This is Mises weekends with your host Jeff Deist earlier this week I had a chance to talk with my good friend Tom Woods on his show. So stay tuned Hi, everybody Tom Woods here Jeff Deist is with us today. That is just so great Jeff Deist is Former chief of staff to congressman Ron Paul He was the last chief of staff to Ron Paul and he is now the president of the Mises Institute Which you should visit at Mises org that is M.I.S.E.S. org He's super smart super insightful and if you don't like Jeff Deist you're a terrible person is pretty much what it boils down to So today we're just going to talk about Libertarianism what it is what it isn't all the different versions of it that seem to be out there and how we regain Clarity over who we are and all that stuff. It's going to be epic and great and I can't wait to start it Jeff welcome back to the show Tom. It is good to talk to you on this beautiful morning So let's talk about Libertarian, I mean we are at episode 1156. This is a pretty fundamental concept to the show and The premise here. I think is that when we think about the way the world looks at us rightly or wrongly There's confusion about who we are But when we drill down even farther, what do we find that even among ourselves we have disagreements as to who we are And what the term means and what we're all about and what our priorities are and what comes first and what comes second And what doesn't come in any place because it has nothing to do with Libertarianism at all A lot of times we can't seem to come to an agreement on that or it'll be Maybe some grudging agreement that we're all on the same page, but let's try to demonize 48% of the people in the mood whatever it is something is gone a little bit screwy here And I want to try to sort through this or think about not necessarily Replacing the term because I'm I'm just an old foggy. You're not going to teach this old foggy new tricks But are there alternative terms that at the very least would be more precise? So if we want to really make clear who we are and where we stand we might use those That's a big question. I just threw at you. It isn't amazing Tom How much this has changed over the last few decades that this is a problem of abundance not a problem of scarcity Thankfully because I can recall one of my very first cars was a really crappy Volkswagen Soraco If anybody remembers those she's I'd never even heard of it I think I paid about $1,500 for it and it was and I had a bumper sticker on the back and said legalized freedom vote Libertarian So this would have been around 1990 first car I ever owned so you know at that time not that long you what's that 28 years ago now Libertarian meant generally capital L Libertarian party guy and it meant this kind of weird Political idea that you wanted to get rid of the government and you wanted to legalize Pod So it had it it had a much narrower Meaning in most people's minds and it also was not a term that everyone would have known Back then and of course today everyone knows the term. It's used in common parlance. It has some very widely Varying definitions applied to it depending on the speaker and that's that's part of the problem is that as Libertarianism has grown The use of the term has grown But you know as a moniker by both left and right and and even amongst Libertarians We have these widespread disagreements is what exactly it means and I noticed something interesting the other day Maybe a week or two ago. I saw that Charles Koch had announced that he's not going to call himself a Libertarian anymore He's going to start using the term classical liberal which of course also has a is somewhat ill-defined and has a host of Good and bad points depending on your perspective, and I'm actually going to recommend David Gordon our own David Gordon Who's written some some interesting stuff on the etymology of the term classical liberalism, but I Thought it was interesting that the Charles Koch did that and I wondered to myself Is that because he's now seeing more downside than upside to the term? It's it's a good question But I think you know with so many things in America. Anyway, there's a French influence We have to go back to the 19th century French anarchists who use the term in a very different way Tom These were free thinkers so to speak in the Enlightenment and they didn't like determinism And so they meant liberty in a much broader sense than perhaps you and I would today And of course the French have always had a different different definition of equality and liberty than Americans Depending on who you want to believe the the person might have coined the term was an Englishman named William Belcham Who lived in late 1700s early 1800s? I'm not entirely sure that that's true, but it may be true but it was certainly popularized by the French anarchists and apparently because There were French political laws that outlawed being an anarchist So if you called yourself a libertarian, but you held anarchist views, perhaps you wouldn't run afoul of this kind of Lincolnite law against Labeling you're something yourself something so some of your listeners might know the name Joseph de Jacques Who apparently popularized the term? So you fast forward To the modern age both the term classical liberal libertarian went through some some changes over the years and there's no question I think that our left friends are correct when they say that libertarianism was originally a left-wing term I think that's true Forget the stuff about the French Parliament It it did have you know left-wing derivations originally So I think we should acknowledge that and there's actually is as an interesting little form of proof of that Here's something that Murray wrote in Betrayal the American right and what so by the way Jeff Let's let's bear in mind. We have a lot of newbie people. Who's Murray? Ah, well something Rothbard wrote something Murray Rothbard wrote. Okay. All right, okay Who is in it certainly in our eyes and in many people's eyes the the godfather of modern libertarianism? So he wrote a book called the Betrayal the American right and he wrote it It came out in 79, which means although at that point Reagan was certainly Running and part of the conversation. We didn't yet have the Reagan era. We didn't yet have Reaganite conservatism So he's saying this in 1979 he writes libertarians Putting that word in quotes in contrast had long been simply a polite word for left-wing anarchists That is for anti private property anarchists even either of the communist or syndicalist variety But now we had taken it over and more properly from the view of etymology since we were proponents of individual liberty And therefore of the individual's right to his property So Rothbard saw that word as correctly belonging to the Missessian tradition of a strong emphasis on property rights But again a lot of our left-wing friends would say hey, that was our word and it actually had an anti Private property connotation. So there's there's an interesting truth there about the use of it But I think nonetheless if you fast forward to the second part of the 20th century The word term classical liberal is already ensconced because liberals had sort of taken that term To in a left the term liberal in a left-wing direction certainly especially in the 30s and 40s and so Libertarian it had become a word without a home and I think Rothbard really grabbed ahold of that word in the in the second half of the 20th century is certainly beginning in the 1970s and said Hey, that's that's our word and it implies necessitates a Missessian view of property and a Rothbardian view of the state and as a result certainly even today in the general public's eye Libertarianism Seems more comfortable on the right now. We as shoe left and right. We're not politically left to right of course But I think most mainstream people would see it as more comfortable on the right and this this upsets some of our left-leaning Libertarian friends and and maybe understandably so but I think that The reason it's more properly seen on the right today is because there is an anti-state Emphasis to the term libertarian and and at least today you can at least talk to conservatives about areas of life Where the state not ought to involve itself whereas I I think if you talk to a died in the world progressive today People who want to politicize every facet of human life. I'm not sure there's any area of Lifetime where they would say oh no the state not ought to interfere at the bedroom Well too late for that look at the me too movement that the the left absolutely the modern left absolutely wants the state in your bedroom so Although we cringe sometimes at the idea of left and right there's still there's still cultural forces at play that That that change and shape the way we use terms so the for the last 30 40 50 years The Rothbardian conception of libertarianism has been placed somewhere vaguely on the right Well, that's been a good thing or a bad thing for us I'll leave that to you and of course Murray himself Flirted mightily from a tactical or strategic perspective with both the left and the right the old right what he saw as the anti-war Right of taft Or Albert J. Nock and and he flirted with the left. He flirted with the Black Panthers. He flirted with the anti-Vietnam War protesters So, you know, it's interesting how words morph and change but That being said has the word libertarian lost its value has it become something? That we can't all agree on I'm not sure It's very human to want to ring fence things and to classify things and to categorize things But also as words become more popular and more widely used they start to Devolve and lose any kind of precise meaning maybe necessarily so so it's it's a tough question I I certainly consider myself a libertarian and I use that term in the Rothbardian sense of someone who is anti-state anti-central bank somebody who thinks Society ought to be organized along private Institutions and someone who thinks private property Private property rights ought to be held in very high regard but there are plenty of libertarians who are Opposed to the liberal libertarian emphasis on private property who think liberty is far more about freedom of movement and sexual freedom and freedom from Landlord freedom from work freedom from want freedom from need So, you know within the the umbrella of of those who today term themselves libertarians There's a very wide Range of views and opinions I think most of your listeners would know where I come from I guess they would view me as a right libertarian. That's fine. I don't much care But we have to I think acknowledge that the term has changed that modern usage has changed And and perhaps we ought to at least consider Whether we all are using it in the same way because if it's a catch-all term for anything Then it becomes meaningless Let me Elaborate here a bit just from my own experience and then I do want to run through some Possible competitors in terms of terms that might be used again Not to say that libertarian needs to be altogether abandoned But let's say you're in a group of people who are sort of in the know What would be a term that would make clear to them precisely where you are? I do want to get to that but just to clarify a bit when we say that today there's confusion and We seem to be at odds with each other It may not be clear to people where that confusion is like for example, we're all against you know At least most taxation I can say for for libertarians I mean there were minarchists who would favor something whatever but in general we want at least low taxes There are some things that you know we want the drug war to be over and stuff like that We can generally agree on stuff like that but Then there are things like the other day I sent out an email to my list and you should all be on my email list that you can get a free book while you get on it at Tom's free books calm, but I send out good stuff All right, I send out a good email every weekday and and it's fun to read So I sent out an email about the new LGBTQ plus acronym now the plus of course means that if you really really wanted to list everything The the acronym would be more like LGGBD TTT IQQ AAPP so I sent out an email saying you know I'm just not sure I'm going for that but but more than that This is the state's dream Because could you imagine the bureaucrats and the lawyers In the service of the state must be like kids on christmas morning looking at this thing Because they know that given the state's ideological commitment to this They're going to be able to invade every nook and cranny of civil society and I gave the example just one example I could give a million Let's say you're a dance instructor. You don't want to instruct same-sex couples. All right. Well A libertarian would say that's absolutely. You're right 100 percent. You're right Uh now a libertarian could also as a private opinion say but that person's a bigot And I don't support what that person is doing of course Look think what you want But libertarianism is all about coercion The use of the state to initiate physical force against people and my point was look at that one example Now first of all that guy is going to be demonized anyway because of course he's a hater So he doesn't even have rights now imagine this trickling through every aspect of life And you see why the state latches on to things like lggbd ttt iqq aapp Because the crazier it is The more it becomes fuel for the state it's it's the state on steroids because the more State-driven group think the more coercion is going to be necessary to impose it on the population And I said in the email this is also why the state loves these open-ended concepts like equality Well, you think you know what equality means it's equality of of opportunity Okay, but there's no way to limit it to that the state will use equality as a crowbar to Open up every sector of society to state influence So it love and plus equality can't ever be reached because supposing by some miracle you did get equality of resources Let's say the second somebody trades with somebody else resources have been exchanged and thereby The disturbing of equality has occurred and now you have inequality again. So you can't ever get there So again, the state loves it because it's an unachievable ideological goal That will lead to the state flexing and building up its muscle. So I wrote that I think that is absolutely Undebatable it does not matter what your private view on these questions is It unless you are not paying attention to how the state operates You will see that the state is going to do this and I was taken to task by one I don't know just some guy in a facebook group and he of course Mistated my view. So I clarified it in my next email when people attack me. I just write emails about that But anyway, I know i'm taking too long to talk, but I just I can't I can't help it What seemed to be happening there, jeff was that this guy is is committed to this cultural outcome And so could not perceive the possibility that the state will use it to build up its Powers what he wanted to do was to punish me for being Whatever insensitive or for having right-wing concerns or this or that but to me that's just a pretty clear ideological question that we can't let the state Latch on to ideas like this that it then uses to build itself up with so what i'm what i'm leading up to Is the following question? It seems that there are certain cultural preferences that people like you and I may have in common And then people like my critic may disagree with and what I think some of this boils down to is something you and I talked about Before we started this conversation, which is suppose you had this deal The state can disappear tomorrow, but The cultural outcome will be very much not to your liking. So let's say we're talking to left libertarians You're going to get a much much more conservative culture Is that a trade-off you would be willing to make or likewise you and I might have to face a more left-leaning Culture is that a trade-off you and I would be willing to face? I think then we really get to see Where is libertarianism in your scale of values? Is it number three four or five or is it number one? Yeah, absolutely true. And that's why I object both ideologically and tactically strategically To the idea of using the left's language and using left-stated goals If you say look, I'm I'm just as concerned about equality as you I just want to use the libertarian means to reach a left end. I think that's that's a huge mistake But you're right if we did have this magic button to press I think a lot of people who might not know me imagine. I'm a social conservative or something like that That's not actually true but nonetheless I would say I have bourgeois boring suburban sensibilities in certain aspects And yet if I could press that magic button and either eliminate or severely diminish the role of the state and society tomorrow And that yielded to society that was let's say more libertine or more left-leaning culturally I would still press that button because I have two kids and my fears for them surrounding taxation surrounding regulation spying surveillance and especially war And and intervention in other nations is much stronger than my concerns over whether A particular lifestyle with which I disagree moves in next door I mean, I view the state as such a malignant criminal agency in our society a big mafia Let's just say the crypts and the bloods on steroids that I I would want to eliminate that regardless Um would all left libertarians agree? I don't know but this is a great question We can eliminate The left versus right libertarian problem simply by saying do you want to eliminate or significantly reduce the state? And take what comes of that yes or no, and we can even say that on on single issues Do you advocate eliminating or severely reducing the state on issue x if so? We are potential allies and that ought to eliminate a lot of infighting it But it doesn't tom because we're we're just wired as humans one to make gross generalizations And ring fence things as I mentioned earlier, but two to draw endless distinctions and divisions between those and it's funny To me how some libertarians imagine that the right and the left are more unified nothing can be further from the truth there are unbelievable divisions and and antagonisms Within progressives and liberals and democrats and conservatives and tea partiers and the republicans So we're not the only ones it's a human thing, but Um it it is it interests me a lot it and when it comes to using this term libertarian I mentioned charles coke had changed his mind on that I think it's really interesting to go read what the left The non libertarian left the progressive left thinks of libertarians and the term libertarian You know go check out somebody like matthew glacius Go check out the new republic Somehow like this You know and people like rand paul and the coax are really getting zero In terms of respect from left liberals No matter what they emphasize in their own libertarianism There's this huge effort by the uncoke my campus group There was a washington post story just a week or so back about how oh my gosh The coax are using their their donations to steer policy at these universities and it It draws into question academic neutrality and credibility and this is a huge problem You know never mind that virtually every university In the country is a left-wing think tank on steroids But you know my gosh the coax the coax are trying to steer academics to write things that are favorable to oil companies You know so it's incredibly facile and I think it's mostly untrue And I don't care what the coax give their money to What's what's nice about my job in the misa's institute is we don't get any coke money So we don't have to sort of play defense The way a lot of organizations do but to paint, you know, james bue canon is racist And to say the the coke brothers are using their money to spread a white supremacist Uh view point on college campuses is so absurd And and it and it suggests tom that progressivism is not a buffet You don't get to pick and choose when ran paul goes to howard university historical black college and talks about prison reform It gets him exactly zero affection or favor from the left and as a matter of fact when he was attacked by his neighbor If you if you actually go into the comment section of some of those articles that news articles at the time If you actually go into the social media swamp, you will see the left was quite gleeful about this They hate the coax they're gleeful about attempting to take them down and they view the coax as right-wing oligarchs So no matter what the coax say about gay marriage No matter what the coax say about criminal justice reform and In trying not to imprison so many black men in our country was an absolute travesty by the way Um I'll throw in my little virtue signaling. Oh, yes, let's talk about prison reform. Well, but it is a travesty. There's a lot of black guys Uh locked up for nonviolent stuff and as a result, there's a dearth of marriageable men for a lot of black women You know that that is that is bad news But you know the coax choose to emphasize that sort of stuff over eliminating the income tax Let's say because that's a form of virtue signaling and and to be fair to the coax they are trying to To find an issue where there's some agreement and to actually maybe have a victory as opposed to Eliminating the income tax code which doesn't appear to be happening anytime soon So I've got you know, I'm not knocking them but there is a virtue signaling element to it But it gets them nothing It gets them nothing because as long as you're opposed to taxation the things like obama care to a regulatory hyper state The left is just going to be forever and ever Uh suspicious and hostile of you. So this all ties into the greater use of the libertarian moniker Um, is it is it still working for us? And does it gain us any people on the left? I'm not so sure it does now Switching gears a little bit to the right Um, you know, there are some people on the right who say and I've heard this a million times Well, I agree with you guys except on foreign policy Well, that's a pretty big except because You know Chris coin and professor George Mason has a new book out on how our foreign policy Our bullying of the rest of the world leads to a bigger state at home Both in terms of our police state and it militarizes the cops But also just in terms of our mentality. It's an interesting book and I actually hope to interview him soon But uh, you know, that's a pretty big but because if you go back to the founding period in this country There was no distinction made between foreign and domestic policy. There's not some magic That makes big government Omniscient and competent and efficient at war and killing and and remaking foreign societies But hopelessly inefficient at home. No, it's the same organization. It's the same entity and it's bad at both But but killing people Is the worst thing the state does And it's it's the the most important libertarian issue in my opinion and it's the one thing where We ought to be uncreate. Well, not the one thing But it is it is one thing where we ought to be unyielding and uncompromising As libertarians and say, you know, unless the the self-defense requirements of an action are entirely justified in the sense of Let's say just war doctrine The united states should not be engaging in these military exercises You know, we all ought to be able to agree on that and we all ought and we ought to be able to To reach out to people on the right who aren't interested in these endless wars and the debt that they Encour as a result and to the left what's left of the anti-war code pink left You'd think we'd be better at that But in order to be better at that we have to be dogmatic We have to say that the term libertarian means non interventionist both both militarily And economically means not intervention in the economy and it means not intervening in in the middle east for example but yet within self-identified libertarian circles there's plenty of disagreement About whether iraq was justified about whether afghanistan where we were still fighting You know yemen syria our relationship with israel all these are are still big questions. So It's it's awfully tough To have faith in a term where where people who use the term don't even agree On bombing and killing when we're at no risk here. There's no self-defense justification for that That's what gets me down And that's what what what makes me worry about whether libertarian as a term Is still useful I want to unpack a couple things you said there you were talking about the uncoke my campus project and let me just add an interesting point to that because That project of course being a progressive project. They can't tell the difference between This is what I always say bob dole newt gingrich donald trump pat Buchanan The rockford institute the mesas institute the kato institute You know, they're all if they don't know they're all the same thing as far as any of the libertarian party They're all the same thing But what's interesting in there is that they lump in george mason university with the mesas institute Now there are a lot of people or not just gmu But a lot of people now i've had gmu people on the show I have no beef with them But the point is there are people who have gone out of their way To distance themselves say i'm not part of the mesas institute, but you know what to the left you are Yeah, well, there's no point There's no point bothering to signal to the 12 people who care that you know as far as they are concerned You are you're the founder of the mesas institute, you know, so you might as well just embrace it That's one thing another thing is and I hope my listeners have patience with me on this because I I hope they see that generally I try to when I have guests on I'm generous with them. I point out their good points I thank them for their important service. Thank you for your service my friend I like to Point out the good things people are doing. I like to bring to the fore work that people might otherwise not have heard of And if the show is not about I'm a crazy ego case and I'm the only libertarian who matters that is as far as anybody who's listening to me knows That's the case, but I do have to toot my own horn on one thing on this When we're talking about division between libertarians, there are some who think Woods just spends too much time attacking the left and he's virtue signaling to the right in his own way Now a couple things we said about that if you read my book real descent, which is the last book I wrote It's almost all against the neocons. There's almost nothing against the left in that book So I got bored with that. All right. Well, I've beaten these people to a pulp now I want another project, but I still have plenty plenty of reserves for anybody who deserves to be smacked around But what's interesting is for those those people who say that about me I've actually had for all their talk about we're going to reach out to the left What do they have to show for themselves other than as you say people biting their hands off They have nothing to show for themselves. Whereas if I may just take a couple quick examples What marie polner and I marie polner is a great. I mean, he's super left wing He's an awesome guy from long island He turns 90 this week and he just wrote to me to say, you know, tom You and I should write another book before they start world war three.  I don't agree with him on domestic stuff, but let's work together on a project So we did that and the result was the book we who dared to say no to war published by basic books Got a starred review from from publishers weekly And Ralph nader who's also a little bit known on the left wound up buying 1200 copies of that book To distribute to people now I could go down. I have a but you know, I did a paper Thanks to the mises institute and the scholars conference. I did a paper on seymour melman who was the late professor Um, I think industrial engineering maybe a columbia university. He was the best even though he was on the left He was the best analyst of the economics of the pentagon And I did a paper that was a tribute to him and it wound up later in my book rollback And then I got great feedback from his current day students who were really glad and so we engage with each other So I do this sort of thing without a lot of fanfare and I actually have something to show for it And yet the funny thing is I'm supposedly the great demon who makes this impossible But I'm the one who's actually out there accomplishing something instead of just writing nasty comments on facebook all day Yeah, absolutely true. I think there's no question about it. And what's interesting to me if you'll allow me a little bit of self-indulgent Self-defense when it comes to libertarian infighting is that they're sometimes people within the the world of coke Libertarianism treat the mises to much like they're now being treated by the nancy mcclain types In other words, they impugn our motives They imagine that we're racist.  So, you know, this this whole thing can be a little discouraging, but Uh, you know getting back to our topic of the use of the term libertarian, I think we just have to get beyond it And I think we have to say What does this term mean? What do we stand for?  None of us has any right to be, uh, Depressed about anything. This isn't the great depression. This isn't the civil war. This isn't world war one or world war two We're not working in sweatshops. So, uh, you know, let's let's just sort of uh Understand the natural human tendency to fight and to uh, to want to uh, You know pick pick battles, but but then let's let's get on with it So, you know, I notice this stuff. I don't spend too much time worrying about it, but I I From my perspective, maybe I'm jaundiced or maybe I'm blinded as a sort of a right libertarian But from my perspective, uh, you're an ecumenical guy who appeals To people across the spectrum So keep doing what you're doing And, you know, just to the other day we saw Ray McGovern get dragged out of the hearing room at the senate Now ray, you know, not everybody's a fan of ray, but I love the guy and ray is a bernie sanders guy But Dog gone at that guy means business. I was just talking to scott horton the other day and I said, I can't believe I was just talking to ray on the phone He didn't even tell me he was going to go do this thing where they dragged him out of the hearing room They were they were treating him physically roughing him up until it was clear there was a camera on him And suddenly they became a lot on them. They became a lot nicer But I said scott this unbelievable the guy was just going to do this and didn't even think it was worth mentioning And he says, yeah, same thing with me. I have him on then like the next day He's getting arrested at some nuclear silo somewhere and this guy means business And so I showed that video I didn't I saw a video just of him being pulled out of the room and then it stopped So then I got another video. I didn't realize it showed him being taken out of the room and roughed up And I I'm not sure I would have wanted all my kids to see that actually, but I said to them Here's a guy. I'm probably a million miles away from on some issues But when this guy is right, he is so right And that is a good man. He's just trying to alert anybody who might still care in the world About something really important and we and you know, and here he is 78 79 years old You got to respect that and my kids my family. We we love ray McGovern and That's the thing. I don't see that Happening I mean with a few noble exceptions. There are people who call themselves libertarians who are incapable of treating You and me the way I treat ray McGovern without even giving it a second thought Well, it's absolutely true and the first thing I thought when I saw that video is I wonder if they could Charge him with some kind of felony or something that would might affect his CIA pension That would be a pretty ugly trick to pull on an older gentleman Who apparently worked there a couple decades three decades, whatever it was, but yeah Yeah, it is interesting that we have we make better inroads with people on the left like ray McGovern and Ralph nader than we do with the new york times and the atlantic and the daily causes of the world and we just have to identify this people who are still Well-intentioned I think that's that's the key is are people even coming to the table With good intentions and live and as libertarians frankly We're still sort of fighting to be at the table not the state's table But the the national conversation the discussion and I'm gonna I'm gonna throw out the name nomi prins Nomi's a deep died in the wool bernieite progressive But she's also become a dear friend of mine. She writes incredible books About the fed and central bankers and the collusion between them and wall street and this sort of unholy elite As opposed to a genuine elite who made their own money, honestly And and she's really a fantastic person and and she and I have conversations About things upon which we disagree. She's got a brand new book. She's out on a tour Her new book is called collusion. She's gonna be at our event in dallas fort worth in a couple weeks So, you know, these these kind of conversations are possible Right, but the first thing you got to do Is stop being mealy-mouthed And and stop trying to talk to to You know people on their terms and and apply our own terms and let's move the conversation We've seen anything from the last few years trump The rise of of people like jordan peterson You know that the old conversation is done It's boring And and we ought to drop it and we ought to try to move in some new directions and even if that means Approaching libertarianism on a in terms of single issue coalitions Or in terms of decentralized approaches. I really like the idea private cities I really like the idea of a federalism and moving power away from the federal government And god knows if if the republic has somehow managed to survive these midterms And if trump somehow manages to get reelected in 2020 Our progressive friends friends are gonna just go ballistic I mean that they're gonna be so much more interested in federalism They already are as a result of trump winning because it really shocked them psychologically It really shook them They're you know, their whole arc of history is that there's an inevitability to progressivism and the next thing comes and the next thing Is hillary clinton And when that didn't happen it really caused them to start asking some existential questions And that's a great opportunity for those of us to say, you know part of liberty Is political subsidiarity self-determination Mises was a huge democrat he he absolutely believed that that democracy was a necessary part Of securing property rights and that you had to have democratic mechanisms. I don't agree with that but nonetheless Localized democracy is an easier sell than anarcho-capitalism and it's also a step in the right direction I don't have any problem with with approaches like that. So it's it's an interesting time Where people are open to new ideas and and that we we can change the conversation But if we allow the term libertarian to become gelatinous Then we're not doing ourselves any favors top All right, and having said that let's say if you I know we're going longer than I said we would but I think we're on a roll, baby I think we got to just let this go where it goes one quick comment and then a question for you One of the things I said in one of my emails this week is that a sure sign of a fanatic Is somebody who is incapable of saying such and such person is really good on Issues a b and c but I disagree with that person on issues x y and z if you're incapable of doing that You're probably a fanatic So let's talk about other there are a lot of other terms people use other than libertarian Some of them are synonymous. Some of them are just flat-out synonyms for libertarianism So people use anarcho-capitalist, which is not necessarily a synonym because there are menarchist libertarians people use Voluntaryist. There are another number of possible terms. You could say Rothbardian What are the pros and cons of these? I mean other than I'm not saying we have to start a whole new Term from scratch. This would be like starting a new political party. Nobody's going to join it. So what what do you think about these different terms though? Yeah, it's interesting. I also hear proper terrian or proper terrianism used They're all interesting and they but they're mostly inside baseball terms that we're talking about Amongst ourselves and so they're probably not that helpful and maybe we're stuck with libertarian But if we're stuck with it, let's defend it Let's not allow it to be seized in the same way the term liberal was seized You know, let's let's develop it and and come up with some core principles and let's defend it I I really like to use the term private. I I love the term private because It means non-state I I think society can organize itself around non-state institutions I think markets and civil society are just fine for running Everything human needs and that would that would include police and courts and and so called national defense Now a lot of people are going to disagree with that and are going to say well Come on Jeff. We need at least police and courts and a military and that's fine I can work with those people but the idea of a private law or private property A private society You know that that appeals to me and I think it appeals to a lot of people who are saying they're you know We're tired of government being involved in everything. We're tired of the politicization of what ought to be non-political issues like sexuality For example, like religion for example Music entertainment all the cultural issues that ought not to be political In the first place. Well the way to make them political is to non-political is to make them private So I don't I don't like the idea that We as libertarians ought to be fighting all these political battles and cultural battles. That's not really our place Let's let's narrow it down and say, you know Whether you agree with us on x y or z culturally Um, here's a way that we can live together Here is a way that you can have sort of your localized Community and and someone else can have theirs and this is this is what keeps I keep coming back to is that We tend to think of libertarians as people who spend all their time trying to get people to agree with us If we just give them the right books if we just give them the right training And I'm a big believer in those books in that training I think we need to capture that five or ten or fifteen percent vanguard of the population There's no question my mind that we need to do that, but Um, that that's all it takes in most societies. You don't need 51 percent You know instead of constantly focusing on how we can get people to agree with us How about if we all spend more of our time trying to to figure out how we can get people who disagree with us to live together And and the way to do that is through decentralization and subsidiarity. There's no question about that the swiss government Their website even says quite openly that we view the the principle of subsidiarity As part and parcel of social cohesion Switzerland is a very diverse country. You've got romani people.  Well, they have good reason to worry about it tom because if he is he's gonna be casting votes He's a guy they hate and he's gonna be casting votes that affect them I mean this seems so obvious. It's sitting there in front of us and but but the problem is is that People like federalism when they're losing they don't so much like it when they're winning so if If the left if the democrats win the 2018 midterms take control of the house and set it and then if they install A democratic president in 2020 all the all of this cal exit and federalism stuff and sanctuary cities is going to go out the window And they're going to get back to federalizing and nationalizing everything But if they lose they're going to be a lot more interested I wish I could say that hypocrisy and politics was some kind of sin I always think that's like call that's like saying that the the tail gunner in a in an aircraft has dandruff I mean hypocrisy in politics. I mean we're thought, you know, it scarcely matters at this point, but It's interesting You know how some of these terms work And and how the term libertarian has morphed and and how we might do better with the term but for me I like to talk about private society versus so-called public or state society That's that's if I had to ever replace the term and I don't think I'll be able to but I I would I would use something along the lines of a private law or or a private property society to describe what I have in mind When I say libertarian but to describe it a little bit more accurately All right. Well, let's finish with this Because of course you are the president of the mesas institute the mesas institute is dedicated to teaching austrian economics, you know from the austrian school of economics, but It does also speak at its tagline about a free society and freedom So these things are not entirely separable So how does the mission and work of the mesas institute mesh with the discussion we've had today? Well, it's interesting. There are plenty of people in Libertarian circles who reject austrian economics. Yeah, no kidding. They they Don't agree with its view of the entrepreneur and capital this the structure production They don't agree with its individualist methodology or in fact, they are they they think that empiricism is the correct Method of economics. They don't agree with its emphasis on property They don't agree with interest races prices and there's plenty. You know, so not all libertarians except austrian economics or even even Chicago or or any kind of free market economics, so we shouldn't hit ourselves there. There's still there are still divisions But you know, if you go and read Somewhere near the beginning of mesas is book liberalism. I don't have it in front of me But there's you know, he he has a great sentence where he says something like if I could boil Distilled the entire liberal program down to one word It would be this property and then he says he actually was for his time writing that in the 1920s A bit of a neoliberal in that he also added to the old what that that single definition of of liberalism property He also added that we also need individual liberty and peace Whereas the old order, uh, you know the the 18th The 19th century liberal order would have just said well property is everything so for his time writing that in 1920s He was actually a neoliberal in that he was appending a couple of new requirements on the liberal program of peace and individual liberty and of course We we all view those things as as very very important as well because they're they're holistic what What flows from your mind and your body and your actions as property But you need to be able to to live and work as you wish in order to to hopefully obtain or create that property so um You know just like the term liberalism is more if the term libertarian has and and we hope That people come to liberty Or a greater degree of liberty-mindedness through through the mesas institute, but it's not our it's not our broad focus Our broad focus is teaching people what we would consider proper or correct economics but uh Proper or correct economics Is not enough We we none of us can can live or thrive or operate in a politically authoritarian culture or society and that's where it seems like we're headed so we need to keep Beating our head against the wall and trying to find new ways to reach people and whether that's a five or ten or fifty percent vanguard or whether that's um single issue coalitions or whether that's just finding people in san francisco who don't want to be part of Of uh, you know jeff sessions america. What whatever that takes. I think we need to be flexible on strategy But I think we need to be Stubborn on ideology Well, the mesas institute before I forget is having an event coming up june 2nd in fort worth Featuring nomi prince as you mentioned. Also, you'll be there yuri maltsav is the soviet defector has been a guest on this show Uh, a number of great speakers are going to be there if you are a member in good standing of my supporting listeners program You get in for free And if you'd like to join that program, just go to supporting listeners.com Sign up and you can get into that event for free. Just uh, send me a note over at bonuses at tomwoods.com And I will get you set up to get into that event for free Uh, otherwise people who are in the area should go to that. In fact, check out the mesas institutes events at mesas mises mesas.org slash events to see if there's anything going on in your area jeff as always Thanks so much for being here. It's terrific talking to you. All right. Thanks a million tom Subscribe to mesas weekends via itunes you stitcher and soundcloud or listen on mesas.org and youtube


This is a practical taxonomy of bugs and how to squash them and I would just want to thank Katrina Owen for her excellent keynote this morning because it's got everyone in this good head space for something that is very important to my talk too. So since this is a practical taxonomy of bugs, this presentation is kind of my personal field guide to debugging and we talk about debugging. We talk a lot about debugging skills, primarily, that's kind of the angle we take it from, and debugging software is an extremely useful skill, right? It's a Swiss Army knife in any developer's tool belt. And really adept debuggers seem to be able to troubleshoot any issue all the way down from databases that refuse connection, like all the way up to undefined is not a function, right? It's like they always know the exact path to take or the next question to ask. Maybe they don't always know the right answer but they know the next place to look. And when we watch them debug, like their deft actions, it makes it really easy to believe that debugging comes from instinct or intuition. And so having worked on a couple of different consulting projects when I first started programming to now and I'm working on a big product company, I've heard this kind of phrase recently about debugging a new application. And it's generally these lines of once you get familiar with the application, once you get familiar with the code base, you'll start to build up some debugging instincts or maybe even more upsetting, you'll build up some calluses around this. I like that it's disgusting, like it's quite gross to think that the work would make me callous and I like that. But I don't think it's actually true or sometimes people say, oh, I need to look there when this happened again because I have scars from the last time. And then you hear specifics like this. Whenever I see something like this happening, the first thing I do is check the logs and see if this process is completing or maybe it's sending a weird message on exit. So you can take that at face value and write it down and memorize it and memorize, you know, when X happens, check the logs and, you know, develop your debugging instincts as I like to call them or you can disabuse yourself of the notion that instincts are magic and that you just build them up over time, you know, through witchcraft or just proximity to other debugging witches. So instincts are mystifying, right? When you see someone debugging as if on instinct, you feel like you're watching MacGyver. Does this person look familiar? MacGyver? No? Okay. So maybe, it might be because I am not very good at drawing, but MacGyver, if you haven't heard of that person before, this is like a television show in America and he was hired as a troubleshooter for the government and he would just go places and he'd have a ridiculous problem and he would just fix it because he was MacGyver. And he just knew how to fix everything.  Sorry, it was a television show. Yeah, welcome to the real world. Talk is just about bringing people down to just bad, low place. Instincts let us make heroes of each other and I think it's fine to praise heroic efforts if someone does a really good job, we should praise them and let them know, hey, thank you, that was excellent. But when we turn someone into a hero, into a MacGyver, we make them the source of truth instead of our code and instincts kind of let us pass off the hard work of communicating in favor of trying to just rely on the heroes of our team. That always breaks, Kate's the only one who knows how to fix it, so you're just going to have to call her because she knows how to fix it, I can't help you. And then finally, instincts don't scale. You can't just spin up a new instance of your resident MacGyver whenever you have a problem. So let's look at the statement before, maybe a little bit more generally. What I see when I saw that statement is whenever I see X, I always check Y. So it's just a conditional, right? And then as someone, there's a vulgar misspelling in my presenter notes, I'm not going to tell you what it is. But it's very funny to me, so please know I'm having a nice time. As someone who really loves logic programming, like I really like conditionals and rule sets, and in my experience, these instincts or scars or gut feelings, and you kind of just boil them down to the base statement, they're just internalized rule sets. And so we can turn instincts and these rule sets into patterns by observing them. But to do this, we have to keep a couple of things in mind, our research methods, if you will. So sometimes we have to contain a bug before we can squash it. And that just means we just have to stop this bad thing from happening before we can do a retrospective and really figure out what's going on and why it happened. And that's okay, because that's just how it is in the real world. We just have to get the app back online and get things working and we can figure out why when we have a little bit more time. Next, we can only work with facts. So you can't say, I think it's this, or I feel like it might be that. You have to say, what I see is this. And then finally, due to timing, because I wanted this to be a 25-hour talk and I submitted a proposal for a 25-hour talk, we can't squash every bug in the entire world in this talk. We really just do not have time. And as much as I like to, I can't just hand you my Swiss Army knife, but I can show you how to build your own. So what's practical, I think, for this is to learn how to identify bugs by their behavior. Luckily for us, such a branch of science already exists. Biologists use a branch or a form of taxonomy called phonetics to identify and group living organisms by their observable attributes. Bugs in the natural world can be identified by their observable attributes and bugs in software can too. To facilitate this, though, I'm going to contrive some highly convenient scenarios so that I can focus just on identifying attributes. And I'm also going to focus on the kinds of bugs that we see usually in live production applications. So first, let's define the two major types of bugs. I call them the upsettingly observable and the wildly chaotic. Upsettingly observable bugs are those that make you smack yourself when you see them. You say, how could this have happened? Or shouldn't unit tests have caught this? Or how could this have happened again? So you've seen this type. All right. They usually live in your code. They're often under-tested or untested. Sometimes they hang out like in your server configuration too. Wildly chaotic bugs break everything everywhere. You can't reproduce them locally. And frankly, you're terrified to reproduce them on production. Maybe, like, how can this port be open but simultaneously rejecting connection? It doesn't make sense. Sort of an up-as-down, black-as-white scenario there. So now we have kind of an idea... Oh, that's way better. So now we have an idea of what two major types of bugs there are. We can actually talk about how to squash them. This is the good part of the talk. If you are snoozing, this is the good part now. We're in the good part. Yeah, so let's get down to business. Let's look at upsettingly observable bug number one. And here are its observable attributes. Is the bug observable on production? Can you reproduce the bug easily in your local environment? Does the bug seem to be restricted to one area, like a specific workflow, or maybe a specific data state? If you answered yes to most of these questions, you might have a boar bug on your hands. Boar bugs are named such because... Sorry, because, like, the boar model of the atom, they're simple and deterministic. And when I say they're deterministic, it means that they always provide the same output for a given input, and they're characterized by their repeatability and their reliable manifestation. So boar bugs are commonly found in code, but they can sometimes be hiding out your server configuration too. Their favorite hiding spot where they like to lurk is, like, in functions or classes or config files with complex branching logic. So somewhere you might see this in the wild, like in your application, is validation. Validation can be a minefield for boar bugs. Validator classes are great classes to unit tests because of their inherent complexity. This also means it's really easy to heavily unit test this functionality using, like, text fixtures without really considering all the things that are required to get data in that specific state. If the consequences of, like, a failing validation aren't planned for, then they can't be rescued and they can't fail in a noticeable way. And validations that fail silently will exit silently. The lack of errors will lead you to believe that there's nothing wrong with your flow and your unit test will lead you to believe there's nothing wrong with your validation. Until that is someone tries to send an email or maybe make a purchase and the UI tells them that they're in a good state, but the action that they wish to trigger was never triggered. So the boar bug is the friendliest of bugs to catch. So I kind of start with this one because we're going to use it as a model for everything else. Replicate the boar bug locally in a test because it has the same output for the same given input. It's pretty easy to test. Write the simplest possible solution and then rewrite the code to be highly readable. Readable code is like your best defense against bugs sneaking back in. It means that the next time someone else has to make change to this class or function or config or whatever, and they will, don't hit yourselves, then they'll know exactly what to do and where to change things. So here's the boar bug again. And there's a little bit of audience involvement here. This is a practical taxonomy of bugs on how to squash them. So I'm going to squash it, but feel free to react like whatever makes you feel good. I thought, yeah, that is good, whatever you want to do, man. Just any kind of squashing, you could just yell squash. So here we go. Excellent. Y'all are going to like the rest of this talk because we got a lot more of that coming. All right, so let's take a look at upsettingly observable bug number two. Here are the observable attributes. How does this work? Wait, does this work? Wait, what is this even testing? Did this ever work? If you answered yes or huh or what to all of these, you may have found a Schroden bug. A Schroden bug is a bug that Schrodinger's infamostotic experiment we cannot confirm the validity of without observing it directly. So this bug kind of looks like a stick, but also if we really stare at it, we can see it's actually a bug. So it likes to pretend to be working code, right? But on close inspection of the code itself, it reveals itself to be a bug. It manifests itself after you read the code. And once you look, you notice that maybe it never should have worked in the first place. Fun. There's two main types of Schroden bugs, those that never worked and those that don't work how you thought that they did. So Schroden bugs that never worked often reveal themselves because of side effects. A common hiding spot for the Schroden bug is in return values. When you complete a function or save something and then end the function with a return value, you secure the result of the function. So a user reports that the UI shows them their template or whatever has been updated. Sorry. Has been updated, but then when they check again later, the changes aren't there.  Isn't that awesome? The second type is similar but a little different. It appears to work. You can see that the data reaches the correct state eventually. And this manifests itself in code in a lot of different interesting ways, but a common place to find this bug hiding is in call counts.  So maybe the first time the function is being called, the data is getting set up and set in the right state. And then finally on the second or third or fourth time that function is called, the data is in place and now it's actually saved. So this means that your code is running the exact same path several times before executing correctly. When you have a bug that seems to be doing the right thing but doesn't, logs are your best friend. Add logging on save update failures to indicate why the value isn't saved. You can also add logging at the various states of data manipulation to see what value your data is at and why. When you have a short bug that seems to work at some point previously but doesn't work now you can use get bisect to binary search between your current bad state and some earlier good state to know when the code worked. And you're probably thinking, I don't care about that metadata I just need to get this fixed. This is actually extremely important. Doing this will prevent you from introducing or reintroducing another bug back into your code. So if you thought that it worked at some point a binary search to find out what made it not work anymore is extremely valuable. So now, reproduction and resolution. So reproduce this broken state locally and in test. Add log statements until you can safely confirm what causes the broken state. If the bug did work at some point find out at which point it did work and make sure you don't reintroduce some bugs from that state too. And then write test to represent the configuration of flow of the fixed state. Are you ready? So those two are fun soft balls. You're probably like, I don't need this talk. Let's get to the fun stuff. Wildly chaotic bug number one. And these are observable attributes. Does it appear non-deterministic? So that means maybe it doesn't appear on every single one of your servers or it doesn't appear on every transaction or it doesn't appear every time the page is loaded. Does it seem to disappear once you observe or debug it? If you answered yes to those questions you might be dealing with a Heisenbug. A Heisenbug is characterized by its seeming inability to be reproduced. Once you try to observe it through recreation you may not be able to find it. So there's two main types of Heisenbug that I think you should look out for. There's a Heisenbug that lives in code. And this often occurs because debugging tools like print statements actually modify the code or they can modify the code rather. And they sometimes change the timing of the execution. So this can be as a result of like a statement or a function in your code that's like lazily evaluated. So it's only evaluated when it's called. And adding a print statement forces eval and it makes it look like the statement was called when maybe it was only called by the print or if it changes the timing maybe now your processes are timed up they're aligned to the stars perfectly so that actually does execute. But that's not the reality of what's happening in your application. Another common Heisenbug to look out for is one that lives in data. This type of bug seems hard to reproduce because you can't and you really shouldn't and I know you do but please don't download users' data onto your machine to recreate the steps. So you probably don't realize what's causing the problem because you can only see the bug on production in that data set which is either of a huge size or an odd specific configuration. Since you can't replicate these bugs on your computer you have to rely on some tooling. I recommend profiling. Profiling measures the memory, complexity, time and callers as a program being profiled. I like to use a VDBug for a VIM which outputs these callgrind files and then you can use it with a tool called Qcashgrind or Kcashgrind. I don't know why it has two names but it does so you can find it at either of those names. It puts out these excellent files which you can see at the top. It indicates what file is called what function is being called and then the line numbers and the length of time it takes for these callers to complete. This is obviously very easy to read in a high stress situation. I could just read this for hours. You can do this you can read it this way or you can output it to a flame graph using Kcashgrind or Qcashgrind. This actually indicates the initial caller the callers that it calls and all those callers up the stack and then the length of time that each of those callers takes to execute. For Heisenberg in code this lets observe what's being called and by whom without affecting the code with print statements or anything else that would adjust the output of evaluations or how long things take. For Heisenberg in data profiling would reveal how much time we're spending trying to return maybe some huge data set or maybe some time expensive calculation. Reproduction and resolution use profiling to find the trigger state use the app not fixtures or database manipulation to try to get the data in this state if possible recreate that state and test and then now that you know what now that you can make this bug deterministic you know for what input you receive a certain output follow the boar bug instructions. Alright wildly chaotic bug number two here are the observable attributes is everything broken literally all of it please send help if you answered yes to all of the above you may have a mandal bug on your hands the mandal bug is named after it's resemblance to the Mandelbrot set a mathematical set a mathematical set that's seemingly random when plotted or graphed the set itself is a collection of complex numbers but those numbers and those numbers alone are the single factor in creating the highly convoluted and sometimes beautiful depending on the artist fractal so keep that in mind that there's usually a single factor the key attributes of the mandal bug is that it seems like everything is unrelatedly broken at once and as a result of this you're probably under very high pressure to get this fixed right now and I have good and bad news so the good news is I really do think it's a single point of failure and it's not an issue with your code and you're probably thinking excellent I'm off the hook but you're not actually anything in your system you're responsible for and you're thinking I didn't sign up for this I'm a web developer not an ops wizard who can fix this MacGyver's on vacation but they said you could call if it's an emergency I think that you can fix this so let's talk about what's really happening maybe the bug is huge and it's everywhere all at once SQL can't connect jobs won't run, emails won't send every submit button on the site is fatal erroring that's okay because you have a toolkit let's just start with the simplest thing let's see if we can access your servers okay yes perfect I have an idea jobs are running, emails aren't sending submits catch fire and nothing stays remember when we set up all that logging let's check the logs when was the last log entry oh around the same time that the bugs started showing up that's not very helpful Kylie actually it is something has happened around the same time that all your bugs started popping up that your logs are no longer writing I have one more idea one more tool that I think will help you and it's the disk usage so I see maybe I'm hearing maybe that this is something others have experienced so this is frighteningly common but let's check the disk usage using df-h the dash-h flag is supposed to give us a human readable output for some definition of human and some definition of readable and let's just see if any one process is using up any one process or any write is using up all of our storage and just see who they might be df-h will show us the used and free disk usage and so the logs stop writing everything stops writing all at once like that's a pretty clear flag to me hey we can't save things and why maybe it's because we're out of space to save things so now maybe df-h hopefully df-h and this contrived solution has revealed to us that we wrote everything to the logs and now we have no disk storage left so now we can do reproduction and resolution on this so let's attempt to connect to the server and view the logs again if the logs are completely full maybe everything else is as well so use the disk usage to figure that out and then unfortunately if you're not experienced downtime this is part of life it's okay so cannot be restarted, rotated or killed at this time in this contrived example, yes it can so please go, thank you this is a practical taxonomy of bugs from the upsettingly observable boar bug and schroden bug to the wildly chaotic hyzen bug and mandel bug and I have really really good news for you we have a jerk, MacGyver who just fixes everything because they just know everything you don't need debugging instincts and you don't need MacGyver you have a toolkit a swiss army knife you know how to observe and classify proactively observe and classify with structured logging and monitoring keep your tools sharp by sharing this knowledge you should have an on-call list and you should have a playbook that documents information these are some resources that I think are excellent about debugging and kind of like more high level debugging on a systems level than just like here's Pry, y'all so I recommend you read these some of them are a bit drier Julia Evans is an excellent resource again my name is Kylie Stradley I'm here from Atlanta, Georgia if they don't hook me off the stage I want to tell you a little bit about my company MailChimp a lot of people think that maybe if you've heard of MailChimp you think it's like a hip internet company that our app is written in Ruby it's actually not MailChimp is actually two PHPs stacked on top of each other wearing a trench coat that being said we write highly object oriented code commit only with tests and we have like a huge diverse development team so if you would like to hear more about that or you just want some of the swag that I brought with me you can find me at lunch and I will give you some thank you