Property and Freedom Podcast

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 325. AI-assisted audio narration of the main chapters of Rothbard at 100: A Tribute and Assessment (Papinian Press and The Saif House, 2026) is available at this PFS Youtube Playlist; the mp3 files may also be downloaded in this zip file. The first two chapters—my “Preface” and Hans’s “Introduction”—were published the week of Rothbard’s birthday here on the Property and Freedom Podcast (PFP315 and PFP314). The other main chapters will be released sequentially weekly on Mondays. The next in the queue: 10. Saifedean Ammous, “Murray Rothbard: An Ode to an Intellectual Hero”

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 324. AI-assisted audio narration of the main chapters of Rothbard at 100: A Tribute and Assessment (Papinian Press and The Saif House, 2026) is available at this PFS Youtube Playlist; the mp3 files may also be downloaded in this zip file. The first two chapters—my “Preface” and Hans’s “Introduction”—were published the week of Rothbard’s birthday here on the Property and Freedom Podcast (PFP315 and PFP314). The other main chapters will be released sequentially weekly on Mondays. The next in the queue: 9. Jeffrey A. Tucker, “The Murray Rothbard I Knew”

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 323. AI-assisted audio narration of the main chapters of Rothbard at 100: A Tribute and Assessment (Papinian Press and The Saif House, 2026) is available at this PFS Youtube Playlist; the mp3 files may also be downloaded in this zip file. The first two chapters—my “Preface” and Hans’s “Introduction”—were published the week of Rothbard’s birthday here on the Property and Freedom Podcast (PFP315 and PFP314). The other main chapters will be released sequentially weekly on Mondays. The next in the queue: 8. Stephan Kinsella, “Mises, Rothbard, Hoppe: An Indispensable Framework”

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 322. AI-assisted audio narration of the main chapters of Rothbard at 100: A Tribute and Assessment (Papinian Press and The Saif House, 2026) is available at this PFS Youtube Playlist; the mp3 files may also be downloaded in this zip file. The first two chapters—my “Preface” and Hans’s “Introduction”—were published the week of Rothbard’s birthday here on the Property and Freedom Podcast (PFP315 and PFP314). The other main chapters will be released sequentially weekly on Mondays. The next in the queue: 7. Thomas Jacob, “Murray Rothbard, Mises University 1990, and the Power of Living Institutions”

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 321. AI-assisted audio narration of the main chapters of Rothbard at 100: A Tribute and Assessment (Papinian Press and The Saif House, 2026) is available at this PFS Youtube Playlist; the mp3 files may also be downloaded in this zip file. The first two chapters—my “Preface” and Hans’s “Introduction”—were published the week of Rothbard’s birthday here on the Property and Freedom Podcast (PFP315 and PFP314). The other main chapters will be released sequentially weekly on Mondays. The next in the queue: 6. Lee I. Iglody, “The Man Across the Hall: My Time with Professor Rothbard”

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 320. AI-assisted audio narration of the main chapters of Rothbard at 100: A Tribute and Assessment (Papinian Press and The Saif House, 2026) is available at this PFS Youtube Playlist; the mp3 files may also be downloaded in this zip file. The first two chapters—my “Preface” and Hans’s “Introduction”—were published the week of Rothbard’s birthday here on the Property and Freedom Podcast (PFP315 and PFP314). The other main chapters will be released sequentially weekly on Mondays. The next in the queue: 5. Jörg Guido Hülsmann, “Three Channels of Asset Inflation”

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 319. AI-assisted audio narration of the main chapters of Rothbard at 100: A Tribute and Assessment (Papinian Press and The Saif House, 2026) is available at this PFS Youtube Playlist; the mp3 files may also be downloaded in this zip file. The first two chapters—my “Preface” and Hans’s “Introduction”—were published the week of Rothbard’s birthday here on the Property and Freedom Podcast (PFP315 and PFP314). The other main chapters will be released sequentially weekly on Mondays. The next in the queue: 4. Douglas E. French, “Remembering Murray Rothbard: Teacher, Friend, and Inspiration”  

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 318. AI-assisted audio narration of the main chapters of Rothbard at 100: A Tribute and Assessment (Papinian Press and The Saif House, 2026) is available at this PFS Youtube Playlist; the mp3 files may also be downloaded in this zip file. The first two chapters—my “Preface” and Hans’s “Introduction”—were published the week of Rothbard’s birthday here on the Property and Freedom Podcast (PFP315 and PFP314). The other main chapters will be released sequentially weekly on Mondays. The next in the queue: 3. Thomas J. DiLorenzo, “The Inspiring and Courageous Intellect of Murray Rothbard”

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 317. AI-assisted audio narration of the main chapters of Rothbard at 100: A Tribute and Assessment (Papinian Press and The Saif House, 2026) is available at this PFS Youtube Playlist; the mp3 files may also be downloaded in this zip file. The first two chapters—my “Preface” and Hans’s “Introduction”—were published the week of Rothbard’s birthday here on the Property and Freedom Podcast (PFP315 and PFP314). The other main chapters will be released sequentially weekly on Mondays. The next in the queue: 2. Jeffrey F. Barr, “The Last Lecture”

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 316. AI-assisted audio narration of the main chapters of Rothbard at 100: A Tribute and Assessment (Papinian Press and The Saif House, 2026) is available at this PFS Youtube Playlist; the mp3 files may also be downloaded in this zip file. The first two chapters—my “Preface” and Hans’s “Introduction”—were published the week of Rothbard’s birthday here on the Property and Freedom Podcast (PFP315 and PFP314). The other main chapters will be released sequentially weekly on Mondays, starting with the one: 1. Hans-Hermann Hoppe, “Coming of Age with Murray”

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 315. AI-assisted audio narration of the main chapters of Rothbard at 100: A Tribute and Assessment (Papinian Press and The Saif House, 2026) is available at this PFS Youtube Playlist; the mp3 files may also be downloaded in this zip file. The first two chapters—my Preface and Hans’s  “Introduction”—are released today here on the Property and Freedom Podcast, with the other main chapters to be released sequentially weekly on Mondays. Second “front matter” chapter: Hans-Hermann Hoppe, “Introduction.”  

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 314. Thanks to volunteer efforts from Jorge Besada, AI-assisted audio narration of the main chapters of Rothbard at 100: A Tribute and Assessment (Papinian Press and The Saif House, 2026) is available at this PFS Youtube Playlist; the mp3 files may also be downloaded in this zip file. The first two chapters—my Preface and Hans’s  “Introduction”—are released today here on the Property and Freedom Podcast, with the other main chapters to be released sequentially weekly on Mondays. First up: Stephan Kinsella, “Preface.”

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 313. This bonus presentation is from the recently-concluded 19th annual PFS 2025 Annual Meeting (Sep. 18–23, 2025, Bodrum, Turkey). Thomas Jacob (Switzerland): Oboxplanet Presentation. Other talks appear on the Property and Freedom Podcast. Other videos may also be found at the PFS 2025 Youtube Playlist.

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 312. This talk is from the recently-concluded 19th annual PFS 2025 Annual Meeting (Sep. 18–23, 2025, Bodrum, Turkey). Alessandro Fusillo (Italy), Saifedean Ammous (Palestine/Jordan), Hans-Hermann Hoppe (Germany/Turkey), Sean Gabb (England), Thomas J. DiLorenzo (USA), Open Discussion, Q&A Other talks appear on the Property and Freedom Podcast. Other videos may also be found at the PFS 2025 Youtube Playlist.

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 311. This roundtable is from the recently-concluded 19th annual PFS 2025 Annual Meeting (Sep. 18–23, 2025, Bodrum, Turkey). Other talks appear on the Property and Freedom Podcast. Other videos may also be found at the PFS 2025 Youtube Playlist. Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Moderator of Speaker Roundtable Discussion: Of Frauds, Fakes, Crooks, Creeps and Clowns: with Alessandro Fusillo (Italy), Saifedean Ammous (Palestine/Jordan), Hans-Hermann Hoppe (Germany/Turkey), Sean Gabb (England), Thomas J. DiLorenzo (USA).

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 310. This talk is from the recently-concluded 19th annual PFS 2025 Annual Meeting (Sep. 18–23, 2025, Bodrum, Turkey). Other talks appear on the Property and Freedom Podcast. Other videos may also be found at the PFS 2025 Youtube Playlist. Thomas J. DiLorenzo (USA): “Virtuous” War Crimes: The American and Israeli Traditions [Sebastian Wang, “Tom DiLorenzo on “Virtuous” War Crimes – The American and Israeli Traditions (PFS Bodrum 2025),” Libertarian Alliance [UK] Blog (Sep. 21, 2025)]

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 308. This panel discussion is from the recently-concluded 19th annual PFS 2025 Annual Meeting (Sep. 18–23, 2025, Bodrum, Turkey). Other talks appear on the Property and Freedom Podcast. Other videos may also be found at the PFS 2025 Youtube Playlist. Hans-Hermann Hoppe (Germany/Turkey), Rahim Taghizadegan (Austria/Switzerland), Guido Hülsmann (Germany/France), Jeff Deist (USA), Kristoffer Mousten Hansen (Denmark/Germany), Thorsten Polleit (Germany), Discussion, Q&A

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 307. This talk is from the recently-concluded 19th annual PFS 2025 Annual Meeting (Sep. 18–23, 2025, Bodrum, Turkey). Other talks appear on the Property and Freedom Podcast. Other videos may also be found at the PFS 2025 Youtube Playlist. Hans-Hermann Hoppe (Germany/Turkey): Democratic Peace and Re-Education: The German Experience [based on: On War, Democratic Peace, and Reeducation: The “German Experience” in Reactionary Perspective“; see Sebastian Wang, “Hans-Hermann Hoppe on Democratic Peace and Re-Education – PFS Bodrum 2025,” Libertarian Alliance [UK] Blog (Sep. 20, 2025)]

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 306. This talk is from the recently-concluded 19th annual PFS 2025 Annual Meeting (Sep. 18–23, 2025, Bodrum, Turkey). Other talks appear on the Property and Freedom Podcast. Other videos may also be found at the PFS 2025 Youtube Playlist. Kristoffer Mousten Hansen (Denmark/Germany): Mileinomics [Sebastian Wang, “Javier Milei and the Austrian School – A Critique from Bodrum 2025,” Libertarian Alliance [UK] Blog (Sep. 21, 2025); Kristoffer Mousten Hansen, “Javier Milei and the Austrian School,” Instituto Rothbard (Sep. 26, 2025); idem, “Javier Milei and the Austrian School,” Mises Portugal (Sep. 29, 2025)]

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 305. This talk is from the recently-concluded 19th annual PFS 2025 Annual Meeting (Sep. 18–23, 2025, Bodrum, Turkey). Other talks appear on the Property and Freedom Podcast. Other videos may also be found at the PFS 2025 Youtube Playlist. Rahim Taghizadegan (Austria/Switzerland): Bitcoin from the Viewpoint of the Austrian School. Note: For those who complain that some Austrian groups do not give enough attention to, are or even hostile to, bitcoin (see Robert P. Murphy, Bitcoin and the Theory of Money, Mises Wire (04/29/2020); Kinsella, KOL401 | Sazmining Twitter Space: Bitcoin & Property Rights; Bitcoin Confiscation vs. Gold Confiscation; On Coinbase, Bitcoin, Fractional-Reserve Banking, and Irregular Deposits; LIBERTARIAN ANSWER MAN: Smart Contracts), keep in mind that for many years PFS has accepted donations by Bitcoin; we have featured Saifedean Ammous many times, often touching on bitcoin [PFP222 | Saifedean Ammous: Hard Money and Time Preference (PFS 2021)]; years ago Roman Skaskiw was here and gave an informal lecture and handed out cards with $5 worth of bitcoin, as I recall, to attendees (which would be worth $4200 or so today, June 28, 2025; see PFS 2013 Annual Meeting—Speakers and Presentations); Professor Hoppe has never spoken out against it, unlike other Austrians (in fact, see his comments at PFP251 | Van Dun, Hoppe, Dürr, Discussion, Q&A (PFS 2022) and Hoppe on Germany, East and West, Russia/Ukraine, and US-NATO (PFS 2022)]; I spoke on it [KOL274 | Nobody Owns Bitcoin (PFS 2019)]; Šimašius’s comments in [Interview] Libertarian Mayor of Vilnius Speaks!; and so on.

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 304. This talk is from the recently-concluded 19th annual PFS 2025 Annual Meeting (Sep. 18–23, 2025, Bodrum, Turkey). Other talks appear on the Property and Freedom Podcast. Other videos may also be found at the PFS 2025 Youtube Playlist. Guido Hülsmann (Germany/France): The Universities and the State [Sebastian Wang, “Guido Hülsmann on Universities and the State – PFS Bodrum 2025,” Libertarian Alliance [UK] Blog (Sep. 20, 2025)]

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 303. This talk is from the recently-concluded 19th annual PFS 2025 Annual Meeting (Sep. 18–23, 2025, Bodrum, Turkey). Other talks appear on the Property and Freedom Podcast. Other videos may also be found at the PFS 2025 Youtube Playlist. Jeff Deist (USA): Understanding Post-Persuasion America [Sebastian Wang, “Jeff Deist on Post-Persuasion America – PFS Bodrum 2025,” Libertarian Alliance [UK] Blog (Sep. 20, 2025)]

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 302. This talk is from the recently-concluded 19th annual PFS 2025 Annual Meeting (Sep. 18–23, 2025, Bodrum, Turkey). Thorsten Polleit (Germany): Stanislav Andreski’s Social Sciences as Sorcery (1972): Known Errors, Deceptions and Intellectual Corruption That Endure [Polleit, “Stanislav Andreski’s Social Sciences as Sorcery: Enduring Errors and Academic Corruption – Thorsten Polleit, PFS Bodrum 2025,” Libertarian Alliance [UK] Blog (Sep. 20, 2025)] Other talks appear on the Property and Freedom Podcast. Other videos may also be found at the PFS 2025 Youtube Playlist.

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 301. This panel discussion is from the recently-concluded 19th annual PFS 2025 Annual Meeting (Sep. 18–23, 2025, Bodrum, Turkey). Alessandro Fusillo (Italy), Anthony Daniels (Dalrymple) (England), David Dürr (Switzerland), Sean Gabb (England), Stephan Kinsella (USA), Discussion, Q&A. Shownotes and transcript below. Other talks appear on the Property and Freedom Podcast. Other videos may also be found at the PFS 2025 Youtube Playlist. Grok shownotes PFP301 | Fusillo, Daniels, Dürr, Gabb, Kinsella Discussion & Q&A (PFS 2025) In this lively Q&A session from the Property and Freedom Society 2025 conference, panelists Alessandro Fusillo, Anthony Daniels (Theodore Dalrymple), David Dürr, Sean Gabb, and Stephan Kinsella field audience questions on Swiss anarchism, ancient and modern slavery, voluntary contracts, gun culture, immigration in a stateless society, and the libertarian implications of pirate governance. Key Topics & Highlights: [0:02] The Röstigraben & Swiss Anarchism David Dürr explains the “Röstigraben” — the cultural and linguistic divide between German-speaking and French-speaking Switzerland — as a symbolic fault line reflecting resistance to centralization in Bern. He suggests that Swiss federalism’s horizontal structure may naturally evolve into anarchic coexistence, especially under external pressure from larger blocs. [4:40] Slave Manumission in Ancient Rome Sean Gabb discusses the high turnover of slaves in elite Roman households, driven by moral obligation, commercial incentives, and legal loopholes (e.g., freeing slaves to avoid torture-based testimony). While urban and domestic slaves often gained freedom, rural and mining slaves had near-zero prospects — fueling revolts like Spartacus. [9:32] Switzerland 2048: A Path to Anarcho-Capitalism? Dürr presents his speculative book imagining Switzerland stateless by 2048. Triggered by financial collapse — rating agencies downgrading federal bonds amid tax resistance — he views the state as a 5,000-year evolutionary mismatch with human nature, destined to fail. [14:31] Panel Debate: Is Voluntary Slavery Libertarian? Kinsella: Firmly rejects Walter Block’s defense of voluntary slavery contracts. Following Rothbard, he argues that the human will is inalienable and forms the foundational basis of self-ownership — not homesteading or external acquisition. Thus, no verbal or written declaration can alienate one’s body or future liberty. He dismisses Block’s extreme hypothetical (a father selling himself to fund his son’s cancer treatment) as far-fetched and unconvincing. Kinsella acknowledges historical uses of slavery contracts in Rome as pragmatic workarounds (e.g., to bypass citizenship restrictions), but insists these were artifacts of a statist legal order — not justifications for permitting such contracts in a free society. As a hypothetical libertarian judge, he would void any slavery contract ab initio on public policy grounds, equating it to enforcing a murder-for-hire agreement. Dürr: Allows limited, time-bound voluntary membership in restrictive organizations — but never enforceable on non-signers. Gabb: Observes many prefer unfreedom (e.g., prisoners recidivating for structure). Fusillo: Calls state citizenship the true modern “voluntary” slavery — an invalid contract enabling conscription and human sacrifice. [24:54] Ancient vs. Modern Slavery Gabb contrasts race-based, hereditary New World slavery with the ancient world’s fluid, meritocratic version. Freed Roman slaves blended in; freed American slaves remained visibly marked. Roman law offered more humane provisions than English common law. [28:18] Swiss Gun Culture & Decentralization Dürr links Switzerland’s militia tradition (guns kept at home) to its decentralized ethos. Recent regulations reflect growing statism, but in anarchy, private defense services would emerge via market demand — not top-down control. [34:32] Immigration Without a State Dürr argues welfare magnetism, not open borders, drives mass migration. In a stateless society, competing charities and communities would fund aid selectively, reducing abuse and scale compared to monopolized state programs. [37:26] Pirates, Property, and the American Revolution Fusillo reveals his talk’s inspiration: pirate ships as proto-anarchist societies with democratic constitutions. Drawing on Peter Leeson’s The Invisible Hook, he ties pirate loot markets in colonial America to anti-elite sentiment. Were slave plantations “legitimate” property? Pirate theft, like early industrial displacement, raises Rothbardian questions about just title — challenging Marxist and mainstream histories alike. A wide-ranging, provocative discussion blending history, law, psychology, and radical political theory — essential listening for libertarians and anarcho-curious alike. Grok/youtube transcript Röstigraben and Swiss Cultural Divide [0:02] Unidentified Speaker: Yeah, we’ll start with the last speaker first. So, David, I found it very astonishing that in your talk you didn’t mention a single time—and to concur with me, you didn’t mention the Röstigraben and the Visa. So, please explain to us their significance for Swiss anarchism. Did I understand it correctly that you want some comments on the Röstigraben? David Dürr: Do you know what the Röstigraben is in Switzerland? This is the frontier we have, so to speak, between a cultural frontier—between the German-speaking part and the French-speaking part. Or you can say the west of Switzerland, which is the Romandie where they speak French, and the western or central part which is Deutschschweiz where they speak German. There is a cultural difference, that’s true. You can go back—my very simplified slides, historical slides—that is a part: Romandie culturally a part of France, one could say, simplified maybe not, but these south-eastern parts of France. While the rest of Switzerland, or the main rest beside the Italian-speaking parties, is part of the former Holy German Roman Empire. There are cultural differences and one often sees them, notices them if there are votes or if there are elections to the federal parliament, that some tendencies are stronger in the French part and others in the German part. Then they speak of this Röstigraben. Röstigraben is a meal—baked potatoes, something like that—with this tip for Switzerland. Maybe I’m not quite sure, but I think in Romandie they eat less this Rösti while we eat it more in the German-speaking part. That could be, but it’s an interesting line. Not too seldom it has very much to do with resistance against the centre of this country, which is in the German-speaking part. There is a nice play on words. If in Romandie, in the French-speaking part, there is a public vote, a general federal vote, and they think there is a tendency more to centralization—that Bern, which is the capital, tries to centralize—they say “Röstigraben,” which is a play on words meaning you’re restricted, you’re suppressed by the centre. That’s why they say this. This is nice, but it’s an important issue. I would say if the anarchist principle can endure and be maintained, it’s still possible that all these parts are somehow together on a horizontal level. Maybe what is common for all of them is not to have a common entity. I can imagine, namely if around them are very strong blocks and maybe some totalitarian blocks also, that this is an aspect: not to be a member of anything around and internally not to have a centre. So this is my comment on the Röstigraben. By the way, Rösti is something very good. I recommend it with sort of sliced meat and so on, but that’s another story. Slave Survival Rates and Incentives for Manumission in Ancient Rome [4:40] Unidentified Speaker: My question is for Sean. I guess a couple times you mentioned that the slaves who did not die in slavery were a very small subset of the total population of slaves. I’m curious to know if you have an idea of what kind of percentage that subset makes up, and if there were any other catalysts or incentives to free a slave besides the conclusion of a contract or to marry them. Sean Gabb: Statistics from the ancient world are very problematic, and that’s putting it mildly. We don’t have statistics and I don’t believe it’s possible to derive statistics. However, freeing slaves was considered in some respects an obligation on masters. If, for example, a slave saved your son when he fell out of a boat, you were not legally obliged, but you were morally obliged to free the slave on the spot. If a slave did you a particular service, you were obliged to free the slave on the spot. Very often you would make an informal contract with a slave. As I said this morning, you look after my wife’s hair for the next seven years, make sure that she doesn’t have any serious complaints against you, and I’ll free you. Many Roman households, wealthy Roman households, could have as many as four or five thousand slaves in them. Masters would need special officers called nomenclatores whose job it was to follow the master around, whispering in his ear, “Oh, that’s Genius. That’s the slave boy you won at a game of dice last month.” How do you keep control of an army of slaves? As I said, you could terrorize them. You could hang them up on hooks and whip them. You could kill them. You could crucify them. You could do whatever you liked. But the result of that would be a rather fraught household. Or you could just free a seventh of them every year or something. Many masters took that approach, quite often because senators were banned from engaging in trade. A senator who was rather commercially minded—and there were many of those—would free one of his slaves and set him up in business with himself as a sleeping partner. The senator would have a strong directing influence over the business, but formally it would be conducted by his freedman. So there were many reasons—moral and commercial and simple keeping-the-peace reasons—that would drive masters to free their slaves. There was a time during Roman history, which came to an end largely in the second century AD, when it was legally useful to free your slaves. If you had committed a crime, your slaves could be examined—and you see, slaves had to be examined under torture. If you were accused of a crime, you would free all of your slaves so they couldn’t be examined under torture and compelled to give evidence against you. So there were many, many reasons for freeing slaves. I’ve said that deriving statistics is difficult. It’s not always impossible. Of those people around Pompeii and Herculaneum who were able to afford gravestones, more than half were freed slaves. So that gives you some kind of idea for the turnover between slavery and freedom in the Roman Empire. But as I said, the great dark mass of slaves—the ones working in the mines, in the quarries, in the fields—they did not have much opportunity for freedom. It is those slaves who fed the Spartacus slave revolt and the other great slave revolts in the late Republican period. They were the slaves who formed the armies of internal bandits who swept through the western provinces in the fifth and sixth centuries AD. Sorry, I could talk at length about this, but I won’t. Does that give you a sort of answer? Unidentified Speaker: It’s quite a crowd today. Viability of Anarcho-Capitalism in Switzerland by 2048 [9:32] Unidentified Speaker: My question is for David Dürr. I’m not sure if I really understood the 2048 thing. Do you think there’s a viable change in Switzerland to anarcho-capitalism in the next 30 years? In your book that unfortunately I cannot read because I don’t know German, do you talk about how this could happen? I’m not sure I totally got that. David Dürr: I’m not sure whether I understood you acoustically correctly. Could you— Unidentified Speaker: No, I’m sorry. I’m not sure if I understood the whole 2048 thing. Do you think in Switzerland there’s a viable change to anarchy in the next 30 years? In your book that unfortunately I cannot read because I don’t know German, do you talk about how this could happen? I’m not sure I totally got that. David Dürr: If I understand you correctly, you wanted this program, so to speak, from 1848 to 2048. Of course this is in part wishful thinking also, or some daydreams. But I think one could imagine that things like that happen. What I try to do in this little book here is looking back—not from here what is the next step that goes there, but let’s assume we are in the year 2048. I will be then 96 years old and maybe young—sorry, yes—and maybe at that event present as a participant, and then looking back what went on which led to this development that this organization was liquidated. Some thoughts I had: that the economic laws could have a strong influence, that rating agencies would say, “No, these federal bonds are not AAA anymore,” because there are some movements that challenge the right of the state to take taxes and to print money and all these crimes on the financial level. That’s why: are you really sure that it’s still AAA? Maybe one or the other or some media would then say no, perhaps not anymore, and so the interest rate goes up and they could not refinance anymore—things like that. But of course in a way it’s wishful thinking, but there could be signs that go in this direction. I think in general such important changes—so overcoming the state, and of course ultimately not only in small Switzerland but also in other parts of the world—in any event, this is something that fundamental and that big that it’s hard to decide a program how to do it. I would say if it takes place—and I’m generally quite confident that it will take place—then it’s interesting to look at it, to support it, to calm people that this is a good development and not a bad one—things like that. But once it is successful that states are overcome, then it’s because that was the development: because this concept of state did not prove viable with this species of Homo sapiens. It doesn’t fit to this species and that’s why it must disappear. It’s not old. It’s just 5,000 years old, this principle, and this is very short compared with the cultural evolution of humans which is 100,000 years. So the state is an error of behavioural evolution. This is my theory, but it’s not more precise to answer this question that you have. Panel Discussion: Compatibility of Voluntary Slavery with Libertarian Principles [14:31] Unidentified Speaker: My question concerns the entire panel and it’s based on a point raised by Sean in his talk about voluntary slavery. A few years back Walter Block started publishing a couple of articles. He made the case for voluntary slavery and he went so far as to assert that if it’s not possible in the libertarian legal code to admit of something like voluntary slavery, then this would be some sort of contradiction. I would like all of you to state what you think about this idea. Is voluntary slavery compatible with universal libertarian principles? If so, why? If not, why not? Very shortly, your one or two main considerations. Stephan Kinsella: I’ve disagreed with Walter in person and in print on this issue. I agree with Rothbard that the body is inalienable because the will is inalienable, and the will is the source of ownership of one’s body, not homesteading. So there’s just no way to abandon your body by a mere declaration. I don’t agree with Walter. The example he gives is: if you’re not permitted to sell yourself into slavery, terrible things could happen—like a father couldn’t sell himself into slavery to get money from a billionaire to pay for his son’s cancer treatment or something like that—which just seems too far-fetched. In Sean’s example, I think it was clever—the example Sean gave was like a type of green card, a clever workaround to Roman laws on citizenship. So if you didn’t have the state in the first place and the concept of citizenship, you couldn’t make the argument Walter makes that, well, if you didn’t have slavery, there wouldn’t be a way to have a workaround to the state’s immigration or citizenship laws. No, I think Walter’s wrong on the voluntary slavery issue, and I’ve written in detail in print as to why slavery is a horrible institution. In those societies where it did exist, such as the Roman Empire, you can see contracts of voluntary slavery as an alternative to our own system of student loans, apprenticeship agreements, and all sorts of other things. But that does not justify any kind of voluntary or contractual slavery in our own society. If I were a judge in a libertarian society, I would just rule any such contract as void from the very beginning. I’d rule it as void on the grounds of public policy or whatever you’d call that in a libertarian society. I just wouldn’t allow it, in the same way as I wouldn’t allow contracts for murder to be enforced. It’s of the same kind. David Dürr: I think an interesting application of a slavery contract is being a member of the state. This is what we discussed already briefly. In a way you can ask: is it legal or is it enforceable in case it is disputed that somebody signs a contract to become a member of an organization that restrains and reduces his fundamental rights from morning to night, takes taxes from him, gives him regulations, things like that. What one can approve this? There are many people who say, “I think we need the state in its very intrusive character—who takes taxes, who makes regulations about everything in all details. This is necessary and I agree that I become a member. I will obey all this.” I think that’s possible that somebody signs a contract like that. Of course, if it’s too tight—and this is also a principle one finds in all legal traditions of contract—if it’s too tight and too long, there comes the moment where you can notice and step back in contracts. There is something like a generation, 20 to 30 years, and then it’s enough. It’s not a precise deadline, but contractual obligations are valid, but not too long if they are too intrusive. In principle, that could be possible. Once you sign a very strong membership into such an organization, it’s valid, but after a certain time at least you have the right to retreat from it and then to be free again. What is the most important difference, of course, with the state is that such contracts are only valid for those who sign it. You can become a member voluntarily and maybe tie yourself for 20 years or so, but not force anybody else. I think that’s the big difference, and this maybe makes the state, in a bad sense, slavery for those that do not sign and are nevertheless forced to obey all these restrictions. So it’s a new form of slavery, one could say. Sean Gabb: I don’t know whether what I’m about to say is relevant really to this question, but I will make the observation that a large number of people do not want to be free and find freedom a terrible burden. In my experience in a prison, I found that about a third of prisoners actually preferred life in prison where they had to make no decisions for themselves than life outside. They didn’t want it for the rest of their lives, but they wanted it for a time because the burdens of freedom were too great. In a sense they signed a kind of contract of voluntary slavery by making sure that they were caught and sent to prison—because in Britain you actually have to want to be caught by the police to be caught by them. Many of them did want to be caught. When they were released, many of them went and did some very silly crime in order to get back into prison. I don’t know whether that’s relevant to this question, but it is to me a remarkable psychological reality. Alessandro Fusillo: Speaking of prisons, there’s this story of a guy who was condemned by an Italian court and they awarded him the possibility to serve his term at home with his wife, and he escaped from home and surrendered himself to the prison and said, “I’d rather be in prison than with my wife.” So maybe marriage can be seen as a form of voluntary slavery as well. Jokes aside, I think voluntary slavery is an invalid contract, as Stefan was saying, because ownership of your body is inalienable and your will is inalienable—if it exists. I have doubts as well about free will, but still. The problem is I think the biggest example of so-called voluntary slavery that we have is membership of a state, because this is the common narrative: we are part of a social contract and we surrender some of our—or most of our—freedoms in exchange for security from this state. I think this is the biggest example of more-or-less voluntary slavery. They convince us that it’s voluntary. In fact, it’s not voluntary. It’s an invalid contract. Which raises the question—and sometimes it’s a contract which entails the fact that you must accept to be killed for the state, because once there is conscription—and now we have the European Union clamoring again for war against Russia or whatever—if you are conscripted you are literally forced to give up your life in this contract of voluntary slavery. So it’s even worse: it’s a sort of human sacrifice on the altar of the state. But if it’s a contract and if this contract is invalid, then there must be a way out of this contract. This is the whole question of libertarian philosophy. The contract with the state, first of all, it doesn’t exist, and second, if it exists, it’s an invalid contract. We have the right, as Herbert Spencer wrote, to ignore the state. This is the main issue about this form of voluntary slavery. Key Differences Between Ancient and Modern “Shadow” Slavery [24:54] Unidentified Speaker: My question is for Dr. Gabb. What are the key differences between ancient slavery versus modern shadow slavery? Sean Gabb: Thank you. Well, Sophia, there are a number of important differences. The most important, I would say, is that in North America and in the European colonial possessions in the New World, slavery after the middle of the 17th century became increasingly a matter of racial difference. The slaves were generally a different race from the master population. There was the possibility of freeing slaves in, I believe, most of the American slave jurisdictions, but you no longer had the shackles on your wrist, but you still had the black skin on your body. In the ancient world, slavery was what you might call an equal-opportunity status. Anyone could be a slave. There were black slaves. There were German slaves with blonde hair. There were Syrian slaves. There were slaves of every possible sort. So there was no necessary continuing stigma if you obtained freedom. There was some stigma for people who in their time as slaves had been prostitutes. These people suffered continuing infamy even after being freed. But generally speaking, if you were a slave and you were freed, you looked like everybody else around you. There was no continuing stigma. You might be looked down on by the upper classes—“Oh, he was a slave once,” you know—but that does not appear to have been a general belief. So that is the main difference. I suppose this is not exactly answering your question, but Stefan is probably the expert on this. In those American jurisdictions which followed the Roman law, the treatment of slaves was generally somewhat more humane than in those jurisdictions which followed the common law, because Roman law has all manner of provisions built in for the management of slaves and for their discipline. Whereas in English common law, slavery was always rather difficult: were slaves human beings or were they simple pieces of property? Were they in the same category as farm animals and cats and dogs? Whereas in the Roman-law jurisdictions of the New World, slaves were a separate class, subject quite often to the humanizing provisions of the later emperors. Does that answer your question? I think the main difference is that slavery in the New World was marked by racial differences. In the ancient world, there were no racial differences. Slaves could be from anywhere and very often were. Swiss Gun Culture, Regulation, and Anarchism [28:18] Unidentified Speaker: My question is for Professor Dürr. Switzerland has always had a really strong gun culture, and probably this has helped to maintain the peace and the decentralization in the country. However, I believe that gun regulations have increased over time. Will you relate this to the loss of internal anarchy, and if these changes in Switzerland—gun laws— David Dürr: To be frank, I don’t hear that well acoustically. Do you mean these problems like immigration? Did I understand? Unidentified Speaker: Yeah, like the gun culture that is really big in Switzerland. How is this loss in internal anarchism maybe related to and has affected this gun culture? Because I believe there has been an increase in gun regulations and stuff in Switzerland. I’m not sure, but that’s what I heard in the last years. David Dürr: I’m still not sure whether I got your question. You mean these cultural differences we have? Unidentified Speaker: No, the guns. David Dürr: Oh, I’m sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m sorry. Yes. Now I got it. I always have people that help me to understand. That’s good. Yes, there is actually an old tradition in Switzerland that from military service you have your gun at home in your cupboard and you are ready every day to defend your country. That’s not that clearly the case today. At least one has the possibility—in certain situations you have even the obligation—to put it back after military service or repetition service; then you have to put it back. The argument is that it’s dangerous that so many weapons are around in private households. This is now your topic, this question. What’s about in a society where there is no state and no public police, no official police, but people have their arms at home, their weapons at home? Yes, I think this is this general question that is, I think, heavily debated in the United States, for instance—that there are some very liberal attitudes that everybody has the right to buy and to have weapons; others say you have to regulate it much more. I think there are statistics that there is not more violence if you are liberal with the weapons than if it’s regulated. Those that do want to commit crimes, they find their weapons somehow. Those who use it reliably and only if it’s necessary, they do not create the danger for society. Maybe a general aspect here: if you imagine a country without a state—and in the case of Switzerland without having official soldiers with their weapons at home—who cares for the national defence? Which is a big issue, of course. That is not quite easy to answer, but the general answer I would say is: as soon as there is a demand for something like security, and also international security, there will be supply. There will be offers. There will be services that you can hire. There will be possibilities to coordinate such necessities with other countries. I could imagine that in a process of overcoming the state, things like security—and namely international security—could be something that is not the first step. Maybe it’s one of the later steps that the international defence organization will be reduced. Did I get your question more or less at least? Unidentified Speaker: Yeah, yeah. Only that I don’t know if it’s related—this recent regulation—with the idea that you say, the loss of the internal anarchy in Switzerland. David Dürr: Again—can you help? Unidentified Speaker: Is there a relationship between— David Dürr: Yeah, yeah. Well, or maybe what about discussing it afterwards? It maybe goes too much into the details, and so I would be glad to. Yes. Immigration Management in a Stateless Switzerland [34:32] Unidentified Speaker: I would want to make the question that you thought she said at the beginning: the relation between the internal anarchy in Switzerland and how immigration has been managed, and the changes—maybe in the immigration—how the immigration problem has been treated in Switzerland through the years with these changes. David Dürr: Now this is immigration. Yeah, this is which I thought it was before. Oh yes. So immigration: of course once you do not have a strong police at the border or things like that, then you just think you are overflowed by immigration. I don’t think that this is necessarily the case, because I think one of the strongest elements of these problems we know today in Europe generally is not that so many refugees are coming to these countries, but that these countries have programs to attract them. This is the social welfare state or some programs—maybe well-thought, I wouldn’t refuse that, maybe with good intentions—but nevertheless it is these programs that attract many refugees that are not really in an emergency situation, that just come here to profit from these programs. In a society without states, I would say there are also programs, because people have a general attitude to help other people in case of need. But these will be different organizations—churches, charitable associations, things like that—which are in a certain competition also among them, that have to raise money, and they do have to be careful with these means. They will not be abused that easily than a monopolistic social welfare state. I could imagine that this problem will be much smaller for a country that has no monopolized system of goodness towards poor people and towards refugees in need. Was that the question? Unidentified Speaker: Yeah. Excellent. Inspiration, Research, and Links Between Pirates and the American Revolution [37:26] Unidentified Speaker: Alessandro, thank you for your presentation. Three questions. Number one, what was the inspiration for choosing the topic? Number two, in your research, did you reference Peter Leeson’s The Invisible Hook, which is a book that covers the same topic? Number three, the title alluded to the American Revolution; could you provide a little more expansion on that linkage? Alessandro Fusillo: The inspiration is mostly by chance. I like reading a lot and I stumbled upon the topic of pirates. I have always been fascinated with pirates, of course. So this is maybe one of the reasons. There’s lots of literature about pirates, as I told—unfortunately it’s mostly from Marxist writers like Christopher Hill or Marcus Rediker or Linebaugh. There are lots, but they are good books, so you have lots of information, especially statistical information, that you get a clear picture of the pirates. There is in fact a libertarian book about pirates—an Austrian-economics analysis of the regulations of the pirate ships—by an author whose name is Leeson. It’s a very interesting book, and he says yes, they were criminals mostly, but their regulations were only dictated by self-interest. If you let self-interest free play, then you end up with a system which is just, at least for the people who belong to this subsystem—so the individual pirate ship. But they had also, we could say, international regulations, because there were relationships between pirate ships and they were regulated by basic principles that they all shared. I don’t know The Invisible Hook—I will take the book. Okay, okay, Invisible Hook—yeah, okay, sorry, yeah, yeah. Okay, then yes, I studied this book and it’s a very interesting book. I think this is a very good libertarian interpretation of these regulations about pirates. Then, last question: they are not only the pirates, but they are somehow connected with the American Revolution. First fact: pirates sold their loot in the British colonies in North America—sometimes legally, sometimes illegally—but there was a big relationship between pirates, Caribbean pirates, and the British colonies in North America. What pirates thought and how their life was, this influenced the people there. Of course, not only them—there were lots of people coming from England escaping maybe religious regulations and bringing with them the tradition of the English Revolution. In my opinion this made sure that there was widespread popular support for the American Revolution. The American Revolution, of course—the heads of the revolution were the Founding Fathers. They were in a way aristocrats themselves. They were affluent people. For example, Jefferson held slaves himself, lots of slaves. They were very educated. They all were fluent in Latin and ancient Greek. It was an elite. But they could count on widespread popular support because these deeply ingrained ideas of liberty were very important in the American populace, which gave birth to the American Revolution. Then there’s another topic, and this is very important. Of course pirates did violate private property because they stole. But the big question is—and this was a question raised especially by Murray Rothbard in The Ethics of Liberty—if we start considering legitimate the existing relationships of property, which is the starting point, then we should analyze if they are truly legitimate. The question comes: is the private property of a slave-owning plantation owner in Jamaica legitimate? How would you consider stealing from the ship of such a person? Is the wealth of a big class of people legitimate? I think what happened in Britain—and which gave cause to lots of rebellions and at the end to an American Revolution—was some sort of revenge. There was a big class of people who felt disenfranchised because they were literally kicked out of their homelands in England or in Scotland or in Ireland, and they were expropriated. They wanted to have back their ownership, or maybe they wanted to take revenge on the same elites who stole from them—who stole the common lands, who stole the farms, and who exerted total control on the government. At that time the global elites—which still dominate in the world—began winning and taking more and more property. The reaction, especially by the English state, was a very harsh reaction. There are stories about all the people who were hanged at Tyburn in London. I think Sean has one book about Tyburn—I bought it today, by the way; it was very interesting. They wanted to make an example. You could be hanged for stealing a handkerchief. Okay, at the time it was maybe a valuable property, but the defence of private property by the British Empire was very harsh. The question arises: was it real property? Was it legitimate property? Did these masses of often criminals have a reason to try to get back what had been stolen? This is a big question, and this puts also in question the Industrial Revolution, because all these people who were evicted from their lands and who got to London—of course the early industries could offer them better living conditions than what they would have had on the land, where they would be quasi-slaves. It wasn’t a life very different from that of a Roman slave in some farm of some latifundist. But still, these people—the story of the exploiting of these people by the Marxists, I think we should review it from a libertarian point of view. Sure, the story that the factory owner exploits the workers because he takes advantage of the plus-value is stupid because it’s a Marxist interpretation. But still these people had been evicted from their land before. So they had some claim to get back what they lost. Again, the new organization both of agriculture and of manufacturing and of industry was way better in terms of productivity, and this is the reason why usually Marxist historians say, “Oh, it’s okay because it’s the progress of the materialist interpretation of history.” But still it was unjust for these people suffering from what happened. I think from the ethical libertarian point of view it would be important to review this part of history and not leave it only to Marxists. [Applause]

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 300. This talk is from the recently-concluded 19th annual PFS 2025 Annual Meeting (Sep. 18–23, 2025, Bodrum, Turkey). David Dürr (Switzerland): A Brief History of Swiss Anarchism [Sebastian Wang, “David Dürr on Swiss Anarchism – Property and Freedom Society Bodrum 2025,” Libertarian Alliance [UK] Blog (Sep. 21, 2025)] Shownotes and transcript below. Other talks appear on the Property and Freedom Podcast. Other videos may also be found at the PFS 2025 Youtube Playlist. Grok shownotes PFP300 Show Notes: David Dürr – A Brief History of Swiss Anarchism (PFS 2025) Overview In his 10th PFS appearance (coinciding with the conference’s 20th anniversary), Swiss lawyer and anarchist thinker David Dürr traces Switzerland’s history through the lens of external and internal anarchism: no vertical integration into larger empires (external) and no centralized monopoly of power within (internal). Far from chaos, anarchism here means voluntary, horizontal structures and resistance to coercion. Key Historical Arc Ancient Roots: Helvetii tribes resist Roman yoke (100 BC); early fragmentation hints at anarchist tendencies. Medieval Emergence: Switzerland forms in the 13th century as Habsburgs expand—small valleys and towns band together in defense pacts (Rütli Oath, William Tell myths). Holy Roman Empire Era: Switzerland remains a loose, recognized entity among larger blocks; internally a patchwork of cantons, towns, and languages. 1515 Marignano Debacle: Attempt to conquer northern Italy fails spectacularly—Swiss lack of centralized command proves both weakness and strength; retreat preserves autonomy. Westphalia (1648): Formal external recognition; internal diversity intact. Napoleonic Interruption: Helvetic Republic (1798–1803) briefly centralizes; Napoleon admits he cannot coordinate the quarrelsome Swiss. Vienna Congress (1815): Restores loose confederation of 22 sovereign cantons—peak of dual anarchy. The Turning Point: Sonderbund War (1847–48) Liberal Protestant cantons illegally force Catholic conservative cantons into a unified federal state via majority vote (no required unanimity). Dürr calls this an illegal coup d’état that ends internal anarchism and creates the modern Swiss Confederation. Modern External Anarchism Switzerland stays out of NATO and EU; rejects EEA in 1992 by razor-thin margin. Ongoing EU pressure via new bilateral treaties—resistance weakening. Why the Center Cannot Hold Switzerland lacks unifying glue: Two main religions (Protestant north/west, Catholic center/south). Urban/rural cultural divide. 26 cantons competing on taxes. 4 national languages (German, French, Italian, Romansh). Dürr predicts breakup by 2048 (Schlussbericht 2048—a satirical “final report” from a dissolved Confederation). Philosophical Coda Rejects “nation of will” (Willsnation) as Hobbesian fiction: Leviathan’s composite body has many people but one head. Real unity comes from diverse individual wills, not a mythical collective one. Teases his pet topic: even strong individual wills are not truly “free”… but that’s another story. Books Mentioned Schlussbericht 2048 (German; fictional dissolution narrative). Staat oder Oper (the state as grand theatrical illusion). A witty, map-rich romp through 2,000 years—proving Switzerland is less a nation than a stubborn anarchist experiment still running. Grok/Youtube transcript PFP300 | David Dürr: A Brief History of Swiss Anarchism (PFS 2025) Introduction and Anniversary Reflections [0:00] Don’t applaud too early. You have to endure me now for the 10th time already. This is my 10th anniversary as a speaker at PFS, which coincides with the 20th anniversary of your conference. So that’s a big honor for me, of course, and many thanks again for the invitation to Guido and Hans. Topic Selection and the Cradle of Anarchism [0:28] As usual, since about two or three years, I made a proposition to Hans: what about the topic of free will, which is not free but it’s very useful that we think it’s free? And he always says, “Oh, David, that’s another story. Why won’t you speak about Javier Milei?” That was last year. Or, “Why won’t you speak about a brief history of Swiss anarchism?” That’s a fine idea, that’s a suggestion. I think it’s a good one and not that other story with the free will. [1:20] Now, a brief history of Swiss anarchism. This is really something interesting. One could even say that a brief history of Switzerland is anarchism. Maybe this is a fairly good example of anarchism. However you define it, one can say some people say that in 1976 there was a football club Bakunin, and they said—this is what I found on the internet—in 1976 they said Switzerland is the cradle of anarchism. This is a football game of young people; at that time this was about like Hans looked like as a young leftist revolutionary. Maybe he did not play football, I do not know. But when they celebrated Switzerland as the cradle of anarchism, they looked back a century ago when this cradle started to exist. The 1869 Basel Convention and Bakunin [2:24] And they referred to this event in 1869: that was an anarchist workers’ union convention in Basel in Switzerland, the place I live. And the famous, internationally well-known and chased anarchist Mikhail Bakunin spoke at that convention in that beautiful hotel—I know the hotel where it is. And he did not plead against capitalists or bourgeois state or things like that, but against other socialists, against this centralist attitude of Marx. So there were not just socialist leftists but anarchists. This was very typical and important for them, and that took place in Basel. So it seems that Basel is, or Switzerland, let’s say, is the cradle of anarchism. [3:44] This is the same convention conference—you see, beautiful, this hotel. This is like anarchists celebrate their conventions, their reunions here at this beautiful hotel with this terrace with the stairs. They all looking friendly at the photographer. This is how anarchists celebrate their convention. [Applause] Swiss Anarchist Highlights: Geneva Assassination [4:18] And of course we are the heroes of anarchism because in Geneva the famous empress was assassinated by an anarchist. So Switzerland is the cradle of anarchism. Defining External and Internal Anarchism [4:38] But after this episode, let me try to go a bit deeper into what anarchism is and namely what Switzerland is about with anarchism. I distinguish between external and internal anarchism. If a country, a population has an anarchist attitude, there is an external, international so to speak aspect, and on the other side the internal one. [5:13] The external one means, I would say, not being vertically integrated into a bigger entity, not just being a small part of a bigger thing. This is the external aspect of anarchy. Anarchy which means—without a Greek—which means first superior, without central monopolized power. This is anarchy, and this is the meaning if you look at the external aspect of anarchy. What is not excluded is that you have horizontal contractual relationships that can be binding, but it’s not a vertical integration. That’s the external aspect. [6:07] And now the internal one: this means that internally, within this group, within this population, within this country, there is no center of power. There is no involuntary collectivity. This is the meaning of the internal side of anarchism. But here again, what is not excluded is that there are centers—in the plural—centers of power: economic centers, scientific, cultural centers, whatever, with voluntary memberships. So anarchism does not mean lack of structure, lack of organization, but no integration outside and no monopoly inside. Early Swiss History: Helvetii and Resistance to Rome [7:01] What does this mean now for Switzerland? The Helvetia, Switzerland, Confederatio Helvetica. This is the official notion. Helvetii, maybe from the very beginning this was a small population somewhere in the place where today we have Switzerland. This is a beautiful picture when they defeated the Romans in one battle somewhere around 100 before Christ. They tried at least to resist the Romans at that place when they forced them under the yoke in this beautiful picture here. That was an exception, by the way. On the long run they could not resist, but that was the attempt to get external anarchy, not to be integrated. [7:58] Internally, they were maybe at that time already truly anarchist because even Helvetii—that was not even a tribe. These were three smaller tribes somehow bound together. So maybe the tendency was at those earlier times already with those people that became afterwards the Swiss—you know—was anarchist. Roman Empire and Early Middle Ages [8:27] Now a bit later, 100 AD, we have this Roman Empire that grew and grew. We have these red Italian parts. We have the provinces there. But in these provinces you do not find any Helvetic province or Swiss province or things like that. In that area where today Switzerland is, there was nothing specific. There was not an entity, neither externally nor internally. So that’s not yet the anarchist Swiss Switzerland. [9:08] Now a bit later, early Middle Ages around 1000 AD, we have a multitude of medium-sized entities beginning to form a horizontal, essentially horizontal empire. So the well-known Holy Roman Empire of German Nation—that’s in principle a horizontal organization of smaller and bigger entities. And this is that situation. Here you see some entities like Burgundy, like Swabia, like Bavaria, and here northern Italy. So relatively big blocks that have some tendency to coordinate among them. Switzerland as such is not there yet at that place. What is interesting is that it’s not within one of these blocks; it’s somewhere in between. It’s maybe it once then will be just a leftover of bigger blocks, and one sees that a little bit here in this graphic already. So still neither an internal nor external entity so far. Emergence of Switzerland Against Habsburg Growth [10:27] And this changes now around 1300 with the beginnings of the Habsburgs, the Habsburg family becoming a big entity, and not by accident within the same period of time. These are the beginnings of Switzerland as an entity refusing being part of a bigger entity. So while Habsburg is growing up, there is something that resists becoming a part of it, and this is Switzerland. So it starts to form itself from an external anarchist approach. Not yet with these frontiers, with these borders, but you see between these red parts—this is Habsburg. These red particles—it has to do with the edges of this empire starting to grow up and to form itself internally. Myths of Swiss Founding: Rütli Oath and William Tell [11:46] This is then the famous myths of the oath of Rütli and of William Tell. I presented two or three years ago. Internally that was anarchy. That was not one small state. That was more or less a defense treaty between small populations and places and churches. So one could say—we heard before—Switzerland is the cradle of anarchy. One might say anarchy is the cradle of Switzerland. If this is true, I don’t know. It’s wishful thinking perhaps. Swiss Stability in the Holy Roman Empire [12:29] Then the Holy Roman Empire has developed. In this context, Swiss became something like a relatively stable place, internally still completely anarchist with many places, cantons and towns and areas and different languages, still but more or less accepted from the places around that it’s Switzerland. In the meantime, other big blocks have developed. On the left side here, you see France that still was big before. On the right side, you see Habsburg—not yet that big. You see even more to the right side, Hungary. So that later on became the big double monarchy of the Habsburgs. And in between you have these many small states formed together as this holy empire. Within them the Swiss as not the smallest but one of the middle-sized or small-sized entities. Failed Expansion into Northern Italy (1515) [13:41] And at that time—this is historically interesting—the Swiss had the idea: now we too, we too. Yes, we too, we will become a big entity. And they saw there were some difficulties in northern Italy between France and Habsburg. And that could be a good opportunity to expand. And maybe that was a mistake in 1515. It was an attempt to expand by conquering these northern Italian parts, Piedmont and Lombardy. And I would say that was a contradiction to the principle of internal anarchy. That was an effect outside, of course, but maybe it’s an aspect of internal anarchy that they conquer and they force, for instance, these Italian parts into their own entity. So that’s a contradiction to an anarchist principle. By the way, anarchist principle that never was declared—I’m just describing what went on. [15:13] But the French king did not like that. And he was much stronger at that battle there with Marignano, at Marignano, a small place there in northern Italy. The Swiss were heavily defeated, and they were defeated probably because they were good anarchists. They were not able to coordinate their military movements, and that’s why the French king was much stronger and destroyed the army completely. And they withdrew—at least they could maintain their internal anarchy, or they went back to their internal anarchy, and they could remain, they could keep their external anarchy. And so the king, the French king, did not integrate them. He hired them as mercenaries afterwards. Peace of Westphalia and Swiss Recognition [16:12] Okay. Then we have this Holy Roman Empire even a bit later, at the time you Alessandro mentioned before with the Peace of Westphalia. And here we see again now this better organized structure of Europe with countries, with states. So this was a sort of new and reorganized form how society organizes itself, and you see here Switzerland. It looks a bit like a big unified country on this map, which is of course not true. If you look closer at Switzerland in the external aspect, you have still this anarchy. So all these states around, partly newly formed states, accepted Switzerland as an entity to be respected. They were not integrated, and Switzerland internally—and now this map is just not precise—internally it looked like that. So that would be the true map of that situation with these different cantons and languages and things like that. Of course there is something around Switzerland but not a unification. So externally granted, internally not challenged, they within this group remained anarchist. Napoleonic Interruption and Helvetic Republic [17:49] That changed actually only a bit later with Napoleon. Here we see the big Napoleon Empire and Switzerland just as one province so to speak, one part of this big empire here of the French Empire. And here again this old name Helvetii I mentioned before came up with the Helvetic Republic implemented by Napoleon. That was an interruption, one could say, of the external aspect of anarchy. [18:29] While—and this is interesting—the internal, you see that it was not just a territory, a sub-territory of France. Again, if you look at it more precise, there was still this diversity, and Napoleon who tried to organize all these Swiss—once he gave up. He said, “Even I, Napoleon, am not able to coordinate these people because they always have conflicts between them,” which is a good anarchist attitude, you know, not to kill each other, but at least to fight maybe more than others do. So one could say internally they could resist in a certain way to Napoleon. Vienna Congress and Loose Confederation (1815) [19:10] And then after Napoleon, so we have the Vienna Congress 1815. Actually that’s now the end of history, one could say and hope for Switzerland, one could say at that time, because back to external anarchy—Napoleon is pushed back—while entering internally into a more specifically designed and organized but still horizontal confederation, a loose confederation of 22 independent cantons. This was not a state. This was a federation. So the internal aspect, internal anarchy, was upheld or even underlined and enforced, enhanced against before. So one could say that’s fine. That’s now the end of history. We have Switzerland with external and internal perfect anarchy. But as you know there is no end of history. Sonderbund War and the 1848 Coup d’État [20:35] And then came this famous Sonderbund War. That’s the episode I mentioned already once here in this group. These were tensions between liberal and conservative cantons. These here in the map, the green parts—these are mainly Protestant, not the chino but they were liberal cantons—while these lilac-colored parts were the Catholic centers, mainly in the center of the country and south in the canton of Valais. So these were typically Catholic, pope-oriented also some of them, and conservative structures, but they were members of this loose confederation of these 22 cantons. [21:48] And then these liberals, these so-called liberals, became quite aggressive and tried with really illegal military force to force cantonal canton like Lucerne for instance to push away their government and implement new liberal governments, things like that, which led to this Sonderbund so that these Catholic cantons formed a new coordination of defense so to speak, this Sonderbund special federation. And the Protestants, the liberals actually who gave birth to this conflict—they went into this war, this civil war, because they were more cantons, they were stronger militarily. They defeated these Catholic cantons, and they did not just force them to dissolve the Sonderbund; instead they enforced them to become a member of the whole confederation. [22:58] So they formed out of a loose confederation a state, new state with sub-parts of course, but these sub-parts, these cantons, were not independent subjects anymore; they were part of this bigger, relatively bigger country and bigger state, Swiss Confederation. That’s a coup d’état actually, and it was against international and constitutional law because for such a step unanimity would have been required, and that was with majority. So that was illegal. So the foundation of the famous liberal democratic Swiss Confederation was an illegal coup d’état. So that was the end of the internal anarchy, and this is still the situation we live in. External Anarchism: Resistance to NATO and EU [24:01] At least one could say the external situation remained anarchist. So far more or less Switzerland could resist to international pressure to become member and integrated into bigger organizations such as the NATO there. Switzerland is not member. You see that? I had to look quite long on the internet for a map where this conglomerate like NATO is marked in red—usually it’s blue, and in the east it’s red, but I thought it fits more in my graphics. For me the blue ones are the good ones, and the red ones I have some hesitation. So well, that’s—but I found that somewhere, and here in the external relationship Switzerland is still anarchist, one could say. [25:03] And the same is true for the European Union, which started not as a union of course—this EEC initial forms—and then more and more developed until 1992 to the Maastricht Treaty which created this EU, European Union. And here you see as an idol so to speak in this big red part, you see this still anarchist, at least in the external relation, this anarchist Switzerland. [25:42] At that same time when this Maastricht Treaty was signed, Switzerland had a vote about not EU membership but a loose form of cooperation, this European Economic Area, and they declined. It’s a very close vote, some small 51% or something like that that went against that, and I think that’s not a bad step for Switzerland at least externally to maintain their anarchist attitude. Of course there are ongoing pressures coming from outside from this red place here to integrate Switzerland currently. Now there are new contracts with EU that will be put to vote somewhere maybe next year or so. So this is a really actual topic, and the resistance against that is perhaps weakening. Let’s hope that it goes in the right direction. Internal Diversity and Prediction of Breakup [26:53] But I would—for the end, I have some more minutes I guess, is that okay?—come back to this internal anarchy that is not lost. But that at that time in 1848 after this Sonderbund Krieg, this internal anarchy was sort of abolished or overcome in a way. And I still would say but this is not true. And then because it’s not an entity, it cannot last too long. I could imagine that it breaks apart somewhere earlier or later, and because once you look at it there is nothing in common. There is diversity however you look at it. [27:57] For instance, this was actually the situation with the Sonderbund Krieg—not precisely the same map but more or less—with the religions. With more or less it’s not that much divided anymore than 150 years ago, but still you have traditionally Protestant areas and Catholic ones in the south and in the center Catholic, in the middle of the country, and for instance in Basel where I live and in Zurich of course they are traditionally Protestant. So there are two main religions, no unity that could be the basis for one state. [28:49] Or we have topographical and therefore cultural differences. There is a difference—you know that from other countries too—between city population and land population; the cities are leftist and woke, while on the countryside they are more conservative. So you have these differences here too. So there too you do not have some common unity. Of course these 27 cantons that are not independent states anymore of course but they are something still, and there are in certain aspects there is also a competition between these cantons, for instance in tax relations—some cantons are cheaper than others. And so there too you do not have unity; you have 2,000 communities. [29:48] And then of course—and that’s the main point—still for languages, and in other countries it’s I think a dominant aspect how a culture develops along at least one main language. Of course the bigger part is German, but at least German and French and also Italian—they play a role. And this is not a unity. This is a diversity. We have here these smaller parts, this yellow—this is Romansh, which is not a big part, but nevertheless it’s a fourth language. And you see also a bit the map we saw before at the beginning here—that was former Burgundy, that was the Holy Roman Empire. And here we have Piedmont and Italy. So you see Switzerland as a leftover between these big blocks. You see that with the language. So there is no common element I would say holding Switzerland together. And therefore I’m quite confident that this breaks apart somewhere. Fictional Future: “Schlussbericht 2048” [31:04] This is what I wrote in my little book that is also on the book table here. And “Schluss” means final report. It’s in German. So either you know German already or you have to learn German, and then you can read this book. Or I can translate of course. So final report—this is looking back 2048, precisely 200 years in the same room as 1848 when the new constitution was decided with that illegal majority I mentioned before. And 200 years later they look back and say now we have liquidated this; a lot of people did not remember even that once upon a time there was something called Swiss Confederation. “Oh yes, there was something.” Yes, in the meantime I thought that is over already. So this is the situation in that book. So one could say in 23 years from now this internal anarchy could be restored. Of course the external hopefully will be maintained. Critique of the “Nation of Will” Concept [32:16] And once you go to this book shelf there is also another book that I made earlier, “Staat oder Oper”—that this is all just a brilliant opera they perform, you know, that people believe in the state which of course is just an opera. There are still some that resist against this anarchist ideas and say, “No, no, no. We have something holding it together. It’s a nation of will. Not a nation of language, not a nation of religion, but of will. Free will. Free will.” That could be a well, but that’s another story, you say. So a nation of will. [33:04] And then I asked, but where is this will? And it reminds me of this gentleman here. You certainly know Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes out of that time already mentioned also by Alessandro before. And it’s this theory: there are many people—you know this body is composed of many many many people of this population—and their wills so to speak are put together, and up there there is one will who coordinates this. This is one will of all these people here, which is of course a theory, a fake which is not true. There is no such will. [33:56] If you look at this, it’s revealing in a way. It’s unmasking this sketch. The body is composed of many many people, but the head is not. It’s just one head, a relatively big one but just one, you know. And this is what this arist scheme is about. There is one will or maybe of a very short group which should be decisive for this whole country. So if they speak about the nation of will, they have an idea something like that. And once I say there is no such one will up there, and we saw that this is just a theory, so this does not fit to our country. [34:52] So one can say in that red part we have pure theory—pure in the sense of not fact-based theory—one will. This is I would say just not existing; this is a theory. So this nation of will approach is a fake, while on the basis we have many wills, many many diverse wills. This is pure reality. So that’s why I can imagine that this lower part has the force to live much longer than something based on this red part. Conclusion: Individual Wills and a Tease on Free Will [35:37] So to come to the conclusion: there is no such thing as a common will. There are individual wills. There can be very strong individual wills. If you imagine some real person being there, strong with a will, wanting to do this or that—maybe brilliant and maybe with visions. It’s different from this fake will. [36:14] And nevertheless—sorry Hans—nevertheless I would ask people, you know, real people with a strong will: is this will really free? So that gave me the opportunity to come to this point again and to compare that gentleman with other gentlemen. I would say but that’s another story. Thank you very much.  

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 299. This talk is from the recently-concluded 19th annual PFS 2025 Annual Meeting (Sep. 18–23, 2025, Bodrum, Turkey). Alessandro Fusillo (Italy): The Pirates of the Caribbean as Forebears of the Libertarians and of the American Revolution [Sebastian Wang, “Pirates, Liberty, and Revolution: Alessandro Fusillo in Bodrum,” Libertarian Alliance [UK] Blog (Sep. 19, 2025)] Shownotes and transcript below. Other talks appear on the Property and Freedom Podcast. Other videos may also be found at the PFS 2025 Youtube Playlist. Grok shownotes PFS Conference Talk: “Pirates of the Caribbean – A Libertarian Perspective” Hans Gillshin opens with humor about his non-piratical attire and thanks the audience at the Property and Freedom Society (PFS) conference. He frames the talk with St. Augustine’s famous quote (via Cicero) equating kingdoms without justice to large-scale robbery, as recounted in the story of Alexander the Great and a captured pirate. Historical Context (17th Century) The 1648 Treaty of Westphalia births the modern state, ending medieval liberties. The Thirty Years’ War introduces mass destruction, secret services, and centralized legislation. England’s 1640s Civil War (often overshadowed by later revolutions) features Levellers, religious freedom advocates, and figures like John Lilburne (“Freeborn John”). The 1688 Glorious Revolution establishes the Bank of England—model for all future central banks—enabling unlimited war financing via fiat money. Enclosure Acts expropriate medieval common lands, creating a rural proletariat, urban migration, and forced impressment into the Royal Navy. Displaced English, Scottish, and Irish peasants become the first chattel slaves in the West Indies (7-year terms), predating African slavery. The Golden Age of Piracy (ca. 1713–1726) Post-War of Spanish Succession, mutinies on brutal navy and merchant ships spawn pirate crews. Pirates fly the Jolly Roger; merchant crews often force captains to surrender and voluntarily join. Pirate justice: captains tried by crew; tyrants executed, fair ones (e.g., Captain Snellgrave) spared. Non-pirates set adrift with provisions; violence targeted oppressors, not random cruelty. Pirates attack slave ships to free captives—leading to significant Black crew members and even captains. British pardon laws and mock “forced enlistment” defenses briefly reduce piracy, but by 1726 most pirates are hanged. Pirate Governance & Libertalia Primary source: A General History of the Pyrates (Captain Charles Johnson, likely Daniel Defoe). Notable pirates: Henry Every (romantic treasure legend) and Blackbeard (terror via flaming beard). Highlight: French pirate Olivier Misson (possibly fictional) and ex-priest Caraccioli found Libertalia in Madagascar—a libertarian anarchist society based on John Locke’s principles. Universal pirate practice: every ship had a signed charter—egalitarian shares (captain 1.5–2×), revocable leadership, and a quartermaster as crew tribune. Many crews issued formal declarations of war against all states. Conclusion Pirates were not mere criminals but rebels against tyranny, slavery, and state power—early fighters for individual liberty. Gillshin closes to applause, suggesting the talk may reframe popular views of piracy. Grok/Youtube transcript Introduction and Thanks [0:01] Hans Gillshin, as usual I will start with thanking you for the invitation here at the PFS conference. It’s a great pleasure to be here year after year and a great honor to be invited as a speaker. Hans previously drew my attention to the fact that my attire today is not in line with my topic. I should have sported at least an eye patch or a peg leg or hired a local parrot to have him on my shoulder. But okay, we will do without. Topic Announcement: Pirates of the Caribbean [0:37] Today’s topics are the Pirates of the Caribbean and piracy in general. St. Augustine’s Quote on Piracy and Empire [0:45] I will start with a quote from St. Augustine, a very famous quote that he got from Cicero. It’s a story of Alexander the Great’s fleet navigating through the Mediterranean. They caught a pirate ship and as he was about to execute the pirate as a criminal, the pirate said to Alexander, “What have you in mind? What do you think, trying to rob all people and to seize the other ships? This is completely illegal.” And the pirate answered, “What thou meanest by seizing the whole earth, but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou dost it with a great fleet, art styled an emperor.” The legend goes—maybe it’s not so much a legend—that Alexander the Great had two possible finales for this story. The first one, the nicer one, is that Alexander the Great was so pleased by the answer that he spared the pirate’s life. The other one is that he executed him nonetheless after having a good laugh at his response. In fact, this story was reminded by the late Pope Benedict XVI to the German Parliament a few years ago because the conclusion of St. Augustine is: justice being taken away, then what are kingdoms but great robberies. And I think this is a very good conclusion, a very libertarian conclusion from one of the fathers of the church. Shift to Classical Piracy and the Golden Age [2:38] But today we won’t speak about ancient piracy but of the, let’s say, the classical piracy—sometimes you hear about the golden age of piracy. And it is the piracy especially of the Caribbean, but not only the Caribbean: the Bahamas Islands, the Caribbean Islands and the whole East African coast, and especially the island of Madagascar, which was one of the base points of the pirates. Historical Context: The Birth of Modern States [3:11] But before we go on to the pirates, I would like to put the story in a general context. And so we go back on land and we go back to the 17th century. The 17th century is, in my opinion, a crucial time of modern history because during the 17th century modern states were born. In fact, the birth date and birth place of the modern states is the Westphalian Treaty of 1648, which ended the Thirty Years’ War and which established a new actor in history, which is the modern state. Modern states are what we know, and at that time they were just in their infancy, in their beginnings, but still they had already in place things which we will learn to understand during the next centuries: like legislation, like secret services—secret services began in the Thirty Years’ War—like extensive wars. I think the Thirty Years’ War was the first mass war with mass destructions and so on. And it was the end of medieval liberties. The English Revolution and Loss of Liberties [4:37] The country where this loss of medieval liberties was felt the most is for sure Great Britain—England at that time—where in the same years started the great English Revolution of 1644. It is somehow maybe a forgotten revolution because we always speak about the three great revolutions: the American Revolution, the French Revolution and of course the Russian Revolution. But in fact, especially the American Founding Fathers in some way were the heirs to the English Revolution. Where we have certain themes which will later on—in fact the pirates, as I will tell you, and the American Founding Fathers—I’m speaking especially about the Levellers, about the rebels, about religious freedom. And you have these mythical figures like John Lilburne, Freeborn John, and lots of rebels who for the first time asserted the same ideals of liberty which are our ideals of liberty in a way lots of time before but still this is what they were telling the world. Of course they lost to the beginning of the global financial elites which were born in England during that time. The Glorious Revolution and the Central Bank [6:19] In the roughly 60 years after the first English Revolution you have the second revolution, the so-called Glorious Revolution. I’m not so sure about the glorious but still it brought about a new dynasty and a new ruling elite in England and it brought about something fundamental from our libertarian point of view, namely the institution of the Central Bank of England. The Central Bank of England is the model of all later central banks and it exerted—and maybe it still exerts—a crucial influence on the world, especially by means of war. Because the big problem of all previous kings and medieval rulers was how to pay for the wars. There’s only a certain point up to which you can rob your citizens; at a certain point they stop, they don’t pay the taxes, you can count on rebellions. And this is the great invention of the central banks: to print fiat money and with this fiat money, with paper, they can just finance any war they want. Enclosures and the Destruction of Common Lands [7:34] The same financial elites who brought about this big change in English power around the world—which set up the British dominance of the world—were the same ones who made a profound change in English agriculture. Sadly enough, this is a field of study which is almost entirely occupied by Marxist scholars and it is the story of the enclosures. But I think this is very important from a libertarian point of view. Enclosures are the encirclement of big agricultural properties, especially for the raising of cattle, especially sheep for the wool industry, and what this happened through was the eviction of the common lands. Common lands were a medieval model of property which is very far away from the individual property that we consider more or less the only model of property. Because typically a British village of the 16th and 17th century would have small plots of land with maybe a small cottage for one family. The family had maybe a cow, maybe some sheep, chickens and so on. They sold their products and they could use, together with all the other villagers, these common lands which could be used for grazing, which could be used for taking wood, water and so on. And this was private property, wrongly styled as common property as it is now with state property. It was not state property. It was the property of an individual village, of an individual group of people, regulated by certain rules about the use of these lands. Well, these lands were expropriated—sometimes legally just by buying them, sometimes illegally occupying them, and sometimes with the power of the state behind the occupiers which through the British Parliament made these enclosure acts which basically expropriated the farmers. Consequences of Enclosures: Proletariat and Impressment [10:14] This brought about two changes. First—and this was intended because the idea was to better agriculture, to have more efficient agriculture—and this brought about first a rural proletariat which was used to work now not as independent owners and farmers but to work for the owners of the big lands. Most of these people couldn’t be used and so they both migrated to the big cities, especially to London, where they could be used for the manufacturers which were the forebears of the Industrial Revolution. And lots of especially young men were impressed by the impressment gangs because the British Empire needed manpower to be on the ships, on the warships, to establish the international dominance in the whole world. And these people were the same ones who had participated in the English Revolution and who had been, let’s say, infected by certain ideals of liberty and who had basically and most of the time no choice than accepting this fate. The First Chattel Slaves: White Europeans [11:37] There were even worse fates because it is common knowledge but not very often disclosed that the first chattel slaves were white people. They were not black people. The first slaves were Scottish people, Irish people and English people because all these people they had no use for. So why not take them as slaves? Sometimes it was time slavery—so 7 years was the usual term—and they were shipped to the so-called West Indies, to Jamaica, to Barbados, to other colonies of the British Empire to work there as slaves. Later on the British discovered that it was cheaper and easier to buy black slaves, especially from West Africa. But the first slaves were natives of Ireland, Scotland and Britain. Life Aboard Royal Navy Ships and the Birth of Piracy [12:36] These people brought with them the ideas of liberty, especially on the boats, the ships of the British kings where life was horrible and miserable. The captain was a ruler like a god and he could easily decide to inflict death penalty, torture by flogging, by keelhauling—a brutal torture—to the sailors who were less than 100% obedient. This facilitated the fact that the first pirate ships were born. At a certain point the sailors on the ships understood that they were maybe 100 people, maybe 150 of the crew and they had to overwhelm just a few officers—the captain, the lieutenant, the doctor, maybe the boatswain. And so they had the physical power on their side. And this happened time and again both in military vessels and in commercial vessels. And this is how piracy was born. The Golden Age of Piracy (1713–1726) [13:52] And especially the highlight of the so-called golden age of piracy was in the years after the end of the War of Spanish Succession until 1726 when the British crushed piracy and hanged almost all pirates. But during these years, during roughly 20 years of piracy, the pirates achieved incredible successes—if from their point of view, of course; from the point of view of the British kings and merchants, not so much—because they brought the international commerce of Great Britain almost to a stop. It was close to impossible to sail a vessel from the Caribbean to Europe and vice versa. Pirate Tactics and the Jolly Roger [14:52] And it was very easy for the pirates to overwhelm the ships for a very easy reason. Pirate ships usually flew the black flag, the Jolly Roger, the black flag with a skull on it. And when the other ships saw the pirate ship with the skull, what the sailors usually did is they forced their captains to surrender. They said, “We won’t fight the pirates.” And normally a big chunk of the sailors of the conquered vessels just voluntarily enlisted with the pirates. Pirate Justice: Trials of Captains [15:30] Contrary to a common narrative that describes the pirates as criminals, as robbers, as torturers, this wasn’t in most cases like that. They just took over the ships because the sailors of those ships were on their side. What they did is very interesting because usually their violence came into play when they made trials against the captains. They examined the sailors of the conquered ships as witnesses and they asked them how they were treated. If they found that the captain was a tyrant—as in many cases—he was executed because he oppressed his own sailors. If he was a good captain—as sometimes happened—there’s a famous case of a Captain Snellgrave who was spared by the pirates because he was a good captain. And usually the ones who didn’t want to enlist with the pirates were left free. They gave them maybe a rowboat, they gave them provisions in water and food, and they left them where they could reach land easily and they could go back to their countries. So it’s a narrative very different from the one that we have of the savage and violent pirates. They were quite humane. Of course, not in all cases. Freeing Slaves and Multicultural Crews [17:06] Another thing that the pirates did regularly on a regular basis was attacking slave ships. Not as you might imagine because they wanted to get the slaves and sell them on the market. No, because they wanted to free the slaves. The first ones who freed the slaves were the pirates. And this is the reason why there are statistics about this fact. The reason why there is a big percentage of black sailors and even black captains on pirate ships—because most of these people decided to remain with the pirates because the alternative would have been maybe to be captured again and sold in some plantation slave market in Jamaica or somewhere. Of course, the choice to go a-pirating, like they called it, was a choice without way back. This is the reason why the Jolly Roger has a skull on it—because the pirates knew that if they were caught the only solution was to be executed and hanged. Pardon Laws and the End of the Golden Age [18:17] This was a common problem that many British kings tried to solve and in fact they issued pardon laws. And these pardon laws were in part useful to fight piracy because lots of pirates decided to abandon piracy and go to the British authorities and say, “Okay, I stop being a pirate so I will take advantage of the pardon law.” And this was good for the pirates because if they hid their treasures—you know there are lots of stories about the treasure chest which is hidden somewhere in some tropical islands—they could keep the proceeds of their piracy. And another common trick that they used was to show especially military ships that the pirates had been enlisted by force. So they made a show, a mock of this forceful enlistment. And so the British knew that the ones who were on some pirate ships did it against their will. And this was a common defense in pirate trials. They said, “No, no, I was forced to be a pirate, so I don’t deserve to be hanged.” In fact, most of the pirates were hanged and executed by 1726, which marks the end of the so-called golden age of piracy. Primary Source: A General History of the Pyrates [20:01] There are not many sources about pirate history. The most famous one is A General History of the Pyrates of the mysterious Captain Charles Johnson who, according to some theories, is a pseudonym for Daniel Defoe who is or should be the true author of this book, which is a collection of biographies of famous pirates. Famous Pirates: Henry Every and Blackbeard [20:32] You have the famous ones like Henry Every who supposedly robbed a big ship of the Indian Mughal and became enormously rich and the princess, the daughter of the Mughal who was going to be married in some Arab countries, fell desperately in love with Henry Every, with a pirate, and they eloped and they lived happily ever after. This is one of the nicest stories of pirates. You have the terrible ones. Maybe the most famous one is Edward Teach, also known as Blackbeard, and he was one of the pirates who exploited in the best way the terrorizing function of the black flag and of the appearance of the pirates. He was called Blackbeard because he had a very long black beard of course. And he used to make braids in his beard and to attach little crackers on the beard and he put them on fire when he attacked the other ships. And so they saw this big man with a cutlass and the pistol and the beard on fire and so they were terrorized and they just surrendered to this appearance. The Story of Olivier Misson and Libertalia [21:56] The most interesting pirate—although I will finish with his story—is a French pirate and according to most scholars about piracy his story is invented. However, Charles Johnson or Daniel Defoe says he is not invented because “I received his memoirs” and so it’s a true story. Of course, in his memoirs he doesn’t reveal his real name and so we don’t know his name, but it’s a very interesting story. In short, this pirate Olivier Misson was the second son of a wealthy family of lower nobility in France. He didn’t inherit his father’s estate and so he chose a military career on the ships of the French Navy. And during his service on these ships he gets to know an Italian priest, a guy who is called Caraccioli. He knows him in Naples at the port of Naples. And together they go to Rome to visit the seat of Christianity. And Caraccioli is his philosophical mentor, let’s say. And he explains to him: this is all religion is just a way to dominate people and it’s just an instrument of government. The true significance is individual freedom. This is one of the reasons why Misson’s story is considered to be fake, to be invented—because it’s too good to be true. And they decide to enlist. So Caraccioli throws off his priestly robe and enlists in the French Navy. And after a certain amount of adventures, during a battle with a British ship, all the officers of the French ship are killed by the cannons of the British. Misson takes over command of the ship and they win. The British ship explodes and all the British sailors except one are killed in the explosion of the ammunition on the ship. And at that point, Misson and Caraccioli ask their sailors, “What do you want to do? We could go back and we will be decorated because we won a big battle, because we sunk a British ship and maybe I will be promoted as a captain or whatever. Or we can decide to choose liberty and become pirates.” And they enthusiastically accept his proposal to become pirates. Founding Libertalia [25:02] And they decide to fly a different flag, not the black flag of the pirates, but a white flag which has “Liberty” written on it. And they are enormously successful pirates. They take Spanish ships and they manage to escape the Caribbean and they land in Madagascar. And in Madagascar they found the dream of us libertarians. They managed to found an actual gulch, a libertarian anarchist city which is governed by principles which are taken from John Locke’s books and which are founded on individual liberty and on respect for private property. Pirate Constitutions and Democratic Governance [25:58] In fact, this is the most interesting thing about all pirate ships. So maybe the story of Misson is a legend, but this is a true and historically proven fact. Any pirate ship had a constitution, a charter which all the sailors decided upon and signed. And usually these charters were quite libertarian because there was absolute respect for private property. The officers of the ship weren’t that much elevated above the common sailors. Usually the captain took twice a share or 1.5 share in comparison to the sailors. Any captain could be revoked from his office by his sailors easily. And they had a very interesting institution which was the quartermaster. The quartermaster was a pirate institution which resembles the Roman tribunes of the plebs. They were the representatives of the sailors. If the captain was too abusive, he was the representative of the sailors. And there are lots of stories which are told by Charles Johnson about captains who were deposed by the quartermasters or by the assembly of the sailors. Another very interesting thing which the pirates did on many ships—this happened—they signed a declaration of war against the world, against all states of the world. And Misson did the same and there are lots of documented examples of these declarations of war. They said states are against our liberty. They are destroying our lives and so we declare war against the rest of the world. And at that time it was possible because if you had a man-of-war with 40 or 50 cannons, you had really power in your hands. Conclusion: Pirates as Fighters for Freedom [28:01] And of course the end of the pirates is a tragical end. They were all hanged. And even Misson, he was defeated and the remains of this mythical anarchist city which was called by the way Libertalia are lost and we don’t know where it is. And so I think maybe I changed your mind about pirates. They were not criminals but they were fighters for the freedom. Thank you for your attention. [28:31] [Music] [28:32] [Applause]

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 298. This talk is from the recently-concluded 19th annual PFS 2025 Annual Meeting (Sep. 18–23, 2025, Bodrum, Turkey). Anthony Daniels (Dalrymple) (England): The Worldly Adventures of a Skeptical Doctor. Shownotes and transcript below. Other talks appear on the Property and Freedom Podcast. Other videos may also be found at the PFS 2025 Youtube Playlist. Grok shownotes Theodore Dalrymple – Snapshots of a Life (20th Anniversary Conference Talk) In this reflective lecture, Theodore Dalrymple (pen name of psychiatrist Anthony Daniels) shares personal anecdotes instead of a formal intellectual biography, emphasizing how formative experiences shaped his worldview. Key Themes & Stories: Childhood & Resilience: A close friend paralyzed by polio thrived despite disability, thanks to family focus on capability—not victimhood—prompting Dalrymple’s lifelong rejection of the “cult of the victim.” Early Encounters with Cruelty & Cowardice: At age 11, witnessing youths mock a blind street musician revealed both human malice and his own failure to intervene due to fear. Death of a Friend & Bureaucratic Inertia: A brilliant 15-year-old classmate died from an asthma attack delayed by ambulance red tape; his mother’s bitter wish (“Why not the other one?”) exposed the complexity of grief and the peril of overreach in seeking “cosmic justice.” Rhodesia (Zimbabwe): Working as a young doctor, he observed efficiency born of necessity under sanctions, stark income disparities due to tribal obligations, and the predictable collapse into corruption post-independence. Tanzania: Julius Nyerere’s admired socialist experiment in collectivized agriculture failed despite massive Scandinavian/Dutch aid, confirming Peter Bauer’s quip: foreign aid transfers from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor ones. Trans-African Journey (1986): Traveling overland from Zanzibar to Timbuktu, he met only kindness—contrasting spontaneous vs. indoctrinated hostility—and viewed bribery as informal taxation in unpaid bureaucracies. Liberia (Monrovia): Amid civil war, he witnessed deliberate, hate-fueled destruction of civilization (e.g., sawn-off hospital trolleys, a defiled Steinway piano), symbolizing fragility journalists dismissed as trivial. Nauru: Sudden phosphate wealth turned a subsistence island into the world’s richest per capita—then into obesity, diabetes, and collapse, proving unearned prosperity is no blessing. Guatemala & Peru: Communist guerrillas were led not by peasants but by frustrated, over-educated elites denied expected status—echoed in Sendero Luminoso’s origins at a revived provincial university. North Korea: A clandestine whisper from a language student—“Reading Dickens and Shakespeare is the only joy of my life”—revealed literature’s power to preserve individual voice under totalitarianism. British Prisons & Slums: Decades as a prison psychiatrist exposed a deeper poverty: not economic, but of soul, intellect, and meaning—where false ideas about addiction became institutional orthodoxy via sentimentality and self-interest. Closing Reflection: Citing Dr. Johnson’s Rasselas (“The Conclusion in Which Nothing Is Concluded”), Dalrymple offers no life prescriptions—only that reading and lived experience must dialectically inform each other to avoid pedantry or shallowness. A candid, contrarian meditation on human nature, civilization’s fragility, and the unintended consequences of ideology. Grok transcript Opening Thanks and Personal Authority 0:00 [Applause] Well, ladies and gentlemen, first as ever I should like to thank Hans and Gulchin for their very gracious hospitality, and second I should like to congratulate them on the 20th anniversary of this conference. I have never organized anything in my life and so I admire organizers, especially people who organize something that is as pleasant as this conference. But I have a third reason to thank Hans this year, because I think I have been to maybe 10 or 12 of these conferences—I do not remember how many—because he has at last asked me to speak on a subject on which I am a world authority, namely myself. Limits of Truth in Autobiography 0:58 This does not mean of course that I will tell you the whole truth about myself for two reasons. First, no one knows everything about himself, and secondly everyone has something to hide. But as a Victorian English novelist, Anthony Trollope, said in the introduction to his autobiography, I shall not tell the whole truth, but everything that I say shall be true. Snapshots of Influential Events 1:28 I thought that instead of presenting what might rather grandiosely be called my intellectual development—assuming that there has been any—I would give you a few snapshots of events and processes that have been important to me. The effect of some of these events takes years to develop because the mind can be like a frying pan or it can be like a slow cooker or anything in between. Childhood Friend with Polio and Rejection of Victimhood 1:57 When I was about six years old, my closest friend, from whom I was inseparable, was one of the last people in the country to suffer from polio. He was left paraplegic. His mother was a Christian Scientist, and Christian Scientists have a rather peculiar view of illness, as if it were an illusion. My parents, who had been very worried that I might contract polio myself, were in my recollection very, very good to my friend and took a matter-of-fact view of his problem, encouraging him to do everything that he could do and encouraging us to encourage him. His mother, who alas died very early of cancer—I am not sure whether her religious belief and rejection of medicine shortened her life; I cannot say that—and my parents, both she and my parents emphasized what my friend could do rather than what he could not do. I think that this at least in part accounted for the fact that he had a very distinguished career, in fact including travel in Africa, which at the time was not easy even for the able-bodied. The memory of my friendship with him had, I think, a subliminal effect on my rejection of the modern cult of the victim and of victimhood. To reduce people to their victimization, to their difficulties, is to do them a great disservice and is far from flattering to them. Blind Accordionist and Insight into Cruelty 3:47 When I was 11, I thought in common with most boys that sport, and in particular football and cricket, were important. There was what I thought was a very important cup match in which the team I favored was playing, and unusually for that time admission was by advanced ticket purchase only, and I joined a very long queue to buy the ticket. Along the queue walked an old blind man playing an accordion and singing. The song he sang I remember was “The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo.” As he passed a group of young toughs ahead of me, they who had a portable radio with them turned up the volume of that radio and drowned out that man’s voice, and he was extremely confused by this. He was an old man and of course he could not see what they were doing, and I shall never forget the look of bewilderment on his face and the laughter of the toughs as they mocked him. Even at the age of 11 I was appalled by this. This was a very small incident, of course, of no historical importance, but it gave me a sudden insight into the potential for gratuitous cruelty that lurks, if not in every human heart, at least in many human hearts. I also learned from this experience the limits of my own courage. I did not intervene in any way. Of course, such intervention would probably have been useless in any case, but that was not the reason for my failure to intervene. It was fear and cowardice. Death of a Scholarly Friend 5:53 When I was about 15, I went to the house of a friend of mine who was 16, whom I had not seen for two weeks. He was a very clever boy destined for a life of scholarship to which I think he would have made a very valuable contribution, and he was also a very nice and a very good boy. In fact, he was a much nicer boy than was I. He suffered terribly from both asthma and eczema, which gave him a pigeon chest and a skin whose scaling I can still see in my mind’s eye. Bear in mind this is more than 60 years ago. His mother answered the door and I asked to see him. She told me that he had died and then described the manner of his death. He had had a very severe attack of asthma and told his mother to call an ambulance. As she did so, he wheezed that he was dying. The ambulance controller insisted on taking details in a highly bureaucratic manner and in contacting his own doctor and so forth. It took several minutes just this bureaucratic procedure. The ambulance arrived a minute after he died. It is possible that the bronchodilator that he used at that time, which again I can still see in my mind’s eye as he clutched it like a lifeline, which was called isoprenaline, played a part in his death. That was not appreciated at the time that it was slightly dangerous. But what his mother then said startled me. I think she was a single mother, which was unusual at the time. Certainly there had never been any talk of a father. He had an older brother who I think was actually a half-brother. In those days one did not inquire into such things. We were much more sophisticated. We understood the virtues of silence. He was a handsome and charming youth who was probably destined for finance or prison or possibly both. The mother said with unmistakable bitterness, “Why could it not have been the other one?” It was as if she believed that one of her two boys was destined to die. I fled from the house and never returned, though I feel that I perhaps should have done. Lessons from the Death: Complexity, Bureaucracy, and Unfairness 8:46 This death, now more than 60 years ago, affected me in more than one way and affects me still when I think about it. First, in the depth of her grief and bitterness, the mother revealed to me the unstraightforwardness and the complexity of the human heart and the hiddenness of much that it contains that can under certain circumstances be suddenly revealed. Her account of the death gave me a permanent hatred and contempt for unnecessary bureaucracy. Of course, the life of my friend might not have been saved had the ambulance come a few minutes earlier, but that is not the point, which is that it might have been saved. I learned from his death also that human existence does not hand out its rewards like medals to deserving soldiers. If anything, this boy, my friend, was more deserving than I, and yet he was deprived of life undeservedly and far too early. A little reflection on the unfairness of it all demonstrated to me that unfairness was ineradicable from human existence. By further reflection that attempts to eradicate it might lead to worse unfairness and indeed brutal injustice, and the attempt to produce what Thomas Sowell calls cosmic justice ends in disaster. I came to the conclusion that it always required judgment to distinguish the ineradicable from that which can be eradicated much less rationally. I still feel a slight guilt that I survived him when I did nothing to deserve having survived him. Medical Work in Rhodesia 10:49 When I qualified as a doctor, I went for six months to what was then called Rhodesia. It had been Southern Rhodesia, then Rhodesia, and it is now called Zimbabwe. Apart from the urge to travel, I wanted to see what was then clearly the end of European colonialism in Africa. To my surprise, I found the country was very well organized, though of course it was not in a completely just way. An ethnic minority of three to 4% of the population had inherited half the land and the better half of the land at that as a result of colonial expropriation. However, as a result of this, the country was the breadbasket of the region. The regime which was fighting for its life against the hostility of the whole world was obliged to be efficient. Sanctions against it called forth new industries and provoked much ingenuity in getting around them. A lesson which I think no one has subsequently learned. The hospital in which I worked was the best administered that I have ever worked in, perhaps because there were no people to spare for unnecessary positions. Salary Disparities and Social Obligations in Rhodesia 12:12 There was an interesting phenomenon which puzzled me for a time. Unlike in South Africa, in Rhodesia, young black doctors—who were not very many but they existed—were paid exactly the same as young white ones such as I. Yet, while I on my salary lived as a prince, perhaps in a way that was more agreeable to me than any way of life I have had since, the young black doctors lived in near squalor, not quite squalor, but near squalor. The question was why they received the same money. The answer really was obvious. While I had only myself to please with my salary, the young black doctors had social obligations to impoverished extended families, also to villages and so forth. These obligations were so strong that they could not escape them. This was far from dishonorable. On the contrary, it was highly moral. The problem came when using these principles, there was a modern state to administer. Naturally enough, everyone aspired to European levels of ease, comfort, and security. The colonialist was both disliked and admired. The corrupt chaos that resulted was, in my view, all too predictable, though not widely predicted. There is much, a lot more I could say on this subject but I do not have the time. Tanzania: Failed Collectivization and Foreign Aid 14:03 I will mention three much later African experiences. The first was in Tanzania where an idealistic president called Julius Nyerere was much admired in the West, particularly by Scandinavians and the Dutch, because he talked fluent morality, and he attempted a socialization of agriculture. That was to say agriculture was 90% of the economy of that country by collectivization and foreign aid—as I have mentioned specifically from Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands which have since recognized their mistake—paid for this experiment and made it possible, though the aid also prevented the mass starvation that would have resulted from the experiment if it had been tried without that aid. A one-party system was instituted and you could more or less tell a party member by his girth. Everyone was thin but the party member had put on weight. The fact that Tanzania received more foreign aid per capita than any other African country and yet produced ever less per capita suggested to me that the famous saying attributed to Peter Bauer, the development economist, that foreign aid is the means by which poor people in rich countries give money to rich people in poor countries was substantially correct. Crossing Africa: Kindness, Corruption, and Informal Taxation 15:58 The second African experience to which I will allude is my crossing of Africa by public transport such as it was in 1986, and I went from Zanzibar to Timbuktu, and I chose those two destinations because I wanted to write a book and it sounded, I thought, Zanzibar to Timbuktu sounds quite good. I should record that at no time as I saw Africa from the bottom up did I feel any hostility towards me as an alien, not even in those places which had experienced civil war or were about to do so. On the contrary, I met only kindness, politeness and generosity. This suggested to me that there are two types of hostility. The rarer which is spontaneous and the second which unfortunately has become more common is programmed and indoctrinated. On the border between Niger and Mali I saw the worst example of corruption in my entire journey. You may be interested to know that in 1986 when I was in Niger the population was 6 million and today it is 24 million. For three days and nights, I slept by the side of the road, which was actually extremely pleasant, but I slept by the side of the road because the other passengers had been imprisoned successively by the customs officials, the police and the army as they extracted bribes from the passengers. I was excluded from this treatment eventually. Although it was quite pleasant sleeping in the open air, I got exasperated and I shouted “Bribes, bribes, bribes.” A Malian soldier took me aside and said very kindly, “But what you have to remember, Monsieur, is that we have not been paid for three months.” I have come to see bribery in such circumstances as this as an informal form of taxation. Once at Lagos airport landing there for the first time, the customs officer said to me, “Have you brought any presents?” “No,” I replied. I was very naive even though I had been across Africa. “No,” I replied, “I do not know anyone in Nigeria.” “For me,” he said. I gave him a small amount of money and we had a good laugh. But had I expressed moral outrage saying this is corrupt and so forth, I probably would still have been in Lagos airport today. Monrovia During Civil War: Destruction of Civilization 19:07 The third African experience to which I will allude is a brief stay in Monrovia, which is the capital of Liberia, during a lull in the city’s civil war there that killed a quarter of a million people—a tenth or a twelfth of the population—and displaced a much higher percentage of the population. Monrovia was very difficult to get to. It was an enclave surrounded completely by rebels. I went on a boat from the Ivory Coast by a buccaneering Welsh captain called Monty Jones. On board was an American ex-Marine known only as Rambo who kept watch for pirates from the deck and seemed to be disappointed that none appeared for him to blow out of the water. There was also a French mercenary soldier who found France unbearably bourgeois and boring and had come to train a militia in Liberia. Monrovia had been destroyed with a thoroughness that beggared description. It was not just the destruction of war. It was not that bombs had fallen on buildings or shells had fallen on buildings. It was much, much worse than that. It was that almost every vestige of civilization or of Western civilization at any rate had been destroyed with a minuteness that bespoke real hatred of it. For example, at the university hospital which was very large—it was called the John F. Kennedy Hospital where open-heart surgery had been performed not long before and was now utterly deserted—was a complete shell. Every last piece of equipment had not so much been destroyed as dismantled beyond hope of repair. So that for example the wheels had been sawn off every trolley at the cost of considerable labor. This was not the work of just a bomb or a shell. People had gone through destroying every last piece of equipment. In the Centennial Hall where presidents were inaugurated and other national ceremonies performed, a Steinway piano, probably the only Steinway piano in the country, had had its legs sawn off, its body lying on the ground, and piles of human excrement were placed neatly rounded in a kind of necklace. It was not so much gang rape as gang defecation. I showed this to two young British journalists who had braved difficulties like I suppose I had really to come to the city, and they saw absolutely nothing significant in the fate of the piano and found it odd that I did find it significant. Why worry about such a thing in the middle of a civil war? Civilization is fragile and not valued by many, including by intellectuals and including by people who benefit from civilization. People nowadays find many things more important than the preservation of civilization. Nauru: Sudden Wealth Without Effort 22:51 Now referred to another couple of experiences, one from the central Pacific and one from Central America. The little island of Nauru in the central Pacific was once the richest place on earth per capita. It was about 10 miles round and its population was 4,000. It was given independence in 1968 when it gained control of the valuable phosphate rock that was mined until then by the British Phosphate Commission that amalgamated British, Australian and New Zealand interests. Suddenly this people who had lived essentially at subsistence level were very rich. Almost everything became free to them. There was nothing for them to do except import. They were not very sophisticated importers. They imported huge quantities of rice, tinned meat, Fanta which they drank 24 cans at a time, and chatter. They became enormously fat consuming on average more than twice as much in calories as a Canadian lumberjack working in a freezing forest. No doubt as a result partly of genetic predisposition, half of them came to suffer from type 2 diabetes and their life expectancy was not more than the late 40s. There are lessons to be drawn from this. An Australian professor, Paul Zimmet, came to study the medical situation. At the time, I thought that this was a typical example of absurd academic concern with arcana. But in fact, what he was studying was an important aspect of the future of the whole world. Furthermore, this experience—and I went several times to this island—it convinced me that wealth without any effort to produce it was not an unmixed blessing. Guatemala: Educated Discontent and Revolution 25:15 I stayed a few months in Guatemala during the era of the Central American peninsula civil war. There was a civil war in El Salvador at the time as well. All the literature on the subject at the time—and there was a great deal of it; people have lost interest in Central America since—was favorable to the guerrillas who were of course communist. The so-called revolutions were treated by academics as if they were spontaneous uprisings of impoverished, oppressed and downtrodden peasantry—and the peasantry was indeed often impoverished, oppressed and downtrodden. But it was obvious to me that such people were incapable of more than jacquerie and that revolution required a discontented educated and intellectual class. This was precisely what I found. The ancient University of San Carlos in Guatemala was in effect an armed revolutionary camp at that time. Oddly enough, the traditional extraterritoriality of the university by which it is meant that the agents of the state were not allowed to enter it—and it was known as autonomy—was respected but it was tempered by abduction and extrajudicial execution once the students left the university. Rapid expansion of the class of educated people led to bitter disappointment that the society and economy was not able automatically to offer them elite status that had once been the automatic reward of attendance at the university. No doubt this has lessons for us all, not just for Latin Americans. I should add that the worst of all the Latin American guerrilla movements, the Sendero Luminoso of Peru, began when the government of Alan García decided to resuscitate the University of Ayacucho in Ayacucho, which was a poor area of Peru, poor even by Peruvian standards. He attempted to revive it. It had become defunct at the end I think at the end of the 17th century. The professor of philosophy appointed there, Abimael Guzmán who wrote a thesis on Kant, had founded a political movement that I am convinced from what I saw in Ayacucho—and it seemed at the time that the Sendero Luminoso might actually overthrow the Peruvian government—that I became convinced that Peru if that happened would have become a Cambodia on a much larger scale. North Korea: Literature as Sole Joy 28:31 I will just also briefly mention perhaps the most extraordinary conversation—if you call it conversation, perhaps communication—I have ever had in my life, and this was in North Korea. I went to North Korea as a member of the British delegation to the International Festival of Youth and Students although by that time I was neither a youth nor a student. But they wanted—even communists want a doctor. So, I went to North Korea. The only conversation or the only insight I had from something that a North Korean said was when I left the Great People’s Study House, which was a kind of cross between a pagoda and a fascist mausoleum, into an enormous urban area outside which reminded me of what de Custine said about St. Petersburg. De Custine who wrote a famous book on Russia in 1839. He said in Petersburg a crowd would be a revolution. Which is exactly right. Anyway, as I was walking across this enormous urban space which was practically empty, a North Korean went by me and said surreptitiously, “Do you speak English?” So I said, “Yes.” And he said, “I am a student at the Foreign Languages Institute. Reading Dickens and Shakespeare is the greatest, the only joy of my life.” I understood exactly, I think I understood exactly what he meant because in Dickens and Shakespeare and of course in other literature, even the poorest person speaks with his own voice. But in North Korea, that was completely impossible. So this was the only time he ever heard or read speech that actually came from the person, from inside the person who was speaking. I do not think you would find many students of English literature in Anglophone countries who would say their greatest joy was reading Dickens and Shakespeare. Recently I think there was an article that I read about English students in Harvard who found even a single page of Dickens too difficult for them. So I think that tells you something about our decadence. British Prisons and Slums: Poverty of the Soul 31:16 Well, enough of foreign parts. They are foreign that is to me. One must always remember of course that exotic countries are not exotic to those who live in them. Somehow I managed while doing all this traveling to pursue a medical career though not a very distinguished one despite my peregrinations. I was for many years a doctor and psychiatrist in a large British prison and psychiatrist in the general hospital next door and what I saw and learned there actually shocked me for avoidable degradation. There is nothing to beat a British slum where the poverty is not so much economic—though of course the people are relatively poor by comparison with other people in the society—but a poverty of culture, of intellect and in a wider sense of spirit. The reasons for this are no doubt complex or as we say when we are not sure of the causes of something multifactorial. But at any rate, I came to the conclusion that ideas, the ideas that people had, their conception of the world as it was and as it ought to be, is very important and that any kind of explanation of their behavior that did not include the nature and content of people’s ideas was deeply flawed and inadequate. In other words, you cannot treat people or you cannot explain people without the concept of meaning in their lives. I was much struck by the way in which obviously false conceptions of the problem of addiction existed particularly addiction to heroin and how an obviously false idea—and it was not difficult to establish that it was a false idea—became orthodoxy amongst decent, intelligent and well-educated people and indeed became, if I might say so, an institutional orthodoxy. I came to the conclusion that a rather toxic combination of sentimentality and self-interest accounted for this. However, if I remember rightly, I devoted a whole talk to this subject some years ago. I cannot tell you how many. So I shall not repeat myself. Conclusion: No Firm Conclusions 34:10 You might say, you might ask what does all this amount to, all this experience. One lesson I have drawn is that I think that reading and experience should be in dialectical relationship as it were that the one without the other leads either to pedantry or shallowness. But I have nothing to say to you about how life should be lived, how you should live your life. I have no firm conclusions and I refer to the last chapter of Dr. Johnson’s great philosophical fable Rasselas which was published in the same year as Voltaire’s Candide which is Candide is much less profound and therefore more widely read. The title of the last chapter of Rasselas is “Conclusion in which nothing is concluded” and that is my conclusion. Thank you. [Applause] 35:21  

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 297. This talk is from the recently-concluded 19th annual PFS 2025 Annual Meeting (Sep. 18–23, 2025, Bodrum, Turkey). Stephan Kinsella (USA): “Where The Common Law Goes Wrong.” Also podcast at KOL474 | Where The Common Law Goes Wrong (PFS 2025), which contains the transcript and shownotes. See also Sebastian Wang, “Stephan Kinsella on the Common Law: Lessons from Bodrum 2025,” Libertarian Alliance [UK] Blog (Sep. 19, 2025). Other talks appear on the Property and Freedom Podcast. Other videos may also be found at the PFS 2025 Youtube Playlist.

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 296. This talk is from the recently-concluded 19th annual PFS 2025 Annual Meeting (Sep. 18–23, 2025, Bodrum, Turkey). Sean Gabb (England): Roman Law and Contractual Slavery [Sebastian Wang, “Roman Slavery: Horror and Paradox – Sean Gabb in Bodrum,” Libertarian Alliance [UK] Blog (Sep. 20, 2025)] Transcript and shownotes below. Other talks appear on the Property and Freedom Podcast. Other videos may also be found at the PFS 2025 Youtube Playlist. Grok shownotes Show Notes: “Ancient Slavery: A Very Peculiar Institution” Speaker: Unnamed (invited by Hans and Gulchin) Source: YouTube lecture (Nov 2025 transcript) TL;DR Ancient slavery was overwhelmingly brutal—most died young under the lash—but a significant minority repurposed the institution for social mobility: voluntary enslavement, manumission after 7 years, and instant Roman citizenship upon freedom. Evidence: thousands of 2nd–3rd century AD gravestones of ex-slaves who married their former owners or rose to elite status. Key Sections & Takeaways Intro & Framing [0:01] Thanks to hosts; title borrows from Jefferson’s “peculiar institution.” History = “nightmare” (Jefferson) or “catalog of vices” (Voltaire). Modern Lens [1:13] Since 1970s, slavery overshadows classical studies; some can’t enjoy Livy, Tacitus, or Roman architecture. Default Experience [2:12] Most slaves: chain-gang labor in fields/quarries → death by late 20s/early 30s. Universal but Uncomfortable [3:20] Slavery existed in every pre-modern society. Greeks & Romans knew it was “unnatural” yet justified it (“some are born for slavery”). Horror Highlights [4:51] Vedius Pollio (1st c. BC): fed slaves to lampreys; Augustus intervened. Galen (2nd c. AD): boasted never striking slaves with his hand—used rods/whips instead. Brothels, gladiators, casual violence. Counter-Image [8:50] Alma-Tadema painting: boredom & despair more typical than melodrama. Manumission as Control [9:56] Household slaves: promise freedom after 5–10 yrs → incentive for obedience. Roman twist: freed slave of a citizen → full citizen (minus Senate/office unless dispensation). Children 100 % free-born citizens. Social Mobility Evidence [12:39] Horace’s father: ex-slave. Multiple emperors had slave grandfathers. Gravestone Gallery (British Museum & others) [13:23] Dasumius (2nd c.): freed & married his slave; heartbroken when she died first. Pattern: hundreds–thousands of stones across Mediterranean: Master frees female slave → marriage. Often the master himself was ex-slave. Even humble sailors & priests did it. Where Did Peace-Time Greek Slaves Come From? [19:42] War captives explain 2nd–1st c. BC glut (Carthage 60 k, Marius 140 k, Pompey+Caesar >1 M). But 2nd–3rd c. AD Greek ex-slaves = no wars in Greece. Answer: contractual/voluntary slavery. Contractual Slavery = Ancient Student Loan [20:44] Certain lucrative jobs (vilicus, dispensator, accountant) legally restricted to slaves. Free poor sold themselves → master paid training/transport → 7-yr service → freedom + citizenship. Roman jurists confirm legality; concern was only fraud/coercion. Citizenship Hack [28:18] Pre-212 AD, citizenship rare. Sell yourself to a citizen → instant manumission → citizen. Cicero called it “disreputable” but common. Star Example: Antonius Felix [26:11] Greek slave → freed by Claudius → knight, senator, procurator of Judea, married Herod’s granddaughter. Family still elite 300 yrs later. Conclusion [29:42] Don’t blanket-judge the past. Slavery horrific for 90 %+, but a subset turned it into a ladder:  “Voluntary enslavement = vehicle of social advancement.”  Like winning the lottery for Felix. Slides / Visuals Mentioned 19th-c. French slave-market paintings (sensational). Alma-Tadema: mundane despair. British Museum gravestones (Dasumius + others). Statistics: war-captive numbers. Roman slave-market scene (voluntary bidders). Acts of the Apostles illustration (Paul before Felix). Speaker offers slides via email. Further Reading Galen, On the Passions and Errors of the Soul Roman law digests on self-sale into slavery British Museum / Louvre epitaph collections Moses Finley, Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology (1970s pivot) Final Quote “The past is a strange place and the more you look at it the stranger it is.” Grok/youtube transcript Introduction and Thanks [0:01] Good morning everybody and it’s good to look around the room and see so many old friends and new friends as well. But I’d like to begin by thanking Hans and Gulchin for their great goodness in having invited me back here again and again. Do we have a little feedback from the microphone? No. All well, very well. Title and Historical Views on Slavery [0:25] Today I’d like to talk about ancient slavery and I’ve called it a very peculiar institution. I think it was Thomas Jefferson who said that history is a nightmare from which we are continually trying to wake up, or Voltaire who said that history is nothing more than a catalog of the vices, follies and crimes of mankind. There is some truth in those sayings. And if you look at the institution of ancient slavery, you do seem to see a very good example of those observations. Modern Perspectives on Ancient Slavery [1:13] We’ve always known about ancient slavery. Of course, for the past several hundred years, we have always deplored it. Since the 1970s, however, ancient slavery has moved to something like one of the center points of classical studies. So much so that I have spoken to people who’ve told me, “I cannot appreciate ancient literature anymore.” Because whenever I read Livy or Tacitus or Polybius or Herodotus, all I can think of is the slaves who made the lives of those writers comfortable, who made it possible for them to write their works. And I’ve seen people tell me that they’re unable to appreciate ancient architecture because it was almost universally constructed with slave labor. The Harsh Reality for Most Slaves [2:12] I don’t want to minimize the effects. I don’t want to minimize the nature and extent of ancient slavery, for in the overwhelming majority of cases it was a veil of tears. It was a terrible thing. If you were a slave in the ancient world, the overwhelming likelihood was that you would spend your life under the lash working in a chain gang in a field or in a quarry and you would die in your late 20s or early 30s from overwork and general maltreatment. Not All Human Behavior Is Cruel [2:53] However, having said that, we do need to bear in mind that although human beings can often behave very badly to each other, this is not a universal tendency. And it is possible to see ancient slavery sometimes in a more positive light than shown in that 19th-century French painting of a slave market. Please. Slavery as a Universal Institution [3:20] Now, slavery is or has been or was a universal institution until about 200 years ago. It is very difficult to find a society which did not to some extent rely on the compelled labor of the lower classes. Slavery was a universal institution in ancient civilization. It is very difficult to think of a single civilization which did not rely to some extent on the compelled labor of the lower classes. Greek and Roman Justifications for Slavery [3:51] What makes the institution of slavery among the Greeks and Romans different is that these people had both a highly rational view of life and a certain obligation to justify what they regarded as an unnatural institution. They always did so with a certain discomfort. They recognized that it was unnatural. They recognized that it was a violation of universal rights, but it existed. They couldn’t think of any alternative. And so they tried to justify it on various perhaps spurious grounds that some people were fitted for slavery and some people were not. Please. Horrific Examples of Slave Treatment [4:51] Now the treatment of slaves. It is possible to construct an entire volume showing the gross horrors of ancient slavery. Here is one. Oh, there was Vedius Pollio. He was a very wealthy Roman, a very wealthy Roman aristocrat, and he had a pond filled with flesh-eating fish. Any slave who displeased him got thrown into it and he’d stand watching the slave eaten alive. There is a story that one day Pollio was entertaining the emperor Augustus to dinner when a slave dropped one of his prized glass vessels. Pollio snapped his fingers, said, “Take him to the fish.” The slave grabbed hold of the emperor’s knees and said, “Please, please, sir, not the fish. Just kill me here. Cut my throat, crucify me, but not the fish.” And Augustus turned to Pollio and said, “You’re not serious about this. You’re not going to feed him to your fish, are you?” And Pollio said, “Oh, yes, I am. He’s my property, and I can do with him as I please.” The story then goes off in two directions. According to one, Augustus managed to stop the feeding. According to the other, he couldn’t. And Augustus could only put the word round: anyone who entertains this man to dinner again is not my friend. But although this didn’t happen very often because it is rather inventive to have a pond filled with fish, you could do whatever you wanted to your slaves. Galen’s Views on Disciplining Slaves [6:28] And there is a story from Galen. When I was a young man, I imposed upon myself an injunction which I have observed through my whole life. Namely, never to strike any slave of my household with my hand. And you think, “Oh yes, well, the greatest medical writer of the ancient world.” And the room does contain a number of medical personnel. Of course, you would expect a certain degree of humanity which is lacking among the other upper classes of the age. But you read on, “My father practiced the same restraint. Many were the friends he reproved when they had bruised a tendon while striking their slaves in the teeth. He told them that they deserved to have a stroke and to die in the fit of passion which had come upon them. They could have waited a little while, he said, and used a rod or a whip to inflict as many blows as they wished and to accomplish the act with reflection.” You find that in the collected works of Galen. It is a reflection which I don’t think any of us would like to see our names set to, but well, different times, different morals. Please, please. Additional Examples of Slave Exploitation [7:51] And again, as I said, you can construct a whole volume of horrors. That’s it: enslaved prostitutes in the brothels of Rome and Pompeii and Herculaneum. The gladiators—not always slaves, mind you. Some of them were free, some of them were women. But mostly they appear to have been slaves forced to fight each other, sometimes to death, for the entertainment of the masses. You have the general violence used against slaves. You have the use of human beings as instruments of somebody else’s will for somebody else’s enjoyment and profit. And I’ll repeat that was the overwhelming experience of slavery, but it was not the universal experience of slavery. A More Typical Experience of Slavery [8:50] It is possible if you look around to find a slight offset to the general catalog of horror that was ancient slavery. Can I have another slide please? Thank you. Oh, there’s a painting by Lawrence Alma-Tadema. That is probably more the general experience of slavery than the horrors I’ve shown. Just the straightforward boredom and despair of being somebody else’s property. But let’s move on. I’ll come back to that later on. I’ll come back to that as well. You’ll notice that French painters—you know, the French—in the 19th century, they used Roman slavery as an excuse for showing large amounts of bare flesh. They could always tell people, “It’s not porn, it’s culture.” But that’s the French for you. Manumission as a Control Mechanism [9:56] Slavery. Can we go back a bit? That’s it. There was the possibility—there was always the possibility in any slave society of freedom for slaves: manumission. And indeed, you can look on the possibility of freeing your slaves as an entirely rational means of keeping control. If you have 400 or 5,000 slaves in your household, you really have two ways of keeping control. One is you do it with a threat of violence, and that can work, but you will have to lock your bedroom door at night and sleep with a sword under your pillow, which is not the way that most people have preferred to manage their households. The other way of keeping control is to make it plain to all your slaves: if you serve me well and faithfully for seven years, let’s say, I’ll free you. Roman Manumission and Citizenship [11:01] Manumission of slaves has always been an option. But in the Roman Empire, it was a general custom—not a general custom with your field slaves; they worked under the lash until they died and then they were replaced. But among household slaves, the possibility of freedom was always dangled in front of the slaves. You do my wife’s hair for 5 years, seven years, 10 years. You put up with her whims, smile at her stupid jokes, and if she comes back to me and says, “I have no complaints against this maidservant,” I will free you. It’s quite a way of making sure that you get prompt and willing obedience from your slaves. But one of the differences between Roman slavery and slavery among the Greeks and other peoples is that if you were the slave of a Roman citizen and you were freed, you yourself immediately became a Roman citizen with most of the rights and liberties of a Roman citizen. Oh, if you were a freed slave, you couldn’t join the Senate—not unless the emperor made a dispensation, and the emperor could and often did. You couldn’t stand for office. But you had the rights and liberties of a Roman citizen in most respects. And your children had all the rights and liberties of a Roman citizen. Social Mobility for Freed Slaves [12:39] The father of Horace, the great Roman poet, was a slave. A number of emperors had grandfathers who had been slaves and so it was possible if you were a freed slave to rise very high in Roman society. It was not a meritocracy in the way that we understand meritocracy during the past few hundred years but it was rather more meritocratic than most societies have been. And the fact that you were once a slave or your father or grandfather were slaves did not seem to hold people back in itself. Gravestone Evidence in Museums [13:23] I will make the slides available. If you send me an email, I’ll send you the slides and you can look at them yourself. It’s a shame because when I was in the British Museum a few weeks ago giving some lectures, I did go about taking photographs and there is a large number of gravestones in the British Museum and if you go to any museum—any of the great museums—you will see similar gravestones. You’ll see similar inscriptions. Ah, there we go. Can we go back a bit to the Dasumius inscription? That’s it. Dasumius Inscription: Master Marries Freed Slave [13:56] This is the Dasumius inscription in the British Museum put up in the second century by a man called Dasumius. He put it up to his wife who had predeceased him. And what you see on that inscription is that she had been his slave. She had been his slave and he had taken a fancy to her. Now you may think of Roman slavery as this: Oh, she or he looks rather pretty. You take your clothes off. You help me out of my clothes. And then you do the wicked act and it’s back to scrubbing the floors for the slave. And that may have been the case very often, but also very often a master would fall in love with his slave. He would then free her and marry her. And here is a gravestone from the second century in which Dasumius explains that he had freed this woman. He’d married her and now he is heartbroken because he’d always assumed that he would die first. Unfortunately, she died first. And what makes it rather sad is that the space that was left for him is blank. And you can speculate on the reasons. Prevalence of Master-Slave Marriages [15:26] And you can say, well, yes, of course, the Roman Empire was a large place. It existed for a long time. Of course, these strange things do happen. But do you believe that this was a very common institution? And my answer is yes, it was. Can we have another look? Another one. There we are. There’s another one. Another man who’s freed his slave woman and married her. And he himself had been a slave. And I’ll come back to that. It may be that Dasumius, who put up the previous gravestone, was a freed slave. Next one. Next one. There is another one: a slave who’s been freed and he’s freed his own slave and married her. And again, there is another one. Oh, can— Yes, this is an important one. This is a man from the upper classes. Quite an important priest. Fell in love with his slave woman, freed her and married her. Okay. Humble Sailor’s Gravestone [16:39] There’s a fairly humble sailor’s gravestone from again the 2nd century. He was an Egyptian who had been a sailor at the naval base in Misenum in central Italy. Again, he’d fallen in love with a slave woman, freed her and married her, and she had put up the gravestone. Next. So this is just a random trawl of the British Museum which is one of the great—it’s one of the great museums of the world. But if you go to the Metropolitan Museum, if you go to the Vatican, the Capitoline Museums in Rome, if you go to the Louvre in Paris, you’ll see the same. You’ll see gravestones which record one of two things, sometimes both of two things: that a master has freed his slave woman and married her. And quite often the master had himself been a slave and then he had possessed slaves of his own and married one. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of these gravestones dug up from all over the Mediterranean world. Sources of Slaves Beyond War [17:50] Now, that shows you a different side to slavery. Again, you mustn’t assume that it was general. Most slaves, I’ll repeat, lived and worked under the lash until they stopped living. But there is an important subset of these slaves who did not die in slavery. And a further question arises. Many of the gravestones that we’ve dug up from all over the Mediterranean world were put up by or to freedmen. They were freed slaves who had done well enough to afford a grave, to afford a funeral with a gravestone. And one question is: where did these slaves come from? The general belief is that Roman slavery overwhelmingly was put together from prisoners of war. And yes, there is a great deal of evidence for that. And the slaves who are working in the fields and the quarries, they were mostly prisoners of war. Statistics on War Captives as Slaves [19:03] And there’s some statistics on that slide. Scipio Aemilianus when he finished off Carthage in 146 BC flooded the market with 60,000 Carthaginian slaves. Marius in about 100 BC when he saw the first Germanic invasions: he took 140,000 prisoners who ended up in the slave markets. Pompey and Caesar together enslaved more than a million Asiatics and Gauls. And there were times when slaves were very cheap and when slaves were freely available. They were in abundant supply. Mystery of Later Greek Slaves [19:42] But many of the slaves, many of the former slaves whose gravestones we now—you can now see in museums—these were Greeks. And they’re from the second and third centuries AD. That is several hundred years after there had been any wars fought by Rome in Greece or the East. There were no Roman campaigns in Greece in 100 AD or in 200 AD. Where did all of these Greek slaves come from? Sometimes they may have been imprisoned for debt. Sometimes they may have been enslaved for debt or for something else. But the very large number of Greek former slaves from the more peaceful days of the Roman Empire, they could not possibly have been prisoners of war. And there’s a limit to the number of people who can have been enslaved for debt. So where did they come from? And here can we move on please? Contractual Slavery for Social Mobility [20:44] Here we come to the idea of contractual slavery. There is limited evidence but then our evidence from the ancient world is limited. There is limited evidence that selling yourself into slavery was an instrument of social mobility. There were many occupations in the ancient world which were only open to slaves. If for example you wanted to be a vilicus, the head of a large household, or a dispensator, or if you wanted to be one of the head accountants in a wealthy household, those positions were closed to free people. They had to be undertaken by slaves for various customary and legal reasons. And so if you wanted to be eligible for a number of rather well-paid, rather generally rewarding occupations, you had to be a slave. And it does seem to be the case that many people sold themselves into slavery for the purposes of social advancement. Slavery as Ancient Equivalent of Education Financing [22:09] Indeed, I could go a little further. Nowadays, if you are poor and young and bright and you want to be a doctor or a lawyer or an accountant or something like that, there are scholarships. There are student loans. There are all sorts of provisions for bright young people from the poorer classes to rise. None of this existed in the ancient world. There was no means of borrowing to invest in your own human capital. There were no apprenticeships. It does look as if the institution of slavery was twisted and repurposed in those cases to do the work that nowadays is done by scholarships, by student loans, and by apprenticeships. And so what you could do is you could sell yourself into slavery to a master who would then oversee your training. You would repay your master’s investment in you by working as his slave for a certain length of time. Seven years appears to have been the customary time. And then you’d be freed. And although you wouldn’t just walk away from your master, you would remain tied to him through the bonds of patron and client, but you would now be a free and independent Roman citizen, and you could get on with your life, and when you died, you could afford one of the gravestones that we’ve seen in the British Museum. Legal Evidence for Voluntary Enslavement [23:58] And so it does look as though contractual slavery existed and that it was not simply an eccentricity but it performed a vital economic function. If you can move on. If you could move on. Move on. Ah, I don’t seem to have the—I don’t seem to have the references from the Roman lawyers on this, but you’ll find all through the various commentaries on Roman law produced by lawyers the observation that it is possible for free people to sell themselves into slavery. The main concern of the authorities was that the contracts were freely entered into and that they were not fraudulent or coerced. You could sell yourself into slavery in the Roman world. Slave Markets and Voluntary Sales [25:02] Indeed, although a slide I haven’t shown you is a rather—again a rather risqué French painting with lots of bare flesh in it—I have—there is a slide on there showing a Roman slave market. It doesn’t look as though Roman slave markets were entirely places to which people were dragged and sold under threat of the lash. It does seem that sometimes people would voluntarily stand on the block and say, “I want to sell myself into slavery so that I can become a hairdresser and be set up a business in Alexandria or Rome or Carthage. Who will undertake the expenses of transporting me to these rather lush cities and the expense of training me?” And it does look as though a bidding process went on and that the winner would get a slave for a contracted length of time, a contracted length of service. Example of Antonius Felix [26:11] Oh, and there’s a—there’s a nice picture. Acts of the Apostles. When Paul got himself into trouble in Jerusalem and went off to Caesarea, he stood trial before Felix. Now Felix, the procurator of Judea, had been one of the slaves of the emperor Claudius. He was freed. He became an important member of the government of the emperor Claudius and he continued to do well under the reign of Nero and he was given a dispensation. He was allowed to become a knight. He was allowed to become a senator and he was eventually sent out as procurator of Judea. That is a very senior governing position in the Roman Empire. He was rather corrupt, but then who wasn’t? And he is the man who tried St. Paul. Indeed, he married into the family of King Herod. So here is a Greek slave who went from slavery right up to the top and his family is still evidenced in Rome 300 years later. So it was a very successful family. How did Felix become a slave in the first century AD when the Greek world was in total and long-term peace? A good question. Had he sold himself into slavery so that he could get a head start in life? Very difficult to say because we don’t have enough evidence. But we do have enough evidence to say that this does seem to have happened in a certain number of cases and it may have been much more general. Gaining Citizenship Through Brief Enslavement [28:18] And the last thing I would say is that—again it’s—we know that it happened but it’s hard to put your finger on exact cases. Remember if you are the slave of a Roman citizen and you are freed, you become a Roman citizen. Now, until the edict of 212, when every free inhabitant of the empire was given Roman citizenship, getting Roman citizenship was rather difficult. It was a rather random process. And so if you were a provincial in Syria, in Egypt, in Gaul, in Spain, wherever, and you wanted Roman citizenship which carried a number of very important privileges, how could you get it? You couldn’t apply for it. You might be able to bribe it out of somebody, but there was a much easier way to get it, and that is to sell yourself into slavery to a Roman citizen who would immediately free you, thereby making you a Roman citizen. There are some surviving writings by Roman lawyers who say this is a most disreputable practice and Cicero sneers at it but it happened. How often it happened we can’t say. Conclusion: Nuanced View of Ancient Slavery [29:42] So what would I say as a conclusion? It is this: that when you make judgments about the past, it’s probably best not to make them blanket judgments. I’m not defending ancient slavery. I’m not saying that it was a just institution. I would never minimize the horrors of ancient slavery. I’ll say for the fourth time, if you were to be a Roman slave, the overwhelming likelihood is that you would work under the lash until you died in your late 20s or early 30s. Beside that, however, you must accept that there is something about human nature that is able to turn the most awful institutions into instruments of self-advancement and that the institution may serve an important economic function. It is possible for the worst institutions to be repurposed into something that is useful and something that is seen as advantageous to the people who are within those institutions. And whenever you think of ancient slavery, you should bear in mind that there was an important subset of the population of the Roman Empire for whom voluntary enslavement was a vehicle of social advancement. In the case of Felix, who ended as procurator of Judea, it was like winning the lottery. He went from being a nobody in some provincial Greek town to procurator of Judea to membership of the Senate and to the establishment of a family which was still wealthy and important and respected 300 years after his death. So the past—the past is a strange place and the more you look at it the stranger it is. I don’t think there’s anything very libertarian about that but that is what I have to say this morning. So thank you very much everybody. [Applause] [32:11]    

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 295. These introductory remarks are from the recently-concluded 19th annual PFS 2025 Annual Meeting (Sep. 18–23, 2025, Bodrum, Turkey). Gülçin Imre Hoppe (Turkey) & Hans-Hermann Hoppe (Germany/Turkey): Welcome and Introductions. Transcript and shownotes below. Other talks appear on the Property and Freedom Podcast. Other videos may also be found at the PFS 2025 Youtube Playlist. Grok shownotes Show Notes: PFS 20th Anniversary Opening Remarks Video: Property and Freedom Society 20th Anniversary – Opening Speakers: Gülçin Imre Hoppe & Hans-Hermann Hoppe Location: Bodrum, Turkey [0:00 – Introduction and Sound Check] Brief audio/video test before the session begins. Music plays as the audience settles. [0:22 – Welcoming the Audience] Gülçin Imre Hoppe warmly greets attendees: Acknowledges long-distance travelers from Thailand, Guatemala, Japan, and beyond. Apologizes in advance for any logistical mishaps (e.g., kitchen oversights). Jokes: “Be glad you’re not eating onions instead of aubergines.” Expresses gratitude for guests enduring travel challenges to attend the second stop on their journey. [1:44 – Celebrating 20 Years of PFS] Marks 20 years of the Property and Freedom Society (PFS). Playful comparison: Gülçin shows a photo of Hans-Hermann from the first conference. Grandkids’ reaction: “That’s not my opa!” Audience laughter and applause. [2:50 – PFS as a Labor of Love] Hans-Hermann Hoppe reflects: PFS has become an institution and a brand — but with no institute, no offices, no employees. Entirely a shoestring operation and labor of love. Organizers receive no compensation; supported only by a few volunteer helpers. [3:49 – Hotel Operations During the Conference] The venue normally functions as a small bed-and-breakfast. For PFS, extra staff are hired from outside — a rare annual event. Normal hotel service is far more modest than the conference experience. [4:37 – Practical Announcements] Enjoy your week in Bodrum. Boat Tour Sign-Up (Monday): Write your name + number of participants on the list ASAP. Needed to charter the correct number of boats. Delays in sign-up can cause complications. [5:25 – Reception Correction and First Speaker] Program error: Reception is tonight at the pool area, not Saturday. Introduces Sean Gabb as the first speaker. Session closes with applause. Key Takeaway: The Property and Freedom Society’s 20th conference is a grassroots, volunteer-driven tradition — sustained by passion, not profit — bringing together a global community in Bodrum for ideas, fellowship, and (hopefully) no onion-aubergine mix-ups. Next: Sean Gabb’s opening lecture. Grok transcript [0:00 – Introduction and Sound Check] Gülçin Imre Hoppe: Are you seeing us? Some more test, test. Gülçin Imre Hoppe: Can you look at us? Can you hear us? Gülçin Imre Hoppe: Quiet, please. [Music] [0:22 – Welcoming the Audience] Gülçin Imre Hoppe: So, who first? Gülçin Imre Hoppe: Oh, okay. So dear old friends, dear new friends, we have here people who come from very far places. They have to travel very long hours. We have you from Thailand. We have some very young couple from Guatemala. We have— Where are those? Okay, that kind of thing can happen. So you have to forgive me. I also have to overlook the kitchen and so on. So mistakes can happen. So be happy that you don’t eat onions instead of aubergines—it could also happen. So welcome. We are very happy to host you this year as well. And also some far traveler from Japan. I forgot you and everybody. It is always difficult to travel and here this is your second stop. So thank you for going through all the difficulties and arriving in Bodrum at our conference. [1:44 – Celebrating 20 Years of PFS] Gülçin Imre Hoppe: We are doing this since 20 years [Music] [Applause] and you can see I stayed beautiful and energetic and everything as usual. Women tend to stay always beautiful. But when we started, this was my husband. [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [2:27 – Handover and Grandkids’ Reaction] Gülçin Imre Hoppe: So I leave you with my— I should mention that when we showed that to my grandkids, they said, “That’s not my opa.” So you can continue. [2:50 – PFS as a Labor of Love] Hans-Hermann Hoppe: I wanted to mention that in these 20 years of course the PFS has become some sort of institution. And we have acquired a brand name I would think, but we have no institute behind us. We have no offices. We have no employees. This is not a money-making operation for us. We don’t get any compensation for this. This has been just a labor of love as far as we are concerned. We just had a few little helpers help out here and there, but as I said, this is a shoestring operation. [3:49 – Hotel Operations During the Conference] Hans-Hermann Hoppe: You should also be made aware of the fact, for instance, that the hotel operates normally more as a bed-and-breakfast hotel with a small kitchen staff. For a conference such as this, we have to hire a substantial number of people from outside who you see standing around helping you, serving you and all the rest of it. So this is for the hotel a very unusual time because things like this only happen once a year. The normal operations of the hotel are far more modest than what you will be offered here. [4:37 – Practical Announcements] Hans-Hermann Hoppe: In any case, I hope you enjoy this week here—close to a week—in Bodrum. And I should also make you aware, very importantly, that you have to enlist on the boat tour list. Write down your name and how many people participate on the boat trip in order for us to charter the right amount of boats for the boat trip on Monday. So please do that as soon as possible because that sometimes causes certain complications to hire the appropriate boat number. So, thank you very much. [5:25 – Reception Correction and First Speaker] Hans-Hermann Hoppe: And with that, I give the word to Sean Gabb as our first speaker. Huh. Oh, I should mention that on the program somehow a slight screw-up happened. The reception will be tonight, not on Saturday, but tonight we have a reception at the pool area. So thank you again and please, Sean. [Applause]

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 294. Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Concluding Remarks, Tributes, and Announcements. This lecture is from the 2012 meeting of the Property and Freedom Society. PFS 2012 Playlist. It was not included previously in the podcast since the video had been lost and I had assumed the audio had also been lost. However, I recently discovered the audio files for two of the speeches as well as Professor Hoppe’s Introductory and Concluding remarks had been preserved, namely those listed below. They are podcast here for the first time. Hans-Hermann Hoppe (Germany/Turkey), Welcome and Introductions Karl-Peter Schwarz (Austria), Between Restitution and Re-Expropriation: Desocialization in Eastern Europe Benjamin Marks (Australia), On H.L. Mencken as a Libertarian Model Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Concluding Remarks, Tributes, and Announcements  

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 293. Benjamin Marks (Australia), On H.L. Mencken as a Libertarian Model. This lecture is from the 2012 meeting of the Property and Freedom Society. PFS 2012 Playlist. Text of article on which the speech was based is below; docx; pdf. Speech. Transcript also below. Grok summary of article: H.L. Mencken’s conservatism, as explored in Benjamin Marks’ essay, is a defining trait that sets him apart as a libertarian thinker who held low expectations for societal reform. Unlike typical conservatism, Mencken’s brand is rooted in a deep skepticism of government and religion, viewing them as historically optimistic overreaches that clash with true conservative doubt. He saw many societal problems as insoluble or unlikely to be addressed due to human folly, yet found entertainment in the pretentiousness of events and the futility of reform efforts. His libertarianism was not driven by a desire to convert others but by a commitment to truth, expressed through sharp, clear prose that prioritized self-expression over activism. Mencken’s approach was neither nihilistic nor despairing; he embraced the world’s flaws with a light-hearted cynicism, finding joy in critiquing its absurdities without expecting change. He believed people’s gullibility and resistance to reason made libertarian ideals unattainable in the near term, a view reinforced by his observations of failed revolutions and reforms that often worsened conditions. Marks argues that Mencken’s consistent, principled stance—free of moral indignation—offers libertarians a radical perspective: not as a competing utopianism, but as a clear-eyed rejection of romantic solutions. His influence, though significant in literature and culture, never popularized libertarianism, underscoring his realism about human nature and societal inertia. Grok summary of transcript: Two-Paragraph Summary for Show Notes 0:00–9:00: The speaker begins by expressing gratitude for being invited to the Property and Freedom Society conference, acknowledging the late Neville Kennard, a fervent supporter who passed away in June. Kennard, despite his frail condition, remained passionate about libertarianism, wearing a Rothbard “Enemy of the State” shirt during the speaker’s visit. The speaker introduces the topic, “H.L. Mencken as a Libertarian Model,” contrasting Mencken’s approach with Murray Rothbard’s. Mencken, unlike Rothbard, had no expectations of influencing society, viewing politics as entertainment and government as pathetic yet amusing. His pessimism, rooted in reason, led him to describe himself as a “specialist in human depravity,” focusing on diagnosing societal flaws rather than proposing solutions. This perspective, the speaker argues, is more realistic than Rothbard’s optimistic belief in a long-term libertarian revolution, as outlined in Rothbard’s 1965 essay, which the speaker dismisses as clichéd romanticism. 9:01–19:38: The speaker critiques libertarian optimism by addressing common arguments, such as the internet’s role in spreading libertarian ideas or the belief that economic crises will awaken people to libertarianism. Mencken’s responses, as interpreted by the speaker, highlight counterpoints: easy access to statist propaganda negates the internet’s benefits, and crises often lead to more government intervention. The speaker also challenges the romanticism of Albert J. Nock’s concept of the “remnant,” quoting Nock to show his own pessimism about societal change. Marcus Aurelius is cited to underscore the futility of expecting posthumous recognition. The speaker concludes by suggesting that libertarians can still find joy in critiquing government absurdities, as evidenced by the lively PFS speakers. For optimists, the speaker humorously recommends following Gina Rinehart, a wealthy Australian secessionist, as a potential catalyst for libertarian progress, while emphasizing Mencken’s view that libertarianism is about personal enjoyment, not necessarily societal change. It was not included previously in the podcast since the video had been lost and I had assumed the audio had also been lost. However, I recently discovered the audio files for two of the speeches as well as Professor Hoppe’s Introductory and Concluding remarks had been preserved, namely those listed below. They are podcast here for the first time. Hans-Hermann Hoppe (Germany/Turkey), Welcome and Introductions Karl-Peter Schwarz (Austria), Between Restitution and Re-Expropriation: Desocialization in Eastern Europe Benjamin Marks (Australia), On H.L. Mencken as a Libertarian Model Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Concluding Remarks, Tributes, and Announcements Grok summary of transcript: Detailed Segment-by-Segment Summary for Show Notes Segment 1: Introduction and Tribute to Neville Kennard (0:00–3:00) Description: The speaker opens with gratitude for speaking at the Property and Freedom Society conference, noting their unfamiliarity among the distinguished lineup. They pay tribute to Neville Kennard, a libertarian supporter who died in June, recalling his enthusiasm despite being bedbound, wearing a Rothbard “Enemy of the State” shirt. The speaker shares an anecdote about visiting Kennard to recount last year’s PFS events, highlighting his passion for the society. Summary: This segment sets a personal tone, honoring Kennard’s dedication to libertarianism and establishing the speaker’s connection to the PFS community. It foreshadows the talk’s focus on libertarian perspectives by referencing Rothbard early on. Segment 2: Mencken’s Libertarian Model vs. Rothbard’s Optimism (3:01–9:00) Description: The speaker introduces the talk’s theme, “H.L. Mencken as a Libertarian Model,” contrasting Mencken’s lack of ambition to influence with Rothbard’s optimistic vision of a libertarian revolution. Mencken’s quotes reveal his view of politics as entertainment and government as “pathetic, obscene, and criminal” but not intolerable, describing himself as a “specialist in human depravity.” The speaker critiques Rothbard’s 1965 essay advocating long-term optimism as romantic nonsense, arguing Mencken’s reasoned pessimism is more justified. Summary: This segment establishes Mencken’s unique libertarian approach—detached, observational, and pessimistic—against Rothbard’s hopeful activism. It frames the talk’s central argument that Mencken’s realism is a more grounded model for libertarians. Segment 3: Critiquing Romantic Libertarian Arguments (9:01–12:00) Description: The speaker addresses common libertarian arguments for optimism, such as the internet’s role in spreading ideas, economic crises leading to libertarian awakenings, and historical victories like slavery’s abolition. Mencken’s counterpoints, as voiced by the speaker, highlight flaws: statist propaganda overshadows libertarian outreach, crises increase state power, and slavery’s abolition doesn’t negate ongoing forms of coercion. Examples like the minimum wage’s global rise and Rand Paul’s less principled stance compared to Ron Paul underscore the difficulty of libertarian progress. Summary: This segment systematically dismantles optimistic libertarian narratives, using Mencken’s lens to argue that systemic barriers and human nature thwart significant change, reinforcing the speaker’s alignment with Mencken’s pessimism. Segment 4: Debunking Nock’s Remnant and Historical Perspectives (12:01–16:00) Description: The speaker challenges the romanticism of Albert J. Nock’s “remnant” concept, quoting Nock to reveal his own doubts about long-term influence. Marcus Aurelius is cited to critique the hope of posthumous recognition, and Mencken’s similar views question posterity’s judgment. Extensive Nock quotes emphasize his belief that societal improvement is nearly impossible due to human limitations and statism’s entrenched power, suggesting revolutions merely replace one form of oppression with another. Summary: This segment deepens the critique of libertarian optimism by showing that even Nock, a revered figure, shared Mencken’s pessimism. It underscores the futility of expecting systemic change, aligning with Mencken’s detached enjoyment of societal flaws. Segment 5: Enjoying Libertarianism Without Expectations (16:01–19:38) Description: The speaker argues that libertarians can find joy in critiquing government absurdities without needing to influence others, citing the lively PFS speakers like Jeffrey Tucker as evidence. Marcus Aurelius and Nock are referenced again to highlight the spectacle of human folly as inherently entertaining. For optimists, the speaker humorously suggests following Gina Rinehart, a wealthy secessionist, as a potential libertarian catalyst. The talk concludes with Mencken’s view that libertarianism is about personal enjoyment, not necessarily progress, encouraging attendees to revel in the PFS experience. Summary: This final segment ties the talk together, advocating for Mencken’s approach of finding amusement in libertarian critique without expecting societal change. It offers a lighthearted nod to optimists while reinforcing the core message of intellectual enjoyment over activism. Note: The segment lengths vary (3–7 minutes) to align with natural shifts in the talk’s content, ensuring each block covers a cohesive topic or argument. body { font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: 1.6; max-width: 800px; margin: 0 auto; padding: 20px; background-color: #f9f9f9; } h1 { font-size: 24px; text-align: center; margin-bottom: 10px; } h2 { font-size: 20px; margin-top: 30px; margin-bottom: 15px; border-bottom: 1px solid #ccc; } h3 { font-size: 18px; margin-top: 20px; margin-bottom: 10px; } p { margin: 0 0 15px; text-align: justify; } blockquote { margin: 20px 0; padding: 10px 20px; background-color: #f0f0f0; border-left: 5px solid #666; font-style: italic; } .author { text-align: center; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 20px; } .footnote-ref { color: #0066cc; text-decoration: none; font-size: 0.8em; vertical-align: super; } .footnote-ref:hover { text-decoration: underline; } .footnotes { margin-top: 40px; padding-top: 20px; border-top: 1px solid #ccc; } .footnote { margin-bottom: 10px; font-size: 0.9em; } .footnote-back { color: #0066cc; text-decoration: none; margin-left: 5px; } .footnote-back:hover { text-decoration: underline; } em { font-style: italic; } Mencken’s Conservatism by Benjamin Marks, Economics.org.au editor-in-chief I. Abstract Why did H.L. Mencken, the most eloquent and popular of libertarians, have the lowest of expectations for libertarian reform? One might think that grappling with this question would be a prerequisite of libertarian activism. One might also think that libertarians would show Mencken — whom they hold in high regard — the respect of dealing with his reasoning, just as they do to statists — whom they do not hold in high regard. Mencken found such situations amusing, predictable and inoperable. II. Introduction and Overview This essay emphasises Mencken’s conservatism above his other characteristics, as it is his primary distinguishing feature and the main reason he is misunderstood. His libertarianism — which overlaps with his conservatism — is also misunderstood, but plenty of literature is available defending libertarianism, whereas there is comparatively little intentionally defending conservatism. Rarely is conservatism even acknowledged as having anything to do with reason, as something that could be right or wrong, justified or unjustified, probable or improbable. Usually it is uncritically dismissed as skeptical, iconoclastic, irreverent, curmudgeonly, eccentric, outspoken, opinionated, independent, sardonic, pessimistic, cynical, bitter and dated. Mencken is described in those terms — which are more comparative and superficial than descriptive and explanatory — far more often than he is described as correct and critical, or, for that matter, as incorrect and uncritical. Mencken is not just different. He does not merely have a valid point of view. His conservatism is not a blind faith in pessimism; it was not of immaculate conception. It is not pessimystic. His viewpoint can be analysed, not only to compare his conclusions with your own, but to compare his reasoning too. Mencken was a conservative. He doubted the goodness, honesty and truth of all government and any religion. Despite the difference between this and what is usually called conservatism, this is the true conservatism. After all, government and religion, being proactive, hope-fuelled and high-expectation responses to whatever the situation happened to be at the time of their founding, are merely examples of historical anticonservatism. In addition to a critical predisposition and lack of faith, Mencken’s conservatism is also an unashamed appreciation of the entertainment provided by: (1) the pretentiousness of both historical and current events; and (2) the hollowness of attempted improvements, including those that will fail due to irrevocable economic laws — that is, socialistic interventions into the market —, and those that will fail due to unpopularity — that is, reforms that would work, if only the populace were not so stubbornly stupid. To rephrase and reframe, Mencken believed: (a) that many problems are insoluble; (b) that many other problems have solutions that would work, but are unlikely to be adopted; (c) that “problems” are often misidentified, or exaggerated in both severity and urgency; (d) that “solutions” are rarely as useful as their believers claim; (e) that if people have free will, they rarely use it wisely and are predictably corruptible, gullible and unreflective; (f) that there will always be “do-gooders” who try to do the impossible and unlikely, and are blindly enthusiastic about their chances; (g) that these “do-gooders” often sink to the level they try to get others to rise above; (h) that not much can be done about these “do-gooders,” and it is usually best not to; (i) that all this has been the case in the past and will be so in the future; and (j) that all this is fun to witness and proclaim. Mencken’s fervour was this-worldly. His cynicism was light-hearted and deeply-felt. His pessimism was upbeat and vigilant. His paranoia was fuelled by neither hope nor fear. His crusade against error and injustice was devoid of envy. He was passionate and questioning and resigned and satisfied. This position is almost always confused with what it is not. Even those who hold such beliefs often find explaining themselves, or keeping silent, too difficult and inconvenient, requiring more intelligence than they possess or independence than they can muster. Acceptance concerns them more than honesty or education. They categorise their behaviour using categories and clichés they have come across, rather than their own immediate sincere reflections. Lacking the language necessary to express themselves or the discipline necessary to be silent until they find the right words, they either cease interest altogether in what gave them these difficulties, or classify themselves as something they are not. If they do the latter, they often change their beliefs until they share all the views of the group that they, originally incorrectly, classed themselves with. Consider, for example, the descriptions in the previous paragraph, how rarely you find the terms therein collocated, your initial reaction — which may have been that they are contradictory – and your reappraisal — which may be that it actually makes surprisingly good sense. Mencken’s inventive language, ducking and weaving of unhelpful idioms, and enlarged vocabulary, do much to explain why his beliefs go beyond, say, the professed faith in democracy, whatever that means, of others; and why his prose is, as he said, “clear and alive.” For example: The imbeciles who have printed acres of comment on my books have seldom noticed the chief character of my style. It is that I write with almost scientific precision — that my meaning is never obscure. The ignorant have often complained that my vocabulary is beyond them, but that is simply because my ideas cover a wider range than theirs do. Once they have consulted the dictionary they always know exactly what I intend to say. I am as far as any writer can get from the muffled sonorities of, say, John Dewey.[1] III. Mencken’s Motives and Expectations In this essay, I quote many passages from Mencken’s writings, not despite their similarities, but because of them. Where I find different eloquent passages where he makes the same point, I include them all, because that itself makes many a point. Specifically, it provides evidence for these controversial and unpopular beliefs: (1) that a critical, cynical and pessimistic person can sincerely enjoy holding and expressing critical, cynical and pessimistic beliefs; (2) that such beliefs need be no disincentive to productivity or obstacle to satisfaction; (3) that a low opinion is justified of the reading public, including attempts to educate them; and (4) that a low opinion is also justified of the government the reading public is part of and supports. Mencken was published prolifically in popular places, yet most of his beliefs were still misunderstood. Even if his aim was not primarily to educate the masses, critics will have a tough time finding where his low opinion of the masses is wrong and what he could have done better to educate them — for example, could his prose have had more appeal, bite, clarity, directness or eloquence, and could he have repeated his viewpoint more? Mencken believed that readers didn’t only need to be given a message once, but that it was unlikely they would get it at all. He repeatedly made the same observations simply for the sake of art, habit and amusement. He wrote on pedagogical, political and moral issues without any pedagogical, political or moral purpose. He was a critic of novels, but he never wrote one. He was a critic of America’s defence policy, but he was not a German spy. He was a critic of Presidents, but he never became one. His objectivity made him suspect, because reason is rarely comprehended, and is not represented by any political party, job description, university qualification or cultural group. It also explains why many people failed to see that, despite never writing a novel, running for office or launching a revolution, he still had many good ideas for those who did. Leading by example means your followers are looking at the back of your head. Mencken faced up to people, and told them what he was thinking. Mencken was a libertarian theorist of the highest rank, but only an incidental activist. He did not believe that he could be a successful activist, and it was not one of his primary aims. He advocated libertarianism because that was what he believed to be the truth, not because he thought it was attainable, or something people wanted to, needed to or should hear. More than an academic, activist or job-holder, he considered himself an artist or animal, someone “diseased” with the thirst for truth and aesthetic sense.[2] Here is some autobiographical insight from Mencken: [A]n author, like any other so-called artist, is a man in whom the normal vanity of all men is so vastly exaggerated that he finds it a sheer impossibility to hold it in … Such is the thing called self-expression … The vanity of man is quite illimitable. In every act of life, however trivial, and particularly in every act which pertains to his profession, he takes all the pride of a baby learning to walk. It may seem incredible but it is nevertheless a fact that I myself get great delight out of writing such banal paragraphs as this one.[3] I have never tried to convert anyone to anything. Like any other man bawling from a public stamp I have occasionally made a convert; in fact, in seasons when my embouchure has been good I have made a great many. But not deliberately, not with any satisfaction … I am, in fact, the complete anti-Messiah, and detest converts as much as I detest missionaries. My writings, such as they are, have had only one purpose: to attain for H.L. Mencken that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk.[4] IV. Mencken’s Conservatism and Christianity In perhaps the best distillation of Mencken’s conservatism, he suggested everyone live not quite sober and not quite drunk, but “gently stewed.” He explained what this solution entails: Putting a brake upon all the qualities which enable us to get on in the world and shine before our fellows — for example, combativeness, shrewdness, diligence, ambition —, it releases the qualities which mellow us and make our fellows love us — for example, amiability, generosity, toleration, humor, sympathy. A man who has taken aboard two or three cocktails is less competent than he was before to steer a battleship down the Ambrose Channel, or to cut off a leg, or to draw a deed of trust, or to conduct Bach’s B minor mass, but he is immensely more competent to entertain a dinner party, or to admire a pretty girl, or to hear Bach’s B minor mass.[21] Footnotes [1] H.L. Mencken, Minority Report (Baltimore, Maryland: The John Hopkins University Press, 2006), p. 293. [2] H.L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy (New York: Vintage, 1982), pp. 442-49; see also H.L. Mencken, Prejudices: Fourth Series (New York: Octagon Books, 1985), pp. 269-77. A note on my referencing of Mencken: Much, but not all, of his work has been reprinted in many different essay versions and compilations. I only reference one location for each specific passage, based on my estimate of: (1) its most popular current location; and (2) where the best relevant discussion is. The Chrestomathies often include only part of a larger discussion, sometimes excising the best bits. I may reference and quote multiple locations for where Mencken makes the same point, but only ever one location when he makes the same point in the same way, as per the two criteria explained in the previous sentence. [3] A Mencken Chrestomathy, p. 466; and H.L. Mencken, A Second Mencken Chrestomathy, ed. Terry Teachout (New York: Knopf, 1995), p. 489; see also H.L. Mencken, In Defense of Women (New York: Knopf, 1927), pp. 77-78. [4] A Second Mencken Chrestomathy, pp. 483-84, 491. The second half of the paragraph Mencken wrote for use in his obituary. [21] A Mencken Chrestomathy, pp. 388-89. *** TRANSCRIPT 0:00 looking through the amazing list of 0:01 speakers for this conference the only 0:03 name I don’t recognize is my own So it’s 0:06 a great privilege to be here Um and 0:09 thanks also to the late Neville Kennard 0:11 who was a big supporter and fan of the 0:12 Propriy and Freedom Society Um and died 0:15 in June this year Uh for a while at the 0:18 end he was bedbound at his country 0:20 property He was quite weak and frail and 0:22 surrounded with sheets and blankets But 0:24 when I came in he set up to see me and 0:27 the blankets fell away and he was 0:29 wearing his Rothbard enemy of the state 0:31 shirt Um Nev had to cancel his 0:34 attendance at last year’s PFS meeting 0:37 for medical reasons So the morning after 0:39 I arrived back in Australia after last 0:41 year’s PFS I drove down to his country 0:44 property to tell him what he missed Um 0:47 he invited me for breakfast but you know 0:49 we had so much to talk about that I 0:50 stayed for lunch and dinner and uh you 0:53 know all talking about all of you and he 0:55 was very interested and so now that he 0:58 has an even better excuse not to be here 1:00 I I guess I will have to report back to 1:02 him at even greater length Um also I’m 1:06 very sorry that Richard Lynn could not 1:08 be here I was uh very much looking 1:10 forward to his speech 1:13 Now the title of my talk is HL Menin as 1:16 a libertarian model What makes Menin as 1:19 a libertarian model so different from 1:22 other libertarian models like Rothbart 1:24 is that Menin had no expectation 1:26 whatsoever of being 1:29 influential But this did not in any way 1:31 stunt Menin’s productivity and passion 1:33 as a libertarian theorist and 1:35 stirer Because to quote Menin quote “An 1:39 author like any other so-called artist 1:42 is a man in whom the normal vanity of 1:44 all men is so vastly exaggerated that he 1:47 finds it a sheer impossibility to hold 1:49 it in such as the thing called 1:51 self-exression The vanity of man is 1:54 quite illimitable In every act of life 1:56 however trivial and particularly in 1:58 every act which pertains to his 1:59 profession he takes all the pride of a 2:01 baby learning to walk It may seem 2:04 incredible but it is nevertheless a fact 2:06 that I myself get great delight out of 2:08 writing such banal paragraphs as this 2:10 one End quote So men considered politics 2:14 a genre of entertainment and he 2:16 considered the corruption of politics 2:17 merely as ad breaks He thought 2:20 government pathetic obscene and criminal 2:22 but not hideous intolerable or in 2:24 unsightly As Menin said of his 2:27 libertarianism quote “My business is not 2:30 prognosis but diagnosis I am not engaged 2:33 in therapeutics but in pathology I am 2:36 not in fact protesting against anything 2:39 I am simply describing something not 2:41 even in sorrow but simply as a 2:43 specialist in human 2:45 depravity.” Such spectacles do not make 2:48 me indignant They simply interest me 2:50 immensely as a pathologist say is 2:53 interested by a beautiful gastric ulcer 2:56 It is perhaps a strange taste that is in 2:58 a country of reformers but there it is 3:00 end quote So the phrase specialist in 3:03 human depravity is quite brilliant I 3:06 think I mean think back to all the 3:07 speakers we have heard over the past few 3:09 days I think it is more descriptive to 3:11 call them all specialists in human 3:13 depravity rather than historians or 3:15 economists or journalists or or whatever 3:19 Um so Menin’s low expectations are I 3:23 think are much more justified than 3:25 Rothbart’s high expectations of future 3:28 long-term libertarian revolution uh or 3:32 pro progress In the 1965 essay The 3:36 Prospects of Liberty in the first issue 3:38 of Rothbard’s journal Left and Right 3:40 Mari Rothbud writes quote “While the 3:44 short-run prospects for liberty at home 3:46 and abroad may seem dim the proper 3:49 attitude for the libertarian to take is 3:52 that of unquenchable long-run optimism 3:55 For the libertarian the main task of the 3:58 present epoch is to cast off his 4:00 needless and debilitating pessimism to 4:03 set his sights on long run victory and 4:05 to set out on the road to its 4:08 attainment.” Now to me this is the most 4:11 cliched romantic rubbish It is just like 4:14 saying that positive thinking helps cure 4:16 cancer In fact it’s even worse than that 4:19 because Rothbart is saying that things 4:21 will get better in the long run even 4:23 though they won’t in the short term And 4:26 even worse it shows that Rothbide 4:27 totally ignored the fact that Menin’s 4:29 pessimism was entirely based in reason 4:32 It was not a baseless attitude Um 4:35 incidentally as an aside all men’s 4:38 biographers have failed to acknowledge 4:40 this central fact 4:41 Also however what Rothbud said makes 4:44 perfect sense If your aim in being a 4:46 libertarian activist is 4:48 exclusively to persuade and influence 4:51 others if persuading and influencing is 4:53 your exclusive aim then you must be 4:55 optimistic that you will persuade and 4:57 influence Otherwise you would not be a 4:59 libertarian activist But why would you 5:02 be optimistic that you can persuade and 5:04 influence 5:05 others here are some common answers that 5:08 many romantic libertarians use 5:10 accompanied by manennian 5:12 response responses Um so romantic 5:16 libertarians like to say that the 5:18 internet age is different because now 5:20 everyone has everyone has such easy 5:22 access to libertarian 5:24 propaganda But menians think that is 5:27 more than canceled out by there also 5:29 being easy access to status 5:31 propaganda Um romantic libertarians like 5:34 to say that government inter 5:36 intervention has become so extreme that 5:38 the economic situation will result in 5:40 people finally seeing the light and 5:42 becoming libertarians But menians think 5:44 it is more likely that hyperinflations 5:46 and depressions result in increased 5:48 government intervention and more 5:50 misplaced blame on on capitalism Um 5:54 romantic libertarians like to say that 5:56 slavery was abolished even though the 5:58 so-called realists said we should just 6:01 regulate the slave trade So they use 6:03 this to show that we should be radical 6:04 in abolishing taxes government 6:06 departments etc as they amount to forced 6:08 labor which is slavery But do you know 6:11 what this argument also says it admits 6:14 that actually we still have slavery 6:17 So 6:17 uh and like um so the radicals did not 6:22 succeed Um but I still like to use that 6:25 argument I think it’s a you know great 6:27 argument But 6:28 just in fact in the latest edition of 6:31 capitalism.hk which is on the book table 6:34 I uh I feature Robert Higgs using that 6:37 argument Um 6:39 uh and romantic libertarians like to say 6:42 that the minimum wage is a great example 6:44 of economic reasoning and the best way 6:46 to to successfully introduce people to 6:48 libertarian thought But what the case of 6:51 the minimum wage also proves is that an 6:53 ever growing number of countries all 6:55 around the world are implementing and 6:57 increasing the minimum wage including 6:59 Hong Kong which has just introduced the 7:01 minimum wage So in light of the 7:03 widespread and growing popularity of so 7:05 obvious a calamity as the minimum wage 7:07 how can anyone be optimistic for any 7:09 libertarian progress in more complicated 7:12 areas like surely minimum wage reform 7:15 would be the first place we’d see it if 7:17 it was a if it was coming Also Ron Paul 7:22 has attracted huge passionate and 7:23 growing following which is leading many 7:25 people to take to make all sorts of 7:27 romantic predictions But if Ron Paul is 7:30 so likely to s succeed how is it that 7:32 someone who owes Ron Paul so much as a 7:35 son does his father and has been 7:36 subjected to more of Ron Paul’s 7:38 arguments than anyone else namely his 7:40 most political child Randpaul is far 7:42 less principled than his father and many 7:44 of his supporters who have such high 7:46 expectations of of where the Ronpor 7:48 movement will lead Um libertarians often 7:52 show one one more example 7:54 of libertarian romanticism 7:58 uh libertarians often show that 7:59 governments of the past that are today 8:01 considered to be tyrannical and 8:02 unpopular even by the establishment 8:05 share the same characteristics with 8:06 popular governments today that are 8:08 considered to be free and popular With 8:11 this argument romantic libertarians hope 8:13 to bring about a widespread 8:14 enlightenment enlightenment which will 8:17 lead to a more just free and prosperous 8:19 society But their observation also 8:21 teaches something quite different which 8:23 libertarians often fail to acknowledge 8:26 As men can point it out quote “The fact 8:29 is that some of the things that men and 8:31 women have desired most ardently for 8:33 thousands of years are not near a 8:35 realization today than they were in the 8:37 time of Rammeses and that there is not 8:39 the slightest reason for believing that 8:41 they will lose their coiness on any near 8:43 tomorrow Plans for hurrying them over 8:47 have been tried since the beginning 8:49 Plans for forcing them overnight are in 8:51 copious and antagonistic operation today 8:53 And yet they continue to hold off and 8:55 elude us and the chances are that they 8:57 will continue holding off and eluding 9:00 us To further communicate that Menin’s 9:04 pessimism was justified I think the most 9:07 effective thing would be for us to see 9:09 that Albert J No did not believe in the 9:12 remnant 9:13 Speaking to the remnant is long-term 9:16 romanticism which in a way is the most 9:18 extreme form of hopefilled romanticism 9:21 And Albert J No is the author of 9:23 Isaiah’s job the most referenced essay 9:25 pointing putting forward being 9:26 influential in the long term and 9:28 expecting that people will find you and 9:30 they will be convinced by what you say 9:33 eventually Um but before I quote no to 9:36 show that he himself did not believe in 9:38 the remnant no fa favorite author Marcus 9:40 Aurelius offered the best criticism of 9:43 those libertarian romantics like Murray 9:45 Rothbard who believed in the remnant and 9:48 are optimists for long-term libertarian 9:50 progress 9:52 Quote they are misunderstood by their 9:54 contemporaries the people whose lives 9:56 they share but they expect to be 9:58 understood by post posterity people 10:00 they’ve never met and never will that’s 10:03 what they set their hearts on You might 10:05 as well be upset at not being a hero to 10:07 your great-grandfather End quote And uh 10:10 Menin made a very similar comment to 10:12 Marcus Aurelius in a kind of a different 10:14 context but it’ll it’ll be clear Quote 10:18 “There is a notion that judgments of 10:19 living artists are impossible They are 10:22 bound to be corrupted we are told by 10:24 prejudice false perspective mob emotion 10:26 error The question whether this or that 10:29 man is great or small is one which only 10:31 posterity can answer a silly begging of 10:34 the question for doesn’t posterity also 10:36 make mistakes end quote So because of 10:39 how popular among libertarian circles 10:42 the myth of no as optimist and reformer 10:44 he is like even if it’s very long term I 10:47 will now read out several passages 10:49 showing that no himself did not believe 10:51 in Isaiah’s job To start with it is 10:55 worth noting that no himself in the 10:57 essay Isaiah’s job itself said “If I 11:01 were young and had the notion of 11:03 embarking in the prophetical line I 11:05 would certainly take up this branch of 11:07 the business aiming aiming at long-term 11:11 influence and expecting that those who 11:13 appreciate your work will eventually 11:15 find you and eventually lead to progress 11:17 in a libertarian direction And therefore 11:19 I have no hesitation about recommending 11:21 it as a career for anyone in that 11:23 position So anyone who’s young and 11:27 prophetical Um but no was not young when 11:30 he wrote it and he was not interested on 11:32 embarking on a career in the prophetical 11:35 line So when people talk of no’s remnant 11:38 they do not talk of a remnant that no 11:40 wrote intentionally for So here are some 11:43 more passages showing that no was 11:45 thoroughly pessimistic about the 11:47 prospects for 11:49 liberty Quote the only thing that the 11:53 psychically human being can do to 11:54 improve society is to present society 11:57 with one improved unit Very few among 12:00 mankind have either the force of 12:01 intellect to manage this method 12:03 intelligently or the force of character 12:05 to apply it constantly Hence if one 12:08 regards mankind as being what they are 12:10 the chances seem to be that the 12:12 deceptively easier way will continue to 12:14 prevail among them throughout an 12:16 indefinitely long 12:18 future It is easy to prescribe 12:20 improvement for others It is easy to 12:22 organize something to institutionalize 12:24 this or that to pass laws multiply 12:26 bureaucratic agencies form pressure 12:28 groups start revolutions change forms of 12:31 government tinker at political theory 12:33 The fact that these expedients have been 12:35 tried unsuccessfully in every 12:37 conceivable combination for 6,000 years 12:40 has not noticeably impaired a credulous 12:42 unintelligent willingness to keep on 12:45 trying them again and 12:47 again This being so it seems highly 12:49 probable that the hope for any 12:51 significant improvement of society must 12:54 be postponed End quote Here’s another 12:57 not paragraph quote “If it were in my 13:00 power to pull down its whole structure 13:01 overnight and set up another of my own 13:03 devising to abolish the state out of 13:06 hand and replace it by an organization 13:08 of the economic means I would not do it 13:11 for the minds of Americans are far from 13:13 fitted to any such great change as 13:15 this.” End quote Here’s another knock 13:18 paragraph Quote taking the sum of the 13:20 state’s physical strength with the force 13:22 of powerful spiritual influences behind 13:25 it one asks what can be done against the 13:28 state’s progress in self 13:30 agrandisement simply nothing So far from 13:34 encouraging any hopeful contemplation of 13:36 the unattainable the student of 13:38 civilized man will offer no conclusion 13:40 but that nothing can be done End quote 13:44 and another quote “Even a successful 13:47 revolution if such a thing were 13:49 conceivable against the military tyranny 13:51 which is statism’s last expedient would 13:54 accomplish nothing The people would be 13:56 as thoroughly indoctrinated with statism 13:58 after the revolution as they were before 14:00 and therefore the revolution would be no 14:02 revolution but a coup d’eta by which the 14:04 citizen would gain nothing but a mere 14:06 change for 14:07 presses There have been me many 14:09 revolutions in the last 25 years and 14:12 this has been the sum of their history 14:14 They amount to no more than an 14:15 impressive testimony to the great truth 14:17 that there can be no right action except 14:20 there be right thinking behind it As 14:22 long as the easy attractive superficial 14:24 philosophy of statism remains in control 14:26 of the citizen’s mind no bene bene 14:29 beneficent social change can be affected 14:32 whether by revolution or by any other 14:34 means End quote And one one last one 14:39 quote “Sometimes people who knew my 14:41 politics have wondered that I do not 14:43 crusade for it or even say much about it 14:45 but much more than a sound economic 14:47 system is necessary You have to have 14:49 sound people to work it.” The wise 14:51 social philosophers were those who 14:53 merely hung up their ideas and left them 14:56 hanging for men to look at or pass by as 14:59 they chose Jesus and Socrates did not 15:01 even trouble trouble to write theirs out 15:03 and Marcus Aurelius spoke his only 15:05 encrabed memoranda for his own use never 15:08 thinking anyone else would would see 15:10 them.” End quote So this passage 15:12 mentions Marcus Aurelius whom we quoted 15:15 earlier and no was 15:17 like no knock often said it’s his 15:20 favorite author Um so here’s another 15:22 Marcus Aurelius passage Quote evil the 15:26 same old thing Whatever happens keep 15:28 this in mind It’s the same old thing 15:30 from one end of the world to the other 15:32 It fills the history books ancient and 15:34 modern and the cities and the houses too 15:37 familiar transient Look at the past 15:40 Empire succeeding empire and from that 15:43 extrapolate the future the same thing No 15:47 escape from the rhythm of events Which 15:48 is why observing life for 40 years is as 15:50 good as a thousand Would you really see 15:53 anything new end 15:55 quote So that knock like Men enjoyed the 15:58 spectacle and was not disappointed by it 16:01 Here is one more knock passage Quote 16:03 “The war was detestable enough but the 16:06 anthropoid job holders who engineered it 16:08 and the masses whom they coerced and 16:09 exploited were doing the best that the 16:11 limitations of their nature admitted of 16:14 their doing and one could expect no more 16:16 than that There was even a certain grave 16:19 beauty such as one obser observes in a 16:22 battle of snakes or sharks in the 16:24 machinations which they continued which 16:26 which they contrived in order to fulfill 16:28 the law of their being One regarded 16:30 these creatures with aor ahorance Yes 16:33 Sometimes with boredom and annoyance yes 16:36 But with dis despondency and 16:38 disappointment no So yes sometimes as no 16:42 said pol politics fills meenians with 16:45 boredom Um but there aren’t many forms 16:47 of entertainment that don’t have 16:49 occasional slow patches and off days But 16:52 really I think everyone here can find 16:54 enough enjoyment in being a libertarian 16:56 theorist and stirer without needing 16:58 to think that they are helping people 17:00 and being 17:02 influential I don’t think I need to tell 17:04 anyone here how amu am amusing 17:06 government is I mean government does not 17:08 tax our our enjoyment It subsidizes it 17:11 Did Jeffrey Tucker look miserable in his 17:14 speech earlier today when he was 17:16 describing how tough government makes 17:17 his life you know as the title of his 17:20 speech seemed to hint um have any of the 17:23 PFS speakers appeared sad about 17:25 government i don’t think so Everyone 17:28 here appears to enjoy the absurdity of 17:30 government and to enjoy enjoy speaking 17:32 against 17:33 it Uh but I understand that many people 17:36 here need to believe that they can make 17:38 a difference by influencing others And 17:41 of 17:41 course being a man I I don’t expect to 17:45 change your minds So to offer you people 17:47 something from this talk um I recommend 17:50 that you learn all you can about the 17:52 Western Australian mining magnate Gina 17:54 Reinhardt Being the richest woman in the 17:57 world she is getting increasing 17:59 international media attention and many 18:01 uh news reports predict her becoming the 18:04 richest person in the world in the not 18:05 too distant future She is now an even 18:08 bigger prospect for bringing on the 18:09 libertarian revolution than Ron Paul I I 18:13 discovered an interview in an Australian 18:14 women’s magazine in 18:16 1975 where she said that she listed her 18:19 occupation on her passport as 18:23 secessionist Her father was not afraid 18:25 to call Australia’s political parties 18:27 public servants industry groups 18:29 university students and journalists all 18:31 a bunch of socialists And Mrs Reinhardt 18:34 is is definitely a big fan of her 18:36 father’s politics Moreover she is 18:38 spending hundreds of millions of dollars 18:40 trying to get media influence although 18:43 none of that’s come to me Um so I hope 18:46 all you uh I hope you all you optimists 18:48 out there feel that you’ve got something 18:50 out of this talk Um in 18:52 conclusion menians might hope that 18:56 libertarian progress will be made even 18:59 if that will unfortunately compromise 19:01 our gargantuan enjoyment watching the 19:03 greedy and gullible passionately support 19:06 people who will be betray them in our 19:09 gloriously corrupt and unprincipled 19:11 commonwealth of morons for a manin 19:14 phrase So we can hope manians can hope 19:17 for libertarian progress but we don’t 19:19 expect any progress but to repeat that 19:22 does not mean that there are not many 19:24 other reasons for being a libertarian 19:26 theorist in shitster and uh one of the 19:29 best of those reasons would be to enjoy 19:31 yourself at hoppers property and freedom 19:33 society Thank you 19:38 [Applause]

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 292. Karl-Peter Schwarz (Austria), Between Restitution and Re-Expropriation: Desocialization in Eastern Europe. This lecture is from the 2012 meeting of the Property and Freedom Society.  PFS 2012 Playlist. Transcript and Grok shownotes/summary below. Two-Paragraph Summary for Show Notes 0:01–15:00: The speaker, invited by Professor Hoppe to the Property and Freedom Society, opens with a reflection on speaking in a “temple of knowledge and liberty,” humorously referencing Roman customs of covering one’s head in temples, except for Kronos, the god of time, who reveals all truths. The talk focuses on historical crimes of expropriation and restitution in post-communist Eastern Europe, challenging the misconception that nationalization was exclusive to communism. The speaker outlines three forms of governmental theft—inflation, taxation, and mass expropriation—emphasizing the latter’s violence and prevalence across the 20th century, from the Balkan Wars to post-World War II population transfers. Specific examples include the expulsion of 3 million Germans from Czechoslovakia under President Beneš’s decrees, which nationalized 80% of the economy by 1948, and the broader displacement of millions across Europe, highlighting that democratic and totalitarian regimes alike engaged in these practices. 15:01–37:12: The speaker critiques the flawed restitution processes in post-communist states, particularly the Czech Republic and Slovenia, where arbitrary time limits (e.g., February 25, 1948, in Czechoslovakia) excluded many legitimate claims. Quoting Murray Rothbard’s Ethics of Liberty, the speaker argues that only restitution to original owners or their heirs upholds justice, yet privatization often benefited former communist elites, fostering oligarchic power structures. Cases like Elisa Fabriova and Prince Kinsky illustrate systemic barriers, with Czech courts and government manipulating legal processes to block aristocratic claims. In Slovenia, Luboš Šeš’s 20-year struggle for restitution yielded minimal recovery, hampered by retroactive laws and biased courts. The speaker concludes that these failures undermine the rule of law, perpetuate corruption, and pose security risks, urging moral clarity despite the unlikelihood of full redress, as time (Kronos) may not deliver justice. It was not included previously in the podcast since the video had been lost and I had assumed the audio had also been lost. However, I recently discovered the audio files for two of the speeches as well as Professor Hoppe’s Introductory and Concluding remarks had been preserved, namely those listed below. They are podcast here for the first time. Hans-Hermann Hoppe (Germany/Turkey), Welcome and Introductions Karl-Peter Schwarz (Austria), Between Restitution and Re-Expropriation: Desocialization in Eastern Europe Benjamin Marks (Australia), On H.L. Mencken as a Libertarian Model Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Concluding Remarks, Tributes, and Announcements Grok: Detailed Segment-by-Segment Summary for Show Notes Segment 1: Introduction and Context of Expropriation (0:01–6:00) Description: The speaker expresses honor and unease at speaking at the Property and Freedom Society, likening it to a “temple of knowledge.” They reference Roman customs of covering heads in temples, except for Kronos, symbolizing time’s revelation of truth. The talk’s theme is introduced: historical crimes of expropriation and their redress. The speaker, a journalist in post-communist countries since 1990, initially believed nationalization was communism’s hallmark but learned it was one of three governmental theft methods: inflation, taxation, and mass expropriation. The latter, often violent, occurred during revolutions or wars, not exclusively under communism. Summary: This opening sets a philosophical tone, framing expropriation as a timeless issue revealed by history. It broadens the scope beyond communism, preparing the audience for a critical examination of 20th-century property theft. Segment 2: Historical Examples of Expropriation and Population Transfers (6:01–12:00) Description: The speaker details 20th-century expropriations, starting with the Balkan Wars (1912–1913) and treaties like Neuilly and Lausanne, which displaced 3 million people. Post-World War I, 4–5 million lost property in new Wilsonian states. World War II and its aftermath saw 12 million Germans and others displaced, with 2 million deaths. In Czechoslovakia, President Beneš’s decrees expelled 3 million Germans, nationalizing 80% of the economy by 1948. The speaker emphasizes that democrats, not just communists, drove these policies, with confiscated lands redistributed or collectivized. Summary: This segment provides a historical overview, illustrating the scale and bipartisan nature of expropriations. It underscores the violent, systemic nature of property theft across regimes, setting up the restitution discussion. Segment 3: Flawed Restitution in Post-Communist States (12:01–20:00) Description: The speaker critiques post-communist restitution laws, particularly in Czechoslovakia, where the February 25, 1948, coup date arbitrarily limited claims. Quoting Rothbard’s Ethics of Liberty, they argue that privatization often enriched former communists, not original owners. The European Union ignored these injustices, and international law, like the Hull Formula, was disregarded. The Council of Europe’s 1996 resolution warned of oligarchic risks, advocating full restitution, but post-communist states favored privatization, perpetuating corruption. The speaker highlights ongoing communist influence, now as oligarchs controlling state institutions. Summary: This segment exposes the systemic failure of restitution, linking it to Rothbard’s principles and broader legal betrayals. It highlights how privatization entrenched former elites, undermining liberty and the rule of law. Segment 4: Case Studies of Restitution Failures (20:01–27:00) Description: Specific cases illustrate restitution barriers. In the Czech Republic, Elisa Fabriova’s claim was denied due to her father’s alleged German identity, despite his murder by Nazis. Prince Kinsky faced government obstruction, including falsified documents and wiretapping, with the “Kinsky Law” favoring public entities. In Slovenia, the speaker discusses the brutal communist era under Tito, where 200,000–300,000 were killed. The West’s leniency toward Tito, exemplified by Eleanor Roosevelt’s praise, ignored these crimes. These cases reflect broader patterns of legal manipulation and historical amnesia. Summary: This segment personalizes the restitution struggle through Fabriova and Kinsky, while Slovenia’s history under Tito highlights Western complicity. It reinforces the theme of systemic injustice in property redress. Segment 5: Luboš Šeš’s Struggle and Broader Implications (27:01–37:12) Description: The speaker details Luboš Šeš’s case in Slovenia, where he survived a death sentence and seven years’ imprisonment for anti-communist activities. After escaping, he sought restitution for his family’s textile factory, recovering only fragments after 20 years. Slovenia’s retroactive laws and biased courts, including judges tied to communism, blocked his claims. The European Court of Human Rights issued a minimal fine, ignoring deeper injustices. The speaker critiques utilitarian arguments against restitution (e.g., Tyler Cowen’s), arguing that verifiable claims deserve redress. They conclude that while justice may remain elusive, moral clarity is essential. Summary: Šeš’s story encapsulates the personal toll of restitution failures, with Slovenia’s legal system reflecting communist legacies. The segment calls for moral discernment, acknowledging time’s (Kronos’s) uncertain justice. Note: Segments range from 6–10 minutes, aligned with thematic shifts, ensuring each covers a distinct aspect of the talk, from historical context to specific case studies and broader implications. Transcript 0:01 by Professor Hoppe to speak here in this uh delicious 0:07 temple of knowledge and liberty of wisdom and 0:14 delight i was not only I didn’t only feel very honored but I also felt a 0:20 little bit uneasy because I considered various negative options not to be able 0:26 to uh come to your expectations but also I considered uh 0:33 marginal things for instance I thought whether it would be appropriate to cover my head talking 0:41 here because as you know the Romans when they went to the temples to worship the gods they covered the 0:48 head and they did it with every god and the meaning of this gesture was obvious 0:54 no so you you hide your weaknesses and you hide your sins from the gods but 1:01 there was one god a temple one temple in which they did not cover their heads and 1:07 this was the uh temple of Kronos the god of time and Blut in his fragments about 1:16 Roman customs explains why because he says time brings to light everything 1:23 sooner or later the truth comes out so it’s completely useless to cover your 1:29 head in the front of time uh time we need time to 1:35 understand and we know that developments uh occur in time and they show 1:43 themselves they reveal their real nature in time uh my argument touches time because it’s 1:51 about crimes historic crimes and uh the way how these crimes were redressed or 2:00 not redressed afterwards i came in 1990 a few weeks a few months 2:07 after the velvet revolution in Prague from Italy to uh to Czechoslovakia and 2:14 to work as a foreign correspondent in several uh postcommunist countries 2:19 when I came to Prague I still shared the common belief that nationalization 2:25 expropriation confiscation was a specific more or less 2:31 exclusive feature of communism it is not it is just one of 2:38 three possibilities of governmental theft the first one the easiest one is 2:43 inflation almost without violence it allows the state to steal money 2:49 continuously and in relatively small amounts from almost from everybody until 2:55 withering confidence in the currency dies the second method is taxation 3:03 this is a little bit more difficult and potentially dangerous for the government 3:09 because it’s under the direct threat of violence and it provides much money from 3:14 a majority of people so if you overdo it you will have a rebellion and it’s difficult to to get to get away with 3:21 this and the third way is mass mass expropriation and confiscation 3:28 it takes all property from a minority which before has to be outlawed and 3:34 completely deprived of domestic or foreign protection it’s possible only under 3:41 exceptional circumstances basic basically during a revolution which 3:46 transforms a society in a in the gulak or after a war it is necessarily violent 3:55 and it’s very often linked to forced population 4:00 transferes and it’s by no means an exclusive feature of 4:06 communism the whole uh history of the uh of the uh 20th century could be told as 4:14 a history of confiscation and mass deportation 4:20 let’s start with the Parkhan wars in 1912 1913 uh between 1913 and 19 23 about 3 4:30 million people fell victims of population transfers and confiscations in Europe alone 4:37 approximately 900,000 Muslims from the Barkans Greeks and Bulgarians during the 4:43 Parkhan Wars about 160,000 Bulgarians and Greeks after the first war after the treaty of 4:51 Na about 1.6 million Turks and Greeks after the treaty of 4:58 Losan and there was an interesting case uh which is not so so well known in 5:04 Western Europe as well and it regarded the Germans mostly uh very much 5:10 assimilated Germans in the French province of Alsus under the presidency of George 5:17 Clemens about 150,000 Germans were selected by governmental commissions 5:24 they were called driage and had to leave als if they were 5:30 detected Germans and in order to speed up this whole process anybody who denounced his 5:38 neighbor as German could apply to get his 5:43 property the list of this I what I what I mentioned those three millions is 5:49 probably incomplete it’s a very conservative estimation 5:54 population transfer is understood in the most strict sense of the 6:00 definition not included in this uh three millions are people of uh uh who left 6:06 the their country and their homestead after the formation of new national 6:12 states it was about 800,000 Germans who left Poland about 6:19 425 mill,000 Hungarians uh who left Slovakia Romania and 6:26 Yugoslavia that means that in the new Wilsonian democratic national order 6:32 about four to 5 million people lost their homestead and their property 6:39 this uh let’s say democratic prelude to the forced population transfers of 6:44 millions of people under the totalitarian regimes of Stalin and Hitler between 1938 and 6:53 1944 affected then probably more than 7 million people it’s obvious that in this 7:00 figure uh the five to six million victims of the Holocaust are not 7:06 included the far biggest population transfer in Europe occurred at the end 7:11 and after second world war until 48 and it affected more than twice as many 12 7:18 million Germans from Eastern Europe 4 million among Fins Poles Ukrainians 7:25 Serbs Croats Sloines Hungarians Slovaks Italians about two million died during 7:34 those transfers all thing after the war communists contributed to these 7:41 crimes but they were by no means the only perpetrators in the case of Czechoslovakia they were they were even 7:48 rather reluctant with the democratic president Edward Benes presented his 7:54 plan to expel roughly 3 million Germans a quarter of the population of his 8:00 country and to confiscate their property the so-called banish decrees or 8:06 presidential decrees initiated the ethnic cleansing and the socialization 8:12 immediately after the war the national and social revolution 8:17 in Czechoslovakia was nearly accomplished when the communists ousted the 8:23 democratic parties in February 48 about 80% of the Czechoslovak economy 8:32 had been nationalized in 1945 and 1946 immediately after the war Banishes 8:39 ordered the nationalization of all banks of all insuranceances about and of about 8:45 3,000 companies in all industrial branches the expert Germans left about 8:52 5.68 68 million acres of fields and forests behind the major part of their 8:59 confiscated property was first divided between uh among Czech and Slovak 9:06 settlers then collectivized after the communist takeover from the 50s until 9:14 89 even groceries and flower shops in Czechoslovakia were run by government 9:21 why is it so important to understand that nationalization and confiscation were not an exclusively communist 9:28 feature because the restitution laws in the postcommunist countries after the 9:34 fall of communism set arbitrary and magical time limits in the case of the 9:40 Czech Republic and Slovakia this magical threshold is a 25th of February 48 the 9:48 day of the coup de Prague if your property had been robbed by communists 9:53 after this day you get it probably back it’s not sure but you have good chances 10:00 if it was robbed by Democrats the day before you have no chance at all 10:05 instead of giving it back to its legitimate owners most of this property was not 10:12 restituted it was privatized uh I want to quote uh 10:20 whenever I talk about restitution I quote Mor Rothbart from the ethics of 10:25 liberty i like this very much how he put it let us say he writes Roritania is ruled 10:33 by a king who has grievously invaded the rights of persons and the legitimate 10:39 property of individuals and has regulated and finally seized their property 10:45 a libertarian movement develops in Loritania and come to persuade the bulk of the populace that this criminal 10:53 system should be replaced by a truly libertarian society with the rights of 10:59 each man to his person and his fountain and created property are fully 11:04 respected the king seeing the revolt to be imminent immen imminent imminently 11:11 successful now employs a cunning strategy he proclaims his government to 11:16 be dissolved but just before doing so he arbitrarily parcels out the entire 11:23 kingdom to the ownership of himself and his relatives he then goes to the 11:29 libertarian rebels and says “All right I have granted your wish and have 11:35 dissolved my rule there is now no more violent intervention in private property 11:41 however myself and my relatives now own Ruritania and if you disturb us in this 11:49 ownership in any way you should be infringing upon the sanctity of the very 11:54 fundamental principle that you profess the inviability of private 12:00 ownership rosbart wrote this in 82 a few years later the communist kings in 12:06 Eastern Europe dissolved their governments and gave up their political 12:12 monopoly but at the same time they declared themselves the relatives and their cronies private owners of the 12:19 former nationalized property rothbart’s answer to this imaginary kings was the following we are 12:28 sorry but we only recognize private property claims that are just that 12:33 emanate from an individual’s fundamental natural right to own himself and the property which he has either transformed 12:41 by his energy or which has been voluntarily given to him by such 12:46 transformers the only way to red address the 12:51 injustice committed against private property would have been the restitution of stolen property to the legitimate 12:58 owners or their heirs a real and fair restitution without 13:04 restrictions regardless of nationality ethnicity language religion or 13:10 whatsoever instead the postcommunist states excluded the broad majority of owners 13:18 and the hairs from restitution and divided the property among a new class of nuvoish mostly from the rank and file 13:26 of the former nomenclatur the European Union in the process of 13:32 integration of those countries excluded the monitoring of the legislation on 13:38 property and restitution from the political criteria there was and is still 13:44 complicity in the behavior of the European institutions it is obvious that all this 13:51 happened against the rule of law as John Loach put it government can never have a 13:58 power to take to themselves the whole or any part of the subject’s property 14:04 without their own consent confiscation by the way is also 14:09 prohibited by international law in 1938 uh the US Secretary of State Corell 14:16 Hull demanded the prompt compensation for lands seized from West Farmers and 14:22 Ranchers in Mexico hull underlined I quote that under every rule of law and 14:29 equity no government is entitled to expropriate private property for 14:35 whatever purpose without provisions for prompt adequate and effective payment 14:41 thereof this is called the hal formula and it became since then part of many bilateral 14:48 and multilateral treaties and it’s nearly always respected when the United 14:54 States and their citizens in are in the game in international law the taking of 15:00 someone else property without compensation is simply theft 15:06 when the taking of the property is considered as an unlawful expropriation then compensation should also cover the 15:14 lost future profits in addition to the loss actually suffered nothing of this 15:21 happened in the postcommunist countries of post of of Eastern Europe and I want to to say all this was 15:30 also covered up by uh the American and the British government uh in the 15:36 agreement of Botam so the very same people who stated the principles 15:42 international law and codel uh were not so uh uh were not going to did not 15:50 respect it after 45 16 years ago there was a rare bright 15:55 moment in the history of the Assembly of the Council of Europe it adopted resolution resolution number 16:03 1,096 in which it warned against the dangers of a biased desolic 16:09 desocialization process that could lead to oligarchical power structure to state 16:14 capture increasing corruption and organized crime had at so you can read 16:21 in this uh resolution at worst the result could be the velvet restoration 16:28 of a totalitarian regime regarding restitution the Council 16:34 of Europe therefore advised I quote that property including that of the churches 16:41 which was illegally or unjustly seized by the state nationalized confiscated or 16:47 otherwise expropriated during the reign of communist authoritarian systems in 16:53 principle be restituted to its original owners in integr if this is possible without violating 17:01 the rights of current owners who acquired the property in good faith or the rights of tenants who rented the 17:08 property in good faith in cases where this is not possible just material 17:13 compensation should be averted the denial and the restriction 17:19 of restitution causes many negative consequences in the postcommunist 17:24 countries first of all it breaks the rule of law and undermines the legal 17:30 order the acquisition of robbed and stolen assets from the government in the course of privatization is not a 17:38 legitimate transaction it is fencing for a low cash price theft and fencing were already 17:45 punished in the same way in Roman law as property is not given back to the 17:53 legitimate owners or their hairs it ends in most cases in the hands of the old 17:58 boys networks former communists who easily compensate their loss of formal 18:04 political power with state capture and economic dominance this leads to still greater 18:12 distortions of competition and still more graft and corruption communists are still in power everywhere 18:19 in Eastern Europe sometimes they call themselves socialists or social democrats sometimes liberals or 18:27 conservatives only the old communist relationship between state and 18:33 corporations has been inverted before it was the party and the state which 18:39 organized the economy now the network of oligarchs control the state the 18:46 government the judiciary and the political parties this is together with with with 18:52 big government the corrupting effect of mass democracy and the increasing burden of the welfare state the most serious 19:01 limitation of liberty in postcommunist societies both communist oligarchies represent a 19:08 collective security risk as well because they can be used and they are used by 19:14 Russia which tries to regain the influence it once had in this part of Europe but let us return to the Czech 19:21 experience the lack of redress for countless illegal property confiscations that took 19:28 place in the wake of the second world war has been documented by the United Nations human rights committee so far 19:36 with can’t response from Prague big or small land owners businessmen 19:41 professionals members of the nobility or the Jewish community all of them Czech citizens are still denied their 19:48 ownership rights there was the case of Mrs elisa Fabriova born in 19:55 1916 her father was murdered by the Nazis in the concentration camp of Awitz 20:00 his property was aronized as the Nazis calledist mrs fabiova’s restitution case 20:08 has been denied by Czech courts one of the arguments that her father was that 20:14 her father was not only a Jew but a German as well and a traitor because I 20:21 quote he had lived in a German way there are only very few examples of 20:28 restitution in favor of the aristocracy which opposed Nazism during the war 20:34 a former Czechoslovak socialist minister of culture Pab Rishetski explained this 20:39 once in the following way i quote him “The current aristocracy in this country 20:46 is basically an occupying force they all arrived after the Battle of the White 20:54 Mountain.” Well the Battle of the White Mountain occurred in November 1620 21:00 during the 30 years war the Catholics defeated the Protestants and aristocrats 21:05 from Catholic countries settled in Bohemia accordingly the descendants of 21:11 the Norman conquerors should be regarded as an occupying force in England too 21:18 the late prince Kinsky born in 1936 was a child as he inherited the 21:25 entailed fid is the exact legal title for it as he inherited the entailed 21:31 fortune of his family his father who right who died in 21:37 1938 before the arrival of the Germans at the Nazis had only been the trustee 21:43 the administrator and limited beneficiary of the entail but not its 21:48 owner his mother immigrated in 1940 with her children to 21:54 Argentina among her papers after her death Prince Kinsky found his Czechoslovak children’s passport based 22:01 on which his set is his Czech citizenship was confirmed and the 22:06 corresponding certificate issued the first five of 157 claims were 22:14 still successful the Czech civil courts confirmed in 22:19 2003 that the state had assumed ownership without due legal order 22:25 without due legal ground the then socialist minister of culture already mentioned sounded the alarm politicians 22:33 from all political parties got together for council about what to do to avoid 22:39 the misuse of what they called a few former discrepancies 22:45 the government created a 30-man special union called Mayate that means property 22:53 to block all property claims this specialized policy unit focusing on 22:58 aristocratic restitution investigations asked the intelligence service to collect evidence in Austrian 23:05 and German archives against Prince Kinsky czech police wire tapped not only the 23:12 prince but also his lawyer this wiretapping was approved by a Czech 23:17 court the government presented even a falsified confiscation notification in 23:23 the court it came out that the district national committee which allegedly 23:29 signed this notification in 46 did not even exist in that year because the 23:35 district was only created in 49 in the meantime the parliament passed 23:41 the so-called Kinsky law which enables the state to interfere in ongoing court 23:48 proceedings with restitution plaintiffs who dare to request pro property from 23:53 towns now the towns obtained from public funds qualified legal aid which the 24:00 adverse part doesn’t have the right to an evident preference of public entities 24:06 at the expense of private plaintiffs in order not to give back the 24:12 stolen property the state doesn’t hesitate to manipulate and undermine its 24:18 own legal order the government interferes in court proceedings it 24:23 falsifies documents it controls and observes plaintiffs and lawyers with metals which are in open contra 24:30 contradiction with the rule of law and all this does not bother the European 24:35 institutions which cover up these crimes with a wheel of silence the Czech Republic whose 24:41 president is a longtime member of the Montel Society is no exception there are 24:47 thousands of similar cases in other postcommunist countries as well 24:53 let’s have a look at tiny Slovenia a former Yugoslav republic under Tito where communism was no less communist 25:01 than Soviet communism or any other communism tito socialism is still 25:06 considered as being penny and moderate also the reign of terror in Yugoslavia 25:11 relative to its population hardly differed from Stalin’s great terror 25:17 according to various assessments between 200,000 and 300,000 youth loves were 25:23 murdered in 1944 1945 1946 between 45 and 50 at least 1 25:31 million people were caught up in the wheels of the communist judiciary and the secret police every tense inhabitant 25:38 of Yugoslavia the West rewarded Tito’s break with Stalin at the beginning of the Cold War 25:45 by overlooking his crimes elena Roosevelt in her regular newspaper 25:50 column praised I quote the dictatorship of the proletariat interwoven with 25:57 humanism and called Titoism as Yugoslavia’s last hope dito was 26:03 successful she explained to her democratic leadership because he told the people the truths from the beginning 26:10 uh by the way it’s quite interesting that um the attractiveness of totalitarian regimes was uh always 26:17 particularly uh strong in uh uh in the most bloody periods of totalitarian 26:24 history during the Stalinist purchase in the certis there were a lot of western intellectuals which were affected by 26:31 this idea that Stalinism is the this communism as the future of of mankind 26:36 this was the case during uh regarding US slavery in the 40s and it was also the 26:42 case during the the cultural revolution in China so whenever when most blood flows no uh the applause from the 26:50 western intellectuals is uh is is growing uh in 26:57 1947 Luboss now 92 years old was sentenced to 27:04 death at a short trial in Ljubljana because of his well-known anti-communist 27:09 positions and his contacts with British diplomats the secret police arrested him 27:14 on the eve of Tito’s birthday on his way home in prison he met Colonel Mitia 27:21 Riich the chief of section two of the Communist Secret Service Osna 27:27 responsible for persecution of the internal enemy ribeich directed summary 27:33 executions of actual and potential enemies of the regime he later became 27:39 Yugoslav Prime Minister and president of the central committee of the League of Yugoslav Communists 27:45 ribeich and his men interrogated Seirs into the early hours of the morning for 27:52 four weeks he was dragged from his cell each night for interrogation and was not 27:58 allowed to sleep during the day the Secret Service officer and his 28:03 victim are approximately the same age ribeich was born in Triesta in 28:09 1919 Sez in Crin in 1920 both enrolled in the law faculty at the 28:15 University of Ljubana in 1938 when Germany invaded Yugoslavia in 28:21 April 41 Sir joined the left-wing nationalist resistance group Star Taba 28:27 meaning ancient rights the communists discovered the apatriotism only two 28:34 months later namely when Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union rendered the Hitler 28:39 Stalin pact obsolete ribbitic a political commisar with the 28:45 rank of a coloner supervised the party reliability of the partisan detachments 28:50 in German occupied northern Slovenia as Seir says his most important 28:57 task was ensuring that no non-communists would join the armed resistance the 29:04 commissiles subjected the volunteers to a strenuous interrogation including 29:10 torture forestry workers found the corpses of partisans clubed to death by 29:15 the commisars the so-called protective order of the Slovenian people’s liberation front of 29:23 uh of September 41 provided for the liquidation of those resistant fighters 29:29 who did not submit to the communist control liberation front contacts with foreigners which 29:37 Seir maintained as translator for the Yuguslav government decided his fate in 29:42 the show trials of 47 of 14 defendants three were sentenced 29:48 to death rubers’s father Frano who had no connection with the anti-communist 29:53 opposition was also sentenced to 10 years imprisonment with hard labor 29:58 because his son was an enemy of the people and he himself a class enemy 30:04 franio Sez was a successful entrepreneur until the Nazis confiscated his property 30:11 dismantled his textile factory and destroyed the buildings what was left by 30:16 the Nazis was confiscated by the communists franio Seirs died after four years in 30:23 prison luboss remained in prison for seven and a half years in 30:28 1945 he succeeded in escaping over the mountains to Italy he taught economics 30:34 economics in Dhaka in Dundee and in Glasgow and founded the center of 30:39 research into communist economists in London he has written several books on the failure of central planning and the 30:47 biography called between Hitler and Tito which is amongst the best and most vivid 30:53 descriptions of life in Yugoslavia in those times sir has tried to recover his 31:00 property for over 20 years the short trial sentence was rescindered 31:06 in 1991 he immediately applied he immediately applied for restitution and 31:12 compensation for unjust imprisonment he did recover a few scattered pieces of 31:18 his family’s property consisting of a house in crime except the business 31:24 promises on the ground floor part of the garden and 600 out of 15,000 square 31:31 meters of land belonging to his father’s textile factory in 1990 the Slovenian Parliament decided 31:39 to return all confiscated properties but restitution was dragged out and came to 31:44 a complete halt sir had to appeal adverse decisions three times eventually 31:51 Slovenia was fined with a mere €18,000 by the European Court of Human Rights 31:57 for the letter handling of the claim where the value of property involved amounts to almost€ 10 million euro 32:06 in 1998 the Slovenian leftist parties that regained power after a brief interlude 32:13 retroactively modified the property restitution law of 90 of 91 to the 32:19 detriment of the claimants the rational given was that fiscal exigence exigences 32:25 of the social state were more important than the rights to property in rejecting 32:31 in rejecting the complaint made by se of discrimination as a result of the new 32:38 law the constitutional court of Slovenia argued that public interest justified 32:44 justified the retrospective application of the law over 40% of property in Slovenia is 32:52 still owned by the government all nine judges in the Slovenian constitutional 32:57 court were still appointed by the former uh president Milan Kuchan who had also 33:03 been the leader of the communist party of Slovenia one of the nine eight were 33:09 non-communists including uh uh of the nine eight were non-communists was also 33:15 Terriil Ribbich the son of the communist bacha Mitia ribich tiel was his father’s 33:23 partisan name s’s case was supposed to be a test case but the European court of 33:30 human rights took eight years to reach a judgment in a left-leaning newspaper 33:36 called Dello in Ljubljana ostian Shupanchich the Slovenian judge in 33:41 Strasburg criticized I quote the gap between Western and Eastern thinking by 33:47 which the European Court of Human Rights is characterized uh and where Bourgeoa mentality still 33:54 prevails and he ranted against yappy legislation instead of feeling 34:01 themselves bound by as he called it legal formalism the jutsu should 34:07 according to shupangich exercise their legal power 34:12 lubocitz reports that that he had drawn the attention of Lutius Wilhabber until 34:19 2007 the president of the European Court of Human Rights to the peculiar 34:24 understanding of law by the Sloven church yet Wilt Harour could not dictect 34:30 in the Slovenian judge’s view any infringement of the unated doctrine at the Strasburg court 34:38 sir accuses the Slovenian constitutional court and the section of the European 34:44 Court of Human Rights chaired by Shupenich of bias what is involved says 34:50 is the disregard of his right to a fair and public hearing by an impartial and independent court and therefore of the 34:58 disregard of his human rights particular of his right to to own his property in 35:04 the meantime Sir has no more legal options to get his property 35:11 back for utilitarians restitutions is simply a nence it is probably much 35:18 easier to make a plan for a swift IMF compatible transition 10 years ago Tyler Cohen 35:25 wrote a paper which is quite often quoted among transition engineers in 35:31 postcommunist countries cohen argued sarcastically against 35:36 intergenerational restitution i quote “The Hopy charge that the lands were 35:42 stolen from them by the Navo if the United States government returns the land to the Navajo should it also 35:50 returned subpropy to the HPI the postcommunist and uh transition 35:57 economies should we remedy only the injustice of the communist era or should 36:02 we go much further back and try to rectify previous injustice as well 36:07 should it matter that the nobles virtually enslaved the Russian peasantry 36:14 should it matter that changes Khn sacked Baktat in two 36:19 in 124 58 now it is obvious that restitution is 36:26 only feasible where property rights are evident and verifiable i doubt whether 36:31 this is the case with the hoppy the lvahos the Russian peasantry or the victims of changenis cheap sarcasm is 36:39 not very helpful it is true Kronos the god of time devoured some of his 36:46 children and Kyros the god of the right moment is unpredictable 36:51 we do not know whether those crimes will ever be properly redressed probably not 36:57 but at least this must not blur our moral discernment thank you for your 37:02 attention 37:12 [Applause]

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 291. Hans-Hermann Hoppe (Germany/Turkey), Welcome and Introductions. This lecture is from the 2012 meeting of the Property and Freedom Society.  PFS 2012 Playlist. It was not included previously in the podcast since the video had been lost and I had assumed the audio had also been lost. However, I recently discovered the audio files for two of the speeches as well as Professor Hoppe’s Introductory and Concluding remarks had been preserved, namely those listed below. They are podcast here for the first time. Hans-Hermann Hoppe (Germany/Turkey), Welcome and Introductions Karl-Peter Schwarz (Austria), Between Restitution and Re-Expropriation: Desocialization in Eastern Europe Benjamin Marks (Australia), On H.L. Mencken as a Libertarian Model Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Concluding Remarks, Tributes, and Announcements

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 290. Bonus podcast episode: Professor Hoppe’s speech, The Ludwig von Mises Memorial Lecture presented at the Mises Institute’s Austrian Economics Research Conference (Fri., March 21, 2025; see Considerations and Reflections of a Veteran Reactionary Libertarian). The transcript is available at Hoppe, Considerations and Reflections of a Veteran Reactionary Libertarian (AERC 2025). In this speech, Professor Hoppe also talked a bit about what he was planning to do in in his PFS 2025 talk later in the year, “Democratic Peace and Re-Education: the German Experience,” 2025 Annual Meeting, Property and Freedom Society, Bodrum, Turkey (Sep. 20, 2025). Note Professor Hoppe extensively comments on the reaction to his previous criticism of Milei; see Hans-Hermann Hoppe, “Javier Milei” (PFS 2024); Hoppe, “What To Make of Milei,” LewRockwell.com (Oct. 3, 2024); and Kristoffer Mousten Hansen, “Hoppe versus Milei on Central Banking: Breaking Down the Differences,” Mises Wire (Feb. 6, 2025). He also discusses various other matters, such as the funding of the Frankfurt School by Felix Weil and its influence on Western Europe and on America (and its connection to “wokeism”); US worldwide hegemony since WWII and NATO provocations of Russia after the fall of the USSR, and its role in provoking the Russia-Ukraine conflict; the US role in the Israel-Hamas conflict and the influence of Israel over US policy and the dangerous alliance of the US and American “exceptionalism” paired with Israel’s “Chosen People” image.  

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 289. This panel discussion is from the 18th annual 2024 Annual Meeting of the PFS (Sept. 19–24, 2024, Bodrum, Turkey). Ammous, Polleit, Hoppe, Kinsella, Hülsmann, Discussion, Q&A. See also Ammous, Polleit, Hoppe, Kinsella, Hülsmann, Discussion, Q&A. Other talks appear on the Property and Freedom Podcast. Other videos may also be found at the PFS 2024 Youtube Playlist.

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 288. This talk is from the 18th annual 2024 Annual Meeting of the PFS (Sept. 19–24, 2024, Bodrum, Turkey). Hans-Hermann Hoppe (Germany/Turkey): “About Natural Order and its Destruction”. See also  “About Natural Order and its Destruction” Other talks to follow in due course here on the Property and Freedom Podcast. Other videos may also be found at the PFS 2024 Youtube Playlist.

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 287. This talk is from the 18th annual 2024 Annual Meeting of the PFS (Sept. 19–24, 2024, Bodrum, Turkey). Thorsten Polleit (Germany): “Immanuel Kant’s ‘Enlightenment’—One of the Sharpest Weapons for the Libertarian Fight”. See also “Immanuel Kant’s ‘Enlightenment’—One of the Sharpest Weapons for the Libertarian Fight”. Other talks to follow in due course here on the Property and Freedom Podcast. Other videos may also be found at the PFS 2024 Youtube Playlist.

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 286. This talk is from the 18th annual 2024 Annual Meeting of the PFS (Sept. 19–24, 2024, Bodrum, Turkey). Jörg Guido Hülsmann (Germany/France): “Coercive Democracy: A Critique”. See also Jörg Guido Hülsmann (Germany/France): “Coercive Democracy: A Critique”. Other talks to follow in due course here on the Property and Freedom Podcast. Other videos may also be found at the PFS 2024 Youtube Playlist.

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 285. This talk is from the 18th annual 2024 Annual Meeting of the PFS (Sept. 19–24, 2024, Bodrum, Turkey). Stephan Kinsella (USA): “Abortion: A Radically Decentralist Approach” Also podcast as KOL443 | Abortion: A Radically Decentralist Approach (PFS 2024), with additional commentary. Other talks to follow in due course here on the Property and Freedom Podcast. Other videos may also be found at the PFS 2024 Youtube Playlist. Panel discussion:    

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 284. This talk is from the 18th annual 2024 Annual Meeting of the PFS (Sept. 19–24, 2024, Bodrum, Turkey). Saifedean Ammous (Palestine/Jordan): “Can the Real Interest Rate Fall to Zero? What would that Imply?” See also Saifedean Ammous (Palestine/Jordan): “Can the Real Interest Rate Fall to Zero? What would that Imply?” Other talks to follow in due course here on the Property and Freedom Podcast. Other videos may also be found at the PFS 2024 Youtube Playlist.  

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 283. This talk is from the 18th annual 2024 Annual Meeting of the PFS (Sept. 19–24, 2024, Bodrum, Turkey). Müller, Dürr, Deist, Gabb, Hoppe, Discussion, Q&A See also Müller, Dürr, Deist, Gabb, Hoppe, Discussion, Q&A Other talks to follow in due course here on the Property and Freedom Podcast. Other videos may also be found at the PFS 2024 Youtube Playlist.  

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 282. This talk is from the 18th annual 2024 Annual Meeting of the PFS (Sept. 19–24, 2024, Bodrum, Turkey). Jeff Deist (USA): “A New Approach to Hoppe’s ‘Open Border Critics'” See also A New Approach to Hoppe’s ‘Open Border Critics’ Other talks to follow in due course here on the Property and Freedom Podcast. Other videos may also be found at the PFS 2024 Youtube Playlist.  

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 281. This talk is from the 18th annual 2024 Annual Meeting of the PFS (Sept. 19–24, 2024, Bodrum, Turkey). Alan Bickley (England): “What is Happening in Britain?” Doug French (USA): “The Entrepreneurial Studies Racket” --> See also What is Happening in Britain? Other talks to follow in due course here on the Property and Freedom Podcast. Other videos may also be found at the PFS 2024 Youtube Playlist.  

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 280. This talk is from the 18th annual 2024 Annual Meeting of the PFS (Sept. 19–24, 2024, Bodrum, Turkey). Special: Hans-Hermann Hoppe, “Javier Milei” (PFS 2024). This is an excerpt of Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe‘s remarks on Javier Milei, excerpted from the panel discussion “Dürr, Müller, Fusillo, Bagus, Hoppe, Roundtable: What to Make of Milei” (PFP279). See also Hans-Hermann Hoppe, “Javier Milei” (PFS 2024); “Who is Hans-Hermann Hoppe, the former inspiration of Javier Milei whom he has now called a ‘libertacrazy liberal,’” La Nacion [Argentina] (12 Dec. 2024). Other talks to follow in due course here on the Property and Freedom Podcast. Other videos may also be found at the PFS 2024 Youtube Playlist.

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 279. This talk is from the 18th annual 2024 Annual Meeting of the PFS (Sept. 19–24, 2024, Bodrum, Turkey). Dürr, Müller, Fusillo, Bagus, Hoppe, Roundtable: What to Make of Milei. See also Roundtable: What to Make of Milei; “Who is Hans-Hermann Hoppe, the former inspiration of Javier Milei whom he has now called a ‘libertacrazy liberal,’” La Nacion [Argentina] (12 Dec. 2024). Other talks to follow in due course here on the Property and Freedom Podcast. Other videos may also be found at the PFS 2024 Youtube Playlist.

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 278. This talk is from the 18th annual 2024 Annual Meeting of the PFS (Sept. 19–24, 2024, Bodrum, Turkey). Antony Müller (Germany/Brazil): “Milei after Nine Months: A Critical Update” See also “Milei after Nine Months: A Critical Update” and Antony P. Mueller, “Nine Months of Javier Milei as President of Argentina: A Critical Assessment,” Mises Wire (Oct. 29, 2024). Other talks to follow in due course here on the Property and Freedom Podcast. Other videos may also be found at the PFS 2024 Youtube Playlist.

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 277. This talk is from the recently-concluded 18th annual 2024 Annual Meeting of the PFS (Sept. 19–24, 2024, Bodrum, Turkey). David Dürr (Switzerland): “If I woke up and found myself president elect of Argentina …” See also David Dürr, “If I woke up and found myself president elect of Argentina …” (PFS 2024) Other talks to follow in due course here on the Property and Freedom Podcast. Other videos may also be found at the PFS 2024 Youtube Playlist.

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 276. This panel discussion is from Day 1 of the recently-concluded 18th annual 2024 Annual Meeting of the PFS (Sept. 19–24, 2024, Bodrum, Turkey). Jayant Bhandari (Canada), Alessandro Fusillo (Italy),  Rahim Taghizadegan (Austria), Sean Gabb (England), Philipp Bagus (Spain): Discussion, Q&A. See also Bhandari, Fusillo, Taghizadegan, Gabb, Bagus, Discussion, Q&A (PFS 2024) Other talks to follow in due course here on the Property and Freedom Podcast. Other videos may also be found at the PFS 2024 Youtube Playlist.

Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 275. This talk is from the recently-concluded 18th annual 2024 Annual Meeting of the PFS (Sept. 19–24, 2024, Bodrum, Turkey). Philipp Bagus (Spain): “The Crime of the Corona Lockdowns” See also Philipp Bagus, “The Crime of the Corona Lockdowns” (PFS 2024) Other talks to follow in due course here on the Property and Freedom Podcast. Other videos may also be found at the PFS 2024 Youtube Playlist.