186. CONCEIVED IN LIBERTY with Michael Saylor & Patrick Newman on Murray Rothbard

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purchase hello and welcome to another

episode of the Bitcoin standard podcast

a year and a half ago Michael said it

very graciously invited me to stay in

his beautiful house in Miami Beach I

thought long and hard about what kind of

gift I could get somebody like Michael

Saylor well there is nobody like Michael

saider but what can you get for somebody

like Michael Sayler I thought long and

hard and I decided I could probably uh

make something special happen if I got

him a pile of Australian economics books

and so so indeed I ordered a bunch of

Austrian economics books from The mises

Institute and had them delivered to his

address and I thought you know he

thought he had expressed sympathy and

interest in Austrian ideas before and

I'm sure that with the stack of Austrian

books in front of him he's going to find

something interesting in the work of

rothbard misa's Hayek and all the rest

of them and I would definitely be very

interested in finding out what Michael

Sayer thinks about these works

well he took the bait he picked up

Murray rothbought conceived in Liberty

as 1700 page monster of a book a great

book by Marty rothbard and he read it

and a year after that visit I saw him

again and he told me he read that book

and he was extremely impressed with it

he enjoyed it a lot and he had so many

wonderful ideas to share about what was

in that book so I'm inviting Michael

here today to join us and discuss this

book and we're also inviting Patrick

Newman who is a fellow at the means

Institute and a professor of Economics

at the University of Tampa and the

editor of the fifth and final volume of

rothbard's book rothbart had only

written the fifth volume by hand and the

publishing house was just published the

first four went out of business but the

fifth volume nobody could decipher Mardi

Gras Parts handwriting and so for many

years just lay there as an

indecipherable notebook until Patrick

Newman showed up at the Muse Institute

and spent that entire summer learning

how to decipher modded off Bart's

handwriting and then was able to

transcribe the fifth volume from

rothbardis to English and translated

from Roth parties to English and thanks

to him we had the fifth volume so

thank you so much gentlemen for joining

me today

yeah thanks for having me happy to meet

you Patrick looking forward to this

discussion safe yeah thanks for having

me on and uh nice to meet you as well

Michael all right so to begin with

Michael

um you know I'm just gonna give you the

ball and let you run uh what did you

think of conceived the Liberty

well so first you know I want to say for

the record I got all these books and I

stacked them on my uh end table

in my uh in my bedroom in Miami Beach

and it was a lot of books and uh they

were very tall and uh first I tried to

ignore them and then I went and I

started thumbing through them and uh it

was a bit daunting but um before I

actually uh did conceived in Liberty I

actually uh read an Austrian perspective

on the history of economic thought by

rothbard and uh and so that kind of

traced from

2000 BC forward all of the um all of the

economic thinkers

and uh and it was kind of a story of

someone comes up with a good economic

idea they get smashed down someone else

comes up with a good economic idea

that's rational let people keep their

stuff they get smashed down someone else

comes along every hundred years there's

an intelligent person in some country or

some civilization that points out that

if you don't steal all the property from

all the people and crush them to death

it'll be good for morale and you might

actually grow the economy and and always

is a little fire and then they always

get smashed down and it goes on and on

and on and on and on all the way you

know up through

you know uh lock and and uh the liberal

ideas of the uh of uh you know

Reformation Europe and after I finish

that you know and that's kind of

you know it's it's inspirational but

depressing both at the same time

rothbard does a really good job of

pointing out to you that there are

intelligent rational people for

thousands and thousands of years and

generally they come to no good end

but and and he has you know the guy's a

saint because he must have had so much

Um passion

and uh so much energy to be able to slog

through and do the research and write

these stories because

you know normally in Hollywood we like

to see the story of the protagonist you

know or the hero that uh struggles

against adversity and wins

and rothberg you know kind of writes a

thousand examples of the hero that

struggles against adversity almost wins

and then has you know defeat hammered

down by some ignorant yeah like they'll

spend 40 years cultivating the the next

king of France teaching him everything

about intelligent economics and

liberalism and the guy's about to about

to take over control the country and

then he dies of a disease in four weeks

accidentally and they they're stuck with

the next guy who knows nothing so that's

the story of

of thousands of years of economic

thought and then I I got to conceived in

Liberty and I was very interested in

that because as an American uh most

Americans are are um

our study of history consists of some

Europeans came to the new world

they are colonized

everything was good until the British

treated them shabbily and then they

threw off the reins of tyranny and here

we are

and it's generally very simple

and there's a American Revolution

and you think that uh the the history

before is is oftentimes homogeneous or

if they tell you the story it's a very

summarized narrative they've reduced it

down to one paragraph

so you know so Murray rothbard offers

this book and it is comprehensive

I mean the the first four volumes are

262 chapters and is 262 chapters of of

um

aspiration

and ego and self-preservation driving

some people uh

to uh to go to the new world to try to

establish a better life

and then uh every single one of the

stories is is either a struggle against

tyranny a struggle against adversity

and uh and ultimately

power corrupting and absolute power

corrupting absolutely

you know and uh and and uh then the

people uh

all being uh abused

eventually uh abused so badly that they

Rebel

with most of the rebellions failing but

uh you know first they flee The Tyranny

and then they Rebel and then most of the

rebellions fail but uh this entire uh

this entire Colonial experiment is this

Crucible

of it's a crucible of experimentation

where you've got some liberal ideas and

some aspiration that's planted into you

know uh

a continent

and as you watch all the different

Colonial experiments careen into each

other

and then strong struggle uh internally I

mean they're dominated by internal power

struggles external power struggles power

struggles with the Indians power

struggles with the Europeans power

struggles between the European Empires

and then power struggles of domestic

political nature you know in uh in the

in in the UK over and over again

you just you just see this careening

chaos where ultimately you know the hero

is the liberal philosophers the lockian

figures that planted the idea of Liberty

in the minds of settlers

and then the the unsung heroes that

generally aren't written about they're

struggling they're running from the

tyrants all the time trying to live

their life being interfered with

and uh it's a it's

262 chapters of brutal pain and and

struggle and uh and tragedy like uh a

tragedy of um

you know of ego

combined or wrapped with a comedy of

errors

that Kareem's toward a final Revolution

or a final Rebellion the last one I

remember

uh and through that chaos rise a set of

founding fathers that that actually

reflects

the best values that we've seen of a

founding nation in a long long time and

thousands of years where you find uh you

find a set of people that that do

Embrace some of the ideology of Lochte

some of the ideology of capitalism and

establish a nation of uh our country of

checks and balances but throughout

you know uh it's imperfect

corrupt

and uh and chaotic

and uncertain and uh and you can't help

but just sit back and Marvel at this uh

crucible that incubated this uh this

nation that became

an imperfect

torchbearer for Liberty and I look at

the title conceived in Liberty and I

just think Murray rothbard has such a

dry sense of humor

because he wrote 262 chapters about

anything but Liberty right and and so

there are people that are sort of

struggling for it but they're just

generally the ones getting Beat to Death

the entire time until the nation arises

and it's it's thought of as you know the

greatest uh standard bearer of Liberty

and and and truthfully I suppose it is

compared to everything else but

I can't help but think that you know

it's this is the Triumph of the least

worst right and uh and that's my

takeaway from it and I we could talk

about

the 262 chapters right I mean it's it is

1700 pages and and every one of the

stories is gripping

blood curdling

fascinating

right you know and every one of them

make a great movie you know except so

many of them kind of end with they end

with the villains winning and and the

good guys crawling off or running off

somewhere else to to lick their wounds

and try again over and over and over

again which is probably why it wouldn't

be commercial

but um

I thought uh what was really useful

about the entire book and and you know

for the audience I would say to

everybody you should read it right and

if you don't want to read it you should

download the audiobook and you should

listen to it because it's one of those

things where

at any age whether you're in your 20s

30s 40s 50s 60s however whatever point

of life you are listening to it grounds

you back into the the human struggle you

know of for sovereignty and freedom

uh you know versus tyranny and uh and uh

the collective

and so I think it's very very valuable

to to read it but

um

I also think you can be lost in the

hundreds and hundreds of chapters

of struggle because they're just so many

and uh and it's always you know each one

of them is about some some decent group

of people being beat up or abused or

victimized by some arrogant egotistical

power hungry

Tyrant that somehow thinks they know

best so um I I think that the most

constructive thing

for a podcast like this is um rather

than dwell too much on the individual

examples of uh of dysfunctional

government of which there are so many

it's more interesting to look at the

insights that come out of the 262

chapters and and I will you know

disclaim Patrick

I haven't read the fifth

volume uh my uh my you know study goes

from when the Europeans hit the shore

and and the conditions leading up to it

all the way to the uh to the victory of

uh of the Americans at Yorktown

I should say

um what is one of the many astonishing

things about this book is that I think

if you were a historian and you produced

this book over a 40-year career this

would be an incredibly successful career

for any historian I mean if if you're in

a U.S historian or an economic historian

and you came up with this book on its

own and published approximately nothing

else this would still be a remarkably

prolific and successful publication

career and Mori rothbard did this plus

dozens of other works of similar size or

even larger sizes he's incredibly

productive it's astonishing and he did

it all on the typewriters and with um uh

with his pen

um and so history of economic thoughts

is one of the most comprehensive

histories of economic thoughts written

and his history of the US is one of the

most gripping and fascinating histories

of the US Written and then there's all

of his Economics work work which is many

many thousands upon thousands of pages

across books and journals

um Patrick give us some of your insights

into uh I I into the volume overall and

what you think what you thought of it oh

of course uh continue the Liberty is a

great

it's a great history uh it's been

published many times rothbard originally

wrote it in the 1960s and then it was

published in the 1970s around the 200

year anniversary of the American

Revolution and then the mises Institute

over the years has published a volume

most recently they had the whole volume

one to four and one giant book that uh

if you've ever held it or held it while

trying to read it you're almost getting

a workout while you're doing so it's

literally so big

and it's it's it's full of lots of

information and you it's absolutely a

history of early America that I remember

being taught to me in elementary school

in my K-12 education at a much more

obviously superficial level but some of

the basics was still taught I think it's

very unfortunate the way history is

often taught now that a lot of those

details of the American Revolution and

what was animating the the founding

fathers and the colonists or have sort

of been uh revised you could say and it

it it's incredible as to save a Dean

pointed out is that rock Bard was

he had many many research interests he

was a polymath as in in many ways in

that he wrote this giant book on

economics the an economy and state then

he wrote this giant book on early

American history then he wrote this

giant book on the history of economic

thought and so on and that's only just

sort of a fraction of what he wrote of

the books he wrote he wrote a book on

the Great Depression he wrote a book on

libertarian ethics he wrote a lot of

stuff and a saving pointed out someone's

entire career could just be on early

American history and they would publish

this four volume book or this five

volume book and that would be sort of

the Capstone of their career and for

rothbard it was really only just one of

his many

uh voluminous contributions

and it's it's absolutely a a series that

I recommend people read or listen to the

audiobook

um I myself have been you know in the in

the fifth volume have written a

shortened overview of of the book uh of

volumes one through four but it's it's I

think it's very very important it's very

important to understand uh how the the

country was founded and all of the

struggles as Michael pointed out very

often when you speak truth to power

power comes and gets you right the the

intellectuals in the sort of the the the

radicals fighting for Liberty and

decentralization and in free markets

they they can often live in ostracized

life uh they're they're sort of shut out

from the halls of power they don't have

the most prestigious jobs or they don't

have all the political connections and

that's because they're a threat as

rothbard won rothbard himself was a

threat and as he's described throughout

his his book through conceived in the

Liberty uh various people when they

there were threats they get they get

ostracized various intellectuals when

they're threats they get ostracized and

so much of American History is built on

people who were ostracized but they

basically kept on persevering and I

think that's a very important Insight

that we we can't forget

um that's just really revealed through

so much of the of of of of the

information that rothbard provides in

his book I wrote down you know about

a bit more than a dozen 16 interesting

points that I took out of the book that

uh that are illustrated by the hundreds

and hundreds of examples and I thought

that might be a

a useful framework for us to discuss

yeah

um so I guess I mean

I started a big idea you know my if you

said Summarize the book I'd say okay the

summary of the book is history is the

story of the triumph of more powerful

currencies religions cultures and

governments over less powerful

competitors

it's really a Triumph of power

and um when you look at all of the

stories and you and you try to make

sense of it like why did that happen the

way it happened ultimately it's just the

Triumph you know humans have a Will To

Power and it's a Triumph of power and

the more powerful entity displaces the

less powerful entity and the competition

is going on in the religious domain the

economic domain the physical domain the

you know all these domains all the the

ideological domain all the time and um

we could start you know start with a an

interesting observation right currency

right we all know currency is a unit of

account uh a medium Exchange

a store of value and a system of control

right I love those four right very

interesting well

um religion

religion is a unit of moral account a

medium of indoctrination

a store of values

and a system of control

and a government if it's going to be

effective generally it

you you want the religion to channel

political power just like you want the

currency to channel economic power

and the point of the government is to

channel physical power and the

government is also it's a it's this you

know unit of cultural account and it's a

it's a method of education and violence

it's a store of culture it's a system of

control and so

throughout human history the governments

find themselves more powerful if they

adopt a religion and some religions are

better at channeling political power

than others and oftentimes you find that

you know if you're the leader of a

country and you want to get a million

people to do what you want them to do

just saying do it because I told you to

do it

doesn't work that well but if you you

know if you if you can enlist them in an

ideology right religion is the original

political party and and the secular

version of a religion is a political

party right that's when we replace

religion we replaced it with the

Communist party or we replaced it with

uh with you know the Socialist Party or

some other party

But ultimately throughout history and if

you look at all these stories religion

plays a big part in in each of the

colonies

and uh and generally uh a lot of these

struggles are are one Colony versus

another and one religious uh group

versus another religious group but

you know this is uh lapsing back into

history in general

you just you find that uh you know

throughout history thousands and

thousands and thousands of times the way

that someone consolidates power is they

all agree on uh a state religion the

religion has ritual

uh we're all going to meet you know

every Sunday on the Sabbath on a

Saturday on a Sunday on a whatever we're

all going to recite the same mantras

we're all going to agree on the same

values

you're going to participate since we all

agree on the same values we agree the

people that don't share our values are

the enemy and uh very rapidly as soon as

you distinguish one group from another

group it's a very short hop to and

therefore we can seize their property

and therefore we should kill them

because they won't give us their

property and and so

uh economic tyranny followed by

um

followed by abuse followed by War uh it

normally follows from these religious

distinctions

and um you know if I look at conceived

in Liberty what's fascinating is you got

to watch

hundreds of experiments in political

economy take place over about 200 years

and

um and so there wasn't one

you you had this um you had you had this

um continent

right which was very special it's a very

fertile piece of land

on the south is a desert on the north is

Tundra to the West is an uncrossable

ocean the Pacific just utterly

impossible to cross on the east

it took thousands of years and

eventually uh the Europeans figured out

how to cross it

and it was very difficult in fact

Logistics turn out to be uh the deciding

factor right in the success of the uh of

the American Revolution more so than any

tactics or any strategy or any action of

anybody right a conclusion is just they

were lucky that it took 12 weeks to get

across an ocean

uh and uh and a very was very difficult

and extremely uh extremely hard to to

send uh men and material back and forth

and to communicate and because of that

you had this uh this kind of semi-closed

system

you know uh where you could run all

these experiments without the

interference uh that that took place so

routinely uh in Europe and in Asia and

uh and that's the American exercise the

um

the uh I mean the first thing you take

away is it I mean one Insight is the

Triumph of Technology

the Triumph of you know the Europe what

did the Europeans have going for them

they showed up with Guns Germs and Steel

and they just showed up and from that

point it was a foregone conclusion that

one of the European tribes was going to

win because what they met when they

showed up was uh us a set of Indians

that weren't even Neolithic

you know if you look at the you know

European history you've got Stone Age

going to Neolithic where where go to

Malta in 2500 BC they're pretty good at

creating stone temples just like the

Egyptians erected a lot of stone tempos

temples so the American Indians didn't

even have that they I mean they didn't

even work well with large blocks of

stone they definitely didn't get to

Copper they didn't get to to bronze they

didn't get to iron they didn't get to

steal they didn't get the gunpowder and

you know the story of European history

is 10

000 invasions and bloody wars that

resulted in the mixing of so many

different peoples and so many plagues

over and over again such that you had a

very

um biologically tough group of of people

that had guns and had steel and they

were gonna win uh regardless and and so

the smartest thing the Indians did as

far as I could see is when the Europeans

showed up if they murdered every single

European that stepped foot on on the

shore that was their best bet their best

idea and they might actually get 100

years or 50 years a piece

as soon as the Europeans set up and they

started to uh to set up a village and

colonize and got a beachhead that was

the end for the Indians and what

happened was just 300 years of brutal

you know uh and uh deterministic

genocide right and uh

they never had a chance now

I'm not really arguing uh in favor of

the moral superiority of the Indians

over the Europeans I write the generals

the other theme you see you know is

endless Tribal wars

right the Euro the American Indians had

endless Tribal wars and and the story of

history is ten thousand Tribal wars

the only the only difference between the

Europeans and rothbard's history and the

Indians history is since the Indians

didn't have uh a very Advanced culture

no one wrote it down and so the 15 000

years of endless Tribal wars amongst

thousands of Indian tribes just aren't

recorded history

right and and every one of them if they

were recorded they would have a story of

Rise through adversity

you know leading to Prosperity leading

to eventual moral Decay leading to

corruption leading to being crushed by

another Indian tribe right so they

weren't much better but

it was pretty clear that all the Indian

tribes were getting displaced

you know they what's funny here is there

are a lot of stories in the book about

a governor right uh the governor of

Virginia a governor of Maryland uh

governor of New York that abused the

colonists and then if they abused the

colonists too much

like for example you know in early

Virginia it's the death penalty to not

go to church it's the death penalty to

try to go home it's the death penalty to

try to leave it's the death penalty to

to break a rule I mean they pretty much

kill you for anything you do the you

know criticizing the boss you know puts

you in jail for a month and criticizing

him three times it's a death penalty so

you read that and you think wow that's

the governor wasn't

so nice right that's it's pretty pretty

awful communist tyranny

and so for that reason they rebelled

against the governor uh I get that but

then when they had a liberal Governor

that said don't murder the Indians they

rebelled against them too and they're

the infraction was the governor won't

let us murder the Indians

and so it wasn't like the colonists were

the good guys

it was uh it was a story of um

the British fighting with the Spaniards

fighting with the French

the Spaniards murdering all the Indians

and enslaving them the Indians enslaving

each other all the time the colonists

wishing to murder all the Indians and

and you know when they did it the hard

way they used guns

but uh you know lots of Stories of the

colonists would uh

they would see some uh some land from

the Indians the Indians would object

they would fight over it an Indian would

kill a colonist the colonists would

murder 20 Indians and then they would

declare war

the colonists would like send the

Indians a bunch of smallpox infested

blankets

a million Indians would you know

hundreds of thousands would die because

the smallpox and germ warfare which I

mean you're kind of amazed at just how

diabolically creative

all of these people are like that it's I

didn't bother just to go murder all the

women and children with guns I actually

infected them all with smallpox and just

let the plague do the job for me and and

they kind of knew that would work

which uh you know leaves you shaking

your head but

but uh

you know that you can't make this stuff

up for example

the colonists get in a fight with the

Indians they want their land the Indians

don't want to give up the land so the

colonists raise an army uh to defend

themselves and then they go March off to

fight with the Indians that are

murdering the colonists but along the

way there's a peaceful Indian tribe that

happens to be doing no harm to anybody

and they don't have any guns so the

colonists murder all of them because

they've also got land and somebody

running you know running the militia

thinks it's a lot easier to kill the

friendly Indian tribe than it is to kill

the Hostile Indian tribe and if you were

to go back in time and someone said give

me some advice

you know uh about how I coexist

I mean the answer is you know the weaker

party doesn't coexist

right you can you know you can run

But ultimately uh it's going to be the

Triumph of power

and so uh you know a steel age uh set of

colonists with gunpowder and and

biological immunity and uh steel they

were going to displace uh the indigenous

tribes and it was just a question of how

much violence was going to take place

and how brutal it would be over time

and um

so my takeaway from that is you really

want to be the technology leader right

and there is no future for your culture

and and no amount of appeasement and no

amount of diplomacy and no amount no

amount of of reasonable uh trade Works

ultimately

this was the story of um the most

powerful

displacing the least powerful

yeah I think I think all that's uh very

very insightful Michael and I just to

sort of comment on some of the things

that you were discussing I agree that

you know rothbard's overall framework is

the story of Liberty versus Power right

he views history as the story of

individuals in favor of voluntary

cooperation and free markets

decentralization versus those in favor

of Greater government Authority in uh

less individual freedom and so on and

that for most of History unfortunately

power triumphs uh we can say Liberty is

responsible for the great flourishing

the massive incredible living standards

that we all have the fact that we're all

able to basically communicate virtually

from different you know parts of the

world and all of that and that's that's

ultimately due to capitalism and

Liberties as rothbard would say but uh

you also have power right in a big theme

of rothbard's book is that power

corrupts and he goes through this is

that whenever sort of the forces of

Liberty control a government or they

finally oust the forces of power they

they in a sense to to to quote Lord

Acton or to paraphrase Lord Acton you

know power tends to corrupt and absolute

power corrupts absolutely

and then they start to use the

government for their own ends they start

to favor their own supporters they start

to restrict uh you know competition

whether in in currency or religion or

other sorts of you know business

activities Etc and uh this is what you

ultimately have and this even happened

after

um uh the Revolutionary War for much of

American history and I I know you

commented on the

the importance of religion for basically

spreading government propaganda

especially back in the day and I think

that's I agree because another big theme

of recurring

part of rothbard's history and

conceiving Liberty as well as elsewhere

is what he called or what has been

called The Alliance of throne and altar

right so it's this alliance between the

government and between a established

religion and it's sort of I'll scratch

your back if you scratch my back the

government builds a nice Church uh or

gives that church a monopoly or says

well we'll give you some money or

whatever and then that church basically

turns around and justifies the

government they say the king is divine

these acts come from God uh or you know

the Royal Governor uh we have to listen

to him or you have to go fight for him

you have to go die for him you have to

go uh on his you know Plantation or his

feudal Manner and repair his road or

something and and and this this is why

the founding fathers ultimately tried to

basically separate church and state they

didn't want an established religion that

would be a mouthpiece for the government

uh and all of its various interventions

and that in the modern form we don't

necessarily they have religion doing

that work but we have intellectuals it's

like the secularized alliance of throne

and altar you get the government

privileging various intellectuals giving

them a research Grant giving them some

sort of University funding or work at a

prominent think tank or government

agency in return those intellectuals

turn around and they say you have to

support government interventions x y and

z

um not necessarily because it's holy so

to speak but it's because it will

benefit the public welfare and that's

really the modern sense and that's why

it's so difficult to sort of Break Free

you could say from Power because they

have the intellectual game they have it

they have it quite nicely and they and

and they they've they've they've

certainly

um I done their job in making sure that

their Viewpoint is the one that's well

heard and there's the Viewpoint that

looks prestigious and prominent or as

the other uh viewpoints are sort of

ostracized and left out and then just to

one uh you know final comment when

you're talking about the Indians and

land Etc and another major kind of

recurring aspect of rockhart's book is

is that to the extent that Liberty was

able to Triumph in what became the

United States The Colony it was

ultimately due to the abundance of land

uh the the the British I was really

starting with the English the French

um it really we could just concentrate

on the English and they became the

British they really tried to replicate

feudalism in the colonies uh they had

first colonized Ireland through like a

hundreds of years process of subjugation

and they said well this is great why

don't we do the same thing

uh for in North America we've got the

Virginia colony we've got uh Maryland uh

you know there's a certain Lord

Baltimore Virginia named after Virgin

Queen Elizabeth and all of that stuff

they said we're going to Grant the land

to a bunch of our favorite supporters

have a bunch of people work on that work

on that land

and the problem was there was just too

much land that people could leave

um and also England was preoccupied with

civil wars and whenever England really

tried to enforce anything the the the

colonists rose up and there were the

there were the Indians and there was a

lot of conflict unfortunately between

those groups I mean ultimately at the

center of their difficulty was the

question over land is that who owned all

of this land a lot of the colonists were

sort of imbued with the Locking well in

order to really own land you have to do

something to the land you have to chop

down the trees you have to till you have

to you know irrigate uh some land you

have to grow crops you have to uh you

know do something to it and a lot of the

Indian tribes were

one way of describing could be too harsh

but of course when they say well we own

this whole forest and the colonists say

well no you don't you didn't do anything

to the forest uh there's going to be

conflict unfortunately and that's a an

ugly side of rothbard's Book it's that

as you mentioned the the quite honestly

sort of the genocidal

um

uh characteristics and and this was you

know that this was this was life back

then it was it was killer be killed

right you're under this constant state

of threat

um you could have your your at your head

chopped off or blown up or if you didn't

obey someone you get the death penalty

and then we decided on a more lenient

form of punishment or if you steal

someone's horse they're gonna cut your

ear they're gonna clip it so everyone

will always see it you'll be forever

branded that's your goes on your

permanent record Etc and and yeah life

was life was rough back then and it's

just it's it's it's just incredible how

people manage to deal with that and in a

sense how a lot of the things you know

Liberty versus Power alliance with

throne and altar you know they're still

with us today and uh yes I just I I

think that those are important takeaways

from uh from rothbard's uh you know uh

uh conceived in Liberty

yeah to the extent that there's virtue

that that pops out following the

American Revolution and of course

there's a lot of a lot of imperfections

at that point too but but the virtue

from the American experiment is you know

you could attribute to the fact that the

Europeans showed up with Superior

technology and they found a a set of

extremely valuable property highly

desirable property

that uh

they could take

from a stone age people like they could

simply seize it uh because the

indigenous people couldn't defend it so

that's that was a benefit to them and

then they were so far away from Europe

it was difficult for the rest of the

Europeans to meddle with them and screw

it up so that was a benefit and then the

third benefit is they ran all these

different experiments and there were so

many bad ones where they had colonies

destroyed by the intertwining of

religion and government and they had

corruption due to absolute power that by

the time they got to the American

Revolution

um all of the Learned uh men that were

involved would have been familiar with

all of the awful results from the um

from the previous political experiments

over the past 200 years and so that you

know separation of church and state was

one of the rallying cries of the

Revolution and you can see why because

because as soon as the religion got

entwined with absolute power life became

hell on Earth for the people that live

in the colony but

it's not that

it's it's it's not that

um absolute power combined with uh

religion

is losing in fact oftentimes it's

winning but what what made the

difference here was

all these colonies were in competition

with each other and there was extra

space to go west to your point so every

single time an awful form of government

aligned with an awful religious

influence and and some authoritarian or

Tyrant implemented a sort of

batshit crazy irrational rules people

fled either fled West or they fled North

and they fled South

so that

um the irrational authoritarians had

their colony collapse and um and so the

rational political economic exercises

were more successful in this market

right the the entire North American

continent became a Marketplace a

political economic ideas

and and uh in other examples in human

history when the authoritarian got

control of the country they just simply

murdered everybody and and so the best

idea didn't always win because brute

force uh came into play but but here

like for example in New York you had a

feudal uh a feudal architecture where

you had a few Rich families that owned

everything owned all the land and in

Pennsylvania you could actually come and

get land so with this flow of people

from Europe to the new world everybody

would land in Philadelphia they'd go to

Pennsylvania because they knew that if

they landed in New York they would be a

surf and if they went to Pennsylvania

they might have property rights and so

there was a Triumph the idea that

individuals should be able to own

property

was competing with a feudal Colony the

idea that only 10 families owned all the

property and in that competition uh the

more rational idea ended up getting all

the immigrants and then they had more

power and they were able to defend

themselves

against uh the irrational idea

Peter Stuyvesant you know as Dutch

governor of New York was a you know

unmitigated Tyrant you know crazy

and so it turned out that when the uh

you know when the British sailed on New

York most of the people in New York

didn't want to defend him and so he

didn't have an army because why would

you want to fight for a an irrational

authoritarian Tyrant when the people

that are going to take over are actually

going to treat you better

so what you found is that the Dutch got

squeezed out of the new world because

they were just awful like I have to tell

this story it's just so ridiculous like

the Dutch show up in uh in uh Delaware

and they started colony and um they

coexist peacefully with the Indians and

then one day the Dutch start throwing

trash out the back side of their colony

and one of the things they throw out is