately with some people come up with these questions, I want to say, listen, our core principle is that we think aggression is unjustified and aggression means the unconsented to use of someone else's property, their resource without their permission. So I think that in general, if you use someone's body without their permission, it's unjustified, it's a crime. And likewise if you use their reach their property without their permission is it's a crime. That's my position. It's not a counter argument to say, well there might be a case where the space aliens want to destroy the earth, you know, okay, until that happens can we at least have property rights on the earth so we can live in peace and prosperity, when we don't have the aliens menacing us. The argument is made by, by some Christians or some theists who say that, well, you claim you own yourself or you own your body but really God owns the whole universe. So you don't really own anything it's like this Native American thing where oh we don't really own the earth we're just passing through blah blah blah. Okay, well on the mortal sphere among other humans in society from among equals you know human beings other human beings. Can we at least say that we have property rights in the in the land and trees and resources and our bodies, even if ultimately in some sense up in heaven God really owns us and we're really slaves to God. We've got to talk about real worlds in the real world that apply among humans on the same mortal plane. Yeah, I mean, so, generally, I think so the divine command theorists generally say that since God is the one who made you and he has like he pretty much owns you. And any like breaking any of his laws is infinitely unjust. So we have a strong reason to, you know, basically obey whatever commands or laws that God has stated so for example this is this is one of the reasons they present to like ban the alcohol, you know, like for example in suppose traditional traditionalist Islamic countries right. They ban the alcohol, and they also ban any kind of freedom to you know like LGBT rights and any kind of like freedom to even make certain forms of like TV shows or movies they ban. They, I think also ban drugs they ban prostitution and all that like when their basis is that that God commanded this and a breaking any of God's command is a major major sin deserving of infinite punishment. So, the stakes are already extremely high for breaking any command. So we are justified in in in prohibiting these things. Yeah, so this is what the general approach. The way the way I look at that is, it depends upon what your goal and your values are. So, if you're interested in human justice on this earth, then the reasons the considerations libertarians give, I think are relevant. You're not interested in that and you have something else in mind, like appeasing some higher entity up there, and you don't care about doing justice on the earth or you don't care about respecting people's rights because it's outweighed by some higher goal. There is logically no different than the mentality of a criminal or or or or a tyrant or a dictator. Basically, a criminal is someone, even if they're aware of arguments for even if they sympathize with some arguments for rights and things like that. They just don't care. They would prefer to use force to override your rights and to violate your rights. So I would say logically that's what these guys are doing they're willing to violate your rights. For the sake of some other goal. So in that respect, as Hans-Henry Hoppe writes, you have to just regard them as what I would call a mere technical problem because other animals or other things on the earth can be dealt with as natural phenomena, or as other reasoning beings. And if they're reasoning beings, and they have enough common values, you can appeal to their shared values and their reason and you can say, you can appeal to that you can you can make arguments you can say, I know you want to use my land or I know you want to use my body. But here's the reasons why you should respect my rights, just as you claim rights in your own property in your own body. And that works with most people because we have civilization in society because that does appeal to most people. But there are some people for whom reason they're beyond reason they don't care about reason they don't care about fairness or justice. So in that regard there's nothing more than an intelligent animal. So they're a technical problem and they have to be dealt with as just by technical means like defending yourself, killing them, moving away from them, trying to try to prevent them from having power. So there's no claim that merely identifying what's right and wrong from our principles will physically prevent other people from violating those rules. I mean, it is possible for rights to be violated. And that is one mistake a lot of people make. And I think there's a mistake that these these religious societies make they, they're not really dualistic in the sense of realizing there's a difference between teleology and causality, or between description and prescription. This is a flaw in the minds of a lot of libertarian activists I think we know they, you know, some people don't participate in it because they see that running around telling people, what's wrong isn't working. So they think that it's pointless. So they had this false idea that if, if, if, if identifying a moral truth doesn't result in the right results, then it's not true. See, they're kind of a monist they're kind of a they're logical positives almost. And with these religious people.  And the purpose of interpersonal human laws, which only has to do with wind force is justified. So, you know, you can believe that prostitution or blasphemy or gambling or alcohol is immoral. And you shouldn't do it and you can even believe that if you do do it you're going to suffer in the afterlife, or even in even in this life. But it doesn't mean that using force against someone with laws to stop it is justified.  Generally, I think the argument I see is for like prohibition is that, look, you do not want your kid to end up in eternal hell, right.   So, Well, it's not unjust in the same meaning because unjust means basically it means you're violating someone's rights. So, you can't say it's violating God's rights because God is too different and powerful from us. You don't have the capacity to hurt him really. Yeah, so you can't say it violates God's rights to do something he doesn't want you to do. So I can't, I don't know how you can say it's unjust in the same sense that we mean, you could say that it's a sin. But all that means is that you're doing something that is immoral, according to God's divine wisdom. And maybe that he will, that will result in certain consequences to you like you're going to be denied the blessings of God's presence in the afterlife, or even now right. So there could be consequences for acting a certain way, but I don't, I don't know if the word just is what I would use there. I think they would probably say like it's, it's, it's like, when you say like, unjust, like when they use the word unjust, they would say like breaking any God, any command of God is unjust so they are pretty much using a kind of perhaps different definition of I think it is different I think they mean you shouldn't do it. Yeah, you shouldn't do it. Yeah, that that's one thing like you have this, like, strong moral reason because God commanded that. Or maybe they mean God's justice sort of informs has to inform all of what are our mortal and human laws and justice are about. But the other problem with that reasoning is it sort of simplistic it assumes that it assumes that law is the is the best or even a good way to achieve something, and it's not always. So for example, let's suppose our goal was to have a society where alcohol use was minimized. It's not clear that just passing a law prohibiting it is going to do it. And it might cause more problems than like like any religion that prohibits alcohol is also going to permit crime and murder, right. So, but we know from the experiment in the US when we had alcohol prohibition. When you prohibit it number one people keep drinking so you haven't stopped it. You might have reduced it somewhat. But number two, you also cause the you cause the criminal gangs to emerge and which causes all kinds of other problems which also prohibited by by God's law. It's not clear that the solution, when you identify something that is a divine act, unjust actor or set or set of practices. It's not clear that that should be made part of the of the of the law.  Is it clear that that's what God's law would want. Yeah, and I mean, I think. So, the thing with like prohibition as you said like it makes activities go underground and more dangerous to be dealt with and basically more people would die from these activities.  So what I'm what I'm saying is there's there's no clear reason to think that such a law would do that because you might create a whole class of people that are murderers so they're going to hell now because there are murderers and criminals, right the bootleggers and all the all the gangs. So, you've created it you've increased a number of people going to hell, in one respect. And you might have only slightly reduced it in the other so I mean I guess you could do some kind of moral utilitarianism and try to sum up.  How can you know this kind of stuff. So the only way to know it is to live by principles. So we have the principles and try to respect rights, and we know that if you have a set of principles that are oriented around the goal of having people live in peace and prosperity. That's going. There's every reason think that's going to be conducive towards increasing the amount of peace in society, and the more peace there is, the better people are and the less of them will go to hell and commit sin so you. There's all these arguments but there's no reason to think a bunch of priests are going to be experts in this legal science it's not it's not a question of morality or religion. It's a question of legal science then and once you get into legal science. We're talking about mortal justice right and we're talking again about what's just and what can be justified and you simply can't justify violently harming someone because of some higher goal. Because again logically speaking, every criminal has a higher goal. He's willing to violate your rights into district to break the breach of peace, because he has a he has a higher value he values his own gains. But that's the same as these people that pass these laws for religious reasons to make people better off they want to help people, but still they have a value that's other than peace and prosperity and freedom.   Yeah. I mean, so how do you like, perhaps, kind of maybe like persuade the, the tradition is to kind of you know see what our side or you know, appreciate. Now that now that's a that's a whole different issue. How do we persuade people. I mean, one approach would be, you know, just point to the natural law tradition of John Locke I mean John Locke had a whole argument about how he tried to combine sort of a the a theism with natural rights he said look God. God is up there and God is all good and God is all knowing and all that, but he gave us the earth to use. What you try to do is you try to anchor the core libertarian principles of initial or original appropriation in like God set us up that way he gave us ownership of our own bodies. And he gave us ownership of the animals and the and the fields and the unknown things. So you could say that. Let's suppose you go to a concert or a movie or an Apple store and you have to wait in line and queue for something. Everyone respects the rules of that venue when they're forming up to buy their tickets, they get in line. Now, it's not really an actual property right because you're standing on property owned by the, the venue or something like that. But the owner of the venue sets up or allows to be set up within that kind of a microcosm of property like rules like everyone stands in line, like that's sort of like a property right your place in line. Likewise, I think you could imagine that the entire earth, even if God owns it and God owns us and we're all slaves to God and all this. Still within the rules of the of this big game God set up within that rule God set up basically libertarian rules, because God does believe in peace. He does believe he opposes violence. He opposes sin and all these things, but I don't see any reason you could argue any good just God that most sensible religions believe in is opposed to the idea of people living in harmony and peace and prosperity. That's the whole point of all the great religions right. I guess that's one that's one response. The other is I mean I know, like some of my friends have written books, trying to explain why, like to Christians for example why libertarianism is the one political philosophy that is most compatible with the ethics of the Bible of the Christian Bible. And I assume people have made similar attempts for Judaism and Islam and other religions. Like, most of a keel who has written libertarian book, you know, to support the libertarian view of the world. Yeah, and like now personally I also believe in God. Now, I think God is loving, kind, you know compassionate, and just right now. I do not think he's going to like punish people for like consensual like punish people forever in eternal hell with great with great suffering and misery forever for like, like consensual actions, right which which do not harm anyone. I mean, if there is any harm that harm is like very minute like perhaps two people are boxing. Right. The harm is not perhaps that much great so it so generally I says, look, it does not seem like God is going to be.  Well, but but you, the question really would be, and I'm not a, I'm an atheist okay but but I'm willing to go with this metaphor or whatever this paradigm but the question is, would God be angry at a society that did not have a law against alcohol use. Or would he be angry at a society that did have alcohol prohibition, he might be angry at that, because he might think it's unjust to use force against people who are innocent, he might prefer them, I mean he did give us free will, which means he gave us the ability to send. Right. He didn't remove our ability to send so we have the free choice the ability to send. And when you impose a law to stop you from doing something just because it's bad for you to do it. You're trying to like almost prevent people from having the choice. If we lived in a society with 100% effective laws where the state had these micro robots and they could just instantly prevent you from violating any law they passed.  You have to be hard working. If you can pass a law for every one of those things and it can be enforced, you'd be just a robot you wouldn't even have the ability to do evil, which means you wouldn't have the ability to do good. I would argue that laws that prevent you from doing things that are immoral and only immoral. Take away your agency and prevent you from being moral. To be moral you need to have the ability to choose immorality and then to choose not to. So that would be one response right. And the other would be imagine this so we pass a law tomorrow that says alcohol is illegal, but the font the penalty is. We're not going to have a big police force policing it so it's really easy to not get caught, and the penalty if you get caught is like a $20 fine. Okay, so it's illegal but the penalties very low. Well it's not going to dissuade very much alcohol use right. Yeah, so you could also have the most draconian sanctions you could have, you could hire half the population as policemen running around looking for alcohol use. And you'd have to tax everyone into oblivion to do that, and have tons of jails and you can even make it capital pun you could say, if you're caught with with even a tiny bit of alcohol, you're going to be executed right away. Yeah, you could have that. And that would probably wipe out alcohol it probably wipe out society to but you could do that. The point is, you have a wide range of options and what the law would be. It's not just binary law or no law. It's a legal response to the issue. And there's no way that that theology or religion can tell you which you should have. You should have a minor penalty, a medium penalty, or a strong penalty. There's no, there's no principle answer to that. So, if there's no principle answer to that that means that God would probably be okay with any of them. Well, he'd be okay with a light punishment, but if he's okay with a light punishment. Why wouldn't be okay with it not being illegal at all and just having it up to social ostracism and moral conventions and moral advice. You know, there's it's what I'm saying is it just doesn't follow from the idea that something is immoral, according to God's eternal commands that there should be a law. It just doesn't follow. It doesn't mean God wants there to be a law. Yeah, yeah, that's, that's true. I think they also have like a book of law right they like so not Christians perhaps like the traditionalist traditionalist Muslims do have a book of law, you know it's Sharia, right.  So, if like God already made those laws so you have to follow them or will you will be punished in the afterlife, or something like that so according to them, they already have the law it's not just immoral. It's, it must be legal based on the God's command, you know, the, you know, the justice, justice system, you know. Already having the laws not I mean that doesn't mean it's justified so the question is, if you come up with a set of laws that violate individual human rights is it justified or not and the answer is not well, as long as it's been around for a long time it's justified. So I would say still unjust.   I don't know let's say 10% 20% whatever it is.   So in a way you're doing a good thing. So you should be rewarded you should go to heaven. I mean, the whole thing is absurd it's like dividing by zero if you want to divide by zero you can get any results. I assume these irrational principles. And they're irrational in the sense because they're, they're assumed to be absolute and just arbitrarily decreed somehow. I mean how we get them is one thing but he said okay it's in the Hadith. It's in the Sharia.  It's an announcement of divine knowledge. And once you have this absolute knowledge, then rational discourse is impossible. Because if you say well, this law is justified because God told me it was. How can I argue against that. I can say well according to lucky and theory and libertarianism it's blah blah blah. They'll say it doesn't matter. God told me there's there's no arguing. You have the question they're like pretty much God right there epistemology like how, how do they know that that God actually commanded them, how do they know that it is what what has to be done or something. You know, we have a big debate among secularists and libertarians and thinkers about whether theology and theism is even compatible with with libertarianism and with reason. Most traditionalists think that they compliment each other and one flows from the other or really they think that they think that reason, human reason flows from, you know, God's divine grace and the scriptures the Bible, all this stuff, but, you know, the Iran people the atheists, the secularists, they think that basically there's there's a tension between one side and the other ones irrationalism and one's rationalism or one's reason and one's irrationalism. And humans are actually pretty good at compartmentalizing and going to church on Sundays and believing ridiculous stuff, but the rest of the time they don't really believe it, you know.  They don't really quite believe what they say, I think I would say like, so to be charitable to them.  One escape route for them would be that if you do that, then God can still like the soul, the control of the soul of that baby is still by God so he can send that soul to somewhere else, so that the soul can practice its free will, you know. So, you weren't just be damning yourself. Well fighting the hypo yeah that's fighting the hypo I mean I don't know of any theology that has a gives people such power that they can. They can make God put these poor early murdered babies into a special room to live an alternative life and HBO sitcom or something you know, but okay sure you can say that you could you could you could deny the. You could deny the hypo, but, but you know, I think lots of terrorists, they say things like that like oh they know they kill innocent civilians but the ones that are holy and good will God will take care of them anyway I mean people do all kinds of outrageous things in the name of allegedly spiritual principles. I mean, this is why like, I think theology, like, just based on like reasoning, I think it is compatible with libertarianism I mean I believe in God and I am, I'm like, mostly dealing with philosophy of religion, you know, mostly reading the works here. And I do read like libertarian works you know like Robert knows a mark the mark the right man Danny Frederick and David Friedman and your work, I really really appreciated your work for with intellectual property. So, like, really like if you have encountered some of the, like, have you ever encountered the traditionalists who are arguing in favor of these prohibitionist laws, what have you like have you ever like talked to them like how what. Well, most people I know that they are, they just, they're just not libertarians that they, they, they don't distinguish morality from from from justice basically so most people are so and partly it's because of the world we were born into we're born into a world with an advanced state and a large democracy and a world with an outpouring of legislation and laws where every little thing someone wants. And probably the government to get a law passed in their favor. So we're used to a world now where I mean I had this conversation with my grandmother before she died a long time ago. Simple country lady nice lady but I asked her I said, I said, do you think that drugs should be illegal. She said yes, I said why she says people shouldn't do drugs. You see those are not the same thing. I might even agree people shouldn't do drugs. But it's not the same question is it should be illegal so when you collapse morality or law into morality and you think that everything this immoral should be made illegal. The converse also happens which is dangerous which is legal positivism, which is the idea that law comes from someone decreeing what the law is. Rather than us discovering what the law is by the application of reason and integration with ethical principles and history and experience and that kind of thing. So in other words, if you start thinking. If you start equating law and morality, which is implied by this idea that everything that's immoral we should make illegal or at least the serious things right alcohol prostitution pornography blasphemy, that kind of thing. You start collapsing morality and law into each other, then you make the other mistake and that is if the government passes a law that implies that whatever their prohibiting is wrong. So if the government says it's illegal to pay someone less than a minimum wage, then it's immoral to not pay someone a minimum wage. So they start taking their lead from what the legislator says, which is basically just a mortal set of fallible human beings with their opinions, but because they have the power of the government, they can make law. But because people think of law morality is linked together. You know, people say this even let some of the parents say this like for example the intellectual property issue, because a lot of libertarians are not anarchists like me they're, they're limited government types, and they tend to be American and they tend to worship the Constitution. And they admit the Constitution is flawed but they think it's roughly a semi libertarian document. So if I say well intellectual property is unjust. Quite often I'll hear someone say, Well the Constitution authorizes it. Yeah I know, I know the Constitution authorizes it, but that's like saying we should abolish slavery and your responses, but slavery is legal. It's like I know I'm saying we should abolish it because it's wrong, because I have a standard of morality and justice outside of the law. Which, which religion, religious people should appreciate because in theory they imagine that there's a higher law up in God's mind or God's realm or, or something. But the point is that normal mortal human law and lawmakers and kings all these people, they're all subject to an outside standard of, of right and wrong. I disagree on where that standard comes from. Like, does it come from God. I think if you say God it comes from God that pushes it back one level is legal positives and to another level because what you're saying is, God can decree now I think there's some confusion among among theists because some people say God is good. Right. I mean maybe you would say God is good. Yes, but when you say that do you mean that God is good by definition, because whatever good is is whatever he says. Or do you mean he happens to be conformed to an external set of criteria called goodness, and we're lucky that we live in a world where the God that happens to exist happens to be a good one. But he's good because he conforms to an external standard that he can create. So God could not make murder. Good. He could punish you for not committing murder, or whatever if we had a wicked God he could punish you. Yeah, tell you but but he couldn't make two plus two equals five and he couldn't make contradictions true and he can't make right wrong. So the even by a serious theological standpoint. Even God is not the source of goodness. He is compatible with it, but he doesn't make it. Yeah, the peace response and perhaps I should say my response would be that like God. God's nature is good. You know, now. Of course, the question is why is God's nature the way it is. That's a different question. Yeah. Yeah, the response is that God's nature is necessary. God's necessarily perfect. Correct. So, but even then he's he's complying with an outside standard of goodness. He might have to be good. It's possible to have an evil God, maybe, but, but the point is, goodness is a standard that's not just his decree put it that way. It's not just what he like you. If you're correct then you couldn't have a God that could decree dishonesty and wickedness to be bad to be good. Yes, he can. It's inconceivable. Yes, he cannot do that. So from that point of view, that perspective is one where there's an external standard of good to us on the earth, and we can evaluate laws and practices compared to that standard. So we can say, this law is either good or bad because it's either just or it's not just in accordance with a higher set of values. So just because the Constitution says copyright is is authorized doesn't mean that it's just because that's just the opinion of a bunch of humans who wrote this document. And their word can be false. It can be incompatible with the higher natural law. Yeah, so I mean, to us, we discover these these God's commands in my view like I'm not religious. So I'm pretty much going by. I thought wait I thought you said you believe in God. Yes, I believe in God but I'm not religious like that's the thing. What's the difference. So religious I would say like generally seem to be people who subscribe to certain forms of religion and they believe in a certain book or scripture and they believe laws that are divine revelation basically they believe in a specific divine revelation that this is revealed by God. I believe that God yes God exists God is good and the way we discover these moral laws or the way we, maybe, like, think about this is not through divine revelation. I think the religious these some of my friends who are religious these they say that you can discover some of God's commands and laws by reasoning and also by divine revelation. Right now I currently say that just use reasoning. Well, well that's that's the idea of like so they according to iron Rand and these types which I tend to agree with is the idea of faith versus reason so faith. If you look at it strictly faith is supposed to be a way of gaining knowledge, other than reason, and reason would include like logical thought and reasoning and empirical evidence right. So are the evidence of the senses plus our reasoning process. According to Rand, the only, the only source of knowledge is is reason and evidence and I tend to agree with that. It can't be a source because faith is just believing something for no reason. I do not like define faith that way like faith is, I mean, I'm not going to define it because I mean it's that's a different thing and I'm not sure that much about faith, but I, but I would you just said you reject you reject divine revelation so I'm seeing a parallel there to to to the just said it's just said it's only reason so that's kind of the realistic Randian view. Yeah, yes, that's. Yes, I agree with that know what I was saying that like there are different definitions of faith basically the divine revelation piece, you know the religious treaties say that. Like Calvinist would say that the faith is response to God, like when Holy Spirit works with you, and something like that and it's knowledge, faith is knowledge. Now, some other piece would define faith differently they might define as a hope, you know, or something like that or trust, trust, trust, you know, trust. Like, you know, he would say like take a leap of faith or something like that you know it's some kind of trust. Yeah, I mean, so now I think libertarianism is compatible with the view that I hold of God.  But you said you believe in God, but you reject divine revelation so. How do I do that. Right. You said, while I'm saying well, why do you believe there's a God. So the reason why is that there are like arguments for the existence of God, you know, like contingency argument. Yeah, yeah, yeah, stuff like that. So I think those arguments are persuasive. I'm persuaded by them. But they only, they only prove something. They only purport to prove something very general vague. They don't prove there's a personal God they don't prove that. So these stages of their arguments from what I read. So one stage is the stage one is basically to prove or argue for unnecessary being a final a final cause or something like that. Yeah, you could on an ultimate and ultimate cause I mean, like, yeah, you could say something like that. And the stage two basically argues that this being is benevolent, or good. You can even argue you can even argue that but that's still not the same thing as a personal God intelligence maybe another thing but certainly not the classical conception of God that in Islam and Judaism and Christianity. I think I don't use these arguments to get to that kind of God. Yes, that's true. And I think Aquinas acknowledged that he said that, right. He said that like natural theology can only perhaps get you to some kind of a good God but it's not going to get you to Jesus, right. Correct. Or some or Islam or something like that. Or even even a loving God or something like that. That's even that's harder to know. I would probably dispute that because neverland is one thing but but loving is a whole different thing that implies too much human characteristics to this entity, whatever he is. I would say like goodness seems to would involve like generosity, kindness, love and these like so so there's a disc there are different models of God there is classical theism then there is neoclassical there is open theism.  Yeah, that's obviously he's obviously pretty hands off. Yeah, I mean, that's right like problem of evil problem of suffering is in my view like is a serious problem I have my own responses. It's a problem if you have this classical personal view of God view but if you if you only think he's the DS view it's not a problem at all it's just well he's he got the universe in motion and it's up to us to make of it what we want or something like that you know. But but then it doesn't get it doesn't help you that much it doesn't, it doesn't. It's just a general background idea that there's some purpose to the universe but it doesn't tell you what that is. It doesn't tell you what laws we should have doesn't tell you what our moral should be. The only way you get that is insert revelation and you say okay, now we know there's a God. Now we know he must sometimes give special insights to his prophets and we can listen to what they say, and get more concrete prescriptions from his wisdom. So you have to at some point make this. You know this this divine revelation jump to get anything useful out of this concept I would think. I would say like the well, if there is a good God, right. I think goodness in some sense has certain features, right, like, we consider justice to be good, and perhaps many other values associated with goodness right so then we say that someone is a good person, or has a good character we there is certain expectations or values that flow from it. Like we would expect that person to be just just you know that person. But however, I mean classical philosophy did all this without. I mean, you know, just the philosophical analysis of the virtues and what it means to lead a good life. I, this is, this is the application of reason by itself. Yeah, how did even knowing that there is a God, much less knowing anything about his nature or what he said. How does that help you in this in this task of reason to, to, to figure out what human virtues are. I think, why is it reasons efficient to to figure out human virtues. Why is reason sufficient figure out human virtues. I mean, why isn't it it should be it should be sufficient it seems to have been sufficient we know since we know some things about the virtues, the Greeks figure that out a long time ago. Yeah, I mean we've been, I don't say that, like, it's, it's due to God that we are good or something I mean. Right, so what what so what does it matter whether you believe in God or not for this analysis. How does it help inform your analysis or help aid the analysis. Anything any ethical moral political theory justice any of these things. Okay, how would it change an argument, if I if I argue that it's unjust to, you know, rob someone. How do you, how do you contradict that by saying, Oh no, I know that there's a God and therefore it's okay to steal from someone. Or how do you say, Oh, you're right and you can reinforce your argument by saying there's a God I don't see how it adds or subtracts to the application of reason. Like, I just, I just use reason to you know, he said right to know something just. But what's the title of your podcast. An orthodox libertarian theology, right theology right theology, but theology does not mean that you have to use some of these. Some of these books or divine revelation as far as I know. You have to use something about God and I'm asking what does it use because I can't see how the general bear fact of God's existence as a good being. How does that inform libertarian analysis. Well, perhaps, like, the thing is like the name of the channel I made was because there are certain positions that I hold one is libertarianism, and one is belief in God. An orthodox means my position is an orthodox among priests right generally teeth have divine revelation and you know you are you will you will go to hell, eternal hell for if you commit certain kinds of crimes now my views are that there is some punishment for crimes for arms in the afterlife, but they are not like eternal kind of punishment you know suffering forever like you it's not like Dante's inferno, you know torture or something like that. You're gonna let Hitler out of jail at some point. I mean, how much do you want Hitler to be tortured at least at least 20 years. Yes, he will be tortured 20 years. You get what you want. I mean, there will be there will be punishment for Hitler and some of these, these people. You know, I used to be in to see as Lewis I don't know if you've read much of him but I'm very attracted to his, even though I'm an atheist, I'm attracted to his, his kind of overall approach to the like he had this scene and in the Chronicles of Narnia and the final, the seventh book is called the last battle it's about Armageddon. It's a meta it's an analogy or metaphor or different reenactment to Armageddon which is you know the end of everything. And basically all the animals. And all the end in this world all the animals are intelligent so they're like humans. So, they're approaching this opening where as land who's Jesus or God is sitting there. And they can either run past them into the light and go to as lands country or heaven basically, or they can run off into the wilderness into the dark. And it's up to them though so they look at as lands face. If they feel terror they run away. And if they feel if they smile and they feel joy they run their welcome and they go past him, but it's not him doing it it's whether they want to or not.   And that's that's compatible with what I was taught as a Catholic that by a modern Catholic that hell is not this punishment it's just the absence of the presence of God you're just not in the presence of God.  But I think I think that's, that's overly. It's understandable people to come up with these stories and these metaphors to explain it but really. It's not like God wants to punish people he's not like sadistic. In fact, you could argue that you know you can argue that you can argue that hell is in that conception of hell is is evil. And therefore God, a good guy would never create it because God, God creates these these beings out of nothingness right human beings that never existed they come into being, and he gives them free will.  Now they have the opportunity to choose the good and all that but some of them are going to choose evil.  Not even forever but even for a million years or something you know, it's like that person would have been better off never to have been born at all.  That's sadistic. So, so what you what you could argue is, which I use that to argue that, therefore, in this world that we live whenever you see an evil person. They're just a robot they're not really real. God never creates people that are actually going to choose evil. But if I figure this out, God, I figured out God's secret of the universe and he's going to send his hit squad out to come get me. So, that's a little bit sci-fi. So I think the Calvinist view is that God created for his own glory.  How that's crazy. I mean, it's not crazy to them right like I went to them because they believe they believe in divine revelation you could never make this stuff up. You couldn't deduce this from reason that this has to be divine revelation. Yes, you cannot deduce that it increases God's glory when people like suffering extreme pain or suffering and like their justification their justification for for eternal hell is that any any any sin. You commit against a being with infinite goodness infinite virtue and infinite like holiness or majesty, like the intuition behind this is that look, it is more wrong to punch a dog compared to punching a dandelion. And similarly it is more wrong to punch a human being compared to a dog.   But like I said earlier you can't violate God's rights you really can't do it injustice against God you can't harm God.  He's not like surprised by it. So, offending, I don't know what that means to offend all you're doing is you're disappointing him maybe. Yes, that's the thing right like they would say that if you break any of his commands, then God is justified in torturing you forever because that's fine but but it's not because you offended. And he's not even you're not even disappointing him because he knows what you're going to do so I don't know this whole. Well, they would, they would say that you had free will and at least some things like, I'm simply saying God is not surprised when you send. That's all I'm saying. Yes, that's true but I mean, like it's their view you know I'm trying to like be charitable you know like kind of give their justifications why they say that. You know, I think your views, I don't know if you know much about Catholicism but your views are compatible with at least some modern versions of Catholicism, the kind I was taught which is that it was basically that at this Protestants really hate Catholicism because it's, it's, it's not completely solo scriptura based only on the Bible, although it's rooted in it so the Catholics believe that the purpose of so they don't have this belief and like you get saved from the earth by saying some kind of spell or incantation, and you're forever saved, which turns into a question of knowledge right because they'll say like well it's important that you know you're saved, which I don't I don't know where they get that from I don't think it is important that you know it, and I don't think you can know it. So like they'll say for example once saved always saved.  And there, they'll wheeze a lot of it and they'll say, Well, if you commit a grave sin later on. That means you never were saved in the first place. Yeah, but that means I can't know I was saved because I thought I was, you know, so like the whole thing collapses but the Catholic view is more like when you go to heaven you're in God's presence but to be in God's presence you need to be basically cleansed you need to be worthy to be in this place. So you have to die in a state of grace that's the whole point of the sacraments to help you get there right.   And some Catholics, if I'm not mistaken, believe that that's what there is no hell like everyone's in purgatory, unless you die as a saint basically like everyone goes to purgatory after Earth. And you work it out until you finally cleanse your soul enough to go to heaven.  But that's I think not the traditional Catholic view you know like the traditional. Now I was taught in the 70s after the sort of the hippies took over.  Now of course, the view is that it's separation from God, and that separation feels like extreme pain and suffering. You know, that's, I suppose, Catholic view but now I do not agree with that like God will not let you at least be in this eternal state of suffering, or eternal state of separation, I think in my view you would still give you chances after death. Now Catholics. That's what I say that's similar to this purgatory notion I'm talking about it's basically a way to finally get to rehabilitate yourself. That would be cool that would be cool and I think I have I have seen, I have read like one of one of my. He's not my friend because I've met him but like one of the YouTube channels that I watch he's, he's called Christian idealism and he's a Catholic and he does not believe in like a Dante's infernal kind of hell, or something like that. He has some form of universalist leanings I think something like those. But anyways, my general approach is like to, to support libertarianism and kind of, you know, a criticize kind of traditionalistic views which are you know, against libertarianism and also which are, which which are these very retributive views where the person is actually burning, actually in great misery and pain forever for like something like blasphemy. Right. Yeah, so I mean I personally think religion, any religion I'm aware of and I think inherently but they're all contradictory. I mean what I think is religion is the remnants of primitive philosophy right humans developed. They came up with started coming with explanations for cause and effect in the world you know what, why does the sun come up every day because of the sun god so it was sort of a primitive explanation. And over time that turned into religion and got encrusted with all these other things. Because people took, they used it for power and they used it for rituals and they use it for organizing their life and different things like that so religion embodies a lot of customary and, you know, societal knowledge so most religions tend to amend moral codes that are roughly, I will say libertarian but you know, don't steal don't hurt people be honest be good. But they're encrusted with all the other mumbo jumbo to right, but so what I what I would do and what I tend to do when I talk to religious people who are not libertarian. I don't think they have a consistent philosophy. So parts of it are illiberal. You know, like if, if, if the command says you should stone gaze that's that's illiberal, but parts of it. You know, so what I do is I appeal to the good parts. And those parts tend to resonate with their intuitions to and their practical knowledge.   So libertarians support a view that is completely consistent with what God really wants. We just we had it worked out more we have more knowledge of economics and this kind of stuff and we have a more consistent working out of the underlying ethics of God's views. So that's what I tend to do. I think you try to appeal to the good part of their religious beliefs and show that they're compatible with libertarianism. Yeah, that's also why I'm trying the best to do that. Though generally, the traditionalists are like generally have the prepared arguments against libertarianism one is one one argument is basically that libertarianism or liberalism leads to, you know, these leads to degeneracy and these kinds of, you know, like libertarianism allows for prostitution to go rampant. It allows for, you know, right, I mean, it allows for alcohol to be you know for these people, you could say something like, Okay, if you allow prostitution or pornography or whatever. Yeah, it seems on the surface that it's, it's contributing to degeneracy, because they're assuming that if you just pass a law it will stop it. But you could say to stop it you have to have a state, and the state is going to be run by corrupt human beings, and there's going to be public choice problems and there's going to be special interest problems, and there's going to be corruption and, and the state's not going to stop there and the state's going to do lots of other things it caused lots of other problems. So you can say that even if in an ideal world we can have, you know, Jesus run the government and do it right. We don't have Jesus running the government. So in the real world, we need to be humble and have a set of principles that let us run our own lives and be guided by God's word and grace and all this kind of stuff. And we have to tolerate the fact that sometimes people will do things that are wrong. But, but the benefit of that is we don't set this huge Leviathan state motion that does lots of other things that you're not going to like either. So in other words, they're just naive about the nature of the state. If they really understood the nature of the state they would realize it's not a tool to do what they want to do it just won't work. And they're also like criticize anarcho capitalism basically saying that look so anarcho capitalism has like will have at least some different communities right operating autonomously. Now, our community will have rules like we will we will stone gaze we will we will kill anyone who commits blasphemy and something like Libertarianism or liberalism does not prevent any of that like Libertarianism does not have any kind of okay okay but but recognizing that you could have a diverse world of different communities and different traditions. Doesn't mean that you should be in favor of that doesn't mean you should be in favor of a given community having those laws. The fact that you might not be able to stop all bad things. Again, doesn't mean that they're, they're not bad things. So what I would say is if you have a community that has stoning of gaze. Why not be able to stop that because you could have an isolated community or tribe somewhere and no one bothers them and they don't bother anyone else but they're doing horrible things behind doors. I would say as long as they let people leave, then the best solution is to just let people leave if they don't live there and if they have a horrible set of rules that I think that over time. The communities that have unjust laws like that are going to tend to suffer. So they're going to competitively. They're going to be a competitive disadvantage to other communities so they're just going to come. They're just going to get they're going to die but they're going to after feel way they're not going to, they're not going to survive or put it this way the society that tend to flourish will be the more cosmopolitan open secular liberal. Open societies I think they will tend to make more money and they'll be healthier people be happier people move there. But Saudi Arabia right now. Well, if God if God had not put oil under those people then we wouldn't have this problem. They just be a bunch of, you know, people in the desert tribes that we can ignore but unfortunately God put oil under them. So I think that's why I think God's a practical Joker. Even their countries in some sense is changing right like Saudi Arabia allowed these festivals right this new this big festivals and there were some traditionalists who are opposing Saudi Arabia allowing these festivals because they think it's it's very bad but but to Saudi Arabia is it's generating revenue right like I'm not aware of that, but I can I imagine that over time, most cultures will will tend to liberalize as the world gets richer. Communication increases as we become more modern, I think over time they'll they will liberalize to. But they can hold on and do a lot of damage in the meantime, but I don't know any solution to that other than be patient. I think spreading liberal libertarian views, you know, and kind of like, perhaps discussion and debates with traditionalists would be helpful in like, yeah, I agree and there are some, there are some. And like what you mentioned must stop the acu all who I've met at Hapa's group in Turkey before he's a, there are there are liberal minded Muslim thinkers and Arabs and people like that. For example, so I mean Turkey, Turkey secularized a long time ago and I don't know if it's going to last but they seem to have you know girls women and bikinis running around everywhere and it's bizarre how they were able to break out of the traditional Muslim world. Yeah, I mean, generally even even I think the traditional Muslim world seems to be as I said right like they allow festivals music festivals perhaps or something like that. So they are liberalizing slowly, but even then they are like arguing against liberalism and like presenting these arguments and my channel is in some sense is to kind of you know, criticize these kinds of traditionalist views to and let more people liberalize liberalize, you know, be more liberal and chill. I mean, I believe that just as you have some of my friends that are Christian libertarians and they keep trying to tell their fellow Christians. Look the principles we really believe in and Jesus's words really, you should really be a libertarian, or at least something like moving in that direction and I think that some some Muslims can make the same or no Jews I'm not sure about the same thing but but but I mean there's lots of Jews libertarians but I don't know about textual support for liberalism but I know that there are some Muslims who claim that there's lots of support for you know liberal values, at least politically and legally speaking. Yes. Yeah. Anyway, I think we should wrap this up in a minute if you want to have a part two I'll be happy to do it but. Okay, anything else you want to wrap up with. What. I said anything else you want to wrap up with or a final. Oh yeah, I suppose. I mean, yeah. My last word to be like, I hope you friends enjoyed it like I'm addressing my audience I hope you friends enjoyed this video. And I would love to do a part two in the future with you Dr can sell out because I want to talk about intellectual property and perhaps some of the libertarian arguments against intellectual property, you know, I mean, okay. Okay, we can do that we can we can do more installments, but thanks for talking to me and. Thank you. Yeah, we'll be in touch. Yeah, great. Have a great day sir. Thanks.


Hi good morning and welcome to today's products and focus so what we've kind of seen is a follow-on from yesterday's kind of listless trading session where the markets just don't really know where they're gonna go next but we broke through 17561 on the US 30 there on Friday didn't do too much yesterday and it looks to be a similar pattern already this morning though both yesterday and today we drifted down towards potential support at 17561 only to have a very modest bounce afterwards for the next potential resistance at 17747 we still have a Golden Cross and the moving averages from Thursday last week and the other technical indicators are beginning to look quite overbought with slight divergence on the slow stochastic so that we're seeing a downtrend slowly developing right here and we're still maybe in the cusp of an uptrend on the US 30 right now so that's something to be aware of today brings the earnings of Apple as well which many traders will be looking forward to so quite a big day if you're trading stocks or the Nasdaq or basically any American index with a big exposure to technology so that should be quite interesting to prepare yourself for moving on to the UK 100 we are just dipping our head below 6415 which is potential support obviously I kind of a interesting candle formation there on Thursday where we rejected the top highs to finish halfway up the candle which usually isn't a great sign so it's not as strong as signals what we saw on the US 30 which is still above potential support the UK 100 is struggling slightly MacD histogram really running out of gas right now which is indicative of selling pressure potentially on the horizon we still have a negative cross of the 80% level and the slow stochastic there so the UK 100 has its work cut out for it if it's going to make more progress in today's session looking on to Japan 225 negative day yesterday another negative day today with an acceleration to the downside looking at the color candle it's almost twice the size of the previous one as we get close to 18,000 and change that's something to to be aware of and to watch out for looks like we're not going to get our bullish cross on the moving averages at some point soon slow stochastic overbought RSI almost kind of getting there and you know we'll see how we get on but nevertheless 18648 is the next potential support level on the Japanese market and there is some central banker and meetings this week we've got the FOMC on Wednesday and I believe you do have Japan session at the end of the week neither are expected to do much in a way of any sort of action to do anything for their economies this month I think the FOMC is all but got a 0% chance of raising rates this session with only a fraction of an improvement towards the end of December so it's all about the statement what comes with it rather than the actual action itself so looking at dollar yen the dollar again is you losing a little bit momentum against the Japanese yen as people are buying the yen as a hedge against uncertainty in the equity markets we are now currently trading quite close to that 55 period SMA in the middle of two ranges right now with one spot 90 or sorry 119 spot 76 is potential support with 121 spot 87 acting as potential resistance you can see there on the RSI we almost hit the 70% level only for it to act as a kind of a quasi resistance so there still could be a little bit of further momentum on dollar yen should things improve but certainly the equity markets look like they're taking a bit of a breather after last week's strong rallying sessions so it's not that there's a huge amount of negativity in the markets because you have a huge amount of constant easing potentially on the horizon so any sell-off is kind of supported by the idea of cheap money just around the corner so looking at West Texas crude it's just getting destroyed the last couple of sessions really negative candle yesterday another negative candle today $42 is a potential support level the Mac these crossing the zero line the other technicals are not yet over but this still has some gas in the tank should that negative sentiment continue looking at gold still not getting a lot of love actually considering we're in a low interest rate environment for longer commodities are just not doing that great I would have thought that gold if yen has been bought as a hedge against uncertainty then gold is supposed to be a safe haven too but the technical signals and the candles are again indicative of selling pressure above 1168 with 1157 still being a potential support and we have that 21 period SMA racing up just behind it finishing up with GBP USD and Euro dollar Euro dollar is not getting much love either another negative day well that negative day on Monday we're having a bit of a retracement back up to 111 one spot 11 which isn't really happening with that much conviction Mac these crossing the zero line other technicals show room for further downside we the question for traders is this going to be a retracement or we're going to be able to break back through one spot 11 and that's up to the traders at home to make that decision so finishing up with GBP USD or cable modest bounce off the 21 period SMA yesterday not much follow through today one spot 54 24 is the potential resistance will that again be a retracement that's up for you guys but negative cross on the MACD we had a sell signal on a slow stochastic RSI pretty neutral so any upwards momentum we get to one spot 54 24 that's a very strategic point to be involved in cable so market calendar wise what do we have coming up we've got GDP in the UK at 9 30 UK time durable goods right there over in the US because of the time difference that's actually going to be 12 30 in the UK and then if we go on to Wednesday you've got German consumer confidence and you have the crude oil inventory change don't forget you do have that FOMC policy decision at 7 o'clock UK time sorry 6 o'clock UK time and if we have a look at some of the details right here you can see on Thursday you've got a house price data employment data from the US US GDP CPI from Germany the housing index Thursday's got a lot of data and if you go on to Friday I think Friday gives you a whole host of Japanese data and you've got the retail sales figures from Germany employment and a seat of CPI from the Eurozone so actually we've got a fair amount of economic data to finish up the week as well so guys keep your eye on the chart for make insights part of your leg going forward and join me again tomorrow to find out what happened next


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