What is Anarcho Capitalism? And What's So Good About it?

Episode Transcript
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Bretigne Shaffer (00:04):
Welcome to the podcast that's all about
solutions.
If you're tired of complainingabout tyranny and you want to
take action to create a freerworld, this is the place for you
.
Join us as we ask what thenmust we do?
All right, I am here today withBob Murphy.

(00:28):
He's a renowned economist,austrian economist, very
prolific.
He published a lot of stuff onthings from anarcho-capitalism
to sort of basic fundamentals ofAustrian economics all kinds of
stuff, some of which I'll linkto in the show notes.
Welcome to the show.

Bob Murphy (00:47):
Thanks for having me , Brittany.

So I asked you here today because, possibly
for the first time in mylifetime, anarcho-capitalism is
in the news, like in themainstream news, so that's
something to be astounded by.
In the first place, javierMillay I'm probably saying it
wrong was elected president inArgentina and he was running on

(01:13):
an anarcho-capitalist platform.
We'll talk a little bit abouthim later on, but I first just
wanted to ask you if you couldexplain to listeners what is
anarcho-capitalism.

Bob Murphy (01:28):
Sure thing.
I think Barry Rothbard coinedthe term, but what it means is
that it's the blending,obviously, of anarchism and
capitalism, and so the idea isthat it's get rid of the state
altogether, so hence theanarchism part of it, but also
maintain private property.

(01:49):
And partly the reason for thatterminology is to distinguish it
, because historically therewere other groups who called
themselves anarchists, and theynot only wanted to get rid of
the state, but they also thoughtprivate property itself was
this unnatural hierarchicalsystem that, in their view, the
state upheld.
So, to them, capitalism wasitself a product of the violent

(02:12):
hierarchical state, and if yougot rid of all unjust authority
and illegitimate authoritiesbecause you were an anarchist,
then you would sweep awaycapitalism as well.
That's what theanarcho-socialists thought, and
so anarcho-capitalist isdesigned specifically to clarify
that, yes, we favor getting ridof the political state,
thinking that it's rooted ininjustice and violation of

(02:35):
property rights, but it'sbecause we uphold property
rights, not because we thinkproperty rights are an
expression of the state.

And why is that a good thing?

Bob Murphy (02:47):
Okay, so there's two main categories of trying to
get that across.
I know we'll probably fleshthese out in more detail as we
go through this, but one thingis just, in terms of basic
principles, that from thatperspective the idea is it's
unjust to violate someone'sproperty rights or to initiate

(03:07):
aggression.
That's the standard definitionof libertarianism, at least in
the American tradition in thewake of Murray Rothbard.
And so if that's your principle, that you can't initiate
aggression against somebody else, well then the state, by its
very nature, does that.
It's not that the stateempirically, a lot of times
happens to do that, it's just,no, by its very nature.

(03:29):
If it were a voluntaryinstitution, to put it
differently, it wouldn't qualifyas a state.
And so the two specificattributes of the state that I
have in mind are the fact thatit engages in taxation and that
it claims, at least within acertain territory, a monopoly on
the determination of thelegitimate use of violence.
All right, so it's not that thestates is worthy, the only ones

(03:50):
who can use violence, but, theysay, the people running it.
We can determine when a use ofviolence is justified or not.
So like they can say ifsomeone's breaking into your
house, you're allowed to shootthem if they want.
So it's not that they're sayingonly police officers can ever
shoot somebody, but the state issaying it's up to us to
determine whether you areallowed to do that or not.
And if we want to, we can sayno.

(04:11):
The rule is you can't do thatin areas that are so called gun
free zones.
And taxation again, that'squalitatively different from any
other kind of payment for aservice.
That, what it means to sayyou're being taxed for something
, as opposed to the stateprovides them like a bridge, and
if they charge a toll, that'snot really a tax, because you

(04:32):
don't have to use the bridge ornot.
But the state doesn't say, hey,anybody who wants to use our
military services, here's howmuch we're going to bill you
each month.
It's like, no, we are going toprovide these services and we're
charging you, and if you don'tlike it, we'll put you in a cage
ultimately.
Okay, so that's the sense.
So that's, you know.
One umbrella is just to say youcan't support such an

(04:54):
institution if you have acertain ethical framework.
And then the other element isjust a pragmatic listing and
just an analysis of the variousthings that the state does and
to show that not only like anylegitimate thing a state does
could be handled throughvoluntary means.
And so, and on top of that,it's that in practice, when the

(05:19):
state tries to accomplishsomething, even if it's
inherently okay, like educationor building roads, things like
that that aren't intrinsicallyevil that still the state does a
worse job of it for standardeconomic reasons that free
market economists can go through.

So I've got a whole list of all the what
abouts, all the objections thatalways come up.
The biggest one I think thatpeople have the most trouble
with is that you kind of alludedto, is protection from crime,
and also I'll lump the twotogether, even though they're a
little bit separate and nationaldefense.

(05:58):
You know, how do you?
How do you let's say, you'vegot this Anarcho-Capitalist
Society going, how do youprevent?
You know, not everybody else isAnarcho-Capitalist, so they've
got these aggressive militariesgoing how do you prevent one of
those militaries from coming inand taking over and occupying,
and then domestically, how doyou?
How do you, how do peopleprotect themselves against crime

(06:19):
?

Bob Murphy (06:20):
Okay, sure, so this is.
I know you're going to belinking to things, but this,
this was the essence of mybooklet Chaos Theory, which was
two essays One was private lawand one was private defense.
For people to just know thatwhat I'm going to be saying now
is that's where I laid a lot ofthis stuff out.
So the private defense, likefor military invasion, I think

(06:41):
that's actually conceptuallyeasier to walk through, and so
maybe we'll start with that one.
So, again, the logic here isjust like you could hear, people
who are libertarians, again inthe American political context,
with a small L at least, mightargue against.
Oh, we don't need politicalsupport of schools.
You know, you don't needtaxpayer funding of schools.

(07:03):
You could just have it be donevoluntarily.
The quality will be better,there's more competition and
then, yeah, in cases if there'spoor kids who either they're
orphans or their parents reallycan't afford to send them to
school, they'll be philanthropicorganizations.
The community's not going tosit there and let some kids grow
up and not know how to read.
That's crazy.
They'll support them and youdon't need, effectively, the

(07:23):
government to stick a gun ateveryone's head, and so you
better contribute to this thingthat we all agree is worthwhile,
right, that you don't need toforce the community to do
something that just 99.9% agree.
Yeah, of course we would dothat in a civilized world.
Ok, so that's kind of the logic.
And so where even a lot ofpeople who favor privatization
of services, they think that, ok, yeah, that works for things

(07:46):
like schools and mail deliveryand even building roads.
Maybe people can have sometrouble about, well, gee, who
would determine the right of wayand the traffic lights and what
?
But the idea that you don'tneed political officials in
charge of hiring guys to layconcrete and stuff, most people
get that.
But when it comes to what ifthere's foreign nations that are
amassing armies and they'regoing to invade us, surely just

(08:07):
to let the free market fend thatoff seems kind of crazy.
How would that work?
So that's what we'll tacklehere.
So I think the first thing forwhat I have in mind is a major
city like a New Yorker and LA,something like that.
And then what if it were ananarcho capitalist?
How would it defend itselfagainst invasion?

(08:29):
So I think one thing is you'dstart with insurance contracts
and so, just like the owners ofthe skyscrapers would have fire
insurance policies like hey,what if there's a big war, alarm
blaze or something?
What do you do?
Well, of course there'd beinsurance to say if the property
is damaged from fire, theninsurance company compensates
the owners.

(08:49):
And then it would be in theinterest of the insurance
companies to say, okay, for ahuge building where potentially
we might owe billions incompensation.
One thing that we'll do is we'llhave clauses and say here's
what your premium would be ifyou don't have any standard
common sense things that wouldprevent fire.

(09:10):
But it would be astronomicalthe premiums because the
potential liability is so high.
And if it's a building that'smade up out of lumber and
gasoline that's sprinkled allover the place and people are
smoking, they would say, yeah,if you want us to ensure that
for fire, we're going to chargeyou a huge premium.
And so instead they say however, if you build according to

(09:31):
these codes and you have asprinkler system and you have
contractual arrangement with thelocal voluntary, you know
private sector fire departmentsand blah, blah, blah, and you go
through all these things thatwould prevent a fire from
occurring and then quicklysuppress it in case it starts,
you know up to the latestindustry, you know cutting edge
standards in the industry, thenwe can afford to charge you a

(09:54):
much lower premium for thiscoverage because we as the
insurance company know, okay,now the chance of there being a
billion dollar claim from thisbuilding is a lot lower, because
look at all these proceduresand we would have the right to
like, send an inspector's andcheck your sprinklers with, you
know, spot checks.
We're not going to announcethat, we're just going to show
up, you know, and have you walkus through and we'll see what
the fire extinguishers arelocated in, their full, you know

(10:15):
all that kind of stuff and thesmoke alarms are working.
So, you know, that's kind ofthe model, so that's the idea,
and I think most people canfollow what I said there.
And so I just noticed I'msaying you that's why you don't
need the mayor's office to comeup with building codes and to
have a, you know, fire up likethat stuff's all volunteer Like,
and in fact you would expectthat to be better in the long

(10:36):
run than if it was a politicalprocess determining those fire
codes and things, because it's,you know, the politicians, it's
not their money on the line,whereas you'd expect the
insurance company to really beon top of the latest innovations
and studying, you know, theexperience of their competitors
and other cities and things.
Okay, so then just take it onestep further.

(10:57):
Another possible bad thing thatcould happen to your skyscraper
is a foreign army.
Might, you know, send its airforce over and drop bombs on it,
and so maybe you'd want to haveinsurance against that kind of
contingency, and so it'd be asimilar process, and again
you're paying premiums.
But now here the insurancecompany is going to have to, you
know when they're going tocover you and say how much would

(11:19):
we charge in a premium?
They would have to say well,what's the chance that this
event is going to happen?
And it's a lot lower if we have, you know, surface to air
missile sites set up, and ifthere's, we have our own air
force and whatever that canrepel invasion.
We have radar stations and blah, blah, blah.
We have intelligence networksthat scour the globe to give us

(11:40):
early warning about oh, thesepeople over here are massing
troops and their politicians aresaying that you know, we're
sitting on their historical landand they're trying to get their
people ginned up to be okaywith them conquering us, and
blah, blah, blah, but that youknow.
That's the kind of informationthat the so it'd be in the
insurance.
In this model and this is justone idea I think it would play

(12:02):
out like this, but again, it's.
If it's a free society theymight come up with a better idea
, but this could work, is so itwould be.
When you say, like, well, whowould fund you know, national
defense or city defense in thisexample, if it's just a big
giant city, it would be theinsurance companies, would be
the direct payers.
And so the system is like thebroad property owners would be

(12:22):
paying premiums to theirinsurance companies, defending
or compensating them in thepossibility of a invasion and,
or, you know, military damage,whatever.
So it, just it, just it, andthen it would be the companies
hiring it.
Yep.

So you might be about to go onto this tangent
, but I think a question that'llcome up for people as well,
then what's to prevent thoseinsurance companies or whoever
it is that's setting up thesurface to air missiles and all
that, what's to prevent themfrom becoming an aggressive,
imperialist type military?

Bob Murphy (12:54):
Okay, yeah, great question.
So here and this is going tobleed into you know, the other
big thing about private law howcould that work?
So if you just for the momentand again we'll come back to
this and explore it but if wejust stipulate the sake of
argument, that there is a law,you know there's law and order,
there's the rule of law in thissociety right now, and then

(13:15):
we're just saying, if that couldbe possible, suspend your
disbelief for the moment howcould these people, these free
people, defend themselves from aforeign invasion?
You know that that's what we'reanswering right now.
So the answer is like all theseinsurance companies, so, for
one thing, they would not bethemselves maintaining the SAM
sites and the tanks and troopsand snipers and blah, blah, blah

(13:37):
.
I think they would just bebuying those services, right.
So I think there'd becompetition.
So it wouldn't be one companythat would own all of the
military hardware.
There would be competition.
Just like you know, in anyprivate industry right now
that's not propped up bygovernment regulations.
There's.
Even in industries wherethere's like one giant player,

(13:57):
there's typically one competitor, right.
That kind of keeps them honest,and you know that phrase is
metaphorical.

But at least the threat of competition, at
least they know that they can'tgo too crazy, or someone will
come in and Right, right.

Bob Murphy (14:11):
So that's, you know that that's what happens.
So there still would be therule of law.
Again, there, there's nottaxing them, they're not allowed
to take money from anybody, andso that I mean that's the quick
answer and even, by the way,just to show what I mean, so
right now it's standard, like,if you know if troops are
invading your country, you mightdo things like blow up the

(14:33):
bridges and, you know, do thingsto try to like slow their
advance.
So in the kind of world I'mtalking about, in the framework,
even if certain, let me say onething just so people finish the
train of thought so how wouldthe insurance company figure out
how to price these services,like to know what they're worth?
Again, it would just go back tothey might say, okay, so you

(14:57):
know, we have policies thatwe've provided coverage and all
these major skyscrapers in thisregion, or some of them at least
, and maybe there's competitorsthat have done other ones, and
maybe we'll pay bounties so thatour actuaries run the numbers
and we say, given that theremight be an invasion, if they're
sending air force sorties overus and a given company that's

(15:19):
operating certain SAM sites, forevery bomber you knock out, we
will give you $800,000.
But I'm making that number up,but the number wouldn't be
arbitrary.
They would do a cost benefitand just see how much would that
be sparing us in expectedpayouts on the margin.
And that's how there would besome rationality there and so

(15:41):
that would help guide thedefense effort, whereas right
now, if the government's incharge, you've got a bunch of
guys and maybe they went to WestPoint or something and they
served in Iraq or whatever, butit's a bunch of central planners
basically saying we have allthese resources at our disposal,
what's the best way to use themto stop an invasion and why
would we expect them to be ableto do that?

(16:01):
If you're familiar with thegeneral critique of economic
planning, then it's the samelogic here.
So here I'm saying there'sgenuine market prices where the
insurance companies can come upwith and say knocking out one
bomber is worth $800,000, takingout $100 infantry is worth blah
, blah, blah and then depending.
So that could help guide theefforts.

Well, and not only that, but in the model
you're talking about, these guys, whoever's making these pricing
decisions, they stand to go outof business if they get it
wrong, whereas in the system wehave currently the military
planners, they're not going togo out of business.
I mean, the worst that mighthappen is maybe somebody will
lose their position, but thatenterprise if you want to call

(16:43):
it an enterprise it's going tokeep going.
There's no threat of bankruptcyfor the military industrial
complex.
So I think that's another.

Bob Murphy (16:54):
But right, I mean if you're, if we're talking about
like being invaded, I guess youcould say the ultimate downside
would be, if you screw it up,you get taken over by a foreign
power.

Yeah, there's that.

Bob Murphy (17:04):
And one little asterisk on that.
So also because I have somepeople, you know, objected to
what I was saying and they werelike, well, what's the point of
being compensated if some enemycame in and took over your area?
But again, if we're talkingabout people who own skyscrapers
, like they would have theability they might leave the
vicinity and still haveinternational bank accounts, and
you know what I mean.
So it's, it's even one citygets devastated.

(17:26):
The fact that you had insurancepolicies with these major
corporations that have a globalfootprint, you know they would
still owe you the moneycontractually and all that kind
of stuff.
So they're just that.
But just to quickly finish theappointment before.
So in this framework, wherethere's still the rule of law
and property rights, if theinsurance companies either
themselves or they delegate it,you know, to some other company,
you know some other companymight be have its, maybe they

(17:50):
have sharp shooters all over theplace and like that's what they
specialize in is they have asniper force and they take out
infantry and they have a youknow a schedule of compensation
where you know oh, you take outa general, you get such and such
, you take out a corporal, youget blah, blah, blah.
If you plant explosives andtake out one of their tanks,
this is how much you get.
And maybe they would find thatthey could increase their

(18:11):
profits by blowing up keybridges and stuff to slow the
enemy advance so they can gettheir snipers all positioned to
then start taking people out orwhatever.
They couldn't just do thatwithout cost.
They would have to compensatethe domestic, you know, their,
their neighbors, who own thebridge.
So they could still do it likethey wouldn't be brought up on
criminal charges.
And in this system I thinkpeople would have, you know,
recognize the courts wouldrecognize that.

(18:33):
Okay, yeah, you did thatbecause of the situation, just
like if somebody is starving inthe woods and breaks into a
cabin and eats their food.
They don't just get to do thatfor no, with no consequences,
but they're not going to becharged the same way like a
regular home invader would becharged, so people would
recognize what was going on.
So likewise, here and again,that doesn't hamstring the
defense effort.
That's what makes it moreeffective.

(18:55):
You don't want the armythinking it could just go around
blowing up your neighbor youknow that's owned people's
property because, well, in ouropinion, this helps the war
effort.
Like you don't know that.
And so market prices.
Keep you honest and make surethat the efforts are coordinated
.
Maybe no, this bridge is reallyessential for evacuating
civilians to, and if you take itout, yeah, it slows the enemy

(19:16):
advance, but then it means morepeople get trapped in their side
and get captured or killed, orso you know that kind of stuff.
So ultimately, and if normalpeople had policies to, that
would compensate them in theevent that, you know, if you had
a life insurance that also paidoff in the event of a military
invasion, you know thoseinsurance companies would have
something to say.
And again, so it's alwayscompeting interests.

(19:38):
When you're trying to determine, like to repel an invasion,
like one thing you could do is,oh, let the troops come in and
then just drop a nuclear bomband wipe out the invading army.
You kill half your populationtoo.
But hey, so clearly it's notrepel the enemy with no other
considerations or criteria.
That's not what they're taskedwith.
And I'm saying market pricesthat try to make people feel the

(20:02):
incentives and realize theseare all the competing interests
at play.
That's how, in other arenas, weallow for social, you know,
rational coordination ofactivity.
And you could bring that to beareven on something like military
defense that most people think.
Well, that has nothing to dowith the market economy and you
know there's a sense and right.

(20:22):
But the defense does like, yeah, what the invading armies do
when that's not free market,that's not voluntary but organ.
In other words, it's not that,all of a sudden, coercion is
great when it comes toorganizing your defense
activities.
For the same reason that if youwant to feed your people, you
don't have the government incharge of wheat output, you let
the market figure that out.

(20:43):
And which farmland should bedevoted to what, and blah, blah,
blah.
And truckers bringing food tothe grocery stores, and how many
grocery stores should they be,and where should they be located
?
Those are all things we leaveup to the market, and that feeds
our people way better thancentrally planning it.
Likewise, yeah, defending usfrom a military invasion is
important, just like food isimportant, and so the best way

(21:04):
to take our given resources andknowledge and come up with the
most potent, efficient defenseis to let market forces help
coordinate things.

And just to clarify I don't think you're
saying you were talking about.
You know if they blew up abridge they wouldn't necessarily
be tried on.
You know they would run upagainst on criminal charges.
I don't think you're sayingthey would be above the law,
that they that there's nothingthese companies could do that
that would have them tried ascriminals.
Is that right?

Bob Murphy (21:34):
Oh, correct, right.
So yeah, they like theycouldn't.
If they went out at gunpointand rounded up 1000 people and
conscripted them and said you'refighting now for the resistance
or else we're going to shootyou.
Yeah, I don't.
I think they would.
If they did that, they would becharged with kidnapping.
You know they would there's.

There's still held to the same laws.
That everyone else is right.
There's still right.
There's not a special standardfor them.

Bob Murphy (21:58):
Right, right, that's what I was saying.
Yeah, so I was trying to get atwhat you know in the woods when
you bring someone's cabinbecause, yeah, it's a special
circumstance.
That's different from, like youknow, teenage kids are just
bored and they see this thinghey, let's break in there and
see if there's anything good inthere.
They would be chargeddifferently.
But still, even the person whobreaks in just because he's
starving, when he's back on hisfeet and back in society, has to

(22:19):
, you know, compensate theperson for the food he took.
Yeah, something likewise.
Yeah, if you blow up a bridgefor strategic reasons to slow
the enemy invasion, you stillhave to pay the owners
compensation.
But yeah, you're probably wouldnot be charged in that instance
with crime, you would just becharged with property damage.

Okay, so I've got a couple more specific
questions about the defensething, but I think this might be
a good place to start talkingabout the rule of law.
And how would that happen ifyou don't have a monopoly state,
if you don't have someauthority dictating you know
what the law is and how it'senforced.
How do you, how do you get that?

Bob Murphy (22:59):
Great, yep.
So so here I want to kind oflike shake people out of it,
because you're right, there'sthis like, if you think about it
in a certain way, it seems likeit's an impossible problem that
like, okay, yeah, the rule oflaw and property rights and even
the military defense, you'regiven that, we know.
But if we don't, you know,don't we need to have an agency
that defines the property rights, just to even start before then

(23:22):
the free market can get going.
Like, how could you have themarket defined property rights,
if that's one way of thinkingabout it?
Because don't you need to knowwho owns what in the first place
?
So I get that issue in and Ithink that a lot of objectivists
, you know, like peoplefollowing the tradition of iron
Rand, that's how they come tothis and that's why they
conclude anarchism, even theanarcho capital is a variant of

(23:44):
it Doesn't make any sense and so.
But I think there's a logicalfallacy in that way of thinking.
So let me just warm people up.
I think we all agree.
There's definitely, you know,rules of grammar and spelling
and punctuation and things likewhen it comes to the English
language right, it's not thatEnglish is arbitrary.
There's definitely rules ofgrammar.
There's certain sentences wecan all say, yep, that's

(24:07):
grammatical or that isn'tgrammatical.
And then I was like, okay, sowho's in charge of the English
language?
What group of experts orauthority figures dictates to
the everybody else what therules of grammar are?
And there is no such group ofpeople.
Now there's things likedictionaries and grammar books
and style guides, but what thoseare doing are just codifying

(24:29):
what the community's usage shows.
Are the actual rules right thatif the Oxford English
Dictionary came out and said theword up you know, up, if that
means moving towards the groundand that's how it defined it in
a certain edition, it's not thatwe would also say, oh, I guess
that's what up means.
We would say no, that's wrong,that's not the definition of up.
And if they did do that, andespecially if they consistently

(24:53):
did that, they would go out ofbusiness.
People would stop buying theOxford English Dictionary
because they would say itsdefinitions are wrong, right, so
again, so it's not that thepeople publishing the Oxford
Dictionary define words.
What they do is they codify,they distill down for public
reference what the definitionsare, and it's not that they made
that decision.

(25:14):
Okay, so that's what I think thelaw is right.
It's this organic thing forlack of a better term right now
that you know governs humaninteraction and that what
happens when two parties arehaving a dispute.
And, by the way, what I'msaying here this is this isn't

(25:37):
just me inventing this, this iscoming from reading people
talking about, like how thecommon law emerged and how you
know law came, you know from,you know Rome, and then through
England and whatever, to comeover here to the United States.
So that's what I'm just taking,that and then kind of
elaborating upon or extending it.
But the idea is that you know,when people have a dispute, they

(25:58):
can't.
You know someone says, oh, hestole my television set, and the
guy says, no, I didn't that.
You know how do you resolvethat.
And so they can go to a judgeand just present their case and
the judge gives theinterpretation, gives the
opinion.
We even use that term opinion.
It's not that the judge ismaking the law.
The judge is saying In myopinion, we have this antecedent

(26:19):
body of law and that's how itapplies in this situation.
And you know, nowadays, in amodern context, with the state
being so omnipresent in all ofour activities, a lot of people
think you know from what I justsaid, like, okay, fine, but the
law that the judge is applyingis just what a bunch of
legislators said, and I'm sayingthat's a relatively recent bit

(26:42):
of hubris in terms of humanity,but historically, you know, the
law was just this thing,independent of you know, human
rights.

I think that's an important is.
I think that's an importantdistinction to make between
common law and administrativelaw.
I mean, I don't know at whatpoint we started having these,
these you know professionals whosat in rooms making up laws for
everybody.
But my understanding of thehistory of common laws, it's,
it's as you say, it's, you know,it's sort of the collection of

(27:12):
people's experience in resolvingdisputes.
But then this other thing camein where it's like these guys
sitting in these rooms saying,okay, what laws are we going to
come up with, you know, thisyear, and you know, impose on
these people, whether they, youknow, want them or not.
There's there's there's aqualitative distinction between
those two kinds of law.

Bob Murphy (27:33):
Exactly so.
For your listeners who arefamiliar, friedrich Hayek has a
collection called law,legislation and liberty, and if
it's there he's making thedistinction between law and
legislation.
That's not redundant and thoseare the terms that he used to
say you know, law means thingslike you know you can't kill
people, blah, blah, blah,whereas legislation he meant

(27:54):
things that political officialsget together and they explicitly
formulate and just say, yeah,issue by fear, and that's what
legislation is.
So he was saying no, the law isancient, that you know.
Way back in the day, even ifthere was like kings or tribal
elders or whatever, they wouldapply the law.
They knew stealing is illegal,murder is illegal.

(28:15):
And if you said why, theywouldn't have said well, because
I'm the king and I said so,they would say speak because it
is you know.
Maybe they would say the godsgave it, or you know, under
monotheism, you'd say came fromGod or whatever.
Or later they might say naturallaw.
But the idea, you know, beingthat no, murder really is
illegal, just like two plus twois for.
Not because some mathematiciansaid so, it just.

(28:36):
It is like a mathematician cangrasp it and study it and maybe
try to explain it to you, butit's not because the
mathematician said so.
It is two plus two is for, justlike murder is illegal, whether
or not some political officialssay.
If they say it isn't, thenthey're wrong.
You know in that, in thatconception then, and so you're

(28:56):
right.
I don't remember.
I mean I, if you'd asked me 15years ago I would have given you
a better answer, but it's beena while since I've read some of
those material.
But yeah, at some point in thein like Europe, it did evolve
away from just you know the kingand you know his subordinates
administering the common law andyou know judges making rulings,

(29:17):
because they just thought therewas this preexisting antisene
body of law that were just youknow the law, that were just the
ministers of, or the enforcersof, into more of a.
This is, these are the rules,because we said so.

Yeah.

Bob Murphy (29:30):
And that was.
It was some of a gradual, Ithink it's would start in
certain cases and then, you know, expanded and also like a huge
shift, just as an aside was thatcrime came to be.
You didn't commit a crimeagainst the direct victim, you
committed against the state, andthat's why I like your chart in
the United States.

(29:51):
It's like the people of New Yorkstate versus the defendant.
Yeah, it's not the, you know,the people who had deposits, the
bank that that's stolen, youknow, you think, why shouldn't
they be the ones, or, you know,kill somebody?
It's not that guy's a statebringing a criminal case against
you.
Maybe it's a civil case, but no, it's the people of New York

(30:11):
versus blah blah, which again isjust the government, you know,
sticking its nose in and sayingoh you, as a front to us, you
know which.
Anyway, Right.

So so how at this?
So we're kind of we're talkingabout common law here, we're not
really we're not talking aboutadministrative law.
How in a, in a society withouta monopoly on force or a
monopoly on the judicial system,how would that even happen?
How would?
I guess the big question is how.
You know, in a nuts and boltssense, you know, I think it's

(30:44):
easy to imagine how there could,how there could be, you know,
judges and courts of law thatare competing, that are
independent.
But when it comes toenforcement, when it comes to
actually okay, this guy isguilty of murder, there's some
penalty for that how does thatgetting forced in a world where
there's no monopoly on force?

Bob Murphy (31:06):
Okay, sure, if I can just take a second just to say
a little bit more, just to makesure we're not, you know, too
skeptical.
Yeah, we do it like with math,but you know, math and science,
there's all kinds of fields ofhuman enterprise where there's
definite objective conclusionsor results, things people
believe in and yet they're notpromulgated by some authority.

(31:27):
Figure Right Again with math.
Yeah, nobody's in charge ofmath.
Now there's certain experts andthings, but again, you know,
and it any given thing, it'slike some guy solves some
theorem that was took, you know,decades of an unsolved famous
math problem.
Some guy solves it.
The average person in thepublic, I mean, they might not
even care, but even if they docare, they're not in a position

(31:50):
they couldn't read the proof andsay, oh yeah, that checks out,
good job.

Yeah.

Bob Murphy (31:53):
They have to rely on other math.
But the idea is you kind oftrust?
There's enough of independenceand competition and rivalry and
objectivity in this field thatif a bunch of the experts all
sign off and say, yep, that's avalid proof, this guy finally
did it.
You know Fermat said this onhis deathbed and this guy
finally proved it.
That that's probably accurate,right, even though you know

(32:15):
nobody's in charge of that.
There's anarchy and math andyeah, no, it's actually very
high up, but there's respectedjournals and whatever.
And so I'm saying, likewisewith the law, there would be you
know different authorityfigures.
You know experts who would bepublishing codes and things and
saying like this is the way interms of property theft or

(32:36):
property law, you know, this isthe procedures that would be
used and this is homicide andall kinds of different areas of
the law where there'd be expertswriting.
But again, it wouldn't be.
They would just say, because Isaid so, they would have
reasoning and whatever theywould be trying to get.
And the reason they wouldbecome and rise from the through
the ranks among their peers isbeing a recognized authority is
because the people who areexperts in that would agree that

(32:58):
oh yeah, that person.
The thing he wrote three yearsago is the definitive work on
home invasion, and so if you'reever a judge, you know I totally
like a judge who takes that asthe framework and then applies
that to the particular facts ofthe case.
To me that's a really fair,just ruling, right?
That's the idea.
And then also, if people arefamiliar with modern day

(33:18):
arbitration, that's how I thinkit would work as well.
So people have a dispute and youknow it's, it's, most people
think they're, or they saythey're right.
You know, I think it's it's andwe can deal a minute right.
And you with you know cases oflike what, if you know someone
really is just a bad actor andwhatever.
But in general, when peoplehave a dispute, you know they're

(33:38):
, they're self serving bysomewhere, but they they're not
up there and say, well, I havemore guns and so that's why I'm
right, it's more.
They will come up with selfserving arguments.
And then the issue is well, howdo we adjudicate among those
claims?
And so for them to, I would sayin a typical dispute, like each
side would say oh, I'm sorry,I'm sorry.
Like each side would say, I'mwilling to submit our

(33:59):
disagreement, you know, to athird party here and abide by
the decisions by by the you know, opinion that this third party
gives.
And right now in the real world, that's kind of how arbitration
works.
Yeah, and so how would thosepeople get a clientele?
By having a reputation forfairness, like so it couldn't be
in a divorce proceeding, onejudge is always pro wife or, as

(34:23):
always, pro husband, becausethen when a couple's having a
dispute, at least one of themwould object and say, no, we're
not going to that guy becauseyou know he's always biased
against.
You know my side of the.
So you would have, you know,the only way a judge could stay
in business is if he or she hasa reputation for being very fair
and just applying the lawdispassionately.
And so I'm saying that's, youknow, that's how that would

(34:43):
arise.
So now just to come back toyour question about okay,
enforcement.
So here I disagree with a lot ofthe literature.
I don't know if it'sdisagreement, but if you go read
some of the classic works inanergo capitalism, like Murray
Rothbard's stuff like for a newliberty is, I think, one of his
earliest works where he has achapter on this, and they've

(35:05):
written other stuff they tend tocut, collapse it into oh the.
There's like a defense agencythat both has like internal
people who make the ruling andthey also have burly guys on the
payroll who have guns and thenthey go and and I don't think
that's how it would play out.
I think they would be distinctentities in a free society where

(35:28):
one you know, the judge is justa person.
I mean it would have supportstaff and whatever, but I think
the judge would be, just likeyou know, a solo person.
Or maybe there'd be a companythat has a team of judges that
you know.
Oh, anytime someone has adispute like this and they get
referred to us, we figure outwho's schedule.
Can you know who can hear thiscase?
You know quick list is quitmost quickly and boom, there you

(35:49):
go.
But I think you know that wouldbe one.
Just like right now, law firmsdon't also have on this payroll
security personnel, right likethe local mall might have
security like mall cops.
You know what I mean.
Yeah not not actual policeofficers?
And I'm just saying in practicelaw firms don't also run those

(36:11):
services out of the same company.
I mean, those are justdifferent things.
And so I think, that's how itwould be in a free society where
there wouldn't be governmentprovided police.
What would happen, is you know?
So I think the guy down thestreet stole my television set.
I say that you know he and wego and I say hey, I'm willing,

(36:32):
and I list like the top 10 inthe community, either judicial
firms or individuals whospecialize in property theft,
property crime and say I'mwilling to submit our case to
any one of those 10 you pick.
And the guys are no, no,they're all crooks.
I don't trust those guys here.
What about this guy?
It's his brother in law who'sno one's ever heard of.
Let's take our case to him.

(36:52):
The community is going toquickly recognize that, you know
.
I'm probably in the right.
And so then I still go and takethe case.
And so I go and you know,there's agencies like property
retrieval Inc.
And you know, and I contactthem, I say, hey, this guy stole
my TV.
I need you to go.
It's in his house, like Ilooked in and I see he's
watching stuff with my TV.
And then I tell them andthey're going to say, well, we

(37:17):
need to maintain our goodstanding in the community.
We're not just going to go tothis guy's house and break in
and take his TV.
We need a court order.
You know, show us a reputablejudge who has ruled that in his
opinion, that is your TV andthen we'll go do it.
And so then I take my case andit gets tried in absentia.
If that guy refuses to show up,I show, you know, my receipt,

(37:38):
my footage from the night it wasstolen and it's someone walking
out that looks kind of like him.
And then I give all thecircumstance and I you know that
trying to demonstrate that'shis and let's say I have enough
evidence that the judge iscomfortable saying, yes, in my
opinion he is guilty of stealingyour TV and, among other things
, he should return thetelevision set, in you know two

(37:58):
ounces of gold for your time introuble, and blah, blah, blah.
So that, right there, the judge.
You know he's not, he doesn'thave an army at his disposal he
doesn't press a button, that'sjust his ruling.
And now the separate agency?
Who has a reputation in thecommunity?
The community trusts these guys.
they're not worried about thembeing rogue criminals because oh
no, we only will step ontosomeone's property against their

(38:21):
will if we have a valid youknow or opinion from a respected
legal authority.
Because it's in their businessinterest to maintain to the
trust of the community thatthey're themselves not a bunch
of thieves.
Right, they show up again.
Are they gonna kick the guysdoor in and shoot up a plate or
throw in flashbang grenades andthen killing the guys infant?
Of course not.
They would be terrible forbusiness.

(38:41):
No one would ever go to themagain if they did that.
And so instead, you know they'llwait for the to when the guy's
out of the house and they'll goin and retrieve the TV that way
or something.
Or first obviously they'll sendnotices saying, hey, we've got
this pending thing, you've got60 days to comply, and then if
it doesn't, you know.
So I'm just saying that's theway I think the system would
play out, so you can just see iteach step.

(39:01):
So as long as there'scompetition and you notice, you
know it's in everybody'sinterest in a civilized society,
reputable companies are notgonna wanna even have the
appearance that they're engagingin criminal activity, because
that's just bad for business.

Right and presumably.
Let's say a company did dosomething like that broke into
someone's, broke down someone'sdoor, killed family members,
killed their dog, whatever thatperson could then take legal
action against them in a waythat you really can't against
the police Is.
Am I right about that?

Bob Murphy (39:33):
Yes right.

They would be held accountable for their own
criminal activities.
They wouldn't have this.
You know special status, youknow qualified immunity or any
other special status that youget just by virtue of being part
of that monopoly.

Bob Murphy (39:49):
Yeah, right.
So yes, the quick answer is Iagree with you wholeheartedly
there wouldn't be immunity.
And oh, just because you're inthe act of law enforcement, that
means all bets are off and youcan do whatever you want.
And oh, I feared for my lifeand that's why I shot that dog.
I mean, there could be thingswhere you know the carrying out

(40:09):
of your standard duties.
If certain things happen, justlike you know, you can come up
with crazy scenarios.
Let's say, the house is on fireand the you know the private
company that has firefighters onthe payroll and they go there
and someone you know takes thehose out and sprays it in there.
And what if there was someonethat they didn't realize and he
was trying to climb out thewindow and the water smacks him
in the face and kills them?
You know they presumably wouldbe treated more leniently than

(40:34):
if some people you know it was amob hit and they went up and
said, okay, we're gonna killthis guy to get this high
powered hose and just drown him.
You know what I'm saying.
So like obviously the intention.
Blah, blah, blah matter.
But right, it's not that simplybecause you're enforcing
property rights, that thereforeyou can do whatever you want,
the law doesn't apply to you.

(40:54):
That no, the law would apply toeverybody.
That's again the whole point.
There's no privileged group inthis system that is above the
law.
Everyone is subject to the law.
So here you really do have therule of law.
It's what's ironic about thisthat, like the objectivists and
whatever say oh no, we upholdthe rule of law.
It's so special to us.
We can't bear a system ofanarchy where there's no rule of

(41:15):
law.
It's just, you know whatever isprofitable, and I would say no,
it's in your, it's only in thisdecentralized system I'm
talking about that.
The rule of law does getapplied to everyone equally,
just like right now.
If the president says somethingungrammatical and that happens
a lot with Joe Biden we can allsay he just said something
ungrammatical.
It's not that, oh no.

(41:35):
By definition, whatever thepresident says is defines what
grammatical usage right.
So the rules of grammar applyto everyone, and likewise
property rights.
You know the rule of titletransfer, and with the rule of
what constitutes a crime andblah blah, those rules apply to
everyone in the system, even thepeople who are.
You know whose job it is toenforce those rules.

Yeah, that does seem to be sort of a
fundamental misconception.
I think I look at it almost askind of magical thinking about
the state, like somehow, withoutreally thinking through how
this happens, somehow there'sthis belief that you can get
rule of law and you can get likegenuine rule of law in a system

(42:18):
where there's a monopoly.
And I think when you lookclosely you kind of see what
you've just described, which iswell, no, you get this special
privileged space for the peoplewho are part of the monopoly and
the rules are different forthem and everyone else.
You know, maybe there's rule oflaw, maybe there's not, but
there's this distinction betweeneveryone else and the people in

(42:39):
the monopoly.
And I feel like that's kind ofone of the biggest barriers to
breakthrough, because in my viewit does kind of just boil down
to this like just belief, like afaith-based belief in this
monopoly system.
But the opposite is actuallytrue.

Bob Murphy (43:01):
Right and at a certain level of abstraction.
You know, it could be true ornot true in either system, right
?
So right now, I can imaginepeople listening to us objecting
and saying what are you talkingabout?
Biden can't do whatever hewants.
Right now, trump is being triedfor blah, blah, blah, you know.
So we're showing thepresident's not above the law
and the police, if they.
You know what's his name, wasit Chauvin?

Yeah, yeah, he got convicted, you know.
So the police just can't goaround killing.

Bob Murphy (43:27):
We talking about it's a so yeah, at a certain
level of abstraction, yep,there's the rule of law in that
system and then it's a matter ofI would say, just okay, using
your analysis, just say inpractice which system is more
likely to actually have thereality line up with the spirit
of what you know, the defenderof the system hopes would happen

(43:47):
.
So, just like we can kind ofsay you know, in practice we
think that yeah, they're, eventhough on paper the people in
the government aren't above thelaw.
You know, I think you and I,brett, and you still think, yeah
, the people in the CIA are notsubject to the same laws as
everybody else.
They get away with a lot ofstuff that if you or I did it

(44:08):
would be criminal, rightly so,yeah.

And most and police all the time.
You know there might be a fewisolated cases.
You know that's kind of, youknow that prove the rule, but
you know you do see crazy thingshappening at the hands of
police.
It's like no, if an ordinaryhuman being did that, they'd be
in jail.
Right, yeah, yeah.

Bob Murphy (44:31):
And so, yeah, and so in this system too, that again
with the anarcho-capitalistsketch of that world that I just
gave on paper, like I'm tellingyou my story, oh, it works out
well.
And then, yeah, you can imagineand maybe this is, you know,
some of the objections you wantto get into about, okay, but
yeah, what if there's like majorwealthy individuals?

(44:52):
Aren't they gonna be able tobuy verdicts and things?
So theoretically that couldhappen.
And then, if we want to getinto it at some point, you know,
talking about why I think thechecks and balances would be
better in that system than inthe first one, yeah, let's talk
a little bit about checks andbalances.

So that's a good example.
And also, like you know whathappens when you do have, like a
genuine bad actors, like youknow, people who have no
interest.
So what you're describing is asystem where people really
everyone has an interest inmaintaining their reputation in
society.
But what about people who don'tcare?

(45:29):
What about people who, just,you know, want to go around and
kill people or, you know, wreakhavoc or whatever?
How does it work with peoplelike that?

Bob Murphy (45:38):
Okay, sure.
So maybe we'll do like thecrazy axe murder first and then
do like the rich guy.
And then the yeah, commitscrimes and just pays judges.

And then the rich axe murderers.

Bob Murphy (45:47):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
What was that movie?
You know?
The 80s movie with the serial,or the movie about the guy in
the 80s, the serial killer, theguy who played Christian Bale.

Oh, I don't know, I don't know, I don't
watch enough movies.

Bob Murphy (46:01):
Okay Well, anyway it's.
I can't believe it's not.
Anyways, there's certain it's acult classic.
So some of your listeners, I'msure, are like, oh yeah, I can't
believe Bob can't.
This is blanking on the name,but anyway, it was a Wall Street
executive guy who also happenedto be a serial killer, and it
was.

Oh, American Psycho.

Bob Murphy (46:17):
Yes, was that?
Yes, okay, okay, okay, so, yeah, so, and you're right that a
lot of what I said I wasappealing to incentives that
ultimately came down to like,yeah, your goodwill in the
community, things like that.
So I think partly what wouldhappen is again, at least in
Western society, like how thingswould play out if it was like a

(46:40):
relatively poor Muslimcommunity might look a lot
different.
But I'm talking here about afairly secular but based on a
Judeo-Christian heritage,capitalist society that just
goes full A and cap.
And I think the way that wouldplay out is people would get
either fraternal organizationsor just literal insurance

(47:01):
companies would effectively bevouching for you.
And so, just like right now,like a brain surgeon has male
practice insurance, and so whatdoes that say?
That if it's demonstrated, notjust that something went wrong,
but that, no, if he didsomething that really was not
medically appropriate, and blah,blah, blah, and that he's on

(47:22):
the hook but he has insurance tocover that, okay.
And so I think, justgeneralizing that idea.
Or just with auto insurance,Like right now, if you kill
somebody or you mess upsomebody's car, your insurance
pays for it directly, right,even if you're at fault.
And so, likewise, I think, justgeneralizing that concept.
I think people would havestandard policies, or at least

(47:44):
in certain areas, likeparticularly in big cities where
there's a lot of anonymity andpeople don't know who's who,
because it's a big community andyou're seeing a lot of
strangers day in and day out, Ithink there probably would be a
role for insurance policies likethat.
So, like before, a, anapartment complex would rent you

(48:04):
a, give you a lease for a yearor something Besides running
your credit, and there's stillwould be credit rating agencies
in this kind of a world.
They would also like you'd havea standard policy that if
you're convicted in a reputablecourt system and this would all
be specified in the contractlike what does it mean to say a
reputable?

(48:24):
whatever, if it's just convictedthat you did a bunch of damage
or, like you, assaulted anotherresident and the property and
blah blah.
That if you owe us damages,that you have a policy that
covers that.
So we know we're good, right.
And so so there and then maybeand it's just like with your
auto insurance if you'reconstantly causing accidents,

(48:47):
your rates go up.
So likewise here.
If you're constantly gettingconvicted of, like beating
people up or petty theft orwhatever vandalizing the
building and your insurancecompany keeps covering for that
and making everybody whole, it'sgonna be harder for you to
maintain coverage, or at leastyour premiums are gonna go way
up.
So that's partly to get you tofeel the consequences of what

(49:09):
you're doing.
So, but so those kind ofmechanisms I think would work
for 98% of the population andjust give people incentives to
keep their behavior in line.
Again, it's not gonna beperfect, but right now, in the
real world, people commit crimesall the time.
It's not the threat of thestate finding you, convicting
you and putting you in a cagewith some other unsavory people.

(49:30):
That's not eliminating crime atall, right.
So it's just a matter of whichsystem.
But so now we just focus.
Okay, yeah, but the crazy axemurder, serial killer, what have
you?
It's not that he wakes up andsays I could go, you know, chop
off 10 people's heads today, but, gee, my insurance rates might
go up.
Maybe I won't do that, likethat's not what's going on with
a guy like that.
Okay, so he does it.

(49:51):
And so, at the very least, amongother things you could possibly
say, I wanna say keep in mind,in an Ancap world, every piece
of property, every bit of land,is privately owned, like some of
it might be owned by acorporation or so you know.
It might not be that, oh, jimowns that.
It might be, you know, anentity that has shareholders and
whatever, but still there's nosuch thing as private property.

(50:14):
There's not, like there's thepublic sidewalk, that, hey, I
have a right to be here likeanybody else.
No, everything's privatelyowned and you can set whatever
rules you want as far as who'sallowed on my property.
So I think in crazy cases likethat, where the guy's on video
camera, he just walks into acrowd and just starts, you know,
just taking out some samuraisword and starts killing people,
and you know they go to 10different judges who all review

(50:37):
the footage and they make surethey identify the guy and he has
no alibi or he doesn't show upand it's well understood that,
yes, this individual is aconvicted serial killer or mass
murderer.
At the very least, everyproperty owner in the area is
gonna say you are not allowed onour property.
And so wherever that guy findshimself besides, if he you know,

(50:58):
if he owned his own house orsomething the people will be
able to call you know the localsecurity agencies to say get
this guy off my property, right?
So you don't?
I don't need to have a separatetheory of under what
circumstances is it legitimatefor us to physically grab
someone and drive him somewhereand put him in a cage.
I'm saying everybody can sayget off my land.

(51:21):
And I think in that frameworkthere would emerge a role for
institutions that would be likesanctuaries for people like that
, and so it could be religiouslymotivated or it could just be a
business that says hey, at anygiven time in this society, this
big city of 10 million people,there's 800 people at any given

(51:41):
time that are pariahs becausethey're like serious criminals
and no one wants them on theirproperty.
So hey, if you're such a person, come here, we're gonna pat you
down and make sure you don'thave any weapons on you.
We're gonna put you in a youknow a very monitored cell and
blah, blah, blah.
You're gonna sign paper orcoming in that says you agree.
You know that you can't comeand go as you please and you're

(52:02):
agreed a bunch of stuff.
But on the other hand we're notgonna treat you sadistically.
You have the right to you knowtransfer to a different one of
our competitors.
That's part of the clause andyou know you have open lines of
communication with ourcompetitors If you feel you're
being mistreated.
Once you're in here that youknow they can send their
representatives and say do youwanna come over here?
So there'd be.
So it would be like the prisonsin this world would actually be

(52:23):
like hotels competing for thepatronage of these people, but
yet they wouldn't.
It would be like the hotelCalifornia, right, the ones you
go to.
You can't leave the system andthe only way you would get out
that is if one of those agenciesagain like would vouch for you
at some point.
So if you really arerehabilitated and notice you

(52:44):
know what's the incentive forall this?
Just pure profit motive.
People are not as productive ifthey're sitting in a cell
somewhere and, by the way, ifthe person could work from
within that facility, thatinstitution, they would.
They wouldn't have them doingsomething stupid like breaking
rocks or making license plates.
That's not productive.
If the guy was an accountant,they would try to come up with a
way can he do his accountantwork from in here, Because right

(53:07):
now he's got an $800,000 orit'd be in gold ounces or
Bitcoin or something.
Amount he owes the estates ofthe people he killed and he's
gotta work that debt off.

You know, and so he's not gonna do the
breaking part.
I also wonder what would happen, you know, let's say again,
there's somebody where it's onthe record, it's clear, this
person murdered a bunch ofpeople or murdered one person.
And I wonder what would happenin a situation like that, where
it is absolutely clear, and thefamily of one of the people that
he killed just goes and takesthe guy out.

(53:39):
You know what would the legalconsequences be to them, what
you know, in our current worldthey would be in trouble, but
would they necessarily inCapistan?

Bob Murphy (53:53):
Okay, yeah, great question.
So quick answer is I'm not sure, because I can't centrally plan
the law, just like if you askedme how many grocery stores per
capita would there be?
I don't know, that's.
You'd let market forcesdetermine that.
So my guess is that I thinkwhat would happen is that there

(54:13):
would be a legal principle thatlike, for example, if someone
steals your television set andyou take it back, I think the
legal ruling you know would bethat if a reasonable person in
your shoes would have been quitecertain that that was your
television set, it's okay foryou to take it back.
You get what I'm saying whereis it?

(54:34):
You couldn't just bomb theirhouse Well, that too.
But also you couldn't takesomeone else's Like, even if you
legitimately got robbed.
And then someone down thestreet had a TV model that was
similar to yours and you went inand took it and it turned out.

Yeah, you can't just do that.

Bob Murphy (54:49):
No, it looked like it that you would be in trouble.
But again, I think the specificthing would be you couldn't
have been sure that that wasyour television set and there's
a high burden of proof that yougotta be pretty sure before you
do something like that, you know.
So I think it would be likethat and likewise.
So, yeah, if somebody you knowkills somebody, then yeah, the
guy's next of kin, I couldimagine, legally speaking, would

(55:10):
have the right to kill him.
That there's a lot of traditionin Western society and culture
about you know an eye for an eye.
But I think what would happen is, you know, so that would be the
limit.
Like you couldn't kill theguy's kids.
It would just be no, if he's akiller, you can kill him, but
also you couldn't, like, torturehim for three weeks.
That I think it would just be.

(55:31):
You know, you can end his life,and so that, yeah, if the
family did that on their own andit would have to be them, right
, it couldn't just be some otherperson who was out, like I was
saying the family is Amish orsomething and they forgive him.
Somebody else couldn't kill theguy and say, well, I'm not
letting a murderer live in thisneighborhood.
Other property owners could say, well, you're a murderer, get
off my land, you know what Imean.

(55:52):
Like the fact that they forgaveyou, good for them.
But you know, get off myproperty.
They could still do that, butthey couldn't, you know, shoot
him.
They say, oh, he was a murdererwalking around.
That's kind of how I think.
And so I think in practice thelaw might say you're allowed to
do up to this amount of you know, retaliation, right.
But in practice I think whatwould happen pretty quickly is.

(56:12):
It would just become standardthat you know the convicted
murderer could say, okay, yeah,you have the right to kill me,
but what if I gave you $800,000instead and you let me work for
the next 20 years, paying youthat debt off?
And then you know the familywould think about it and say,
well, that's not gonna bring dadback if we kill him, and you
know we could do a lot with thismoney and blah, blah, blah.

(56:35):
And also, I think that's betterfor the convicted individual.
You know what I mean, like interms of rehabilitating people
instead of just putting him in acage, like I know we were
talking about death penalty butshort of that, like oh no, he
should be sitting in prison for20 years.
That doesn't make him a betterperson, right?
It doesn't help anybody.
And then he's like mixing it upwith other criminals, like
that's and maybe-.

They're reflecting the art of being the
criminal in that setting.

Bob Murphy (56:56):
yeah, or maybe being himself abused in there from
those other you know.
and so then you let him out for20 years and they're rampaging
maniacs, right right, so that'sjust crazy, and so I think a
much more humane system thatalso would tend to minimize
recidivism would be that, no,when you're convicted,
technically, yeah, the family orwhoever can do this much in

(57:17):
punishment to you, but I thinkin practice, they would just get
, you know, a monetarycompensation in lieu of that,
and I think, as that became morewidespread, that would just
become the civilized thing, sothat if somebody ever didn't say
like, oh yeah, this guy in abar fight broke this guy's arm
and this guy broke both of hisarms because the judge said that
you're allowed to do that, Ithink most people was like, oh,

(57:39):
why didn't you just take$300,000?
What's wrong with you?
What are you?
You know sick?
What's you twist it?
So I think that's-.

Yeah, creates an incentive for more civilized
behavior actually.
Right because More civilizedresponses.

Bob Murphy (57:52):
Yeah, because there is a certain I don't know
paradox is the right word.
But like to sit, you know, iflittle kids are growing up and
they're like, oh, how come thatguy is, you know, is being
hanged, and say because hekilled someone in this community
we don't like killers andthat's why we killed him.

You know, like- yeah, wait a second.

Bob Murphy (58:11):
And ultimately you know there's some limit to that
logic, right?
Like if some guy kidnapped abunch of people and kept them in
his basement for 10 years anddid awful stuff and then killed
them, you're not gonna take himand put him in a basement for 10
years and talk.
The most you're gonna do iskill him.
Yeah.
And most people realize you'renot gonna literally just do to
everybody what they did to theirvictims.
And so once you admit that,well then, okay, just because

(58:32):
they killed someone, why doesthat mean we need to kill him?
And again, it doesn't bringanybody but but yeah, going back
to your question, I do think,at least in the initial
implementation of this.
I think because there is asizable segment of the
population who would you know,who think that no, and if
somebody killed somebody, youknow, either they deserve to die

(58:55):
or, at the very least, thevictim's family has the right to
claim their life if they sochoose, like you, leave it up to
them.
That's not what the communityshould impose.
That choice on them.
Right, I can imagine that beingthe legal norm.

Right, and presumably the way this would
look from place to place woulddiffer based on, you know, the
values of that community.
I mean, a place that was fullof Amish people, I'm imagining
the law and how it plays outwould look a lot different from,
you know, an East Coast or aWest Coast sort of urban

(59:30):
environment.
I mean, If there really is nomonopoly, then it seems like
local values would sort of riseto the top wherever you are, and
it's gonna.
It would look different fromplace to place.

Bob Murphy (59:43):
Right.
And it's precisely because ofthat, that's why a lot of people
recoil on this kind of systemthat I'm sketching, because it
seems arbitrary, and that's Iget.
Why, like, an objectivist getsfrustrated, is like no, what
you're describing is like sayingyou know, in a vegetarian
community the restaurants aren'tgoing to serve burgers, but in
another place there.

(01:00:03):
But that's not because there'sanything intrinsically moral or
moral.
But if you're a vegan andanimal rights person you would
think there would be.
But you get what I meanChocolate versus vanilla ice
cream, like, oh yeah, it's justprofitability and we're going to
cater to what the communitywants.
But when it comes to matters ofjustice, there really is an
objective right or wrong.
And yeah, I mean I'm Christian.
I do think you know there'sabsolutes.

(01:00:24):
But likewise, having agovernment doesn't solve that,
right?
If you've got a hardcorecommunity of, you know,
followers of Islam and theythink that it's more illegal for
a woman to walk, walk around ina bikini, having representative
government and a bicamerallegislature, and you know,
executive, that if it's 99%hardcore Muslims who think that,

(01:00:47):
well then in their systemyou're going to the government
police are going to arrest herand try her because she's
walking around in a bikini,right?
So I'm saying, the virtue of amore voluntary framework, like
I'm saying, is it doesn't allowsome people to impose their will
actually on others or things.
Where it's, if it's there'sreally a high cost, at least

(01:01:11):
that will be expressed, right.
So just to give a quick exampleso let's say you know there's
some despised minority, they'remuch more likely to have their
basic rights protected in thekind of framework I'm talking
about, even though a lot ofpeople might have thought it
would go the other way.
They might say, oh no, in, in asystem where there's, there's

(01:01:31):
no absolutes, it's just profitmakes, right, or something.
Then you know, why wouldn't the90% who despise the other 10%,
why wouldn't they just, you know, patronize legal systems and
whatever, and they have morevoting power.
But by the same token, ok, ifit's a majority rule, democratic
system, you're going to get thesame outcome, right.
But the difference is the, youknow, the 10%, like it's very

(01:01:54):
costly, like it depends howextreme we're talking about.
But if it's like, oh yeah,people, it's not illegal to kill
, let's say it's redheads, just,you know, to make it not so
inflammatory, right, just say,oh yeah, you can go, it's not
illegal to go kill a redheadbecause they're not, you know,
they're not the same thing asother people that that would be
a very expensive thing Because,like, among other things,
redheads would pay a lot, youknow, to avoid that outcome and

(01:02:16):
it would just be very costly.
Right, like they work, play,you know, employers hire them
and whatever their productivemembers.
So I'm saying, just killingthem and there's no, that
imposes a lot of costs on thecommunity or losses, let's say
damages beyond, just to theindividual who just got killed.
And I'm saying a market systemlike I'm describing, though that
has ramifications.
Other people feel that, more sothan in a society where it's

(01:02:40):
just we vote and then thatthat's what the outcome is.

Bretigne Shaffer (01:02:43):
And there's also, there's also something
about this whole idea ofimposing a one size fits all
solution on an entire nation ofpeople who have different
cultures, different values,different beliefs.
It's never going to makeeveryone happy, and I think
everyone.
That just seems so obvious tome.
You know, you're not going tobe able to impose these one size

(01:03:04):
fits all rules that's going tomake for a happy, harmonious,
big, big, huge group of people.
And yeah, you can believe that.
You know well, my, my view ofmorality is the right one.
Or you know that this is someobjective truth, and I think
they're objective truths too.
But I think the ones we canagree on are things like, you

(01:03:27):
know, murder and theft and thatkind of thing.
Beyond that, you know, there Ithink there's something.
I think it's always going tojust lead to more conflict to
try and find one view of justiceor morality that's going to fit
everyone, because it's not.
I mean, you know you could takethe example of abortion and

(01:03:49):
definitely don't want to go downthat trail, but it really comes
down to it's.
It's a, it's a clash offundamental values and you're
just not going to get in thiscountry especially, you're not
going to get everybody to be onone side or the other side and
to try and impose I feel like totry and impose one view of what

(01:04:12):
the right answer to that isacross the country.
It's just going to result inmore conflict and more
divisiveness, as opposed tohaving you know different
communities, where the downsideof that is you have to, you have
to know that.
You know, across the border,these people are doing something
that that I find morallyobjectionable.

(01:04:33):
And there are all these othercommunities all over, you know,
all over the place, doing thingsI find morally objectionable.
But which is worse?
Living like that or trying to,you know, force everybody into
one box.

Bob Murphy (01:04:46):
Yeah, and what you just said ties into a point that
I want to make sure we we gotacross in this episode that the
people thinking like again withthat objective is mine and I'm
just.
I keep going back to thatbecause I just recently saw at
the Soho forum it was BrianKaplan and I'm blanking on the
guy's name now, but the head ofthe Iran Institute.

Oh yeah, ok, I can't think of a name either.
I know who you mean.

And so they were arguing just over this stuff.
And so again they seem to thinkthat right now, in the real
world, with states, we have therule of law.
And no, we don't, even in theUnited States, right, some
states have the death penaltyand other states don't.
Yeah Right, so we don't have asingle body of law that's
applied equally to all Americans.
It depends which state you'rein, and then certainly the laws

(01:05:32):
change if you leave the US andgo into Canada or Mexico.

Yeah.

Right and so, ultimately, to be consistent,
the person saying oh, you needthe state to have a monopoly to
enforce the rule of law becausethere's objectives and we don't
want to just leave it up to thewhims of the local population.
You would need to have oneworld government that would
impose a uniform law code toeveryone on earth.

Right.

And most people don't.
I mean, some people might thinkthat's ideal, but most people
think no, it's OK if peopleacross the globe have a
different government that theyset up and I recognize, even if
they use procedures that I thinkare democratic, and blah, blah,
blah.
The specific you know, detailsof their legal code are going to
be different from what's overhere and most people kind of are

(01:06:16):
they're OK with that and I'msaying, all right, well, that's
what would happen undervoluntary, decentralized systems
.
Yeah, no matter which city youwent to, whatever and kept city
you went to, murder is going tobe illegal.
But in some of them, yeah,maybe, public nudity is going to
be illegal, whereas in otherones it won't be.
You know who knows?
Or other ones.
Yeah, you can't be walkingaround shooting up heroin on a

(01:06:38):
bench out in the public view.
In maybe other places you couldwhatever, but the idea is that
you know community standards andthings.
That's all going to find itsexpression in those codes.

I wanted to get back to one thing you were
talking about.
The whole idea of insurancecoverage is sort of a way of
vetting people and like ifyou're, if you don't have good
coverage, you know, if you'vecommitted crimes or whatever
you're going to, your insurancecoverage isn't going to be great
.
A hotel is not going to want totake you in, people aren't
going to want to do businesswith you.
It starts to sound a little bitlike a social credit system.

(01:07:12):
So how do you distinguishbetween the two?

Right, and I'm glad you asked that.
And also, too, let's try toremember, not forget.
To come back to the what if therich guy just pays judges to
rule in his favor.
Yeah, ok, but yes, so you'reright, because you know what's
what I found hilarious?
So I wrote this stuff up when Iwas in grad school.
So this was the early to mid2000s and well, early 2000s.
And it was funny that theconversation you know and I

(01:07:40):
would be arguing this stuff oninternet forums and things, and
it would typically start outwith oh yeah, you'd have this
completely lawless society whereanything goes and there'd be
XMERS running around and, youknow, children just going into
the local CVS and getting heroinand blah, blah, blah, and it
would just be crazy, might makesright and there'd be no rule.
And then I would start goingthrough and describing my system

(01:08:02):
and by the end of it they saythat's a totalitarian nightmare
in your framework to even getinto the local mall.
You'd have to flash yourcredentials and show your papers
at checkpoint Charlie just toget in and go.
You know, go to the mall.
This is what a totalitarian.
I wouldn't want to live underyour unfree society, murphy,
where, you know, corporationscontrol micromanage.
So I'm just saying, notice,those are two completely

(01:08:24):
opposite objections, right, yeah?
So, having said that, thoughagain it's going to sound like
I'm, you know, trying to say, oh, my system has the best of
everything, ha ha.
But I think, yes, we don't wantthere to be the Chinese system
where if you criticize thegovernment, then you know you
get dinged and then you knowhotels and stuff won't rent

(01:08:44):
rooms to you and whatever.
Or if you, you know, if youdon't have enough carbon credits
, or if you do things, that youget dinged.
We don't want that, right,that's totalitarian
micromanagement of your day today life and that's that's
creepy.
But on the other hand, again,we don't want wild recklessness
and so, like, if you're a lenderand you're deciding whether or

(01:09:04):
not to give a loan to somebody,I think most of us are okay that
there exists such a thing as acredit score, right, and it's.
It's completely voluntary,right, that it's, you know,
these and agency and there'scompetition among them and they.
But they just keep track ofyour debts and whatever.
And so you and you could say Idon't want that.
And then they could say, okay,fine then, but no major credit

(01:09:25):
card is ever going to give you ayou know a card and no banks
going to give you a loan orwhatever If you've never agreed
to.
You know, this kind of thing.
So I think again, likewise inthe system I'm describing, you
know, once we stipulate what thebasic property rights are, no
one's forcing you to, you know,forcing you to do anything.
But you could imagine, you know, in certain settings again, if

(01:09:45):
you're the apartment owner andsome random guy shows up and you
have no idea who he is, like,you know, I think most people
are you okay with if they do abackground check just to see is
this guy, you know, from aneighboring community where
there's pending, you know,judgments against him that, oh
yeah, he just he robbed a bank200 kilometers away and now he
came over here and he's tryingto rent a room.

(01:10:06):
Well, no, I don't want you torent it, you know.
So I think it's just a matterof competing interests that yeah
, on the one hand, you as anindividual don't want a bunch of
other people prying into yourbusiness and thinking every
little thing I do is going tohave some impact.
But on the other hand, othertypes of businesses realize we
got to protect the people in ourorganization and we can't let

(01:10:27):
antisocial individuals come inhere without some kind of filter
on the front end.
And I think the trade offbetween those two desires to say
, well, what's the right line?
I think it depends on a case bycase basis and again put it
into a voluntary competitiveframework you're going to get,
you know, the outcome thatcaters to the most people and

(01:10:48):
what their preferences are.
So probably like in a smallcommunity where everyone kind of
knows each other and there'snot a lot of you know drifters
coming and going, you know,maybe when you go to apply for
an apartment they actuallywouldn't say, well, you got to
have a policy by a reputableinsurance company, because they
would just know we've beenrunning this place for eight
years and only once has thereever been an issue and so we're

(01:11:12):
not going to annoy most of ourcustomers for some rare thing.
That's probably not going toeven matter.
You know they could do right.
Just like.
Maybe a better, more practicalexample for people is if you've
noticed, if you're like in asuburb and you go to buy baby
formula in the in the ballgreensor something, it's up on the
shelves, but if you're in arough neighborhood and you go in

(01:11:35):
, it's behind the glass.
You got to go to the front andask for it.

Yeah.

And you know that's inconvenient or whatever, but
you can understand why thestore's doing that in a high
crime area, and so I think it'sa similar kind of thing here,
where you know businesses wouldrespond appropriately and if it
really isn't an issue then theywouldn't have those, those
screens up or those extra checks.
But you know and certain youknow.

Well, you'd also think that you know if
people, if your experience ofusing your insurance as a way to
you know, to vet yourself forpeople you want to do business
with, if your experience of thatfeels like a totalitarian
nightmare, you might switchinsurance companies.
Or you know, there's it's inthis system, it seems like the,

(01:12:17):
the individuals, have a voice,whereas you know, in China, you
don't have a voice.
You don't have.
You know there's no, there's no, there's no feedback loop for
the people who are being social,credited upon Right To sort of
voice their, their objections.

Right, yeah, just to extend what you're saying.
Right, because partly what'sgoing on with you know the
Chinese system, and then in theUS how they're trying to unveil
it, and I think you know, likethe World Economic Forum and
those characters are allinvolved.
They're lying, right they're.
They want to implement it, likewith the, the Vax ID.

(01:12:54):
Yeah, right, they don't.
They weren't trying to stop tospread a coronavirus.
That's not what the point ofthose was.
Yeah, the point was to trackpeople and they knew, oh, yeah,
just try to get national ID cardthat everyone's got to carry
around to get in a plan wherethe American public's not going
to be for that.
So let's do the Vax passportand set or the Vax port, was
that they called it Vax port?

That's passport.

Yeah, whatever, I think they had some I mean not
the authorities, like the, thelibertarians who are against it,
like they.
I think they call it Vax port,like just a.
But anyway, it was all a farceright, it wasn't about it.
And I'm not even taking a standon COVID and the effects of it,
I'm just saying the authoritieswere not implementing a lot of
those rules and proceduresbecause they were just lying

(01:13:37):
awake and like, oh my gosh,graham is going to catch this
and what can we do to help her?
That's not what was going on.

No.

And so that's partly why people recoil against that
stuff is because we know it'sphony and they're lying to us
and they're unveiling thesethings or unrolling them for
other reasons.
Like CBDC is not to preventfraud, it's to be able to track
people and to be able to shutthem out of the Commerce.
That's why they're doing it,and so, yeah, with this stuff
there would be genuinecompetition.

(01:14:03):
And so, yeah, if, if there weredifferent, you know, like there
could be rating agencies likebeyond just a credit score, but
just in general, like your lawand law and order score, or
something which sounds eerilysimilar, but at the very least
it would be accurate.
It would be classifying stuffthat other people would
plausibly care about.

Yeah.

You know what I mean , that like a potential employer
or whatever.
If it's going to say, oh yeah,this guy and you know he, you
know he eats a lot of beef andthat has a lot of carbon
emissions.
Someone who's thinking abouthiring you to work in their
factories and say I don't care,you know now it is previous job
that he get into fistfights allthe time.
I care about that, and sothat's the kind of you know what
I mean.

So they would yeah, the incentives lineup the
incentives lineup to producesomething and like yeah.

And, like you said, there's also the flip side that
the people being surveilled orinvestigated or reported upon
you know they also would have aninterest in privacy and so
those companies would onlymaintain stuff that you know in
the interplay between the two.
You know, in other words, youmight say, hey, what business of
it is yours credit agency thatI got into six fistfights in my

(01:15:08):
last job.
And they would say, well,because for our business model,
employers are only going to careabout our reports if we include
stuff like that.
If we didn't include that, wewould go out of business and
they would cater to reportingagencies that do tell them if
you got into fistfights to yourlast job.
So, yeah, that's a prettyrelevant thing.
And then, who is an employee?
You might say, well, I'm goingto shop around.

(01:15:28):
But if all the major agency islike, no, if you got in a
fistfight in your last job, wegot to tell the potential player
that, then you would realize,OK, if I want to work and you
wouldn't need to use that, youcould say, OK, well, I'm going
to go out of business and I'mgoing to shop around.

Oops, you just froze up.
Oh there you are.
You froze up per second there.

Okay so, but again, even there, it's not that it's
imposed on you.
You could just say, okay, fine,well, you know, screw you guys,
I'm going to go find you know asole proprietor and talk to the
owner and say you know, yeah,you know what, I don't have
reporting agencies.
I did get into a fight in thelast job, but you should have
heard with the guy, you know,the guy who was sleeping with my

(01:16:07):
wife, and the guy was like ohto it, really.
Okay, yeah, well, I'll give youa shot.
If you start a fight here,you're gone.
But okay, I'll give you a shot,you get.
I'm saying so.

Yeah.

Nobody's being forced.
It's just be different groupshave their in.
But yeah, no one's going to bemaintaining records of things
that really have nothing to dowith the ostensible purpose,
just because they're snoops ortrying to spy on you, because
that would go out of business.

Yeah, yeah, okay, let's get back to the rich
guy who pays the judges to ruinhis favor.

Right, okay.
So what's funny about thatobjection is so it's a valid
objection to concern, but what'sfunny is it seems like the
implication is because right now, when we had the state running
the court system, there reallyis a one rule of law that
applies to everybody, and richpeople are prosecuted with just

(01:16:57):
as much zeal and vigor is thelowly, you know, poor, homeless
guy, when, of course, no,everyone knows, in the current
legal framework, if you'rewealthy, you can afford really
good lawyers and whatever, andyou're going to be able to beat
cases that someone without asmuch as much means would be
prosecuted, you know, would beconvicted on, right.
So right now, it's not the casethat a rich person isn't able

(01:17:23):
to to evade the consequences ofillegal activity more than a
poor person, right?
So it's just, as always, amatter of degree.
Yeah, which system do you thinkis more susceptible to that?
So, in a free society, again,the way the judge.
Again, in the typical case,it's not.
This is another thing.
I haven't highlighted thedistinction.
Right now, if you get chargedwith a crime and you go before a

(01:17:45):
court, you have no role in whoyour judges.
That's just a side, right.
And so, even if that judge hasa notorious history of
corruption and making terriblerulings that the public can kind
of see.
That's crazy.
That would have a crazy ruling.
You know, if it's a place wherethe judge is due to election
you can try to vote the guy outor something, but you know it

(01:18:06):
might be a political appointee.
It's a very tenuous, you know,like the mayor, when two people
are running for mayor, the factthat one judge in that city's
framework made a crazy rulingtwo years ago, that's not going
to determine the outcome of thatelection.
Yeah Right, so everything justgets all bundled together,
whereas again, this moredecentralized framework that I'm
talking about, the way aparticular judge maintains his

(01:18:28):
or her livelihood is, bothparties to the dispute have to
submit to it ahead of time andsay, yeah, I'm willing to go
before this judge.
Are you Sure?
Yeah, and so if it were, youknow, documented that?
Oh yeah, occasionally thisjudge, whenever there's rich
clients, tends to rule in theirfavor, even if we didn't know,
we didn't see the paper trail,it just looked like huh.

(01:18:50):
It seems kind of funny thatrich defendants always get off
with this guy, even when itlooks like there was a smoking
gun case against them.
Then you know, other people,when they're plaintiffs against
a rich defendant, are going tonot agree to that judge Right,
and so that's you know the wayit would work that, yeah at any
given time.
certainly, people aresusceptible to bribery or

(01:19:12):
whatnot, but if you're wholethere's a cost to it for them.
Right, right, you're more likelyto be punished, whereas in the
current system, again, at best,it means oh, that might be
something that would angerpeople and in the next election
maybe that's going to be usedagainst you.
But you know people aren'tgoing to remember that two years
later, and you know so anyway,that's.
I think the penalties forcorruption are much lower in

(01:19:36):
practice in the current systemthan it would be in the kind of
one that I'm describing.

Yeah, yeah, I've got a bunch of other sort
of what about?
What about one really sort oftargeted, specific one?
Gets back to defense, because Ihear this objection sometimes,
which is nuclear weapons exist.
You know, we're not going toget rid of them.
Isn't it safer for humanity?
Isn't it better that they'reheld by governments, that we

(01:20:04):
have this way of limiting whogets them and there are very
strict controls on how they canbe used?
If we didn't have thosegovernments, the nuclear weapons
are still there, wouldn'tanybody have access to them.
And how would you?
It just seems like that wouldbe a very dangerous thing to
have this terrible technologyavailable to anyone with no

(01:20:27):
controls on it.
How do you respond to that?

Okay, sure, so.
So one thing is to say you know, in the last 150 years, the
biggest mass murderers have beenpolitical states.
Yeah, right.
So in terms of what's the lastgroup like?
I would rather plumbers orelectricians or soccer players
have control of the nukes ratherthan politicians.
Ultimately, right, like interms of, or, you know, let's

(01:20:53):
say, political rulers, becausein some countries, like you know
, with Stalin a politician, Iwould use that word for him.
So there's, there's that, but Iget, you know, the, the prime,
the premise, the idea beingshouldn't there be strict legal
limits on who can control thesethings?
And then, given that we have aworld dominated by states,
doesn't that mean that the stateshould be in control?
So the way I would hand that inmy framework is again going

(01:21:17):
back to, you know, the basicframework that the way you would
interact with other members ofsociety, other institutions, is,
I think you'd have an insurancecompany or fraternal
organization, or whatever it'sgoing to be called, vouching for
you.
And so, likewise, if you'resome company that wants to, you

(01:21:38):
know, buy a factory and startprocessing uranium and building
really powerful weapons, I think, in order for an insurance
company to sign off on that, tosay yes, if this company is
convicted of causing damages toanyone in the community, you
know we will pay that off andthen we'll deal with them

(01:21:58):
ourselves.
They're going to have, they'regoing to have rules in place
like, say, well, no, if you haveequipment on your premises that
could possibly kill a millionpeople, then and then we're
going to be on the hook forthose legal damages.
There's no way we're going tovouch for you.
I don't care what you pay us inpremiums, that's too risky.
And so I think that's the waythings like that would would

(01:22:20):
would play out, that you wouldsee the the legal so effectively
.
I don't think privateorganizations would be legally
allowed to hold the you knowsuper aggressive weapons that,
if misused, could causewidespread carnage.
So there might be like tacticalnukes that could be used
offensively, but in terms of, dowe need to have the ability to

(01:22:41):
blow up a whole city, I don'tthink that that would legally
happen in the kind of world I'mtalking about it wouldn't be
insurable.

Right, I mean, there was an argument I
remember when, when Fukushimahappened, and there was an
argument at that time that and Ibelieve it was the case that
that nuclear power, at leastthat nuclear power station, was
not insured.
That it's, that it's notinsurable because of the,
because of the, because ofexactly what you're talking

(01:23:10):
about the high degree of risk isthat?
Do you know?

if that's the case, I know about the US.
I don't know over there likewhat their deal was, but yeah,
in the US one of the issues withdeveloping building more
nuclear plants was apparentlywith the regulation and the
liability, and that's why a lotof pro nuclear people wanted the
legal code to be changed.
That, yes, like you're saying,I think a lot of insurers would

(01:23:37):
not put themselves on the hookfor that because you know, geez,
if something goes wrong there'sa potentially open ended
liability.
And so they wanted the pronuclear people wanted government
rules, kind of like with thevaccine stuff.

Yeah, yeah, don't hold us accountable for
the harm we do, so, so right soit's now I can't speak to, like.

I've talked to some pro nuclear people that that
agree with the limits but theysay no, it's common sense.
Things like if you knew enoughabout the science and blah blah,
you'd see that you know whatwe're talking about is quite
reasonable.
It's more like just not givingthe jury the ability to say, oh,
that's a trillion dollars indamages, when really it's not.
You know that kind of thing,right, right.

So I don't know enough to weigh in on
whether it's wrong.

I'm just saying in the free society that I'm
talking about the legal damage,you know, liability would be
sensible and if it turned in, Ithink in practice that, yeah,
the so, whereas a nuclear powerfacility, if it's got safeguards
and whatever, poses not a verybig threat.
yeah, the population, whereas ifyou have a bunch, of things
that have, oh Jesus, some groupbroken, or if just the people

(01:24:44):
running this organization wentrogue and they weren't going to
do that and they wanted to, theycould kill millions of people.
That, yeah, I don't think anythird party would want to say.
Yep, we vouch for them andwe're on the hook legally for
any damage they cause.

Yeah, yeah, Okay.
One of the biggest objections Ihear all the time is this has
never been tried historically.
There are no historic examplesof anything like what you're
talking about.
So this is crazy.
It never has been, it never canbe.
How do you address that?

Okay.
So if I want to be glib aboutit, I can say, well, good, so
this way at least we know it'snot a demonstrated failure.
In contrast, your proposaltypically the person I'm talking
to of limited constitutionalgovernment, we know that doesn't
work Because you know, look atwho we had.
We had Samuel Adams and BenFranklin and Thomas Jefferson
and James Madison, and they allgot together and gave us this

(01:25:38):
great system, this greatexperiment, and it blew up in
our face.
So you really think we're goingto reboot and have a bunch of
founding fathers that are betterthan those guys were to give us
Constitution 2.0, and this timewe mean it Right.
So I'm going to say, if you'regoing to use lessons of history,
you can say limited governmentclearly does not work.
It's been tried hundreds oftimes.
It always has failed, always100% failure rate.

(01:25:58):
And so you know, I could again,being glib, I could say the
very least, the system I'msaying it's not that there was
some society that we could pointto that oh yeah, that was doing
what Murphy wanted.
Oh yeah, that was doing whatMurphy wanted, and then, 50
years later, it's a big statethat took over or something.
So less glibly, it's true, noone society has ever had all the

(01:26:20):
attributes I'm talking about.
But each particular thing I'msaying there are analogies, just
like in this conversation we'vebeen having.
You know, I would try to say,like with the medical
malpractice, right, like itreally is the case right now
that for you to drive your caryou need to get insurance.
That you know vouches for youand says, yep, if this guy
causes damage with his vehicle,we will make the person good,

(01:26:43):
good and otherwise you can'tdrive on the road.
So I think you know that's astandard thing to say in a free
society.
It would be similar the ownerof the road, we would say you
need to have a policy, you know.
So a lot of these things arelike that.
And again, arbitration, you know, you see, that right now
there's private security interms of, you know, personnel.
I think there's more peopleemployed privately in security

(01:27:04):
right now in the US than thereare public sector police forces.
Okay, so their legal standingis different, but I'm just
showing it's not that everyonejust sits back and says, oh, we
have the police to protect us,that no, lots of organizations
know the way you actuallyprotect your person and property
and your employees and stuff is.
You have private sectoremployees, you know, with that

(01:27:27):
function.
It's just they're notgovernment police.
So you know, again, with allthese things, the ratings agency
, like things with Amazon andstuff, the thing that shows a
real world application of, well,gee, what if you send money to
someone and they don't send youyour books or your merchandise?
Well, that could happen, butthey have rating systems and in

(01:27:47):
practice it's pretty good.
Whereas if I told you howAmazoncom worked before, it was
a thing you could imagine, a lotof people saying that would
never work.
Are you out of your mind?
You're just going to send moneyto random people 200 miles away
and just hope they send youtheir stuff.
That's not going to work, andyet it does work right.
So I realize a lot of thisstuff.
If I say, the whole system atonce sounds crazy, but if you

(01:28:11):
just think of each littlecomponent of it, it's not crazy.
And we do see real worldanalogs of that already, and I'm
just kind of combining it allinto one thing.
Yeah, yeah.

Why do people tell anarcho capitalists to go?
Move to Somalia.

So, yeah, this is a very popular thing.
So Somalia per se, I don'tthink is so unfair and I'll come
back to that in a second.
But in general, yeah, peoplewill point to, like recently I
saw someone say, oh, if you likefree markets, go to Gaza right
now, because there there's nogovernment.
And I and I got to my point was, yeah, a region being

(01:28:48):
completely obliterated by agovernment right now is showing
this is what it looks like ifthere's no government
involvement Like that's justcrazy.
Yeah, so with Somalia, infairness to there, it really was
genuine period of statelessness.
We know when the I forget theguy's name when the you know
previous dictator fell, and thenyou know there were squabbling

(01:29:10):
clans and things, but there wasno other government that was
established in his absence andso it was genuine statelessness.
So it wasn't a picnic, but youknow what Somalia under anarchy
was better than Somalia with astate, okay.
And so again, with all thesethings you got to do apples to
apples.

By what measurements?

Life expectancy literacy rates, One that maybe
doesn't strike people asparticularly important, but like
cell phone usage per capita,you know, various metrics.
That and also too.
So Ben Powell has an article onthis.
If you want to look that up andput it in the show notes page
yeah, that's P-O-W-E-L-L is howyou spell his last name.

(01:29:52):
And also, too, he did it like acomparison of Somalia with some
of the neighboring countriesand just showed over time.
And so it's not only that, inabsolute terms, somalia did
better when their governmentfell, because you might just say
, oh well, in general, humanityprogresses, or whatever, but no,
that the rate of improvement,like Somalia, compared to its

(01:30:16):
neighbors, somalia's relativestanding, improved when their
government fell.
And why did their governmentfell?
It's not because everyone readRothbard, it's because the guy
was so corrupted, it was such anawful regime that it collapsed
under its own weight.
Okay, so it's not surprisingthat taking away the awful,
parasitical regime and leavingit with nothing, those people
did better off, right and so.

(01:30:38):
So again.
But it's to point to that.
See, that's what happens.
You take away the government islike no, no again.
So, for one thing is yep, theywere better.
So, even so, somalia does liveup to the claim, which is take a
given group of people, otherthings equal.
You take away their state,they're going to be better off.
Somalia actually fulfills that.

(01:30:59):
Now, that again, the claim isnot for any group of people with
a state.
Compared to any other group ofpeople without a state, the
latter is better.
That's not what we're saying,right, right.
And so it's like if I say it'sgood for a basketball team to
pass the ball around and notjust have one guy, you know,
take all the shots, and youcould say, oh so the Chicago
Bulls with Michael Jordan, if hejust took the shots all the

(01:31:21):
time, isn't going to be able tobeat a high school team if they
pass the ball a lot.
Well, no, the Bulls would win.
But I'm saying other thingsequal, right, so the Chicago
Bulls if they pass more isbetter than the Chicago Bulls If
Jordan just shoots every shot,right.
And so likewise, yeah, the US,if you take their state away,
we're going to be way moreproductive and better and
peaceful than Somalia without astate.

Okay, so that's you know yeah, yeah, it's
not as apples to oranges Reallyquickly because I realized how
much, how much, how little timewe have left.
So if you can quickly addressthe issue of how do you prevent
a new monopoly state from risingup, Okay.

So I can't guarantee that, right, you know, humans,
humans have free will.
There's nothing that wouldnecessarily prevent you from
forming a state.
You know, depending on yourview of history, whether you
believe in the literal genesisaccount or whether you believe
in more of an evolutionary thing.
At some point there wasn't whatwe think of as human government

(01:32:23):
or states, let's say becausegovernment could be a more
generic term yeah, politicalstates of the kind we mean,
those definitely started at somepoint in human history.
Right, and so if there was aperiod when humans existed and
they didn't have the politicalcourse of state that we have in
mind by that term, and thenlater it existed, clearly that
shows States can come intoexistence, right, and so I can't

(01:32:45):
prevent that and say, oh,because of clause 8 on my
contracts, well, what if peoplejust ignore them?
Right, so I can't prevent that.
But what I can say is I thinkif you had a system like I'm
talking about, up and running,it would be very robust to the
emergence of a new state.
And so I think what's what'sreally crazy is to start with a
limited state and assume it'sgonna stay limited.

(01:33:07):
Right, because there it's veryeasy, especially when the state
is in charge.
Oh, we have a Supreme Court,and so when we're accused of
violating our prerogatives, weturn to the Justices we
appointed and said, hey, did webreak the law?
And they say no, you didn't.
Okay, good, great, I'm glad wegot that straightened out.
Yeah, and you know, we tookaway these people's guns.

(01:33:27):
Does that violate the secondamendment?
No, it doesn't.
Okay, phew, okay, great, right,that's what's ludicrous.
Whereas if you don't have thatapparatus and it's all competing
Organizations with a generaldecentralized rule of law where
nobody's above the law, it'shard for one organization to
kind of rise and dominate theothers.
And you know, to kind of goback to like say, oh, wouldn't

(01:33:48):
the dominant defense saying shejust turned into the state.
They could try, but everybodywould at least recognize that
they were criminals.
That's, I mean that the stateright now.
It's not merely that they haveguns and they point and I think
a lot of libertarian types missthis sometimes that they're real
jaded and they say, oh, yeah,the reason the government can do
xyz is because they have moreguns than people.
No, they have legitimacy.

(01:34:10):
Now you might think it's amisplaced, and so do I, but the
general public does not view.
The mayor's office is the samething as like a mob boss
headquarters.
Right, that certainlibertarians do, that's not the
general population.
If the general populationthought that the mayor wouldn't
be a ruler anymore, he wouldlose his authority.
Yeah, and so I think peopleunderestimate that that in order

(01:34:35):
for a group to rise above andthen you know they would have to
Gain some legitimacy, and itwould be hard to go from a
situation of Anarchal capitalismto one group coming on and
taking over all those powersthat we traditionally associate
with a nation state and Nothaving anybody along the way say
wait a minute, you guys areviolating your prerogatives.
You can't do that.
You're a criminal, right.

Right, yeah, especially if you've got, if
you've got, this establishedrule of law where, where
everyone is held accountable,and suddenly someone rises up
and is like, well, no, we're notgonna, we're not, we don't want
to be held accountable, we'reyou know, we're gonna do our own
thing.
It's like I think people justbased on their own experience
would have a problem with that.

I would, I would hope, I would think and also
just to elaborate or extend whatyou said, I think the fact that
there would be competingagencies providing the same type
of certain would be critical.
So right now you go to arestaurant, you go to a fast
food place and you get foodpoisoning.
People can be mad at that chainand say, hey, watch out,
community, don't go to, you know, burger King, because I got a

(01:35:35):
whopper the other day and I gotreal sick and da, da, da they
wouldn't say oh well, the nexttime you're hungry I guess
you're just gonna stay home thenyou know what I mean.
Like they wouldn't talk likethat.
Yeah because there's othercompeting places, whereas if
people say, hey, you know thecops, last week they took that,
cut that suspect in the custodyand they broke his arms I don't
think they should have done thatyou'll get a lot of people

(01:35:56):
saying, oh well, next timesomeone's breaking into your
house I guess you're just gonnadeal with it yourself and not
call the cops, right.
Right.
And the reason they think likethat that dichotomy, it's all or
nothing is because there's oneagency, the police that do that.
But if there were ten differentpolice organizations providing
the services and one of them wasconsistently more aggressive
than the other nine, it wouldmake sense to say, hey, instead

(01:36:17):
of patronizing this tenth one,let's do these other nine.
And it wouldn't be.
You're either choosing betweenHaving laws enforced at all or
cops who you know break your armjust because you mouth off to
him.
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, you have any thoughts on Javier
Millay and Whether he's reallyis here real anarcho capitalists
.
Is he are you hopeful?

Mm-hmm.
Okay, so I'm biased, because inan interview he literally cited
chaos theory.

Oh, wow.

I was asking him for my point of view.
He was like Robert MurphyKyle's theory, but I don't know
what he said, but I think it wasa favorable and so, yeah, and
he is, he really does know, andin a crook capital he's not just
bluffing and again, why wouldyou bluffing?
Although he won.
So I guess you could say maybehe did realize that.

(01:37:08):
Note the time is right.
What do people want?
Yeah, and I'm gonna pretend tobe it, even though actually I'm
a menarchist.
Yeah.
So I do think that, yeah, heactually is an ancap and you
know, he's a trained economist.
They're getting people don'tknow his background.
He's a professional economist,he's worked for major banks and
stuff.
So he's definitely, you know,in that vein and has read the

(01:37:29):
literature and knows the theoryand believes in it.
So I don't know, I don't knowhim personally.
I know a lot of people who areclose, you know, to him.
Like I interviewed this guy,nicholas Kachinowski, who was
one of the co-authors of theproposal to a, to get rid of

(01:37:49):
their central bank and todollarize.
So I know a lot of people thatare, you know, like I'm like one
or two layers of separationfrom him and a lot of them are
very Complementary and they'rehopeful that they, you know.
So like when the people on theleft are accusing him now being
a fascist and whatever, becausehe's Like saying, oh, if you're

(01:38:11):
protesting and blocking traffic,we're gonna arrest you, and so,
like the left, so look at this,see right wing fascist.
And I know a lot of people whoare, you know, coming out and
defending him.
And so I don't know himpersonally, I haven't followed
his career or anything, but Idefinitely can say he's, he
knows the material, he's notbluffing about that.
And A lot of people who Irespect Are hopeful like let's

(01:38:34):
see if this guy can really pullthis off.

They don't think it was like some cynical
thing and oh yeah, he's gonnaget in there and disappoint it's
just like everybody else doesyeah, he did say he was gonna
get rid of the central bank andI think people, people had had
the sense that that was gonnahappen, like on day one, and it
hasn't happened yet.
And right, what do you?
What do you think about that?
Do you think he's broken hisword on that?

Um, so I, I don't know, I Agree, like he was, you
know, having a chainsaw andstuff like that.
Yeah, it seemed prettybombastic.
Having said that, though, hedid publicly endorse the
dollarization plan.
Like I said, this guy knowNicholas, and I forget what his
co-authors name was In in theirproposal.
Like that was written, you know, a few years ago, so it's

(01:39:15):
before Javier was was a thing,or a frontrunner at least.
You know it was a laboriousprocess.
It wasn't just on.
You know, next Thursday we getrid of the central bank because
the deal was all of the existingbanks, all of their Assets,
like on reserve with the, withthe central bank, were

(01:39:35):
denominated in their localcurrency, you know what I mean.
You can't just snap your fingersand switch the whole thing over
, just like right now.
Imagine if you know, we weregonna get rid of the Federal
Reserve and, instead ofeverybody using dollars, we were
gonna use Swiss francs orsomething that would be hard to
pull off in one month.
Yeah, transition, yeah, withoutthis right.
So that's what, the what, thefeedback I've gotten on that.

(01:39:59):
So, again, I don't know, Did itwas his campaign rhetoric?
Did he leave that open tonuance?
Or like what?
Did he lead his supporters tobelieve, no, we're really gonna,
on day one, get rid of thatthing?
I don't know, because I don'tspeak the language and I, you
know, I haven't been able to seewhat his commercials were like
but it sounds like that wouldn'thave been a realistic thing to
promise.
Anyway, you know right and whatI can say is, yeah, that he

(01:40:22):
publicly endorsed this plan, forthis is the blueprint we're
gonna use for the dollarization,and if you went and read that,
it was clear this was gonna be adrawn-out process.

Yeah so yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, we've gone
close to two hours.
Um, is there anything?
I mean we could probably go onand on and on, but is there
anything else?
Is there anything critical?
We've left out anything thatyou know big misunderstandings.
People have something, anythingthat needs to be addressed.

Well, it's a funny.
Can we talk about the mafialike wouldn't?
yeah, yeah, yeah over yeah, thisis a good one, like I think
they just kind of underscoreshow, if you study free market
economics, you have a certaininsight into this.
So right now and again, use theUS is the the the place where
I'll make my points andreference students as the
history I know.
But in the United States, whatare the sectors where the mafia

(01:41:17):
or organized crime in generalthrives?
It's all those that are eitherliterally prohibited or heavily
regulated by the state.
Yeah, so prostitution, gambling, illegal narcotics and back in
the 20s, when alcohol wasillegal, right, that's what
Oregon, you know, al Capone wasa bootlegger and all this right.
Once you, they legalizedalcohol.
It's not that organized crimehad anything to do with liquor

(01:41:40):
anymore.
Okay, and so as an economist,you can study that and try to
figure out why that is and gothrough and say, well, yeah, cuz
when it's illegal there'smarket share and you know
there's incentive to Like thecosts and benefits have taken
out your competitor, becausethis is my area where I'm gonna
sell the whiskey in this region,those, those numbers.
The incentives are different ifit's illegal and the only

(01:42:00):
people selling the whiskey are,by definition, criminals.
Right to be able to stay inbusiness must have networks in
place where they pay off thecops and pay off the judges,
like if the community knows, ohyeah, you need liquor, you go to
that guy.
Well, the cops know that too.
So the only reason you're gonnabe able to persist in there is
if you're paying them off.
Right, right and so right.

So you've already, you already paid sort
of the entry fee to the world ofcriminality, and so you might
as well, you know, be committingcrimes right on the market real
crimes.

Yeah, on the margin.
For you then to Occasionallyshoot people is not that
qualitatively different, becauseyou already gonna have the
police and the judges on yourpayroll and whatever, yeah.
Whereas if you're a law abidingCEO, you know anheuser-bush and
you're at a board meeting andthey're like okay, we're gonna
unveil a new product line andwhatever, and let's make sure we
don't have commercialsinvolving trans people, because

(01:42:53):
that pisses people off,apparently, and did a.
Oh and, by the way, why don'twe go do a drive-by and kill the
shareholders of Heineken?
Maybe that will be good.
It'll be like what are you outof your mind?
Why would we do that?
Like we're running a reputablebusiness here.
They would expose us all kindsof risk.
So, and also, the margins aresmaller, right, when it's a
reputable legal business, themarkup from what you pay

(01:43:16):
wholesale to get the product andthen resell it right, the
markup's not that big.
So to capture 2% more marketshare Doesn't mean that much.
It's not worth killing somebodyover.

Whereas yeah, don't.

I have the rights to sell cocaine in this
neighborhood, based on what Ipay the Colombian drug lords For
the product and then what Iresell it for.
You know you're mostly paid forthe, for the risk of being that
, you know, middleman.
That's what you're gettingcompensated for, and so, yeah,
to take somebody out might meanyou make an extra $300,000 a
month and, yeah, I'd killsomebody for that.

(01:43:46):
I mean not me, but the personcould right, right.
So I'm just saying there's so,just more generally, that's kind
of the idea.
And so it's Precisely in thoseareas where the state comes in
and outlaws or heavily regulatesquote Legitimist business
people from operating in yeah,that the mafia thrive right,
because they, because this theregulation creates those profit

(01:44:08):
margins Right, they wouldn'texist without right without that
, and so then, one way ofthinking about an Anarcho
capitalist world, if you want.
It's like if the state is stillthere, but legalized everything.
And so some people think, oh,if everything's legal, that
means mafia is gonna runeverything, and I would say, no,
that means the mafia would runnothing right, go out of
business.
Yeah, the current level, withthe state regulating some things

(01:44:30):
and legalizing others.
The state, the roster, themafia thrives in those sectors
that are heavily regulated, notin the thing that are wide open.
The mafia doesn't run drycleaning operations because
there's no margin there.
You know people really need tohave dry cleaners, just like
they really like to drink.
But if there's no, you know.

Anyway, that's , yeah, that's a really good
point, that's a really good,that's a really good point.
Okay, thank you so much.
This has been fantastic and Iwill.
I've got a bunch of stuff tolink to.
I'll link to your chaos theoryand, oh, what is your website?
How do people, how do people,keep current with you?

(01:45:08):
How do they know what you'redoing?

Yeah, I guess I would point people to my podcast
.
Probably so Bob Murphy show.
Calm is the place to go.
I do have a personal set, but Iwon't even mention it because I
haven't updated that in a while.

So okay, I would say Bob Murphy, show calm.

If you're into the kind of stuff I've been talking
about, this is that's the placeto go.

Okay, and you're on Twitter and I don't
think you're not on sub stack oranything else.
Right, you're just um rightTwitter.

I'm Bob Murphy econ.

Okay, okay, Okay, thank you so much Well
thank you.
You've been listening to.
What, then, must we do?
The podcast.
For those who understand thestate is the problem and are
seeking solutions For moreepisodes, go to Bretney dot sub

(01:45:56):
stack calm.
That's Bret E dot sub stackcalm and subscribe.

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What is Anarcho Capitalism? And What's So Good About it?

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