Trevor Burrus Welcome to Free Thoughts from Libertarianism.org and the Cato Institute. I'm Trevor Burrus. Aaron Powell Joining us today is Robert Higgs, senior fellow in political economy at the Independent Institute, editor-at-large of the Independent Review and author of many books including the Libertarian Classic Crisis on Leviathan. His new book is Taking a Stand, Reflections on Life, Liberty and the Economy. Welcome to Free Thoughts. Trevor Burrus Thank you very much. Aaron Powell So I'd like to start with your background in history particularly, how do you came to Libertarianism both in the ideas and then to become a professional Libertarian? Was this something you were just born into or did you have a moment of revelation when you were 18 or something? Robert Higgs I would have to speculate on the remote origins of my inclination toward Libertarianism. I was not brought up in a political household and was not especially interested in politics. Even when I was in college although I was interested in certain things at the time, I think I might actually date my movement in that direction to, when I was 17, I went to the US Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut and that was a very rigorous place especially in those days there was constant harassment and physical and psychological pressure being put on people constantly so the idea was to drive away or break people who couldn't take the pressure. So there was a kind of method in the madness but one of the things I learned there is that in a situation like that where there are superiors and inferiors and a chain of command, some of the superiors will abuse their power and I think that is an insight that stuck with me from then on for the rest of my life. You give people power, even petty power at your peril and there are people who enjoy abusing those who can be abused and I think that sensibility was important to me as my political thinking developed which happened during the 1960s. I didn't fancy myself a Libertarian if anything when I was in college I thought of myself as a new leftist which wasn't all bad and I was always opposed to the Vietnam War even when most Americans didn't know it was happening so that was a big influence on me too because that taught me that the government is capable of routinely committing horrible crimes for years on end for the slightest political motives. Did you read any authors around that time that helped you out? Well I used to read Rampart's magazine that was probably the only kind of ideological reading I did consistently but I dabbled in leftist books of various sorts. I read some Marx and some of the contemporary leftists. I became enamored actually of C. Wright Mills and to this day I actually defend Mills in many ways. I think Mills was an honest scholar and of course he didn't have a decent understanding of economics and would have benefited greatly from having one but despite that C. Wright Mills I think continues to be someone one can learn from and particularly his analysis of elites in his book The Power Elite and others. He also wrote a book called The Sociological Imagination which has some really excellent advice to young scholars. How do you go about your work with integrity? How do you do the nuts and bolts of it? What are you trying to do which was basically tell the truth? I'm curious how this notion that you picked up that people in power will abuse that power led to specifically libertarianism and a skepticism about state power because one of the things that we often hear especially from those on the left is that that very idea that if people have power they're going to abuse it, the big guys are going to beat down the little guys is what makes them want to embrace the state even more because they see the state as the way to correct that. The bosses or the warlords or the strongest guy in an anarchic world or whatever is going to beat up the little guy or take advantage of them or force them to work long hours for low pay and so we need the state to be the protector of the little guy, the protector of the common man. Well I was not completely immune to those kinds of thoughts by any means but I was saved from going too far down that path by the fact that I was studying economics. I think if you wanted to identify one overwhelmingly fatal flaw in the thinking of nearly all leftists it's that they don't have a clue about economics and the more I learned about economics especially after I got into graduate school the more I understood the importance of markets and the benefits of markets and even the relationship between markets and freedom in general and so by the time I got my PhD which was in 1968 I certainly didn't consider myself a conservative never in my life did I consider myself a conservative but I still thought of myself as a person more on the left than anywhere else but after I went to work as a professor at the University of Washington they kicked that out of me pretty quickly and at the same time that sometime in that first year of my teaching career I stumbled across Hayek and just loved Hayek the first thing I read by him was this great 1945 article a use of knowledge in society and at the time I thought well that's you know a really good article I can use that for my students because there's no math in it everybody can understand this but I didn't really understand it myself because being trained as a neoclassical economist I was thinking that it's a lot like what I learned from Stigler and other Chicagoans about the economics of information so I still had a lot of understanding to arrive at but it led me to have a high opinion of Hayek and so the next thing I did was to read the Constitution of Liberty which to me was a very important book now when I look back at it all I can see are all the concessions that Hayek is making you know one after another and why some people call him a socialist and all that but at the time he seemed like just a perfect classical liberal and he impressed me with his scholarship that's what won me over Hayek was this you know this great old-fashioned European scholar who knew a lot of languages and he knew about philosophy and law and he wasn't anything like the economists I had read in my education he was the real deal as a thinker and so that kind of tipped me over into classical liberalism very early and from that point on I think I just gradually evolved in the direction of being a more and more unforgiving classical liberal and late in the 70s again because of Hayek's having cited Mises I read a human action from cover to cover and I would say that was the only kind of epiphany experience of my whole life as a scholar that really hit me very hard and actually made me think that I despite the success I'd been having in mainstream economics it made me think that that everything I'd written was just garbage. I want to ask you about one of those things you wrote about around that time because it's my favorite book of yours in 77 it was published the competition of courage and blacks in the American economy 1865 to 1914 which is definitely in that old style economics full of graphs and numbers but what was the general thesis what did you generally find in that book? Well the book aimed to as it were change the emphasis practically everything written in black history took the view that blacks had been victimized from A to Z at every point in history it's almost the case of what my old colleague Morris Morris used to call the theory of infinite and increasing misery and they start on slavery and then it gets worse every year notwithstanding their emancipation or anything else and that was just so counterfactual that nobody who respected evidence could accept it and I didn't when I started reading black history but what I tried to do in that book first as a result of some research I did on particular issues about land tenure and land ownership and occupational distributions and migration so forth I built up a body of analysis and a set of facts that led me to believe that that not only were blacks not 100% victimized but despite everything working against them and there was a tremendous amount working against them they actually succeeded by virtue of their own efforts and by virtue of the fact that there was competition for their services and that's why the book is titled competition and coercion because competition and I'd learned this from Gary Becker's work and other work in the just the mainstream economics of discrimination competition is the salvation of oppressed people and that can be seen in any case you know pick your ethnic group and you see the same phenomena operating if people have something valuable and certainly black labor was valuable as and some blacks had skills beyond labor power there there's going to be potential for someone to to bid away an exploited worker a worker who's being paid less than the value of his marginal contribution to to output and so in a way my book was infused by pursuit of that theme and included ultimately some attempts to estimate what had happened to black income levels between the late 60s and 1860s and world war one approximately and I found that black income on average was was growing faster than white income was growing that was a period of very rapid economic growth in general but because blacks had started at such a relatively low level even if we if we go you know 50 years time they've only improved from about 25 percent of the white income level to to 35 or 40 percent of the white level but that's not trivial that's a lot of improvement and I and I collected a lot of evidence that demonstrated just in concrete ways how their living conditions had improved you know what kinds of things they might have in their home what kinds of clothing and food and entertainment and and what have you they had access to by the end of that period typically that they had not had access to at the beginning of that period I mean the immediate post-war period was horrible in every way because of all the disruptions of the war and all the destruction that had taken place in the south where 90 percent of the blacks lived and continue to live throughout the next 50 years but would competition in the market have done I mean do you think it did better for blacks in that period than attempts by governments to alleviate or fix these problems whether so we had the problem with separate but equal for example which is a very antique about yes that when plus cb Ferguson came down it was you're saying you had to have segregated rail cars or you're allowed to but that meant the rail companies had to have two rail cars that were half full as opposed to one that was full which would which didn't seem to really the businesses themselves in the market were not as in discrimination as perhaps the government was would you agree with that oh yeah that was another part of my thesis that whereas competition in the market was their salvation to the extent that they had salvation whenever they encountered the the government and in in their case it was at the state and and especially the local level where they made these encounters the they were totally out of luck then the only hope they had in their encounters with the government was the the protection they could get from a powerful white patron so a system developed in the south particularly in the plantation areas where blacks became beholden to plantation owners or business owners for protection from the state and and you know if they were arrested their patron would go in and pay their fine if they were you know about about to be sentenced to jail or something the guy would go in and talk to the judge and and in all sorts of ways there was an a trade going on this was a market phenomenon this paternalism there was a trade going on the blacks provided faithful services you know they they didn't run away the first time they were unhappy about something and in exchange they got the protection from the official discriminators that that stood ready to squash any black at any time how much does competition alleviate these discrimination based on race if i guess the discriminators gain utility from the racism so they you know they like not hiring blacks or they would they really don't want to hire them because they don't want to be around them or the rail cars like yes we could have integrated the rail cars but then the white customers might not have been willing to pay as much or wouldn't have patronized the service well it it continues to operate and can operate with great power so long as there are enough people who value wealth more than the exercise of discrimination and in the in the south you know between the war between the states and the first world war there were plenty of people who preferred wealth to the pleasures of discrimination and especially these wealthy people you know the blacks were hated more by working class lower class whites wealthy people didn't fear blacks you know they were they were so far removed from them by class status and wealth that they didn't see the blacks as any threat to them at all they they weren't hankering to to hurt blacks in the same way that that lower class whites were sounds a lot like our a lot of anti-immigrant rhetoric today yeah well also especially if those lower class whites were unionized and then it got really bad for african-americans yeah many of the unions that were formed and of course in the south there wasn't as much unionization as in other parts of the country but where unions were formed they usually did either discriminate against blacks or simply exclude blacks from employment so unionization was definitely a negative big negative factor but but not one that affected most black workers because there was not enough unionization in the holy con there's more in the north yeah after the great migration uh david bernstein's only one place of redress is a great book about that right but i wanted to ask about another book the one i had mentioned at the introduction uh crisis in the vio than i probably your most known book um and for those who haven't read it uh definitely if you're a fan of this podcast or libertarianism in general you have to read it can you give us an overview of what you what you looked for in crisis the vio than what you found well that book was aimed at tracking the growth of government especially the federal government from the late 19th century up to the time it was written in the 1980s and at that time the growth of government had become a kind of cottage industry among economists and to some extent among political scientists and people were people were applying various theories that uh we're lying around in economics or that they they devised for themselves to to account for why government got so much bigger in that century and uh i didn't have a great interest in that when i first started my career but my colleague douglas north uh who was the department chairman and the man who hired me and the future of mobile prize winner well that that future at that time doug was viewed as you know the expert on government economic relations among us economic historians and so he was constantly writing about this and talking about it and and we all work together the economic historians especially uh read each other's papers i was in his office practically every day just to to talk about economic history and so i talked to him a lot and in my own teaching of us economic history courses i dealt with that subject but i wasn't doing research in that area but i was getting more and more in a sense frustrated by my inability to persuade doug of certain things particularly that ideology had been very important in this process ideological change and also that the national emergency periods especially the world wars had been critical times for the growth of government neither element had at that time become important in doug's thinking uh so by the early 80s you know by 1980 81 i decided well i think i'll write a book on this and my idea was just to write about basically the two world wars and the great depression because that's where the main action was for these crises but when i started writing and started going around giving talks at other universities one of the questions that often came up was well you know there were crises at earlier times in history why didn't they produce this ratchet effect your telling us was produced by uh by the the wars and the depression and uh and that led me to decide that i needed to have a chapter on progressivism because i'd come to believe that it was that ideological watershed of progressivism that created a a condition wherein there would be a ratchet effect you have to have people predisposed to think that when there's an emergency government should jump in with all four feet and that had not existed in the 19th century it's not that nobody wanted government to come in and you know hand rinse to them or do favors for them that's always been the case but in the 19th century there was a kind of dominant ideological belief that that government should be limited or at least the federal government or certainly the federal government should be but even at the state and local level there was a belief that politicians were crooked that they wasted people's money that they were always you know engaging in boondoggles especially after what happened the 1830s and early 40s with all the bankruptcies of states and their canal projects that went belly up and and that led to a bunch of constitutional revisions and so forth so from then on especially there was a lot of thinking among opinion leaders and you know lawyers and writers and what have you that that that government was simply you know a factor that while people didn't want to get rid of it they wanted to have government for kind of classical liberal reasons they thought it should had to be kept small it had to be kept limited or it would abuse its powers or waste a lot of people's money and and progressivism altered that as the default ideological background condition and as a result it meant that the next time there was a pretext for a great increase in government action as during world war one then many people were predisposed to to favor well let's have the government do this let's have it do that if you know if we have to have a big bunch of ships built by the government to fight the war why don't we have the government build housing for the shipyard workers and it just went on and on there was always some connection whereby some immediate pretext like fighting the war could be hooked on to some other government activity and so when you government started buying a lot of certain raw materials to produce munitions well the next thing you know is that it bids up the prices of of copper and leather and and burlap and various raw commodities and then that creates pressure because people who use those commodities in their own businesses their costs are being driven up and then that creates pressure for government to use price controls and so in world war one you ended up not with comprehensive price controls but with selective price controls on these specific items whose prices had been driven up by government's own purchases on a large scale and you just see this kind of thing again and again and again and it's because nobody was stopping to say look this is a bad idea for government to create a shipping board to regulate ocean shipping rates and and working conditions of sailors that's a bad idea you know we should let markets take care of those things because by the time this was done in 1916 opinion leaders thought oh that's a good idea you know we we've got railroad regulation ship that's very similar and now shipping rates have been driven up because you know the british navy is driven from the seas and it's very expensive for americans to ship goods to latin america to bring raw materials from from there and other places and and so people who had to incur shipping rates were screaming for some kind of relief and and and it just went on and on everyone had a a similar element like that which which required that there be a predisposition to use government in a way that had never been used before so how intentional was this ratchet effect in the sense that so the way you've described it it sounds almost like government grew but people didn't set out to grow government they might have a predisposition to say like okay so government undertook this activity and that activity had negative effects somewhere else and so well we screwed that area up so we should go and fix it and you had people who naturally thought that government would be better at fixing it than markets so that's what we ought to do and then that leads to this ongoing ratchet but was there an intentional element going on behind it either like within government like people saying here this crisis is an opportunity to grow our power or the power of government let's do it or people outside of government saying this crisis and the things it's leading to are a way for me to use government to benefit myself both there were some of each and even when people entered into these expanded government activities as a simple reaction to the immediate problem at hand they quickly realized that they might have a good deal here and so later on they defended its continuation or perhaps even its enlargement you had for example after the war industries board set priorities for for purchases of different materials the government was using so that the government's contractors got the top claim on copper or steel or leather whatever it was that system of priority was something that a lot of businesses like they thought after the war we should keep this we should have somebody regulating industry because you know before we had all these dreadful price wars and and companies would have destructive competition destructive competition i made scare quotes on that if anyone couldn't see always a lot of big businesses complaining about destructive competition you know because incumbents like things the way they are they want to be the producers they want to have to be fighting off entrance all the time so if there's a regulator you know particularly if they're the guys doing the regulation they can take care of this you know they can they can normalize everything you know they can they can get rid of uncertainty and destructive competition all the rest of it but well that's sort of one of your the sort of i think at that point with crisis and the viathan which is really interesting because the first line of the book this is maybe this was um because it was oxford press or but the first line of the book and part one is and this is interesting for now because you kind of went into sociology of the state i mean that's a lot of what you kind of have end up doing how what is the mindset of people in government what are the minds of the people who work with government what are they trying to achieve but i think maybe that started with crisis the viathan but the first line is we must have government only government can form certain tasks successfully and which is an interesting uh it i'm not sure if you believe that now uh but but then you did it seems seemingly well when i wrote that i believed it in the usual way that it was taken i still believed we we had to have government as i say government as we know it you know government says they really are in the world coercive imposed uh mean uh you know you don't have any choice about this governments we're the government and you're not do what we say uh i continue to believe we must have government uh to do a variety of things to keep social order to suppress criminal behavior and to adjudicate disputes and for a variety of reasons but i do not believe that we must have government as we know it we don't have to have coercive imposed government and i'm satisfied at this point that uh that it is quite possible to have non-coercive means of carrying out all the functions that really need to be carried out to have an orderly and prosperous society that conclusion was a long time coming for me when i wrote crisis in leviathan i was still very much uh classical liberal uh still very much a neoclassical economist and those things gradually changed and i became more radical over time did that shift result from just a lessening of practical concerns so you know when you say wrote that sentence the the thought that we must have government as we know it was because the alternative well it would be better from a moral perspective might not work or did you have a shift in moral reasoning that just said that you know i now think that it's totally morally impermissible to have this sort of course of government well when i wrote that line i wasn't even thinking about moral issues i was thinking as an economist i was thinking what will work and like almost everybody else i thought anarchy won't work you know obviously that's out and you know i followed up that sentence in the same paragraph with a wonderful quotation from from mesis uh who's explaining that government is not a bad thing it's actually the most wonderful institution human beings have ever devised and uh that's that's the opposite of what i now believe but uh what what caused my thinking to change over the years was was not so much learning more about the literature of anarchy or or changing moral position although i didn't make moral changes but it it was simply that the more i learned about government as we know it government as it actually is the more horrified i became to see government as it really is with your eyes open is something that i found appalling it just seemed more and more outrageous to me that these people who had a sign over their house saying government were permitted allowed to commit criminal acts right and left to their very existence depending on criminality and everybody just took this for granted as if there's no problem here not only is there no problem but as mesis said it's the greatest thing that ever happened and uh and so eventually the the the moral outrage and the analytical change of understanding that uh i acquired joined forces to me to uh to bring me to a position where i'm just astonished that people put up with what they put up with well you shortly before we recorded this you're giving a talk here at kato on your book and during that you mentioned that things are actually a lot worse so things in washington things with the government are a lot worse than most people even think and most people tend to think no matter what where they are in the political spectrum that things aren't great yeah um so how are they worse and then relatedly when you talk about you know that people seem to be okay with this how much do people know about how bad these things are uh well i think they're they're very much worse than than most people think or understand um as i say if you if you had a microphone in everybody's office and the way you had in nixon's office this would be a revolutionary uh news item for people you know they knew what these guys are actually saying and doing uh there's one thing i've always loved about the fbi which is their sting operations against politicians they set these up so elaborately so that they get just ironclad film audio you know documentary evidence so that they get these bastards just nailed to the wall you know they can't possibly say they're innocent and i just love it when these guys are revealed but the trouble is you know you can't do a sting on every single politician on earth uh and as for the second part of your your question i think most people know practically nothing about what really goes on in politics they they watch the news they hear politicians give speeches uh that's about the extent of it there are very few people who actually study and scrutinize politics at a level where where they would begin to think about these things and even those who do usually are overwhelmed by ideology they start playing with one team or the other uh there's a lot of partisan political affiliation that muddies everybody's water they begin to think yeah these these progressive politicians are all sleaze bags but you know our guys are upright christian godfaring mother loving you know apple pie eating or vice versa and that that's just a total waste you know that that just means your understanding is hopeless when you sign up to play for one of these teams you don't understand that they're they're both committing the same crimes they just have a different set of clients are the crimes limited to you talked a lot about politicians and the politicians are up for all this stuff but one of the things you learn spending time in washington is how much of the federal government is really out of the politicians hands it's the bureaucrats the people in the agencies who dominate so much are things as bad there as well i think the politicians themselves are the most crooked but are there any good politicians are you at this point do you think that it's possible that anyone got here clean they got to dc you got to federal office it's conceivable i'm not going to name any names but then the bureaucrats are another level the the problem i think is a little different in the bureaucracy the problem there is is that these bureaucratic kingpins have a lot of discretion and they have tremendous power and they're pretty much entrenched it's uh you know you got to do some pretty outstanding stuff to to get yourself removed from power and so they're pretty confident they can wheel and deal as they as they like and of course some of them get get bought with you know cash and a plain brown rapper too but that i don't think is the typical way in which they're corrupted they're corrupted by by just the ease with which they're able to exercise power and abuse their power and by being able to think of themselves as really being right of you know the of not even committing crimes but of doing you know good things for people if not all people at least the right people i think they're corrupted by hubris more than they're corrupted by cash the politicians of course they're not immune from hubris by any means but but you know they're they're constantly fighting to collect money to run the next election and that means cash is really terribly important to them in a way that it's not important to the bureaucrats how culpable are should we regard people in government i mean of any sort whether it's dmv person up to a d8 and up to someone who you know files papers at the at the epa should we regard all them as somewhat culpable in this endeavor or do some of them get a free pass of some sort well yeah at a philosophical level if if you work for government you're culpable you're you're living on on stolen property but i don't i don't see any point in saying the janitor you know cleans the offices in the department of agriculture is a is a big criminal and of course a lot of the clerks and work-a-day drones in these bureaus they don't have anything much to do with policy at all they're just shuffling papers that doesn't mean they don't abuse people they run into you know even the guy at the welfare office he can he can give some grief to the poor so bees that go in there trying to get a month months worth of groceries but but at the same time they don't make policy they don't you know set any any rates or or you know rules about how they're going to deal with people it's the policymakers people have some influence over making policy and and i think too the a lot of the lawyers that work in the government are you know they're basically their their job is to put a legal gloss you know to throw a legal garment over whatever kind of crimes their bosses want to commit and that to me is really despicable because you know in theory a lawyer's highest obligation is to the law and to truth they all swear to this you know that's but i think you know that's kind of laughing stuff you know if you had 10 lawyers in a bar they'd get a good laugh out of that and certainly if they had anything to do with the criminal justice system where things work almost in the opposite way or lying is like built into the very tissue of what they do every day but but i i think the culpability question is not an easy one it's not a black and white thing and it's possible that there are even people at very high levels who aren't you know who don't deserve to be indicted uh sometimes they they do the honest thing they resign uh in world war one you know when when colonel house and company were were wheedling the president toward engagement in the war William Jennings brine was secretary of state and and this all this pro-british policy and all this anglophile thinking and he was appalled by that you know because in his his circles these brits were not good guys you know and the whole idea that the US was going to end up going to save their cookies seemed wrong to him it wasn't that he was pro-german he just was pro-peace and he didn't see a good reason for the US to engage in that war and and he was right but it turned out that you know he couldn't prevail so he resigned and you know this is extremely rare that anybody in government at a high level ever resigns people people you know can do this that and be called all kinds of names and whatever they just stick it out they it's as if they can't stand the idea of living without that power on that matter apiece you write in the book although i generally issue quarrels with fellow libertarians of our doctrinal matters i draw the line at the question of war and peace yes because war is as i call it the master key it unlocks every door where your your liberties are protected it opens everything up to state dictation uh it reduces everyone to the status of potential slavery you know the fact that the millions of men were were forced into the military the state told them you have a choice you can go to prison where you'll be horribly abused or you can go into the army take your pick and on top of that of course there were all the propaganda pressures and the pressures just of you know their friends and relatives and what have you because you know the country the country's been bamboozled into this kind of belief and in the nation state over time and and so it's not just that the state is out there driving people to to do what it wants there are plenty of social pressures too i i remember when i was young and thinking about what what if i get drafted uh i certainly wasn't going to go in vietnam and i wasn't going to go into the army that was fighting in vietnam either and so i had to decide and i decided you know i would leave the country if they tried to draft me but but the main thing i thought about the time is what effect that would have on my parents because i knew that would have a very devastating effect on them even though they weren't political people that was a very unsavory thing you know they'd have to face their own friends and neighbors you know their sons a draft dodger so you know these pressures are real there is a society out there that that you know by a whole variety of means has been molded into into suitable raw material for the rulers and they don't know it they think this is all how it ought to be and and it's just unfortunate that that then people don't have greater awareness of the reality of what's being done to them by people who have no right to do it is war ever okay though if people have an individual say an individual right to self-defense don't we have a right to collective defense you would if every individual had the power to decide if he would participate in that collective effort or not then it would be fine but it's never that way it's never that way it wasn't even back into colonial days when there was militia you didn't have a choice everybody was in the militia if you were able bodied so you know i think i think the problem when people try to equate the right of self-defense with what governments do when they go to wars that they're just not the same thing uh individual you know if you attack me and i i fight back you know i'm exercising my right of self-defense but but you know if if some guy's running around in in yemen and trying to overthrow the government and the u.s government sends a drone over there and kills him and 50 other people at the same time that doesn't have a damn thing to do with my self-defense or anybody else's that's just murder and uh and there's no other gloss you can put on it it people accept this because they haven't thought about it and and and in fact many people really don't have a well-developed sense of moral thinking or moral reasoning they just do what is customary or what they've been told or what they're used to habit is the worst thing in the world for those of us who try to try to build a free society because the thing that keeps most people in line is just habit it's always been this way and they would have to break away from the way things normally are get out of line get themselves in trouble make enemies well no wonder there's so few mavericks it's costly to oppose statism in a world infused by statism a lot of people uh read your new book um especially like the first section first 80 pages or so and also maybe listening to this podcast may think oh well you know professor hex is pretty angry um and uh is that accurate you also have a great essay in here about called the power of the state versus the power of love uh so is accurate to say you are angry in some way or are you more just trying to implore people toward friendly toward toward love rather than force well both actually uh i i am angry at the state i think uh it it consists of a lot of people who are committing crimes and they're hurting a lot of people by doing so uh you know when you think about what a great world it could be if we didn't have these crimes being committed if we didn't have for example so many government measures to hold down the poor you know minimum wage laws licensing regulations public schools public schools it just goes on and on and on uh we we really couldn't even have a poverty problem in a country like the united states if it weren't for public policy there are too many ways in which people could get out of poverty and would but not only not only do these policies keep them in poverty but these policies corrupt them they they make them think they deserve handouts they make them think that that people owe them something you know these are the kinds of beliefs that say a hundred years ago or more when immigrants came to the united states they didn't come here thinking oh the people that are over there owe me something they just wanted a chance to work do you ever think that you might be the utopian about what freedom can do versus government i think that there still would be problems and freedom we'd people would still be poor we have to give an actual yeah no no no i'm not utopian i know that any world with human beings in it will have trouble okay that's the nature of the raw material some of us are no damn good okay so i certainly do not believe that a abolition of government as we know it would bring about some kind of heaven on earth but it would it would be vastly better than the world we live in infused by state power and and the way in which problems were dealt with would be very different too there wouldn't be for example people punished for victimless crimes and if you look at our world the punishment of people for victimless crimes is almost like name of the game you know as a jiff tucker wrote a piece just a few days ago about about what goes on a traffic court every day it's just robbery you bring in there all these people one after another who haven't hurt anyone they haven't violated anyone's just rights and they're just being ripped off altogether thousands of dollars you know that what happened out there by st louis and that that's suburb you know it was very much tied to the fact that those those little suburban governments live off stealing from people through giving traffic tickets to people and hauling them into court all kinds of stupid pretexts and so the robber barons are not things that go back to the middle ages we have robber barons all over this country whole local governments whole police departments live off robbery outright robbery it's not just you know the fact that all taxation is robbery it's a it's it's blatant robbery you know the people people talk about oh in mexico if a policeman stops you know he's looking for a bribe well sometimes he is but what do you think is happening here it's a much more elaborate system of extracting your money it's it's no more decent in any way than that poor you know ill-paid mexican cop who wants a hundred pesos to let you off but people don't understand it they accept that it's the law it's the rules blah blah blah that's crap it's robbery that's all it is and and i wish people would come to see it is that more than they do because this is the kind of thing where something might be done this isn't like you have to overthrow congress or you know replace the president or anything it's just you you got to go to city council and say you bastards better stop this or we're voting you're all you're all butts all out of office one of the really distressing things about government and particularly powerful governments and big governments is i mean we we can go to the city council and we can tell them we'll vote them out but we're often in the minority and even if we can get a group of people together these things are so big and so entrenched that the amount of control the amount of say we have over it is vanishingly small what can those of us who recognize the immorality of a lot of this um and see the system for what it really is is there anything that we can do in our daily lives to move the needle to shift things more towards not that utopian world but the a better world i think there are a lot of things that can be done many things that can be done in the form of opting out or you know relocating yourself adjusting somehow how you live where you live what you do people don't very often at least think about their lives in that way they don't think when they think where will i live what job will i pursue they don't think about you know well how exposed am i to the evils of the state but when you can get them to thinking that way they often find there are a lot of things they can do to evade avoid lower the risks and when they do that they in a sense become believers who can sort of talk to their friends relatives and neighbors and say look you don't have to put up with this stuff you make a missionary out of them as it were as soon as they discover that they can escape some of the abuse i know friends i have good personal friends who they don't get involved in libertarian activities or groups or anything like that but they live their lives in a way that that is constructed to to maximize their actual freedom and avoid government abuse and to to to make their tax bill as small as possible to make their exposure to government regulation as small as possible and to do all sorts of things that are within the grasp of most people if they thought about working toward that so there are ways of opting out i mentioned in my my talk earlier today a homeschooling which has been tremendously successful in in removing about 10 of the children in the country from the horrors of the government schools and there's plenty more room for homeschooling or for for private schooling and i think a lot of people are are dissuaded from doing homeschooling or private schooling by the expenses and by the time demands and and by feeling they're not qualified but i think you know if you can get people to thinking about just how bad it's going to be in the public schools you know the public schools now are like prisons literally in some areas you go through you go through metal detectors there are there are security people in the corridors you know would you want to send your child to a place like that every day it's like you know okay sonny it's time to put your six hours in the city jail off you go have a good day i don't know why people people do this except that it's just inconvenient to pursue the alternative but but the truth is when you get started you get a critical mass it's not as hard as you think we've homeschooled our kids in my step kids that i have and the the homeschoolers get together and cooperate with each other in so many ways that people are aware of to to give certain classes to the kids to to give activities to them to to really flesh out a nice educational experience it's not that every day there you got to have six hours of class time as it were with with mom or dad sitting there working with the kids and there's a lot of online stuff you can do now tremendous resources for that cds you know you name it it's just all sorts of things that homeschoolers can do and when they do that they they take their children out of the control of these wicked school authorities who are are in some ways the most irresponsible people i can think of they're they're just sick with the idea of following rules no matter how much sense they make a lot of them are just are just stupidly pc they they they they ram ideas about the environment and and all all sorts of discrimination and what have you down the throats of the kids and and of course you know kids are not as easy as people might think you know if a kid has a brain in his head by the time he's eight he begins to see what's being done to him to some extent but not all of them and a lot of them just end up being affected by what's done to them in the government schools and well that makes me think of this the question that reflects a bunch of these ideas which is what is worse competent government highly competent government that's really good at accomplishing its goals out no matter how nefarious they might be or incompetent government ones that would fail in the process of trying to accomplish their goals well sir certainly incompetence is better in many many departments of government unfortunately in some cases you know where you really would love incompetence like the police the incompetence becomes fatal you know they they send the SWAT team to the wrong address very often for example so it's you really wish they'd been more competent at a time like that even though I don't I don't want them going to anybody's address to serve a warrant but you'd like the NSA to be less competent oh yeah absolutely I like to be utterly incompetent you know they just hear static when they plugged in if it were up to me so do you do you think things are do you have any optimism at all or do you think things are just kind of circling the drain well there's always hope you know sometimes people listen to me and they say and this guy has no hope that's not true there's always hope we're alive we still got brains in our head we may wake up and do something someday it's not inconceivable but what are the odds I think the odds are not good one gentleman in my talk today was pointing out all the positive trends about life expectancies and wealth and what have you and there's no gain saying that the United States and other advanced welfare warfare states are wealthy people have a high level of living they're constantly entertained they have marvelous electronic toys you know every day from four years old up has a smart phone now and and so yeah it looks it looks wonderful in in some ways but on the other hand it's a police state and the police state part of it gets worse every day and it doesn't seem to matter what anybody says about it it's as if all the protest is just part of the ritual dance you even have members of congress they you know they stand up and they make a speech or they go in and introduce a bill or something but what is different what does the NSA stopped doing I think it started doing a lot more in the past 10 years than it stopped doing so I I really do believe that there's a there's a part of government and this is the heart of it the war intelligence foreign policy part that really runs on its own power that it's really not under effective control I wonder sometimes even how much control the president of the united states has over some of these people because what can he do if he issued an order to the head of the NSA how's he going to know if that order was really carried out of course the guy will say yes sir yes sir but maybe he won't do anything and how's the president going to know he's not a techno genius and he's got other things to do he's got a golf game so things could get better but like the opposite well that's that's the short term view I hold in this country there are parts of the world where things are getting better in most ways and that's glorious you know the fact that that china went from being a centrally planned communist country to being a semi open fascist country that was a huge improvement for hundreds of millions of people that one change probably did more to improve human well-being than any other single thing we can think of look just the numbers of people had benefited people don't have famines anymore in china what a glorious thing they used to starve by the scores of millions when they had a famine they had them every once in a while same in india india is not having famines anymore they've got the technology to avoid that so yeah things are getting much better in some ways is anybody created a free society hell no not even close are most of the advanced countries moving in the wrong direction yes their freedoms are diminishing rather than increasing and it's not that it's all one way there's mixed picture all the time some things go worse some things get better but you have to evaluate the overall picture and you have to decide what's important to you is it important that you have more electronic toys or is it important that that that you not have cops breaking into people's houses with hand grenades to serve warrants so to me i don't want to live in a police state and if and if i have to go somewhere and live in relatively primitive conditions that's an improvement for me i don't think many people would like it they wouldn't consider it an improvement and i'm sorry they don't because that's that's the crux of the thing at ground level it's the fact that people don't love liberty very much and when they have to pay a price for it they won't pay much and until that changes it's hard to see how we can ever have a much freer thank you for listening free thoughts is produced by evan banks and mark mcdaniel to learn more find us on the web at www.libertarianism.org


igure out if it's meeting their goals and if it's not what we could do to attract businesses to the city with housing one of the things that we talked about was one thing the housing task force that our last meeting did spend some time talking about what are the few things that we could be asking the city for and we're going to hear be hearing from them I'm not sure exactly but we have nothing coming up but but get some but consider having someone the way economic development departments do have someone to affirmatively work with and recruit and try to get housing developers to to build so affirmative outreach for housing is a if we want to get more housing we need to preserve the housing we have now that so I would say consider regulating short term rentals there there's a tremendous impact negative impact on the rental housing stock from the short term rental industry possibly couple that with the proposal that I saw to encourage to work on some kind of short term rental develop if people can you say that one more time short term rental develop getting their B&B not to put it in people's houses but build an Airbnb building obviously we're not the city not going to build it I heard about recruiting people to serve on city committees and boards and my former daughter in law many years ago was invited to this effort that the city they were living in was doing where the city would get all the nonprofits and city boards and committees that are looking for members and do outreach to employers to other community groups to say come talk to us we're going to have a town committee fair or something come and let us make a pitch to you about what you could do if you were to be one of these 28 city boards so that we don't just put the notice up and nobody signs up or the only people who sign up are the people that are already on who are mostly really good but also might want to have a break and some of those people might be thinking well I have to keep signing up if I don't if we're going to develop more parks make sure that we are maintaining sufficient staff resources to service the parks that we're going to have maintain the funding for the housing trust fund that might be the thing but we just love it well there's certainly no shortage of things so so we're definitely not going to get to a point of voting tonight but what we did last time and I think this is helpful as I sort of drew the chart out is we came up with your goal and then we wrote down all of the strategies some of them may be staff supported and some of them may be council coming out of this list that you had and then what we could do is a straw poll vote and then I could bring this to you instead of a fully fleshed out plan to look at so this would be the first step so we would see what has the majority of council support to include in the plan so you had let's say a bunch of things about economic development there might be like 15 rows here right but the ones that should be included in your council strategic plan which again doesn't mean that they're not going to get done but the ones that have the majority of the council voting for them right would be included in your strategic plan and you're still giving us a limited number of votes to help us yes I would need to come up with the exact number but yes you'll have the dots next time yes I think they would be you have the dots with us but we didn't expect I don't think quite this many which is good this is fine right so the dots may be a digital straw poll where we do it independently you send it to me and then we bring it to council and talk about it publicly and do the formal voting so this we'll have to come up with the plan but I hadn't planned coming back to y'all until October with the fully fleshed out thing but to me there's definitely room for another step in between that where y'all could hear feedback about these ideas we can make them public obviously with the agenda and then we could make formal votes on their so I think we can think of a process yeah of course so under the category that you have their strategies when it says council versus staff is that like council like council generated versus staff generated they'd also be on the same list or actions because some of these are strategies some of these are actions so we're going to layer all this into the way that it makes the most sense and then put in the stuff that we know are in these other play ends that we've already talked about see where there's duplication but I guess the only question I have really is is there anything you know right now this is just assuming that everybody's idea is everyone else is fully rewarded and I don't know how we if we want it well that comes down to you one further question I kind of assume that there are some things that maybe this is a bad assumption but there may be some things that we kind of either have to do right we'll sort those and so I just hope that when we get to voting that we don't have to vote on those those should be separate because like yeah you know don't want to waste a vote I would like us to come back together live after that initial vote because I don't think we did last time and I really missed that for any sort of final selection oh yeah we definitely had to do all of it over zoom and it was the worst so I'm not saying we do any of this over zoom this will all be in public meetings we get council meetings would be a council agenda item where we sit down talk I mean I thought you were going to send it by zoom survey that's fine for the initial yeah just for the initial to narrow it down right so the other thing which is you know I'm thinking as I'm looking at this and I'm looking at the staff over there is you know this is back to my plane so where do you want to go when you get there and how much do you want to pay for it because there's a lot of really expensive stuff here yes and it's all great but you know at some point we're narrowing down now and I don't know how much you know how much work you want done or when you're going to want done to put money to these things because and then some of these have you know follow up so they're great ideas but then what is the I'm going to pick on one because regulating part-time that might be a good thing for housing what's that going to take for us to do we're going to have people checking that what's the ongoing effort for that what's the cost of that effort how many what does that program look like it's a great idea but at the end of the day it's not going to do what we want or we better have to just invest in getting more housing we need to think of how we sort those there's just one so a lot of these is what's the ongoing effort that goes once we've done this what's the left what's the annual cost so I mean first of all I think there might be some like clubbing so that will help like I know that the first time I did this there were like a bunch of things thrown out I had no idea what any of it meant like is there a point and there's things that have even come up recently like this Berlin conservation where there's like this time sensitive unique opportunity that's popped up of some land adjacent to city owned land that like I'm just like it would be helpful for people to understand what the proposals are but yeah Berlin conservation or name and so probably a lot of them did I understand that there's going to be like a conversation go through some more slides here and I'll show you sort of what this all looks like you mean you voted last year my first year I think there's another thing to add just before you do this is that this as you know those of you born this will once we set this this will guide our activity will guide the agendas but stuff still comes up it kind of goes back to that what's urgent maybe not important but it's urgent like we said so we may at some point have to have an agenda item kick in for our purchase of land and so the only question is how does that meet is you know is that an environmental stewardship is that you know is that consistent with our values and our goals or is that just something we're not interested in so probably we'll have to be talking about purchasing in the park so how does that fit into where we want to go where's the money coming from like I feel like it's a slightly unique year in having that you know little bit of city money that you know so if there's things like engineering studies or things that are like one time expenses that we could front load and like that set us up to even if it's like two years down the road that we're going to have the funding to do it or whatever but I guess just like how is there a lens of this unique moment of that plus there might be like a set of things that would be priorities if we get state money for it but otherwise won't be but like what would we need to do to be ready for that and like so that would be a good way to sort that out too and like ways we could think about different things well and so some of that would be now and some of that would be when we actually get to the budget and we try to put all this stuff in and we said okay now we have real now we see budget reality okay let me do that I have one thing that I thought of that I want to get on the list people didn't go for it last time but I'll throw it in ah sneak it in last minute 16 year old voting for local elections oh right statue of councillor McCullough hahahaha can I just I just want to make it clear homelessness task force has to have some recommendations coming out in the next couple weeks here so I didn't include a bunch of specifics on this because it would have been too late but we will be bringing we have to do it so connecting all of these things together which I think gets to sort of Lauren's point so that y'all just established your goals which was really helpful I have six right you've also come up with a lot of strategies right so we will be putting all of the strategies that you've put forward and staff can put forward in sort of a into this matrix right you also came up with a lot of activities that could support those strategies so we'll put those and other things that staff recommends to get those strategies done and then the things that we didn't really get into but staff will be presenting to you is recommended action items to accomplish your initiatives that would accomplish your strategies and accomplish your goals so what we'll probably look at next time is strategies and initiatives we won't get down into the action because that's very in the weeds for y'all right so hopefully we'll be able to come to you with actions that support your initiatives that support strategies and goals right so the things that will be I'll be asking you to sort of straw pull vote on electronically and then we'll bring to council next time is the keys these three buckets and so I think that's really the we've changed a little bit in the next steps here together because this was a lot which is great and amazing so but this is a lot to sympathize so what we'll be doing is doing that first pass of those first three layers plus that mission and vision statement to start workshopping together and that allows for more public feedback about the things that you discussed tonight and we'll give the public a way to see sort of those things outlined and weigh in on their prioritization as well so I am excited so my first goal for first draft was October 13th that's still a goal for a first draft but I will try my goal is to put this on your next agenda thank you thank you this was very exciting and I really think this was very successful so thanks y'all really grateful I ask this to talk anytime like if that's a blind up part never ending list of ideas with no money to put to them you know that's not what this one is about that's right visioning is the important part yes before we before we adjourn and so if we're done with this yes I'm done if y'all are done if you feel done we're done okay so without objection wait what I'm sorry there is objection that's what I was saying oh I'm sorry I was like spacing out there for a second stop talking it's a little distracting thank you go ahead before we adjourn because there's question and raise about the appointment of the counselor do we want to schedule a special meeting sometime between now and the end of September 13th which is 10 days after 17 17 sure I'll double check it 13th is Monday yeah well it's business so I was just going to suggest so it's 17th if you go business but anyway as soon as possible there's going to suggest a special meeting on the 13th can I go that should work for me no it doesn't I'm not sure why you're shaking your head is that because we should I'm saying it's fine that works for me oh no I'm sorry I was just kind of I just made a tennis appointment what do you mean 6.30 I'm going to Barrowing Tennis and it's late and the day is 4.30 but I'll just change it I can't do anything okay good how's the noon on Monday that's better that's fine yeah I had something there but that noon doesn't work for me noon doesn't work for me but you don't necessarily need me for this on the 13th I'm available you're available and we can work for me I mean we have the what's the latest we can do it I think to err on the side of caution the 13th would be the latest we can do it would one yeah so that's what we're talking about the 13th so Lord you couldn't make it it's a very better time I could do 9am also 8am you're in school actually I could do 8am Monday I could do like 8am or 8.30 yeah on the 13th 8.30 okay how's that for you Connor 8 or 8.30 you don't want this fine we have something at 9 8.30 please kids to school there you go we'll have to be a physical presence we'll do that here but it'll otherwise be here well you could come here if you'd like but it'll otherwise be zoom there'll be a zoom available we have something big at 9 so it shouldn't take more than half an hour I will be zooming I would probably come but if I'm the only council member he's coming I might not yeah me either that's why it helps to know what people plan to do zoom zoom zoom zoom zoom 8.30 a.m Monday zoom in person one agenda item to address the issue that's I was thinking that I was like oh yeah we gotta do it okay so we're clearing 8.30 13th any other business before we're done okay thank you all for the time yeah it was fun now without objections we're going adjourned


It gave me the honor to see you. Mrs. Kennedy, the Congress has authorized the presentation of a medal for you in recognition of the distinguished and dedicated service which your husband, Robert Kennedy, gave to the government and to the people of the United States. Robert Kennedy's service to his country, his commitment to his great ideals and his devotion to those less fortunate than himself, matters now for history and need little explanation from me. The facts of Robert Kennedy's public career stand alone. He roused the comfortable. He exposed the corrupt, remembered the forgotten, inspired his countrymen, and renewed and enriched the American conscience. Those of us who had our philosophical disagreements with him always appreciated his wit and his personal grace. And may I say I remember very vividly those last days of the California primary and the closeness that it developed in our views about the growing size and unresponsiveness of government and our political institutions. Among the last words he spoke to this nation that night in Los Angeles were, what I think is quite clear is that we can work together in the last analysis and that is what has been going on within the United States. The division, the violence, the disenchantment with our society, the divisions, whether it's between blacks and whites, between poor and more affluent or between age groups or on the war in Vietnam, is that we can start to work together. We are a great country, an unselfish country and a compassionate country. Obviously, many of you here knew him better than most. You knew him as husband, as brother, as father, and uncle. He wrote to his son Joseph on the day of President Kennedy's death, remember all the things that Jack started, be kind to others that are less fortunate than we and love our country. And it is in the final triumph of Robert Kennedy that he used his personal gifts to bring this message of hope and love to the country to millions of Americans who supported and believed in him. Come, my friends, he liked to quote the Tennyson lines, it's not too late to seek a newer world. And this is how we should remember him. Beyond the distinguished public service or our own sadness that he has gone, his friend, composer John Stewart said about him, what he said about the first fallen Kennedy, and about us, that when a chill wind takes the sky, we should remember the years he gave us hope for they can never die. And so, Mrs. Kennedy, this medal has been waiting patiently to be presented to President and Mrs. Reagan and friends of my brother here at this ceremony and everywhere. On behalf of Ethel and her children and all the members of our family, let me thank you, Mr. President, for this great honor that you have given to Robert Kennedy. And it is appropriate that he should receive it from you for he understood so well that the common love of our country transcends all party identification and all partisan difference. And you should know that after he debated you on international television in 1967, my brother Bob said that Ronald Reagan was the toughest debater he ever faced, and obviously, he was right. Robert Kennedy was a man of action, but also a vision. From memory, he so often quoted Shaw's words that they were finally his own bywords. And so he dreamed things that never were and said, why not? And I hope that when we think of him now, we will think as he did of all those who have no one else to care for their concerns. He gave his strength for those who were weak. He gave his voice for those who had no special interest to speak for them. And he always remembered those who were forgotten. He had an uncommon feeling for the common people who make America work. He had often walked the corridors of power in this White House and conferred with the mighty here. But he could walk with equal grace through migrant camps or talk with other ease to workers on an assembly line. There was at once an intensity and a gentleness in him that made him a unique spark of hope in a dark time. The violence that struck him down has threatened and touched so many others. The nation and the world have felt the pain so recently. Those of us who were with Robert Kennedy when he died in 1968 felt a special sense of relief this year, Mr. President, at your own recovery from the attack against you. And today all the Kennedys feel a special sense of pride in the brother, husband, father, and son who went before us. He was often misunderstood in life. But people everywhere know how much he meant. But they have missed him so much all the years since his loss. To you, Mr. President, to the Congress and to our fellow citizens, we are grateful for this gracious tribute today. Our family is grateful to Ethel, the light of his life, who stood with him on countless platforms and around the nation and around the world. A friend who has sustained our spirits and dark passages and bright days. And I speak here for many others who loved Robert Kennedy as well.  And if they were here, that pride would be shared by my father, by Joe and Jack and Kathleen, who always knew that while Bobby was the smallest, he had the biggest heart. Thirteen years ago, at this hour, Robert Kennedy lay dying of his wounds. And accepting this medal in his memory, I would say again what I said when we took leave of him. He was a good and decent man who saw wrong and tried to write it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it. And my prayer would be the same. Those of us who loved and who took him to his rest that day, continue to pray that what he was for us and that he what he wished for others will someday come to pass for all the world. Thank you.


Hey guys, it's Jess and welcome back to my channel I hope you've all been having a very happy and productive week and being Friday Of course, it's that time of the week where I take one of your study related questions And I answer it in my Q of the week video So if you guys want any of your questions answered in an upcoming Q of the week vid Then leave them down below in the comment section or send them through on social media Just find me at study with Jess on Twitter and Instagram And if you guys find today's video helpful then please thumbs up to let me know And if you're not already subscribed you should probably click that subscribe button down below So you get notified whenever I post up my videos Anyways, let's get into today's question of the week and today's question comes from Lani and she asks the following She writes in saying hi Jess loving your channel. Thanks Lani I have my year 12 exams next year and want to know how I can do really well and get straight A's What's the best way to complete exams and do you have any tips? Lots of love Lani Okay, so Lani I have quite a few tips for taking exams Considering I have done I've sat a lot of exams in my lifetime a lot after all of school and four years of university They've been they've been a lot of exams that I've done So I've got a lot of tips for you and I've actually written them all down in a long list on my phone The first one I wanted to say was before you actually get into an exam Something that I would always do and it is backed by scientific research is to go for a walk to help oxygenate your brain So get the blood moving and get more oxygen into your body because the more you can oxygenate your brain before Something that requires a lot of focus the more you'll be able to concentrate during that task so even just for 10 minutes go and have a bit of a walk around campus or Even do some star jumps bit of exercise anything like that that can be a really good idea and then as far as when you get Into the exam first thing I've got written down here is to enter with a Plan of attack. Oh, yeah So you need to know exactly how you are going to tackle your exam If it's got a multi-choice section a short answer and an extended answer section Then which sections are you going to be completing first to last? How long do you plan spending on each of the sections as well? So you know as the clock is ticking when it's time to move on this way Hopefully you'll be able to complete everything within the allotted time frame and then of course another thing to do is to use your reading time Really wisely, so I feel like some students have the tendency during reading time to just wait with Anticipation to get writing but actually have a think about the answers that you want to be writing down as well But if you want to earn yourself some extra time during exams Then I do have a little tip for you that involves something you can do during reading time Which is this and I can't believe I didn't know this until one of my last years studying But it's to complete or read through the multi-choice questions first Brainstorm your answers and try and answer those only During your reading time because on average they say that you should be able to answer one multiple choice question per minute And if you've got ten minutes of reading time the second that they say that you can start writing in your exams You could probably solve the first ten questions right away Now on the topic of multi-choice questions something that I can advise you to do is just to stop you from getting Tricked with all of those or caught out with all of those trick questions or trick answers that they put in multi-choice questions so a lot of the time your teachers and lecturers will put something in there that You've never seen before and you freak out and you think oh my goodness did I not revise for my exam correctly and Did I miss this? Is this the real answer so instead of doubting yourself? Make sure to cover all of the potential answers first and have a bit of a brainstorm about what you know about the topic at hand This way it actually stops you from likely getting caught out from all these trick questions because you honestly know a lot more than you Give yourself credit for so that's my little trick for multi-choice questions Now something else that I used to do in my exams is actually draw little illustrations and diagrams or charts on the side So even in my statistics exam. I used to draw the little Graphs on the side or even in any other exams. I was doing I might have had different illustrations that I associated Certain information with so you can actually dug your memory right down in some of those blank sections on the exam Anything that you need to just to help you solve these questions as well Don't feel like you have to keep your exam booklet completely neat It's totally fine to show your workings. You really should show your workings and yeah use it If you I don't know maybe made up a funny acronym that you know could help jog your memory write that acronym down So that instead of doing it all in your head It's written out in front of you and you're less likely to stuff anything up as well now when it comes to completing really long exams Something that I do and I feel like a lot of students are really cautious about doing this or Preferred not to because they're worried that they'll run out of time But we're actually not made to sit for two three hours without getting up and stretching and taking a bit of a break So if anything it can actually help your productivity and your concentration To take a quick bathroom break and get up and just stretch go to the bathroom or get a drink Rather than try and use all of that time to complete your exam Because if you're feeling really stressed or you're feeling tired or you just can't focus and it's already gotten one or two Hours into your exam then you're probably actually going to be benefiting yourself more if you take a little bit of a break And this is for anything in life really if something's not working Just get up remove yourself from the situation for just a moment and gather your thoughts Change up the environment and then come back to whatever it is you're doing so I used to always do this in exams I remember my English exam I don't think anyone really got up to go to the bathroom, but myself But honestly it really helped me because it meant I wasn't really stressing that much and when I did come back I just had a fresh perspective and also by the time that I got back from the bathroom My subconscious had remembered something really important by actually just not thinking for just a couple of minutes So yeah, if you feel like you're able to take a few moments from your exam I would really recommend that you get up and then come back to it So just go to the bathroom get a drink And then you'll actually be able to increase your focus by taking a really really tiny study break So Lani, thank you so much for your question I hope I've answered it well for you this week And if you guys want to send in your study questions leave them in the comment box below And of course if you enjoyed today's video then thumbs up Just let me know and like I said if you're not already subscribed then click the subscribe button down below to join In on all of the desiccate fun and yes if you want to check out some other videos click the cards up there and you can also check out my Study Skills book for high school survival guide There's a ton of tips about how to study for exams manage exam stress and even take exams as well So I'll link that in the description box as well for you guys All right until Monday when I see you for brain food have a very happy and productive weekend Bye


Hi there, my name is Sandy Alnok. I'm an artist and paper crafter here on YouTube, and I'm going to show you some mini trifold cards. Art Impressions has done some trifolds before. They've been full-size cards with panels that flip out, most sorts of things, and they've now come up with these telescoping types of trifolds. So they give you a sneak peek as to what's inside the card rather than the way they've worked in the past. So if you want to Google the other ones, I'll leave a link to some of them in the description down below, but I want to show you these ones that telescope inward and they give you all the directions, the measurements, and everything. But what I did find was that on an 11 by 4 and a quarter piece of paper, I get this little thing that happens if I use the exact measurements and my front panel ends up a little bit short. And even the inside panel, I thought maybe that one won't go all the way to the edge, and it didn't either. If you adjust by just a little tiny bit of an eighth of an inch on your scores, then you can make that work out right. But what I decided to do, because I was originally going to color it with Copics, and I changed my mind because I realized Copics go through the back and I didn't want it showing on the inside of the card. So I used watercolor paper and I'm going to watercolor it instead. And I'm using three and five eighths and seven and three eighths for my measurements. Because what that's going to do is give me one panel that's going to fit snugly just before that fold. Fold the other side over and use my bone folder and my my board to get that perfect. And then just mark the edge so that I can cut off that extra piece. Watercolor paper is generally 12 inches, a lot of the pads that I use. So I had a little bit of play and that allowed the card to end at the right spot. I'm going to use my MISTI to do the stamping and I'm going to put a piece of acetate in there so I can stamp on that as a test first. And that way I can make sure it's in the right spot exactly where I want it. Because these stamps are cling stamps, they're not clear, so I can't actually see where it's going to be. So I'm going to get it all kind of lined up, close the MISTI and then when I open it back up, the stamp sticks to it. Turn it around so you can see what I'm doing, even if it's going to be sideways here. And I'm going to stamp it onto the acetate so I can see the placement. Is that where I want it on my card? If not, I can move my stamp around. That one I'm pretty happy with. So I'll just remove the plastic and I will put down some ink onto the stamp and stamp it onto my card. Now, my card's hanging out of the MISTI.  I was going to re-stamp a little bit just to get a heavier line and I decided not to because I was a little worried that I would end up with the paper moving.   So get your card closed and just trace it. You can erase this pencil line easily. And then do it again. Set it up on a piece of acetate and see if it's where you want it. It's not. I want to slide it over a little. So I kind of get an idea. I want to kind of go over maybe half a block. So I'll move my stamp over on the grid board half a block and then use my magnets like I'm supposed to to hold the paper down because it'll hold it still and I can re-stamp if I need to. And then I can stamp my image on there.  There's two dies that come with it.  And now you can see we're getting that telescoping going on. And if I trace that line into the inside of the card, then I can just I'm just going to hand stamp my little bunny. But you could if you're doing multiples, you could set it up again and stamp that on the inside as well. So then the bunny is going to show up through the little hole as well. And all that's left now is the watercoloring. And I have a good selection of all different kinds of Daniel Smith watercolors. So I'm just going to grab different colors and not mixing. But if you have a set of like the six essentials, you can mix all of these colors from those just mix up a bunch of little dots of different ones. Or if you have the dot charts, this would be a great use for that because you only need a little bit of each color. And you can try them all out and compare perhaps all of the reds and all the pinks and see what colors you like best by painting them in a real world situation like this. So I will link you to that in the description down below as well as all the stamps and goodies. Now I did not wait for my tulips to dry. So you can see my green is seeping into some of my tulips. So do as I say, not as I do and be a little more patient. I just wanted to get her done because I was in a hurry when I was painting this, but it's such a loose image that it's not really going to matter. And you can tell I'm not even worrying about shading. I'm just dropping color in. And when you've got a really loose, fresh springtime summertime image like this, it's so easy to just paint and be loose and don't get stressed out. Don't get yourself all worried about it. Just keep moving and get your image painted. And if you do a whole bunch of these, you can get all of your greens done at once on all of them. And then by the time you get back to doing the flowers, you won't have any wet paint next to where you're coloring the next portion. So word to the wise there. So I'm going to use a couple different greens. And then for these little flowers that are hanging down, I just put some purple at the top and then I rinsed and dried my brush so I could just kind of pull a little bit of the color down. So that they would kind of fade into white and sorry about the crazy zooming thing, whatever is going on with my camera. And then I added a little drops of pink at the top of each one of those purple ones. And I'm going to drop a little bit more color into my yellow flowers because they weren't making me happy. And now we got the little bunny on the inside. I've erased my pencil lines so that it gets all lined up and add some ground underneath, which is of course soaking in some of the yellow from the bunny. And I'm going to be a little more careful now since I found that I messed that up and go carefully around with very, very light blue. And then drop more heavy blue into it once I know that I've kept my blue away from the bunny and that it's dry enough to do that. So I'm going to drop a little bit of brightness in there. I'll use a little bit of water and a dryer brush, a cleaner dryer brush to soften that outside edge. And then of course pink. We got to put a little bit of pink in the ears and in the little flowers. And there is the finished telescope card where you get the little preview of the bunny. He's so cute. And the flowers, you know, they didn't need any great detail or anything. They just had to have a little bit of color in them because everybody's going to be looking to get to that little bunny on the inside of the trifle card. And there's a stamp blessings to you. You can use this all year long. Even if it's got tulips, who cares? Do them all year long because it's such a cute card. And this is another one of the trifles. I wanted to just show it to you. This one is on Nina and this one I did in colored pencil because I again didn't want the color to go through. Doing them in colored pencil works great. Or if you die cut this out of Bristol board, you could use your zingling color markers to do it. But there's a little kitty on the inside of this one. So I'll link you to all the supplies in the description down below as well as some of the big trifles. So you can see what I mean when I say these are smaller and different. And here's a few other cards you might want to take a look at. One of the right talks a little bit about how to mix your colors for getting a variety. So if you have just a few colors, that one, the hydrangea is painted entirely with six little colors of paint. Alrighty guys, you take care and have a great day. If you want to subscribe, you can do that or watch any of these videos or go see more on my blog. And I'll see you next time. Take care. Bye-bye.