Thank you, now can everybody hear me? Okay, this is room by inclination and some of us are by profession intellectuals. As such, there is a continual temptation for us to pay a greater regard to the power of ideas than is actually in the case. Intellectually convinced of the power or libertarian or conservative ideas, and our intellectual conviction has created a passionate, moral and spiritual conviction of the truth of those ideas.  In the case of many intellectuals, that is a fair influence. But when it comes to the great commands of ordinary people, I think it is unfair. Most ordinary people are cleverer than I am, and many of them are cleverer than you are. The difference between them and us is that they don't care about ideas. They care about ideas in the way that I care about the color schemes. I am as capable as anybody of looking at a particular color scheme and saying, well that doesn't seem to work very well, or that's not nice. But when people start talking about the harmony of shades and which color scheme in which my eyes play over them, I am not interested. Go ahead and do it immediately to the experts, and that is how most people regard ideas. They are not interested, but have better things to do with their lives. And so, if we want to win the battle of ideas, if we want to complete an overpowering victory in the battle of ideas, a victory that persists generation and in its century after century. We need perhaps to look at something more powerful as a stabilizing force, with only power of mere abstract ideas. And what I want to talk about is at least a study of such a stabilization of liberal, of libertarian or conservative values. I will talk about England as it's the subject that I'm going to next. Now for various historical reasons which would take far too long to explain and which would take me far outside my remit, I will simply say that England was uniquely fortunate. It was the only country in Europe which preserved the empire and the details of a limited medieval constitution into the rising commercial civilization of the 17th century. England is the home of liberal or libertarian or conservative ideas. Or modern libertarianism is, in a sense, a purification of English, political and intellectual experience. That's true if it is perhaps a somewhat exaggerated thing, but I would insist that it is and is not quite true. Now you might think that the English liberal tradition was created by John Locke and David Hume, Adam Smith, and Thomas Baddington McCall, even though they are some criticisms made of him, buzzed on to a little. What I would say is that although these great thinkers contributed much to the English liberal tradition, they've not created it. They are at least as much an effect of that tradition as a cause of it. The reason why England was and remained a free country for certain centuries had very little to do with the power of autonomous ideas. If you think of political philosophy in the late 17th century, you think John Locke is. John Locke's been correct to us that John Locke was an abstract philosopher while his second treatise on civil government was very much, it was very much based on English constitutional tactics of the day, but it has a sufficient degree of abstraction to see whether or not you're English, whether or not English is your first language. But John Locke was never very popular in England. John Locke was the taste of a small minority of intellectuals. By far the more influential factors in the late 17th and early 18th centuries were people like Alvin Sidney. And if you read Alvin Sidney's discourses on civil government, there would be nothing much between you that's questionable and never late. This was far at the time. What kept England free could be summed up in a Latin phrase, first expressed in the 13th century and last heard of the 19th century. There is only an anonymous retiree. We do not want the laws of England to be changed. In the 17th century, there arose the idea in people's minds of ancient and immemorial constitution. This was carried to what we would often consider to be absurd methods, in the legal arguments over the validity of Charles I's shipwreck or his legal taxation in the 1620s, counsel on both sides, formally raising precedence from the reign of King England a thousand years before. There was an assumption in most people's minds that the parliament which opposed Richard Vissett in 1399 was exactly the same in its forms of seizure as the parliament which met in 1741. People might wear different clothes, but everything was unchanged. Later on, this idea of an ancient and immemorial constitution was attacked to the idea of change. You'll read this in Blackstone's Conquistries, of course, in 1764, that there had at one time been this wonderfully perfect liberal English constitution which had been disrupted by the Northern invasion, and the previous 600 years had been a type of struggle to get back our ancient fundamental liberties. But the idea was that the constitution had not changed. It had changed in the past as it was, and any change now should simply be towards recovery that earlier meant. Not true, rather not strictly true. But the point is people believed it, and the fact that the constitution was believed not to have changed in the past was an excellent reason for declaring that the constitution should not change now or in the future. The system was legitimized by the fact, or believed in, its legitimacy. Legitimacy was based on its immemoriality. It had always been so, therefore it should always be so. Now, if you look at England in the 18th century with the eye of an outsider, you'll see rather less than any libertarian society. You'll see many good features, but there's a lot of bad features. Let's look at the law. The criminal law was a mass of injustice. You could be handled by world-renowned opponents. If you would try out one of those values, you were not allowed legal representation. So the question of war is the consequence of a science union. But on pure matter of facts, you were expected to bend yourself. And if there was the slightest defect in the procedure, the constitution case would be thrown out if there was a spending situation in life or in this court, but all proceedings were done in court. But it meant that criminal trials were often rather likely tossing the court.  If you turn to the civil law, back to him, it was a massive assertion. There were three common law courts. The Court of Kings made it to the Court of Comptes and the Court of Buchekka, and there was each a court, child, three, kid, four, so there were plenty of differences from law and energy. If you wanted to start a law case, you might need to prioritize unions in two or maybe three different courts, which all proceeded at different speeds and ways, and you might want to do well in the other. Everything was slow. Everything was expensive. Many things would need to be answered. England was not a libertarian society as we would regard. In England was a free country. There's no doubt about it. It was a free country. The state did not intervene in many areas of life. We were left alone to live very largely as you pleased at the Court of Comptes and its current work. Now, let me continue with the good about the system. Because everybody believed that the Constitution would be legitimized by its antiquity, and because everybody was terrified to raise a single finger against this magnificent structure known as the English Constitution, it meant that the authorities were as tightly serviced in every area. And if we had had the sort of Constitution that America carried far as it thought, that it would be in the United States, I'll give you two cases to example. In 1765, the government got a general warrant act to serve the prisoner. Now, the common law said that it still says that if you wanted to serve for areas of the crime, you must get one for a magistrate, and you must specify the place to be served, and you must specify what you are searching for. And if there is any conflict in the execution of that one, the officers involved are liable to criminal or civil prosecution. A general warrant would run different. It would allow the authorities to go on what the English is called a fishing institution. There is no address language in the warrant, and there is no specification of rules to be seen. It is just a general warrant. It would allow you to go and do some yoga and look for evidence of a crime which is not specified. Now, this procedure came in the licensing act in 1661. The licensing act would expire in, I think, 1694, but the procedure for getting a general warrant continued. People would not even notice it. They would not leave, and they would not use very extensive. But in 1764, one of the senators of the state got a general warrant to search the crevices of a Mr. Carriter printer to see if he was publishing citizenship literature. Mr. Enfield refused to allow the magistrates and the officers to enter. And he took leave action against the secretary of state. And he went into court. And the judge, a courtier of justice, listened to the arguments on both sides, and the government boys would often say, well, there may be perhaps some ambiguity as to the requirements. But they're required. I mean, how on earth is there to go to a country with all these people running around publishing sedition? And the judge sat down saying, I'm very sorry, but the reason the state is no defense of the court law. And the government lost. And the secretary of state, Mr. Carriter, had to pay damages. A country for the $1,000 or $10,000 doesn't matter. This is a lot of money by today's standards. And from that time, it was generally accepted that general warrants were believed in the court. And the government did not rush through an act of Parliament shortly afterwards allowing general warrants. The courts had relaxed. These warrants were unconstitutional. Therefore, they could not be used. Now, that was something that happened in a time of moderate political excitement. Let me move to another example. 1793, June 2 of the French Republic, the world's first modern totalitarian human machine was chewing its way through France.  France was turning upside down with a cataract with blood everywhere. And there were radicals in England who wanted the same for us. Some of these people were simply as guided to use the idiots. Some of them wanted a real and fair human. Oh, there was a mass, there was a huge model of that. There were people running around saying that Tom Paine was the quality, civil war and rebellion. There were people who claimed that little extracts from the rights of man by Tom Paine were being proofed on sleepcraft and given to children. I mean, you've got important stuff to be inspected for in other contexts. There is a problem with the government to refuse something about it. But even when you put aside the exaggerations and roll back, there was a conspiracy in England. There was a large and well-organized radical movement which wanted to do to England what had been done in France. And so, in September 1793, the government arrested 12 men who except for the leaders of the English radical movement. A couple of them were people like John Phil, a trojan of them and he would probably have loved to stick a cap of lipstick on his head and wander around when people snagged on to the beauty. And the most of the people were people like John Paul, two old-fashioned radical friends of Dr. Johnson believed in the Parliamentary Report. Thomas Harvey had well-intentioned children who believed that if a working man should get an eddy and there should be a Parliamentary Report, a new tax comes back to the city. But these men came to trial at a time of a minute's more time. You can stand on the tips of those and you can look across the channel and explain if the wind is in the right direction and you can go with snow and dark. So, a few years ago there was a lot of travel and you could almost see the ability rising and falling and people were trying to abandon the bridge and these men were brought to trial and they were given a due process for law. The first trial came on after John Paul II. The Defense Council, Thomas I, a great advocate called the Prime Minister to give evidence of the defense. He subpoenaed the Prime Minister to leave passing down the street where he was trying to conduct all the routes and to walk into the guilt of all the trials he had faced in London and to give evidence about how he had co-operated with John Paul II. Nine years earlier he had made a failed attempt of Parliamentary Report. First time spiritual events went on I think for seven hours at the end of that time the jury brought with them not guilty. John Paul II released and he tried twice in the same fence. Never touched again by the authorities for the rest of his life at 2014. Next trial came on, Thomas I, the radical defense minister. Erskine ripped across these areas to pieces. It was based on how the use of such agents let us see over the remarks here's the evidence you can find Erskine's speech in the same trities it goes on and on and on another man's effort at the end of the trial the jury made that not guilty, Thomas I released. The first trial came on John Paul II the government might have a prediction but they lost heart. John Paul came into court and the prosecution stood up considering with the drawing of the starters and Paul rather upset he said to the judge oh but I'm not again caught I want to sleep I want to sleep I want to sleep I want to sleep I want to sleep I want to sleep I want to sleep I want to sleep I want to sleep I want to sleep and there was no oh here's the government sharpened up the laws against religious vital and if you were an anti-establishment journalist you might find yourself sidelined you might find yourself done over and over again but the English constitution imperfect as its was has sufficient legitimacy with the majority of people so that it prevents the horrors of England or the French Revolution it also has sufficient legitimacy with the ruling parks with the powers that they to prevent any of the sort of horrors that you see in operas like The Daily or TOSTA there's sort of nasty reactionary police spying or torturing or putting being there for our trial we had none Yes, we had an absurd and ill-believing system Yes, there was much questionable about the English constitutional law of practice but the belief that this was an ancient and immemorial constitution preserves from anything like the French Revolution or anything like the reaction in most other European countries against the French Revolution the the constitution was destabilized in the 1830s the reformed powers were well intentioned and that was inevitable the legal reforms of the years between 1830 and 1880 were very good the old leading system was very hard to defend but you see it was a change and it was often rapidly changed the 19th century reforms did the best disguise the fact that it was a change the way to maintain the picture of an ancient and immemorial war of things is by allowing most institutions and most customs and those traditions to continue uninterrupted customs died as they become useless and new customs emerged and a result were changes but these changes take place against an apparently un-shifting background it is possible to say the constitution's ancient and un-shakeable you make it that in all parts of the world people forget about it it becomes part of that background of immemorial attitudes and finally the other thing the constitution has a say as we stay alive by reform but at the recent 1970s it was still possible to believe that none of much had changed you see the way in which the government the customs and institutions of an actual life had not changed that much or seen to most people not or changed that much when I learned very good politics of the 1670s and 1890s I didn't have to look up glossaries to see what was this type of read what was that supposed to mean it sure does a how does the bill proceed through Parliament I didn't mean to learn about it it was history but it was also cloud politics I could use my actual everyday experience of constitutional practice in more people to understand the arguments and the proceedings of 300 years ago and then the collapse came on the image of constitution could be compared to one of the whole weak temples we've been looking at for the past few days it stood proud and unbroken for about a few years and then many people decided that these things were worth it and for 200 years fanatics and thieves chipped away at it deleted defaced it for the end of 200 years free structures were still standing still very largely walked where it did in the past and then the enemies found a new way of destroying them as building you do not attack with a frontal sword and the enemies are too solidly constructed what good said the young people like fires the crops collapse bringing them around the ground and bang their good old temples and that's what the left has been doing to my country since the 1960s or the 1970s a number of other values were established here in 1960 in the 1960s they were built for the abolition of form of law still and we throw that in the dark so you can't do that Liberty and England do not detain on the imprisoned constitution as in the United States it depends instead on the way of institutions and such you can't avoid trauma graduate you can't do that with that great money oh then you can't sense the credits oh then you can't do that you can't do that there's no constitutional provisions you just can't do it because it is not a part of our way so what you do need to go bullish our way you do it with small virtue pieces who will be fit to the English system and wait for the engines thoroughly around 12 inches of wood 350 yard 1770 yards of wire 5218 feet of wire 370,000 inches of wire I think it was over here not very rational of it I won't even describe the way they've been weighing it so the electric pace of the engines is about 300 about the only huge price 240 bits per pack divided into 20 shimmings of 12 pins not very sense of the limit electric pace is let's say 100 bits per pack the English counting system 4 year counting which do not necessarily correspond with the law and distribution but good let's sweep the way let's divide the law to two characters let's put it in the class let's avoid a little set of problems what are we going to do with the procedure well let's give it a little bit of ownership of language of realism today there are some points that should place it with claims claims surely only a pack only a nutcase will change to these improvements improvements, improvements normalization after they call it the problem is about 40 years of this this with or customs and institutions of it that are dependent having more very big it doesn't work it doesn't work during the past six months I've been doing a lot of radio and television work defending the right of an organization or the British National Party to exist and to continue the British National Party is said to be a National Socialist movement there are some National Socialists in it but I think it's more accurate despite nowadays as a white nationalist the point is it's more natural than they are I mean they go into a guest chamber more or less following their literature they have a right to say their own now at first when I used to go on and attend their right to seek, to publish and to organize I tried being an abstract argument about people's right to express any opinion they like on matter of public on matter of public policy this didn't seem to it didn't seem to get much relevance with people to this argument these men are being prosecuted under laws that have been discriminated for when I was a boy you could say anything wrong to this country on matters of public policy anything at all why can't you back to that these laws are being discriminated for and you know the enemy and the right to vote they are they sit by silent and embarrassed all in well I mean I don't agree with the national party I think they are probably they are angered you know these laws are monstrous you can't do this it still works but they aren't long we are facing not a full front as a whole being but if you can we aren't facing a series of side assortments you attack the minor things of our actual life you tear up that web of customers and institutions that deserve treatment and when you've done that you have things like trial by jury that result from this the right in itself the right to freedom of speech so we've got those things standing alone they are meant to stand alone they are meant to be supported by the far winning of our less important business but they stand alone and they go not over one attack and so I suppose the lesson we are going to say today is this we should try not to be harried about the power of abstract ideas they swear our things but also in the mind of the masses we should respect the customs and institutions of ordinary people so far as we can things may not be immediately conducive to a free society but really from my experience in England once you get rid of things which are not immediately conducive to freedom things like being in the city you will see that they did have a certain supporting role and if we ever do with the lack of ideas in order to get complete and overpowered with the corrupt intellectuals and their business interests and our best interests do not make a recovery we need to ensure our ideas are as far as possible embodied not just in a prison document which my very experience suggests is my learning tonight we need to make sure that our ideas are embodied in the practices and beliefs and customs and traditions of daily life ideas are important ideas in a sense change the world and if you want to influence ordinary people you never just throw a couple of volumes of propaganda or anything of that they're not ready to act they will have a criticizing deposit they're just not after it in the same way as I'm not after deciding what the best policy is we need to be rather more statistically in our defence, in our attack and we have to get it in our fight one last point the English and Serbian is so ill-funded and so immoral that we have to print and bind our own laws and this is the problem it's a couple of years old I'm ready to sell out 20 copies unfortunately I've sold them out I can promise you to rely on it double the size of it but I didn't throw this one together because I came out of some of the theory that I had been bound and I looked and said you don't take those and I said well here it is I'll always sell it with rules of isolation I'll go after that price to stop with the binding it's too much trouble to print the binding you can have them for you can have them you can have them for what is the 10th year there's a reason for that it's like the 4th year 10 years and so if I had my arm out thank you very much for your indulgence


The study developed an integrated fuzzy object based image analysis and deep learning approach, PhobiaDL, for monitoring land use cover changes and compared it to three machine learning algorithms. The PhobiaDL approach used fuzzy membership functions and deep convolutional neural networks, DCNNs, to derive object features and attributes, while the fuzzy synthetic evaluation and Dempster Schaefer theory, FSEDST, apply to validate and carry out spatial uncertainties. The results showed that the PhobiaDL approach outperformed the other approaches and improved the strength and robustness of OBIA decision rules, while the FSEDST approach improved the spatial accuracy of object-based classification maps. The study supports lake restoration initiatives by decision makers and authorities in applications such as drought mitigation, land use management and precision agriculture programs. This article was authored by Baxia Faisizadeh, Kivan Mohamedzadeh Ladjajeh, Tobia Lakes, and others.


Welcome to George H. Smith's Excursions into Libertarian Thought, a production of Libertarianism.org and the Cato Institute, narrated by Daniel Highland. Tracking Freedom with the Human Sciences, Part 1 In the two previous essays, I discussed some general features of the human sciences and methodology. Although I will have much more to say about these matters, I now wish to discuss some aspects of the distinction between freedom and coercion. This is necessary because, as I shall explain in later essays, the dichotomy between freedom and coercion has played an indispensable role in the libertarian or classical liberal approach to the human sciences, most notably in sociology and economics. Throughout the libertarian tradition, freedom and coercion have been viewed as conceptual opposites. They cannot coexist at the same time and in the same respect. Where we have coercion, we necessarily lack freedom and vice versa. Freedom consists of the absence of coercion. Although freedom and coercion are opposites in this sense, they do not have symmetrical properties. It would be misleading, for instance, to compare freedom to the negative of a black and white photograph of coercion in which the colors are the reverse of those in the developed print, but follow the same pattern. The concepts of freedom and coercion are not related in this way. One is not a negative image of the other. A significant difference between freedom and coercion lies in the fact that coercion is a motive for specific actions, whereas freedom, in most cases, is not.  And suppose Marilyn complies by surrendering her purse to the robber. Now, if we ask why Marilyn gave her money to the robber, it makes perfect sense to say, because she was forced to do so. This means that Marilyn surrendered her money in order to avoid being injured or possibly killed. The presence of a coercive threat, therefore, gives us a reason or motive for Marilyn's decision. Now consider this question. Why did Marilyn give money to a harmless panhandler? Here it would be peculiar to reply because she was free to do so. This does not provide a reason for Marilyn's action in the same way that coercion did in our previous example. To specify that Marilyn was free to comply with or refuse the panhandler's request, she describes the general context in which her decision was made, but it does not explain why she chose one course of action over another. For this, we would need an explanation like, Marilyn felt sorry for the poor fellow, or Marilyn likes to help people who are down on their luck. I previously said that freedom does not provide a reason for specific actions, but I also qualified this statement with, in most cases. What I have in mind here are politically motivated actions. We may say, for example, that many Americans fought the British in 1776 because they desired freedom from British rule, or that many libertarians do what they do politically because they hope to bring about a free society. In such cases, freedom does function as a motive or reason to act, so it serves to explain, at least in part, why specific actions were taken. Aside from this kind of politically oriented behavior, and a few other cases, as when a slave escapes from bondage, freedom does not function as a reason to act in the same manner as coercion. Freedom is not the motive of our everyday decisions and activities. Rather, freedom is a social condition that makes certain actions possible. Freedom expands our range of options, but it does not usually motivate us to choose one particular option. This point becomes clearer if we keep in mind the epistemological function of attributing motives in our attempt to explain human actions. A motive or reason for acting must explain why we chose to do acts rather than pursuing an alternative course of action. A motive that explains every possible course of action actually explains nothing. Why did Marilyn choose to give money to the panhandler? Because she was free to do so. Why did she give him $1 instead of $5? Because she was free to do so. Suppose Marilyn did not give the panhandler any money, and we ask why she refused? Because she was free to do so. This generic reply obviously fails to explain any particular decision by Marilyn. The statement, I was free to do so, applies to every alternative available to her. So it does not address the question, why this action rather than that. I have emphasized the asymmetry between freedom and coercion because it illustrates an important point. Freedom is an invisible feature of social interaction, so to speak. It is not usually felt or perceived as a distinct experience with identifiable characteristics. And this feature has made the identification of freedom's consequences quite difficult. Freedom cannot be perceived by the senses. It must be understood by the mind. Because freedom does not normally function as a motive, it is a difficult task to trace the causal impact of freedom on human action. What is the relationship between freedom and virtue, or between freedom and social order, or between freedom and economic prosperity, or between freedom and personal happiness? To answer these and similar questions, we need a causal theory that enables us to link freedom to various phenomena, virtue, order, prosperity, happiness, and the like. But since freedom is not normally a motive for action, the cause-effect relationships between freedom and such phenomena are normally indirect. Consequently, we can trace the causal influence of freedom, especially its long-term effects only with the aid of abstract concepts and theories. Consider the science of economics, which is indispensable for an understanding of how the unfettered pursuit of self-interest within the boundaries of justice generates unintended economic benefits for society as a whole. Or consider sociology, which explains how a spontaneous social order can arise that has not been designed or foreseen. Both of these disciplines are essential if we are to appreciate the social effects of freedom and its many benefits. Modern libertarians have these and other human sciences to draw from in our defense of freedom, and these disciplines have greatly enhanced the quality of our arguments. But most people have neither the time nor inclination to study the human sciences, so they remain ignorant of many of freedom's benefits. In this respect, freedom resembles the moons of Jupiter, which could not be observed until the invention of the telescope. The human sciences like the telescope enable us to observe, understand, is a more accurate term, phenomena that we cannot see with the naked eye. And just as most people do not possess a telescope, so most people do not possess a knowledge of economics and other human sciences that would enable them to observe the otherwise invisible phenomena relating to freedom. The abstract disciplines known as the human sciences enable us to track freedom through time and across many types of interaction. I now wish to discuss a basic role that freedom plays in social interaction, but first a note about my terminology. The great German sociologist Georg Simmel, 1858 to 1918, was suspicious of the word society because it might convey the mistaken impression that society is an entity, whereas what we call society is actually an ongoing process of reciprocal interaction, not a thing. Simmel therefore coined a German word that is normally translated as association, and I shall follow his lead. Thus, when I refer to association, this is merely a shorthand for the process of social interaction. And when referring specifically to an interaction between two persons, I shall sometimes use the word bisociation. Again, this is merely a matter of linguistic economy. I maintain that freedom, or the absence of coercion, is a standing presumption that guides our associations. By presumption, I mean an implicit expectation of how others will respond if we choose to interact with them. By standing, I mean a presumption that operates continuously throughout every form of association. A presumption, in other words, that is fundamental to the process of association, and without which it would not take place. Standing presumptions are essential to social interaction. If we choose to interact with others, we do so because we expect them to respond in a certain way. In many cases, as when dealing with strangers, this presumption is not based on personal knowledge of the particular individual with whom we choose to interact. Many of our everyday interactions are oriented toward others who, from our point of view, are anonymous to some degree or other. We deal with anonymous others, those strangers of whom we have no personal knowledge, not as unique personalities, but as ideal moral types. Specifically, we presume that others will exhibit at least a minimal degree of justice when interacting with us. When this presumption is not operative, as when we anticipate that another person might use coercion against us, we will typically avoid association altogether. In this sense, it is not freedom per se, but the expectation of freedom that drives social interaction. And though our expectations are based on our past experiences, it is not the past, but our beliefs about the future that make association possible. It is not past events per se, but our expectation of future events that impels us to interact with others. We choose to interact with others when we believe that this association will prove beneficial, as determined by our personal values. And we will decline to interact when we believe that a particular association will prove harmful, rather than beneficial. The preceding summary, which requires a good deal of elaboration, is intended to highlight the crucial role that freedom plays in social interaction. The distinction between freedom and coercion is by no means an arbitrary construct of libertarian ideologues. Rather, it is grounded in psychological and sociological facts. Human action is motivated by our subjective valuations, by our desire to replace a less satisfactory state of affairs for one that we regard as more satisfactory. Human action, in other words, is purposeful. We act as a means to an end, an end that we value more highly than what we presently have. We will not choose to interact with others if we believe that our association will thwart rather than facilitate achieving our values. An action occurs through time and requires continuous effort. We are not infallible, so after undertaking an action in pursuit of a goal, we may reassess that action in the light of new information. This may cause us to alter the original action, choose a more suitable action, or abort the project altogether. This ability to change an action in progress, to adjust and adapt as we go along, is essential to most of our actions. If this power were denied to us, then this fact alone, if known in advance, would profoundly influence our original decision to undertake a particular action. Suppose a deity were to issue this command. When you decide on a goal and begin to act to achieve that goal, you are not permitted to quit, change goals, or alter your action in any way. You must continue with your original plan no matter what the consequences, or I will punish you with death. This additional element of coercion by increasing the cost of failure would obviously change our initial evaluation of whether or not to take a particular action. If I have agreed to meet a friend across town at 2 p.m., I might ordinarily decide to catch a bus at 1 p.m., figuring that this will leave enough time to make my appointment. But if the penalty for tardiness as decreed by God is death, then I would be likely to leave much earlier, or perhaps select a more reliable means of transportation, such as a cab. I might even have refused to make the appointment at all. Or if I had, I might have insisted on a more accessible meeting place, as the cost of failure increases, our willingness to take an action decreases. Let us now apply this reasoning to face-to-face interaction with another person, or what I call bisociation. When we engage in bisociation, we do so on the assumption that this interaction will promote a subjective value, that it will bring about something that we want, that it will result in a desirable state of affairs. And as with other actions, the benefits of bisociation depend upon our ability to adjust and adapt as we go along, according to our ongoing assessments of its potential costs and benefits. Above all, we presume the right of free exit. We presume that we will be able to end the bisociation at our discretion, when and if we deem it undesirable. If we knew, or strongly suspected otherwise, if we believed that the other person would not permit us to exit freely after the bisociation had begun, but would himself decide if and when we could sever our relationship, then with our right of free exit denied, we would never interact with that person at all. Without the right of free exit, the bisociation would have no value for us. It could no longer serve as a means to our ends, because upon engaging the other person, we would be subjected to his coercive control. We would thereby become an instrument of his will, a means to his ends. Without the right of free exit, we could no longer reap the personal benefits of bisociation, because we could not reasonably foresee its consequences. Thank you for listening to Excursions. To learn more about Libertarian philosophy and history, visit www.libertarianism.org.


Hey, I want to jump on real quick. I just got the phone with coach Michael bird the super coach for about 20 minutes We talked about 15 20 minutes. I'm telling you what I learned a lot on that one call if you think about it in your life There's a lot of people that want to we want to learn more. We want to have mentors We want to get coached. We want to elevate our game. We want to dominate our space. We want to grow I get questions all the time. Honestly, I'm the exact same way. I'm always wanting to learn I'm met the crazy thing is I just I bought a ticket to growth con to and saw coach Michael Burt speak to 9000 plus now I'm talking to the phone with them hiring him to come to our conference We're gonna be doing some business together at the end of the day Think about where you want to be what you can do to get around people that you want to be around coach Bird is someone I want to be around I freaking love the dude You've got people in your life that can mentor you that can help you They can coach you that can get you to another level you need to find those people and do whatever it takes to get around them Because I'm telling you what the stuff that I've learned from him is paying off dividends already and it's not even that much I mean that 20-minute call I learned as much on that 20-minute call as I will typically learn More than watching videos and shows, you know all this other thing so getting close to people and Learning from people is huge so in your life when you want to go somewhere when you want to hit a goal You have a dream Find someone to learn from and then freaking go deep and dive in and get close to them I promise I'll pay off man. I really will


All right, let's make this official. How about a good morning from everyone? Good morning. Let's try that one more time. We had a spirituality and health event here this weekend, and they had more behind there. Good morning. So good morning, everyone. All right. We're awake. So welcome to the Center for Total Health. We're happy to have you here today. Mental health is an important topic to us, and one of the topics that we host in our space, not frequent enough. So we're happy to have your group here today, and this is a very important topic to us, so I'm anxious to hear a lot about the discussion. The Center has been open now for about six years. I've seen some familiar faces in the room, so welcome back. If you haven't been here before, please take a tour. I was able to tour a few people before the event started this morning, but all the exhibits, even this wall behind you, are interactive, and I'm happy to talk more about the various content that you will find within the Center here. So we are the Center for Total Health. We focus on your total health, the broader picture of health here in this space, and so there's lots of topics that ladder up to your total health, and we're happy to talk to you more about that. So some housekeeping rules, or just some things to keep in mind as our guests. I hope you've all silenced your phones or put them on stun, so we don't want that to interrupt the great discussion that will take place today. If you haven't found your way to the bathrooms yet, you can go either way around what we call the boxcar here in the middle. The hallway to the back is pretty much in the middle here, and you'll find the restrooms just outside the door. Along the same lines for your safety, we always want you to know where the nearest exits are. Many of you came in the front exit, but out the back to the bathrooms is another exit that goes out to our garage and outside, and then immediately behind me is another conference room that we've just kind of blocked off with the drape, but that's another exit should we have to exit because of a fire drill or something like that. So just want you to be familiar with the space. Also, if you need to get on Wi-Fi, we have free Wi-Fi here, so if you're looking to log on and check emails or whatever during a break, all you have to do is open up a browser window. Our screen should pop up, and you just have to accept our terms and you'll be right on the internet and on your way. Some other just points to make about the facility. You will see cameras all around you today, so we will be videotaping and taking photographs. If you're not comfortable with that for whatever reason, just let the photographers or videographers know, and they will be happy to make sure your back is turned or whatever as they take pictures, but this is a great conversation, and we want to welcome you all to our space. As you tour our space, I also just want to call out, we have a special exhibit that we've installed. Thank you to Mental Health America. Our bus stop is a space we like to customize depending upon the events that take place here, so we've installed some of their information in our bus stop exhibit, and we're always looking for partners on this very important topic. So if you would like to become a part of our space, we're always looking for partners for that content here in our space. So without further ado, I'm gonna turn it over to Tony Beretta to get the meeting started. Thanks, Keith, and I just want to welcome all of you here to the Center for Total Health, along with Keith. The team here is fantastic, and whenever we in the public policy space within Kaiser Permanente have events, it's a tremendous benefit to have this center where we can bring people together. About, it was in 2011, our prior CEO, George Halverson, had envisioned a center in Washington where we could, in his words, bring people together for conversations about health. And ever since then, it's been a very interesting time in public policy and healthcare, and we've had a large number of events here focusing on issues around health, centered around health reform, and related issues. A couple of years ago, Bernard Tyson, our current CEO challenged those of us in the government relations and health policy space to think about what issues could we bring Kaiser Permanente to in a new and different way, where we might be able to make progress, at least put our shoulder behind the wheel that a lot of other people have been working on for a long time, to try to add momentum to some areas that aren't just naturally gonna happen over time. And so we've developed a strategy a few years ago which includes forums like this one, where we would bring some of Kaiser Permanente's resources and expertise and ask others with even more expertise to come in and talk to us. And the issues that we'd identified a few years ago to do that were around prescription drug pricing, unsurprising to hear that that's something, we hear a lot about it. Also, I'm not so sure that we need to be pushing that issue since many of the activities within the pharmaceutical industry make discussion of that somewhat self-executing on the front page of the newspaper all the time. Another area of interest that we were hoping to create some progress was in the area of telehealth where there's radical transformation of how healthcare services are being provided. And yet public policy is not really keeping pace in some respects, inhibiting the development of some of those services and simply creating a little bit of complexity over time and so we've been focusing on that. But the one that I'm most excited about has been identifying mental health and wellness. What can we do to advance mental health and wellness as a matter of public policy? I've been concerned over the years that there has been, and this is largely because of the issues where we as an organization have been challenged to improve our mental health services. I can tell you an enormous amount of effort has gone in to improving access and improving the models of care within our organization. I have also over the years participated in other organizations for nine years I was on the board of the East Bay Agency for Children in the East Bay of San Francisco Bay Area, which is essentially a mental health care provider, social workers providing social services to kids with mental health needs in the Alameda County Schools. And what was very clear to me working in that area was it's really on a shoestring. It's really remarkable both, how few providers there are to meet the needs that for young people in the schools who are facing all kinds of challenges all of the time. And there are programs that exist to take care of those kids. Many of them are tied up in complex public policy driven restraints. One of the most interesting conversations I had recently over coffee a couple of weeks ago with their CEO was a program I wasn't aware of where Kaiser Permanente has funded a social worker in one of the schools in one of the middle schools in Oakland to simply have a free floating social worker who's there to support the teachers in the school to figure out how to have a more coherent experience for all the kids in the classrooms. Not somebody who's funded by MediCal. You know, it's not, you know, those rules don't apply because if e-back were to get paid they would have to have the social worker meeting with the kids, working them up, doing all the things that need to be done. But the notion that there's not enough flexibility in terms of how we approach these things, how we can get upstream to take care of folks and provide the resources that are necessary to do, what are just logical things. There's plenty of opportunity for us. So I'm really pleased that we have pulled together an extraordinary group of people today. You know, all of you spend a lot more time, many of you spend a lot more time on this subject than either I do or our team has in the past but it's clear that mental health and wellness is the one area within our organization that people are the most excited about, the most excited about the opportunities there are moving forward to improve the quality of care and access to care and most excited about and feeling deep down that we're all very close, we see it every day, we either experience it personally, we see it in our families and we see it in our friends around us, just the incredible depth of need that exists and a fundamental disconnect with the services that are available, whether we wanna talk about payment policy or whether we wanna talk about workforce policy, there's a bunch of things that we can talk about but I think the thing that we can do most usefully here and one of the reasons that we wanted to pull a group like this together is to really ask ourselves what are the right questions we should be asking ourselves as we examine what's in front of us. I know I have my own preferred solutions to the various problems that I see in front of my face. I know all of us have our own experiences who are interested in this space but fundamentally we need to start with and this is true for Kaiser Permanente, we're still in the early stages of this conversation, many other folks and other organizations are more developed in terms of their thinking in this space but it can never hurt to ask ourselves are we asking ourselves the right questions, are we focusing in the right spaces and how can we pull people together to work together to try to improve things in this space. So that's the tone I hope we set for today. Before we move into the agenda, I would like to ask my colleague, Sessia Chevria, to come up, she is going to show us some interesting things that have to do with polling or something like that. So Sessia, do you wanna? Yes, thank you. Yeah, that was great. So today we'd like to start off the day with a poll. If you look at the center of your table, one of the table tents has instructions on our polling exercise today. So we have two questions to kick off our time with you. You will need your phone or a laptop and this is as straightforward as sending a text message. So if you follow those instructions, we should be able to get you up and running with our first polling question in a second. Raise your hand when you feel like you're ready to go for the poll. Great, excellent. Okay, good. All right, so why don't we go to our first question? So we wanna find out a little bit more about who's in the room today. So why don't we have you answer? What sector do you work in? So you can see A is government, B advocacy, C healthcare, D think tank, E philanthropy or F for other. So if folks wanna take a second and submit their responses. Still going? Great, we have quite a few others in the room. Can I have folks, anyone that checked other share with us where you're from? What sector? Anybody check other? Yes, okay, great. Thank you, Charlie. Others, yes? Okay, great, thank you. Any others? Great, well thank you all for joining us. So let's turn to our next question which is basically we wanna know what you hope to learn during our forum today. So we're hoping that you'll list the specific topics that you'd like to see covered. So you can enter a word. Oh, I see there's still responses for the last one coming in. But go ahead and type a word. Again, something that you're interested in learning today, something that you're hoping will cover. And those should start to appear on the screen as well. So I see policy priorities, integration, school mental health, excellent. Access to care, teen suicide, workforce, advocacy agenda, community focused health, equity and access, policy, policy ideas, great. Solutions, collaboration between competitors, that's a good one. Integration approaches, should we write? Great, thank you. Last few responses, payment policy, children's behavioral health, opioids, great. Workforce again. Well, thank you everybody for participating in the poll. We're hoping to come back to some of these at the end of the day and just see how well we did in addressing them. A few others are coming in but we'll go back at the end of the day. Thank you, thanks Tony.


The process to alter Nigeria's national revenue allocation formula has begun. Benres State Governor Samuel Autumn is now advocating, you know, a change in how revenue is shared amongst the federal government, states and local government. We've invited a public affairs analyst, Mr. Nik Aguli, to shed more light on this with us. Good morning, Mr. Aguli. Good morning. Thank you for having me this morning. All right. I want to lay out the facts, first of all. Presently, Nigeria's allocation formula is 52.63% for the state, for the federal government. And we also have 26.72% for states and 20.6% for the local government areas. Now, this formula is what has been in use since the 90s. So do you think it's time for a review or we're just fine? Thank you very much for that question. To be honest, my view is that we should not even be talking about revenue allocation because where is the revenue coming from? The revenue is derived principally from the oil, gas and the Niger Delta and taxation being raised from federally collected taxes. And we shouldn't have this in the bottle economy where the two types of government, the state and the local government, are looking up to their mother, the federal government, to breastfeed them every month. I agree that if a mother breastfeeds children, it gets to a point where the children are able to print for themselves and are given 60 years old. And we have this state that have been existed from 60 years, from 40. I think the youngest of our state should be like 30 years old. How can a mother keep breastfeeding a 30-year-old asset? This democracy that we copy from the United States of America, there is no revenue sharing the federal government of the United States. We want to copy a system of government that unfortunately and tragically too, we decided to copy what they said or copy right. The United States don't share revenue. Though Biden does not share revenue to any governor or county in the United States, they generate the outlaw revenue. It will interest Nigerians to know that in the United States, who is the most pressing with copy, it is the state and local government that send money to the takers. I'm not the other way around as you are practicing. In Nigeria today, we owe the 36th place of the federation and the FCP. Every state has been endowed with enough retortings that if the governor and local government are not lesbians and they look in words to unlock the value embedded in their state, nobody will be talking about looking to have been there for money. This is my view about this matter. Mr. Agole, since we currently have the current format that we're working with until we're able to achieve a change in format and let states now start to depend solely on what they can generate, I want us to first of all look at what we currently have closely. Why does it feel like regardless of how much these states get every month, it's still not enough to achieve what they need? Because they still are seeking more funds. You still see states lobbying for loans from outside the country even. You still see states seeking grants to finance themselves better. In 2020, a state like Aquabomb received about $146 billion from the federal government. The Delta State I think received about $186 billion from the federal government and it still doesn't seem to be enough. So would you say that this is because of mismanagement of funds or the state really just needs more money to be able to function? This is the brutal truth. The brutal truth is that there is no state in Nigeria that depends on federal allocation that is going to develop. It's impossible. If you check what is happening, when the federally allocated funds get to the state, the state, state money government and state officials make a way with what we do that and that is what is happening year in, year out, year in, year out. We are having expectations of development, having expectations of state government working, having expectations of state vector schools, vector health care, vector roads, better working, coming into our homes and it's not happening. And it has not happened, look, we started this current democracy in 1999. So from each state, they either have their state governor or in some cities they support governor. So you have city people who have come into the governor, depending on federal allocation, they make the best performance, every year they make budgets to see the state are not developing. I mean it is said that it is only a madman that can't do the same thing and expecting different results. The state simply needs to use what is coming from the center to unlock the values that they get in their hospital. You spoke about Governor Atom. And Governor Atom is my governor. I am from Benire, but I tell you that the biggest resource of Benire State is the fertile land with a good climate to match. What has Governor Atom done to unlock value in the agricultural space in his sixth year in office? He does nothing. He drives around, he looks at the fertile land, right parallel, but he doesn't track it. That is where the money is. Because if Benire mechanizes and begins to cultivate their soil, money will be coming from the United States to buy food, will be coming from Europe to buy food, from Australia money will be coming from all over the world into Benire to buy food. And that is why we will be talking about government having enough money to develop the state. As long as auto-carrying is on the cashier, going to the federal government to get allocation to my pay salary, salary that is going to be paid, his oil salary, his oil pension, his own contractors, you can see that this money is not going to be enough. So in 2023, Nigerians have to look carefully. Any candidate standing for the position of governor or local government chairman, or even Nigeria as a champion, that has no idea as how they will look in what to generate value and develop their state, you give them a vote and the same situation is going to continue. So we're discussing today. Mr Agouleh, I need to ask you this question. Do you think Nigeria's current political structure allows for such autonomy of state? Or do you think we will need that restructuring that we all keep talking about? Let me answer your question in two parts. Yes, Nigeria needs restructuring. I want to admit restructuring. I mean that the federal government has to relieve majority of the 68 items on the exclusivity of participation. The federal government should not have more than eight items on the exclusivity. What should be on the exclusiveness should be defined, foreign policy, economy, like currency teaching, because we have to issue one currency. Those are the kind of things that should be on the exclusivity of Nigeria's constitution. The rest of the items on the constitution should be devoted to the state and local government. These are governments that are closest to the people. When we come out there, the federal republic of Nigeria, it's a scam. We are not running a federal government. When we run a federal system of government, we are running a unit three system of government. So how can we come out there to a federal republic and we are in fact not running a unit three system of government? So as far as restructuring is concerned, that is my mind about it. But let me now answer your second question. You are saying even in the current structure, at the state's handicap, in terms of unlocking value in your state, because every state in Nigeria like I said is black. Is it that they have land for the culture? They have mineral resources in the ground to be taxed or they have poverty potential? Nigeria is black, all around. Can the state unlock value even with the current culture that we have? The answer is the capital years. Well, this question is what stops the government from mechanizing that the culture of Nigeria? Nothing, nothing. The federal government will not stop him. Nothing stops him. He has all the powers to kill the soil in Nigeria and bring in value from countries are not coming to buy food. So pounds, dollars, everything will be coming to Nigeria to buy food. That is one of the problems we develop in the state and give a price to every other state in Nigeria. Mr. Agole, you mentioned earlier that in the next elections, citizens should or they electorate, should look out for governors or candidates who have ideas that can unlock these potentials. I wanted to quickly also mention that these ideas are very, very many and campaign promises can be sweeter than sugar sometimes. But it's what happens after they get into power that is next. So I want to get your view on what makes governors in Nigeria so lazy, what makes them get into that position and completely lose interest in internally generated revenue and looking out for ways that they can boost that revenue. And how can they electorate and show that they don't continue to allow such characters get into office? I want to thank you for the word you have used, lazy. And that is exactly what these guys are. These guys are lazy. All the governors and local governments in Nigeria are lazy. And the reason they are lazy is because there is a big mama of the federal government who is preceding them every month to the federal allocation committee, sending the billions of Naira monthly. Look, after I'm here, if I was guaranteed that my father would be sending me a check of 10 million every month for all the days of my life, I could probably know what, I could probably not do anything to generate the income for myself. And this is what is the problem. That we copy the most person from America, but we are running it in our own way. If you buy cars, you have to rent a car in a product with the manufacturer specification. You can only buy a car and the manufacturer will try to move forward and they try to pull down. This is what is happening to Nigeria. We copy the democracy that the local country should generate revenue and take to the center. Our own is that we are now using the center to pay money to the center local government. The opposite direction is from the work for us. Is it that we go and start our own system of government? But if it is this America or we either oppressing the way the Americans are doing or we are lost, take the second part of your question.  We have so many people in my state, by the way, we have more than 100 individuals that have come forward and they want to be governor. How can they electorate, see if they are betraying, don't also have their eyes on their location and don't also really want to follow the case or looking around. The simple answer is the electorate needs to look at a degree. They need to look at track record. They need to see what the people have done in the past, what the people have done in the past and what their promises are. They don't want to make us or something around anything. Who never had the track record of what anything successfully is what we still have in our head. You know that that man is not going to do what he doesn't have. That's why we need to look at what these candidates have done in the past. There's enough history for them to use. Ms. Agulay, I want you to just quickly remember and apologies that we're moving away from the discussion on states and now talking about the electoral process. But I think that one of the challenges is the fact that we have a similarly flawed electoral process and you know if you do not get you know parties picking the right candidates you can't really make this selection that you're referring to because it's really who is on the ballot that determines who gets voted for. So there is that but even after the elections you know when these you know people get into power there's still the need for people the citizens to be able to make stronger demands of their governors. The people of Benway state should be able to remind Governor Tom of how much he received from the federal government you know in 2020 and since the time that he's been there and also how much he's been able to generate as internally generated revenue since the time that he's been in that position and remind him that he has absolutely no excuse to be demanding more money when he is not been able to show working. I thank you very very much for that question. What you are saying is actually up. You see democracies have pillars. These pillars must be great to support democracy to run very well and one of the pillars is the sanctity of the electoral process. You also have the independence of the judiciary. You have the rule of law. You have the independence of the three arms of government. The executive administrator, the judiciary. Without this ingredient democracy is going to work. And this is why each of the problems and I mean we're discussing today was discussing economy. What's this economy on what if the electoral process is not producing the right managers of the economy. I mean this is why it is that president want to worry. The portfolio industry bill and the electoral bill. The president has to pay attention to the portfolio industry bill. Why is he not paying attention to the electoral bill so that we can show a better process. The economy we are.  From becoming a proper local public chairman or even the president. The main power point and that point is if the electoral process is as it is. This is governor's and little government chairman or even president. The citizens have been given the most power in the constitution to checkmate those elected to meet them. Natalia has a unique situation where we are in the democracy of the nation every two years. In the four years cycle, we are left people, they are not governing well and we are hoping for the best election. The constitution has provided us the power to follow through the governor's process and to participate in the democracy director. There are two governments. You have the executive, the legislature, the judiciary and the people. We also address another matter. Granted that the electoral process is strong and the president is developing concrete concerning a new bill. If we come to point it with the choice and president Boopari has not attended the new electoral bill into law. What options do we have as a Brazilian? We have two options. You see that we sit at home, not come out to vote or we come out to vote. Unfortunately of someone sitting at home, we only ensure continuity of the misgovernment that we are all trying about. The only hope that we understand of something changing is if Nigeria comes out to vote, not to vote. There were 30 million votes in 2019 presidential election. What if we have 50 million, 90 million that didn't poop out in 2023? To show that we are aware of the process, we just need that they deserve. So when people sit at home, they expect change. Change is not going to happen. So even at home as the electoral process is, it means there's been chance for us from the current trajectory that we are all. And Nigeria is going to approach, register, get the voter card to be ready for the party in 2023. Okay, Mr Agoule, at the beginning of the show, you mentioned that the focus of states should be on revenue generation, right? And you mentioned sources of that generation, which should be oil and non-oil sources, including taxation. So I want us to take the example of the River States case. So River States actually took the FIRS to courts, basically challenging who had the constitutional duty to receive a VAT, value added tax in the state. And the courts actually favoured River State government, saying that they have the right to collect taxes. But just yesterday, we have a statement from the FIRS, Director of Communications, warning residents of River States to continue to pay their taxes to the FIRS or face penalties because they have gone ahead for a state of execution on that matter. So really, where does this leave us? Where the River State governments want that judgment? And it all seemed like, oh, this is something other states should emulate. So states can go ahead and generate revenue internally, collect their taxes, so that they can be able to do the things that states should do for their citizens. But now that we have a case where the FIRS is challenging that judgment, appealing that judgment, where does that leave us regarding revenue generation for states and allocation? Let me answer your question in two parts. The first part is that we are running a democracy where the rule of law has to be supreme. So the River State government has won a case. If indeed the FIRS has got a state of execution, they've got a judgment for a state of execution, the judgment of the lower court. Then, River State individuals will have to obey the ruling of the court by continuing to pay taxes to FIRS. But if FIRS is yet to get that state of execution, it then means that the judgment of the court as obtained at River State is complete. And River State individuals will be breaking the law with the continuing pay taxes to the FIRS. So that is one point. The other part is that, what is my view about states collecting their taxes? And my answer is yes, states should be collecting their taxes. You see, in a normal situation, where there are some states in the north, you know, they have state, they have sharia, they will not allow the sale of cigarettes, alcohol, things like that. Okay? When you have it in the cloud, my legos, rivers, alcohol, they are selling alcohol, cigarettes, and all those things. And the VAT that is being generated from the state of alcohol is coming into a central court, held by the FIRS, and then the FIRS now divides the VAT. It gives it to the state in the north. Who thought I love the state of alcohol? How does that work? Who kept me in the progressions and things like that are happening? So every state should be empowered to, I mean, VAT is a consumer tax. If you go to the United States, from where we copied the democracy, it is the state of local country that collects consumer tax. It is the state of local government. You don't expect the state government to pump down and be collecting small, small things that are consumer tax. We should have a state government that is, that is really ubiquitous, ubiquitous, like different foreign policies, and those kind of things. So a reverse state government is right in the state that they are taking. We believe that that judgment should be successful in all the states of the federation. Let all the states do it if they are local practice. That's my view on this. All right. All right, Mr. Nika Guley, Public Affairs Analyst. We appreciate your perspectives on the program this morning. Have a great day. Thank you everyone. Thank you. All right. Up next, we'll be taking a look at the ranking of universities in Nigeria side by side her global counterparts after the break. Stay with us.


Okay, we're back. We're live. It's two o'clock block and this is Community Matters. We have a special show about a special program. Am I right? That's Marina Poon. She is the President of the Hong Kong Business Association. Hong Kong Business Association. It's a very active organization here in Hawaii, right? Yes. And she has a program we're going to talk about in a minute. And that's Jerry Sumida. Jerry Sumida is a principal at Carl Smith Ball, and he is one of the founders, I get this right? Yes, right. Of the Hong Kong Business Association, which is HAKBA. Right. HAKBA. H-K-B-A-H. That's right. Yeah. So on the 25th, which is only two weeks. Ten days away. It's going to be this program at Lawniakea, which you've organized. And it's about Hong Kong and China. It's about trade. It's about business. It's about all the things we need to be concerned about here in Hawaii. And that's really to your credit that you're presenting this program. But we're here today to find out why and what. We know how. Well, we don't know how. We'll find out more about how. We know where. We know when. It starts on, what, Sunday night to 24th. There are some events. Yeah. And then it goes all day and all through the evening on Monday the 25th of February. Yes. Okay. Why are you doing this, Marina? Okay. This is my thinking at that time before I started it. I was, as you know, you saw the TV all the time about the China and U.S. trade had conflict. Yeah. So people call it trade war. But I don't want to call it a trade war, but it's a conflict. So back and forth. And I thought this put us a U.S. resident or businessman. It's just in a very odd position. So especially like China. If you want to do trade with China, that position is odd. Yeah. A lot of trades with China actually will be surprised. Not Hawaii, but a lot of trade. But Hawaii should be interested. Hawaii should know about these things, participate at least in the conversation. Yes. So, and I thought that because also I am a Chinese immigrant from Hong Kong, and I also thought is put us in an awkward position because of they've been fighting for the trade. So I hope that we can put in a program so everybody have a dialogue so we can talk about it. And hopefully we can find a solution, you know, to do this whole package. You have a Chaka Block program here. I mean, you have speaker after speaker. I know. You have a real, you know, this is a. We have actually. Parade of talent. Yeah. Eight out of town speaker. Three of them are directly from Hong Kong. And five of them is full from U.S. mainland. Yeah. So when we do a show or a movie, we always ask ourselves, what is the takeaway? What takeaway do you want people to get from this program on the 20th? Yes. It's very clear that we have two side of it, morning and afternoon. The morning side, we are focused on the U.S. and China trade policy and relation. So hopefully that the audience or the participant will learn and or participate in the dialogue and conversation after the panel they addressed it. And hopefully that we can find a common solution to solve at least the Hawaii and Hong Kong, China problem, not necessarily the national problem, right? So we cannot control. But in the afternoon, it's a practical business advice by all our speakers, including Gerald Sabina. I would expect nothing less. Yes. And we're going to talk about that in a minute. So you're calling this the 2019 U.S.-Hong Kong-China form. It's not the first one? No. Interestingly, the first one we did is called U.S.-Hong Kong forum 2010. The second one in 2014, we called it Hong Kong-China forum. Now we put that together. U.S.-Hong Kong-China forum. So what I gather from what you say is, right now we have this trade, what do you call it, conflict, trade conflict, not a war but a conflict. And business people who might otherwise deal with China might be intimidated by that. They may not want to go there or they might hedge their bets, so to speak, because of who knows what's going to happen about the trade conflict. So I think what you're saying is you're offering advice to them on what kind of expectations they should have and what kind of moves they should make to better engage with trade with China. Yes. I thought that through our dialogue, maybe they can find a way to manage it, at least if it's not a solution. To give them comfort, to give them a drive, to give them solutions. Right. That is your word. Right. Solution. That's one. Who should come to this program? Oh, everyone interested in the international relations, the first thing first. Second is anybody interested in Hong Kong, China and U.S. trade and business, how to learn the other side. And hopefully that we can present our side to the other side better too. And one more question that we need to ask you is this is the Hong Kong Business Association HACPA. But why Hong Kong and not China itself? Why isn't there an organization so like yours, which is based in China and Beijing, Shanghai, that would put this program on? Wouldn't we get a more direct connection that way? It's a good question. Since I only affiliate with Hong Kong Business Association, so obviously I will do that. If I have another organization affiliate, maybe I will suggest the other organization. Why don't we put on this? Okay. We do what we can. Yes. Yes. What's the website that people should, I'm sorry, Jerry. You can also remember though that historically when trade with China began to develop after normalization, Hong Kong was looked upon as a gateway. And even China looked upon Hong Kong as the way in which both to bring in foreign direct investment and business as well as with China ultimately to go out into the broader world. Now Hong Kong is a little bit less strong in that particular regard. And you talk about Beijing directly, Guangzhou, Shanghai, etc., other cities in China. But Hong Kong has always been a pivotal role and really still is in many cases. If you look upon the internationalization of the RMB as a currency, Hong Kong is partly the site where they're trying to build up that particular foundation. So when the Hong Kong Business Association of Hawaii was first established, part of it was because of Hong Kong's strength itself, but also part of it was as a gateway into China. So at this point as Burina indicates, there is a U.S.-China business council based in Washington and so forth. But from the Hawaii perspective, the Hong Kong Business Association or Business Association of Hawaii or HAKPA as you call it, really has been the focal point. And it's just expanded the program now rightly so into sort of greater China. Okay, I'm so glad to bring him here. Well, let me add this, Jerry. My perception, you can agree or not, is that Hong Kong, whatever Beijing has in mind about the future of Hong Kong, the people in Hong Kong want to continue as the gateway to China. That's their aspiration. And they feel strongly about it because that's the way it's been for hundreds of odd years. And in fact, de facto, they deliver a lot of foreign investment into China and they organize investment arrangements that happen in China. So they're very well equipped and they're very active right now and they want to do it. They want to continue to do it forever into China in the future. Now there are those leaders in Beijing who may not feel that way. From time to time, I read Frank Cheng in the Wall Street Journal out of Hong Kong, I think. From time to time, you see little points of resistance by Beijing. They say, no, you stay there, Hong Kong. We have our plans for Hong Kong and you are not the masters of your destiny. We are. But that may or may not carry because the real momentum here is that Hong Kong was, is, and to a large extent, will continue to be the gateway business-wise to China. Am I right? Partly. I think now what has happened quite frankly is that you've got direct lines to other parts of China from the outside. And that's not just North America but also throughout Asia and in Europe. So Hong Kong is in an evolving situation to put it nicely. You do have the, you know, two systems, one country approach which some people would deem to be eroding within Hong Kong. Singapore has looked very much as a potential counterpoint if not rival to Hong Kong. So we're in a state of flux. Hong Kong still is a major way in, but it's not exclusive. And as you know, right across the border, there was a now a metropolis of Shenzhen. Previously, it was just a relatively small village. And now it's one of the largest, largest cities in China. As direct connections was everywhere in the world. That's right. And it's developing to an NIT and an AI powerhouse. He's really, really right. He has a lot of knowledge on that. You'll be talking about these things in the program, right? Yes. He will be one of our speakers. And you actually will be our moderator. Yeah. I want to moderate the panel on One Belt, One Road. That's what I want to do. Thank you. So what is the what is the website where people can see the detail of this program? Actually, they can go on the Eventbrite, which is the one that we put on for registration. So they can go on the 2019 US Hong Kong China forum.eventbrite.com. Okay. 2019 US Hong Kong China Forum. And here's a picture of what you will find fairly complete. A lot of activities. This is the I'm showing you the picture of the activities for the 25th. Yeah. And this one is for the evening before plenty of activities on the 24th in the evening. It's a Chinese New Year gala press our organization 23rd anniversary plus a welcome dinner to our out of town guests. Yeah, come here by choice. Also, Xin Yan Kuala. Xin Yan Kuala. Thank you. Okay. Jerry, I want to talk about our panel. Okay. Okay. So we have a panel on One Belt, One Road, which is a piece of fascination for me in terms of, you know, Chinese policy. And it is being played out. It was announced what not too long ago is being played out now in with great speed and robust energy everything coming out of China's robust energy. And we have a panel to discuss this. So what's the take away from our panel? And then we'll talk about the detail. Well, we haven't had the panel yet. So we're not quite sure. But as you see it now, well, as I see it now, first off, one of the questions is in your right, One Belt, One Road, BRI as is now more formally called or informally called is a subject of major interest in both positive as well as skeptical, depending on which circle you're talking about. But it is, from one perspective, a very visionary, long range program plan initiative really to create or recreate or enhance two major trade routes from really the western part of or the eastern part of China, all the way through into Europe, one the northern so-called northern route, and one a sea based route, the southern route, maritime route, which will cover almost all the countries in the world with the exception of North America directly. Anyway, it even penetrates into Africa. And it is supposed to encourage trade and along that economic development and prosperity along those trading routes. And it is not just trade, but if you take it in its fullest explained extent, it's international customs, use of artificial intelligence, transportation networks, power plants, other kinds of infrastructure, so forth and so on throughout all of those countries. An investment. And an investment. Large investment. Very large investment and a very long timeframe. That's one side of it. On another side, it's a question of whether or not in effect it is China seeking to spread its geopolitical strategic plans throughout all of that area and essentially rival North America in short. And they're also both financial, international financial as well as national financial and geostrategic military implications that have been drawn from a lot of this. So it's not a road actually. Not, no, not a road is, we would know it, a route perhaps. And it's not a belt either. But it's an idea that sounds to me like from Xi Jinping's point of view, it's a great idea. It is. It's an idea whose time has come for China. Well, yeah, possibly for China too, although it is visionary. You have to take that very much into account and it's been compared somewhat to the Marshall plan. Although quite frankly, the two are quite different, both in terms of historical contacts and also in terms of objectives. I mean, this is a long range infrastructure plan to assist China and its economy. Well, but there are, there are challenges. There are problems. There are potholes on the road, so to speak. And one of them I keep reading about is the reaction, the pushback that China gets when it encourages a large infrastructure project. It makes huge loans.  And this could be a strategic, critical, strategic, important project like a harbor. Right. And so I hope we are going to discuss that in this panel. It should be discussed and come up because that is, there is an issue, there is pushback. And one of the questions quite frankly is, you know, to what extent is all of this a, a clearly thought out and systematically implemented geostrategic political policy of the Chinese government or how much of this is a broad initiative with a lot of different kinds of players with some ways of doing things that really are not necessarily or have not been thought out but end up with a few very difficult situations such as the pushbacks you've been talking about. Yeah. I mean most of these, these projects are loaned projects. They're not grants, they're loan projects and major infrastructure projects. So you're talking about railways, bridges, dams, harbors, port facilities, so forth and so on. And the basic idea is that a project is decided upon in a particular country and supposedly is part of the BRI initiative. I will build and enhance to that. A loan is made for the project. Sometimes it's 80 percent of the project costs, sometimes a little bit less, but 20 percent equity, 80 percent loan is, is relatively standard. The loan is made to the government. The government uses the loan proceeds to buy the infrastructure equipment, services and equipment. Generally speaking it's a, and by the way the loan is from a Chinese policy bank in which there are four major ones. The loan proceeds are used to essentially hire Chinese contract companies with Chinese laborers who come in to build the project and then from the operations of the project the revenues are to pay back the loan. When you have a project that costs a fair amount of money and the revenues anticipated from that project are much less than either anticipated or hoped for then you have that kind of for situations. Very much like borrowing money from the bank here and not being able to pay for it, the remedy is foreclosure. And that's what has happened in at least one major well publicized project in Sri Lanka. There may be another one in the airport. There was a port project, there may be an airport project that goes similar and that's caused pushback from a number of countries in Asia as well as Southeast as well as South Asia and in Africa. Well those two problems that we've talked about, one is the pushback on the Chinese who wind up owning the project through their business style on this. And the other that is kind of troublesome is the lack of coordination among the private interests that are involved under the general umbrella. So what that says to me is corruption and these things may offer opportunities for the individual players to do corrupt deals. And I'm hoping that we'll discuss that too on the 25th. I'm looking forward to that. And I want to stop now because there's miles to go before we sleep, maybe a whole world miles to go. And this will be a very interesting panel. Some people think this is going to be the most interesting panel in Marina's program. What do you think, Jerry? Well, with J.U. as moderator, it has to be. Okay, Marina, what do you think of Jerry and the panel? What do you think of the program in general? How important is this program to you, to us, you know, and for that matter, to the connection between the two countries, the U.S. and China? I think I find the perfect panels for the right topic. So as you said, this is America may not be in that round, but I hope that the panel will also address how we can be involved in. Yeah, the bottom line is that this, you know, it is a visionary. If carried out in the way the vision would suggest, it could be the biggest thing that has ever happened for China since the 14th century anyway. And America should learn from what China is doing. That sounds like the table is turned, but the table is turned. America should learn from what China is doing. But the war is wrong, so it will come back. Well, that's not what Thomas Friedman said, but hey, that's okay. Well, one of the other things you might mention that might be discussed is, in fact, what is the response of other countries, including the United States, including the recently enacted Build Act, that is directly in response to the BRI initiative. So we can discuss that. Oh, gee, I'm getting so excited about this program. Tell them again how they can sign up. Tell them again the message you want to leave with them in this discussion. I hope everybody will find a time to come to us, especially afternoon panel. Jay will be there to moderate it. The website that you can learn about this program is 2019 US Hong Kong US HK China dot event bright dot com. Yeah, or Hakba. Oh, okay. Hakba, for the name of the organization, that'll find the event bright. It'll find the information. Hong Kong Business Association, the Hakba. Jerry, you always somehow get the last word. Why don't you take the last word now? Come and participate in the conference. It is going to be interesting. And as Marina indicated, there are two parts of it. One is to look at a whole US China trade situation, and whether you, whatever you call it, a war conflict or whatever, they're really critical issues. And Hawaii is involved, at least indirectly, if not more in all of that. And we do have a short term as well as a long term interest in all of that. And the second part is different subject matters. BRI is one of them, but there are other aspects too. And that kind of fills out the broader set of relationships with China. Trade is a big focus in the morning, but then the broader set of implications, they go in many cases like BRI beyond China are of interest. So it'll be a very well rounded program. And I think that quite frankly, the Hawkeye is to be really commended for bringing this kind of discussion with this kind of breadth and expertise, as you said, from both Hong Kong as well as from the US mainland to participate in this. And this is pretty powerful for Hawaii. Thank you, Brina Poon, for putting the program on. This is very important to Hawaii. Thank you for having us. Thank you. Thank you, Brina Poon and Jerry Sumida. Aloha. Thank you. Aloha.