Transcript: Walter Block Interviewed on The Savvy Street Show

Date of recording: February 22, 2024, The Savvy Street Show

Hosts: Marco den Ouden and Vinay Kolhatkar. Guest: Walter Block.

 

For those who prefer to watch the video, it is here.

 

Editor’s Note: The Savvy Street Show’s AI-generated transcripts are edited for removal of repetitions and pause terms, and for grammar and clarity. Explanatory references are added in parentheses. Material edits are advised to the reader as edits [in square brackets].

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

Hello and good evening. Welcome back to The Savvy Street Show. As always, I have a co-host and we also have a distinguished guest. Some of you are subscribers, you may have seen and heard my co-host before. Today it is Marco den Ouden. He is a well-known libertarian and the publisher of the blog, The Jolly Libertarian. He’ll introduce our special guest. Welcome to the show, Marco.

 

Marco den Ouden

Thank you. Glad to be here. Walter Block, back in the day, you propounded a theory of justice where you took the biblical injunction of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth to a higher level. You argued that proper justice called for two eyes for an eye and two teeth for a tooth. Can you elaborate on that?

 

Walter Block

I was trying to articulate what I thought would be a proper libertarian punishment theory.

Well, that’s only part of it. I was trying to articulate what I thought would be a proper libertarian punishment theory. Well, look, Marco, suppose I steal your car. What should happen? You catch me, the cops catch me. Well, first, I ought to be made to give back your car to you. So that’s one tooth. Second, I think what should be part of the punishment for me is I should give you my car, assuming it’s of equal value for an equal amount of money. So, that’s the second tooth. The third element of the punishment would be if I immediately went to Vinay, who is the policeman, and I said, sorry, I stole Marco’s car. I don’t know what I did wrong. Here is Marco’s car. Then there should be no further punishment on the third element. But if I hid out for five years and Vinay, the cop, was trying to find me, well, who’s going to pay for that? I should pay for that. Fourth, Marco, when I stole your car, I scared you. Your sense of safety was reduced. So, what are we going to do to make that right? Are you going to go boo, and scare me? Well, maybe not that way, but you have to scare me in some way, an equivalent way that I scared you, and I suggest Russian Roulette with the number of bullets and the number of chambers proportionate to how badly I scared you. Now, if it was carjacking and I pointed a gun at you, well, that’s pretty heavy, and there should be not that many chambers and a lot of bullets. On the other hand, if I didn’t do that, then there’d be more chambers and fewer bullets. And also, it doesn’t have to be at my head. It could be at my pinky if I stole bubble gum from you or something like that. So, I think that it’s two teeth for a tooth are only part of proper libertarian punishment, which I admit is a little draconian. But then again, as a libertarian, I’m not really much in favor of theft. I shouldn’t be stealing cars. And this is a good way to stop me.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

Alright, next time I grab Marco’s bubble gum, I’ll have to be very careful…I could lose my pinky. I must ask him, but we assume we can grab each other’s bubble gum.

I’m sure 90 % of the viewers have already recognized you, Walter, which is what Marco assumed, that you’re so well known, you’re a legend in libertarianism [that no introduction is needed.]

But here we have Walter Block, Harold E. Wirth professor of economics at the School of Business in [Loyola] University in New Orleans. And his introductory bio in fact says he was introduced to libertarianism by Ayn Rand, which leads me to my next question because I heard that [it was] Ayn Rand’s longtime associate Nathaniel Branden, who changed you to a free-market ideologue, if I’m not mistaken, around the age of 22. So maybe you can tell our viewers about what happened then and more importantly why didn’t you become and stay an objectivist? And did you stay in touch with Nathaniel? Sorry, that’s three questions, over to you.

 

Walter Block

Well, I went to high school with Bernie Sanders. He and I were on the track team together. We ran the same distances, half mile and up. And I had roughly the same views as he had. Then we both went to Brooklyn College. And Ayn Rand came to speak at Brooklyn College. And I came to boo and hiss her. Now in those days, there was no cancellation. This [was] a polite booing, polite hissing.

I was appalled that she favored free enterprise because everyone [knew] that free enterprise is fascism and babies will starve and it’ll be just horrible if we have laissez-faire capitalism. So, at the end of her lecture, they announced that the Ayn Rand Study Club or whatever group it was that had invited her to Brooklyn College was having a lunch in her honor and anyone could come even if you disagreed. Well, I wanted to convert her to socialism.

So, I came to the lunch and there was this long table with maybe 50 people on each side and she was sitting at the head of it and her cronies, Nathaniel Branden, Leonard Peikoff, and Alan Greenspan, were all sitting next to her and there was only room at the other end of the table. So, I sat there, and I turned to my neighbor and said, you know, socialism is the way to go. Capitalism is evil. And the guy said, well, I don’t really know all that much about it, but the people who do are at the other end of the table.

I was a chutzpah-neck in those days, a little pushy, and I stuck my head in between Ayn’s and Nathan’s, and I said, there’s a socialist here who wants to debate someone on socialism versus capitalism. And Branden said, who is it? And I said, it’s me. And Branden was very nice. He said, look…there’s no room at this end of the table, but I’ll come to your end of the table, and I’ll talk to you on two conditions. One, you don’t allow this to lapse. We keep going until we settle this one way or another.

And secondly, you read two books that I’ll recommend. Well, the two books were Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt. And I read them both in one weekend. Atlas Shrugged is, I don’t know, 1200 pages…I couldn’t put it down, except for the Galt speech. I never read that. It was just too boring. But I read those books, and I came to the Ayn Rand Lecture Series, at NBI, Nathaniel Branden Institute.

I was never really an objectivist, but it was a cult.

And I came to Nathan’s house and Ayn’s house, and I came with my roommate, Ben Klein, and I was converted. I was now a free-enterprise capitalist, a fan of Ludwig von Mises, whose books they recommended as well. I was never really an objectivist because I hardly understood all of her views on metaphysics and epistemology, and also [because] she was somehow against Beethoven; Beethoven was “evil.” I like Beethoven. He’s my fifth favorite composer. I just sort of ignored all that stuff. So, I was never really an objectivist, but it was a cult. If you asked Ayn Rand at one of these lecture series a question like on page 42, you said this, could you elaborate on that? That would be a friendly question and she would elaborate on it, and all was well. But if you said on page 42 you said this and on page 82 you said that and I see a contradiction between the two, you know what she would say? She would say “get out.” I mean, I was just amazed that a person would [say that], to a polite question. I mean, if I were asked something like that, you know, that I contradicted myself, I would try to say that I didn’t contradict myself or I would say, well, I did, and I’ll have to take one or the other views or I’ll have to think about it, I’ll get back to you. Something, you know, scholarly, reasonable, nice, but she would just kick you out of the meeting, which was horrible. But they were the only free-enterprise people I knew. So, I would stay away for a couple of months and then I would come back like an addict.

And then I would leave out of disgust for the cultism. The next step in my intellectual odyssey, was [when] I met Larry Moss. He was a fellow student of mine at Columbia University. And he said, you must meet Murray Rothbard. He’s an anarchist. And I said, anarchist? I don’t want to meet any anarchists. They’re crazy. You know, we’ll have chaos and this and that and the other. And finally, he and his roommate, Jerry, they ganged up on me, and they dragged me kicking and screaming to meet Murray Rothbard. And Murray converted me in about five minutes to laissez-faire capitalism or anarcho-capitalism. And I really haven’t changed my views much since I met Murray. Murray is my mentor, my guide, my friend. I look up to him, I revere him. I don’t always agree with him on everything. And when I disagree, he doesn’t kick me out. He’s very nice. And I try to emulate him in everything I do.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

Thank you.

 

Marco den Ouden

Oh, that’s an interesting little bit of history there. One of the things I didn’t mention before is that you and I go back quite a [long] way. You were for about 10 years, starting around 1978 or 79, the chief economist at the Fraser Institute in Vancouver, Canada, where I lived at the time. So anyway, you and I have known each other for quite a while. And over the years, even after you became a professor at Loyola, you continued to own a house in North Vancouver, and you’ve come back frequently to visit and been part of the libertarian movement in Vancouver for years. Back in 2016, at the BC Libertarian Party Convention, you mentioned that you were in favor of a big-tent outlook on libertarianism, that there’s room for minarchists, anarchists, classical liberals, constitutionalists, whatever, and you asked by a show of hands to [show] what different faction people were in. Our friend, Lewis Dalby, asked why he couldn’t be both an anarchist and a minarchist. It’s a seeming contradiction, but I found the question intriguing because I’d been reading Hans Herman Hoppe’s book, Democracy: The God that Failed, where he argues in favor of covenant communities. And Lewis’s question goes to the heart of Hoppe’s argument. In a world of many small covenant communities, each would follow its own path, its own mutually agreed-to structures. Overall, we have sort of an anarchist framework, but each of these little communities could be whatever they wanted to be, including even a Sharia Islam little-covenant community. Would you say that Lewis was actually correct in saying that you can be both a minarchist and an anarchist?

 

Walter Block

I don’t think so. Lewis is a friend of mine, a friend of yours, a friend of ours. He’s one of the good guys. He asks very provocative questions and makes very good challenges. And we don’t tell him to get out. Now look, you can have a Sharia community and it’s not a government because they all agree to it. Right? I mean, look, take voluntary sadomasochism.

Marco, you’re the sadist, I’m the masochist and you whip me. But that’s not government because I had agreed to be whipped. Now it looks like government because government whips people. But we agreed. You can have a Nazi group, a voluntary Nazi group. Now, they can’t kill any Jews or blacks or gays or anything like that. But in their little covenant community, they can read Hitler and they can sieg heil and give the Nazi salute and do goose stepping and whatever else they wanted. But it’s not a government. Because a government by its very nature is coercive. And if everyone agrees to be based on Nazism or Islamofascism or whatever it is, it, by definition, is not a government. So, I respectfully diverge from Lewis’s argument in that regard.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

Thank you. Now, not going back that long now for 40 years, but just eight years. In 2016, I think you were the first prominent libertarian to support Donald Trump and you were the founder of the group Libertarians for Trump. You got a lot of flak for it. And then, of course, we kind of know what happened in 2020 and here we are in 2024, all sorts of obstacles in front of Trump, but you have got…the evidence of four years of his presidency now and a lot more speeches from him. Are you still supporting Trump and if so, why, and if not, why not?

 

Walter Block

Well, remember, Trump was running against Hillary. It’s not so much that I was thinking that Trump is an anarcho-capitalist. He’s not. Like, what’s his name from Argentina? Javier Milei. He’s magnificent. I’d have no compunctions, I would support him. I mean, Donald favors tariffs. Donald favors Social Security, favors medical socialism, but he’s better than Hillary. I mean, Hillary was horrible. I have no compunction in favoring Donald against Hillary, and I nowadays would have no problem with supporting Donald against Biden. On the other hand, if somehow Rand Paul were running against Trump, not likely because they’re both Republicans…But if Rand Paul was running against Trump, I would support Rand Paul, because I think Rand Paul, [is] maybe not as wonderful as his father, Ron Paul, but pretty darn good. I would support him. In politics, who you support is not objective support, it’s rather relative support, relative to their opponent. So, I would make no apology about supporting Donald against Biden.

He’s criticized for being nasty. My defense of him is, I’m from Brooklyn, he’s from Queens. And I say, everyone in New York is nasty, except in Staten Island. They’re nice in Staten Island. No big deal with making fun of people and calling them DeSanctimonious and calling people Birdbrain. And it’s just a New York thing. Doesn’t bother me, because I’m from New York.

But it bothers a lot of people and I wish he wouldn’t do it because he turns off a lot of people and you have this “Never Trump” syndrome, which I am not a member of. By the way, in addition to having Libertarians for Trump and we got 5,000 signatures, me and my cronies also started another group called Scholars for Trump. The idea was only stupid rednecks would support Trump. So, you had to have a PhD or an MD or something like that [to get into that latter group]. And we got about 250 signatories on that as well. I won’t say I went all out. I didn’t spend all my money on him, but I spent some time supporting him because I thought Hillary would be a disaster and I thought relative to her, he would be very good.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

Sorry, just one side comment. I thought it might come from Trump’s being a little bit of a Jeffersonian in foreign policy relative to his Republican counterparts.

 

Walter Block

Yes, I think he did the David (Abraham) Accords where Israel had contracts or agreements with several of the Arab countries, and they were on the verge of doing it with Saudi Arabia when October 7th came in. Trump keeps saying he likes Putin, and he can get along with the guy from North Korea. That’s good, who wants a nuclear war? I think on foreign policy he’s pretty good. On certain economic policies he’s not as good. I mean, I’m a free trader, and he wants to have a 10 % tariff on all imports. Well, I disagree with him. I think we should get rid of Social Security and socialized medicine. He supports them. I don’t agree with him on 100%. But compared to who? You have to say, compared to who? And I support him in 2024 against Biden.

 

Marco den Ouden

Okay, well, let’s continue on from there. One of the things that Trump did, of course, was he closed the borders in some respects. And he’s talked a lot about building this great big wall against Mexico, keeping Mexicans out of the United States. Back in 2016, again, a few months after the Libertarian Party Convention, you spoke at Simon Fraser University where you debated Lauren Southern on open versus closed borders. Lauren was for rigidly controlled borders to keep out undesirables. And you argued for open borders. Now someone sharing Lauren’s view is Hans Hermann Hoppe, who argues in Democracy: The God that Failed, for rigidly controlled borders for the United States as a whole, based on an extrapolation from his ideas about covenant communities and about his idea that an absolute monarch is preferable to democracy. What do you think of Hoppe’s argument on immigration and border control?

 

Walter Block

Well, I think Hans Hoppe is one of the foremost libertarian theoreticians. He and I are often mentioned in one breath as Murray Rothbard’s strongest supporters or basic lieutenants or something like that. And I think it’s well deserved in his case, but I disagree with him on several issues, and this is one of them. I favor open borders. I think it’s the only possibility, the only idea compatible with libertarianism. How do I get there? Let’s suppose somebody comes from Mars, nice guy, and he lands in the middle of the Rocky Mountains in Wyoming or somewhere in the middle of Alaska on virgin territory, on land that’s never before been homesteaded. And he starts homesteading it: he starts getting rid of a big rock and cutting down a tree and putting in a corn plant and domesticating this area where nobody is [around] for 100 miles. Along comes a government cop, ICE, and says, “What are you doing here? You’ll have to leave. You’re violating the law.” And the Martian says, “Yes, I am violating the law.”

What libertarian law have I [the Martian] violated?

But we’re interested in libertarianism. What libertarian law have I [the Martian] violated? And there’s no answer, because he has not violated any libertarian law. Libertarianism says that if it’s virgin territory, and we’re assuming human beings are on Mars and where he comes from, Africa or Asia, who knows where he comes from, and he’s just homesteading virgin territory. He did not violate any libertarian law, therefore, Hans is wrong. Now Hans could respond, well, a lot of the immigrants, they come from the Middle East, and they see a woman in a miniskirt, and they want to make her wear a hijab over her head, and they’ll rape her because she’s wearing a miniskirt and [assume] she’s obviously a prostitute. Not that you should be raping prostitutes either, but they have a very different idea of what appropriate behavior is. Or there’ll be criminals coming up from Mexico.

So, how do we have our cake and eat it? How do we adhere to libertarian principle, and also protect ourselves from bad guys? And not only bad guys, suppose there are a quadrillion Martians. A quadrillion, that’s more than a trillion. Or maybe it’s an octillion. And they’re all good guys, but we don’t want that many people to way down the earth.

How do we have our cake and eat it? How do we adhere to libertarianism and protect ourselves either from massive numbers of good guys or outright criminals? My problem with Hans is he’s willing to give up on libertarian theory in order to be a pragmatist and save us from this. And I say, no, no, no, there’s a better way. And the better way is to privatize every square inch of the country. Water, air, everything. And I have a series of books. I have actually two series of books. One is Defending the Undefendable, I, II, III. And the other is my privatization series. The privatization series has four books in it. One is Why Should We Privatize Everything? My motto there is if it moves, privatize it. If it doesn’t move, privatize it. And since everything either moves or doesn’t move, you privatize everything.

And the second book is why we should privatize the highways, streets, and roads, because in the US, 40,000 people die on the roads, and privatization would save their lives. The next book in this series [says] we should privatize oceans, rivers, and lakes. Why? Because otherwise we’ll have the tragedy of the commons, we’ll run out of fish and whales. And the fourth one is privatize space. Okay, so we have to privatize every square inch of the country, and then if this Martian comes in there, we’ll say, hey, you’re trespassing. This is privately owned. Now, the argument against that is there is such a thing called sub-marginal land. Right now, why isn’t the middle of Alaska or the middle of the Rocky Mountains privatized? Because it doesn’t pay to privatize. Because it costs more, given the infertility of the land. So, what we have to do is get private charity to set up and privatize everything.

And now, we can have our cake and eat it. We can adhere to libertarian principle (and Hans is willing to get rid of it) and also protect ourselves against too many people and criminals. And not only is he willing to get rid of libertarian principle, he concocts these weird things of somehow the government is really in charge of this unhomesteaded land in the middle of Alaska or in the middle of the Rocky Mountains in Wyoming. Where does he get that from?

I say to him, Hans, you’re an anarchist. How did the government do something right? And the government never homesteaded this land. And Hans is one of the foremost creative philosophers of homesteading land, a la John Locke and Murray Rothbard. I think Hans…his heart is in the right direction. He wants to protect us, but he does it at the cost of getting rid of libertarian theory. And I want to have both.

 

(Editor’s Note: One of us (Vinay) believes “all land privatized” is in fact Hoppe’s “no open borders argument” in a nutshell. See: https://mises.org/library/case-free-trade-and-restricted-immigration-0)

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

Okay. Maybe I could take you back to your comment that the Ayn Rand circle was like a cult because she [refused to entertain] even a notion that she may have contradicted herself. To me the hallmark of a cult is the refusal to see new evidence. I have a hypothetical question, it’s not real evidence. So, let us say we’ve been in some kind of libertarian utopia for a decade or more. It’s a free market. If there is a government, it’s minimal. But there’s no intellectual property law. No patents have been granted for a decade or more. Big Pharma is refusing to invest billions in R&D, and many other big firms in other industries are refusing to do so because China simply de-engineers the tablet and manufactures it cheaply. So why invest three billion dollars in the next big medicine when you’re not even going to get 20 years or any such set period where you can recoup your costs? And scientific progress has stalled.

The evidence now speaks to something being wrong with the libertarian world. How would you handle that situation if you find us in it?

 

Walter Block

Very good question. Let me start by not answering it, but I’ll get to it, and to what you said…Is there a problem with the libertarian world or with the libertarian worldview? And there is one. There’s one weakness of libertarianism that I can see. And I hope that you guys can set me straight or some of the listening audience can do so. I really don’t like torturing animals.

I’m not talking about dog fights. I’m talking about taking a cat and pouring oil and then lighting them on fire. I regard that as pretty damn despicable. And I wish there were a way in libertarianism to put them in jail for that because I think it’s despicable. On the other hand, I don’t see it. This is a weakness I see in libertarianism. I wish there were a way where I could get that guy.

Because I just regard that as despicable, taking a cat or a dog or some helpless animal and torturing [it] to death, burning [it] o death, or sticking pins in [it] or whatever. So, that’s a weakness. Now, my mentor in this area is a guy named Stephan Kinsella, who is also a great libertarian theoretician. And he says that there’s no such thing as intellectual property. OK, so what’s going on here?

What’s going on here is, Vinay, if I steal your bicycle, you no longer have your bicycle. I have it. But now you come up with the Pythagorean theorem. By the way, it’s the Vinay theorem, it’s not the Pythagorean theorem. You came up with it, but I look over your shoulder, or somehow, I’ve got binoculars, and I see you playing with the Vinay theorem, and I copy it. Do you still have it? Yes. You still have it. So how can I be said to have stolen it from you?

And if I can’t be said to have stolen it from you, how can it be property? Then there’s this issue of you’re supposed to have your patent for 20, 30, 50 years, whatever, it varies how many years. Look, I own this pen. I can give this pen to my [son]. He can give it to his children, my grandchildren. We own this forever. What’s this nonsense about owning property for 90 years or 70 years? There’s something wrong with the idea of owning ideas because if they’re stolen, you still have them. Girl A puts her hair up in a ponytail. She’s the first one that ever put her hair up in a ponytail. Girl B sees this and says, hey, that’s a great idea. Keep the hair out of my face. I’ll get a rubber band. I’ll put my hair in a ponytail. And then girl A comes up to her, slaps her in the face, and takes away the rubber band and says, you can’t have a ponytail because I started it, I own the idea of ponytails. That’s preposterous. That’s violation of libertarian theory. Okay, now the objection, a pragmatic objection is that if we don’t have patents or copyrights or anything like that, then intellectual…progress will come to a halt. This is a pragmatic or an empirical claim, but it’s a false empirical claim because look, if I invent something, it will take a year or two for you to reverse engineer it. I now invent the cure for cancer, and I’m making a fortune, and you buy the pill or whatever it is, and it will take you a little while, and nobody will trust your pill because my pill worked.

It’s true after two or three years or whatever the time period is, I’ll no longer have a monopoly. It’s not really a monopoly. I’ll no longer be the single seller of this cure. But I’ll have a big incentive to create the cure for cancer. Not only will I make a lot of money, I’ll be famous and, you know, everyone will thank me. And then we have a lot of empirical evidence. I think it was not Beethoven, but oh, that other guy. He had 104 symphonies. I forget his name. And there were no patents in those days. Mozart, I don’t know how many symphonies he created, or Beethoven, Schubert…one of those guys. They were creating symphonies all over the place and they couldn’t patent them. And yet they kept producing them and they made money off of them. So, the pragmatic argument against this is false. Now, if it came to a choice between libertarian principle and pragmatism, I would go with the libertarian principle. But here I don’t have to make that choice because the argument that without patents and intellectual property innovation would come to a halt is just false.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

I posed it not as an empirical claim, but as a hypothetical. Would you revise libertarian theory if the hypothetical stared you in your face?

Okay, we’ll move on, but I posed it not as an empirical claim, but as a hypothetical. Would you revise libertarian theory if the hypothetical stared you in your face? [By the way] in my head, you can grant animals limited rights, all living organisms [can] have a limited right to not be tortured.

You might be able to hunt them, eat them, but to not be tortured for no reason is a limited right that can be granted by human society. Coming back to this question, it’s if the empiricism stares you in your face, so you’ve got to revise the theory or ignore the empirics. Which one [will it be]?

 

Walter Block

Marco, can’t we kick him out? No, obviously, you know, I’m just…

 

Marco den Ouden

No. (Lots of laughter)

 

Walter Block

No…I’m just kidding.

 

Marco den Ouden

If I might interject here, Walter, your argument is actually very similar to Frederick Bastiat’s. He argues that for the originator of an idea, his advantage lasts for as long as it takes for his competitors to catch up with him. So, he does have an initial advantage because he’s the first on the block with this new idea, but he doesn’t have it forever. [Until] others start copying him. And I think Bastiat actually gave Gutenberg as an example of this. And I think that’s what you’re arguing for as well, that the advantage is very limited. It’s limited to the time period it takes for potential competitors to catch up.

 

Walter Block

Well, look, obviously I was just kidding about canceling Vinay. I’m just being silly. But this question is a very good question. And you could even improve it. You could say, look, suppose we adhere to libertarianism and everyone dies. We all die. Don’t ask me why, but we all die. Well, then I’m not that radical a libertarian. I would say we have to give up libertarianism. You can come up with hypotheticals like this. But you see, you could do that with any theory. You could go to the socialists and say, look, suppose we have socialism and everyone dies. Or suppose we have the X system. So, in a sense, it’s almost unfair to come up with hypotheticals like that. You have to have some sort of reason. Why would everyone die just because we have economic freedom?

Or why would there be no more innovation just because there wasn’t a monopoly for it? You have to come up with some sort of reason. But, you know, if you want to play the hypothetical game, it’s a very powerful tool, and it can undermine libertarianism, but it could undermine any system. I could pull one on you and say, look, suppose we do have patents and no inventions occur. Would you give up your support for patents and copyrights?

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

Almost definitely I would reexamine it, yes. I would have to. You can’t be averse to reality.

 

Marco den Ouden

Yes. There’s also the argument, just very briefly, that a lot of big companies buy up patents to suppress competition. So, that’s another problem that needs to be put into the mix.

 

Walter Block

Yes, there’s a whole literature on this that patents slow down innovation because without patents, you just go ahead and you start inventing. With patents, you have to make sure you don’t violate this guy’s patent and that guy’s patent, and you can’t do this and you can’t do that. So, there’s a very powerful argument saying that a patent system slows down innovation.

 

Marco den Ouden

Okay, well, let’s move on now. Walter Block, I loved your first notable book, Defending the Undefendable. It was quite an entertaining read many years ago, and I knew you had been planning to write a sequel, and I recently discovered when we were planning this interview, I looked it up and saw that you actually had completed a sequel now, Defending the Undefendable II, and a very entertaining book.

I haven’t read it all, but I’ve browsed through it. And the first entry that you have intrigued me particularly, it’s called the “Multinational Enterpriser.” And I see this essay as a defense of globalism, which so many despise in conservative as well as leftist circles. Can you elaborate on your take on globalism?

 

Walter Block

Before I do it, just give me 10 seconds. Let me see if I can find Defending III because there are actually two subsequent books. Yes, here I got it. This is Defending III (shows book cover). And I’m now working on Defending IV. On the multinational, I favor free trade. Free trade is mutually beneficial, necessarily beneficial in the ex-ante sense. I bought this shirt for $10. When I bought it, what value did I place on the shirt? More than $10, otherwise, if it was less than $10, I wouldn’t have bought it. And if it was equal to $10, why should I disturb myself? There’s nothing in it for me. There’s no benefit for me. And the guy who sold me the shirt, valued it at less than $10, maybe at $2 because he had plenty of them, wanted to get rid of them. And he made an $8 profit. So, all trade, buying, selling, renting, lending, employment, whatever, is mutually beneficial in the ex ante sense. Ex post, you know, maybe I regret that I bought it, it’s out of style and not that I care much about style, but I could regret buying it, although usually you don’t regret buying the shirt. And it doesn’t matter whether I bought it from a domestic producer or I bought it from a foreign producer. Donald Trump wants to have a 10% tax on imports in order to save jobs in the US or increase benefits. But if you extrapolate from this and reduce trade, I mean, the reason we’re so rich is we have specialization in the division of labor. Imagine if we had a tariff, not from the US, but a tariff just from my home state now of Louisiana. We tax, I don’t know, wine from California and meat from Montana. And now you could say, well, I live in New Orleans.

Maybe we shouldn’t buy anything from Baton Rouge up the river. And now you keep going smaller and smaller and eventually we have to produce everything for ourselves and we all die because 99% of us owe our very lives to the fact that we could trade. And Donald Trump is on the side of killing people by interfering with trade. So, the multinational enterprise is a company that has branches in this country, a branch in that country, main office in the third country, wherever that is. And somehow this is bad. I just don’t see that.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

Okay, I’m going to another hypothetical question, apologies. I just want to make a couple of observations first. You know you’ve been brave. Hans Hermann Hoppe has put you on the guillotine block (pun intended) of libertarianism for defending a country which we’re not going to visit today. Jeffrey Tucker’s sore at you for defending the lockdowns but now we have a different reality staring us in our face. At least I think it is different. Looking back, with the benefit of hindsight, we have evidence of Sweden that probably, you know, we didn’t need to have lockdowns. We have evidence that there were other remedies, Methylene Blue, maybe other remedies that are unmentionable here that may have worked, and maybe the vaccines didn’t work as well, and so on and so forth. We also have some evidence that the elites may be planning another disease X and lockdowns. Now with that reality behind us, we have an actual empirical claim about both the efficacy of the vaccines and what the lockdowns were actually used for. Maybe there was a real lab leak. Would you still support the lockdowns?

 

Walter Block

Okay, good. Look, there was this woman called, what was her name? Typhoid Mary. Typhoid Mary had typhoid. And she was working in a restaurant and she was giving people typhoid, which is a horrible disease. Now she wasn’t doing it purposefully. She didn’t realize that she had typhoid. But what should we do? We the police, whether it’s anarchist police or government police, what should they do with Typhoid Mary? Well, they got to get her out of circulation. She’s creating typhoid. which is a dread disease for other people. At the beginning, we didn’t know that COVID was nonsense. We didn’t realize that it only affected people who were 75 and older, or very, very few people who were under 75 were impacted by it at all.

And with Monday morning quarterbacking, with the benefit of hindsight, what we should have said is, look, 75- year-old people and older, be careful. If you get it, it’s going to really impact you heavily. Wear a mask, don’t go out, be cautious, and that’s all we should have done. But we didn’t know. We just didn’t know. And I thought that as a libertarian, there’s nothing wrong with forcing Typhoid Mary not into a jail, but into a hotel or into her house. And then, you know, I’m against welfare. But…

We have to feed her. We have to make sure she has electricity so she can watch TV or whatever. We have to treat her gently. She is a public danger, and we have to protect the public against her. But she’s not a prisoner, but she’s sort of in house-arrest or in hotel-arrest. So to me, when COVID was first mentioned, it was unclear. And yet, virtually every libertarian said, no, no, no, you can’t do this. It’s against libertarianism. No, it’s not against libertarian principles because Typhoid Mary or COVID Mary was infecting other people. And when you infect other people with a deadly disease, we now learn it’s not a deadly disease, but we didn’t know then. Well, you’re not a murderer, but you’re killing innocent people. We got to stop you. So, what I said, is look: Libertarians, we economists believe in specialization and in the division of labor. As libertarians, we don’t know anything about COVID. So, shut up. Here’s the Ayn Rand in me, shut up. Be a little cautious about what you’re saying. Don’t go out on a limb and say that this is a violation of rights. It is a violation of rights if COVID is now the way we see it.

Many libertarians are philosophers, or bus drivers. What do they know about communicable diseases?

But at the very beginning, the first month or two, all sorts of libertarians were pontificating about that which they knew nothing. They weren’t epidemiologists or biologists or specialists in transmittable diseases. And they were pontificating. And I was saying, let’s be a little cautious here. And when the next COVID comes up, I will again come out in favor of caution.

Realizing that the powers that be don’t like freedom and would like nothing better than to do COVID II. But we have to be careful about this, and we have to be cautious about that in which we have no expertise. I’m an economist. Many libertarians are philosophers, or I don’t know, bus drivers. What do they know about communicable diseases? Why are they so cocksure about themselves? So, when Jeff Tucker, who is a good libertarian in many ways, takes umbrage with me, I respectfully disagree.

 

Marco den Ouden

Let’s move on to the lighter side a bit here. A few years ago, there was a movement afoot at Loyola University in New Orleans where you teach to have you fired. And then one of your supporters launched a counter petition to have Loyola give you a raise. How did that all work out, Walter?

 

Walter Block

Well, the way it started was this… In 2014, when Rand Paul was a viable candidate for the 2016 election, and unbeknownst to me at the time, the New York Times wanted to do a hit on Rand Paul. And the thesis of the hit was Rand Paul is a maniac because he hangs around with maniacs. And I was one of the 12 maniacs that they were going to mention as crazies and in league with Rand Paul. So, the New York Times called me up, [and asked…] Can they interview me about libertarianism? And I said, sure, I’ll talk to anyone about libertarianism. I’ll talk to the Nazi periodical. I’ll talk to the Commie periodical. I’ll talk to the New York Times. And I was giving them the usual libertarian non-aggression principle, private property rights based on homesteading. The non-aggression principle doesn’t mean that you can’t have boxing as long as both agree to box. And I was giving them the usual, what is libertarianism thing. And either they weren’t getting it, which I don’t believe because I think they were bright, or they wanted a gotcha moment. I gave them the voluntary slavery argument.

What’s the voluntary slavery argument? Voluntary slavery argument is…suppose my son, God forbid, had a horrible disease and it would cost $50 million to save his life. I don’t have 50 million. Vinay has long wanted me to be his slave. So, I make a deal with Vinay. Vinay, give my son’s doctors 50 million, let them cure him, and I will now come to your plantation, and I’ll be your slave. And I’ll give you economics lessons, I’ll pick cotton, I’ll do whatever you want. And, by the way, you can kill me. You can treat me just like a chicken or a horse or a pig or whatever. I’m your property.

Is this a valid contract? And I said libertarians are divided on this. Murray Rothbard says no. Robert Nozick says yes. And I said, yes, it’s a valid contract.

Every trade is mutually beneficial. How did I gain? Because I value my son’s life more than my freedom. How did Vinay gain? He valued my servitude more than 50 million. He’s [in this hypothetical] very, very rich.

Do you know what these rascals did? They came out and said that I favored actual slavery.

Do you know what these rascals did? They came out and said that I favored actual slavery. That was in paragraph three. In paragraph 18, I don’t know the exact number of the paragraphs, they clarified this a little bit. And what happened? I tell you, if I were the president of the university and, Marco, you were quoted in the New York Times as favoring actual slavery, I’d call you into my office, I’d say, please tell me you were misquoted. He didn’t do that. What he did is he wrote an article in the student newspaper saying, well, we’re against slavery. Walter Block favors slavery, he’s no good. So, 500 students got up a petition saying that they ought to fire me because I favored slavery. No, I don’t favor slavery. I wrote to the New York Times, and I said, look, I was misquoted. And I said, I have a long paper trail of supporting reparations to present-day blacks for the slavery that their grandparents suffered 150 years ago. So, how can I favor slavery? And could you please print the correction?” And they said, no. They were very polite. At least they responded. So, then I sued them. I sued them and we settled on grounds that were very favorable to me. Then what happened is a former student of mine, got up another petition saying Walter Block is great, give him a raise. And I got 5,000 signatures on that. So, it’s 5,000 versus 500. But I’m not a real big fan of the New York Times. I mean, they said I favored actual slavery as a libertarian. That’s preposterous, that’s an abomination. So, that’s my story on that.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

Interesting. Actually that leads me to the last question of the day. Did I hear you right? You said New York Times refused to apologize, but they settled with you. Did they offer you monetary compensation or something?

 

Walter Block

Yeah, I got monetary compensation, and I got a few other things of value.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

Very, very good. I mean, I wouldn’t put it past them that they didn’t make an error, that [it] was deliberate. It’s entirely possible knowing how they operate. Now, going back to Loyola and our hypotheticals, remember the great Ayn Rand dictum, at least the one I love is: “Reality is the ultimate arbiter.” And you almost answered this hypothetical question by saying, yes, you settled for compensation [in a libel law case]. I have this very ugly hypothetical: Your detractors have hatched a plan to abuse your legacy. You have a great legacy at the moment, one you can be proud of. A student falsely accuses you of sexual harassment and then two more female students elevate the sexual harassment to sexual assault. The university, like you said, they don’t ask you “Did this happen?” They just fire you.

There goes your livelihood. Your reputation is in ruins. Hoppe still has you on the guillotine block for a very different reason. And even your marriage is strained. And some lawyer comes along and says, listen, I can get you millions or a very hefty compensation under libel law. And now as an anti-libel law libertarian, would you proceed? To mount a [libel] case against these people.

 

Walter Block

Well, it’s not that much of a hypothetical because I did sue the New York Times on the basis of libel.

Well, it’s not that much of a hypothetical because I did sue the New York Times on the basis of libel.

And I also, as a libertarian, oppose libel law. Why do I oppose libel law? Because you don’t own your reputation. Your reputation consists of what other people think about you, and you don’t own their thoughts. So, these five young women besmirch my reputation by saying I engaged in sexual abuse against them. And now my wife leaves me, and my employer fires me, and all of my friends leave me. Did they violate any of my rights? Did they steal anything from me that I own? And the answer is no, they didn’t because I don’t own my reputation, paradoxically. Because my reputation doesn’t consist of what I think about myself. My reputation consists of what everybody else thinks about me.

And I don’t own their thoughts. So, these five young women who accuse me of all sorts of things, they ruined my reputation. Why would I not sue them, but I would sue the New York Times? And on what basis did I justify suing the New York Times for ruining my reputation? Here I relied upon libertarian class analysis. Now Marxists have a class analysis that the bourgeois are bad, and the proletariat are good. That’s the economic Marxists. The cultural Marxists have this view that straight white males are evil and everyone else is good. Class analysis. We libertarians also have class analysis. It’s got nothing to do with Marxism. It’s rather that statists and people who initiate violence against other people are the bad guys and everyone else [are] the good guys. And the government is a bad guy. And what is the relationship of the New York Times with the government? It’s the mouthpiece of the government. It’s a big supporter of the government. Salzberger is donating all sorts of money to the government that he didn’t have to do based on law. So, you know, there was this interesting case with Robert Nozick who sued his landlord. And then everyone made fun of him, and they started calling it anarchy, state and rent control. His book is Anarchy, State and Utopia, but they wrote “Anarcho, State, and Rent Control” because he sued his landlord.

And I was wondering, is there any justification to sue your landlord even though you’re against rent control? And I came up with the idea, well, suppose his landlord punched him in the nose, and his landlord is bigger than him, and there are no witnesses, and the only way that Robert Nozick could get back at his landlord, and I’m not saying this is true, you’re not the only one with hypotheticals, would Robert Nozick be entitled to sue the landlord under rent control laws? And I say, yes, if that’s the only way you can get back at him.

Well, the only way I could get back at the New York Times, who was part of the ruling class, was to sue [them]. I’m able to sue [them]. Now, these five young girls, they’re not part of the ruling class. Whether Loyola is or not is a gray area. I might be able to sue Loyola on this ground. But I certainly can’t sue these five young women who lied about my proclivities, not my proclivities, but my actual behavior. And, you know, I sometimes wonder what’s wrong with Loyola? If they really wanted to get me, that’s what they should do. They should get five young women who I’ve never met, and they all swear up and down. Yes, yes, Block did this, Block did that. But I guess they don’t want to get rid of me that much. Or maybe they’re afraid that one of these young women will turn on them. And can you imagine what would happen to the Loyola reputation—talk about reputation! If it came out that Loyola told these five young girls (or young women) to lie about me in this way and, if just one of them broke and would take lie detector tests and obviously they would fail lie detector tests, and obviously I would pass any lie detector test and I would take lie detector tests all over the place. It’s not that good a technique to get me. But, to get back to your point, I would not sue them because I don’t consider them part of the ruling class.

 

Vinay Kolhatkar

Great. Well, thank you for that. And I’m very, very glad that these three, whether three or five girls, it’s entirely a hypothetical. We very much hope nothing like that ever happens to you. And thank you very much for being here. And thank you to my cohost, Marco. I will let the viewers know that Walter Block will be back with his co-author Alan Futerman, to defend himself against allegations from his former, not former…I hope current friend, Hans Hermann Hoppe, about Israel and that will be sometime in April hosted by Marco and my other co-host, Roger Bissell.

Good night and good luck. Thank you for being here, Walter and Marco.

 

Marco den Ouden

[It] was good to speak to Walter again.

 

Walter Block

It was a pleasure. I greatly enjoyed it. It was a lot of fun. Thank you.