Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering HPE Discover 2017, brought to you by Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Welcome back everyone, we are here live in Las Vegas for HPE Hewlett Packard Enterprise Discover 2017. This is theCUBE, SiliconANGLE's flagship program. We go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise. I'm John Furrier with my co-host Dave Vellante. Our next guest is Phillip Catrone, who's the VP and General Manager of Worldwide OEM, Data Center Infrastructure Group. You're taking all the stuff and offering it out to customers for HPE. The portfolio's massive, welcome to theCUBE. That's right, hey, thank you so much. It's great to be here. And what a great business, you know? I got to tell you, we have thousands of customers. Multiple billions of dollars of revenue, double digit growth for the past five years. It's an awesome business. And I'd love to talk to you about all the vertical markets that we're taking care of. So let's start in with the strategy. So we see HPE, okay, do not have a cloud play, which is fine. I mean, what does a cloud play really mean? The cloud is everywhere, so it's not like a cloud play, kind of reminds me of the internet play. What's your internet play? It's the internet. So you guys are seeing the cloud all around you with other folks. That's an OEM opportunity in and of itself as people become service providers. The solutions are all over the place as well. There are service providers, but we find with OEM customers. Let's think about OEM customers as this. Let's talk about edge for a moment. We move compute to the edge as far as possible, right? It's an in vogue. It's a current contemporary topic of saying at the edge. In OEM, we work with customers, say in healthcare. Whether you want records at the hospital, having it in a private cloud, accessible to all doctors. But it goes a step further. You need to acquire the data first. Now let's talk about a CT scanner. A CT scanner needs a lot of processing to produce the image. So we'll put a compute specialized compute server inside the CT scanner to receive probably a terabyte of data per minute that has to be recorded flawlessly into the server. Now we accumulate that information. Now it's not just one record. It's thousands of records. Now we can take doctors and take a look at all that information to try to create better outcomes for patients. So think about pushing all of that data to a private cloud inside of a hospital in a healthcare example. Now you can look at video surveillance, another great example, manufacturing, control of assets on your manufacturing floor and possibly even telecommunications. So think about not just cloud but pushing it down to the edge and doing the compute processing storage there and then possibly using the cloud later on for big data analytics. I forgot to ask you the question. Why are people interested in the OEM solution from you? Because you mentioned business is good, doing over billions of dollars. But why are they wanting to OEM, YHB? Why not just buy off the shelf stuff and cobble it together? Yeah, so that's a long answer. And I hopefully have enough energy to keep you and your audience entertained here. But let me say this. If you're going to bet your business on a product, on the infrastructure, who are you going to do it with? Because it's a lot of responsibility. I can't book revenue until my OEM customers book revenue. That means they depend on Hewlett Packard Enterprise. So think about that level of responsibility. Okay, now let's think about the four components of what makes our OEM business. First off, I'm going to break this down into four S's. The first S is going to be solution. Everything around here you see at HP Discover is all about the portfolio. Resilient portfolio. What does OEMs care about? They care about great products, quality products, feature rates, great value, but they also care about long life. So why do I care about long life? Some of these customers will spend six months to eight months qualifying, certifying a solution on a server. They don't want to redo that for possibly another year or two, five years down the road. Pardon me. So they actually want to take their time and live that life out as long as it squeezes. So it's integral to their solution. It is. And they really spec it out. They're not just like bloating it, stacking and racking. That's right. But now they need someone to execute it. They need a supply chain, the second S. They may, if a customer, a small customer, inside of Iowa wants to ship product in Singapore, Japan, or South America, they need a company that can take them global. We can do that. One skew, a custom skew for that customer, the exact configuration, their image loaded in the factory deployed globally. The third S, services. Once it's deployed, they're going to need someone to maintain it. They'll do first level call on their application or something along those lines, but they need someone to get on site and actually help them fix it if something were to happen. We give that assurance in our services. And then finally, you know, the OEM business is a dedicated business. It's not a, you may have not heard about us before. They were just a covert business, but it has dedicated resources, dedicated sales staff, dedicated engineering to manage and maintain. We have like a control tower. So think about our IT customers who are receiving products into their data center. It's a one-time transaction, generally speaking, or infrequent. For OEMs, it's every week we get a PO. We've got to be executing flawlessly all the time. So we need a control tower to maintain that entire ecosystem to make sure it's a flawless execution. So what's the fourth S? So you got it? I got solutions, supply chain services. Staff, I call it dedicated resources, staff. Now I got to ask you Phil, so you, before the split of HPE, HPE had a big instrumentation business and sold presumably to a lot of, for instance, medical device applications and use cases. Was there synergy between your business and that business? How did the split affect you? Certainly affected the supply chain in a way. Supply chain shrunk. Did it affect your buying power? How did you navigate that split? So generally speaking, the two businesses were operating separately anyway, even from a supply chain perspective. And yes, it's true that there are common customers between, say, HPE today and HPE today as well. But in the case of calling on common customers, there's a workstation application where HPE specializes it. And then there's a storage or a compute from a server perspective and we specialize in that. And there actually has been minimal overlap. So actually, if anything, there's still a very collaborative relationship with HPE today. And you said it's multiple billions growing in double digits per year. And what exactly, I mean, can you give us a sense of some of the solutions that you're selling? I mean, what's hot?  First off, telecommunications. Telecommunications was a huge opportunity to build out of 4G.  Now we're looking ahead of 5G. Now there's a tremendous opportunity and we're starting to work on the servers of tomorrow. Now, do we have the portfolio today to do 5G? Of course, but when 5G finally lands, it's probably going to be a ball. It's going to evolve and it'll probably end up even being a different server than what we actually have on the truck today because we're going to optimize and tune. But what's super, super hot, I want to go back to healthcare for a minute and it's important for all of us. When my children sometimes ask me, hey dad, what do you do for a living? Well, if I tell them I say, well, you know, OEM out, they don't want to tell that to me, right? Okay, so, no, no, we build servers and I don't understand that, what's a server? Storage, they don't get it. But if I say it this way, I help you connect that phone. Probably 90% of the phones in the United States connect to an HPE server, that's a fact. Okay, that means it's enabling. So we provide communications, we provide entertainment, we're the infrastructure behind and we save lives. How can you possibly proclaim that we save lives? I'll tell you how. When I'm telling, I'll go back to that CT scanner example. When a terabyte comes off that scanner and goes onto that server, there cannot be a hiccup. It's not buffered, it's got to land directly on it. If not, it's a missed scan. That means the patient gets re-radiated and it's an FDA offense. None of our, we got family members that have to go through CT scans, that's not a good thing. So, we help save lives. That's the perspective. Now, what's important, what's happening, what's so popular is collecting that data. And let's go to digital pathology. That's the latest thing. Now, are you familiar with digital pathology? Not really. Now, but the key point though is, is that the having the reliability is critical on the OCS. Absolutely critical. And they go to HPE for the reliability, the custom engineering, staff. That's right. These are the services you guys provide. And big data analytics, and that's where digital pathology went to. We want to close on this topic. When you go in, if someone has cancer and they take a tissue sample and they look for, they run the genome sequencing and they're looking for the mutations in the cell. Now, as you start to accumulate that, and then we work with companies that are accumulating a petabyte a week of data on this very topic. Okay, that's a lot of data. Okay, now I want to figure out what's the most effective cure? So, I can go back and look at millions of patients and look at what the therapies were for that specific mutation. That's very compelling. Now, instead of throwing a barrage of every possible treatment to treat every patient, which in and of itself is detrimental to the body, now maybe it can be very small. I talk to some doctors and they say, you know, sometimes an aspirin can be a therapy for a specific mutation. Well, why would I give it radiation? And this is the reason why data is going to, this is the power of big data. Power of big data. It's going to help us make better decisions. Well, thanks so much for coming in. Really appreciate sharing the insight. OEM opportunities are out there. And congratulations on your success. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. This is theCUBE coverage here at HPE Discover 2017. Stay with us for more. We're on day two of three days of exclusive coverage with theCUBE. I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante. We'll be right back. Stay with us.


I've spoken out a lot about deliverance ministries, and I want to make sure that people understand what true authentic deliverance looks like There is a such thing as deliverance by God But I think what's happened of late is people have gotten the wrong understanding of what it means to be delivered What did Jesus come for when we look at the Bible and we look up the word deliverance in the Hebrew? One of the words that's used is the word Yeshua where we also hear the word Yeshua the name of Jesus in Hebrew Also in Greek when we see the term deliverance in the New Testament The Greek word for deliverance is the Greek word for Soterion which is salvation to be saved and so to understand what deliverance ultimately is Where it comes from what it encompasses It is all centered around the person of Jesus and him in your life in Luke 4 18 Jesus gives this quote where he says the spirit of the Lord is upon me because he's anointed me to preach the gospel To the poor he has sent me to proclaim the release to the captives and Recovery of sight to the blind to set free those who are oppressed and he says to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord Jesus's ministry centered around him setting people free delivering them, but it was not just in really one capacity He came to set us free Totally Jesus says so if the Son has set you free then you are free indeed and the word for indeed in the Greek is the word Antos which means Thoroughly is continually being actually so indeed truly And so if you are free then you are free indeed Without anything lacking for anyone to say otherwise would be to make a mockery of what Jesus said You cannot be declared free indeed and then still be bound by some sort of demonic activity Does that mean that there is no demonic activity? They may not come your way. That's not what that means at all Peter says that Satan goes about like a lion seeking whom he may devour that is also us He has designs on us, but the truth is he will not succeed How do I know because John says a couple things one greater is he that is in me That is the Holy Spirit then he that's in the world notice He's in the world, but then John also goes on and say in chapter 5 two things He says that we who are born of God are Overcomers, this is what we do and this is the present active participle meaning this is what we continually do We are in a state of overcoming Overcoming does not mean that you are free from problems Overcoming means that you overcome all of the problems Including those that come about as a result of demonic activity He also speaks of us overcomers those of us who've been born of God He says that the evil one the devil the enemy cannot touch us Therefore it should be clear that there is nothing that we have to worry about or to fear Do not let people tell you that you can be bound or enslaved There are those that even want to play Semanical games with the word in the Greek that gives us this term for possession The word demonics of my means to be oppressed to be possessed to be demon possessed What it refers to is a person having a demon being afflicted by a demon tormenting by a demon in other words A demon has decided to bother this person Sometimes it shows up physically sometimes it just shows up in them Internally mentally and emotionally which is why we have the term possessed There is no difference in the Greek and you do not find any Greek lexicons or grammars that would state Otherwise do not listen to people who say that there is a difference that will say that you cannot be possessed But you can be demonized you can be oppressed not a Christian again That would nullify us being overcomers that would nullify John saying that he can touch us That would nullify Jesus saying that we have been freed indeed now someone's gonna say court But it sounds like you are denying the power of God and also naively Denying that there are demonic influences. Well, no as a matter of fact I lean heavily on the power of the Holy Spirit. See it is my testimony Personally of God's deliverance how I was delivered even before I knew him when I was born Drugs in my system almost died the night that I was born and it didn't get that much better thereafter My father sold drugs my mother used drugs We knew how to not only deliver drugs seeing them cooking Cocaine all these different things that we grew up. We thought it was normal Moving from place to place to place to place someone asked me how many times have you been shot at? You mean by strangers? Well not counting my mother twice We have had an actual hit put out on us to where we had to move from one house to another part of the city then ultimately moving out of town even after moving with my father and going to high school things seem to be Kind of turning around but after that I found myself being homeless, but God delivered me from that as well I am in the faith. I'm growing in him I'm learning and then some of you also know of my own Actions that caused me to go to prison wasn't some sort of demon It was just my sinful self and then me yielding to that for the time being but God was still there and remember The promise that he is going to deliver me I am still an overcomer and so the fact that I'm sitting before you today even speaking When my prison outdate is 2025 I've been out since 2020 and so do I believe that God delivers without question God delivers? Do I believe that God says free? Yes free indeed Spiritually emotionally as a matter of fact even literally again. I am not behind bars I have seen the worst of the worst as well as the best of the best God is who he says he is and I did not need someone to lay their hand on me To tell me or to tell some demon to come out in the name of Jesus No by simply placing your faith in Christ You will be delivered do not let someone tell you that The power of God is limited that he cannot deliver you by you having your faith in him And the Holy Spirit in you is not powerful enough But it takes some other man to deliver you that is blasphemy my friends But the beauty of the power of the Lord in us is that we have been set free And I would say to anyone who is struggling who's going through they're going to be some issues They're going to be problems. There's gonna be struggles. There's gonna be persecutions. Don't believe me ask Peter Ask Paul ask John ask Jesus There always going to be some struggle for those of us who are in Christ He says those of us who are in Christ shall suffer persecution that part is to be expected But if you want to find out what true deliverance comes from ultimately and how you get past or how you overcome some of the temporary things that bother us or As Paul says these light and momentary afflictions Paul says in Galatians do not get weary in well-doing keep doing the right things keep praying Keep studying keep fellowship and keep praising and worshiping God because he says in due season at the right time at the point of time He says that you shall reap your reward And so when someone wants to show me what true deliverance looks like I don't need you to show me some example of someone Acting someone pretending as a matter of fact bad acting I don't need to see someone saying get out get out get out 20 30 times before nothing actually ever happens I don't need to see a carnival show if I want if I want to see true deliverance. Do you know what I do? I simply look in the mirror


Let's talk about mobility for deadlifting. So You need a certain amount of mobility to get down to the bar safely. So if the bar is, you know, maybe 10 inches off the ground, I should probably know this measurement It's half a plate off the ground Then I need to have a certain amount of hip mobility to get down there And so that's the the primary joint We're gonna talk about with the squat. You have a lot more dorsiflexion. You have a lot more ankle motion that you need when you come on down With a deadlift, it's it's less of an issue, but you do the mistakes or the the deficits that you have in hip mobility kind of get amplified as you go through this so Big thing is first one. I need hip flexion mobility I need to be able to bend at my hip so that my back doesn't bend like this Okay, primarily what we see with Spinal health research is that when the spine flexes and it's or flexes and extends It wears down the discs a little bit more and so what, you know, even just anecdotally The people that you see who are really strong usually don't deadlift with broke-looking backs Because they don't last right they can't train for long periods of time Even people who have really good technique as as you get really heavy that will start to wear you down But the best people will have a pretty normal curve They'll have a little bit of rounding in their upper back. They'll have a pretty neutral Maybe a slightly upward gaze in their neck and their low back will be about flat Maybe have a slight still lordosis curve to it most to just for further edification Most are not lifting like this and then picking the bar up like this Okay, if you want more on that watch my previous series that we talked about Deadlifting safely without hurting your back. So we went through a lot of different faults and fixes throughout that hip mobility wise, okay Hip flexion big deal, right But we also need hip extension at the top and so those are our primary Movers when we're doing our primary Motions that we need when we're doing a normal deadlift a two leg deadlift But what I kind of want to talk about is that it's it's not just that simple I mean I can I can measure things by hip extension mobility and I do want that and I can say Hey, do you feel your glute muscles turn on at the top of this deadlift? And you can say yeah, and I can be happier. You can say no and I can be a little concerned Um, but to get that hip extension sometimes I need to start worrying about some other exercises or some other movements And what I'm talking about here is a frontal plane and transverse plane movements. So if I Deadlift and I always screw my my hips way out like this or I screw my knees way out like this And they kind of splay apart I start to restrict the mobility in the back of my pelvis here my si joints And so if you're struggling with tension back there and it feels like it's getting really really tight Some of that's okay during a deadlift But if it's persistent throughout the day and it never goes away Then we have to start to look at why is that happening? Why am I losing all of this and generally what we see is that The tension back here ramps up and the tension down here just plummets And so for these people you may want a little bit more Adductor even though it's not a huge mover during this movement. I'm not really bringing my knees in a whole lot No, but it's it's it's kind of counter intuitive But I can use those muscles and they will position my pelvic bones So that when I come up to the top of this deadlift I can really feel both Both glute muscles and not so much back tone Okay, so if I'm if I'm seeing let's start at the bottom if I don't have the position here I'm usually just going to try to cue it and so if I'm bending my knees too much That could be one thing that I need to fix if I fall forward onto my toes That could be another thing that I want to fix If I have a big belly And I try to keep my knees pretty close sometimes that belly will get in the way There's too much pressure there.  I'm not going to have you go all the way down Or I'm going to say take a little wider stance and I want you to sit down in between your knees Right, we need to turn it into more of a squat maybe more of a sumo deadlift kind of thing So consider that not everybody type is Works well with the same variations And that's you know, that's kind of like the key principle that we keep going over is I need you to have options I want you to understand that sometimes some people aren't going to lift like you Some people aren't as short as I am and they have trouble squatting, you know Some people aren't as mobile as I am and they have trouble getting down Into a deadlift position safely So they might need to elevate the bar up off the ground or the kettlebell up off the ground Or maybe they just work from the top Down But they don't go all the way down or maybe they do go all the way down But they have to start at the top because they can't find the tension that they need, okay All of these little possibilities can play into this. So Getting that hip mobility at the bottom We talked about you know the gut thing it can get in the way a big other thing Is I forgot what I was going to say I'm going to look it up Oh, yeah, it's like squatting so I can use the squat to actually train the position that I want down there So if I need this and you know, maybe my back hurts a little bit and I'm afraid the deadlift Well, I can start to prepare myself for it by training the squat And then I learn how to do these frontal and transverse these weird this adductor stuff I can learn how to get all of that and get that hip mobility So that it will allow me to get down into my deadlifting position safely Awesome. I do like that tying in. I didn't plan that out. That's good So Next thing so we talked about the bottom. I want to talk about the top again. So if I am having trouble Finding a top locked out position without leaning my back I need to learn how to keep my hips underneath me. And so there's there's tons of different Cues that I might give you. I like to say tuck your tail between your legs I also like to say pretend you're wearing a belt to bring your belt buckle into your belly button I also like to say try to push your stomach into your low back All of those might work and if they don't then we need to try some other thing Lots of people are pretty locked up. It's a little bit worse as you're more stressed out It's a little bit worse if you don't sleep very well And so maybe I need to kind of hold your hand a little bit So I might lay someone down on the ground and teach that motion independent Of the rest of this deadlift. I'm going to lay you down. So you don't have to oppose gravity so much You take some of that You know cognitive stress away And then we just say okay, all we're doing is pelvis stuff here I want you to pick your tailbone up off the ground and push your low back into the ground And so if I try to snake my hand under here, I can feel that my low back is pushing into the ground I know I'm doing it well And then I might do a couple reps. I might even then lift my hips allow my low back to come up off the ground And I'll keep going. I'll try to keep tension on there and I'll try to find and feel my hamstrings And my glutes there at the top. That's perfect So this is the lockout of a deadlift. You see It's a little bit more difficult from a mobility standpoint But it's a little bit easier from a motor control standpoint Difficult from a mobility standpoint meaning my hip flexors my quads here are a little bit longer And so there's more tension to overcome But easier in a motor control standpoint meaning I'm laying on the ground. I'm not standing up Right and so I can take this and I can say yes, that's a really good position Now I want you to do that at the top of your deadlift And so then I can start to use that exercising between my sets of deadlifts to repattern My deadlift and to find that hip mobility that hip extension that I'm looking for If None of this seems to be working. You probably need a coach I can try to help you if you email me. I do some online coaching Other otherwise Coaching in person you got to kind of ask hey, you know, when you join a when you join a gym I'm really particular about Deadlifts I want to learn them But I don't feel like I ever do them correctly. I'm really concerned about my technique Can you help me and wait till they prove that they can help you and then You know, you're good to go Online coaching in person coaching other thing you can just do something else. You don't have to deadlift per se It's really cool and I like it and that is kind of my own little bias But there are plenty of other things you can do instead of a full-on deadlift like We talked about the when you got the belly, right?  It's a little alternative Other things I could not come down quite as low I could pick one foot up and do a single leg variation Single leg romanian deadlift maybe even a whole single leg deadlift off the ground That stuff is really difficult I could start to train Other single leg stuff I could stick with more squatting patterns like this maybe a split squat Maybe I bend over in my split squat a little bit more try to load my glute I feel it already try to load my glute and my hamstring a little bit more While I'm doing this and maybe I don't even have to come over that far Maybe I keep my feet closer Maybe I keep both feet on the ground but put more weight on one leg And then I bend over and I try to get this staggered stance throughout my single leg RDL Maybe my back is all messed up today that I just want to Train my upper body. Okay, plenty of different alternatives. You can do those are just a few I challenge you to be creative and come up with your own So I hope that helps we talked about hip mobility for deadlifting We talked about getting hip mobility at the bottom keeping hip mobility at the top We talked about some alternative exercises muscle groups types of motion that you need talked about How you might need to modify if you got a little belly in the way there All sorts of stuff if you have any other questions about hip mobility, please leave them in the comments below


They are everywhere, all around us. They seep into every aspect of our lives, our culture, both ancient and modern alike. They're always here, hiding in plain sight, waiting for us to notice them and to what extent they affect our lives and our consciousness. Aliens? No, no, no. Today, the modern scientific method treats everything it investigates as a pattern of observables, seeking to find inherent meaning and causality between the things that it studies. But long before the scientific revolution, the human response to patterns and meaning was different. Related more with an immediate personal and emotional reaction, and today, in the minds of most people, this still remains true. We find meaning and patterns in one of the most universal mechanisms for the transference of information. Symbols. Whether it's the ancient symbolism of hieroglyphics or tarot, or modern logos and graphic designs representing a company, symbols are a foundational expression of meaning and idea that are often worth more than a thousand words. The truth is, this episode itself was inspired by you, very people. We recently came out with a brand new Spirit Science podcast called Spirit Science Live, with a ton of new videos we publish weekly. But at first, a lot of people were really upset with our logo, because many felt that our logo looked like a commonly known pedophilia logo. Now, the Spirit Science Live logo is actually the Penrose triangle, very different from what it's accused of being, and which is an optical illusion that we chose because we were bridging the 2D into the 3D with the podcast. But seeing the people's reactions, we thought it was a wonderful opportunity to discuss symbolism and the meaning and power that becomes attached to certain ideas. And so, without further ado, you can use the link below to check out and subscribe to our podcast, and otherwise, enjoy the episode. If you were to ask an anthropologist, you'd learn that a symbol is a mark, sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or represents an idea, object, or relationship. An everyday example is a stop sign. That red octagon is designed to be common in most countries and stands as a universal sign to stop. But the octagon shape doesn't have an inherent meaning itself. It's only us who've given it that meaning of stop, at least one paired with the color red. It kind of makes you wonder then, maybe there's aliens on another world who see a red octagon and think, gotta go fast, but hey, that's another video for later. A funny example of this was in the movie Mars Attacks, where once the Martians landed and proclaimed peace, one of the nearby civilians let a dove fly loose.  So the Martians got scared and started shooting everyone. This applies to all symbols to some extent. Their value and meaning is arbitrary depending on cultural context and changes with time. One example of this is found in the Tarot, where we see a deep and rich history of symbolism having untold levels of meaning that reveal itself more and more with each look into it, along with cultural changes that happen time and time again. And on that note, if you haven't seen our brand new Major Arcana episode yet, please make sure to give it a watch after this one. It was really fun to make, but anyways, moving on. The thing about symbols is that because they are so ancient, our minds sometimes don't consciously recognize them. Take something simple, like a sunset.  Yet, whenever we see and contemplate one for real, there's no denying that at some level of our subconscious, all sorts of associations of thought, mythological pattern, and symbolic imagery are stirred. But today, often in modern life, we don't really think about the sun going down. We've all got lights and computers and other things that keep our attention. In mythological terms, we don't much concern ourselves with the death of the sun, the withdrawal of the light and heat, his nightly journey beneath the great dark waters of the underworld to be reborn in the east, as we ourselves are reborn from the nightly death of sleep.  But while we've come a long way from such thoughts logically, the human mind, especially the subconscious, seems to work in pre-logical and pattern-based imagery. Our unconscious, as it would seem, is designed to weave together archetypal symbols with our personal symbols into complex patterns, and because our mind communicates through association and symbology, if an external symbol matches one of your internal ones, you can sometimes get a very strong emotional response from it. Even against conscious, rational convictions, people find themselves deeply moved by symbols, which naturally, advertising companies are very aware of, and is the basis of subliminal messaging. If you don't believe us, check out our conspiracy series, see for yourself. But before we go there, let's return to the beginning. In early Spirit Science episodes, we've discussed the significance of the platonic solids and sacred geometry, and the truth is, all symbols are made up of a combination of basic principal strokes. By understanding these basics, we can quickly see that even most modern symbols are based on an ancient symbolic alphabet of sorts. Most of these signs can be identified as open or closed, straight or curved, crossing or non-crossing.  Of all symbols in history, the dot, the line, and the circle are the foundations. They are the parents from which all others evolved. The dot signifies unity, the origin, the point that appears first when drawing, the beginning. Expanded into infinity, the dot becomes the circle, embodying the cyclical nature of things and the wider universe, giving things a sense of motion and the divine feminine. The line is drawn with a stroke, and is by its nature the active principal, the sacred masculine, and signifies change through will. Wavy and zigzag lines are different. Wavy lines are fluid and passive, whereas zigzags are sharp and rigid. Some particularly powerful signs have retained their meaning across all of history. The best example is the cross. The design of two intersecting lines make their appearance from deep prehistory, as petroglyphs in European cult caves, dating back to the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic, and throughout prehistory into the Iron Age. In the European Bronze Age, the cross symbol appeared to carry a religious meaning, perhaps as a symbol of consecration, especially pertaining to burial. In other words, the cross is not only pre-Christian, but has been known to represent balance, structure, and protection coming from exerting your will upon the world. When curved and expanded, the cross can become the swastika. When curved and overlaid on top of each other, we get the eight-rayed star, which has long since been a symbol of Venus, Ishtar, and divinity in countless cultures. This brings us to one of the most interesting aspects of symbolism, how they change. The swastika was widely used as a symbol of divinity and spirituality in Indian religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. And in Europe, it was a symbol of auspiciousness, good luck, and well-being until the 1930s, where it was appropriated by the Nazis. When designing the insignia, Hitler understood its significance and place in European history and attempted to syncretize its use with his own ideology, believing that it was the symbol of the creating and affecting life, and a race emblem of Germanism. But the earliest swastikas actually come from 10,000 BC in Ukraine, where it was found in a context of other phallic symbols, meaning that it may have originally been a fertility symbol. As a result of World War II and the Holocaust, though, many people in the West still strongly associate it with Nazism and Antisemitism. Today, though, it's still used as a symbol of good luck and health in certain parts of Asia and India. The differing use here goes back to the whole cultural transmission thing, where symbols will take on a personal meaning depending on which response they move in you. At a core level, though, all communication and data processing happens through the use of symbols.  And speaking to this, we can see a powerful example of it all, along with a reflection of human consciousness at the moment, with an event that happened on TikTok recently that led to a number of people getting accidental Nazi tattoos. A user named Smooth Avocado shared with her followers a proposal that everyone in Gen Z should get a matching tattoo to represent their generation with pride, a symbol of unity for them, and a bit of a rebellion to the boomers. The symbol, however, which was created by the avocado herself, just so happened to look identical to the Wolf's Angel symbol, a known symbol of white supremacy and Aryan ideology used by Hitler's SS. Whoopsie! But it's interesting nonetheless that the meaning never crossed their mind. To the avocado, it seemed simply like a good symbol to represent the young generation because it contained a Z shape. It also shows where human consciousness is at, because from this entirely innocent mistake, the poor avocado received a massive volume of hate mail and even some death threats. I guess negative symbols beget more negativity? This whole thing though really begs the question, can seemingly bad symbols change their meanings into good ones? It seems far easier and likely, and often, that good symbols become bad, but it may not be impossible to go the other way if people are willing to stand up for what they believe in, even if their symbols are similar to less popular or perhaps more negative ones. This can be very difficult to do when you're up against a lot of social backlash. Of course, this brings us back to our podcast logo that we mentioned at the beginning. We didn't even consider that there was a connection from the Penrose Triangle to this other more spirally triangle that is often linked to pedophilia groups. A lot of people were outraged and demanded that we change our logo, but we really had to sit with ourselves and ask, are triangles just off limits now? Is it right for us to bend over backwards for a few angry people who are making connections that we know definitively aren't there? You see, if we instantly changed our logo, it would be like a big public declaration that we were in the wrong. But we really weren't sure that we were, especially because the spiral triangle symbol hadn't even crossed our consciousness while we worked on our podcast. As we went deeper, what we found out was that this seeming adoption by pedophile groups is yet another form of appropriation of an even older image. Historically, the spiral was often linked to the sun and symbolized expansion, creativity, and the essence of a journey. In Newgrange, in Ireland, the Triskellian symbol, which is made of three intersecting spirals, was often illuminated by the sun on the solstice, and even the triangle represents the most stable geometric form, embodying stability and unity. The work of Paul Tillich, however, makes an interesting case for the changing of meanings of symbols. According to him, symbols like people are born and die. A living symbol taps into the collective consciousness of the people who perceive it and can reveal hidden levels of meaning and transcendent or religious realities to those who observe it. In theory, when a symbol loses its meaning and power for an individual or culture, it becomes a dead symbol. But when it is identified with a deeper aspect of reality, it takes the place of the idea it originally conveyed and can work its way into human consciousness again. The bottom line is, symbols convey a message and meaning to the observer, but that meaning massively depends on culture, background, and upbringing. Depending on the nature of a symbol, it can carry value in three main ways, ideological, comparative, or isomorphic. Ideological symbols are generally religious, like the Christian cross or the awen symbol for druidry. And these convey complex sets of beliefs and ideas that are moral or mythical to certain groups. Comparative symbols are things like fine art or awards that tell us which is better, gold, silver, bronze, you know the story. And isomorphic symbols are harder to identify because they tend to blend in with the surrounding environment and enable people and organizations to conform to their surroundings. Kind of like how wearing a suit in a meeting symbolizes professionalism. Regarding meaning, generally symbolic thought can be broken down into six different ways of interpreting. Territory markers, which set liminal boundaries between borders or even identifying sacred and secular worlds. Symbols of measurement, which help us make sense of weight, time, and movement. Symbols of planning, which help us define our intentions more clearly like cities and town maps, relationship symbols that help to create families, lineages, and social groupings, or in modern society, money is often given such value. In more ancient societies, there were distinct classes of symbols to describe our relationships with spirit and the other world. But above all else, symbols are used to describe the world through depiction, representation, and are a way of conceptualizing the world around us and our experience of it. In modern times, we have logos that companies and advertisements use to make us connect to their product. And just like sacred geometry, most of these logos are designed to specific proportions and measurements that help them bypass the conscious mind and wriggle into the subconscious. And this isn't even an exaggeration. In college, I took a class specifically about graphic and logo design throughout history, the most boring class in all of college, but the depth that we learn about specific proportions and angles and geometries that are found within logos are outstanding. Regarding symbols and their meaning, let us now share a quote from Heinrich Zimmer, who says, symbols hold the mind to truth, but are not themselves the truth. Hence, it is delusory to borrow them. Each civilization, every age, must bring forth its own. But now, can there really be any new symbols? Especially if each one is just a rejig of the seven basic shapes. When it comes down to it, symbols are just a very human way of communicating. Why else would humans be so prone to pareidolia? It's our job to see that symbols change with every new generation, and if we leave symbolism behind, it may die and we may lose this amazing method of communication. So until next time, keep an eye out for those subliminal messages, and we'll see you later. Toodles!


So it's time for another product review. So this time we have an oldie book goodie. Let me tell you something. I've seen plenty of natural youtubers use this particular product. It's a Dominican product and it's called the Cresce Pillow Natural Pyro Therapeutic Treatment for Help with Capillary Growth. So the directions say first hypothermic, I think I'm not pronouncing it right, vital therapeutic natural treatment that involves the use of natural plants, girl just got real country on you, for hair growth the innovative formula provides ashtraxin 100% natural assets necessary for a healthy hair avoiding excessive flaking and adding nutrients to return. Okay girl that's good. So what are the directions? Apply after shampooing and allow to set for 15 minutes. Now this is a small size. If I could guess it's between 8 and 10 ounces. Let's see 8.5 ounces. Let's go ahead and open this up. Now if I can remember correctly I purchased this through eBay. I purchased it through eBay because I couldn't find it you know on Amazon.   I can't think of the name. Definitely a lotion so the consistency is very look at that very very thick. I want to scoop out just a little bit. Oh that's look at that.  This is extremely creamy now honestly uh crazy pillow I could have used a good 12 ounces but that's my my fault for getting the smaller size so let's see you guys I'm gonna put just a little bit there and yeah it is extremely smooth and creamy because even with me wiping it off look at the look at the gloss. All right so this is how creamy it is. All right y'all this is wash day I had to cut that short oh I would have been talking forever so this is my hair wet look at how much my hair has grown I really been trying to take care of my hair so let me just go ahead and jump right into this review y'all. So we're gonna go ahead and section off my hair. Can y'all see how much my hair has grown? This is wet and my hair is very fragrant like you already know that look at this. I'm excited y'all. Okay honestly if I wasn't so dangling in a hurry to try this product I would have warmed it up. I really would have. That's what I would recommend because it's so thick. Oh very nice. All right you guys I had to slow down some or I need to slow down some because this is just eight ounces and I'm already halfway through the jar so as you can see I'm not applying as much on this side of my hair but I will say this product is going on fairly fairly easy no problems at all. I love the way that it's coating my strands is even what do you call it it's clumping them together my curls together very very nicely. Now I will say now I'm going to mention this at the final commentary and that this is a very very fragrance this is giving me white diamonds this is giving me giving me peppermints in my purse plastic on the sofa yeah this is giving me old woman so it's very very fragrant so be aware okay this is what the back of my hair looks like with everything on. Y'all it's very fragrant but I'm okay because it's just a deep conditioner and I can wash I can wash this girl out so let's go ahead clip it all up and yeah I use all what is this eight ounces all right yeah I'm so silly so I mean for heat to generate especially since it's chilly here I'm gonna put this big old I'm not gonna laugh okay Vivian don't don't laugh we're gonna put this on and then I'm going to put this on with the circumference of my girl I got a big ass head so it's going to generate enough heat um we're gonna leave it on let's see what the directions say okay that's in Spanish 15 minutes retire with plenty of water do they mean rinse out they said retire anyway we're gonna rinse out after 30 minutes okay all right you guys I am back I've rinsed out look I've rinsed out all of the product this is what it looks like my hair feels amazing I'm trying to put on my glasses but it's a little warm in here my hair feels really really good look at the curls the curls curls curls it feels amazing it rinsed out really well no complaints and overall it does what it is intended to do now disclaimer it is very very fragrant um if you are someone like me that is um a bit sensitive to products hair products that have fragrance this has a lot um and I have allergies so um but it has that white diamonds I'm going with the wind type of scent to it it really does so that is it you guys I'm rambling at this point thank you so much for watching I think it was always to automate subscribers take care bye


Well thank you very much for choosing to show up for my talk today. I remember Mises used in the past when they had concurrent sessions and I always felt like I was in competition with somebody else and now I've got a captive audience. So this is really an encouraging week of the year for me. I sometimes get a little discouraged when I see Gen Z and I come here and reminded that not all is lost. So I'm very pleased that you're here. It's a friendly audience unlike some that I speak to. So I have a lot of slides. I probably will not get through all of them but since Tom DiLorenzo used none I figure I will use his unused slide show. Well not really but he was kind enough to let me expand my PowerPoint. That was a joke but I didn't go over very well. Alright further ado. Alright so I have had an interest in environmental economics for a long time partly because it was one of those areas where I thought that we really need to think hard about this if you're dedicated free markets because it's an area where a lot of people think that markets don't work very well and there are really two areas of subsets I guess you could say of environmental economics. One would be the questions about resource use like land use which we're going to focus on today, deforestation, oil reserves and are we running out of oil etc. Fisheries, overfishing, recycling questions, things like that and then there are the other questions about externalities which if you have looked at any of my YouTube's from past, Mrs. U, I spend more of my time on externalities in those. Bash Ronald Coase a little bit and things like that. So that would be things like if you are engaged in a consumption or production activity and your activity causes some kind of cost or benefit for someone else who's kind of a bystander, those are the externality questions and if you take an environmental economics course you're probably going to run into those issues as kind of the bread and butter of a basic presentation of these things from the mainstream. The core issue of both of these is property rights, right? Who owns the air, who owns the oceans, who owns the oil reserves, who owns the land and where we don't see property rights being very clearly protected and defined, then that's when we run into problems and we'll see that Barry Rothbard recognized that, Carl Minger recognized that, we can go back a long way and see that that's been understood. So what we're going to do here is first look at some issues of subjectivity, calculation, the nature of efficiency and how that connects to the environment and then we're going to look at government and land management. And I will go as far as my time permits on talking about some of the problems that arise when government manages land or owns land outright, when it restricts the use of land as we see with, for example, zoning laws. A lot of people will look at land use and for that matter, water use questions and say, well, this is just capitalism run amok and we've got to control capitalism or we're going to have islands of plastic in the ocean and so forth. So if you have a chance to take a look at this article on Mises.org from Mark Branley from about, I think this is about five years ago, he talks about land ownership in the United States and Tom DeLorenzo mentioned this very briefly in his talk last hour. And this is a map of some government land ownership. This is just federal lands. It does not include state owned lands. It does not include municipalities that own land and there's awful lot of that as well. You know, cities own roads, of course, streets and parks and these kinds of things. A lot of the infrastructure is municipality owned. So this is only a fraction, but you can see, I think Tom mentioned that in the state of Nevada, there's something like over 80%. Well, I think actually if you just look at federal land, it's well over 90% that is that is owned by the federal government. A lot of this is BLM land, Bureau of Land Management. This is not the other BLM used to be, I could say BLM and everybody knew what I was talking about and now I have to specify. This is I don't think this map includes a Bureau of Indian Affairs land, which according to the government, this is owned by the Indians and Native Americans, but I don't know whether Native Americans would see it that way because there are a lot of restrictions on how they can use that land and transfer it. Military bases, of course, national parks, national forests and forest service land. There's tons of these agencies with various acronyms that own and manage this land and a lot of the remaining private land is heavily restricted. Mark gave, Dr. Brandley gave this table showing some of the states that have the highest percentage of federal and state land. You can see Alaska is like 91.2% federal and state owned and Nevada is, I guess, Tom was right, 85.1% did not break 90%. So and then down at the bottom, Mark threw in New York because it's got a very high percentage of state owned land, even though federal owned land in New York is not that high, so 37% total. And then if you look at offshore territorial claims by the federal government, you find that massive amounts of land, though submerged, is also claimed by the federal government. So you can have this island out in the middle of the Pacific and you've got a 200 mile radius around that island, which is a huge amount of underwater territory. And this is increasingly important because we already know there are offshore oil reserves and navigation rights that are sometimes in dispute, as we see in the South China Sea. And so these kinds of things are important to think about. This is a massive land grab, really. I mean, ironically, the, maybe not ironically, I don't know, but the 200 mile claim of the exclusive economic zone that gives us this kind of territorial claim was done by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. So this presents a calculation problem for us because if government ownership of land is accompanied by all of the various bureaucratic restrictions that they impose, and you can read Mises' excellent short book bureaucracy, if you have not read that, it is pound for pound, probably one of the best Mises reads that you will find. It's not difficult and I urge you to take a look at that. But basically what can happen with government ownership of land is that they end up using it for political purposes. What else would they do with it? They use it to reward their friends and punish their enemies to respond to political goals that they think the voters will respond to. Bradley says that government restrictions on use of resources on government lands limits economic growth and land socialism, which is what this really is, will create economic calculation problems. So the first calculation issue here, he says, is the government's decisions regarding the use of this land and the resources on and under the land. Since the government owns the land, we see no prices for these resources. You can make up prices. I mean, the government will lease oil reserves. They will lease rights to some of the mineral resources under land, but that's not the same thing as a market price. It's playing games with something that might be called a price, but because it's not resulting from voluntary action, it's not conveying the same information that you would see in a marketplace. So it's almost useless. The government has no way to economize on these resources in the sense that government officials, even if they wanted to, could not efficiently allocate those resources. They make them based on political considerations. So they end up allowing the private sector to access the wrong resources, wrong in the sense that if we were allowed to have private ownership of these resources, we would choose to use them much differently. We don't know exactly what that would look like. Maybe we would chop down fewer trees on federal lands. Maybe we would chop down fewer trees on federal lands. We don't really know what that would look like, but it's highly unlikely that the decisions made by the government bureaucrats in charge of this land would match exactly what we would see in an encumbered market. There are some other calculation problems as well. If the government, and I sort of said this already, that the prices that we see that the government creates aren't market prices and therefore don't give us any solid information on how to manage this. All right. So if you take a typical undergraduate or graduate level economics class that deals with the questions of market failure, as it's called, you will see a short list of three or four items, usually including these, that first of all, there are externalities, the side effects of our consumption or production behavior. We're accidentally or unintentionally imposing benefits or costs on other people. There's the argument that markets don't produce enough public goods. The public good is not just something that's produced by the government, but a public good would be classified as something that if you use it, you're not using it up. There's just as much left over for somebody else. And it's hard to charge a price for it. So you end up with what's called a free rider problem. Now, Austrians are going to look at this. Austrian economists are going to look at this and say, well, these are in a lot of ways spurious complaints against the market. For one thing, if you try to introduce the government to fix these things to the extent that they are problems, then you're going to end up with often worse outcomes. But the third is the inefficiency from some kind of market power. This is the genesis of all this antitrust law and so forth, as you see. Dominic Garmentano's classic old work on this on antitrust law, the case for repeal, is really great on this. I'm not going to talk about that today. But usually these problems with externalities and public goods arise where property rights are not well protected. And secondly, and I've got an article I think toward the end of the presentation here that I'll mention about Art Cardin who talks about the fact that just because you've shown that the market didn't match your idea of what is efficient doesn't mean that the government's going to improve upon that. In fact, it may make things worse. I had a, when I was not as politically astute as I am now, which is not very, I just got into Wofford. And I read some of the things that my colleagues there were writing. And I again, not being very astute, thought it would be a great idea to criticize them. So a fellow in the English department wrote about, I wrote an article about his basically extended field trip with students to the coastal areas of South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia and bemoaned the problems of land use in those areas and said in an article on this, he said, it's a bad idea to turn the whole future of a region over only to people with money to make. And I couldn't resist this, I probably should have, but I couldn't resist and I ended up writing something to kind of argue that this was way off base. He went on to talk about some of the, you know, the depredations of the environment by the people that were selling hamburgers and used cars and all of these things that, you know, obviously to him, this was a bad use of land. I don't know whether he's really forgiven me for that article, but in any case, there are some important questions. I think that I've got some of the same preferences that a lot of my more leftist colleagues have that I like going hiking and untrammeled wilderness and I like seeing trees more than I like seeing used car lots and I like seeing, I like going out into places where there are fewer people and seeing wildlife and so these are these are preferences that I probably share with others. The problem from an economist standpoint here is that when we try to make these arguments about the best land use, we run smack into some major problems of calculation and of subjective comparisons of value or comparisons of subjective value. So how do we know what land use is best? Is it best that a national park be used in the way that it is or would it be better if people were allowed to live there? If we had homes on that property, we can't know that. We can have individual preferences about that. My wife and I took a trip early this summer where we visited four national parks. It was really really great to be able to see some of the things we saw and the experience for me would have been diminished if I had had to look at some apartment building on the edge of the Grand Canyon but these are these are merely personal preferences that I have. Will government really bring us closer to what we want? We can see in some cases that restrictions lead to very problems they're intended to to prevent. So pulling from a Driscoll and Rizzo's book, The Economics of Time and Ignorance, they say to know whether a market process is optimal, we would need to know the very information whose discovery is the object of that process. If we could independently ascertain the information, the process would be superfluous. For me to be able to say or for me to say that the that that an apartment building on the edge of the Grand Canyon is not optimal would be for me to assert information that I don't have because I don't have a market that would communicate that in any effective or believable way. Hayek in his book, Law, Legislation and Liberty, who's quoted in a book that I should go ahead and mention here. This is an oldie but a goodie. This is Roy Cardato's book, Efficiency and Externalities in an Open-ended Universe and not insurmountable as a text on environmental economics and and published by the Mises Institute a number of years ago, but I think the concepts there are really really great. Anyway Hayek says that the whole of the so-called welfare economics which pretends to base its arguments on the interpersonal comparisons of ascertainable utilities lacks all scientific foundation. The fact that most of us believe that they can judge which of the several needs of two or more known persons or more important does not prove either that there is any objective basis for this nor that we conform such a conception about people whom we do not know individually. The idea of basing coercive actions by government on such fantasies is clearly clearly an absurdity. So this brings us to one of those words favored by Austrian economists, catalaxie. I can't even pronounce it, catalactics. Because catalactics is the study of monetary exchanges. There is in a catalaxie there is no overall hierarchy of goals. There are only the separate objectives of the individuals. Now this is separate and distinct from economic efficiency. You'll hear a lot of welfare economists talking about efficiency. Well it's not efficient for there to be apartments on the edge of the Grand Canyon. They'll assert without a shred of information, valid information. So economic efficiency is compatible with Austrian economic theory only in so far as it applies to the assessments of whether the means chosen by the individuals are consistent with the accomplishment of ends chosen by the individuals. So we can't engage in interpersonal comparisons of the values of the ends. I can't say with any authority that the value that people have from living in an apartment building on the edge of the Grand Canyon is greater or lesser than the value to the people like me who visit once in a while and hike around and want to see something that doesn't have an apartment building on it. There's no way for us to make that assertion with any... I can't say it's efficient to have an apartment building there or it's efficient not to have an apartment building there. So catalactic efficiency occurs when economic efficiency is promoted by an institutional setting that ensures that property rights are secure which in turn promotes the discovery and use of information for the accomplishment of individual plans. So it takes into account the fact that we can't judge other people's valuations of environmental goods. So if we want to promote this kind of catalactic efficiency we need to think about what is it that promotes the security of property rights? What is it that promotes the ability of an individual to pursue and obtain their ends with good information? Good information that may be provided by a market. We have prices that tell us how relatively scarce this good is compared to that good. In a voluntary marketplace setting in a catalaxi we can have that kind of information provided to us. So part of what we do in an Austrian environmental economics is we look at institutional settings. We don't try to say well let's figure out whether it's better that this land be used for a national park or be used for an oil field or be used for a parking lot or a solar farm or... We don't try to make those decisions because we know that we can't make those decisions for other people. Cordado again in this in this book says that no meaningful means ends framework is even possible without the ability to access and control physical resources. Beyond this the role of this institutional setting is to allow the exchange process through the price system to disseminate as much information concerning appropriate exchange opportunities as possible. The more restrictions you place on that ability to exchange freely with other people the lower quality that information is going to be that you get out of the market price and if you dispense with market prices altogether or you decide to sort of make up make believe prices where the government's leasing mineral rights or something on federal land then you have no idea you are operating without information that would would help us to make these decisions correctly. So Cordado says efficiency is an individual goal seeking problem we're not trying to figure out what produces the maximum value to society and you'll see this all the time in welfare economics well let's see how can we maximize the social value of something we can't do that. Well you can pretend to do that but you can't do that with any kind of any kind of certainty at all. Rothbard mentioned this and again I'm quoting from Rizzo here time uncertainty and disequilibrium where Rothbard said we cannot decide on public policy tort law rights or liabilities on the basis of efficiencies he's talking about that mainstream version of efficiency or minimizing of costs only he says only ethical principles can serve as criteria for our decisions about efficiency it can never serve he says as the basis for ethics on the contrary ethics must be the guide and touchstone for any consideration of efficiency and this is in logic of action two and Rothbard says look we economists are going to have to get used to the fact that we don't not all of life can be considered by our own discipline we're going to have to realize our limits here on this all right so if you take an environmental economics class of any kind you'll probably run into this term the tragedy of the commons this term originated so I'm told from an article from 1968 written by a biologist named Garrett Harden H-A-R-D-I-N but the idea is much older than that we can find as we'll see people like Carl Minger from the Austrian school the founder of the Austrian school talking about this kind of thing and even before that we understand this problem that if you've got a resource of some kind that's not owned and anyone can use it then it's going to be overused and we're going to have a problem whenever a person can use the resource but doesn't face the full cost of using that resource so you know think about an office refrigerator right so the little refrigerator in the break room and there's stuff in there like coffee creamer and who knows what else but there's you go in there and you use this stuff but you use it without thinking as much about the fact that other people might want to use this as well and even though there may be some cultural constraints to this you think well I want to be a considerate person that consideration pretty quickly runs into limits we don't when you've got a small group of maybe five or six people sharing that refrigerator that's one thing when you've got a commons that is much larger than that is shared by many more people it becomes much more difficult to handle these things so I created this kind of this is an adaptation from a game theory text with two ranchers Al and Bob and they've got a common pasture nobody owns the pasture Al doesn't own it Bob doesn't own it and they've got a decision to make do I put one cow out to graze or two cows cows out to graze on this pasture pasture has a rate of growth of grass that is given by nature it's going to the grass is going to grow at a certain rate whatever that is and the more cows you put on it the more that grass is going to be depleted if Al and Bob put both put one cow out to graze each they both get five let's say five pounds a day of beef weight gained 10 pounds total if they put a total of four cows where they both put two cows out to graze on this pasture then they only get eight pounds of weight gain for their cattle each day because the grass is not keeping up in growth rate with the depletion from the consumption from the cattle so from a the point of view of maximum weight gain for these cattle you'd want to have one cow from from each rancher but how is it that this is going to be enforced if neither one of them owned the property neither one of them owned the pasture so if you look at for example the upper right quadrant here so here's Al who decided to put two cows out to graze Bob puts only one cow out to graze Al's cows is gaining six pounds or the two cows together gaining six pounds a day and Bob's single cows gaining three pounds it Al is incentivized to put both cows out to graze on the pasture because if he only put one cow out to graze he'd get only five pounds of weight gaining a day so Al's got the incentive to put two cows out out to graze same thing for Bob this is symmetric so if Bob puts two cows out to graze he gets and Al puts only one then he gets the six pounds of weight gain so they both got an incentive to put two cows out to graze so we end up here in the lower right quadrant where they get a the least weight gain possible in this situation a minger pointed this out many many years ago long before garret harden he said minger said when all members of society compete for a given quantity of goods that is insufficient a practical solution to this conflict of interest is only conceivable if the goods pass into the possession of some of the economizing individuals and that these individuals are protected by society in their possession to the exclusion of all other individuals this is why barbed wire was such a great invention because it allowed pasture land to be cheaply separated into private parcels which could be controlled in their access and you would not have the same overgrazing problem of this is a picture I usually show this every year you may have seen this if you've been to a previous mises you but this is an aerial photograph of the boundary the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic looking north so the Dominican Republic is on the right and Haiti is on the left what's the difference between the right and the left well obviously the Dominican Republic's got a lot more green there's trees growing the Haitian side does not why would this be the climate's the same two sides of the border the difference is property rights so if you look at an economic freedom index such as that that's produced by the let's see it's the Frazier Institute and I think they've got a partner or two involved in this you can find this at free the world dot com listing of economic freedom that's you could quibble about the methodology there I suppose but it's it's um I use it frequently Haiti has a much lower ranking of overall economic freedom they're ranked number 103 whereas the Dominican Republic is ranked number 62 but if you drill down to the protection of property rights component of that of that index Haiti's index for property rights protection is much lower than the Dominican Republic so the Dominican Republic with whatever its flaws does a better job of protecting property rights so in on the Haitian side what happens if you go onto public land and you cut down a tree probably nothing there's not as much protection for property rights so you end up with a commons where the minute a tree gets big enough to be worth cutting down somebody cuts it down and nobody's going to stop you and so you end up with no no forest to speak of on any land that's not protected in that way by property Murray Rothbard extended this to water and and if you look at Walter Block and Peter Nelson's book water capitalism the case for privatizing oceans rivers lakes and aquifers they point out that Rothbard and Block and Nelson all point out that if you privatize a body of water then you can alleviate some of the difficulties that are associated with that commons typically in the United States if you have a lake or an ocean or river this is a kind of a commons and nobody in particular is going to have enough control over this to limit access and to guard against against overexploitation of that resource so Rothbard says in his book for a new liberty only private property rights will ensure an end to pollution the invasion of resources only because the rivers are unowned is there no owner to rise up and defend his precious resource from attack if in contrast anyone should dump garbage or pollutants into a lake which is privately owned he would not be permitted to do so for very long the owner would come roaring to its defense now several years ago you saw pictures like this and some others that you you might have seen about this this great pacific garbage patch and the the coral of plastic that's out there in the middle of the ocean because we're we're using drinking straws apparently and that is it's a commons I mean the ocean is a commons now does it have to be that way I don't I don't think so in fact there have been some interesting steps I won't get into about how that that we've started to see some movement toward privatization of oceans but for the for all practical purposes this is still a massive commons and a lot of plastic that winds up floating down rivers ends up in the middle of the ocean nobody owns the rivers nobody owns the oceans we would be very surprised if we saw someone's swimming pool in their backyard with massive amounts of plastic floating around it I mean I'm gonna pick I don't have a pool but if I did I would be picking up the least little bit of litter out of that pool it's my pool I'm the same way about my front yard I mean compare that to the side of a highway I mean people just throw stuff on the side of a highway all the time nobody's I mean they got signs that have empty threats about fines if you pollute but or litter but my front yard I guard with some intensity if you throw a can in my front yard I'm not going to be happy about that a lot of this litter appears to be the result of people just dumping stuff that they know nobody's going to say anything about so one observer pointed out that fishing nets account for 46 percent of this trash the majority of the rest is is ropes oyster spacers eel traps crates baskets and a good 20 percent of it at least in 2018 with this article was written was from the 2011 Japanese tsunami just washing up onto shore going back out to see carrying with it a lot of debris so I always ask for a drinking straw when I get my coffee my iced coffee the idea that we are creating pollution in the middle of the pacific because we're using drinking straws in Kansas is just not the case but people feel good because they I don't have time to tell my story about paper drinking straws in China in 1948 but maybe if you ask me afterward I'll get to that so there are some political considerations I'm running out of time here of course so I'll go quickly through this art carden says that the information needed to know whether a particular regulation works quite literally does not exist and the key difference between firms and governments is that firms have market tests for their decisions governments do not the second problem that governments face here is incentives so if you're elected to public office you don't become an angelic creature who's suddenly not interested in your own well-being and is now completely devoted to the well-being of your fellow creatures and the bureaucrats that work for these elected officials are also not publicly interested anymore than a private sector merchant would be so we tend to assume that people have their own personal interests that have an outsized role to play in their decision making this is not different for people in government so political incentives are fundamentally different in other ways from market incentives if you're if you're operating a firm you have to think ahead what's going to be the value of this firm next year five years ten years down the road even if I'm not going to live that long I still have an interest in preserving the value of that because I want to be able to sell that firm when I'm ready to retire and in order for me to sell it for the highest price possible I have to ensure that the buyer can anticipate a an ongoing high value for that firm political incentives are different in that way because they they discourage that long-term view so I have to think about if I'm a political elected official I have to think about the next election if I feel like I'm pretty secure in my position I'm probably going to get re-elected and I might think about the election past that but there's no way for me to bequeath my my political capital to another person at least not very easily and the level of uncertainty there about whether or not my my my seat in congress will remain is going to discourage me from thinking much past the next election or or two so this may lead to some very short run decision making Rothbard says while rulers of government own public property their ownership is not secure in the long run because they may always be defeated in an election or deposed hence government officials will tend to regard themselves as only transitory owners of public resources while a private owner securing his property and its capital value may plan the use of his resource over a long period of time in the future the government official must exploit his property as quickly as he can since he has no security of tenure so what does that mean I mean you're going to be you're going to pillage this in some way for as much as you can I mean go ahead and extract those resources sell off those mineral rights because you can use that political capital to get reelected but you may not have much of an incentive to think about long-term conservation considerations Rothbard goes on to say that even the most securely entrenched civil servant must concentrate on present use because government officials cannot usually sell the capitalized value of their property as private owners can in short except in the case of the private property of a hereditary monarch you can talk to some others of us about monarchy maybe later government officials own the current use of resources but not their capital value so he says to kind of wrap up Rothbard here it's the government official who must take and run who must exploit the property quickly while he is still in command now back to our you know my my article a long time ago about the use of valuable coastal property and I live in South Carolina we've got some beautiful coastal landscapes and and I grew up going into the salt marshes of coastal South Carolina and going crabbing and shrimping and tooling around a little motor boat and this fantastic landscapes are really to this day enjoy that that kind of terrain people value that as I do and because people value those natural landscapes private developers will take that into account when they're making their their plans for development but it is expensive if you preserve the natural landscape that means you can't do as much of this well this you know that's that's a lot less natural landscape and a lot more concrete and steel a lot more people on that beach than you might see at a more expensive beach resort so there's this trade-off between access and affordability if you prohibit development on government-owned land you're reducing the supply and therefore increasing the price for users of other land to imagine two mile wide stretches of beach next to each other if the government says we're setting aside this one mile of beach as a national seashore and nobody can build on this and we will only we'll be very restrictive about what we allow people to do on this property the substitute for that mile of beach is the mile next to it and that's the closest substitute probably so what's going to happen to the value of that land what's going to go up right and so a lot of the development will simply shift so you may think well the government preserved this land but when in in actual fact what they may have done is simply move the development next door so you may have less natural habitat next door than you would have had otherwise did this really improve things from the point of view of someone who values natural habitat i mean you get the government sort of stamp of no access but it didn't really necessarily produce a an increase in the availability of that natural amenity housing availability may drop the cost of visiting environmental amenities like beaches may go up which in turn may mean that this becomes more of the province of the the wealthy and the ironically the very people who are in favor of some of these national reserves national seashores national farms national parks or they think that they're doing this out of a concern for the common the common person's access to these amenities but in fact they may be reducing that access more than they recognize i won't get into the mechanics of this let me just take a couple of well one minute and and mention briefly zoning i'm going to get to the picture since that's more interesting this is uh near where i live um i don't know why the cost coast shows up there but anyway there's the cost code one of them and you see this kind of urban sprawl that people complain about and this is one of the land use concerns that i hear from people well if you know if you don't govern if you don't plan municipal planning and you don't do this sort of restrictive zoning then you're going to end up with people living wherever they want to live well wow that that would be bad right uh when people build stores and and strip malls and and and all of this all of this stuff well randall holcomb who's um years ago he he's he's been i haven't seen recently but he's been to some mesas conferences and and um has has written extensively on this and he said urban sprawl can produce more efficient land use patterns and enhance people's quality of life nobody forces people to live in single family detached homes developers build them because that's where people want to live um if you look at at states like california where i know i've talked to a couple of you from california here and and uh california is famously restrictive on their land use maybe this is one of the reasons why it's so expensive to live in places like the bay area because you can't build outside of very narrowly defined uh areas so um some economists have suggested that zoning um can actually increase the spread of urban areas into undeveloped areas um and and a good example of this is uh this is toronto and not in california canada um but you see the green that was over the years set aside as a reserve you can't build in that area so what has happened in in some of these places and i think seattle is another example of this kind of thing with a green belt well you can't build on the green belt it gets increasingly expensive inside the green belt close to the to the city so what do you do if you want affordable housing well you move outside it's really ironic to me that people talk about affordable housing and at the same time we're practicing these kind of policies that make housing far less affordable but you're you're encouraging longer commutes because now you have you can't just be where the green belt is you have to be outside of that and commute a longer distance creating more pollution uh more time burned on the highway uh more highways and um more car accidents and all of these things that are adverse consequences of these kinds of land use decisions i am out of time i'll have to stop here i'll welcome questions at the q and a this afternoon thank you


If I can help somebody As I travel along And if I can cheer somebody With the word If I can show you're living Then my living shall not be in vain Then my living Everybody in this group today To give all of you that you can possibly give I'm a mother four, have six grandbabies And on last Thursday when I got up You know, you hit the floor running Because, you know, we're having 11 year olds in school Have a grandbaby that lives with me And I have chores and responsibilities through the day And by the time you get your stuff done It's time to pick them up and they got to be fed They're always hungry Have to get the kid to football practice The grandbaby to dance practice And of course you come home and your child has a science project That's due the next day that he can tell you not to that night And last Thursday I really just wanted to sit down and cry I said, Lord, I said this whole day is gone And I said, I just don't feel like I've had enough time And I just felt like I was falling apart And I reminded myself I said, give every measure that you possibly can Because there's going to come a winter season in life When nobody's going to ask you to go pick up a science project Nobody's going to ask you to take the kid to dance lesson Because you'll come to a point in your life, perhaps Where your body won't give you the opportunity to do that Being a nursing I have seen many people in the winter of their life And these bodies fell us sometimes You want to be active as you age and continue to go until the day that they have to put you in the ground But sometimes these bodies do something different So while you have the activity of your limbs You better move And you better do all that you can Because I watched it with my mom And I've watched it with my patients in the hospital When your body decides to do something different That's just it Unless the Lord says, speaks otherwise in your life and restores health When your body decides to do something different And having seen all of that I'm just determined to kick every bit of vitality out of every minute of life that I can possibly get