1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:05,000 In socialist countries, it is not the seller who has to be grateful. 2 00:00:05,000 --> 00:00:09,000 It is the buyer. The citizen is not the boss. 3 00:00:09,000 --> 00:00:13,000 The boss is the central committee, the central office. 4 00:00:13,000 --> 00:00:19,000 Those socialist committees and leaders and dictators are supreme, 5 00:00:19,000 --> 00:00:30,000 and the people simply have to obey them. 6 00:00:30,000 --> 00:00:33,000 Greetings and salutations, my fellow plebs. 7 00:00:33,000 --> 00:00:36,000 My name is Walker and this is The Bitcoin Podcast. 8 00:00:36,000 --> 00:00:44,000 The Bitcoin time chain is 840715 and the value of one bitcoin is still one bitcoin. 9 00:00:44,000 --> 00:00:47,000 Today's episode is Austrian Audible. 10 00:00:47,000 --> 00:00:53,000 We'll be reading the second of Mises 6 lectures and the topic for today is socialism. 11 00:00:53,000 --> 00:00:57,000 If this is your first time listening to The Bitcoin Podcast, 12 00:00:57,000 --> 00:01:02,000 consider going back to the previous episode on capitalism and listening to that first 13 00:01:02,000 --> 00:01:05,000 as it sets the stage really well for today's read. 14 00:01:05,000 --> 00:01:09,000 I'll continue releasing these Austrian Audible episodes in the coming weeks 15 00:01:09,000 --> 00:01:13,000 and I hope that the complete set of six Mises readings 16 00:01:13,000 --> 00:01:18,000 serves as a great introduction to the Austrian School of Economics and Ludwig von Mises. 17 00:01:18,000 --> 00:01:24,000 A sincere thank you to everyone who shared their thoughts on the first episode on capitalism. 18 00:01:24,000 --> 00:01:31,000 You can download the PDF of Economic Policy, Thoughts for Today and Tomorrow by Ludwig von Mises in the show notes. 19 00:01:31,000 --> 00:01:37,000 I encourage you to share these lessons with your friends, family and strangers on the internet 20 00:01:37,000 --> 00:01:44,000 who can benefit from the knowledge of real economics as taught by Mises and the Austrian School. 21 00:01:44,000 --> 00:01:51,000 You can find the links to watch or listen to this show on all platforms by going to bitcoinpodcast.net 22 00:01:51,000 --> 00:01:53,000 or via the links in the show notes. 23 00:01:53,000 --> 00:01:58,000 If you're enjoying The Bitcoin Podcast, do me a favor and give the show a five star rating 24 00:01:58,000 --> 00:02:01,000 because apparently that helps other people discover the show. 25 00:02:01,000 --> 00:02:08,000 Or if you're listening on fountain.fm, consider giving the show a boost or creating a clip of something you found valuable. 26 00:02:08,000 --> 00:02:12,000 And if you are a bitcoin-only company looking to sponsor the Bitcoin Podcast, 27 00:02:12,000 --> 00:02:18,000 hit me up on social media or by going to bitcoinpodcast.net.com. 28 00:02:18,000 --> 00:02:37,000 Without further ado, let's get into lesson two from Mises' six lessons, socialism. 29 00:02:37,000 --> 00:02:46,000 Economic Policy, Thoughts for Today and Tomorrow by Ludwig von Mises, second lecture, socialism. 30 00:02:46,000 --> 00:02:53,000 I am here in Buenos Aires as a guest of the Centro de Diffusion Economia Libre. 31 00:02:53,000 --> 00:02:56,000 What is Economia Libre? 32 00:02:56,000 --> 00:02:59,000 What does this system of economic freedom mean? 33 00:02:59,000 --> 00:03:04,000 The answer is simple. It is the market economy. 34 00:03:04,000 --> 00:03:12,000 It is the system in which the cooperation of individuals in the social division of labor is achieved by the market. 35 00:03:12,000 --> 00:03:16,000 This market is not a place. It is a process. 36 00:03:16,000 --> 00:03:22,000 It is the way in which by selling and buying, by producing and consuming, 37 00:03:22,000 --> 00:03:26,000 the individuals contribute to the total workings of society. 38 00:03:26,000 --> 00:03:31,000 In dealing with this system of economic organization, the market economy, 39 00:03:31,000 --> 00:03:34,000 we employ the term economic freedom. 40 00:03:34,000 --> 00:03:43,000 Very often, people misunderstand what it means, believing that economic freedom is something quite apart from other freedoms, 41 00:03:43,000 --> 00:03:47,000 and that these other freedoms, which they hold to be more important, 42 00:03:47,000 --> 00:03:51,000 can be preserved even in the absence of economic freedom. 43 00:03:51,000 --> 00:03:54,000 The meaning of economic freedom is this, 44 00:03:54,000 --> 00:04:03,000 that the individual is in a position to choose the way in which he wants to integrate himself into the totality of society. 45 00:04:03,000 --> 00:04:06,000 The individual is able to choose his career. 46 00:04:06,000 --> 00:04:10,000 He is free to do what he wants to do. 47 00:04:10,000 --> 00:04:16,000 This is of course not meant in any sense, which so many people attach to the word freedom today. 48 00:04:16,000 --> 00:04:23,000 It is meant rather in the sense that, through economic freedom, man is freed from natural conditions. 49 00:04:23,000 --> 00:04:27,000 In nature, there is nothing that can be termed freedom. 50 00:04:27,000 --> 00:04:34,000 There is only the regularity of the laws of nature, which man must obey if he wants to attain something. 51 00:04:34,000 --> 00:04:41,000 In using the term freedom as applied to human beings, we think only of freedom within society. 52 00:04:41,000 --> 00:04:48,000 Yet today, social freedoms are considered by many people to be independent of one another. 53 00:04:48,000 --> 00:04:57,000 Those who call themselves liberals today are asking for policies which are precisely the opposite of those policies 54 00:04:57,000 --> 00:05:02,000 which the liberals of the 19th century advocated in their liberal programs. 55 00:05:02,000 --> 00:05:11,000 The so-called liberals of today have the very popular idea that freedom of speech, of thought, of the press, 56 00:05:11,000 --> 00:05:18,000 freedom of religion, freedom from imprisonment without trial, that all these freedoms can be preserved 57 00:05:18,000 --> 00:05:21,000 in the absence of what is called economic freedom. 58 00:05:21,000 --> 00:05:29,000 They do not realize that in a system where there is no market, where the government directs everything, 59 00:05:29,000 --> 00:05:36,000 all those other freedoms are illusory, even if they are made into laws and written up in constitutions. 60 00:05:36,000 --> 00:05:40,000 Let us take one freedom, the freedom of the press. 61 00:05:40,000 --> 00:05:47,000 If the government owns all the printing presses, it will determine what is to be printed and what is not to be printed. 62 00:05:47,000 --> 00:05:52,000 And if the government owns all the printing presses and determines what shall or shall not be printed, 63 00:05:52,000 --> 00:06:01,000 then the possibility of printing any kind of opposing arguments against the ideas of the government becomes practically non-existent. 64 00:06:01,000 --> 00:06:07,000 Freedom of the press disappears, and it is the same with all the other freedoms. 65 00:06:07,000 --> 00:06:14,000 In a market economy, the individual has the freedom to choose whatever career he wishes to pursue, 66 00:06:14,000 --> 00:06:18,000 to choose his own way of integrating himself into society. 67 00:06:18,000 --> 00:06:22,000 But in a socialist system, that is not so. 68 00:06:22,000 --> 00:06:26,000 His career is decided by decree of government. 69 00:06:26,000 --> 00:06:32,000 The government can order people whom it dislikes, whom it does not want to live in certain regions, 70 00:06:32,000 --> 00:06:35,000 to move into other regions and to other places. 71 00:06:35,000 --> 00:06:41,000 And the government is always in a position to justify and explain such procedure 72 00:06:41,000 --> 00:06:48,000 by declaring that the governmental plan requires the presence of this eminent citizen 5,000 miles away 73 00:06:48,000 --> 00:06:52,000 from the place in which he could be disagreeable to those in power. 74 00:06:52,000 --> 00:07:00,000 It is true that the freedom a man may have in a market economy is not a perfect freedom from the metaphysical point of view. 75 00:07:00,000 --> 00:07:04,000 But there is no such thing as perfect freedom. 76 00:07:04,000 --> 00:07:08,000 Freedom means something only within the framework of society. 77 00:07:08,000 --> 00:07:17,000 The 18th century authors of natural law, above all Jean-Jacques Rousseau, believed that once, in the remote past, 78 00:07:17,000 --> 00:07:21,000 men enjoyed something called natural freedom. 79 00:07:21,000 --> 00:07:25,000 But in that remote age, individuals were not free. 80 00:07:25,000 --> 00:07:31,000 They were at the mercy of everyone who was stronger than they were, the famous words of Rousseau. 81 00:07:31,000 --> 00:07:36,000 Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains. 82 00:07:36,000 --> 00:07:40,000 May sound good, but man is in fact not born free. 83 00:07:40,000 --> 00:07:44,000 Man is born a very weak suckling. 84 00:07:44,000 --> 00:07:49,000 Without the protection of his parents, without the protection given to his parents by society, 85 00:07:49,000 --> 00:07:52,000 he would not be able to preserve his life. 86 00:07:52,000 --> 00:07:59,000 Freedom in society means that a man depends as much upon other people as other people depend upon him. 87 00:07:59,000 --> 00:08:05,000 Society under the market economy, under the conditions of economia libre, 88 00:08:05,000 --> 00:08:12,000 means a state of affairs in which everybody serves his fellow citizens and is served by them in return. 89 00:08:12,000 --> 00:08:20,000 People believe that there are in the market economy bosses who are independent of the goodwill and support of other people. 90 00:08:20,000 --> 00:08:27,000 They believe the captains of industry, the businessmen, the entrepreneurs are the real bosses in the economic system. 91 00:08:27,000 --> 00:08:30,000 But this is an illusion. 92 00:08:30,000 --> 00:08:34,000 The real bosses in the economic system are the consumers. 93 00:08:34,000 --> 00:08:38,000 And if the consumers stop patronizing a branch of business, 94 00:08:38,000 --> 00:08:44,000 these businessmen are either forced to abandon their eminent position in the economic system, 95 00:08:44,000 --> 00:08:49,000 or to adjust their actions to the wishes and to the orders of the consumers. 96 00:08:49,000 --> 00:08:54,000 One of the best known propagators of communism was Lady Passfield, 97 00:08:54,000 --> 00:09:00,000 under her maiden name Beatrice Potter, and well known also through her husband Sidney Webb. 98 00:09:00,000 --> 00:09:08,000 This lady was the daughter of a wealthy businessman, and when she was a young adult, she served as her father's secretary. 99 00:09:08,000 --> 00:09:10,000 In her memoirs, she writes, 100 00:09:10,000 --> 00:09:17,000 In the business of my father, everybody had to obey the orders issued by my father, the boss. 101 00:09:17,000 --> 00:09:22,000 He alone had to give orders, but to him nobody gave any orders. 102 00:09:22,000 --> 00:09:25,000 This is a very short-sighted view. 103 00:09:25,000 --> 00:09:30,000 Orders were given to her father by the consumers, by the buyers. 104 00:09:30,000 --> 00:09:33,000 Unfortunately, she could not see these orders. 105 00:09:33,000 --> 00:09:37,000 She could not see what goes on in a market economy, 106 00:09:37,000 --> 00:09:43,000 because she was interested only in the orders given within her father's office or in his factory. 107 00:09:43,000 --> 00:09:48,000 In all economic problems, we must bear in mind the words of the great French economist, 108 00:09:48,000 --> 00:09:53,000 Frédéric Bastiat, who titled one of his brilliant essays, 109 00:09:53,000 --> 00:09:59,000 C'est qu'on veut et ce qu'on n'est vaut pas, that which is seen, and that which is not seen. 110 00:09:59,000 --> 00:10:03,000 In order to comprehend the operation of an economic system, 111 00:10:03,000 --> 00:10:07,000 we must deal not only with the things that can be seen, 112 00:10:07,000 --> 00:10:12,000 but we have also to give our attention to the things which cannot be perceived directly. 113 00:10:12,000 --> 00:10:19,000 For instance, an order issued by a boss to an office boy can be heard by everybody who is present in the room. 114 00:10:19,000 --> 00:10:24,000 What cannot be heard are the orders given to the boss by his customers. 115 00:10:24,000 --> 00:10:30,000 The fact is that, under the capitalistic system, the ultimate bosses are the consumers. 116 00:10:30,000 --> 00:10:34,000 The sovereign is not the state, it is the people, 117 00:10:34,000 --> 00:10:41,000 and the proof that they are the sovereign is borne out by the fact that they have the right to be foolish. 118 00:10:41,000 --> 00:10:46,000 This is the privilege of the sovereign. He has the right to make mistakes. 119 00:10:46,000 --> 00:10:51,000 No one can prevent him from making them, but of course he has to pay for his mistakes. 120 00:10:51,000 --> 00:10:56,000 If we say the consumer is supreme, or that the consumer is sovereign, 121 00:10:56,000 --> 00:10:59,000 we do not say that the consumer is free from faults, 122 00:10:59,000 --> 00:11:03,000 that the consumer is a man who always knows what would be best for him. 123 00:11:03,000 --> 00:11:10,000 The consumers very often buy things or consume things they ought not to buy, or ought not to consume, 124 00:11:10,000 --> 00:11:18,000 but the notion that a capitalist form of government can prevent people from hurting themselves by controlling their consumption is false. 125 00:11:18,000 --> 00:11:27,000 The idea of government as a paternal authority, as a guardian for everybody, is the idea of those who favor socialism. 126 00:11:27,000 --> 00:11:34,000 In the United States some years ago, the government tried what was called a noble experiment. 127 00:11:34,000 --> 00:11:41,000 This noble experiment was a law making it illegal to buy or sell intoxicating beverages. 128 00:11:41,000 --> 00:11:49,000 It is certainly true that many people drink too much brandy and whiskey, and that they may hurt themselves by doing so. 129 00:11:49,000 --> 00:11:53,000 Some authorities in the United States are even opposed to smoking. 130 00:11:53,000 --> 00:12:01,000 Certainly there are many people who smoke too much, and who smoke in spite of the fact that it would be better for them not to smoke. 131 00:12:01,000 --> 00:12:05,000 This raises a question which goes far beyond economic discussion. 132 00:12:05,000 --> 00:12:14,000 It shows what freedom really means, granted that it is good to keep people from hurting themselves by drinking or smoking too much. 133 00:12:14,000 --> 00:12:17,000 But once you have admitted this, other people will say, 134 00:12:17,000 --> 00:12:19,000 is the body everything? 135 00:12:19,000 --> 00:12:22,000 Is not the mind of man much more important? 136 00:12:22,000 --> 00:12:27,000 Is not the mind of man the real human endowment, the real human quality? 137 00:12:27,000 --> 00:12:31,000 If you give the government the right to determine the consumption of the human body, 138 00:12:31,000 --> 00:12:36,000 to determine whether one should smoke or not smoke, drink or not drink, 139 00:12:36,000 --> 00:12:40,000 there is no good reply you can give to the people who say, 140 00:12:40,000 --> 00:12:44,000 more important than the body is the mind and the soul, 141 00:12:44,000 --> 00:12:52,000 and man hurts himself much more by reading bad books, by listening to bad music, and looking at bad movies. 142 00:12:52,000 --> 00:12:58,000 Therefore it is the duty of the government to prevent people from committing these faults. 143 00:12:58,000 --> 00:13:06,000 And as you know, for many hundreds of years, governments and authorities believed that this really was their duty. 144 00:13:06,000 --> 00:13:09,000 Nor did this happen in the far distant ages only. 145 00:13:09,000 --> 00:13:18,000 Not long ago, there was a government in Germany that considered it a governmental duty to distinguish between good and bad paintings, 146 00:13:18,000 --> 00:13:28,000 which of course meant good and bad from the point of view of a man who, in his youth, had failed the entrance examination at the Academy of Art in Vienna. 147 00:13:28,000 --> 00:13:34,000 Good and bad from the point of view of a picture postcard painter, Adolf Hitler, 148 00:13:34,000 --> 00:13:42,000 and it became illegal for people to utter other views about art and paintings than this, the supreme führers. 149 00:13:42,000 --> 00:13:48,000 Once you begin to admit that it is the duty of the government to control your consumption of alcohol, 150 00:13:48,000 --> 00:13:55,000 what can you reply to those who say the control of books and ideas is much more important? 151 00:13:55,000 --> 00:13:59,000 Freedom really means the freedom to make mistakes. 152 00:13:59,000 --> 00:14:01,000 This we have to realize. 153 00:14:01,000 --> 00:14:09,000 We may be highly critical with regard to the way in which our fellow citizens are spending their money and living their lives. 154 00:14:09,000 --> 00:14:16,000 We may believe that what they are doing is absolutely foolish and bad, but in a free society, 155 00:14:16,000 --> 00:14:23,000 there are many ways for people to air their opinions on how their fellow citizens should change their ways of life. 156 00:14:23,000 --> 00:14:30,000 They can write books, they can write articles, they can make speeches, they can even preach at street corners if they want, 157 00:14:30,000 --> 00:14:39,000 and they do this in many countries, but they must not try to police other people in order to prevent them from doing certain things, 158 00:14:39,000 --> 00:14:45,000 simply because they themselves do not want these other people to have the freedom to do it. 159 00:14:45,000 --> 00:14:49,000 This is the difference between slavery and freedom. 160 00:14:49,000 --> 00:14:53,000 The slave must do what his superior orders him to do, 161 00:14:53,000 --> 00:15:01,000 but the free citizen, and this is what freedom means, is in a position to choose his own way of life. 162 00:15:01,000 --> 00:15:07,000 Certainly this capitalistic system can be abused and is abused by some people. 163 00:15:07,000 --> 00:15:11,000 It is certainly possible to do things which ought not to be done, 164 00:15:11,000 --> 00:15:16,000 but if these things are approved by a majority of the people, 165 00:15:16,000 --> 00:15:22,000 a disapproving person always has a way to attempt to change the minds of his fellow citizens. 166 00:15:22,000 --> 00:15:25,000 He can try to persuade them, to convince them, 167 00:15:25,000 --> 00:15:32,000 but he may not try to force them by the use of power, of governmental police power. 168 00:15:32,000 --> 00:15:38,000 In the market economy, everyone serves his fellow citizens by serving himself. 169 00:15:38,000 --> 00:15:42,000 This is what the liberal authors of the 18th century had in mind 170 00:15:42,000 --> 00:15:50,000 when they spoke of the harmony of the rightly understood interests of all groups and of all individuals of the population. 171 00:15:50,000 --> 00:15:56,000 And it was this doctrine of the harmony of interests which the socialists opposed. 172 00:15:56,000 --> 00:16:02,000 They spoke of an irreconcilable conflict of interests between various groups. 173 00:16:02,000 --> 00:16:04,000 What does this mean? 174 00:16:04,000 --> 00:16:09,000 When Karl Marx, in the first chapter of The Communist Manifesto, 175 00:16:09,000 --> 00:16:13,000 that small pamphlet which inaugurated his socialist movement, 176 00:16:13,000 --> 00:16:17,000 claimed that there was an irreconcilable conflict between classes, 177 00:16:17,000 --> 00:16:26,000 he could not illustrate his thesis by any examples other than those drawn from the conditions of pre-capitalistic society. 178 00:16:26,000 --> 00:16:35,000 In pre-capitalistic ages, society was divided into hereditary status groups, which in India are called caste. 179 00:16:35,000 --> 00:16:41,000 In a status society, a man was not, for example, born a Frenchman. 180 00:16:41,000 --> 00:16:48,000 He was born a member of the French aristocracy, or of the French bourgeoisie, or of the French peasantry. 181 00:16:48,000 --> 00:16:52,000 In the greater part of the Middle Ages, he was simply a serf, 182 00:16:52,000 --> 00:16:59,000 and serfdom in France did not disappear completely until after the American Revolution. 183 00:16:59,000 --> 00:17:03,000 In other parts of Europe, it disappeared even later. 184 00:17:03,000 --> 00:17:09,000 But the worst form in which serfdom existed and continued to exist even after the abolition of slavery 185 00:17:09,000 --> 00:17:12,000 was in the British colonies abroad. 186 00:17:12,000 --> 00:17:18,000 The individual inherited his status from his parents, and he retained it throughout his life. 187 00:17:18,000 --> 00:17:20,000 He transferred it to his children. 188 00:17:20,000 --> 00:17:24,000 Every group had privileges and disadvantages. 189 00:17:24,000 --> 00:17:27,000 The highest groups had only privileges. 190 00:17:27,000 --> 00:17:30,000 The lowest groups only disadvantages. 191 00:17:30,000 --> 00:17:37,000 And there was no way a man could rid himself of the legal disadvantage placed upon him by his status, 192 00:17:37,000 --> 00:17:41,000 other than by fighting a political struggle against the other classes. 193 00:17:41,000 --> 00:17:49,000 Under such conditions, you could say there was an irreconcilable conflict of interests between the slave owners and the slaves, 194 00:17:49,000 --> 00:17:56,000 because what the slaves wanted was to be rid of their slavery, of their quality of being slaves. 195 00:17:56,000 --> 00:17:59,000 This meant a loss, however, for the owners. 196 00:17:59,000 --> 00:18:05,000 Therefore, there is no question that there had to be this irreconcilable conflict of interests 197 00:18:05,000 --> 00:18:08,000 between the members of the various classes. 198 00:18:08,000 --> 00:18:14,000 One must not forget that in those ages, in which the status societies were predominant in Europe, 199 00:18:14,000 --> 00:18:18,000 as well as in the colonies which the Europeans later founded in America, 200 00:18:18,000 --> 00:18:26,000 people did not consider themselves to be connected in any special way with the other classes of their own nation. 201 00:18:26,000 --> 00:18:31,000 They felt much more at one with the members of their own class in other countries. 202 00:18:31,000 --> 00:18:37,000 A French aristocrat did not look upon lower-class Frenchmen as his fellow citizens. 203 00:18:37,000 --> 00:18:40,000 They were the rabble, which he did not like. 204 00:18:40,000 --> 00:18:48,000 He regarded only the aristocrats of other countries, those of Italy, England, and Germany, for instance, as his equals. 205 00:18:48,000 --> 00:18:56,000 The most visible effect of this state of affairs was the fact that the aristocrats all over Europe used the same language. 206 00:18:56,000 --> 00:19:03,000 And this language was French, a language which was not understood outside France by other groups of the population. 207 00:19:03,000 --> 00:19:10,000 The middle classes, the bourgeoisie, had their own language, while the lower classes, the peasantry, 208 00:19:10,000 --> 00:19:15,000 used local dialects which very often were not understood by other groups of the population. 209 00:19:15,000 --> 00:19:18,000 The same was true with regard to the way people dressed. 210 00:19:18,000 --> 00:19:25,000 When you traveled in 1750 from one country to another, you found that the upper classes, the aristocrats, 211 00:19:25,000 --> 00:19:32,000 were usually dressed in the same way all over Europe, and you found that the lower classes dressed differently. 212 00:19:32,000 --> 00:19:40,000 When you met someone in the street, you could see immediately, from the way he dressed, to which class, to which status he belonged. 213 00:19:40,000 --> 00:19:45,000 It is difficult to imagine how different these conditions were from present-day conditions. 214 00:19:45,000 --> 00:19:52,000 When I come from the United States to Argentina and I see a man on the street, I cannot know what his status is. 215 00:19:52,000 --> 00:19:59,000 I only assume that he is a citizen of Argentina and that he is not a member of some legally restricted group. 216 00:19:59,000 --> 00:20:02,000 This is one thing that capitalism has brought about. 217 00:20:02,000 --> 00:20:06,000 Of course, there are also differences within capitalism. 218 00:20:06,000 --> 00:20:13,000 There are differences in wealth, differences which Marxians mistakenly consider to be equivalent to the old differences 219 00:20:13,000 --> 00:20:16,000 that existed between men in the status society. 220 00:20:16,000 --> 00:20:23,000 The differences within a capitalist society are not the same as those in a socialist society. 221 00:20:23,000 --> 00:20:31,000 In the Middle Ages, and in many countries even much later, a family could be an aristocrat family and possess great wealth. 222 00:20:31,000 --> 00:20:39,000 It could be a family of dukes for hundreds and hundreds of years, whatever its qualities, its talents, its character, or morals. 223 00:20:39,000 --> 00:20:45,000 But under modern capitalistic conditions, there is what has been technically described by sociologists 224 00:20:45,000 --> 00:20:48,000 as social mobility. 225 00:20:48,000 --> 00:20:53,000 The operating principle of this social mobility, according to the Italian sociologist and economist, 226 00:20:53,000 --> 00:21:00,000 Vofredo Pareto, is la circulation des élites, the circulation of the elites. 227 00:21:00,000 --> 00:21:08,000 This means that there are always people who are at the top of the social ladder, who are wealthy, who are politically important, 228 00:21:08,000 --> 00:21:13,000 but these people, these elites, are continually changing. 229 00:21:13,000 --> 00:21:17,000 This is perfectly true in a capitalist society. 230 00:21:17,000 --> 00:21:21,000 It was not true for a pre-capitalistic status society. 231 00:21:21,000 --> 00:21:28,000 The families who were considered the great aristocratic families of Europe are still the same families today, 232 00:21:28,000 --> 00:21:35,000 or let us say, they are descendants of the families that were foremost in Europe 800 or 1000 or more years ago. 233 00:21:35,000 --> 00:21:44,000 The Capitians of Bourbon, who for a long time ruled here in Argentina, were a royal house as early as the 10th century. 234 00:21:44,000 --> 00:21:52,000 These kings ruled the territory, which is known now as Île-de-France, extending their reign from generation to generation. 235 00:21:52,000 --> 00:21:59,000 But in a capitalist society, there is continuous mobility, poor people becoming rich, 236 00:21:59,000 --> 00:22:04,000 and the descendants of those rich people losing their wealth and becoming poor. 237 00:22:04,000 --> 00:22:09,000 Today, I saw in a bookshop in one of those central streets of Buenos Aires 238 00:22:09,000 --> 00:22:17,000 the biography of a businessman who was so eminent, so important, so characteristic of big business in the 19th century in Europe 239 00:22:17,000 --> 00:22:24,000 that, even in this country, far away from Europe, the bookshop carried copies of his biography. 240 00:22:24,000 --> 00:22:27,000 I happen to know the grandson of this man. 241 00:22:27,000 --> 00:22:38,000 He has the same name as his grandfather had, and he still has the right to wear the title of nobility which his grandfather, who started as a blacksmith, had received 80 years ago. 242 00:22:38,000 --> 00:22:43,000 Today, this grandson is a poor photographer in New York City. 243 00:22:43,000 --> 00:22:52,000 Other people who were poor at the time this photographer's grandfather became one of Europe's biggest industrialists are today Captains of Industry. 244 00:22:52,000 --> 00:22:55,000 Everyone is free to change his status. 245 00:22:55,000 --> 00:23:01,000 That is the difference between the status system and the capitalist system of economic freedom, 246 00:23:01,000 --> 00:23:07,000 in which everyone has only himself to blame if he does not reach the position he wants to reach. 247 00:23:07,000 --> 00:23:12,000 The most famous industrialist of the 20th century up to now is Henry Ford. 248 00:23:12,000 --> 00:23:19,000 He started with a few hundred dollars which he borrowed from his friends, and within a very short time, 249 00:23:19,000 --> 00:23:23,000 he developed one of the most important big business firms in the world, 250 00:23:23,000 --> 00:23:27,000 and one can discover hundreds of such cases every day. 251 00:23:27,000 --> 00:23:32,000 Every day, the New York Times prints long notices of people who have died. 252 00:23:32,000 --> 00:23:42,000 If you read these biographies, you may come across the name of an eminent businessman who started out as a seller of newspapers at street corners in New York, 253 00:23:42,000 --> 00:23:50,000 or he started as an office boy, and at his death he was the president of the same banking firm where he started on the lowest rung of the ladder. 254 00:23:50,000 --> 00:23:57,000 Of course, not all people can attain these positions. Not all people want to attain them. 255 00:23:57,000 --> 00:24:04,000 There are people who are more interested in other problems, and for these people, other ways are open today, 256 00:24:04,000 --> 00:24:09,000 which were not open in the days of feudal society, in the ages of the status society. 257 00:24:09,000 --> 00:24:16,000 The socialist system, however, forbids this fundamental freedom to choose one's own career. 258 00:24:16,000 --> 00:24:25,000 Under socialist conditions, there is only one economic authority, and it has the right to determine all matters concerning production. 259 00:24:25,000 --> 00:24:36,000 If you want to keep your bitcoin safe from the socialist, communists, and totalitarians who would love nothing more than to seize it on behalf of an ever-growing, centrally-planned state, 260 00:24:36,000 --> 00:24:48,000 then head to bitbox.swiss.com and use the promo code WALKER for 5% off the fully open-source, bitcoin-only, Bitbox O2 hardware wallet. 261 00:24:48,000 --> 00:24:53,000 Then get your bitcoin off the exchanges and into your own self-custody. 262 00:24:53,000 --> 00:25:00,000 The Bitbox O2 is easy as hell to use whether you are brand new to bitcoin or you are a well-seasoned psychopath. 263 00:25:00,000 --> 00:25:06,000 Again, it is bitcoin-only and it is fully open-source. You can head to their github and you can verify that for yourself. 264 00:25:06,000 --> 00:25:08,000 Please do not trust me. 265 00:25:08,000 --> 00:25:18,000 Plus, when you go to bitbox.swiss.com and use the promo code WALKER, not only do you get 5% off, but you also help support this podcast. 266 00:25:18,000 --> 00:25:19,000 So thank you. 267 00:25:19,000 --> 00:25:26,000 One of the characteristic features of our day is that people use many names for the same thing. 268 00:25:26,000 --> 00:25:31,000 One synonym for socialism and communism is planning. 269 00:25:31,000 --> 00:25:39,000 If people speak of planning, they mean of course central planning, which means one plan made by the government, 270 00:25:39,000 --> 00:25:44,000 one plan that prevents planning by anyone except the government. 271 00:25:44,000 --> 00:25:51,000 A British lady who is also a member of the upper house wrote a book entitled Plan or No Plan, 272 00:25:51,000 --> 00:25:54,000 a book which was quite popular around the world. 273 00:25:54,000 --> 00:25:56,000 What does the title of her book mean? 274 00:25:56,000 --> 00:26:04,000 When she says plan, she means only the type of plan envisioned by Lenin and Stalin and their successors, 275 00:26:04,000 --> 00:26:09,000 the type which governs all the activities of all people of a nation. 276 00:26:09,000 --> 00:26:17,000 Thus, this lady means a central plan which excludes all the personal plans that individuals may have. 277 00:26:17,000 --> 00:26:22,000 Her title, Plan or No Plan, is therefore an illusion, a deception. 278 00:26:22,000 --> 00:26:29,000 The alternative is not a central plan or no plan, it is the total plan of a central governmental authority 279 00:26:29,000 --> 00:26:35,000 or freedom for individuals to make their own plans, to do their own planning. 280 00:26:35,000 --> 00:26:41,000 The individual plans his life every day, changing his daily plans whenever he will. 281 00:26:41,000 --> 00:26:45,000 The free man plans daily for his needs, he says for example. 282 00:26:45,000 --> 00:26:49,000 Yesterday I've planned to work all my life in Cordoba. 283 00:26:49,000 --> 00:26:54,000 Now, he learns about better conditions in Buenos Aires and changes his plan saying, 284 00:26:54,000 --> 00:26:58,000 instead of working in Cordoba, I want to go to Buenos Aires. 285 00:26:58,000 --> 00:27:00,000 And that is what freedom means. 286 00:27:00,000 --> 00:27:07,000 It may be that he is mistaken, it may be that his going to Buenos Aires will turn out to have been a mistake. 287 00:27:07,000 --> 00:27:13,000 Conditions may have been better for him in Cordoba, but he himself made his plans. 288 00:27:13,000 --> 00:27:17,000 Under government planning, he is like a soldier in an army. 289 00:27:17,000 --> 00:27:23,000 The soldier in the army does not have the right to choose his garrison, to choose the place where he will serve. 290 00:27:23,000 --> 00:27:26,000 He has to obey orders. 291 00:27:26,000 --> 00:27:32,000 And the socialist system, as Karl Marx, Lenin, and all socialist leaders knew and admitted, 292 00:27:32,000 --> 00:27:37,000 is the transfer of army rule to the whole production system. 293 00:27:37,000 --> 00:27:44,000 Marx spoke of industrial armies, and Lenin called for the organization of everything, 294 00:27:44,000 --> 00:27:50,000 the post office, the factory, and other industries, according to the model of the army. 295 00:27:50,000 --> 00:27:56,000 Therefore, in the socialist system, everything depends on the wisdom, the talents, 296 00:27:56,000 --> 00:28:00,000 and the gifts of people who form the supreme authority. 297 00:28:00,000 --> 00:28:07,000 That which the supreme dictator, or his committee, does not know, is not taken into account. 298 00:28:07,000 --> 00:28:14,000 But the knowledge which mankind has accumulated in its long history is not acquired by everyone. 299 00:28:14,000 --> 00:28:20,000 We have accumulated such an enormous amount of scientific and technical knowledge over the centuries 300 00:28:20,000 --> 00:28:28,000 that it is humanly impossible for one individual to know all these things, even though he may be a most gifted man. 301 00:28:28,000 --> 00:28:33,000 And people are different. They are unequal. They always will be. 302 00:28:33,000 --> 00:28:38,000 There are some people who are more gifted in one subject, and less in another one. 303 00:28:38,000 --> 00:28:44,000 And there are people who have the gift to find new paths, to change the trend of knowledge. 304 00:28:44,000 --> 00:28:52,000 In capitalist societies, technological progress and economic progress are gained through such people. 305 00:28:52,000 --> 00:28:59,000 If a man has an idea, he will try to find a few people who are clever enough to realize the value of his idea. 306 00:28:59,000 --> 00:29:06,000 Some capitalists who dare to look into the future, who realize the possible consequences of such an idea, 307 00:29:06,000 --> 00:29:08,000 will start to put it to work. 308 00:29:08,000 --> 00:29:16,000 Other people, at first, may say, they are fools, but they will stop saying so when they discover that this enterprise, 309 00:29:16,000 --> 00:29:22,000 which they called foolish, is flourishing, and that people are happy to buy its products. 310 00:29:22,000 --> 00:29:30,000 Under the Marxian system, on the other hand, the supreme government body must first be convinced of the value of such an idea 311 00:29:30,000 --> 00:29:33,000 before it can be pursued and developed. 312 00:29:33,000 --> 00:29:40,000 This can be a very difficult thing to do, for only the group of people at the head, or the supreme dictator himself, 313 00:29:40,000 --> 00:29:43,000 has the power to make decisions. 314 00:29:43,000 --> 00:29:50,000 And if these people, because of laziness or old age, or because they are not very bright and learn it, 315 00:29:50,000 --> 00:29:56,000 are unable to grasp the importance of the new idea, then the new project will not be undertaken. 316 00:29:56,000 --> 00:29:59,000 We can think of examples from military history. 317 00:29:59,000 --> 00:30:03,000 Napoleon was certainly a genius in military affairs. 318 00:30:03,000 --> 00:30:06,000 He had one serious problem, however. 319 00:30:06,000 --> 00:30:15,000 His inability to solve that problem culminated, finally, in his defeat and exile to the loneliness of St. Helena. 320 00:30:15,000 --> 00:30:20,000 Napoleon's problem was how to conquer England. 321 00:30:20,000 --> 00:30:25,000 In order to do that, he needed a navy to cross the English Channel, and there were people who told him 322 00:30:25,000 --> 00:30:34,000 they had a way to accomplish that crossing, people who, in the age of sailing ships, had come up with a new idea of steam ships. 323 00:30:34,000 --> 00:30:37,000 But Napoleon did not understand their proposal. 324 00:30:37,000 --> 00:30:43,000 Then there was Germany's general stop, the famous German general staff. 325 00:30:43,000 --> 00:30:50,000 Before the First World War, it was universally considered to be unsurpassed in military wisdom. 326 00:30:50,000 --> 00:30:55,000 A similar reputation was held by the staff of general folk in France. 327 00:30:55,000 --> 00:31:02,000 But neither the Germans nor the French, who under the leadership of general folk, later defeated the Germans, 328 00:31:02,000 --> 00:31:06,000 realized the importance of aviation for military purposes. 329 00:31:06,000 --> 00:31:08,000 The German general staff said, 330 00:31:08,000 --> 00:31:13,000 Aviation is merely for pleasure. Flying is good for idle people. 331 00:31:13,000 --> 00:31:20,000 From a military point of view, only the Zeppelins are important, and the French general staff was of the same opinion. 332 00:31:20,000 --> 00:31:27,000 Later, during the period between World War I and World War II, there was a general in the United States 333 00:31:27,000 --> 00:31:32,000 who was convinced that aviation would be very important in the next war. 334 00:31:32,000 --> 00:31:35,000 But all other experts in the United States were against him. 335 00:31:35,000 --> 00:31:43,000 He could not convince them, if you have to convince a group of people who are not directly dependent on the solution of the problem, 336 00:31:43,000 --> 00:31:45,000 you will never succeed. 337 00:31:45,000 --> 00:31:49,000 This is true also of non-economic problems. 338 00:31:49,000 --> 00:31:56,000 There have been painters, poets, writers, composers, who complained that the public did not acknowledge their work, 339 00:31:56,000 --> 00:31:58,000 and caused them to remain poor. 340 00:31:58,000 --> 00:32:01,000 The public may certainly have had poor judgment, 341 00:32:01,000 --> 00:32:08,000 but when these artists said, the government ought to support great artists, painters, and writers, 342 00:32:08,000 --> 00:32:10,000 they were very much in the wrong. 343 00:32:10,000 --> 00:32:17,000 Whom should the government entrust with the task of deciding whether a newcomer is really a great painter or not? 344 00:32:17,000 --> 00:32:22,000 It would have to rely on the judgment of the critics, and the professors of the history of art, 345 00:32:22,000 --> 00:32:29,000 who are always looking back into the past, yet who very rarely have shown the talent to discover new genius. 346 00:32:29,000 --> 00:32:37,000 This is the great difference between a system of planning, and a system in which everyone can plan and act for himself. 347 00:32:37,000 --> 00:32:43,000 It is true, of course, that great painters and great writers have often had to endure great hardships. 348 00:32:43,000 --> 00:32:48,000 They might have succeeded in their art, but not always in getting money. 349 00:32:48,000 --> 00:32:51,000 Van Gogh was certainly a great painter. 350 00:32:51,000 --> 00:32:58,000 He had to suffer unbearable hardship, and finally, when he was 37 years old, he committed suicide. 351 00:32:58,000 --> 00:33:04,000 In all his life, he sold only one painting, and the buyer of it was his cousin. 352 00:33:04,000 --> 00:33:10,000 Apart from this one sale, he lived from the money of his brother, who was not an artist nor a painter, 353 00:33:10,000 --> 00:33:14,000 but Van Gogh's brother understood a painter's needs. 354 00:33:14,000 --> 00:33:19,000 Today, you cannot buy a Van Gogh for less than a hundred or two hundred thousand dollars. 355 00:33:19,000 --> 00:33:24,000 Under a socialist system, Van Gogh's fate might have been different. 356 00:33:24,000 --> 00:33:31,000 A government official would have asked some well-known painters whom Van Gogh certainly would not have regarded as artists at all. 357 00:33:31,000 --> 00:33:37,000 Whether this young man, half or completely crazy, was really a painter worthy to be supported, 358 00:33:37,000 --> 00:33:40,000 and they, without a doubt, would have answered, 359 00:33:40,000 --> 00:33:43,000 No, he is not a painter. He is not an artist. 360 00:33:43,000 --> 00:33:50,000 He is just a man who wastes paint, and they would have sent him into a milk factory or into a home for the insane. 361 00:33:50,000 --> 00:33:58,000 Therefore, all this enthusiasm in favor of socialism, by the rising generation of painters, poets, musicians, journalists, actors, 362 00:33:58,000 --> 00:34:00,000 is based on an illusion. 363 00:34:00,000 --> 00:34:06,000 I mention this because these groups are among the most fanatical supporters of the socialist idea. 364 00:34:06,000 --> 00:34:14,000 When it comes to choosing between socialism and capitalism as an economic system, the problem is somewhat different. 365 00:34:14,000 --> 00:34:24,000 The authors of socialism never suspected that modern industry and all the operations of modern businesses are based on calculation. 366 00:34:24,000 --> 00:34:30,000 Engineers are by no means the only ones who make plans on the basis of calculations. 367 00:34:30,000 --> 00:34:38,000 Businessmen also must do so, and businessmen's calculations are all based on the fact that, in the market economy, 368 00:34:38,000 --> 00:34:48,000 the money prices of goods inform not only the consumer, they also provide vital information to businessmen about the factors of production, 369 00:34:48,000 --> 00:34:55,000 the main function of the market being not merely to determine the cost of the last part of the process of production 370 00:34:55,000 --> 00:35:01,000 and transfer of goods to the hands of the consumer, but the cost of those steps leading up to it. 371 00:35:01,000 --> 00:35:09,000 The whole market system is bound up with the fact that there is a mentally calculated division of labor between the various businessmen 372 00:35:09,000 --> 00:35:16,000 who vie with each other in bidding for the factors of production, the raw materials, the machines, the instruments, 373 00:35:16,000 --> 00:35:21,000 and for the human factor of production, the wages paid to labor. 374 00:35:21,000 --> 00:35:32,000 This sort of calculation by the businessmen cannot be accomplished in the absence of prices supplied by the market. 375 00:35:32,000 --> 00:35:39,000 At the very instant you abolish the market, which is what the socialists would like to do, you render useless all the computations and calculations 376 00:35:39,000 --> 00:35:42,000 of the engineers and technologists. 377 00:35:42,000 --> 00:35:50,000 The technologists can give you a great number of projects which, from the point of view of the natural sciences, are equally feasible, 378 00:35:50,000 --> 00:36:01,000 but it takes the market-based calculations of the businessman to make clear which of those projects is the most advantageous from the economic point of view. 379 00:36:01,000 --> 00:36:10,000 The problem with which I am dealing here is the fundamental issue of capitalistic economic calculation as opposed to socialism. 380 00:36:10,000 --> 00:36:21,000 The fact is that economic calculation, and therefore all technological planning, is possible only if there are money prices, not only for consumer goods, 381 00:36:21,000 --> 00:36:25,000 but also for the factors of production. 382 00:36:25,000 --> 00:36:38,000 This means there has to be a market for raw materials, for all half-finished goods, for all tools and machines, and for all kinds of human labor and human services. 383 00:36:38,000 --> 00:36:43,000 When this fact was discovered, the socialists did not know how to respond. 384 00:36:43,000 --> 00:36:46,000 For 150 years they had said, 385 00:36:46,000 --> 00:36:52,000 All the evils in the world come from the fact that there are markets and market prices. 386 00:36:52,000 --> 00:37:02,000 We want to abolish the market, and with it, of course, the market economy, and substitute for it, a system without prices and without markets. 387 00:37:02,000 --> 00:37:08,000 We wanted to abolish what Marx called the commodity character of commodities and of labor. 388 00:37:08,000 --> 00:37:14,000 When faced with this new problem, the authors of socialism, having no answer, finally said, 389 00:37:14,000 --> 00:37:23,000 We will not abolish the market altogether. We will pretend that a market exists. We will play market like children who play school. 390 00:37:23,000 --> 00:37:29,000 But everyone knows that when children play school, they do not learn anything. 391 00:37:29,000 --> 00:37:34,000 It is just an exercise, a game, and you can play at many things. 392 00:37:34,000 --> 00:37:44,000 This is a very difficult and complicated problem, and in order to deal with it, in full, one needs a little more time than I have here. 393 00:37:44,000 --> 00:37:47,000 I have explained it in detail in my writings. 394 00:37:47,000 --> 00:37:52,000 In six lectures, I cannot enter into an analysis of all its aspects. 395 00:37:52,000 --> 00:38:02,000 Therefore, I want to advise you, if you are interested in the fundamental problem of the impossibility of calculation and planning under socialism, 396 00:38:02,000 --> 00:38:08,000 read my book, Human Action, which is available in an excellent Spanish translation. 397 00:38:08,000 --> 00:38:10,000 But read other books, too. 398 00:38:10,000 --> 00:38:17,000 Like the book of Norwegian economist, Trugve Hof, who wrote on economic calculation. 399 00:38:17,000 --> 00:38:27,000 And if you do not want to be one-sided, I recommend that you read the highly regarded socialist book on this subject by the eminent Polish economist, 400 00:38:27,000 --> 00:38:36,000 Oskar Lang, who at one time was a professor at an American university, then became a Polish ambassador, and later returned to Poland. 401 00:38:36,000 --> 00:38:41,000 You will probably ask me, what about Russia? How do the Russians handle this question? 402 00:38:41,000 --> 00:38:44,000 This changes the problem. 403 00:38:44,000 --> 00:38:54,000 The Russians operate their socialistic system within a world in which there are prices for all factors of production, for all raw materials, for everything. 404 00:38:54,000 --> 00:39:05,000 They can therefore employ, for their planning, the foreign prices of the world market, and because there are certain differences between conditions in Russia and those in the United States. 405 00:39:05,000 --> 00:39:17,000 The result is very often that the Russians consider something to be justified and advisable from their economic point of view, that the Americans would not consider economically justifiable at all. 406 00:39:17,000 --> 00:39:22,000 The Soviet experiment, as it was called, does not prove anything. 407 00:39:22,000 --> 00:39:29,000 It does not tell us anything about the fundamental problem of socialism, the problem of calculation. 408 00:39:29,000 --> 00:39:32,000 But are we entitled to speak of it as an experiment? 409 00:39:32,000 --> 00:39:39,000 I do not believe there is such a thing as a scientific experiment in the field of human action and economics. 410 00:39:39,000 --> 00:39:54,000 You cannot make laboratory experiments in the field of human action because a scientific experiment requires that you do the same thing under various conditions, or that you maintain the same conditions, changing perhaps only one factor. 411 00:39:54,000 --> 00:40:03,000 For instance, if you inject into a cancerous animal some experimental medication, the result may be that the cancer will disappear. 412 00:40:03,000 --> 00:40:09,000 You can test this with various animals of the same kind, which suffer from the same malignancy. 413 00:40:09,000 --> 00:40:15,000 If you treat some of them with the new method and do not treat the rest, then you can compare the result. 414 00:40:15,000 --> 00:40:18,000 You cannot do this within the field of human action. 415 00:40:18,000 --> 00:40:22,000 There are no laboratory experiments in human action. 416 00:40:22,000 --> 00:40:38,000 The so-called Soviet experiment merely shows that the standard of living is incomparably lower in Soviet Russia than it is in the country that is considered by the whole world as the paragon of capitalism, the United States. 417 00:40:38,000 --> 00:40:45,000 Of course, if you tell this to a socialist, he will say, things are wonderful in Russia. 418 00:40:45,000 --> 00:40:50,000 And you tell him, they may be wonderful, but the average standard of living is much lower. 419 00:40:50,000 --> 00:40:58,000 Then he will answer, yes, but remember how terrible it was for the Russians under the czars and how terrible a war we had to fight? 420 00:40:58,000 --> 00:41:04,000 I do not want to enter into discussion of whether this is or is not a correct explanation. 421 00:41:04,000 --> 00:41:13,000 But if you deny that the conditions are the same, you deny that it was an experiment, you must then say which would be much more correct. 422 00:41:13,000 --> 00:41:26,000 Socialism in Russia has not brought about an improvement in the conditions of the average man, which can be compared with the improvement of conditions during the same time period in the United States. 423 00:41:26,000 --> 00:41:31,000 In the United States, you hear of something new, of some improvement, almost every week. 424 00:41:31,000 --> 00:41:50,000 These are improvements that business has generated because thousands and thousands of business people are trying day and night to find some new product which satisfies the consumer better or is less expensive to produce, or better and less expensive than the existing products. 425 00:41:50,000 --> 00:41:52,000 They do not do this out of altruism. 426 00:41:52,000 --> 00:42:14,000 They do it because they want to make money, and the effect is that you have an improvement in the standard of living in the United States, which is almost miraculous when compared with the conditions that existed 50 or 100 years ago, but in Soviet Russia, where you do not have such a system, you do not have a comparable improvement. 427 00:42:14,000 --> 00:42:21,000 So, those people who tell us that we ought to adopt the Soviet system are badly mistaken. 428 00:42:21,000 --> 00:42:24,000 There is something else that should be mentioned. 429 00:42:24,000 --> 00:42:30,000 The American consumer, the individual, is both a buyer and a boss. 430 00:42:30,000 --> 00:42:38,000 When you leave a store in America, you may find a sign saying, thank you for your patronage, please come again. 431 00:42:38,000 --> 00:42:49,000 But when you go into a shop in a totalitarian country, be it in present day Russia or in Germany as it was under the regime of Hitler, the shopkeeper tells you, 432 00:42:49,000 --> 00:42:53,000 you have to be thankful to the great leader for giving you this. 433 00:42:53,000 --> 00:42:58,000 In socialist countries, it is not the seller who has to be grateful. 434 00:42:58,000 --> 00:43:00,000 It is the buyer. 435 00:43:00,000 --> 00:43:02,000 The citizen is not the boss. 436 00:43:02,000 --> 00:43:07,000 The boss is the central committee, the central office. 437 00:43:07,000 --> 00:43:24,000 Those socialist committees and leaders and dictators are supreme and the people simply have to obey them. 438 00:43:24,000 --> 00:43:30,000 And that's a wrap on this Austrian Audible episode of The Bitcoin Podcast. 439 00:43:30,000 --> 00:43:38,000 If you're a Bitcoin-only company interested in sponsoring another fucking Bitcoin podcast, head to bitcoinpodcast.net.com. 440 00:43:38,000 --> 00:43:47,000 If you're enjoying The Bitcoin Podcast and these Austrian economics readings, consider giving a 5-star review wherever you listen or sharing the show with your network. 441 00:43:47,000 --> 00:43:49,000 Or don't, Bitcoin doesn't care. 442 00:43:49,000 --> 00:43:53,000 You can find me on Nostar by going to primal.net.com. 443 00:43:53,000 --> 00:44:01,000 And if you want to follow The Bitcoin Podcast on Twitter, go to at-titcoinpodcast and at Walker America. 444 00:44:01,000 --> 00:44:05,000 You can also find the video version of this show at youtube.com. 445 00:44:05,000 --> 00:44:09,000 Or at Walker America on Rumble. 446 00:44:09,000 --> 00:44:11,000 Bitcoin is scarce. 447 00:44:11,000 --> 00:44:13,000 There will only ever be 21 million. 448 00:44:13,000 --> 00:44:15,000 But Bitcoin podcasts are abundant. 449 00:44:15,000 --> 00:44:21,000 So thank you for spending your scarce time to listen to another fucking Bitcoin podcast. 450 00:44:21,000 --> 00:44:24,000 Until next time, stay free.