I'm going to be discussing my two books, Defending the Undefinable, Defending the Undefinable One, and Defending the Undefinable Two. But first let me tell you a little story about how I came to write this one. What happened was I was doing my PhD dissertation at Columbia on rent control, and most of it was on math and stat, and I am very bored by math and stat. So I had to keep pushing. There was a war in Vietnam going on, and my choice was either do my dissertation and stay in school or go and shoot some people and be shocked by them. I decided to stay in New York and do my dissertation, but I had to give myself reward. So every time I finished doing one more set of equations, I promised myself I would take one whole day off, and I could do anything I wanted. And what I decided to do is to write something. I'm a nerd, you know, so that's my pleasure to write stuff.  And then I'd go back to my dissertation and then I'd have another week off or a day off in another week and I'd write another article. And by the time I finished my dissertation, I had about 30 articles floating around and I put them together and that's this book. So I'm very grateful for my PhD dissertation. Boring as hell, but at least it created or helped me create this. So what I'm going to do is read the table of contents of each of these two books and then maybe talk about one or two of the issues. And as I read them off, write down which issue that you would like me to talk about so that I can talk about the ones you want. Okay, so in the first book, here are the chapters under sex, the prostitute, the pimp and the male chauvinist pig, on the medical, the drug pusher and the drug addict, on the free speech, the blackmailer, slanderer, libeler, denier of academic freedom, advertiser and one of my favorites, the person who yells fire in a crowded theater. Then under outlaw, there's the gypsy cab driver, the ticket scalper and the dishonest cop, dishonest cop. Under financial, it's the non-government counterfeiter, the miser, inheritor, money lender and non-contributive charity. Ayn Rand would like that one, I guess. Under business and trade, the commudian, slumlord, ghetto merchant, speculator, importer, middleman and profiteer, under ecology, the strip miner, litterer and waste maker and under labor, the fat capitalist pig employer, the scab, the rate buster and the employer of child labor. By the way, this book came out in 1976. My dissertation was finished in 72, so it took me, it takes a while to get a publisher when you're starting out, it took me a while. I want to read what Hayek wrote about this. And when I saw this letter, I asked different people to write, I don't know, a blurb for the book. And when I read this, I thought Hayek was drunk. Here's what Hayek said. Looking through defending the indefendable made me feel that I was once more exposed to the shock therapy, by which more than 50 years ago, the late Ludwig von Mises was in a consistent free market position. In other words, he's comparing me to Mises. I was just a young punk kid, not that I'm any Mises now, but that was ridiculous, I was like in my late 20s. And I really thought he was a little drunk on this. Later on, what happened is I got a hold of his book, The Road to Serfdom, and I wrote a blistering attack on it because I thought he was selling out on principle. And in that, I said I hate to be like the, what is it, the dog that bites you? No, that's not, the person who bites the dog. Sorry? Bite the hands that feed you, thank you. I'm getting senile, I'm losing it here. You can see, pretty soon I'll be drooling, so the people in the first row, you better watch out for the drool.  And then I realized that a good professor, a good scholar is after the truth. And if you don't have it, and one of your students, or followers as I am of Hayek, I mean I revere him as an Austrian economist, I think that as a libertarian he's a little, not as good as he should be. But I think that that's the ideal, that we professors want to get to the truth with a capital T if possible. And if we don't, and if one of you students can set us straight, that's good, we shouldn't resent it, we should glorify that. In my talk on Friday on Murray Rothbard, I will be talking about Murray in this regard and how he reaches the highest levels of just this sort of a thing, of welcoming criticism from his followers. Okay, so that's the first book. The second book, this one came out in what year? 2013, so it's a long time between 76 and 2013. I've now got defending the undefendable three in, I'm sort of halfway through it, but I keep getting distracted unlike the girl who can't say no. You know, people ask me to do this and I say, oh yeah, that's fun and I'll do that. And so one of these years I'll come out with defending three. And if anyone has suggestions for what's not on these lists that need to be defended please send me stuff, get my email and say, hey, you should include this person in defending three. Okay, so here's defending two. Under trade, multinational enterprise or the smuggler, British petroleum, nuclear energy and the corporate raider. Under labor, the hatchet man, the home worker, the picket line crosser, the daycare provider and the automator. Under medical, the smoker, the human organ merchant, that's the person who buys and sells used body parts, the breast milk substitute purveyor. Under sex, topless in public, polygamous marriage and the burning bed, that's about wife abuse, where the wife kills the abuse of husband. The discriminators, the sexist, the peeping tom, the aegis, the homophobe and the stereotyper. These are all people who discriminate. And by the way, two books have come out on the basis of defending the undefendable. One of them is called the case for discrimination. And the other on a topic in this book is legalizing blackmail. So I'll talk a little bit about discrimination and blackmail when I get to doing chapters here. So under discrimination, sexist, peeping tom, aegis, homophobe and stereotyper. In defending three, I'm thinking of having people who discriminate against those who have too few hair follicles. Under business, the war toy manufacturer, the colorizer, the baby seller, baby seller buying and selling babies, David Gordon will appreciate that one. And the heritage building destroyer, under politically incorrect, the bad Samaritan, not the good Samaritan. The duelist, the person who duels, fights duels. The executioner, the dwarf thrower. Those are people who throw dwarfs.  And the intellectual property denier. Okay, so what I'm going to do now is I'm going to take one chapter from this book and that is blackmail. And one chapter from this book, namely discrimination, and start off with those two and then maybe pick one or two others from each book into the audience where you can choose other chapters or pretty much anything else you want to ask me or discuss. Okay, so under blackmail, what's going on with blackmail? Now you'd think blackmail is a very bad thing and very bad things should be prohibited by law. But libertarianism doesn't prohibit all bad things. Libertarianism is a theory of what law should be and what it says is you can do anything you damn well please. Just do not initiate violence against other people or their property. So the question is, does blackmail constitute an initiation or a threat thereof of violence against someone else? And my answer is no, it doesn't. You have to distinguish between blackmail and extortion. In blackmail, what I'm going to do is threaten to become a gossip.  That's what blackmail is. It's the threat to become a gossip. But is gossip, per se, a violation of rights? No. Right? I mean the only violation of rights is murder and rape and theft and threatening to become a gossip is not to threaten to use violence. Now extortion is very different and usually they're conflated and in the literature they use the synonyms for each other which is improper because they're very different.  So blackmail, it's not nice but then again, or nice hood. It's a theory of we should prohibit things that have uninvited border crossings or trespass but you're not trespassing on anyone else's property.  Whereas if you're in the hands of a gossip it's game over. The gossip is just babble. So if you're going to put people in jail for blackmailing, you should put them in jail even more for being a gossip and yet that's silly. Gossip is a good thing. Gossip keeps people on the straight and narrow. Gossip is a way of a non-legal way of making people behave better than they might otherwise be because you're always afraid someone will gossip yack, yack, yack. So this is the case in favor, not of blackmail but in favor of legalizing blackmail and prostitution. I don't favor prostitution. I have a daughter. I have a sister. I have a wife. I wouldn't want any of them to be a prostitute. I don't go to prostitutes. I don't think prostitution is a good thing. I think that the much better way of relating male and female or male and male or female and female because you have prostitution all over the place is through love and kindness and being friends. And that's what prostitution does. And nor does blackmail. What happened was the University of Pennsylvania Law Review had a big thick essay, not an issue of the University of Pennsylvania Law Review. And what it consisted of was a whole bunch of very, very famous people arguing as to why blackmail should be illegal, illegal. And half of them, and they're very famous people. I think there was, I don't know, I can pick out some of the authors here. Some of them are very famous libertarians. Richard Posner, for example, is one of them. And I think Epstein is another one, Richard Epstein, Nozick, a whole bunch of people and they split. And some of them said, no, no, no, it's based on utilitarianism, namely blackmail is so bad that we have to prohibit it. Not a one of them said, here's the case for legalizing blackmail. And yet I had written several articles and I wasn't invited to that. So Murray Rothbard used to say, hatred is my muse.  So this is mainly a critique of all of those people who contributed articles to the University of Pennsylvania Law Review saying that blackmail should be illegal and here's why and they diverged as to why it should be but not a one of them made the case that it should be legal. So this whole book is just filled with my ranting and raving against those guys and some of them are very, I read off names and articles. The others are very famous within legal circles. So that's that book and that's the blackmail topic. Okay, the next one is discrimination. Now remember, libertarianism says you've got to keep your midst to yourself. You can't grab other people or their property.  No. You can discriminate till the cows come home. Now it might not be nice but if you discriminate you're not violating their rights because they have no right that you should deal with them.  For example, Milton Friedman on wage, on free trade, on rent control, on occupational licensure. I mean he's really, really good on those things and what does he specialize in? Money, where he's horrible in and educational vouchers where he's horrible in. Happily there are two people for whom Murray's law of people specialize in what they're horrible in doesn't work and that's Thomas Sowell as our warmongers. So from a libertarian point of view they're not really kosher they're not really part of our gang but they hardly ever talk about it. What do they talk about? They talk about discrimination. Now you might think that racial discrimination is really a bad thing and it hurts people and what Walter and Thomas do is come up with article after article, book after book showing because the usual feeling when you hear about racial or sexual or any kind of discrimination is oh my god that's disgusting it ought to be prohibited by law because the victims of it are really hurt and what Walter and Thomas say is no no no they're not really hurt and what I say in this book about discrimination is that they're not really hurt. So let me give you some examples.  The question is why doesn't some other bus company start up and say black people you can ride in the front of the bus see the solution the recipe for discrimination is competition so the question is why didn't some other company whether started by a black person or a white person just somebody who discriminates in favor of green namely green as in money because there's profits to be made because if black people are told you can't ride in the front of the bus you have to go to the back of the bus company so why didn't some other bus companies start up in the Jim Crow south in the 1930s or the early 1940s the reason is because in order to start up a bus company you had to get permission from the very people who were espousing Jim Crow legislation in the first place so competition is the solution for this discrimination but they didn't allow competition so of course it's going to hurt black people somebody else could open up a bus company and presumably all black people would go to that one and some white people because that's the next bus well then the whole thing would go away take another case suppose black people and white people have an equal productivity and some of them do and let's say their each productivity is $10 an hour and due to discrimination black people only make $7 an hour well what are you going to do I'm going to offer $701 and I'll make $299 pure profit and somebody else will say $702 and someone else will say $703 and where will it be bid up to to $10 namely the discrimination is perilous and it probably wouldn't even go to $701 or $702 because market forces of competition would see to it that this didn't occur okay I've done a little bit on discrimination I've done a little bit on blackmail let me pick one more from this book and one more from that book and then I'll open it up for discussion and people hopefully will ask about other chapters and I'll try to respond to them so which one shall I pick here let me see personal yells far in a crowded theater that's one of my favorites and Justice Holmes was saying that you know free speech is all well and good but there have to be limits you just can't say anything you damn well please and by the way I agree with that I don't think that all speech acts are legitimate there are certain speech acts which should be prohibited by law namely if you don't give me money I'm going to kill you namely a threat it's just a speech act but I think that that should be prohibited by law it has to be some sort of clear and present danger for example in a play if some character says if you don't give me money I'm going to kill you that's okay or in the present context I just said those words but you all know I'm not going to kill you I mean that's just silly I'm doing a philosophical examination here but if it was you know close in a dark alley and you were afraid and I said that and you shot me it would be legitimate defense was right now if you shot me I'm just an absolutist on free speech because an absolutist on free speech would say anything you want okay back to Justice Holmes who said well we have to have limitations on free speech because otherwise people will yell fire in a crowded theater we can't have that well what's the libertarian answer as I see it what is this chapter in this book all about it says look because you're violating the contract but suppose you had a theater where they wanted to do that shouldn't consenting adults be allowed to yell fire in a crowded theater and then rush together I mean if they all agree to it one of my articles talks about this thing called murder park what's murder park it's a stadium where the walls are 20 foot thick and everybody is issued a pistol with six bullets but wait when the bell rings at 50 minutes of the hour everybody has to stop we cart out the dead bodies we give more ammunition to all the new people and then you start in again for another 50 minutes is this a violation of rights no if there are consenting adults now look I'm not favoring this sort of thing and I don't think anything like this exists but theoretically if people want to commit suicide in weird ways I'm a devout atheist so I have to say that with quotation marks but murder park and yelling fire in a crowded theater are on a par namely the reason you're not allowed to yell fire in a crowded theater unless there's a fire is because in the contract there's an implicit contract if they don't put it on the back of the little ticket they give you they probably have it on the wall somewhere namely whenever you go to a movie you behave yourself shut off your cell phone don't be a pain in the neck to anyone else don't yell fire in a crowded theater so that's why you're not supposed to be yelling fire in a crowded theater not because it has anything to do with free speech and then what Justice Holmes said is well since you can't yell fire in a crowded theater you can't do this you can't do that and little by little the rights of free speech are truncated okay let me pick one from this book let me see which one I shall pick the executioner the death penalty what I'm now doing is defending the death penalty for murder now a lot of people say that we shouldn't have the death penalty death penalty is medieval it's obnoxious it's no good and also on a pragmatic utilitarian point of view it doesn't really reduce the murder rate both of these claims are wrong I claim let me do the pragmatic or utilitarian first what happened was a whole bunch of people economists did econometric studies and they divided the 50 states into those states that had the death penalty and those states that didn't have the death penalty trying to hold constant other things like age of the population because a younger age would have more murders I mean if the average age of 70 you'd have fewer murders than if the average age is 30 and they would try to control for other independent variables in their econometric equations and then they found no correlation between the death penalty and the murder rate so they said death penalty doesn't help reduce the murder rate and that's one argument against the death penalty but then we had a very wise econometrician a guy who graduated a year or two at Columbia and Isaac Erlich was his name and he did it a very different way he didn't correlate death penalty states versus non-death penalty states but rather he correlated execution states versus non-execution states in other words there are some states like California as it happened was a death penalty state in the sense that death penalty was on the books but they never executed anyone in the death penalty state let's look at whether they actually execute anyone or not and then he correlated executions with the murder rate and he found a very very statistically significant correlations which suggest that the execution not the death penalty status but executions actually reduce the murder rate because you know people feel sorry for a guy on death row that he's going to be killed by the murderers you have to take into both into account if you want to be a humanist okay so much for the pragmatic or the utilitarian now let's talk about the day ontological or the philosophical or the rights based okay so here's the situation what's your name William I kill William and now the question is has justified have I given up my right to life there's no right to life but right now to be killed and my claim is so here's the situation with death here we have before and after and here's the murderer and here's the victim and before the murderer I'm going to give a smiley face since he's alive and the victim I'm going to give okay so the murderer kills the victim now suppose we had a machine a magic machine of the sort that Nozick is always inventing that if you flip the switch what happens is you take the life out of the live murderer and you stick the life force or life into the dead victim and out they come after you flip the switch and now the murderer is unhappy because he's dead and now the victim is alive and namely I'm now dead and William you're back now alive not just a zombie but you're actually alive would we have a right to use this machine and the answer is you're Don Tutin because what I did to him is I stole his life I realize I'm being a little poetic here you can't really steal a life you can't grab it but work with me here I stole his life and what he says is you got to return it look if I stole his TV and they caught me surely they would make me disgorge the TV I stole from him and give it back to him now the return theory the way I see it would be a little bit more draconian than that because if all I did is from a pragmatic point of view if all we imposed on me is the obligation to give him back his TV and if I get caught all I have to do is give back what I stole so the second tooth in the there's two teeth for a tooth theory is I have to give him one of my TVs of equal value and if I don't have one then I have to give him the amount of money because the law has to do on to me what I did on to him so now I'm giving him two TVs and the third one is costs of capture if after stealing his TV at the police station I said hey you know I stole his TV I'm sorry here's his TV back well then there were no costs of capture but if dirty rat that I am after I stole his TV I then hid and you guys had to come look for me well who's going to pay for all those costs me and fourth when I stole his TV I scared him his feeling of security has been undermined so how are we going to compensate him I'm the thief here we have to make me play Russian roulette with a number of chambers and a number of bullets proportional to how badly I stole or how badly I scared him so that would be my view of libertarian punishment theory which is pretty draconian you wouldn't have too much theft if we libertarians got in there and dealt with criminals but the very but the very first thing is you have to give back with your stole in his life so execution is justified and it has good benefits okay I've now done what I said I would do I talked I gave a list of the chapters here I showed two books that came out of this out of these things here there was only one little chapter on each here the entire book is sort of a discussion of what I only discussed in a chapter of ten pages or so and I developed it into a book of two or three hundred pages okay so now I would like to call on people to ask about another chapter that I didn't cover yes sir in the front the bad Samaritan well we all know what the good Samaritan is good Samaritan you see somebody on the side of the road who's hurt and you stop and you help him the bad Samaritan is someone who goes by and doesn't help and doesn't have to go like that to the victim but just doesn't help there are now good Samaritan laws on the books where if you go by somebody in an accident and you don't stop to help you can be in violation of law and be considered a criminal so what I'm saying is you don't have to do that also in this chapter take the following case you're drowning and I've got a a rope or a rope with a little thing to save you a life preserver and I say I'll flip you the life preserver if you promise to become my slave forever am I justifying doing that yes it's a market transaction if you don't like the market what do they say if you can't stand this sort of weird thing get out of libertarianism or realize you're being incompatible with libertarianism I tell you if I were drowning and my choice was either drown or be your slave I'd rather be your slave at least I'm alive so it's a little harsh and it would be nice if the guy with the life preserver and the rope just tossed it in be a good guy be a good Samaritan because you're in law no so that would be the burden of that chapter yes sir the miser well there are two different chapters one is the miser and one is the non-contributive charity because a miser could contribute to the charity he just now my favorite miser is Scrooge McDuck Scrooge McDuck yeah she's with me on Scrooge here and what Scrooge does is he gets into his money bin and it goes up and it falls down on him and he goes eh you know so so he's a miser well miser is a hated the Keynesians hate miser the worst thing you can be is a miser or if you stick money under your mattress instead of spending it and the whole idea of redistribution from rich to poor from the Keynesians is that the rich have a low marginal propensity to consume they save a lot and the poor will spend it all and spending is good for the Keynesians not for the Austrians well is what the miser does is it a violation of libertarian principle those are the eyeglasses I use for everything namely of anything I ask is it a per se violation of property rights or rights to person and saving money and putting in a money bin and it is not so it's legitimate and it should be legal but I try to do more than say it's legal I try to soften up my readers by saying not only is it legal or rather not only should it be legal but it also has benefit has benefits what happens when the miser socks away a million dollars prices fall compared to what they would have been otherwise had he been spending it prices would have been bid up a little bit so if prices fall then our money is worth more so the miser is actually a benefactor to all of us the miser is helping all of us by making our cash balances it's called the cash balance effect namely what you do is you take money divided by a price index and the price index falls because the miser is spending less money therefore the fraction money divided by the price index the denominator falls and the price index falls so our money is worth more so we ought to pet miser on the back we ought to have ticker tape parades for them we ought to write a friendly letter to your friendly miser and say thanks miser you demand you're helping us you're making our dollars worth more so instead of denigrating these poor misunderstood miser we ought to carry them around on our shoulders and say thank you now the non-contributive charity is a separate chapter in this book look I think it's a nice idea to give charity it's virtuous people are poor they're suffering and we're pretty well to do people in middle class here or upper middle class or whatever or some of us are very wealthy it's a nice virtuous thing to do but that's not the eyeglasses through which I'm looking at this I'm looking at it through the libertarian are you in violation of what the law should be and the answer is no now I'm ran takes this to a degree that I wouldn't go as far as namely for her charity is almost a negative a bad thing not quite but almost whereas for libertarians you know we don't call libertarian we're indifferent to that look what's the libertarian view on whether chess or checkers is more libertarian whether vanilla or chocolate ice cream is more libertarian the answer is it's irrelevant to libertarianism libertarianism is a theory of what is just law it's not a theory of all of life now a lot of people have a theory of all of life we don't as libertarians call libertarians we're only talking about what the law should be and what's legal and what's illegal or what should be legal another chapter yes sir peeping Tom now here we talk about the rights of privacy is there a right of privacy and from the libertarian point of view right now I'm looking at all of you people and you people are looking at me you're violating my privacy dirty rotten kids and I'm violating your privacy there is no right to privacy there are only rights to private property now if what I do is I sneak into your house I'm guilty of trespass so you don't have a right to privacy you have a right to private property because if we really had a right to privacy we couldn't look at each other and in this chapter what I do is I list every detective in fiction you know like Sherlock Holmes and all those guys if there truly were a right to privacy then the profession of being a detective would be illegal so do you really want to say that the detectives who look up things and try to follow people to see if they're behaving themselves I think one of the members of our group here is a detective and what he does is he's not here in the audience I won't out him but what he does he works for an insurance company and for the insurance company there are people that make a claim oh my leg hurts like this and what he does is he follows them around and he finds out that they're engaging in a marathon and he takes a picture of them running in the marathon and he brings it back to the insurance company and the insurance company says to the claimant hey you know you say you can't hardly walk what are you doing running a marathon well the detective violated the privacy of the claimant the false claim of injury physical injury so they get money from the insurance company so if you really believe in the right of privacy we shouldn't have detectives now none of this has anything to do with NSA because people will say well then the government can monitor all of our speeches all of our cell phones all of everything we do no the government can't do anything the government can't do squat because the government according to Libertarian is a violator so it's an illicit institution plus they trespass they force various computer companies to give them information against their will so I'm not coming out in favor of government eavesdropping or anything like that private eavesdropping is different provided that they don't violate property rights through trespass yes profiteering Murray Rothbard had something there was a calendar, a Libertarian calendar people every once in a while put out a Libertarian calendar and they have all Libertarians on the picture and then they have a little saying underneath and Murray's saying in one of these calendars was a man's contribution to society is proportional to the amount of profit he used but that was the gist of it the more profits you make the more you help people see the way the Marxists see it is it's sort of a fixed pie and if I get more you have to get less no it's almost the opposite if I'm making more profit then I am doing a much better service look suppose I invented the cure for cancer and I charge 10,000 a pill would I make a lot of profit you're dawned to and I'd make a lot of profit for a lot of people who are desperate yes now suppose I make a better rubber band my rubber band is better than the actual rubber bands don't ask me in what way I'm not into rubber bands will I make a profit yeah will I make a vast amount of profit no namely in making rubber band profits I'm making a contribution to society we need rubber bands we need better rubber bands and I make a modest amount of profit so the point is the more profits I make in the market that is the better more contribution I'm making to society now of course if the way I make profits is not through giving a better product at a lower price but rather through crony capitalism or what the public choice people call rent seeking I don't like the phrase rent seeking because what's wrong with rent I mean there's economic rent and they use the word rent to depict something pretty despicable namely going to the government and getting a law pass such that you can't have imports that compete with you or something like that getting a favor from government now if that's the source of your profits then all bets are off I'm not defending that kind of profiteering by the way why don't we have wage earing I mean those guys in the NBA and the NFL you know how much money they're making and for the best players why is there no word wage earing namely getting too high a wage well they did that with Michael Milken Michael Milken made 400 million a year as a wage and then actually people were saying that that wage was too high but somehow wage earing hasn't caught on because wages are okay which is silly I mean profits, wages, rents interest rates it's all the same for libertarians on the left somehow profit is evil but look every time we do anything we make a profit or at least we try to make a profit what's your name young lady sorry Deirdre Alexandra she brought that shirt a very nice white top and she paid 30 bucks how much did she value it at 30 dollars and a penny at least maybe 50 bucks so she dirty rat she is 50 dollars off of the seller on the other hand the seller valued that shirt after he had the 3000 of them at a dollar because he's trying to get rid of them so he made a profit off of her of 19 dollars so they each exploited each other no they each helped each other it was a mutual benefit they each profited off of each other and a profiteer is someone who gets a real big profit and then she made a 4980 dollar profit so there's nothing wrong with profits if it comes from the free marketplace a guy in the red shirt dishonest cop dishonest cop okay what's going on with dishonest cop why do I like the dishonest cop it's all a matter of comparison well that's not true I was going to say it's all a matter of comparison you know I favor Trump over Hillary because I think he's less warmongering in many ways but she's even more despicable mainly because I think World War 3 is a very bad thing it could ruin your whole day and I think that Hillary is more warmongering-ish than Trump by the way I favored a man Obama against McCain in 08 I thought McCain was going to drop a nuclear bomb on whoever and Obama seemed more peaceful I mean their domestic policies Bob Higgs are forever demonstrating to us okay suppose we have an illegal law or rather illegitimate law and the illegitimate law is if you smoke marijuana you go to jail and now a cop catches me I'm smoking marijuana and he catches me an honest cop will put me in jail do we want an honest cop no we want a dishonest cop now the goodness and here we have a hierarchy the best dishonest cop would say block is smoking marijuana do it somewhere else where I can't see you or you know do it so that I can't catch you because if I see you and my sergeant looks over my shoulder he's going to wonder why I'm not arresting you that would be the best thing that's the dishonest cop that we want someone who overlooks an illicit law of runaway slaves in 1862 if you caught a runaway slave you're supposed to return the slave to the rightful owner but you know we think that slavery coercive slavery that is is illegitimate and we want a dishonest cop who won't return an innocent slave to the master well it's the same thing with marijuana so the best dishonest cop would be someone who just looks the other way and says okay block look if I haul you in it's going to be five years in jail and a fine of five thousand give me a hundred bucks and I'll let you go which do I prefer five years in jail and five thousand or a hundred bucks obviously I prefer a hundred bucks so that would be a little lower level he's not a nice guy who's letting me go but you know it's just a hundred bucks so that dishonest cop is not as good as this one but it's pretty better than the honest cop if there's an illegal law or a law that's contrary to libertarianism like you can't smoke marijuana now by the way I don't favor smoking marijuana I personally don't indulge I can understand medical you know it helps people with glaucoma and maybe cancer but I'm not into recreational drugs personally it's just my personal thing I wouldn't want my children or my grandchildren to do that I wouldn't want you to people to do that but it's just a libertarian issue the libertarian issue is is it a perceived violation of a proper law and it's not you've already had a shot Tom well can I just get I can't get this machine out of my head the idea that I get that libertarian theory steals something the murderer basically steals the life force of the murderer out and return it to the victim that would be returning what was taken from but given that we I'm sorry I'm a little thick and I'm not getting your point but given that we don't have this machine and just executing the criminal does not result in transferring his life force to the other person now all we have is two dead people it just seems like vindictiveness no one has made hold shouldn't he have to instead work for the heirs of the guy instead if I were on rent what I would do is say get out because if you ask a difficult question you know but obviously I'm just teasing here in the chapter I do say that I can't do the whole chapter what I do say is since we don't have the machine what I'm trying to say is we can imagine the machine and if we can imagine the machine logically there's nothing wrong with execution but back to the real world we don't have the machine well now who owns the life of the murderer the heirs of the murderer may the heir of the murderer let's say I killed William and he's got a wife and kids and he was their support and now his wife owns me and I say she can do with me whatever she wants one possibility is make me work at hard labor for the rest of my life another one is to execute me and charge admission for public execution with tens of thousands of people and make a lot of money does she have a right to do that I say yes because my life is forfeit as shown by the machine so it's not just that we'll have two dead people now obviously when the government does it you know government shmoverment but the point is my life is forfeit his wife is now the owner of my life to do with which as she will and one of the things she could do is execute me and make money on it because you know the breadwinner is now gone so I have that in the rest of the chapter yes Murray Rothbard shirt would you handle that the same way oh accidental yeah suppose I if it was an accident then it's a tort it's not a crime look if I put a dent in your car with my car by accident remember I gave you the four parts of libertarian punishment theory now only the first part applies I would have to make good the dent in your car or I broke your TV I sort of shoved it with my elbow it fell on the floor I have to give you my TV but there's no second TV there's no cost of search there's no Russian roulette by accident and I'll pick William again I don't want to get everyone mad at me I'm cleaning my gun and I shoot him well now only the first of the four teeth of libertarianism applies but still his wife is bereft of his services I owe a life the tough one is suppose my baby two year old baby somehow I dropped the gun in his crib and he shot William well does the baby owe the life no I owe the life because I'm the guardian of the baby so this would be sort of more complicated issues but the point is there are only two choices it's me or his wife and kids who is more deserving of my life when I killed him by accident so that's a harder one to get through but I think that's where the law of libertarianism leads us Roger am I over time? yeah a little bit oh I'm sorry thanks for your attention


I think the first part of what it just says is really, really important. And that's taken to supervision. Yeah. It becomes very hard or challenging if you don't take this to supervision because you're in your own script. Yeah. Brought up in a script or a negative transference, which is very hard to get out of if you haven't got someone to help you stay an adult. Yeah, definitely. Excellent. We demystify what goes on behind the therapy room door. Join us on this voyage of discovery and co-creative conversations. This is The Therapy Show behind closed doors podcast with Bob Cook and Jackie Jones. Welcome back to episode 71 of The Therapy Show behind closed doors with myself Jackie Jones and the ever present Mr. Bob Cook. The topic we're going to be covering tonight is working with a client you don't like. A really interesting topic this one. Yeah. But just before I go into that, I'll fair. Well, maybe we're on air. I don't know. You said this is number 71. It is number 71. And I'm so pleased because I am 71. I'm 72 in next month, but I am 71 at the moment. So I've done an episode for every year of my life. You have. What an achievement. Absolutely. Absolutely. It's just great to hear. So this is a, this is an interesting one working with clients that you don't like because in supervision, it comes up a lot. Of course, in my career as well, it came up quite a bit, but people, you know, therapists are often bringing that discipline to me. So I thought it would be a good podcast to talk about. And of course, what you're really talking about here is negative counter-transference. Yes. That's what in the technical words of people listening to it, negative counter-transference. And interestingly, you know, Jackie, there isn't much written on it. That is interesting because it is human nature. It's part of being a human being. Yeah.  Yeah. In the therapeutic process, I think it's very useful to analyze the negative counter-transference before you just say, no, I don't feel I like you or some, you wouldn't say that anyway. But what I'm saying, I think it's useful to take the supervision and analyze negative counter-transference. Sorry, because then you can go forward from there or not. I was very surprised when I looked at negative transference. There isn't much written about it. And I remember telling, or having a conversation with Richard Erskine, I said, why don't you put a chapter on negative, you know, negative transference and working with it in the next book. And he promptly left it out. But there wasn't that much written. So I can say a bit about it in this podcast. Why do you think there isn't much written about it, Bob? To be truthful, I don't know. There is some. Don't get me wrong. There are things, you know, subject is covered, but not as much or as extensively as other subjects, and particularly, of course, positive counter-transference, which I think is covered much more. So I think it's a shame because negative transference is something all therapists are going to feel sometimes. Experience it sometimes, yeah. Is it because we're supposed to be professional at all times? I didn't even thought about it that way. But of course, I suspect that might have a grain of truth in it. Yeah, I just wondered because it is something that most of us will experience at some point or another. It'd be highly unusual if you didn't. Yeah. Highly unusual. And of course, we'll need to talk about negative transference or you might want to say negative counter-transference. What you're talking about is somebody who hits your triggers from your own history. Yeah. And means that, therefore, you have an emotional reaction in the present, even though it comes from your own history. Yeah. I mean, I think the best thing to do in that situation is to take it to supervision. Definitely, yeah. Have you worked with many clients where you've had negative transference with? There's been a few on a few occasions. I'd say that I connect more with some than others rather than I don't like certain clients, if that makes sense. There's certain clients that I resonate more with and I connect with better than others. And have you reflected on what that's about? Yeah, possibly. Yeah. I mean, if you want to look at it analytically, that will be to do, or you might argue, that will be to do with your experience of the past. So, as an example, not saying particularly with you here, but if somebody came in to my, and this has happened, so I'm smiling at myself because I was thinking about it and looked just like one of my abusers from the past, then, you know, what happened was I had a reaction against that person and projected onto that person. How bundler stuff, which actually has nothing to do with them. Yeah. With me, it's been more about the feeling that I get with certain people rather than appearance or, yeah, I don't know, maybe even more so than the words that they use. If I just get a certain feeling being around that person that reminds me of something in my past when I felt that way before. So that feeling is associated, though, with a time, place, person. Definitely, yeah. The origin. Yeah, yeah. And sometimes maybe the feeling that I'm not good enough or something like that, then I can get triggered. So are you saying that you can trigger onto a person, as given example, where they might have a specific parental attitude, which is pretty, say, judgmental. Yeah. Then that might trigger off some thoughts, feelings, images from the past. Yeah. Or close to, you know, opening up a different way of looking at things if they're quite close minded or quite fixed. Then I find that difficult, yeah. And that comes from your past again. Yeah, yeah. But I get a feeling of inadequacy that I used to feel when I was younger type of thing. So yeah, definitely connected. And then if we're looking from a transactionalist point of view, especially when people bring these sorts of things to supervision, is we're moving. This is the therapist. Yeah. This happens. The dangers that will move from adults into our own child state. Yeah. And we react in a negative way. As maybe we did all those years ago to the person that was so negative to us. Yeah. And it's instantaneous as well. That's the thing. It doesn't build up slowly. It's an instant thing when it happens. That's what shocked me. Yeah. So can you see? Well, I'm asking you, but let's ask you this question. Can you see any positivity of working with the negative transference as a therapist? Yeah. What would you see as the positivity? Once you've taken it to supervision of working with the negative transference. Because it helped me work through things, taking it to supervision. And it helped me. Yeah. In knowing myself better and what my triggers were and things like that. And it's challenging. And I think that's okay in the therapy room. It's okay for me to be challenged in the therapy room. I think the first part of what I just said is really, really important. And that's taken to supervision. Yeah. It becomes very hard or challenging. If you don't take this to supervision because you're in your own script. Yeah. Brought up in a script or a negative transference, which is very hard to get out of. If you haven't got someone to help you stay an adult. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. If you're seeing these clients on a weekly basis, it's really difficult without supervision. It's almost impossible because you're brought up in your own script. Yeah. So yeah, so that supervision is the first port of call. Yeah. Would you ever discuss it with a client? Would I or have I? Have I? I don't think I have. No, I haven't. Would I? I think I would with. I think I'd have to take it to supervision and make sure that whatever I say or share has a clinical benefit for the client. Yeah. Rather than just spontaneously sharing something. Yeah. And that's because of things like shame and. And, and, and projective identification. The other thing I think is important is the developmental level of the. Client. So if you've been working with them for years, for example, I think that's a different, different relationship to someone who's just come through the door. Definitely. Yeah. I was thinking, I'm not sure whether I would discuss it with the client or not supervision, definitely. Whether I would take it in the therapy room. I'm not sure. I never have. No. And I can only think that. If I did, it would be a. After, you know, a useful discussion with the supervisor. And I'd have to be certain in my own mind. That it had clinical advantage. For the. Client rather than me. Yeah. Rather than just being simply useful for me in some way. Yeah. Would you ever refer wrong? Oh, now I want to go on something else. Haven't taken it to supervision. Talking about it. And if I would come to the conclusion with the supervisor. That the negative transfers was too strong. And I wasn't. Able to stay an adult or at least be. Satisfied. I could stay an adult. Then I would refer. Yeah. I referred on this another question and I just say something like. You know, I think it's important that you work with someone else because. There's things in my own history. Which can get triggered here, which has nothing to do with you. And actually the problem with that is I can't give you the best services. Yeah. Against. There's no guilt or shame or blame or anything. I've done that. Yeah. Interestingly enough, probably only two or three times in my. Career spans over three decades. But I have. Yeah. I've always faced it that way. Yeah. Because we are only human. We can do all the work, but if we're being triggered, then it is again, you know, looking at it clinically, it's only fair if we refer that client on so that they are getting. Yeah. I remember one person and it taught me a lot. Because it realized I hadn't done enough work. There's just somebody with my father. With. With respect to my father. Because if it had done the work and the therapy, then I would have been able to probably work with this person. Yeah. But. It would make me think and reflect and realize that I hadn't done enough work on certain areas to do with my father. Because I found myself moving into Charlie estate. And it didn't help. Yeah. The client at all. Didn't help me. We didn't help a client. No, that's it. Yeah. It's a really interesting topic. Yeah. And I think you. I think you need to. If you are going to refer on, you need to say it in a way. That's really important, which isn't sharing and et cetera, et cetera. And do it in a way which is very honest. And that is. It's not good for you. Yeah.  I should be for you. And I'm going to. Take a look at the therapy. But in the meantime. I need to refer to somebody who hasn't got the same. Perhaps history that I've got. Yeah. I think that's maybe why I always have a clause in my contract that we agree to, you know, see each other for four weeks and then reassess in four weeks. Because that, that, you know, they're, they're prepared for a check-in after four weeks, whether we're going to continue working or not. And it's, it's both sides. Because as much as we can have negative transfer. Negative transfer. And so I suppose they can as well. Yeah. And yeah. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. By the way. And. On a, on another level, but similar. And it's still negative transfers. I'm, I'm, I'm reminded to talk about, of course, the times when I have worked with people. When, of course. I've had this type of negative transfers and identification, but I've taken the therapy, realized what it is, worked on it in my own therapy. Yeah. When I'm able to stay an adult to be able to do the work that I need to do. And it's been very useful. Not just about my own therapy, but it's been useful in terms of the relationship with the client. Yeah. But that's happened quite a lot. And it, and usually, you know, if I can't see the child. In the client or the younger self in the client. I'm more able to stay grounded. Yeah. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. That doesn't mean necessary that if I can't see the child and. Or, or the vulnerability in the client in front of me for lots of different reasons that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which makes sense. Yeah. It's an interesting one because I can't myself as a relational integrist psychotherapist. So how much I would share this, it would be dictated by. If it's useful for the client. Yeah. Because sometimes. In a session. I, I'm consciously aware of having a reaction. To what they're saying, not necessarily transference, but it's obviously touched something with me that I've had a reaction to it. Like, you know, I've, I've. Shed tears in therapy sessions with some people, whether that's empathy or. I'm not sure what it is, but sometimes clients do. Impact on me more than others. Well, it's an interesting podcast about. I don't think it says should or not. But in terms of clinical practice. Share a weeping with your client. For whatever reasons. Is that beneficial? I don't think so. Yeah. I remember when I first. Some time ago. Therapist I really admired and. Looked up to him being a therapy for a long time. I remember it's a group, big group. And he. You know, shared us some of his tears and. I quite shocked me because. I remember when I first. Some time ago. I remember seeing some of his tears and how it quite shocked me. Because I hadn't seen. That level of. Sort of. The heart in you, if you like, from that perspective. Yeah. And it shocked me and. It taught me a lot. In terms of. You know. How it kept myself away from him. Perhaps. Because I hadn't seen the heart in him. And I think it's not to it. I think it's really important to discuss and supervision. But it also gave me the permission as a. I'll say fledgling therapist would be around quite a bit. To be able to share feelings, which I'd stop myself, I think. Yeah. Yeah. All the time. Yeah, yeah, but there is a danger of. You know, one of the reasons I like transactional analysis is because we can bring ourselves into the therapy room if it's beneficial for them. But I suppose the danger is that sometimes do we take up too much space in the therapy room? Yeah, that's the biggest reason that. You know, some is to do with you and not then. Yeah. The other several reasons or discussions. That's why I said to be a good podcast. Is you could unknowingly. Elicit elicit. The rescue inside of the client and they move into rescuing you. Yeah. During the work we need to do. Yeah. So to be a good podcast to have and. I think that it, whatever happens.  And I still think it needs discussing to see. You know, what triggers have been. You know. Touched. Etc. Etc. Yeah, because there has been, I don't want to say quite a few cases, but quite a few times where I've been going through something in my own personal life that the client brings that they're actually going through. Which obviously. Is one of those situations that can be quite difficult. You know, when, when my dad passed away, I had like two clients that had a family member that passed away at a similar time. So, you know, sometimes the universe just throws a curveball at us. I've been seeing these clients for quite a while when my life and their life kind of went through the same thing. And it's at those times where. You need to be. You know, you're not only listening to originally think. And I don't think you do terrible certainty, but I think you can discuss it anyway. Yeah. Whether. The therapy that you're doing is in service of the client and not yourself. Yeah. You can go after your own therapy. To do the work that you need to do. I don't think it needs to be done necessarily with clients. No. I think that lots. There's something very weird in the sense of shared humanity. Yeah. I think it was more that's what I did do. You know, but I think it was more how coincidental life can be that we're going through it at the same time. And I didn't actually take a break from work. When my dad passed away. All right. I did a lot more personal therapy. But it was like I knew that at least two of my clients were going through a similar thing. And would that have been appropriate for me to stop seeing them? When I knew what they were going through time.  Yeah. It's an interesting one. Those sorts of dilemmas. Yeah. And I think as a therapist, there's always a dilemma of one sort or another going on. Oh, nearly always.  You foster children didn't you? I did. Yeah. You know, there's lots of issues there that's around attachment and ruptures in attachment that might get activated in the therapy room. Yeah. Yeah. So there's lots in our histories which can get activated. You're right. If the person, same person or, you know, person in the Google individually has the same sort of issue. Like you've just explained there. It is a really important one to. Take to supervision so that you don't merge with your client. Yeah. Doing therapy for yourself rather than actually doing what you should be doing. Yeah. So it's very, very challenging when you have those circumstances of possible identification. Yeah.  Right. You know that you've been a therapist throughout that. So, you know, it's understandable that we are going to go through certain things at certain times. Oh, yes. And we also must remember that people act, respond, you know, in their own unique ways. Yeah. So even though I may act or react in certain ways to certain levels of trauma or whatever we're talking about here, someone else might not. Yeah. That's a really good point that is, you know, if we're looking at grief again, we all grieve differently. There isn't a rule book for how we should cope with. No, because what you said there is interesting. You said that you didn't take any time off work. You also said you had some therapy, I understood that. Yeah. And then another person might deal with their own grief in a completely different way, whether they need to go away and have some time off from their profession. And it's a different process. Yeah. I'm always being taught and believe this, and it's very hard to do. And I think I did it pretty well, but you cannot, you can't do it perfectly. And that is have, move away from any assumptions. Yes. Yeah. That's a hard ask. Yeah. Try to do it. Yeah, definitely. Because we, it is again, it's, it's part of the human nature that we do make assumptions that, you know, they'll feel the same way that I felt when I went through it. Or, you know, they should be feeling this way or shouldn't be feeling that way. Yeah. That comes up daily.  That comes up daily. That came up daily for me in my clinical career. Exactly what you're talking about there. The, if I carried myself away with my assumptions, therapy would be far more challenging. Yeah. And if I don't know if that would happen particularly well because my assumptions are often incorrect. Yeah. Well, they're based on your past and your history. Yeah. Mutual relational needs and the world might not be. Yeah. Yeah. The more you talk about topics like this, the more you realise how much of a mind field it is in the therapy room. It's very, very difficult. I mean, you know, I had a lot of sadness in my own history and I was thinking somebody I did pass on by the way. It's not that I didn't like them by the way, particularly, but they had very identical situation to me, very young. And as we talked about it, I felt myself moving away from here now reality. I took it to supervision and it came clear that there was still a lot of therapy for me to do. And I did refer on. Yeah. Because actually if I hadn't done, I would just move to child and also being caught up with my own assumptions. Yeah. So assumptions are one of the biggest curses, I think for a therapist. Curse might be the wrong word, but biggest challenge anyway. Yeah. If you're unaware of what it is that's going on. I think this is why I love therapy so much, because you are always shining a light on yourself. Yeah, absolutely. And it's a light that has been going on for many, many, many, many years in many different ways through therapy and my own reflection. And without that, I could easily have merged many times with the clients of Compton Madore. Yeah. And that is a recipe for disaster in terms of therapeutic change. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think one of the hardest things in the early days for me as a therapist was, you know, being honest with myself and being transparent with myself is, you know, who am I? And sometimes that's painful. We do unearth parts of ourselves that we don't necessarily like, you know, we learn about making assumptions and, you know, I would thought some feelings around certain things or certain people. And it's not always pleasant when that comes into your awareness. No. And sometimes our dark sides, even though we've attempted to therapy and perhaps to minimize the dark sides of our own spirit, they may collide or have the possibility of colliding with the darker sides of clients to come through the door where you've got some identification with. Yeah. Yeah. Because some clients come with a specific problem that you, you know, you might think that's a bit close to home. So I'll refer them on before you even see them. But then other clients, you know, you can be seeing them for quite a few years when something will come up. Well, that's a good thing to mention, by the way. That's what you've just said there. Now, hopefully the relationship, which has been, you know, longer to developmental level, might be able to hold together long enough for you perhaps to do the therapy or supervision that you need to do so you can stay an adult. Yeah. Work through the issue with the client. If you can't, that's a really big, big area to discuss with the client or at least talk about in a way. But I think you'd have to go through supervision and therapy to work that through because you're right, suddenly out of the blue sometimes things occur, which even though you work with a client for say two or three years and then something comes up you don't expect. Yeah. Supervision and your own therapy has to be your first port of call. Yeah. When you share it with your client. Yeah. Even if you know them very, very well. Yeah. But, you know, I think of an incident of somebody I worked with for eight years and she was talking about something very close to home. I thought I'd done a lot of therapy on this. I was thinking about things. She said, what are you thinking about? You seem to have changed in your manner. Wow. And I realized suddenly that I was somewhere else. And I said to her, yes, what are you talking about? It was very evocative. And I had a sense myself that I perhaps moved away. And I'll take this supervision and talk about this. The next session, then she said, was it about X and we briefly identified the process. It was towards the end of the session. So I was able to take a supervision and therapy. And then I brought it back and said, well, I'm doing this work here and it's been very useful. Thank you. And I'm able to stay here with you now so we can explore this area. Yeah. Yeah, I think, you know, if I was on the receiving end of you saying that I would probably trust you all the more for doing that, you know, because we're not infallible. We're not, you know, robots that don't have emotions and a life outside in the therapy room. Yeah, you're right. And usually when a supervisor comes and says, I've got, you know, this cloud I don't like has arrived at doorstep. I don't know if I can work with them.  They push against the client because they're afraid in some ways of being vulnerable with this client. Yeah. So usually supervision I would encourage or share the person to explore briefly before they defer on what area, what areas you might be feeling vulnerable with this client. Because it's about vulnerability in the end. Yeah. So I encourage to be vulnerable in a human relationship. Yeah. Therapist clients, both. Yeah, it does. And the two always come together in my book, you know, courage and vulnerability, because it's easy to just shut down and not be vulnerable. Well, I think it's, it's interesting, we're easy. I think it's a coping mechanism, which has been cultivated. And that sense is easy because it's predictable. Yeah. It's predictable. It's a way that we've learned to cope to shut down or whatever it is that we, the way we cope. So in that way, it's easy. But I suspect at the beginning, when we started to adopt that way of defending so we could survive in a more robust way, it was probably something we had to do. Yeah. But becomes sort of second nature because we've learned to cope that way. Yeah. Interesting one now, but yes, I think you're right that we've learned to cope in a certain way. But I think in careers, anybody who listens to podcasts, you're going to find many clients to come to you that solicit your negative transfers, I'm sure. And take it to supervision and get your own personal therapy, if it does. It's the only way forward. Yeah. And if we find ourselves not being able to stay an adult, we do then need to defer in a sensitive way and explain why in a transparent way so the person feels accounted by you. Yeah. And that you're doing it for the best reasons. That's, you have to. Yeah. Absolutely, Jeff, that you're doing it for the for the best reason for the client. Yeah. I've really enjoyed that one, Bob. Thank you. It's interesting subject area. Yeah. So what we're going to be discussing in the next episode is working with multiple personality disorder. Now that's a specialist, a specialist subject of mine. At the end of my training in transaction analysis, and I went on to study an integrative psychotherapy, I started to specialize in the whole subject of multiple personalities. It was at the beginning of the 1990s. And it's not so common now because the terminology is called, you know, it's dissociative identity disorder. But it's a podcast I'm looking forward to. Me too. I've never worked with them and I wouldn't know where to start. So it's a learning curve for me. So until next time, Bob, thank you. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye. You've been listening to the therapy show behind closed doors podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. We'll be back next week with another episode.


What is the best diet for weight loss? Hi, this is Dr. Osho, and let's examine this question. The short answer is that compared to an unhealthy diet, like a standard American diet that has a lot of processed foods and added sugars, any diet can be healthy and can be beneficial for weight loss. However, if we were to compare different types of healthy diets, then we could find which one of the healthy diets is the best for weight loss, and this is what a recent study did. Again, they found that any diet can help toward weight loss, but a lower carbohydrate diet is the best for weight loss. This is fairly definitive when we look at the type of study that this is. This is what's known as a systematic review with made analysis. Essentially, it looks at other studies and aggregates and summarizes all the results. In this particular study, there were 53 studies that were examined looking at over 68,000 patients. When all this data was weighed, looking at high carb diets, low carb diets, or we could say high carb low fat, which is one type of diet versus low carb high fat, another type of diet. If we look at these different types of dietary interventions, it's been shown that although all diets can work, the best diet for weight loss, a weight loss diet that works the best tends to be a lower carbohydrate diet. If you're struggling with weight loss, there can be multiple things that can contribute to weight loss, not just diet, but from a dietary perspective, the diet that seems to work the best for weight loss is a low carb diet, although if you're shifting from an unhealthy diet, any diet can work. This is Dr. Ruscio, and I hope this information helps you get healthy and get back to your life. Thanks.


So one of the things that people like to talk about, people who maybe don't have much familiarity with statistics but enough to kind of feel their way around, they'll talk about correlation. And correlation we understand to be the degree to which two things move together. So when economists say things like, for example, increase trade is good for the economy, increase trade is associated with increased household income, it's associated with less unemployment, it's associated with less poverty. One of the things people say is, well, what's the correlation between those two things? And correlation is kind of a, it's a good and a bad thing. It's good in the sense that it's this nice clean number. It goes from zero to one, right? Or negative one to positive one, depending on what kind of correlation you're using. But it's this nice little compact thing where we understand that zero means these two things aren't correlated and one means they're very highly correlated, right? So people have this kind of impression that the closer your correlation gets to one, the more correct your statement is, whatever the statement is you've just made. So there's some things we have to be careful about when it comes to correlation. And one of the things is what we call a spurious relationship. A spurious relationship is a relationship that, statistically speaking, looks like a nice strong relationship. Here are two things and they seem to move together and they've got a nice high correlation. That's all well and good, but what you're seeing is simply due to random chance. There isn't any real relationship here, it's just randomness that you're seeing. We call that spuriousness or a spurious relationship. Background case in point.   Next day you flip a coin, it comes up tails and you see the stock market went down and you say, good God, I've got the magic coin that predicts the stock market, right? Every time it's heads, the stock market goes up. Every time it's tails, stock market goes down. Now the fact is that we all know that that coin has no relationship whatsoever. to the stock market. What's going on is that by random chance you happen to match up the coin with the stock market. That's a spurious relationship. Now the unfortunate thing about spurious relationships is that by random chance some of them are gonna persist for a long time. So we have an example here number of, this is actual data, number of sunspots in the current year. This is 1960, 1980. So you see the number of sunspots in the current year and you see the number of Republicans in the Senate one year later. And what you see is this this is going over a 20 year period as the number of sunspots declines one year later the number of Republicans in the Senate declines. As sunspots go up one year later the number of Republicans in the Senate go up. Right? And somebody might look at this and say well yeah this has got to be a spurious relationship. There is no relationship between sunspots and number of Republicans. It's just random chance. That's true. Except that this thing persisted for 20 years. 20 years. You know and it leaves you wondering well look even though I know rationally there's no relationship between sunspots and Republicans. This relationship this apparent relationship is showing up in the data maybe I could use it to predict election outcomes. So you're kind of making the statement of I know these two things aren't related but I also know that they're showing up being correlated in the data so maybe I can make use of this. Here's the problem. It took 20 years for this data to accumulate. So this nice picture that you're seeing you would not have seen this picture in 1960 you wouldn't have seen it in 1970. It's not until 1980 that there's enough data there that you can construct this picture and you look at it and you say oh my God look at this thing. Let's start using sunspots to predict Republicans. Now the problem is that no spurious relationship is guaranteed to persist. If you move time forward and look at the next 15-20 years what you find is that the relationship disappeared. So again we see number of sunspots going up and down and one year later number of Republicans in the Senate going up and down but they're no longer moving lockstep with the sunspots. So this relationship that's this is the problem with the spurious relationship because it's due to random chance even though it's there and it exists there's nothing to guarantee it's going to be there tomorrow. And so if you start to base decisions on this thing you're basing decisions on a relationship that could disappear at any moment. And this is what would have happened if we had started making our election outcome predictions based on sunspots we would have found that we would have very bad predictions because we're based on this spurious relationship that just disappeared. So one problem with correlation is we have to be careful about spurious relationships things that appear to be correlated and in fact are only correlated due to random chance. Another thing we have to be careful about are what we call third variable effects. This is two things that are correlated and they're correlated because of some real underlying phenomenon it's not random chance. However the underlying phenomenon is not that the two things are mutually causal. Give an example if you look around at population data in the United States you will find that communities that have more churches also experience more crime the two are correlated. More churches goes with more crime and I can tell you that the relationship is not spurious it's not random chance there's actually a relationship here but here's where we go wrong. We go wrong if we think that the relationship just because churches in crime are correlated that churches must cause crime or maybe crime causes churches right? What's going on is what we call a third variable effect and third variable effect means that there is some other phenomenon that is correlated with these two things and so when this other phenomenon does what it does these two things move and appear to be moving together and appear to be related when in fact they aren't the third variable here is population size the more people you get the more crime you'll get because you have more people but the more people you get the more churches you'll get because you have more people. There's a beautiful example of this this happened oh maybe I want to say 15 20 years ago a major soft drink manufacturer was coming was rolling out product trying to expand market share and they were rolling out product in India in you know what was at the time a relatively new thing in India to have vending machines so you're selling the this manufacturer was selling the soft drink in the vending machines an interesting thing happened this company introduced vending machines in in a city in India in a couple of weeks later there's an outbreak of hepatitis and they introduced the vending machines in another city in India and a couple weeks later there's an outbreak of hepatitis and then a third city in India and a couple weeks later there's an outbreak of hepatitis and this kept going on and it got to the point that health officials were becoming quite concerned that this company's product was tainted in some fashion it's causing hepatitis this is a good example of a correlation there's a very tight correlation between company puts the vending machine two weeks later hepatitis what was going on interestingly was a third variable effect that is these two things were indeed correlated the company's product and the hepatitis they were correlated but they weren't causal one wasn't causing the other what was going on was this third variable effect that the the children largely couldn't afford to buy a can of this product so they would pool their coins buy one can and share it amongst themselves it was the sharing of the product that was causing the hepatitis right it's a third variable effect so the warning here is with with correlation two things just because you see a tight correlation doesn't mean that there's actually a relationship it could simply be random chance we call that spuriousness furthermore just because you see a correlation and there is a relationship there doesn't mean that the relationship is causal it could be a third variable effect that these two things are are actually neither causing the other it's a third variable that's causing both of them another thing we have to be careful of when it comes to correlation is reverse causality a good example of this is you know every morning you set your alarm and every morning the sun rises this there is a causal relationship here it's not spurious and it's not a third variable effect the causal relationship is between these two things but just because you set the alarm and the sun rises doesn't mean that you're setting your alarm causes the sun to rise in fact the causality moves in the other direction because you anticipate the sun rising at a certain time you set your alarm appropriately so this is one more thing we have to be careful of when we talk about correlation that we aren't just because we see a relationship and it's not spurious it's real and just because it's actually is causal we've got one thing causing the other doesn't mean that the causality runs in the direction that we think it does so one interesting set of correlations to look at is the relationship between economic freedom and and socioeconomic outcomes and i'm showing you here the relationship between economic freedom and the global peace index so every dot is a is a country and they're measured horizontally by economic freedom is measured by the Fraser Institute so to the right means the country's experience more economic freedom that is the government is less in is less intrusive into people's economic decisions taxes are lower regulation is less this sort of thing to the left is less economic freedom so the government is more intrusive in people's economic decisions up and down is the global peace index so up is the country is less peaceful it's not just a matter of being less peaceful with regard to neighboring states but also the country is less peaceful to its own citizens so if they put you know use violence to put down protests this sort of thing the country would score high on this on this peace index and by high it's an inverse scale so high means less peaceful low means more peaceful in what you see here is in apparent correlation there are clearly exceptions but remember this is a stochastic relationship exceptions are to be expected what's interesting is the trend there on average it appears that as as countries are more economically free they also score better on the global peace index interestingly you find this same kind of phenomenon correlations of economic freedom with all sorts of other interesting things countries that are more economically free tend to have on average lower poverty rates than countries that are less economically free and this is not just true for the rich countries it's also true for the poor countries you know because you might say well yes rich countries tend to be economically free because we have the leisure to be concerned with economic freedom and to tell the government to stay out of our lives we want to do what we want to do oh and by the way because we're rich we're going to have less child labor we're going to have less poverty okay fine but if you look at the poor countries poor countries that are economically free although they have very high child labor rates and they have very high poverty rates those poverty rates and child labor rates are lower for the poor economically free countries than they are for the poor economically unfree countries so no matter how you slice it you see this recurring theme that countries that are more economically free they score better for child labor they score better for poverty interestingly they score better for um environmental measures like pollution and deforestation um you see in this data that they score better for peace um they also score better for income which is kind of to be expected right economically free countries you think of the more developed countries which also have high incomes but if you look at the poor countries poor countries are economically free have high their incomes are low but they're higher than they are for poor countries are economically unfree interestingly you see the same thing with inequality countries that are more economically free have less income inequality than do countries that are more economically or than do countries that are less economically free so there's interesting correlations here and you can all the the the arguments still apply you know do we how do we know these relationships aren't spurious how do we know that there's not a third variable effect these are all very good things in their economists who look into this data and address these questions what is interesting to me is that no matter how you slice the data whether you're looking at differences among countries or differences among states in the united states or differences among cities or differences across time the same pattern keeps emerging again and again that you get better socioeconomic outcomes in countries that are in country city states that are more economically free now one possible argument here is that well economic freedom causes causes better outcomes because we're seeing this this correlation and of course you can't say that because we don't know is there a reverse is it reverse causality is it that countries that are have better that are more economically rich the countries that are cleaner environments countries are less in less have less inequality do they demand more economic freedom right does the causality go the other direction is it is it is there a third variable effect something that we haven't thought of causing both these things the good outcomes and and the economic freedom and you know I don't know the answer to that so what I cannot say is that this data indicates that economic freedom causes good things what I can say though is that because every way you look at it you see the correlation going in that direction more economic freedom correlated with with good outcomes what you can say is that economic freedom does not cause badness that is correlation does not imply causation but the absence of correlation does imply the absence of causation because I don't see economic freedom correlated with bad outcomes I can conclude that economic freedom does not cause the bad outcomes now there's a technical footnote here that goes along the lines of well it is possible that there could be some third variable effect that if it is negatively correlated with economic freedom and positively correlated with this outcome and that it and that it's the magnitude of the effect is large enough to outweigh the magnitude of of the effect of economic freedom that in fact the the correlation does go in the other direction we're just not seeing here and I'm not going to go into that argument largely because it's it's it's highly technical but I will tell you this it is an argument but but there's a tremendously high bar for that argument to get over to become meaningful generally speaking generally speaking you can you're safe to admit you're safe to make the statement that correlation does not imply causation but the absence of correlation does imply the absence of causation so about the Gini coefficient would you say it's an accurate measure for income inequality the the Gini coefficient question is a good one it leads into the next topic there there are a variety of of economic problems in my opinion with the whole idea of inequality it ignores half of the economy we only look at when we look at transactions and we think about inequality we look at the people who are accumulating dollars we don't look at the people who are accumulating goods and services in exchange for those dollars right so but those are economic issues there are some statistic statistical issues with with the idea of inequality put aside how it's what particular measure you use just the concept of inequality raises raises a problem at least statistically and that's called aggregation bias aggregation bias is occurs when you take a whole bunch of data and you you average pieces of it together and you then look at those pieces and draw some conclusion about the individual people on the basis of the averages and sometimes not always but sometimes the conclusions you draw can be faulty give you a good example let's suppose we're we're going to calculate income inequality for a group of people and we ask everyone to come into the room and we say what is your income and we've got you've just started your career so your income is you know very low you're a little bit further on your career your income is higher i'm further mine's higher these two gentlemen are coming close to retirement their incomes are quite high and if we calculate inequality for this table we get some you know decent inequality from low incomes to very high incomes so we go away and we reconvene 10 years later and 10 years later you two are sitting in this position your mid-career your incomes are are moderate i'm sitting over there uh my i'm close to retirement my income's quite high these two gentlemen have retired they're gone and replacing you two or two young people who've just entered the job market with low incomes and if again we calculate inequality again we get this you know decent inequality we've got poor people here we've got rich people here well here's the interesting thing if this is how we progress around the table people coming into the job market moving up middle career retirement go live in florida over the course of our careers every one of us earns exactly the same income so over the course of our careers we have perfect equality even though every time we look we see inequality now that's i'm not making the argument that there is no inequality in the world what i the argument i'm making is when we go to measure inequality we we take snapshots of the world like looking at this table and saying okay what's the difference in our incomes and we we can in doing that miss large components of equality good case in point we um we talk a lot in this country when we talk about inequality we'll say things like in 2000 the poorest 20% of of americans earned 3.8% of all the income and in 2007 the poorest 20% of americans earned 3.4% of all the income so you look at those two things you say well look the poor americans their lot has not it has not improved in fact it's it's worsened a bit over these years they used to get 3.8% of all the income now they they earn 3.4% of all the income and so we're concerned about that and we we we talk about this we say about you know the stagnation of poverty there are people here they're trapped and they're always there it's always you know 3% there are 20% of the populations earning 3% of the income whatever it is that's an at at least in part at least in part it's an aggregation bias we've taken a bunch of individuals and we've put them together into a single measure and we look at that measure and we assume that what is true of the measure is true of the individuals that's not necessarily the case i give you another example in 2000 the youngest 20% of americans were 7.1 years old in 2010 the youngest 20% of americans were 6.9 years old now if you apply the same logic to these people's ages that we did to their incomes you would conclude that these young americans not only did they not get older they actually got younger over the course of 10 years right their average age was 7.1 now their average age is 6.9 of course what's going on here is and it's interesting to think about because nobody got younger we all got older and yet the youngest 20% of americans have a younger age how is this happening of course what's happening is people are aging over the course of this decade and they're no longer part of the youngest 20% and new people are being born and they're born into this youngest part of the 20% so when we talk about the youngest 20% that's an aggregation and we compare the youngest 20% in 2000 to the youngest 20% in 2010 they're different sets of people some are the same right some are the same but a lot of them are different new people have come in old people have gone out just like in the example of the table we come back here in 10 years these guys are gone i'm moved over there you're over here we've got two new people it's a different set of people similarly when we talk about the poorest americans in 2000 the poorest americans in 2007 some of those people are still there some of the people who constitute the poorest americans are still amongst the poorest americans 2007 but also a lot of them are different some of them have have some of these people who were amongst the poorest in 2000 and now have higher incomes they're no longer amongst the poorest we've had immigrants we've had young people enter the workforce and they're now amongst the poorest americans in 2007 they weren't there before so at least in part it's a different set of people moral of the story is be careful be careful when you look at aggregated data averages of groups of people what's true of the average what's true of the aggregation is not necessarily true of the individuals that comprise the aggregation a beautiful example of this is this picture so you we hear the thing about um stagnation a wage stagnation amongst the middle class and what you're seeing here the blue line is median worker compensation so just to be clear about this this is compensation means people's incomes and employer paid benefits so everything that you get as a result of your job um median worker means we've lined up all the american workers from poorest to richest and we're taking the guy in the middle and the 2014 dollars means that it's adjusted for inflation so what you're seeing and there's nothing special about the years these are all the years that were readily available from census bureau at the time what you're seeing are the years 1992 through 2013 and the blue line is pretty flat this is the story the blue line is what is what leads us to this conclusion that median worker compensation hasn't changed over the past you know 20 years now if you look at the red line this is a little bit different this is compensation over the median career and you have to get your head around what's going on here picture the red line as follows in 1992 we asked but we census bureau asked people set of workers what is your median what's your income and then we pick the median one from this set of workers and in 1992 there are people who are just joining the labor market so think you know 20 20 year olds 22 year olds something like that the median income of these 20 22 year olds is is what you see on the left side of that red line then each year census bureau goes back and asks those sane people what's your income and what you see is over the course of their careers their income is rising and rising and rising kind of plateaus around 2007 right but it's certainly not the story of stagnation that red line represents the actual an actual person's experience going through the course of his career he starts out low he earns more and eventually he ends up you know at some higher level of income that's a very different story than the blue line the problem with the blue line is it suffers from aggregation bias with with the blue line what you're seeing is in 1992 the average income or the median income for all the workers in 2013 the median income for all the workers and what we're missing is the fact that the group of workers in 2013 are different from the group of workers in 1992 so although each workers income maybe not each worker but at least the median workers income was rising over time the median for all the workers remains constant so in a in a perverse way the statement median worker incomes have stagnated in English is correct but it does not characterize what's actually going on what's actually going on is that the workers are earning more money over time


Hey, I'm Emily. I'm a student dietician at Curtin. I'm thrilled to share that I attended the Dieticians Australia Conference, showcasing research for my masters. My abstract on trauma patients supported by my supervisors in Curtin was accepted, giving me the opportunity to present my three-minute thesis as a student. I also had the privilege of attending insightful talks by field experts and networked with dieticians nationwide. I can't wait to do all again in the future. Thank you Curtin.