Hi, I was an extra on the first Harry Potter movie as one of the wizard kids. It was a wild experience and today I'm going to tell you a bunch of behind-the-scenes secrets. Secret number one, Hagrid was a real god. He was just a large man that lived near the set. He looked and smelled horrible. They only shot a seed with him because they wanted more creatures in the movie. Me and the other wizard kids, we would lure him out with meat from the catering table and then we'd throw rocks at him. He kept yelling at us, Oh, stay away from the castle. It's cursed. The cuts from the rocks gave him a really bad infection and he died a few days later. But the test audiences liked his scene so much, they CGI'd him into the rest of the movie. Movie magic, huh? Secret two, there were two Harry Potters. Casting child actors is apparently pretty tough, so they shot the movie a second time using another actor than Daniel Radcliffe. But once they decided Daniel Radcliffe would grow up to be hot, they decided to use his cut. My buddy Dave was the other Harry Potter and they never paid him. Secret three, Mystery filming location. The flight to the UK was way shorter than I expected it to be. When we weren't shooting, they would lock us inside and they would close the blinds so I could never see outside of the castle and figure out where in the UK we actually were. But I did see a sign on the bus right in that said Atlantic City, so we must have been near the ocean. Come to think of it, the producers, you know, they had normal British accents, but one time when they didn't know I was there, I overheard them speaking in American accents. Where do you think they filmed the movie? Leave a comment below. Secret four, Draco Sigfoy. Tom Felton, who played Draco Malfoy, taught me how to smoke cigarettes. Tom was clearly addicted. He said it helped him deal with the magic scenes, which were apparently really traumatizing to film. We blasted a pack of reds right before my first scene. I felt like I was gonna vomit, but he made me keep going. I would say no more cigarettes, Tom. No more cigarettes, please. And he'd say one more cigarette. Just one. I would say no, please, Tom. No more cigarettes. And then he'd light one and then he'd hold me down and he'd put it in my mouth and make me smoke it. Secret five, no shots of the floor. There are never any shots of the floor in that movie because the castle was infested with rats. It looked like a furry living carpet. You couldn't take off your shoes because they'd be immediately dragged under the floorboards and eaten by the rodents. Every time they shot a scene with magic in it, more rats would show up. The walls were full of them. It would be hard to sleep because you'd hear them screeching and eating each other all night. And then sometimes you'd wake up covered in scratches. Secret six, the injuries at Platform 9 and 3 quarters. It took way more tries than you'd think for us to go through the wall at Platform 9 and 3 quarters. Lots of actors got sent to the ER because they kept bonking their heads on the wall and getting concussions. Rupert Grant was actually discovered there. He was just a regular kid about to board a train with his family. The production saw his tough, leathery forehead.  He kept hitting the wall and hitting the wall and hitting the wall. He was bleeding from his forehead and his eyes. He could barely see, but production said, keep going Rupert, you're doing so good. One time he finally made it and he disappeared through the wall. And we got the shot. His family was long gone at that point and they haven't been reunited since. Even if they did meet again, they probably wouldn't recognize him because his face was permanently disfigured from hitting the wall so many times. Do you think Rupert Grant's performance as Ron was worth giving himself brain damage? Sound off in the comments. Secret seven, the dungeon creature. One time I was going to the bathroom and I got lost in the castle and I saw something. It was dark so I couldn't get a good look, but it was tall and lanky and red. It looked like a person, but the way it crawled on the floor, I've never seen a human move that way. I asked the director about it and he just started slapping me. He was saying, do you want to screw this up for us? Do you really want to screw this up for us? So I kept quiet about it. Secret eight, head big. Head wig, way bigger in real life. I only saw him once, but he was about the size of a buffalo. He was trying to fly away and the handlers, they had these ropes with hooks latched into his skin and they were trying to pull him down like a living parade balloon. Feathers and blood were flying everywhere. One of the producers was yelling, don't kill him. We need his blood for the ceremony, which I assume was the scene where Dumbledore announces who won the house cup. They eventually got him back down, but not before he took a big bite out of one of the camera operators. Secret nine, a magician never reveals their secrets. They wanted the techniques for filming the magic scenes to be totally secret. Nobody who wasn't a main cast member was allowed on set, not even me. So we'd have to wait locked up in our bedrooms and whenever they shot the magic scenes all the lights would flicker and the room would get super cold. The actors always looked so beaten up and tired afterwards. One time Emma Watson came back from shooting and her eyes were blank and she couldn't remember our names. There was one particularly intense magic scene where we felt the entire castle shake. We heard these horrible otherworldly voices echoing through the walls and a great beam of light shot up into the sky. The next morning there was slime all over the walls and it smelled like fish. Now those are some special effects. It was so intense that both of the Harry Potter actors, Daniel Radcliffe and my buddy Dave, disappeared. A week later they found Daniel naked a mile away from set. But Dave never returned. They said he was somewhere terrible now. How many kids do you think disappeared from the set? Let me know in the comments. Secret 10, The Potter Curse. For the last behind-the-scenes secret, we'll talk about the Potter Curse. It's always been rumored that if we ever revealed any information about what really went on behind the scenes of Harry Potter then we would immediately burst into...


Thank you very much, Hans. Thanks again, once again to you and Gwelchin for the invitation. Honored and happy to be here. I do believe this is my seventh or eighth time. I figure that if I keep attending every year that over time my percentage rate of attendance will asymptotically approach 100%, sort of like the Bitcoin inflation rate. Anyway, my topic today is reflections on the theory of contract. I do have these slides. I will post them later on my site when I post this talk. And I have some background material here in the beginning and sprinkled throughout the lecture. I was going to make a joke that Hans tends to assign me boring sounding titles and I was going over some of the previous ones I've done here which is on property rights and the protection of international investment and patent and copyright, corporations, legislation and common libertarian misconceptions. But they actually sound pretty juicy to me. I guess I'm just a legal geek or something. Anyway, when you say we're going to talk about contract it sounds like it's a mundane, boring topic but I believe this is key. A proper understanding of contract theory is key to having a solid understanding of what libertarian principles are all about. Libertarians usually view the libertarian bought a theory or principle as the non-aggression principle or the NAP. And they'll usually say something like the initiation of violence against others or aggression is impermissible. And they say so we're against aggression and then they'll just sort of throw in these other things that are sort of attached to it like ornaments to a Christmas tree.  As if these are all implicitly part of what it means to commit aggression and I'll go over this later. I think this is, we have to really understand the non-aggression principle as a shorthand for what the libertarian principles are but really aggression is the violence against someone's body and all these other things are related to our property theory. Okay, so the common understanding of contract even by libertarians is that contracts are binding promises. You say something and you magically create an obligation. You make something happen.  I'm gonna have a demonstration. This is my magic wand from Harry Potter. Lumos. Okay, it's the magic, right? A word. Thank you. The point is this is an incantation, a magic word that made something happen, right? In the idea of Harry Potter and magic and this view is similar to how most people think of contracts. You say some magic words like I promise to do this and therefore some obligation is magically created. Now, under the actual law that we're most used to which are the two main legal systems in the world are the common law and the civil law which is a type of Roman law. Under the common law, contract is viewed as if there's an offer made by someone and then the person to whom the offer is made accepts it. So we say offer plus acceptance equals binding agreement or contract. So A plus B equals C. In the common law, this contract is only binding if there's consideration which means both parties have to give each other something. However, otherwise it's called a nudum pactum. Sean, I'm trying my Latin here today or a naked promise which means it doesn't have enough consideration to be binding. However, the common law treats this requirement as basically a formality because it could be something as small as we say a peppercorn, it could be something tiny which is why contracts often have a dollar or $10 that is said to be paid for something large in return even if it's not actually paid. They're trying to imitate this peppercorn idea or this consideration idea. The Roman law doesn't exactly have the consideration requirement. It's a little bit more clean but you need cause which is the motivation of the parties which has to be a legal legitimate cause. Okay. And before we turn to the, what I think is the correct theory of contract, let me explain what in the actual law, the Roman law and also the common law to some extent, usually contracts give rise to obligations, legal obligations. These obligations are classified into two types. They're obligations to do and to give. Obligations to do something for someone like an obligation to perform a job, to paint a house or to sing at a concert or to give means to give someone some property that you own. The thing is obligations to do are always enforced with damages. That's monetary damages. In other words, if you so-called reach the contract and you don't perform what you are supposed to do, then the court in a lawsuit would award money damages. They don't make you perform the action you are supposed to perform. That would be called specific performance. And obligations to give something are also enforced by the court ordering you to either give money, which is a type of property in damages, or to transfer the title to the property in some cases, usually with real estate. So the rule basically is that the courts will not enforce specific performance. They will not make you do what you promised to do, except in the case of real estate because land is said to be unique. There's no replacement for this particular parcel of land because of its location. So they will enforce that specifically, but even in that case, the court is ordering the breaching party to transfer some title to the winning party. So in reality, all contracts are enforced ultimately by some transfer of property. It's never the court will force you to go sing at a concert and put you in jail if you don't. Now, the question is why would this incantation, I hereby obligate myself to do this, why would that be legally binding? So the law and legal theorists have offered different reasons for why this would be so, and the most common is the expectations or reliance interest theory. So the idea is that I promise to do something for you and then you rely upon what I promised and then you might change your position. That's called detrimental reliance. You change your position to your detriment if I won't perform. So my promise has caused you to change your position, relying upon my promise, and therefore if I'm not held to do that, I've harmed you. So that's the typical idea that people give. The problems people have pointed out, even Randy Barnett who's a libertarian contract law theorist as well is that this reasoning is circular because the law always says if I promise something and if you reasonably rely upon it, then I can be prevented from denying there was a promise or I have to follow through with it. But this reasonable part means that there's a circularity because it's not reasonable to rely upon a promise unless it's going to be legally enforceable. So if the legal system said promises are not by themselves legally enforceable, then no one would reasonably rely upon that. So you see how this is sort of a circular argument. Now, what's the proper way to be a contract? The proper way to be a contract is to view it as being embedded in the basic concept of libertarian property rights. So the entire, as Rothbard pointed out, all rights are property rights because every right determines who has the right to control a given scarce resource. A scarce resource is something that there can be conflict over, that people could have violent conflict over. So property theory always answers the question who has the right to control this resource. And libertarianism is just simply unique in our particular set of answers to this question. Who owns what? So there are two basic sets of questions. One is about human bodies. And this is what non-aggression is really about. In the case of bodies, our answer is self-ownership. Every person owns himself, at least initially, at least presumptively. Okay, and this is actually as Professor Hoppe has pointed out in some of his earlier work, which has not been translated yet. The right to control one's body does not really arise from homesteading. It arises from the fact that we directly control our bodies. This gives us a special link to our own bodies. So this is libertarian theory of body ownership. Now for all other things in the world that are scarce resources, these are basically previously unowned resources. Our bodies were not previously unowned, which is why they're not homesteaded. But other things in the world are at one point not used and not homesteaded, and then they become used by people. These are external resources. So to answer the question who owns that resource when there's a dispute by two or more people over who has the rightful control of that resource, the libertarian approach is to resort to three basic principles. The first one is original appropriation, locky and homesteading. That is, all things being equal, the person who first uses a resource has a better claim to it than others. As Hoppe talks about prior owners or prior users have a better claim than late comers. If this was not the case, there would be no such thing as ownership, because anyone's use of something would just be temporary and subject to the whims of late comers who would steal it from them. So prior owners have to have a better claim, all things being equal, than late comers. Unless the prior owner voluntarily transferred the property to someone else, this is what contract is. So that's the consensual transfer. Or unless the previous owner harms someone, invades their property, thereby incurring an obligation to compensate them. That's rectification or restitution. So in those two cases, you could see that a third party could have a better claim to a resource than was previously owned. So by resort to these three principles, we can in principle determine who owns any given resource in the world. So property theory is about the acquisition of resources, but also about the transfer of title to resources due to loss or harm or transfer of those resources. So involuntary loss that is due to a tort or trespass or crime, that's dealt with by punishment theory and restitution theory. Voluntary transfer is dealt with by contract theory. So this is what contracts are. Contracts are not binding promises. Contracts are simply transfers of title to property. Now, and if you think about it, this is what property rights are. Property rights means a human being is assigned the ownership of a resource, including your body, which means you have the right, it's called exclusive ownership. Why do we say exclusive? Because you have the right to exclude other people from using your property or you have the right to consent or give them permission or sometimes called license to use your property, including your body. So examples of when you give consent to use your property would be letting someone hug you or kiss you or have sex, getting a massage, having surgery, having a surgeon cut into your body with your consent, entering a boxing match and getting hit by someone, inviting people to a party at your home and they enter into your home and they're using your home, renting your car, renting a car from someone, you have temporary use of the car. These are all examples of the owner giving consent to use, to someone else to use the property. And then non-consensual would be sex that it's not consented to, which is called rape or someone sticking a knife into me when I don't consent, which might be called battery or murder if I die and someone using my house without my permission is trespass or someone taking my car without my permission would be theft. So consent is the key. Justice consent is the key for determining for who can use property owned by someone. It's also the key of contract. So contract is when the owner expresses consent to transfer ownership to someone else of the resource. So the owner of the resource has the right to loan it temporarily or to allow someone to use it or to permanently and completely transfer the title. That is the alienate title. So it just depends upon what the terms of the contract are. And by the way, contracts do not have to be written. A lot of people think that a piece of paper with words on it is the contract, which is not the case because you could have oral contracts and by the way, most contracts are verbal. Written contracts are verbal because words are used. So people often say verbal to mean oral. But contracts need not even be verbal. Sometimes you could have two people that don't speak a language and they engage in a transaction by just gesturing or pointing or they understand. I want to buy that newspaper for a dollar. No words are exchanged. That's a nonverbal contract, but even that's a contract. It's a transfer of title to property. All this is a result of some pioneering work by two libertarian theorists, Williamson Evers, who's still living, and Murray Rothbard. Which is, actually I believe this is one of Rothbard's most important achievements and unoverlooked achievements. And it's even more surprising because neither Rothbard nor Evers or lawyers or legal theorists and that they came up with this, to my mind, as astonishing. As an indication of how Rothbard viewed the importance of this, Williamson Evers published his pioneering article on this in volume one, issue number one, the first article of the Journal of Libertarian Studies in 1977. And then a few years later, Rothbard had a chapter in his Ethics of Liberty based upon Evers' work where he elaborates this theory as well. So my initial thinking was that Evers was a genius that he is and he came up with this idea and then Rothbard built upon the work. But later I discovered that in 1974, three years before Evers' article, Rothbard has this really important article, Justice and Property Rights, where he has a few paragraphs hinting and suggesting at the basis of this contract theory. So what I believe happened is that Rothbard, this is really Rothbard's theory. He had discussions about it with Evers. So Evers took it and wrote his article. Rothbard published it in issue number one of the JLS and then Rothbard built upon it. So this is honestly Rothbard's theory as elaborated by Evers. And I finally tracked down Bill Evers about two years ago after trying for maybe five or 10 years because he's difficult to get hold of and he's not initially very friendly. But I finally reached him through persistence and he agreed to do a podcast with me about this and he basically agreed with what I had surmised about the chronology of this. Now, I'm gonna just go through types of contracts under this understanding and some of these classifications are in common with the way the Roman law does it, but not exactly because Roman law and the common law view contracts as binding obligations whereas we would not view contracts as obligations but simply as transfers of title. So you could say that a contract has to include either one or more transfers of title and these can be conditional or unconditional and they can be present or future-based transfers of title. So let me just give a couple of examples. So a donation or a gift is when I transfer some resource to you. So I'm giving you ownership of something. Now that'd be one way because it's only going from me to you. There's not something coming back. It's unilateral and it's unconditional and it's present because I'm giving to you now, there's no conditions, you get it. Now imagine someone telling their granddaughter, if you make good grades next year, I'll pay your tuition. So that's a gift, it's a donation. It's one way because she doesn't give anything back, no title, to any property back. It's unilateral, it's conditional though. So it will only happen if the condition is satisfied, that is if she makes good grades. And it's also in the future because he's going to pay her at some time in the future after the condition is determined to have happened or not, which also makes it conditional because the future is uncertain as Austrians have pointed out many times. Another more common type of contract would be a two way and a bilateral. Bilateral means each obligation, each title transfer is dependent upon the other and there's each person is transferring something to the other. And it can be contemporaneous like a purchase of an apple.  These are not conditional, they're conditioned only on each other. Like the title to my coin is conditioned upon you giving me an apple and the title to the apple is conditioned upon you giving me the coin. But it's not based in the future. Now take the example of employment or paying someone for a service. I pay you to pay at my house or I pay you to show up at my factory. That is one way, not two way. Most people think of that as a two way contract because you're exchanging services for money. And economically that might be the right way to think about it because it is an economically it's an exchange but legally it is not an exchange because you don't own your labor. You don't own your actions. It's just something that you do. You could think of the action that has performed the labor as one of the ways of satisfying the condition of the one way title transfer. So for example, a wage contract really is if you paint my house, if you show up at my factory for a week, eight hours a day, then I will transfer $1,000 to you. So you see the only title transfer there is $1,000. Saying that you're selling your services is I believe a metaphorical way of describing it or maybe an economic way but it is a confusing metaphor and I believe this kind of mistake helps lead to the labor theory of property and intellectual property ideas because people start thinking of they own their body, they own their labor because after all I sell my labor, I must own that labor if I'm selling it and if I own my labor then I own anything that's the fruit of that labor so I own everything I create that's of value so you see how you get to the intellectual property idea if you have a confusing understanding of contract theory itself. Alone is another example of a contract which is a two-way and bilateral and it's partly conditional, partly unconditional, partly present, partly future. What I mean by that as alone is I give you money now and you give me money in the future. So the future money is necessarily uncertain because it might not exist because the future's uncertain, right? The debtor may have no money in the future. His project may go bust, he may be bankrupt, he may be dead. The world may have exploded. So the future money is what we call in the civil law hope, it's the sale of a hope. It's something that doesn't exist. So the exchange is conditional only in the sense that I'm only transferring this present money to you conditioned upon you agreeing now to transfer future money to me in the future. So that's the condition but the present money, the loaned amount is given unconditionally in the sense that the debtor owns that money completely because he needs to be able to spend it on whatever purpose he is borrowing it for. Then there's other types of contracts, wagers like a bet, leases, rentals, giving someone permission to enter your house, restrictive covenants which is agreements entered into between homeowners that neighbor each other not to do certain things with their property, things like this. So again, I just wanna call attention to the fact that all future transfers have to be conditional and this is important, it's important for analyzing issues like fraud and theft as I'll get to later if I have time and if not I have a long article on this which interested parties can research later. By the way, one of my lesser known books among libertarians and Austrians is a legal book I wrote about five years ago. It's a dictionary of Louisiana civil law terms which is a Roman law based system and actually a lot of the classification terms that we would use to classify different types of contracts which I did not use here because I wanted to keep it descriptive and understandable but we have words like aleatory contracts, synaligmatic contracts, onerous, gratuitous, commutative, accessory contracts. So you can see how there's different classifications of contracts according to the mixtures of things that you do, the conditions you put on them, the nature of the things being transferred. Okay, what do we have about five minutes Hans? Okay, all right. Now, in essence what you can see is that there's almost no difference in result of this Rothbardian and Evers' view of contract and the way the law really operates. The way the law really operates is they say that contracts are binding promises and binding obligations but in reality all the courts do is award damages or award a piece of real estate. So all the court really does is enforce the transfer of title to property. They never force people to abide by their obligations. So why say that there's a breach of contract with damages and money? Why not just make them what they are? Why not regard contracts as what they are which is transfers of property? So for example, even Rothbard himself slips up a little bit when he tries to analyze inalienability in his contract article. I think just because he was not a deep legal theorist and he went so far in this article, it's incredible, but he tries to say why would not debtors' prison be legitimate? Because if you view contracts as binding obligations and if you have an obligation to repay a loan and you don't repay the loan, well then you're breaching your contract and you're arguably committing theft which is what Walter Block views. And so if you have a strict legal system then you could be punished, be put in jail for theft. And so debtors' prison used to be actually employed. Rothbard wants to say that that is not legitimate so he argues that it's disproportionate. I think the better argument is that it's not theft. It's not theft because remember in a loan the transfer is money now, it's used by the borrower. According to the consent of the lender, later the borrower has no money to repay the loan. Remember that future money was an uncertain thing and if it doesn't actually exist now. So if I don't repay you today because I'm penniless there is nothing to steal. So Walter says something like, well the original money was stolen because it was only given conditionally but it wasn't given conditionally because if it was given conditionally that means the borrower wouldn't have been able to spend it. So that had to be given fully in the beginning. Okay, now let me mention one more thing. In my article on this I go into why this view of contracts explains whether our bodies are alienable or not. So I think contracts are used to transfer title to these external resources which are alienable. Our bodies are not alienable. If I promised to be your slave I try to sell title to my body to you. Under the original theory of contract the mainstream theory there's no clear reason why that wouldn't be binding because a promise is a binding obligation. I promise to be your slave, I promise to do what you tell me to do. If I don't do that, if I don't follow your orders then I'm breaching the contract. Under our theory the question is simply can you transfer title to your body? I believe you cannot and this is because of the difference which I mentioned in the beginning the difference between ownership in the body and in external resources. The body is not homesteaded. The body is owned because of our direct connection to our body. Our direct control over the body. And that direct control doesn't go away after you make a promise to someone to be their slave. So you're still the owner of your body because you still have the best link to your body. External resources on the other hand are things that were previously unowned. At one point they were unowned and they become to be owned by an act of original appropriation which means they are appropriated, they are homesteaded. Homesteading is an act of an intent to own by a human actor which means that you can abandon these things. You can own it and then you can unown it with your consent. Just like you can consent to someone borrowing your property you can consent to them having it. You can consent to abandoning it and relinquishing your intent to own it and then the next person can re-homestead it so to speak. So this is why a contract to sell an item that you own is enforceable and is effective but a promise to sell your body is not. I go into that in more detail in this article so I think the Rothbardian and Ever's View of Contract actually points to the right way to view the inalienability question. Also fraud, which I think I don't have time to get into this now, but fraud is an outcome of the fact that title transfers can be conditional. So if I transfer some money to you conditioned upon you giving me an apple by the language being used, by the meanings being shared by the parties to the contract, by apple I mean something and he means something. We mean an actual healthy apple that's not a bomb or not loaded with poison. So if he gives me a poisoned apple on purpose or a bad apple and he takes my coin, he knows that my coin title transfer is conditional upon his giving me an apple and he knows he's not doing that. So he's basically receiving possession of my coin but not titled to it. He's receiving it by trick. This is what fraud needs to be viewed as not just some kind of dishonesty or lying to people. It has to be part of a contract, contractual interaction. In any case, I think I'll wrap up here but I will say that I'm gonna put these notes on my thing but I did have a long discussion with Tom Woods on his podcast a couple years ago about this, about this whole theory and I also have two of my lectures in the Mises Academy series on libertarian legal theory I did a few years ago which deal in depth with this contract theory so people can look that up there or read my long article on it. So I'll close now. Thank you very much.


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here see multiple inverse of two is one by two but one by two does not belong to z. So, therefore, z with multiplication has a binary operation is not a group. Next example five say whether n plus n with addition has a binary operation is a Avalian group. So, here n with a set of all natural numbers clearly satisfies closure and associative property under the usual addition as a binary operation. So, zero is the identity but zero does not belongs to n. Here set n is also called counting number. So, here the zero does not belongs to this set. So, also moreover for A belongs to n we do not have this type of element A minus A is equal to zero. So, zero does not belongs to n. So, inverse of A is equal to minus A does not belongs. There is no negative number. So, hence n plus is not a group. So, next example six. So, that q plus set of positive rational number is an Avalian group where star is defined by this. A star B is equal to E B by 2 for all A B belongs to q. So, we have to show that q plus q plus comma star is an Avalian group and here a binary operation is defined by this relation A star B is equal to A B by 2. So, here is a particular solution of example six. So, here q plus is a set of all positive rational numbers. So, first we see the closure property. So, clearly A star B is equal to A B by 2. So, means any element we consider from does this set set of all positive rational number. So, this relation will always satisfy. If we take any element suppose we consider 3 and 2 belongs to q plus means 3 star 2 means 6 by 2. So, this element will always belongs to q. So, you take any elements from q plus 2. So, this relation is always satisfied. So, this means closure property is satisfied. Next associative property. So, first we define we find this a bracket A star B star C. So, A star B A B by C star C then after again applying this operation defined by this relation we will get A B C by 2 divided 2 is equal to A B C by 4. Similarly, we find this here also we get A B C by 4. So, from this two relation we see that this is equal to this. So, A and B their relationship is same. So, associative property is satisfied. So, here you see this property is satisfied. So, next you see identity we find identity. So, we consider E B the identity element. So, then A star E is equal to A. So, for existence of identity this condition must be satisfied. Therefore, A star E is equal to A. So, A star E is equal to E means A E by 2 is equal to A. So, this implies E is equal to 2. So, here identity elements E is equal to 2 belongs to q. So, this is the identity element. So, next we find the inverse element. So, suppose this is the inverse element A to the power minus beta inverse of A, then for inverse of element we must have this property A star B is equal to E is equal to B star E. So, already we find that 2 is the identity element. So, A star A to the power minus 1 is equal to D is the identity. So, after applying the relation A star A to the power minus 1 we find this relation and after calculation we get A inverse A to the power minus 1 is equal to 4 by A. So, this is the inverse element. So, inverse of A is 4 by A which is belongs to q plus. So, now, we check the commutative property. So, for commutative we have this A star B is equal to B star A. So, A star B is equal to A B by 2. Similarly, B star A is equal to B by A by 2. So, this condition is satisfied. So, therefore, q plus with binary operation star is an abelian group. So, next we discuss example 3. Here, z is the zivita set of all 2 by 2 matrices with non-zero determinant. Then, so that z is an abelian group under matrix multiplication, but it is not an abelian group. So, here we are given that the zivita set of 2 by 2 matrices with non-zero determinant. Then, we have to prove that z is a group under matrix multiplication, but this is not an abelian group. So, first we check for closure property. So, A B belongs to z, any 2 matrices we consider from z, any 2 matrix we consider from z. So, your multiplication will be always belongs to z. So, your closure property is satisfied. Then, associative since matrix multiplication, we know that matrix multiplication is associative, though we have this condition is satisfied. Then, identity. So, identity is a matrix. So, we consider the identity, this identity matrix we consider. So, here we know that A, so this condition is always satisfied in matrix. So, therefore, this will be the identity element. So, now, we find the inverse element. So, inverse of matrix A is this, A to the power minus 1 is equal to 1 by determinant of A, the element of this matrix is D minus C A, this belongs to z. So, all conditions of group is satisfied. So, therefore, z is a group, but matrix multiplication is not commutative. So, this set with matrix multiplication is not an abelian group. Next, we move to the example 8. Here, example 8 is let G be denoted as the set of all matrix of the form. So, G is the set of all matrices of the form x, x, x, x, where x belongs to R, where x not is equal to 0. So, we have to show that G is a group under matrix multiplication. Your closure property. So, we consider any two matrix from the set G, where A is equal to this and B is equal to this. A matrix is x, x, x and B is y, y, y, y, 2 by 2 matrix. So, after multiplication, we will get ab is equal to 2 x y, 2 x y, 2 x y, 2 x y. So, this belongs to G. So, therefore, closure property is satisfied. Then identity. So, we consider E is the identity. So, A is equal to A is equal to EA. For existence of identity, we have these conditions. So, after simplifying this condition, we get 2 x y, 2 x is equal to x. So, identity element is 1 by x. So, for E 1 by x, 1 by x, 1 by x, 1 by x is the identity element of G. Next, we find inverse element. So, let this matrix be the inverse of this matrix. So, we apply the condition of existence of inverse, this AB means we have this condition AB is equal to I is equal to B. Then B is called inverse of A. So, applying this condition, we get this AB into B is equal to identity element. This is the identity matrix. So, after simplifying, we get this. After modulation of this 2 matrix, we get this. So, 2 x y is equal to 1 by 2. So, y is equal to this 1 by 4 x. So, inverse of this matrix is 1 by 4 x, 1 by 4 x, 1 by 4 x and 1 by 4 x. So, this belongs to G. So, all conditions of a group is satisfied by this set. So, hence G is a group. So, next we discuss example 9 and 10. So, here you have to show that G with this matrix is an abelian group under matrix modulation. So, Lana requested to solve this problem yourself. Similarly, example 10, the set of matrices, this set forms a group under matrix modulation. So, this example also you try yourself. So, now, we come to the end of today class. In today class, we have discussed what is a group and properties of group and we solve various type of problem. So, here we discuss a group. A group is an algebraic structure that is a non-empty set equip with a binary operation which satisfies certain postulates and properties of group also discussed in today class. So, next class we will discuss about subgroup, coset and normal subgroup. So, thank you.


Never lose to brimstone again. Spread the word. One enemy remaining. You're nice. He might have molly. Try to bounce the molly with your body. Try to bounce with your body. Nice. Let's go. Nice. Nice. Let's go.


Within easy reach of San Francisco's busy metropolis lies seven natural treasures, as precious as the gold discovered near here in 1848. Their islands and ponds, dunes and wetlands are havens for wildlife and for people. These special places are the national wildlife refuges of the San Francisco and Monterey Bay areas. They are part of a national network of more than 548 refuges, totaling nearly 96 million acres. Wildlife conservation has been the promise of the national wildlife refuge system since it was founded by President Teddy Roosevelt in 1903. For more than a century, the refuge system has worked with others to manage, restore and conserve habitat. Special places for wildlife to nest, rest and raise young. The national wildlife refuge system conserves some of America's most special places. Places where birds, fish, plants and other wildlife can survive and thrive. Refuges are also the people's lands, providing quality outdoor experiences for current and future generations. Three of the local refuges lie in the northern part of San Francisco Bay. Antioch Dunes National Wildlife Refuge runs along the southern shore of the San Joaquin River. It was the first national wildlife refuge set aside to protect endangered plants and insects. The refuge is home to the Antioch Dunes evening primrose and Contra Costa Wallflower. It is also home to the Endangered Langs Metalmark Butterfly, which is dependent on native buckweed and lives nowhere else in the world. Docents lead tours each month and volunteers help with habitat restoration and monitoring. San Pablo Bay National Wildlife Refuge was established to protect the pickleweed and cord grass salt marsh and its resident endangered species. The California Clapper Rail is a full-time resident, as is the salt marsh harvest mouse. Both species live only in the salt marshes of San Francisco Bay, and this refuge provides some of their best habitat. This area is a major stop along the Pacific Flyway. Millions of migrating shorebirds and waterfowl can be seen here from fall through winter. Among them is the largest population of canvas-backed ducks on the west coast. Miles of walking and bicycling trails provide access to marsh and bay views and rewarding bird-watching opportunities. Volunteer opportunities include helping in the native plant nursery. Although composed of only two tiny specks of rocky land in their surrounding waters, Marin Islands National Wildlife Refuge hosts one of the largest heron and egret rookeries in California. It also provides habitat for other birds, such as the black oyster catcher, osprey and geese. Volunteering provides a rewarding way to see the refuge. Organized groups help remove invasive vegetation and plant native species throughout the year. Feralon National Wildlife Refuge is the oldest of the refuges in the Bay Area. It is made up of a half-dozen rocky outcrops known as the Feralon Islands, which rise from the Pacific Ocean 28 miles west of San Francisco Bay. Feralon's cliffs are brimming with common meurs and other seabirds. Below them, fur seals, elephant seals and sea lions breed or haul out after an ocean swim. Fur seals are breeding on the islands again, after more than 150 years' absence. From late summer to fall, large numbers of California brown pelicans also make their home here. For seabirds and marine mammals, the Feralon Islands are a sanctuary where they can rear chicks and raise pups. Commercial boat trips provide good views of the island's wildlife. South of the Feralon Islands, at Monterey Bay, lie two more refuges, Salinas River and Ellicott Slough. Salinas River National Wildlife Refuge is a patchwork quilt of habitats, including grassland, salt marsh, saline pond, sand dunes and the Salinas River. Thanks to its habitat diversity, this small refuge provides living space for a variety of wildlife species, many of them threatened or endangered. Among them are western snowy plovers. During the summer, they nest on the beach in dunes. The Salinas River Refuge is one of the few places left in this part of California where plovers breed successfully. During spring and fall migration, thousands of shorebirds and waterfowl gather on the saline pond in the river. Wildlife viewing and photography can be spectacular along the three miles of walking trails. The beach also offers wildlife viewing as well as surf fishing, a popular activity. Nearby lies Ellicott Slough National Wildlife Refuge and State Ecological Reserve. This refuge was established to protect the Santa Cruz Long-Towed Salamander and its seasonal wetland and upland habitats. Biologists monitor this endangered species throughout the year to help ensure its survival. Here, staff work with local students to restore native habitat. Once again on San Francisco Bay, along its southern end, lies the Don Edward San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge. It was the country's first urban national wildlife refuge. Don Edwards is the largest of our local refuges and it provides an oasis for millions of migratory birds and a variety of endangered species. It serves as headquarters for the seven refuges of the San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge complex. A variety of activities and education programs are offered here and at the Environmental Education Center in Alviso. In addition to conserving habitat for wildlife, the National Wildlife Refuge System also restores habitat altered by urbanization. Examples of restored habitats can be seen throughout the refuge, but the most extensive is the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project. It is one of the largest tidal wetland restoration projects in the West. When completed, a rich mosaic of wetland habitats will replace more than 15,000 acres of former commercial salt ponds. There will be restored tidal marsh and ponds managed for wildlife. The restored marsh will provide habitat for endangered species such as the California Clapper Rail and Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse. The water level in the ponds will be managed to improve the feeding and resting habitat for migratory and resident water birds, and for the threatened western snowy plover, all of which thrive in a saltier environment. Conversion of the salt ponds will bring other benefits too. Water quality will be improved and nursery habitat provided for fish. There will be better flood management and more wildlife-oriented recreation. Already the public is welcome to enjoy more than 35 miles of walking trails, join guided walks, come for special events, or participate in environmental education activities. You can also volunteer to help lead activities or get involved in countless other ways. There is something for everyone. There is something for you. They are close. They are wild. They are yours. They are the refuges of the San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge Complex. Now let's go outside.


Well guys, 2021 is off to an amazing start. After months of lockdowns followed by a spotlight on police abuse that led to a summer of legitimate protests and illegitimate, but I'm told mostly peaceful riots, we wrapped up the year with an extremely contentious presidential election that brought America's political division to a new peak. And because I'm obviously the luckiest person on the planet, I got to experience that partisan animosity all over again in December thanks to Georgia's runoff election. I approve this message. This message. I approve this message. Ugh. As if that weren't enough, President Trump's complaints of election fraud and the outrage over the final outcome brought a massive protest to Washington, D.C. That ended with a group of people that have been labeled insurrectionists breaking into the Capitol building while Congress was in session. And just like at some of the other riots last year, several people got killed in the chaos.  But speaking of restricting certain types of expression, all of this brings me to the subject of today's episode, social media censorship. This is an incredibly complex, often misunderstood, but extremely important subject. So no matter who you are and where you're coming from, prepare to have some of your beliefs challenged on this episode of Out of Frame. As I'm sure you're aware, after the Capitol break-in, much of the news media blamed Donald Trump for inciting the violence in the first place. Now legally, that's a pretty bold claim that's rightfully very difficult to prove. But whether or not that argument actually holds up in court, the political media was on fire from the next week, blaming Trump until he was eventually impeached. Again. I'll leave you all to debate about that in the comments, because what I really want to talk about in this video is what happened next.  Facebook did the same thing.  To be fair, Parler's CEO claims that they actually got shut down to stop Trump from joining, so we'll see about all that. Either way, all the major social networks started engaging in a massive purge of individuals, groups and pages that had anything to do with Trump, the stop the steal protests, or in some cases Republican politics in general. Predictably, all these actions enraged a large percentage of the 74.2 million people who just voted for Trump and who now have even more reason to believe that big tech is using its immense power over human communication to manipulate the political direction of the country. For someone who deeply cares about free speech, the last few weeks have been shocking to watch in a bunch of different ways, but it's all seriously reinforced a point I've made many times to anyone who will listen. You can't censor your way into less extremism. Lord knows it's been tried. For years, we've seen growing hostility from people who believe they have a right to silence any ideas they consider too dangerous to be heard. It's become a moral crusade. They're doing it for the greater good, after all. And sure enough, over the last decade, this kind of cancel culture has attacked hundreds of targets with an incredible mix of arrogance and ineptitude. They've bravely promoted the escalation of violence against fascists, while simultaneously using that label to describe just about anyone who doesn't blindly support the latest ideological fad in the woke orthodoxy. It's a confusing world where professors who rejected racial segregation on college campuses, actors who took roles outside their personal experience, artists and musicians who are influenced by other cultures, popular comedians who tell jokes that don't land years or decades after they were spoken, and even respected academics whose work might lead to uncomfortable conclusions all get tossed into the same category as society's worst bigots. But that's exactly what's happened. People who aren't extremists or bigots have been shouted down at events, cut off from social media, doxed and harassed, physically assaulted, and become the subjects of coordinated de-platforming campaigns in the name of purging wrong-think from the world. In some cases, the social media companies themselves have actively participated in these kinds of witch hunts. And yet, strangely, none of this has done anything to de-escalate tension across our society. In fact, the more this illiberal minority tightened its control over what ideas people are allowed to openly discuss, the more polarized and detached from each other we've all become. And with serious political violence becoming more and more common on both sides of this divide, we need to take a moment to learn how we got here and how to fix what's gone wrong. It's hard to say exactly how far back we need to go here, but I do think it's important to recognize that a lot of the shifts in our culture have been a product of demographic and economic changes to the makeup of our society. Thanks to widespread free trade, coupled with innovations in mass communication, cheaper energy and new transportation technology, we all experience a much more international existence than anyone's ever had before. Overall, this has been a huge win for humanity. Global poverty and hunger dropped significantly. Access to health care and education shot up. Lifespans improved, child labor went down. We have more and more affordable goods and services, faster innovation and vastly more wealth. But this also resulted in some major political and cultural changes. Not all of which have been good, nor have their costs been felt equally by all groups of people. Especially in the United States, the cultural split between people living in urban and rural areas exploded. So where once a large percentage of Americans could relate to a blue-collar, duck hunting conservative like Phil Robertson, by 2013 he was part of an ever-shrinking minority. Meanwhile, over this same period, people who had no cultural standing before started to gain power and influence. They were also going to college. And while that should mostly be understood as a positive development, it opened the door to some things that were not so good. In particular, cancel culture. I've done several videos that touch on this subject already, but I feel like I've often had to gloss over the role postmodernism and Marxist critical theory have played in the coddling of the American mind. Starting in the early 20th century with philosophers like Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault, postmodernism's rejection of many core enlightenment principles began a decades-long dismantling of concepts like objective truth and common morality. Now, before you dismiss this idea entirely, postmodernism's rejection of overly rigid rules did make some important contributions to aesthetics by encouraging artists to borrow techniques from multiple cultures, time periods, and traditions to create some really cool stuff. So it's not all bad. But applying the same deconstruction of grand narratives to science, mathematics, physics, economics, politics, and perhaps especially ethics is a disaster. Of course, postmodernism has an important ally in this story, and its name is critical theory. Around the same time that postmodernism was taking root in academia, Frankfurt School Marxists like Herbert Marcus, Max Horkheimer, and Eric Frohm were building a philosophy of history, sociology, and media that viewed everything through the lens of group identity, ideology, and political power. History is just an ongoing battle between oppressive exploiters, mostly capitalists, and the oppressed. As far as I can tell, their purpose as academics is almost exclusively to be political activists, teaching students to hate the ideas and narratives of people supposedly in power, including I'm Not Making This Up, Work Ethic, Logical Reasoning, and The Scientific Method. Health itself is little more than a social construct, a function of power, and even the meaning of words can be defined and redefined at the whim of those who want to reshape society. By the 1970s, these ideas had thoroughly spread into the humanities and teacher education. By the 1980s and 90s, they were significantly influencing entertainment and popular culture. By the 2010s, a whole generation of young adults had grown up with these ideas embedded in every aspect of their lives, and then they signed up for Twitter and went to work for social media networks. I'm obviously condensing this story a lot, but it's all just set up for the culture war we find ourselves in today.  Even copyright law was originally established as a way of ensuring that the king had control over what people who owned printing presses were allowed to publish. There's nothing new about that. It took Western society millennia before we saw the first real limits on state power. It took another several hundred years before those limits started preventing the regulation of speech and a few hundred more years before those limits were actually even close to equally enforced. Most countries don't have any legal protections for free speech at all, and almost none have anything close to our First Amendment. And that has had to be vigorously defended in the courts in order to expand the protection of speech to more and more groups of people. It's just that since the Enlightenment, this aspect of society has been steadily improving. Kings and lords have had less and less power to control what people say and do. The Church lost its authority to dictate what was and was not acceptable in society. Publishing and media have opened up, and people have been able to express themselves in all sorts of new and interesting ways. We no longer have strictly enforced censorship codes in our movies and TV shows. Even public libraries are less restrictive of the kind of content they allow on their shelves. Legally speaking, in the U.S. at least, free speech has probably never been better defended from the government, but in the culture, completely different story. As some aspects of our society opened up, other parts, especially among younger people, closed down. Historically, censorship was usually a product of the most important members of society protecting a pre-existing power structure, but the people primarily driving modern cancel culture aren't cranky politicians, tycoons, and powerful members of the clergy. They're kids throwing temper tantrums because it's easier to shout down talks and de-platform disagreeable people than to engage challenging subjects with reason and persuasion. It's also worth noting that the modern mob is no longer geographically limited. Thanks to social media, what once upon a time may have been a handful of angry villagers with pitchforks and torches chasing after a heretic is now a global network of harassment built around algorithms that amplify outrage, and most people don't really even understand how it works. Fortunately, I'm here to help. Terms like artificial intelligence and machine learning conjure up this image of something that's emotionless and incorruptible. It's robotic and inhuman. Algorithms are just math, and as we all know, math never lies. It has no biases. Right? Sadly, no. As we discussed in the episodes on the social dilemma, every piece of content that social media algorithms recommend or ignore, demonetize, age-restrict, flag as inappropriate or outright ban is filtered by automated systems and keyword recognition. This all seems very clean on the surface, except that those systems are created by human beings, who each have their own biases and political viewpoints that unavoidably get baked into the way these algorithms are written. Remember what Kathy O'Neill said? Algorithms are opinions embedded in code. Whoever chooses which words and phrases are filtered and how the systems react whenever they appear controls the flow of information for most of modern society. That is a tremendous amount of power. More than even the most despotic rulers could have even dreamed of a century ago. Even if no one means to do harm, it's just not possible to keep the developers' own values from influencing the decisions they make on behalf of billions of social media users. And especially in Silicon Valley, these values aren't a random or representative sample of the average beliefs of people around the country, let alone the world. We know this from demographic and political opinion surveys, from regional voting records, and most obviously from the things the leaders and decision makers at these companies say in their own blogs, tweets, and interviews. It's foolish to argue that these biases don't affect the flow of information on social media. For example, in a Project Veritas Sting video from 2018, messaging engineer from Twitter, Prené Singh, unwittingly explained exactly how his own biases could shape essential parts of the ecosystem. But I mean, plenty of people do talk like that. It's just that if you exist in an echo chamber that has almost no meaningful diversity of thought, you may never meet someone who does. And if you're in charge of defining which types of words and phrases get restricted and which don't for a huge network like Twitter, you're going to end up silencing millions of people simply because you don't understand how they communicate. It's especially easy to cause major problems if you start by assuming all those people are bots and shut down their accounts. In your mind, they're not even human. The fact is, most people don't really consider how their biases drive their choices, and that's the real danger of these kinds of algorithms. They've always reflected the opinions and beliefs of the people who created them. That's why, if you understand how this works, it's not so hard to see how we ended up with the Declaration of Independence being flagged as hate speech. All it takes is for people working at Twitter to assign negative values to the kinds of language that it contains. We do have the challenge of some monocultural thinking. I have said publicly that, yes, we will have more of a liberal bias within our company, so there's to CNN. But that doesn't mean that we put that in our rules. But hold on. Because what I'm getting at is that at some point in time, things have to get down to a human being looking and reviewing at cases. If you guys are so left-wing in your staff and the area that you live in, and all these things, things are almost naturally going to lean left. Unfortunately, all these systems are extremely opaque and have never been made available to the public. And they're pretty much the exact opposite of due process. Every social network blocks content and removes users on the idea of guilty until proven innocent, where the accuser is also the judge. So we don't actually know what specific words, phrases, and imagery are boosted by the different social platforms, which are restricted or why. And we can't trust the companies themselves to be impartial or fair. What's more, we do know that there's a lot of pressure from the employees, some executives, and many of the top users of these platforms to explicitly silence people they don't like. Over the last few years, companies like Facebook have been in full-on crisis mode, reeling from privacy scandals like Cambridge Analytica, accusations of Russian election hacking, and getting blamed for rising political violence around the world. They're being accused by their own friends of unwittingly helping Trump get elected. So they've reacted to these issues by downgrading the reach of pages and groups, bringing on new fact checkers to put warnings on posts that they labeled as fake news, and outright limiting people from running what they define as political ads. Speaking as someone whose content deals with difficult subjects, I can tell you that this has all been an incredible mess. They also started cracking down on more and more people for community standards violations, including tons of folks who don't actually fit the descriptions of the kinds of bad people you see on the news. And again, nearly a decade of aggressive cancel culture has not demonstrably reduced extremism. If anything, it's only ever made it worse. But I'm sure the question on everybody's minds now is, what do we do about it? Well, it's complicated. In spite of what some of you might believe, this is an issue of censorship. But in spite of what others among you might believe, it's not a legal issue. It's actually kind of shocking how badly wrong most people get this. Wrong! The First Amendment prohibits the government from writing laws that infringe people's right to speak freely. It does not prohibit private individuals from limiting the speech they allow in their homes and businesses. Social media companies have, and should have, every legal right to define the limits of speech on their platforms. In fact, they need to set some rules if they want to create an environment free from harassment, threats, and obscene content. Those rules can actually support a culture of free expression. But that's not the same thing as stifling different points of view because the people in charge don't understand or agree with them. Asserting the moral authority to dictate what millions of social media users are allowed to say in here violates the most basic essence of free speech as a concept. And that concept predates and indeed is the entire basis for First Amendment law. So yes, it's possible for private companies to engage in censorship, and quite often that's exactly what's happening here. But unfortunately, there are a few other myths we need to bust as well. Firstly, we need to talk about Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. It just doesn't do what you think it does. It's not a magic shield for social media companies to escape liability, and repealing it won't reduce their incentive to control people's speech. Here's what the law actually says. No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider. There's nothing about this that's unique to the big Silicon Valley social media companies and there is no legal distinction between publisher and platform. It just means that you're not responsible for my content and I'm not responsible for yours. Anyone who allows third parties to post comments or publish videos on their website is protected by Section 230. Without that protection, it would be a horrible idea to ever allow anyone to post anything on a site they didn't own. What's more, the bill explicitly encourages companies to create filtering tools to limit illegal content and help their users control their experience. The one tricky part of the law is that these filtering tools have to be created in good faith. We may need courts to decide exactly what that means. But no matter what, repealing Section 230 would create a huge incentive for every interactive service provider to control speech and expression even more than they do now in order to avoid a flood of libel and slander lawsuits. This isn't the right answer. Secondly, I can't believe I have to say this, but just because a company is publicly traded doesn't mean it's owned by the government. It means that anyone can own a share in the company by buying its stocks. On a related note, a company that gets government contracts or subsidies isn't owned by the government either. I've spent much of my life criticizing corporate welfare, but anyone arguing that the government should have more control in those situations is moving in entirely the wrong direction. That's not how it works. That's not how any of this works. Lastly, using antitrust laws to break up social media companies is a non-starter, both because it would destroy the things that are actually good about them and because none of these companies are monopolies to begin with. Google competes with Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, and a host of other search engines. YouTube competes with Vimeo, Twitch, Bitshoot, Library, and a zillion other video sharing sites. Facebook and Twitter compete with each other, not to mention TikTok, Miwi, Mine, Scab, and so on. Amazon Web Services has several other major competitors and a thousand smaller ones, not to mention the fact that it's possible to host website data on your own servers. The only way it's possible to claim that these companies have monopolies is if you redefine the term to mean that Facebook is the only company in the world that does exactly what Facebook does. It would be like saying McDonald's has a monopoly because they're the only company that makes the Big Mac. Even though there are clearly a dozen other hamburger restaurants and a hundred other fast casual chains all competing for the same set of customers. That's absurd. Yes, all of these companies are big. Yes, they're very successful. That's because they produced goods and services people actually like to use. We all made them what they are by giving them our time, money, and attention. And you know what? This insight is also the solution. Censorship, no matter how well intended, is inherently arrogant and comes with some incredibly damaging side effects. After the great purge of 2021, the behemoth social media networks saw a serious exodus of users and stockholders fed up with their policies. Facebook and Twitter alone lost a combined $51 billion in market value. After building an industry and dominating the internet for the last 15 years, these companies are opening the door for their competitors to take over by repeatedly violating their users trust. New companies are already rising to the challenge, but they only stand a chance in a world that doesn't tie them down in red tape. So we need to resist calls for heavy-handed regulation because they're both unnecessary and counterproductive. Just as social media executives can't predict the fallout and unintended consequences from their policies, politicians have no idea how to predict and plan the perfect future of communication on the internet. Worse still, multi-billion dollar companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter, which have entire divisions devoted to influencing public policy, will always have vastly more sway over the way these kinds of laws get written than any entrepreneurial startup. This is a well-known phenomenon in political economy called regulatory capture, and it's one of many reasons that giving the state more power over the internet is never going to create the results people hope for. We don't need more laws. What we need is for more people to see what's going on, develop a lot more genuine tolerance for different points of view, and support a culture of free speech. Here's what this means. Don't participate in cancel culture.  Demand transparency from the rules on social media. Spend more time on the platforms that don't automatically cave to the mob. Share videos like this one to help your friends understand why these issues matter, and if you can, cultivate your inner entrepreneur and help build the next generation of social media networks that take due process and free expression seriously. Censorship on social media is a very real problem, but we can solve it by doubling down on our best values and abandoning our worst. The future of our society depends on it. Hey everybody, thanks for watching this episode of Out of Frame. I honestly hope that I can get back to talking about movies soon, but this is just not an issue I can ignore. I hope you'll check out all the links in the description and jump into the conversation in the comments. If you like what we're doing here, please like this video and subscribe to the channel. Also, check out our Behind the Scenes podcast. It lets us spend more time talking about stuff like this every Friday, and I think you'll enjoy it. And if you really love this video, consider supporting Out of Frame on Patreon or Subscribestar. I want to thank all of our subscribers, but especially our associate producers. So, to Connor McGowan, Dallin Case, Hemantana, Richard Lawrence, Matt Tabor, and Vega Starlight, thank you. Normally, this is the part of the video where I'd tell you to follow us on the major social networks, but given what we just talked about, I'd like to encourage you to join our Discord server instead. It's not only a way for us to diversify the ways we stay in touch with all of you, it's also a great space to practice what we preach by hosting wide-ranging, interesting conversations online. Join me there, and I'll see you next time.


The CDC is advising people to follow five simple steps in order to help prevent the spread of coronavirus. 1. Wash your hands. A little soap and water is all you need. Simple wash of the hands. First off, quickly wet the hands, just lightly, and then from there, a nice dose of soap. 2. Or sneeze into your elbow. Make sure to clean that section as well. 3. Don't touch your face brains. It's as simple as that. 4. Stay six or more feet away from each other. 5. And the most important one. If you're feeling sick, stay home. Try to avoid contact with other people as much as possible until you're feeling better. You really want me to shake your hand? That's all I got for you on this Silver Bulletin. Stay safe and healthy. I'll see you on the next one.