Welcome. I'm glad for the big turnout. It helps when there's no competition.  That's what's called the market for security So I do that one on Friday. So this one is other, you know, it's a sort of hodgepodge of various issues of You know, how could things be handled in a free society? I also want to make just a quick announcement. Some of you may be interested to know So I think a lot of you have noticed my son's been down playing chess and he played a faculty member here I'm not gonna say who it is But let me give you a hint by the transitive property. I Can now beat Friedrich Hayek in chess so you can figure out so we've narrowed it down all right, so Economics of a stateless society. So one thing is why did we why do I use that term stateless? There's a thing going back where Some people make a distinction between the state and government and like state with a capital S and government with a small G and I used to think oh who cares about that but More recently, I've had a change of heart So I try to you know, sometimes you slip up in casual conversation But I do try to stress the state because some people the way they use government They mean it just as a more general like there's authority so they might say oh There's government within the church or the family and any sort of hierarchy at all even if it's Consented to in some manner. So that's why I'm trying in this talk to stick to else be saying stateless Also, just so you're not getting confused Really what the what the goal is from a Rothbardian perspective and what motivates the people who are you know the faculty at this Event is a free society. I think that's the more positive goal So statelessness is necessary but insufficient for a free society, right? so that obviously Martians come and blow up the world or something it would be stateless, but you know, it's it's I'm not sure what you They'd get rid of the NSA. So it's it's not sure it's a toss-up. All right, so that's that's where we're coming from with this one Let me motivate this by giving a very interesting quote here So this is from an intellectual. I'll tell you who it is in a second But let's just consider the statement for if the bulk of the public were really convinced of the illegitimacy of the state If it were convinced that the state is nothing more nor less than a bandit gang writ large Then the state would soon collapse to take on no more status or breadth of existence than another mafia gang hence the necessity of the state's employment of Idiologists and hence the necessity of the state's age-old alliance with the court intellectuals who we've the apology of for state rule and So I like this quote because it underscores I think even libertarian sometimes fall prey to this misconception that the reason The the state has so much power and influence in society is that they have more guns than people or geez They you know, they just have tanks and we don't so therefore that's why they're in charge and that's not really correct that Mises Relying on the insights of David Hume would often stress that in the long run. There's no such thing as an unpopular government Okay, even and you might say oh come on maybe like in Western democracies, but but you know, we're about authoritarian regimes No, you can see this principle there the most clearly It's precisely in the most totalitarian regimes where they have the strongest tightest control on the media the schools You know people don't have internet access, right? So if it really were, you know, the North Korean government were in charge of the government The North Korean state were in charge Because of the fact that they could just kill people and that you know any dissent wouldn't be tolerated Then they would say yeah, go ahead teach whatever you want in the schools because if anyone steps out of line, you know We'll kill them. That's not what they do though They very tightly control what ideas that people have because they know how fragile their rule really is I said the people running the show They know just how fragile is that's why they have to worry about public opinion That's why they have to have this whole system of intellectuals court intellectuals who propagate falsehoods and you know myths about We like when you think about us history the normal way that's taught is just a succession of us presidents Right as opposed to I then this was the age when this entrepreneur, you know did his thing or this inventor did such and such Whereas you know it's supposed to be this is period of different rules by the person in the White House That's the way it's typically taught and it's not a coincidence. Okay, so So that's the importance of a week like Mises University that yes There's other particular strategies like C setting in the Free State Project or political action whether to educate the public or just to You know try to elect more libertarian officials But all these going underground off the grid so forth, but all those things require More of the public to agree with the spirit at least of the stuff we're teaching this week, right like even if for example drugs were still Illegal if nobody in your neighborhood was ever going to call the cops on you then it wouldn't really matter Right, you see so it takes the public has to cooperate with the authorities and ultimately as Mises says It's not enough for the the ruler to have an army because why do the soldiers point their guns at the population instead of turning around and pointing them at The ruler and you know coups happen. There are violent Overthrows of the government and so Mises point was ultimately its ideas that matter So who was the this might surprise you who actually wrote this this? Really provocative passage. It was a young Janet Yellen in grad school No, it wasn't It was Murray Rothbard Now now why did I do that? I just told you not to trust the court intellectuals because I'm here with a tie Doesn't mean what I'm saying is right. Okay, trust no one. All right There apparently there it's probably apocryphal, but I was reading on like the Sicilian You know mafia and well a stuff came from and apparently there's a story about how The the mafia don takes his young you know his oldest son And but when he's still a young kid takes him out like it has him stand up on some building That's you know like maybe this tall and says jump off.  I'll catch I'll catch you the kid jumps and he just lets him smack into the ground It was trust no one. All right, so Here's I'm gonna jump into a bunch of specifics, but there's a general presumption for volunteerism So no matter what the issue is It's odd that normally the way the argument goes for oh and yeah, yeah Sure freedom works for things like TVs and ice cream cones But in this particular issue and the interventionist will give some particular social Situation we need state intervention because of the da da da da right and they'll go through and list why standard Profit maximizing business wouldn't be applicable in that situation But what's odd is it's like everybody in the world can understand There's this glaring gap here where people want something to be done And yet the only people who seem to not be able to recognize that are the profit-seeking business people, right? And so the idea is that silly yet It might take some ingenuity there might have to be some cleverness in how can we charge and make money? Solving this genuine problem that we all agree people have here But it's odd that the one set of people who apparently can't recognize there are the people who would make a bunch of money from fixing the problem So this is a probably a bit dated. The principal is the vanilla ice. I know like two of you now know who this is Because his iconic song he has a line if there's a problem you'll all solve it And so okay, I will have to get a different reference for next year. All right So let's talk about money. So here's an area where a lot of people just assume Oh, of course, you need the state to provide money, right? They can't even conceive I mean just to look around look at there's money. That's just provided by states all over the world So of course that has to happen. What is manger taught that no actually? Historically money emerged first voluntarily in the private sector and it was only later that Political states coerced and you took over that area So how did that how did that form? So just talk about something like gold so manger and I'm here I think you guys may have gotten a version of this already But let me just reiterate the story really quickly not just for its own sake But also to show the type of explanation and something that you could call a spontaneous order So first of all manger and by the way, let me just mention this isn't just that Austria and fanboys are saying oh, we like the way manger handled this no back in the day I think it was like in the encyclopedia of economics Manger had the article entry on the origin of money Okay, so it was he was acknowledged at the time in the late 1800s as he was one of the people who really had written the best exposition of how could money have emerged Spontaneously if that's the word you want to use or or without you know some central planning organization or some wise king So for what one thing is manger pointed out the problem with the so-called state theory of money right the idea that Look at there's this thing money. It's clearly not natural, right? We say where where did trees come from? Well, that's obviously something that was was natural You can talk about evolution or you can talk about God But it's not that humans had anything to do with why trees are there But money is clearly something that came from human beings and so then that it's a natural And it's also very useful and so it's a natural inclination for people to say so therefore there must have been some wise Person or group of rulers way back when who invented this thing because they can't conceive of how else could it have arisen And so manger pointed out there's a lot of problems with that So number one we don't have any evidence of that right you would think if somebody invented money We might remember that person that might have been recorded somehow and that that's that's not the case This is also even if it were true that some you know, so people are engaging in barter. Let's say and then Some wise person has this great idea like you know what what if instead of trading things that you directly value and accept And trade what if we and he like picks up a stone and says what if every one half of every transaction involves people accepting these stones That are by themselves not something that you would value that would sound really stupid, right? I mean we now having grown up in this world We understand that actually that does make sense But you can see how back then that would that would seem crazy and then furthermore even if he like maybe the king says All right, everybody has to when you're selling something you got to accept these stones first And don't worry when you want to buy something you trade in these stones for it So that's why it'll all be a wash in the long run It will all be more effective and efficient even if he could convince his subjects to go along with that perhaps You know because he's threatening them somehow What would be the purchasing power right so if originally you were going to sell horses for so many eggs Now here so oh gee I have to first sell the horses for stones Well to know how many stones do except you need to know well How many stones trade for eggs to know if this is still a good deal or not or for maybe I just don't want to sell Well, how would you know that because the egg seller is in the same boat? How does he know how many eggs to sell for stones right so you see it's it's hard and this is another area where I think even We talk about fiat money even a lot of Austrians and libertarians sometimes say oh the reason this is valid is because the government has guns and makes it valuable and It has to be more complicated than that right because you wouldn't know just from scratch What's the purchasing power of even this fiat money supposed to be so just just keep that in mind that? There's a lot more involved when to get people to accept and use something as money Okay, so that's great. It seems like mega makes some good points, but then how how did we get there? It's almost like he seems to have proven. Yeah money can't exist how would it ever get off the ground and So the story he tells is I'm obviously simplifying it here boiling it down for the just the basic story is that even in a state of I'll say barter the more technical term would be direct exchange But even in that state some goods would have a bigger market than others some things would be more salable or we could say more marketable so things like eggs and and beef and so forth would have a wide market where something like a very Sophisticated telescope it could be valuable But only a very few people would want to buy that thing right and so if you're going into town to trade and You're carrying a bunch of eggs You're gonna quickly find somebody on the other side of that you know who wants eggs and has whatever you want But if you're going to town with a really sophisticated Telescope and you want horses what are the chances you're gonna find someone on that day who's selling horses and wants a really sophisticated Telescope so you see you see the problem there So manger said what people would do who are in the position of wanting to unload goods that are relatively unmarketable Even though they might be very valuable is they would do indirect trades right they would take something as a stepping stone So they found someone selling eggs who wanted a really fancy telescope They might trade because they know if I have a bunch of eggs I'm much more likely to find someone selling horses who wants eggs than wants this sophisticated telescope So that's the the first link there in the argument and once you accept that which you know seems pretty straightforward It's snowballs right so then what happens is things that initially just because of their Attributes and people their desire for direct consumption or production Desired a certain good and it was relatively marketable now its marketability gets enhanced because there's a second layer of people who accept it Because they're gonna trade it away All right, and so things that initially were a little bit more marketable now are a lot more marketable because more and more people Accept them in a trade just intending to hold them temporarily to unload them later All right, and that process snowballs and if one or two goods Gets to the point at which just about everybody realizes. Oh, yeah, I'm not gonna have trouble unloading that So I'll see whatever I have to sell I'll sell take that thing and then go trade it away for whatever I ultimately desire We'll go up that's money. That's what money is. It's a medium of exchange. That's universally accepted So and then the things like why gold and silver There it's because if you think about what sorts of goods would be very useful in that role Things that are, you know, very durable like like cattle could could work in some respects But it's you know, you have to feed them they go to the bathroom There's all sorts of problems with them if you want to buy something that costs half of a cow It's hard to make change right so there's things like that whereas gold and silver there's really nothing wrong with them They're pretty good on all the dimensions of what would make a good medium of exchange And that's why over time the market embraced gold and silver as the monies Whereas something you might felt like what about diamonds the strike against diamonds is they're not homogeneous, right? It's not that a pound of diamonds is a pound of diamonds if you have one huge diamond That's more valuable than a bunch of smaller diamonds that have the same weight Where's with gold that doesn't work like that because you can just melt gold down and it's a pound of gold or an ounce of gold Is an ounce of gold? Okay, so that's Manger's story about how money could have emerged Just using and notice there nobody planned that outcome so and this is a subtlety So it's not that we're saying rationality wasn't involved and this was just oh just money emerged and it was kind of this weird thing Everybody was making very specific means ends appraisements But what they were doing was just saying okay. I want you know, I have this telescope. I want to get I'm gonna say horses and there's a guy here offering eggs for a telescope I will make this trade because I know I'm more likely right so that's a very rational Thing to do there. It's not we're not just appealing to some Tendency or propensity to trade you can see why that person's improving his own position the way he evaluates it But he wasn't thinking ah and then when others start doing this 10 years from now We're all going to be using money and that makes more sense than bar Nobody was thinking like that it just sort of naturally happened each person looking, you know fairly short term where this Result was something that was the result of human action, but not of human design Okay, what about Coins, okay, so you can say all right that explains maybe why gold could be the money in a community But what about actually having coinage that's something that states around the world right now do But again, this was originally you had private mints That would take the gold and silver and stamp them into coins And it was only later that you know states political institutions crowded that out and took over that that function So that this isn't to science fiction George selgin actually has a book on this going through and showing pictures too So it's not only that the money the coins that were privately produced were possible that they existed They were actually much better looking coins than the stuff that the states produced because they had to be there was in competition So to be clear The private mints they didn't make gold money gold was money by itself All they were doing was they they it would be A matter of convenience to for example if a merchant was selling something for 10 ounces of gold And you walked in there with just a block of yellow metal They could you know, they would have to weigh it They would have to try to assess its purity whereas if there was a company that would take The actual blocks of metal and stamp them into very recognizable coins with a certain insignia That would be hard for counterfeiters to match and on the you know the circumference they had ridges So it'd be hard to shave off You know bits of gold so that you are assured of the the fineness and weight of it That's what the mint did that's the service that provided it was just Certification that this really is an ounce of gold or you can tell this is an ounce with very little inspection compared to Just the raw metal as it were okay, and so that really happened. So since mints were competing with each other That's why the coins would have to look nice. That was one of the attributes Why would you carry coins from this mint versus another? Well, the things were really ornamental and pretty to look at that would give them a slight edge And of course they also had to be hard to counterfeit and so forth All right, what about banking that's another area where it seems like oh clearly you need to have heavy regulation at least of Banking because otherwise the public's going to be taking advantage of no again here. This is standard. You can see how this would emerge It's very inconvenient to just rely on gold coins And so there would be a role for banks To issue notes for example saying the bearer of this Is entitled to one ounce of gold at the murphy banker at the you know Rothbard bank or whatever and they could be 100% reserve I won't get into that because I you know did the lecture yesterday And i'm saying even this service that that is providing genuine service to the public Right if you get to be pretty wealthy and you have thousands of gold coins in your possession You're vulnerable to robbery All right, and so you could go give a storm at this place that has big vaults and armed guards and cameras and insurance And then they give you Debit card and modern times are back then they could give you paper notes Which are very easy to transport if you're going to make a large purchase It's a lot easier to hand over some high denomination notes than to have bags of gold coins Or you could write checks, you know that the bank could certify that yes This person has whatever 10,000 ounces of gold to his name And so he can write these authorized checks and there can be a very you know They can check your signature and blah blah blah to make sure it's a legitimate transaction. All right, so there's plenty of Reasons that banks would emerge and did emerge historically for volunteer through the voluntary market Let me just mention here That what we're told that regulation and central banks are supposed to do Is the opposite of actually what they do in practice, right? So the the claim is Oh without heavy regulation if you just had laissez-faire in banking Banks would be issuing these notes the public would have no idea what they were there'd be fly-by-night companies And you know merchants would be accepting notes And then they'd go and the bank wouldn't exist anymore things like that And so we need regulation to protect the public from wild inflationary booms caused by these wildcat banks And actually that is 100 backwards that in the voluntary private sector where there's just standard contract Enforcement where banks don't have special privileges There would be very sharp limits on note issue because if anyone bank issued more notes than its competitors did Its reserves of gold would quickly get drained right that Because you would you are a merchant you're accepting let's say you accept notes from anybody What are you going to do with them? You're not going to hold notes from some bank You don't recognize you're going to go to your bank and deposit them And so at the end of every week or month the banks all settle up with each other with clearing Transactions and on net if your customers turned in more notes than this bank's customers did vis-a-vis each other The one bank settles up by sending net gold to the other bank to get settled up And so if one bank is issuing paper notes like crazy and doesn't have the gold to back it up Then its clients spend more in the community the other banks accumulate notes Drawing on that bank and it runs out of reserves. So there were strict limits on credit expansion from any one bank in that kind of a system Central banks their function what's one of the things if you go look at the historical controversy or discussion One of the functions of the central bank was to be a lender of last resort So that is not at all telling private banks. Hey, don't lend too much. Don't be too aggressive in your loan policies If we're here to bail you out if you get caught with your pants down That's what you need a lender of last resort for is if you get caught And people you owe people more money than you can pay them at the moment That's when the central bank comes in to rescue you so that institution far from promoting Capitalism among commercial banks actually gives them the incentive to inflate more And then also obviously tight regulation restricting free entry of new firms into the banking sector Allows a cartel to form right because even if all the banks, you know, remember that mechanism I said two minutes ago. What if all the commercial banks agree with each other? Hey, let's just all of inflate in unison So our notes, you know cancel out each other and we can all make more loans and earn more interest income And then we won't have a net drain of reserves because we're all doing it together They might do that But then some new bank can set up shop that has a higher reserve ratio And it will drain the reserves from all the expanding banks But you can't do that if it's really hard to open up a new bank And right now it's very difficult to oh, you can't just open up a new bank It's not like opening up a pizza shop. Okay, and so notice again All the things that are in place allegedly to protect the public actually Protect the the banking sector and allow them to inflate more Okay the famous question who would build the roads? I I always forget to look up and tom woods has my favorite quick one-liner response to this He says something like that. Yeah, it's kind of amazing that this is the go-to objection to libertarianism It's like there's consumers over here and there's wal-mart over here and they can't figure out how to you know They're all just scratching their heads saying how can we get together and right and notice it's It's not like it takes some secret knowledge to know how to build a road You see what I mean like it's whereas you could see with things like Uh, you know, we'll get into this on the friday talk if you go to that when we're talking about military defense You can kind of understand someone thinking well g the nsa and the fbi and the ci They know Things the private sector doesn't know and so that's why they need to be in charge of keeping us safe from the russians or whoever But when it comes to building roads, it's not like yeah, the government or the political authorities know certain things about asphalt That nobody in the private sector know you see what i'm saying. All right Okay, also besides just the theoretical appeals. I'm making historically again. We see the same pattern the early turnpikes They were raised Constructed privately there was and there were there were mechanisms too to overcome what you could call the free rider problem So if there are a bunch of merchants in a certain area They knew if they built a turnpike that went through there that they could attract, you know traffic from you know So like people are going from here like this major city this major city and let's say there's a town in the middle They would know if we make it convenient for these people to go right through our town this way Then we'll benefit from them stopping and buying stuff along the way from us rather than stopping somewhere else And so the the merchants in an area Might all chip in to help contribute and build a road where they're not stopping people every two feet and charging a toll They could have free access roads Like that where the local merchants are the ones putting up the money because they know it will more than pay for itself In the extra traffic they're going to get all right, and there were like public Shaming campaigns and things in certain areas where you know somebody who was the advocate of building this privately financed turnpike Would get contributions from the major merchants and then if somebody was holding out You know he might publicly let people know that hey this one guy is going to benefit from this and he's not So they couldn't stick a gun to his head But the point was there were plenty of mechanisms to try to get financing for so-called public goods Short of sticking guns in people's faces all right and this did work historically and it was only later the governments took it over Okay on this issue some people say oh my gosh if this were the case I mean in some cities red lights would mean go and green lights would mean stop and it would just be complete anarchy and chaos Okay, so number one obviously that's silly Okay, like it's not that we have different definitions of what a centimeter is around the world And yet it's not that if you try you know some scientists try to publish a paper And they have a footnote saying by the way when we say centimeter we mean and they said some huge unit of length You know they would just wouldn't get published that'd be crazy. All right, so it's not that you need Force to make sure that there are standards that people voluntarily embrace on the other hand It's good that in certain settings there would be some variety and some experimentation And so if you've never heard of this guy later go google hans monderman So he I think he's dutch. He's a road engineer And he has what at the time were very unorthodox views So he doesn't believe in signage or lights and in in his mind If if you have to put up a light or a sign to regulate the traffic flow you built the road wrong That it shouldn't you shouldn't have to give that extra information Just the natural design and layout of the road should give the drivers what they need And he was a big proponent of traffic circles And you know the drivers would go up to there and they would be confused and not know what to do And he said exactly that's what you want You don't want people zoning out and just not paying attention because oh, it's all right If there's a red light i'll stop otherwise i'm not even paying attention to what i'm doing He said that's how you hit pedestrians as if you're not really paying and instead if you're a little bit confused as a driver You're looking around you're alert. You're not going to hit somebody and he did this thing I can't find it on youtube now, but I did see it. He's talking to a reporter explaining his views He goes up to an intersection that he designed. It's like a traffic circle and it's crazy. There's cars all over the place he turns around Yeah backwards and he and he starts walking backwards across the street into the traffic right So he was hit and killed but still the point No, no, he didn't get hit and killed So his point was he was showing How much he trusted his design that he knew the oncoming motorists were very alert and they're not going to run into a guy Okay, so again, i'm just i'm not saying that's necessarily the solution But my point is we just assume that the way the state builds maintains roads now is the way it ought to be done When no it's a cliche about how in many areas there's potholes in the roads and it's terrible So the you know who knows what it would look like But don't just assume the way that the state maintains the road network right now is the correct way And it's up to the market to prove it could maybe match the performance of the state. Why would you think that? Okay, walter block makes the point if you look at the the fatalities It's not as if there's two people every year who die on the roads right There's lots of fatalities and his point is if a private company were causing all these there'd be congressional hearings And yet the way it is now If people die, it's just oh well Yeah, a driver error that guy must have been drinking or he was going too fast or get his brakes checked people Don't stop and say gee maybe we shouldn't have the political system being in charge of designing and building and maintaining the roads Maybe that's why there's so many deaths at this intersection Okay, beyond all that stuff this simple phenomenon of traffic jams, right? So if you're not from a big area, this might not be a huge deal to you But if you like or you know, new york la chicago houston it is Crazy just how much time people waste every day Russia we're going to and from work in the city and these are very productive people that time is very valuable So I don't I don't have the estimates of my fingertips But I'm thinking it's like in the billions of dollars in terms of just lost productivity these high productive people Sitting in traffic beyond that I do think the murder rate in new york would go down if you privatize the roads because people how aggravated they get And i'm losing it and they just you know go I'm I'm not even kidding. I'm being serious. All right, so Also something like bridgegate. I don't know if you guys know what that is but chris christy got in trouble he's governor of new jersey and There were serious elegant I don't know if they like literally proved it happened But there were very serious allegations of some of his key staffers to punish some mayor Some democratic mayor who hadn't supported christy's reelection campaign as governor Deliberately shut down some roads. I think it was the george washington bridge on the top Deliberately shut them down during rush hour one time to punish that mayor to cause massive traffic snarls And then there were some he likes some I think somebody died because he was in the in the ambulance or something And and so that was a huge scandal and people said that's partly why maybe christy didn't get picked as trumps vp because of that reason But the point being If if we were from scratch debating whether the political system or the profit and loss system should build and maintain roads And I said well, you don't want to trust the political system because maybe just out of personal vendetta They might deliberately cause huge traffic jams that inconvenience thousands of people I'm sure the critically. Oh, yeah, I'm sure somebody would do that. Geez, you know, whereas no that literally happened apparently Okay, so you see and why not the only reason it was bad for them is they got caught. It's not that You know, they they lost out on the other deal that the officials who made that call Were thousands of dollars poorer because they had fewer people passing the toll that day Right, you could say the the the political authorities missed out on the revenue But so the people who made that decision do not directly get to pocket that revenue That's not their money. It would be corruption if they pocket whereas a private company Is not going out of a vendetta just implement some policy because they hate some guy across the street And lose thousands of dollars or at least they will personally feel that they would have to really hate the guy to do that They're like if you're willing to pay it. Okay asset forfeitures, there's a huge thing now where governments Like the police this was a big thing I can't remember which interstate it was but there's an interstate that went through nashville Where the the the deal is people would bring in money in the cars buy drugs and then go the other way Um with with the drugs and the police set up roadblocks to allegedly to stop this trafficking But coincidentally they set it up on the side where the money was coming in They weren't trying to catch the people with the drugs They were stopping people who had cash in their in their trunks Seizing it and there are horror stories where like people who don't trust banks or some guy was in the middle of something And he was moving and he had you know thousands of dollars like 80 thousand dollars in cash in his trunk Because he was going to go buy a house and just he was you know person for some reason he didn't trust the commercial banks with a nut job and You know, there was it wasn't like You know, he had a bunch of white powder in the back seat or something. You're like say hello to my little friend no he He's just a regular guy and he had a bunch of cash and the cops started with that suspicious And they took it and he has to prove he's not a drug dealer to get his cash back Right, so there's all sorts of things like that That wouldn't be able to occur I mean the reason the state can get away with that kind of stuff is because they own and control the roads That's partly why they have such dumps. So again, it's not merely an issue of Traffic jams. Oh, by the way, I didn't explain the reason traffic jams occur is because the price is too low That's just a standard shortage. Just think about a supply and demand graph What happens if the price is too low too many people want to use the resource Compared to the quantity supplied. That's a shortage. That's what traffic jams are their shortages Okay, so the price is too low if it were privatized The price the tolls would initially shoot through the roof But at least rush hour would be you know fast and then with those huge profits People would build more roads and tunnels and bridges and so forth Okay, the last thing involuntary blood draws. There's another thing now too where At dui checkpoints or whatever they will against your will like hold you down and pull blood out and test it again And people were you know that went to the supreme court and things but that's The reason that happens is because the government's the one in charge of the roads Right, if there were a mark a private company in charge of these roads here and another company on these roads here If you didn't elect their policy, you would just drive on the competitors roads Whereas, you know, if it's the local government doing it, you it's it's harder just to say I'm not gonna I'm not gonna go to albuquerque anymore. Whereas you could easily say I'm not taking route a I'm taking route b that this company maintains Okay, what about public so-called public transportation Again, if you if you live or in a big city or have lived there, you're gonna know exactly I mean if you haven't this might not make sense to you But this is basically what the subway looks like a new york city at certain times of day And so what they will do I mean literally the subway comes in it opens if it's like Four through six p.m. In certain areas where a lot of office workers are going home for the the subway opens People literally go in I'm talking about like in terms of there's not much of volume left Inside the subway car. That's not human flesh I'm being serious And so But notice that doesn't happen on airplanes, right? It's not like you get into the plane and And some guys sitting on your lap and somebody's on your shoulders And they're you're saying, okay, we're going to tokyo now we strap in And you say why is this oh because it's a popular you should have known you should have flown at 3 a.m That's that's the solution They don't do that or a movie theater opening, right? You go to like the opening of the new avengers movie or something It might sell out But the theater owner doesn't let everyone pile in and sit on you to go watch captain america, right? Because they I mean this is silly I said because they know we want our customers to have an enjoyable experience What you do is you raise the price or you build more capacity You don't just let anybody pile in so that the thing So that the the rationing mechanism is to make the good or service less enjoyable to the user That's not what a private business is but the state does that because they don't care The people run the subway whether they make more or less profit Those bureaucrats don't earn bonuses for earning a profit again If they got caught doing that that would be embezzlement if they said no we we raise tolls and we we limit You know we put in turnstiles and strictly enforce them and we had police to make sure People weren't going in beyond just the seating capacity in the standard standing room And then you know and we raised the prices to be able to accommodate that and we made an extra billion dollars last quarter And now we're going to give ourselves bonuses of 100 million each for this new plan You know people would flip out they'd say what are you doing? You're charging us more money and pocketing it that'd be corruption And so that's why the political system doesn't do that and you end up with craziness like this All right. What about free and compulsory schooling? Okay, so government schools are often a euphemism for prison in some communities And here I mean so I don't just mean like oh miserable. I don't want to have to learn algebra I mean in some areas like literally you are in physical danger if the kids they have to go to certain schools And again, it's it's not it's precisely the groups of people that interventionists say would be left behind and not taken care of in a free market And that's why we need to have free so-called public schooling Is because of these underserved communities that you know the rich capitalists would ignore It's precisely those people who are getting terrible educations and are often in literal physical Violence situations because of this they can't even not go to school because it's against the law Also, it's not a coincidence. I would say right. It's not just oh, yeah The people running the state apparatus mean well and they just haven't paid attention What they weren't aware that there's shootings and knifeings and schools and so forth and the test scores are pretty poor No, they know full well. So I think the real reason in terms of long term Why is it the state insists on having such a strong presence in education? It's for the reason I said in the beginning that the people running this know full well How much ideas matter and ideology is important and this is how you maintain for example that US history is nothing but a succession of which president will happen to be in office for that four years Okay, and so homeschooling other nontraditional approaches vastly outperform these establishment ones And also let me just mention The I think there's like about half the let's say half the people who are currently in college Shouldn't be and I don't mean because they're stupid. That's not what I'm saying I'm just saying there's a certain type of person like when I when I first was teaching I could just tell that in the class Half of the students I would say they really it's it's they just they were there because they had to because they knew Oh, yeah, I have to get a college degree to get a job You got to do this and it was really just four years of checking the box Whereas let's say the other half were actually interested in the ideas and again I'm not saying the one group was smarter than the other and in many cases There were plenty of really intelligent people who I thought this is such a waste for them to be sitting here watching me draw Marginal cost curves, they're not going to ever use this stuff They should go out and you know get more business experience right away. They're wasting four years here Not only spending money, but they're missing on a potential job experience. All right, so The way I try to get regular people to see this point as I go the other way and I say what if We changed the expectation so that everybody to get a job to be considered a normal citizen And to have good loving parents had to go get a phd in something Right, we could see how that would be crazy. You say no that would that would just water down what a phd meant If everybody if the standard rule was any educated person had to have a phd in something You would realize that have to lower the standards and those programs And it would just be an arms race if everybody has to get a phd Then that doesn't signify anything and so it's just now instead of having to have a bachelor's degree You have to have a phd It would cancel out largely and it would just we would all lose four or five more years of our life rather than being productive Okay, and so you can see how that would be kind of crazy. So I'm saying what are the chances right now? We're at the optimal position And whereas we admit insisting on more schooling would be a problem No, maybe dialing it back actually would make more sense And it's clearly with all the government support given to education in terms of subsidies and mandates and so forth You can see how it's pushing people well beyond whatever that optimal level would be Okay, what about safety regulations? I'm going to speed up here because I got a couple more topics. I want to hit Whenever there's a food board illness or a plane crash Even though the state apparatus is officially in charge of keeping that stuff safe safe for us to make sure those wildcat Free enterprise nut jobs don't run the show and have shoddy products and adulterated food and so forth and crazy planes Where there's no oil changes. That's what we have the faa for the fda So whenever people die whenever there's disaster under the state's regulation Why people don't say, huh? Maybe the state's doing a bad job. No, it's always Thank goodness. We had the you know faa there. We need to beef up their funding when there's a plane crash, right? That's that's weird. It's like what could possibly happen to make people doubt the current system They always look at the failures under interventionism and say that's what would happen under the free market except more so Which is just weird if you think about it Okay, so just look at the comparative institutional analysis When there's a plane crash the faa typically will get more funding if there's some particularly agree like if some inspector Got caught being drunk and he didn't go look at the planes that he might get fired or something But it's not that the program is going to get its budget slash because you're doing a bad job They're going to get more funding if you're in congress and there's a bad plane crash and you vote to cut the funding of the faa You know, that'd be crazy people go nuts. What are you doing? They need more money So that's weird where if they fail they get more money. So why would we expect them to to do well in that scenario? Also, I don't have time to get into it here, but the standard libertarian critique of the fda is that they have all these unnecessary regulations and insistence on uh test procedures and so forth to bring a new drug to market Such that right now it costs over a billion billion with a b dollars to bring a major new drug to market. So that's true And so that's partly why Those drugs are so expensive because they have to be otherwise it wouldn't make sense And that's why you have drugs developed for mass markets not for real niche Illnesses because it just they they don't can't make money off of it. That's all true But the flip side is also true that the fda approved stuff that is actually So dangerous that it shouldn't be used under an standard metric of you know risk reward And yet the fda is very reluctant and sluggish in admitting it made a mistake and yanking the thing from the shelves And because the fda approved it that sort of gives its blessing and makes people more likely to use the thing Then if you just had a total free market So here it's not that consumers on their own would have to go and do tests on pills There would be private certification agencies right now. There are magazines like there's best pills worst pills I think it's a subscription service they um This was true as of like five years ago or so when I was doing research for a book That magazine Correctly anticipated all of the recalls the fda would do Months or in some cases years before the fda reversed itself. So let me just restate that This magazine that was giving consumers feedback and insight into which pharmaceuticals were safe or not was saying these particular Items the fda has approved. We think they're not safe. We think the fda will reverse itself eventually And it was corrected in all of those cases and in many cases it took years for the fda to admit It had been wrong in particular go look up the vioxx scandal just to see, you know, the most egregious case Okay, what about vaccinations? so again here Private schools and so forth they can have whatever rules they want a private school can say to attend here You need to show us you have these vaccinations. That's you know under a free society They're fine to do that they're free to do that other schools can say the opposite They can say, you know what? We don't insist on this So it's the point is you don't need a political system to enforce it. It's not that regulation or Standards necessarily has to flow from the course of political process Also, this is an ironic area Because by its very nature if you're saying no my kids vaccinated then in general that your kids should be free You know should be safe from these illnesses Right, so it's it's odd that this is one where a lot of it's a hill a lot of people die on and say Yeah, I like the libertarian view, but no, I mean come on. We have to have mandatory vaccinations And the counter response to this Is interesting so I was in an argument with somebody, you know I was saying I don't think the state should enforce vaccination policies let the schools and You know workplaces come up with their own policies And uh and I and I made that that second point and I said by the way If you like the vaccines and think they're good then just okay give them to yourself and your kids And then you'll be safe from this stuff, right? And you say well, no, that's not enough. We need to have what's called herd immunity We have to have it so that most people get it because There are people who because of their you know frail system or whatever If they got the vaccination it could be deadly to them And so since they can't get vaccinated we need to enforce just about everybody else gets the vaccination so that we can't have an Outbreak and so notice though they're admitting It went from these vaccinations are totally safe and only jenny mccarthy and other nut jobs could possibly Not want to give their kid this stuff to well some people might die if we gave them the vaccine So that's why everyone else has to be forced to do it And so now we're just quibbling over Who is it safe to give it to or not it's gone from this blanket science versus tinfoil hat wearing nut jobs to We're disagreeing the political authorities say this group it's safe to administer to and some parents disagree with that judgment So now you can see that this is really a very nuanced thing and clearly I would you know give the prerogative to the parents Okay, the last thing I got 30 seconds here. I'm going to solve the immigration problem. You ready? Okay, so First of all As with things like prayer in schools. Hey, do you think that in the government schools? There should be prayer You know can and or the 10 commandments There's no good answer to that the people on both sides have legitimate points So the same thing with immigration With the authorities in washington enforcing national borders Yes, both sides make valid points and there's no ultimate solution. So it's it's you're not going to have that's part of the problem That's why you don't want to have the political authorities mandating a one-size-fits-all solution Okay, let me just mention though. There's no such thing as a right to travel freely Okay, when it comes to things like malls fancy restaurants country clubs or your own house Of course, you can enforce borders. You're not, you know restricting someone's freedom But there's no freedom to travel through this region Unmolested by any sort of intervention that that's not true. There's no such thing as the right to move around the right to migrate So ultimately in a free society private landowners would set whatever policies they want So let me just demonstrate. I'm going to solve this with powerpoint. It would look something like this Okay, so we're worried Imagine like the current continental us goes roth bardy in next thursday This is the way it would look conveniently only people with very short first names bought these parcels of land Now now the and so they set whatever policies they want. Okay. Now the problem is you say, what about pan pan is kind of crazy She's a big fan of ms-13 in isis. And so she Is not going to do much about this border right there So that's why we need to have you know, washington dc come and put troops and build a fence. Watch this you guys ready Okay The people around pan can enforce it. Okay. And so The point being that yeah, it's it's a hard problem. I'm actually I'm not I mean I'm being glib here Obviously, it's a hard problem. But the point being that As with everywhere else just private private. That's really the only solution. So yes, we can quibble and say, okay Given that this isn't going to happen next thursday What should the u.s federal government? I get that but my point is there's going to be no good satisfactory answer there Whatever we say is going to be inferior compared to legitimate private property where people enforcing the borders on their own land Okay, I am done here. So thanks everybody


Welcome back. It is still the run-up on plus TV Africa and I still have as my guests come with a rugby and slim national youth leader Labor Party Aki Olawaya public affairs analyst member of the Labor Party and my Queen Illo policy analyst and former governorship aspirant APC Ogun state. Gentlemen you're welcome. I also still have with me my virtual co-host Adebayo Olawaya. Hello Adebayo. Are you still there? Yeah, I'm already. All right well strong indications have emerged that ahead of the zoning of offices of presiding officers for the National Assembly crisis looms in the ruling party the all-progressive Congress the APC as calls for the immediate resignation from office by the national chairman senator Abdullah Adamu Hayton according to the rights activist Adamu's resignation would also be a great opportunity for the all-progressive Congress to assuage the feelings of Christians towards the same-face arrangement of the party in the recently concluded presidential election. Well Nigerians are not known to resign especially political office holders. Let me start with you. Do you see him head into this call to resign? Well I wouldn't expect him to actually say this is a classic case of a storm in a teacup. The party has all this under control. There's the issue of perception so those people are clamoring for his resignation. I think I've got it wrong at this stage. They should at least exercise some bit of patience and I'm sure even the leadership itself knows that justice must not only be done it must be seen to have been done.  Maybe as much as half. So if for some political expediency and you know putting merit over where you are from made us to have both the president and the vice as Muslims that doesn't mean that the president elect as it were is oblivious of the fact that Christians must be well represented. So that's number the first two positions in the country. There's the position of Senate president, there's the position of us of rep. There are other positions that technically we can be sure that Christians will be represented. As it were for Labour Party for PDP they had a balancing of the tickets you know but people move the things that move the need that ultimately made them to decide in favour of one thing or the other very you know playing tribal politics has not really helped us in this country playing religious politics too has not really helped us. So if we can uptake or promote competence maybe character maybe results driven administration above most other things we would be better off. Alright Adebayo you want to come in here? Yes I would actually like to start with Mr. Mayor because in the room to the presidential election is after the candidate of the APC, Ashua Drew Polakme, who had chosen his running name there was a lot of noise and the APC that fed back to the system to the public the information that religion didn't matter it was going to be cool meters but now we are beginning to see religion wearing it again in the APC. I am just wondering if the APC has been consistent at all, if religion never mattered when it chose its presidential running date should it now matter and is the APC contradicting itself? Yes it is. Okay it's not a contradiction there are forces within the party there are interest groups within the party so this is just a section of the party feeling that their voice have to be heard. It's not we can't wish it away the fact that okay demographics people have to be represented in a country where you have women you know I would expect us to do better than we have done in the past. The Bwari administration promised at least 30% representation for women we've we've had it worse and that is not because it's not an APC problem it's a Nigerian political system problem you know I think this new 10th assembly or whichever assembly it is going to be is now maybe three senators who are women out of honour and hate you know it's not good enough for me I will if I were the governor or the president I will be working towards getting something close to 50-50 it's not going to be automatic but if the desire is there when there's a will there is a way so it's the challenge is not just for APC the challenge is for all the political parties and political actors we should try and promote inclusivity either of religion or of ethnicity people should be represented because you feel more at home when you see that okay my person has been represented in this this whether that now translate into effective efficient productive representation is another matter so at the end of the I think at the top of the pyramid we should have character and competence then a little down the line we should be able to think are we representing the parties are we representing the various demographic that need to be represented so we are not speaking from both sides we are just saying that even if in this particular instance we have to go in this direction that doesn't mean that we have lost sight of the fact that other things have to be carried along so it's not an either or situation it's a and situation we can do this we can balance ethnicity and balance competence when you need arises okay how do you find this drama playing out or about to play out in the APC especially speaking from the view of an opposition so I think it's the same genius on one hand to say that competency character you know in how they picked the two ticket you know offices for vice-president you know should overlook religion or perhaps you know social class or many of the things we look at from a diversity lens and now going to party politics and say well perhaps oh yeah let's bring up let's bring back that you know need to have representation I think APC as a public establishment as a party that's been around past eight years has become a cancer to Nigeria in terms of how they've led this country looking at the results for the past eight years how they conduct elections I mean perhaps if the previous president before Buhari did not choose an excellent process he will not have emerged again as you heard our candidate Peter we say if you're going to be called excel I see the process must be excellent I go back to the fact that again looking at the spare and representation across the party he mentioned three people being women senators or elect they're all party members that again shows you that as a political party looking at you know how we like to project our politics and our preference for diversity and inclusion again action matters I'm not an APC member so I can tell us who they up for you know religion or perhaps ethnicity but we're all saying something as a nation if we're truly going to forge ahead we're truly going to build the best of our democracy inclusion diversity must be what we often portray so the 11-year-old child the 14-year-old girl the 18-year-old university graduate understands that it get home talk of national character we're not only saying to do it because we want to play together but we're equally taking a serious approach in making sure that's how we again teach people to be better Nigerians so I wish APC the best but I'm saying you know you get more propaganda in computers in efficiency so what we choose to do in our party structures not my business all right do we have comrade on now all right we've lost that connection with comrade but how do you see because the 10th assembly will be formed very soon in fact June it will be inaugurated now the parties are having meetings APC will be having their meeting today just as you your party is planning to have their protest today but do you see the position of senate president given to the southeast as waging so I think it will be unfair to again hand off a consolation price the region to perhaps you know appear as though there is this balance and equity being distributed Nigerians seek competent leaders that again can architect a blueprint or a future that the unborn generation will benefit from it look at our community and Lagos body but was before we're calling him the new architect of Lagos was simply saying how can we write the future of in Nigeria that works so yes at the point where senate president is selected congrats to all of the senator candidates that won again truly on the mandate of people for those that read their ways into office their candidates will obviously go to court as they said but knowing fully well that yes for the time means somebody is going to occupy our chair a senate president I'm truly hoping they pick the best and the brightest people with ideas people have gone to abuja to write laws to basically you know promote bills that advances this nation can we make them become the country that manufactures can we become the country that does not export doctors but becomes a foreign medical tourism destination so for us we're truly saying look when I lose whatever it was in that chair not make sure as you lead the Nigerian people and as you again write policies and introduce programs they're doing it in the best interest of advancing Nigeria I did buy you want to come in yes I was quite impressed with the analysis that was making and the follow-up that has come from Mr. Lowey but if I recall correctly Mr. Lowey made references to demographics and interest groups within the ABC and he mentioned the percentage of participation within the party and I want to throw this question to Mr. Lowey one of the reasons that have been that has been adduced for the emergence of labor as a very strong force has been the fact that it's provided a platform for young people and then if you look at the PPP and if you look at the ABC to help you find young people in the top echelons of the party or even in political appointments when President Bansungyo was there we have very many states of information but very young people we won't say that in a while will you say that maybe what has been able to influence where they see much and see what is happening in the ABC are you seeing young people like to emerge in any leadership positions in the ABC which is obviously most likely going from the federal government. So I would say this you can't teach an old dog how to play new tricks you start looking at the competition for party positions within the ABC again say for their national youth leader Dior Israel again one who's again done some of the necessary work from the age of 10 getting himself to where he's today much good as to him outside of that realm you would find very un inspiring faces as you look at the ABC and how it's built its leadership structure going into the next administration again if we again hopefully come out of court with a judgment I would hope that Peter OB and my party would be the ones again having ministers and a cabinet and remember let's even talk about a possible Bella Ahmed timable administration and we look at a lot of figureheads that were part of his political campaign the surrogates and perhaps the individuals in his presidential campaign council it only tells you that the blueprint that we should expect is not one that young people would truly smile at yes you may have surrogates like his son who's again who's been on the front lines campaigning vigorously but you look at liberal party and you see inspiration you see what the future looks like from the candidates and even the faces behind the obedient movement a lot of people are first-timers in politics never run for counsellorship never run for LGA chairman never even run for House of Assembly as a matter of fact a lot of people who spearheaded this obedient movement in terms of the prominent verses could not even tell you what a world meeting look like or whether a political unit was but again these new school politicians and I would call them because again they're actively involved in politics have basically dismantled the political establishment even look at the latest elections and the results that emerge it would all the weekend I happened with all of the suppression and threats and ethnic divisiveness that the APC promoted they could not still again reduce the turnout giving us the victory so I'm saying something our party again speaking the language of the future so what are we doing about faintheck how we open Nigeria's brothers we see that Nigeria becomes a thousand destination every December next on Ghana two billion dollars from Afro nation what steps Nigeria from again saying Nigeria should be visa free in December let us complete our next one neighbors so I say give us smart policies a lot of young people the jacquard syndrome every day you go to the airport I see young people with their certificates fiscals to one degree orders fleeing this nation rather than having a brain drain can we have a reverse brain drain so for many of us like me a diaspora who lived in the US for 17 years coming back to Nigeria saying you know what home is home I want to be part of this nation building we are speaking the language that the next generation can benefit from so I'm hoping the APC can see a lot of things we have done it will talk about politics and how you even promote candidates in office for the first time in history of Nigeria you have online everyday working class Nigerians supporting political candidates going out knocking on doors printing t-shirts we hope we don't pay people to show up we don't mobilize the word mobilization to us is fresh or in Spanish so I'm saying what are we doing differently as a nation we say that you know what when our APC of labor or PDP Nigeria should work for everybody which have inclusiveness which have diversity and simply saying this country will then become the beacon on the hill an African continent for where we can become an example well thank you so much gentlemen well this is how much we can take because of time I can allow your public affairs analyst member of the Labour Party comrade national youth leader Labour Party and policy analyst and former Guardship aspirant APC of the state have been our guest today as we took a look at the LP plan nationwide strike against INEC and the call for the resignation of the APC chairman senator Abdul ahi Adamu of course my co-host has been added by a lower care who joined me virtually as always many thanks for watching thank you gentlemen I am Maureen Menongwese again good day


Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today, we are going to discuss the Controller and Auditor General's report, the CAG report, which has been placed in the parliament on the Rafale deal. Pornjoy, how do you react to this? In the Supreme Court seal cover, we had been told, this is what the Supreme Court judgment said, that the CAG has redacted the price and placed it before the parliament. All the figures have been given to CAG. This was said about two months back. Now, we find that actually CAG has redacted as predicted in the Supreme Court seal cover, presumably, that the price figures. Does it show that the CAG had already told the government what it was going to do? Pramir, firstly, this report presented by the Controller and Auditor General of India in parliament today, which is the 13th of February 2019, is not only about the Rafale aircraft manufactured by Dassault aviation. It deals with 11 contracts that were signed by the Indian Air Force. These were capital acquisition contracts between 2012-13 and 2017-18. The total value of all these contracts came to 95,000 crore approximately. Now wait, what is very interesting is right up front, the preface says that the Ministry of Defense in on the 15th of January 2019 had requested the CAG's office to redact the commercial details pertaining to the MMRCA, which is the Media Multi-Role Combat Aircraft Rafale. CAG was reluctant and refused to carry out the redaction of price information on account of difficulties in comprehension, and they can compare, but nobody will understand. I would like to add that the Ministry of Defense repeatedly told the CAG about this. The CAG, which is the Controller and Auditor General of India, is a religious organization. It is believed that it has a new president, who has not said before and then agreed. When did the Supreme Court give the letter and when did the Supreme Court verdict come on this issue? About two months back, which is after this letter by the CAG saying that we do not want to redact the price. In November, they have submitted the sealed cover to Supreme Court and 14th December, the verdict came out. In November, in the sealed cover, they predicted that this will be a redacted one, and they have told that to the CAG, as per the CAG report, in February this year. And it is truly amazing and CAG refused to accept it initially. Now, it is true that without those details, it's virtually impossible to decipher what is being compared to what, because all of it is X, Y, Z, M, all kinds of letters have been used. Let us, for instance, agree with what the government seems to be saying, that the Supreme Court judges were weak on grammar, they did not understand the different written past tense, present tense, and future tense. So, we will leave that to the Supreme Court to sort out its and the government's English, because we don't have what it is. I say, 11th December, CAG saw somebody. 11 contracts. Apache attack helicopter, Chinook heavy lift helicopter, pilotess, trainer aircraft, missiles, ammunition, lots of things, reconnaissance system, weather radar, attack helicopter apache, 11,420.05 crore. You gave everyone's number. You made your BXS in just one place. 10 defense purchases, capital acquisition. Now, on the 11th one, in the price column, just the price column, they blacked it out. That means it might have mentioned, we don't know whether it's mentioned, whether they had it, we don't know. It's blackened here. This is public money. Why, why Modi government is so scared or reluctant to disclose what they are spending from the consolidated fund of India. They have also said 95,000 crore in total purchase. They have also said, having said that it takes two minutes for you to calculate that the Rafale deal, as per CAG's 95,000 crore figure and the other 10 figures that they have given is about 60,000, 61,000 crore. It's nearly 61,000 crore. That's what it is saying to me. So, why this reduction of the total price if they had to redact the price of the details, if at all. Now, as the whole world knows, there is enough details out there which makes clear what the so-called India specific enhancements for which the prices, this presumably are keeping secret and the total price of the aircraft, they're keeping secret. This is really more your question. The India specific enhancements are not India specific enhancements. They are only India specific enhancements for Rafale. They are for other aircraft including for instance Eurofighter. These are very much a part of the base many of them. Not all of them, but for the many of them base bid and this is reiterated by the CAG. It's not me or you saying it. The CAG is saying it that these, lot of these were not India specific enhancements. They were called for in the tender itself. These were the deviations Rafale had taken because of which they were actually going to be thrown out of the bid. So, therefore, this whole English about India specific enhancement itself is a problem. Now, we have to take it in a different way. In a comparison, the CAG gives this comparison that ASQR is the India specific enhancements. That is ASQR is Air Staff Qualitative Requirements. Yes. So, Rafale was not matching with 14 of them where Eurofighter Typhon was lacking in four of them. Both the parties agreed that they will put it together. Now, my basic question is slightly different. I mean CAG says that this proposal was a totally different one. And CAG goes into complete length to describe the entire process of the MMR CA deal, okay. But when it come to this one, when it come to this one, they are completely, they are not at all saying a single word on the process. Who authorize the Prime Minister? In fact, it is a very interesting question you are raising. They have given details of how bad the earlier process was. They are starting from 2000 and up to 2015, then the Prime Minister's announcement. They are not saying what prompted the Prime Minister to announce, who authorize the Prime Minister to announce. These are not a part of this audit at all. On 27th of March, there is, according to the CAG, a decision to scrap the MMR CA deal. The Defence Minister public record seems to know about it when on March, on April 3rd? Yeah, on April 3rd. Jay Shankar, the Foreign Minister, does not know about it, one secretary. Two days before Mr Modi leaves, Modi leaves for France was not aware that this deal is going to be cancelled. A new deal is in the offing. New deal is announced and you can go back and see the announcement. They claim though they were not really agreement, it was just announcement. The announcements are made on 10th April. From 27th of March to 10th April, how would the defence procedures followed? This is the question you are raising. There is a procedure which has to be followed. Air Force has to say, I want this. On the basis of this, you have a procedure and if you are deciding the L1 bidder is to be negotiated with for a specific number of aircraft, you are scrapping the tender, then the L1 bidder has no meaning. And if you consider the L1 bidder to be still extend alive for this purpose, then the other bidders also could have been alive. To the Supreme Court, the government said on March, they started to, even this report says the same, they started to withdraw the MMR CA process. 10th March, his Prime Minister, Modi announced a new deal. 10th April, 2015. Now in this report, it starts only after the audit says only after whatever happened after the announcement of the Prime Minister's announcement. What prompted him to announce this? Who authorized him? Where is the air secure? What kind of a decision was reached which was not communicated to the defence minister? If such a decision was there, the details were not provided to the CAG as per this report. How did you come to a new agreement? Because the DPP, the defence procedure, even for intergovernment and agreement is quite clear. There has to be a set of processes to be followed. For our viewers, one must understand the 2G scan was not about who took the money. 2G scan was a violation of procedures. That is what the court said, the violation of procedures and violation of procedures is what the coal secretary has been convicted of. So, it is not that the violation of procedures are just matter of detail, they are the central issue when we talk about corruption and the government. CAG report blackened the price. The government do not want anyone to see the price. This morning, in the Hindu newspaper, N. Ram put out the dissent note of 3 members of the Indian negotiating team, the contact negotiation committee. There were the 3 technical members who had some ideas of this. That says the exact price is almost 7.88 billion, approximately few millions here and there. Which has been going around the media for a very long time. Now, this CAG report, when we take that price and that report says that dissent note says two things. One, and this also says, this CAG report also says there was a proposal from EADS that is the manufacturers of Eurofighter Typhoon, which Indian Air Force selected the two machines. And one was Rafaal and the other was Eurofighter Typhoon. And Eurofighter proved to be more expensive at that time. They are saying they were cheaper. 2012, they proved to be more expensive. Exactly. CAG report says that was cheaper. In that case, if they had to go, if Modi government had to go for a new deal, why didn't they consider that? The recent CAG report, government given to CAG report, government has told the CAG that it was an unsolicited report. So, they didn't go for unsolicited bid. Yeah, unsolicited offer. So, they didn't consider that. Assuming all the figures, redacted figures, which we don't see are there, they're all correct. Even assuming that based on the report, is it an Apple to Apple comparison to look at the price of the earlier 126 aircraft and the 36 aircraft bought to a common base or are there differences? Difference, Mr. Nirmala Sita Raman and Arun Jaitley. Arun Jaitley said 20% lower. Nirmala Sita Raman said it's 9% lower. And so did Trapeer. Trapeer said 9% cheaper in the interview. The reason is, in this particular deal, there is no bank guarantee. Correct. The bank guarantee has a price. If you look, see, the deal, it's the contract is signed on 2016. The contract ends on 2022. So, if you go for a bank guarantee, if as per how the difference deals works, if the manufacturer is refusing to give a bank guarantee, the government force them to give a bank guarantee saying that we will be at the bank guarantee charges. Charges are being sold. Correct. Right. The descent note, the descent note of those three INT members, they worked out. India negotiating team. Yes. They worked out the charges, which was coming to 7.8%. So, this means 7.8% fees are increasing. From that, 7.8% will get 2.8 minus. So, the difference is approximately 5%. So, the price is high. I'm going to give them a benefit of doubt, just because they have used so many letters of the alphabet to not tell us what the calculations are. So, we really don't know what they have or haven't done, which is what the CAG itself said, that nobody will understand when we deduct the price, what the hell have we audited. And I would go with that.  But leaving that out, the issue is that bank guarantee was not considered in the comparison. That is fairly clear from these two accounts. I think two very important issues. A 59,000 crores has been bandied about on the total price. Nearly 61 now. Now, as per this, according to CAG now, by simple subtraction, we reach a figure of 61,000 crores, roughly. So, that is one. The second is this 2.86 certainly is far lower than 20%, 9% that have been talked about. That was not there. The minister earlier. Actually, it's not there. And even this 2.86% seems to be highly suspect, because honestly, the bank guarantee figures we know, according to the dissent note of the three technical members, means that this price was going to be higher than the original price that they had offered. So, I think on both these counts, best we can give to the CAG. Well, shall we say, barely pass marks for their calculations, but certainly not much for transparency. No, I will use harsher language. I will allow you to do that. I'm saying it's a sham. I would, you're saying it's a sham. I am saying my classmate in college, Mr. Rajiv Merishi, the controller and auditor general of India, he's a constitutional functionary, hasn't exactly covered his office with glory by selectively choosing not to disclose information, which in the opinion of not just me, but large numbers of people would not have compromised the security of this country, but selectively redacted information, which evidently suits the ruling regime. So, the autonomy of the CAG, the independence of the CAG, I believe has been compromised. And as we discussed at the very outset, how did the Supreme Court know what was going to happen all this while, two months before? Last concluding remark, which I would like for Ajay to become, giving him the last chance on this, Ravi. No, I haven't given that. I'm going to not go on the assault. I'm going to ask you, Maharshi was the finance secretary. He's now become the CAG. This did go to the finance ministry in spite of what Mr. Jaitley says, because the defense procurement procedure is very clear that this has to be ceded by the finance ministry. Was it right on this part to have done this, signed the report, or should he have recused himself saying, I'm not going to be partied to this? Let somebody else in the CAG look into this. According to Mr. Arun Jaitley, the finance minister, who has given Mr. Raji Merishi a clean shit, saying that the finance secretary really had nothing to do with it.  The other justification could be that Mr. Merishi were a different hat at that point of time. As the secretary, the senior most secretary in the ministry of finance, he was holding a particular position. Now that he's in a constitutional position as the head of the control and auditor general of India, he can afford to look dispassionately at his own judgments, if you like. It's like saying somebody was finance secretary and becomes RBI governor, and therefore his position changes, and he can afford to be critical of himself. Regretfully, I wish I could be as charitable as this to my friend Mr. Raji Merishi. Then we left one thing in between here. The price was, for this particular deal, for 36 Rafal, the price what the so was given in 2000, 7.8 billion in 2015. Our government and ministers keep saying, this price is a better negotiated price. Before the negotiations started, this price was submitted by the so. Look at today's design note, it says. Okay, what you are saying is this was the price which was given at that time, submitted by Dasault. Negotiations does not seem to have made any change in the price. We must take it at face value. Is that what you are saying? Ravi, despite my classmates, I don't want to have the last word. I'd like you and Ravi to have the last word. I want to ask one question here. Where does Mr. Anil Ambani figure into all this? Well, there is going to be a separate CAG report on the offset contract that has also been written over here. So we have to wait for it with bated breath, whether this will do. Do you think it will happen before the elections or after the elections? How can parliament is over now? How it will not come out? I think it's very clear. The session is over. Parliament session is ending today. This is the last day. So why did they wait for the last day of the session of the government? This is today is Modi government's last day in the parliament. That's right. Thank you very much, both of you for being with us, trying to enlighten me and the viewers of this very complicated picture that the CAG has presented before the nation today. Enough for today. We'll keep coming back to you with more ruffles because I don't think this issue is going to go away.


This module focuses on the abortion law in Canada from the 19th century into the present day, through eras of crime, health, and rights. It presents abortion law as something of interest more than in the regulation of physicians and medical practice. It presents abortion law as a product of Canadian physicians' legal and political engagement. My name is Joanna Erdman. I am the McBain Chair in Health Law and Policy at the Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie University. And abortion law is one of my subjects of study. Today, I'll move through the eras of Canada's abortion law, marked by the social injustice that spurred each successive reform. In the early 19th century, Canadian colonies followed Britain in criminalizing abortion throughout pregnancy. This prohibition was then reflected in Canada's first criminal code of 1892 and remained the law until 1969. By the historical records, cases of women being punished under the law were exceedingly rare. In explanation, legal historian Constance Backhouse offers public sympathy for women's plight, as well as immunity being traded for their testimony. Prosecution, rather, targeted those who performed abortion, often midwives and other irregular practitioners. In fact, many historians linked the 19th century criminalization of abortion to the professionalization of medicine. State intervention was justified partly on an ideal of the profession, as said against the claimed moral corruption and commercial exploitation in abortion practice. Women nonetheless suffered under the criminal law, for they went to considerable lengths to control reproduction despite the law, seeking abortion from whoever offered and often at great risk. Poor women were confined to the vagaries of the back alley. Women with means turned to the sympathetic physician or private maternity hospital. In other words, criminalization did not so much outlaw abortion as it regulated it, allocating risk on the basis of social status. Long before any formal permission in law, physicians in hospitals were therefore performing therapeutic terminations of pregnancy. Legal scholar Shelly Gavigan explains that these physicians were not indifferent to the risk of criminal liability, but rather they perceived protection from professional autonomy and clinical work. By the 1960s, many hospitals had set up committees which physicians could consult to provide additional protection from prosecution. It's therefore unsurprising that when the Canadian Medical Association began to publicly question the criminal prohibition on abortion, and to advocate for reform along with the Canadian Bar Association, both professional organizations favored a hospital-based committee system. In many ways, it was already the status quo. In 1969, Parliament voted to amend the criminal code, such that procurement of a miscarriage was an indictable offence, unless performed by a doctor in an approved hospital on written certification of a committee with no less than three doctors, the continuation of pregnancy would endanger the woman's life or health. The reform had a dual purpose, both to provide a measure of legal protection for physicians, but also to provide a measure of legal control, refusing to give individual doctors discretion to authorize termination. Less therapeutic abortion would effectively become abortion on request. Unfortunately, the 1969 reform did not cure the social injustice of the criminal law. Class and other social bias was overwhelming in assessments of therapeutic need. The law was applied unevenly and unfairly. Married white middle-class women with connections to a family physician of good standing fared better in approvals, provided they were willing to be labeled mentally unstable in their medical records. For women of color, First Nations women and women with disabilities, the cost of a rare approval was greater. Certification was often granted only on consent to sterilization. Qualifying hospitals were always free under the law to set up committees or not. Most declined and the boards of others sent stringent approval standards. For women who made it through the system, a shortage of operating room time, a lack of equipment and training, created a scarcity driving it further access inequality. Women waited on average eight weeks for services. Women, and especially the socially marginalized, were forced outside the hospital and the law. But by the early 1970s, the back street on which they landed had changed. By this time, second wave liberation feminists took on abortion as a political cause. Not only did they mobilize for political and legal change, their direct action tactics led to their involvement in abortion service provision itself. Through underground information and referral networks, groups across the country provided women with pregnancy tests that had sympathetic and skilled clandestine providers, often physician, or newly legalized services in the United States. They also arranged for transportation and sometimes financial support. The introduction of vacuum aspiration also significantly made abortion safer and quicker to perform, especially outside hospital settings. These underground networks not only provided access to safe services, but bore witness to the injustice of the hospital committee system. Many groups first tried to work legal channels, seeking to persuade doctors to refer women to hospital committees and to shepherd women through the process, but they were rarely successful. More common were doctors sending women the other way to the underground networks for services. Activists used this outflow to politically protest the dysfunction and hypocrisy of the legal system to demand improvement in services. By 1977, a government study on the operation of the abortion law, commonly known as the Batchley Report, told the government what many Canadian women knew first hand, as activist Juby Reddit wrote, that the procedures in the criminal code for obtaining a therapeutic abortion were a loser for many Canadian women. Many of the clandestine providers during this time were physicians, perhaps the most famous among them Dr. Henry Morgantaler, a Montreal family physician. Morgantaler, along with colleagues across the country, provided abortion care as a matter of conscience and in defiance of the law. These doctor's services were illegal because they worked without committee certification in facilities without government approval, yet they provided services often with better complication rates than hospital doctors. Throughout the 1970s and into the early 80s, Dr. Morgantaler and colleagues opened and worked illegal clinics in Montreal, Toronto, and Winnipeg. Their clinics were raided and charges were laid, but juries often acquitted. Their civil disobedience was designed to engage and challenge the law. By inviting and fighting criminal charges, these physicians put the law on trial, arguing its dysfunction, inequity, and injustice. The Toronto Arrest and Trial of Dr. Morgantaler eventually led to the Supreme Court of Canada's 1988 landmark judgment, R. V. Morgantaler. In this judgment, the Supreme Court held that the 1969 law, the hospital committee system, was unconstitutional. It violated Section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Women's Right to Security of the Person. Based on the encyclopedic evidence of the Badgley Report, a majority of the court declared the law dysfunctional in practice. The lack of hospitals with committees and the long delays of the committee process significantly increased women's risk of harm. Physical harm from increased complications, but also psychological harm in the delay itself. In other words, the injustice of the criminal law was not that breaking the law threatened liberty and imprisonment, but that compliance with the law threatened health and well-being. This harm was simply inconsistent with or disproportionate to any legitimate objective of the criminal abortion law. In the lone opinion of Justice Wilson, however, the injustice of the criminal law reached further. She would have found the law in breach of the right to liberty, taking from women the most fundamental of personal decisions. A woman's right to develop her potential to the full, to plan her own life, to make her own choices, to be her own person. After R. V. Morgantaller, Canada was without any unique criminal offence of abortion. But it's a myth to say that Canada thus has no law on abortion. Rather, on decriminalization, abortion could have been absorbed into the public health care system and governed by provincial law regulating hospitals, medical profession, and the practice of medicine. It could have been, but it was not. Within months of the Morgantaller judgment, almost every province had some regulation to limit access to abortion services. Some replicated hospital committee approval and provincial law, others prohibited all abortions outside hospital facilities. And then there were the funding restrictions. When certified as therapeutic care, hospital abortions were fully funded under public health insurance schemes. But with decriminalization, funding restrictions were drawn, only in life-threatening circumstances, only on physician approval, only for hospital but not clinic services. All of these restrictions were challenged in court, and some with success. The British Columbia Civil Liberties Association denounced the funding restrictions in that province as 180 degrees opposed to the spirit of the decision of the Canadian Supreme Court in R. V. Morgantaller. Courts, however, decided these cases on narrower statutory rather than constitutional grounds. The restrictions were declared simply irrational health policy. It was not until the mid-2000s that charter rights cases in Manitoba and New Brunswick gained traction on funding restrictions. Though to this day, an over 20-year legal battle with the New Brunswick government over cleaning funding remains unresolved. Public funding remains restricted to abortion services performed by a gynecologist's obstetrician in an approved hospital and certified as medically required. One of the primary laws and challenge of the funding restrictions was the Canada Health Act. This is a federal statute that sets the basic criteria of our national health care system. Public administration, universality, comprehensiveness, accessibility and portability. And conditions full federal contribution for cost sharing in health based on provincial compliance with these criteria. In the 1990s, the federal government used its spending power under the Canada Health Act to politically compel provincial reform in abortion funding. Abortion was declared a medically necessary service by all provincial colleges of physicians and surgeons and then federal health minister Diane Marlowe ordered all provinces to fully fund abortion services as medically necessary health care or to face financial penalty. Some provinces complied, others took the financial hit. Today, almost all provinces have repealed abortion funding restrictions with the notable exceptions of New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. And yet, so many Canadians still face barriers to care. And this is because a formal right of access means very little when abortion services are simply unavailable. Since 1977, there has been a steady decline in public sector hospitals providing abortions, a critical service provider for rural and remote regions of the country. An increasing proportion of abortions are now performed in single purpose clinics, which are limited to large urban centres. The availability of abortion services in eastern Canada is especially concerning. As of July 2014, the only abortion clinic in New Brunswick shut its doors. And now, much as Canadians did in the criminal era, many are travelling across the US border for services. In Prince Edward Island, no services are offered on island, requiring inter-provincial travel in every case. These spatial disparities in abortion service availability levy a heavy burden in travel and expenses for those seeking services. In a 2013 study, researchers Christabel Sethna and Marion Dool captured these burdens. 18% of women who participated nationally in their study reported travelling more than 100 km to reach services. Many bypassed available hospital services because of real and perceived deficiencies in the quality of service. These access barriers and the social inequalities they engender give yet further reason to look to Health Canada and the pending approval of Mipha Pristin for use with mysoprostol in the termination of pregnancy. Health Canada oversees the approval of new drugs under the authority of the Food and Drugs Act, assessing drugs on the basis of safety, efficacy and quality. In 2012, a pharmaceutical company brought forward a new drug submission for Mipha Pristin to Health Canada. Although Mipha Pristin is registered in 57 countries for this indication, Health Canada has yet to approve the drug. When used with mysoprostol, Mipha Pristin is a safe and effective method of early term abortion. Moreover, a great promise of medical abortion is that it may be provided safely, earlier in pregnancy, by a more diverse set of providers including family physicians, nurse practitioners and midwives in a broader range of facilities. The approval of Mipha Pristin is thus an important step towards improving access in rural and remote communities and in reducing our gaps in service delivery. In summary then, let me offer this final thought. Many look to Canada as a lesson in the decriminalization of abortion. And our current state of service access and availability indeed offers an important lesson, which is this. On the decriminalization of abortion in Canada, associations of criminality carried into other realms, namely health policy. Allowing government to disclaim responsibility for abortion access and to reassign the social inequality and access to the market. The lesson. To ensure access to abortion services based on need, we sometimes need state intervention. We need government. We need good law. Laws that protect service providers through privacy protection. Laws that protect service access from harassment and obstruction. And laws that protect service availability through insurance coverage. This is the history of abortion law in Canada. To seek freedom from illegitimate state control over reproduction, but also to ask the state to govern in the interests of affected communities. That is abortion law in the service of health and rights. This presentation is not intended to serve as legal advice. The content is intended for education purposes only. This presentation was developed with the generous support of Dalhousie University's Health Law Institute. Thank you.