>> host: in the white community's? >> guest: certainly it extended down the black communities in the 1980s. you raise the scarface example. >> host: what i'm saying in general i think most of these incidents and the shootings of rivalries among drug rivals take place in poor black neighborhoods. >> guest: they certainly do. that is what happened with crack-cocaine. new markets, that settles down and this settles down and you don't see this sort of thing anymore. you certainly don't see this sort of thing anymore but i think that's a minor issue. i don't, i certainly don't want to downplay the fact that people are killed and obviously that is awful. but i think that has been the sole sort of point or one of the major points driving what we do with drug policy. i think it's short-sighted and limited.

>> host: okay. the book is called "high price" a neuroscientist's journey of self-discovery that challenges everything you know about drugs and society. our guest has been dr. carl hart and i want to remind you that dot or so there is not only an author and associate professor of psychology and psychiatry at cornell university and a member of the national visor counsel on drug abuse a board member of the college on the problem of drug dependency and has done 22 years of research in neuropsychopharmacology and dr. hart it has been a real pleasure to learn about you. this is in large part a biography as well as a book about drug in society and race. congratulations on your book. >> guest: thank you. ..

this is about an hour 20. >> afternoon, everyone. i want to thank you all for coming out and welcomed me while to the cato institute. i name is michael tanner and i'm a senior fellow here at the cato in the two, but of course i'm

not the person who's really here to see. we are here to talk about new book by kevin williamson, "the end is near and it's going to be awesome." we have kevin talking to us a little bit about his book in a few moments and then we will have some commentary on not from nick gillespie of a reason.com and recent tv will have a few things to say i'm sure. if you look around right now, you can see pretty obviously that the major institutions of the modern welfare state are beginning to show their strength after all, you can look at the fact we have right now at the federal level 126 separate federal antipoverty programs at a cost of $860 billion a year.

and yet, poverty rates go up. we spend more every year on education, more federal education programs, more federal education dollars and test scores go nowhere. we spend more money on social security and medicare as these programs careened towards bankruptcy and yet social security delivers a much lower in declining rate of return to young people leaving them on the hook for higher taxes or lower benefits in the future. federal intervention in the health care system from medicaid to medicare to obamacare is leading to higher health care costs and difficulty in seeing the doctor of your choice. all you have to do is look at the most recent scandals were suffering right here. investigation of journalists,

the benghazi debacle, the irs harassment of conservative groups if you take the word for everything, every administration telling the truth all along, you have to come to the conclusion that the cia, the state department, irs, and other federal organizations are utterly incompetent. that's the best news, the good news is that most of the federal government is incapable of work in a seen a two-car funeral. that kevin will tell us this is good news because we are going broke at the same time. the fact is that this country we talk about facing a $16.7 trillion national debt right now, which process only in

a slightly better position than countries like greece and italy, we have the fourth highest national debt among oecd countries. that does even begin to touch the real cause when you get into the unfunded liabilities programs like social security and medicare. the mossad domestic forecast to include the unfunded liabilities of programs we face a real dead is somewhere around 80 troy and, about 500% of gdp and perhaps as large as 120 or 100 dirty trying dollars in debt. over 900% of gdp. even using the national debt of course it's 103% of gdp, which means we owe more than the value of goods and services produced in this country over the course of a year. flycatcher credit card bills are realizing that added adept to be more than your entire pretax

salary. so what we are going to hear today is just how close city on those facts make a and why they are such good news. so with that, i would like to turn it over to kevin williamson, who is national review's roving correspondent, exchequer blog deals with issues like debt, deficits, finance and politics. i also to say he's a frequent editor for my own column for national review online, which means when a frame is sufficiently snarky i can expect him to add additional smart to my columns, which is something badly in need and political punditry. it's long and distinguished journalism career and stared at the bombay-based indian express newspaper group. his 15 years in the newspaper business in texas, pennsylvania, colorado. we're thrilled to have them here. lots of television shows, one of

the talking heads now that we no longer rate newspapers as they did do this. at any rate, his book is "the end is near and it's going to be awesome" and we are delighted to have him. [applause] >> by old-fashioned newspaper man, he means every newspaper editor for tor has been through bankruptcy. none of them during the time i was there. it's nice i was able to avoid that. thank you for coming out today. i appreciate it. i know there are lots of other things to do with your time and your afternoons about the inevitability is of politics. i think it started, i should probably go ahead and blame john for this book.

i was speaking at an ihs event a few years back and i heard an offhand remark at the end that would libertarians arrest difficult questions about social challenges, thinks the poverty, education, people who are disabled and can't take care of themselves, we say well, charity will take care of it, free-market and those are kind of our two answers to everything john said well, that's really what you need to write a book about. so they spoke an attempt was to answer john's challenge they are and i will leave it to you all to decide whether that has been sufficient or not. so i made a number around 140 trillion. when i look at the situation, i also include the state and local

debts in state and local unfunded liabilities as kind of the aggregate national fiscal overhang, which if you wonder whether there's a political debate, rios national average in overhang, which nobody cares. most of it not in the form of explicit that. the state and local level and national level have to get paid one day. mostly liabilities associated with title ix since a local level with pensions for state employees, which turn out to be a huge, huge liability that most people don't think about. running around between $3,000,000,000,004,000,000,000,0 00 in obligations for the states and cities that they have no possible way to pay or think about paying. i sign a statement that in 15 years the state of illinois's pensions alone will exceed all

of their expected tax revenue. if they close down the schools, fire the police can let the highways fall apart, get rid of the zoning department and don't do anything to try to pay pensions, they still won't get the bills. [inaudible] >> i want to see 15 year sentence. sometimes you forget. we're not talking about the safety or stun the rotors 60 years the road. in california for a city after going bankrupt. i happen to be at the city council meeting at san bernardino when they declared in group c. if he'd been there, you'd never be so happy to see people go bankrupt. they were the worst body of elected officials i've ever seen anywhere. and you know, that is the guy who spent time in pakistan. they're just terrible. but in the ad, as i argue in the

book, i think this is an opportunity for us. i hate to take the rahm emanuel approach and let the crisis to waste, but if you've got one coming, it pays to be prepared for it. i've spoken a lot about how we go about solving social problems to student groups. as a teacher, professor for a while and the abstract economic argument puzzle than, partly because they don't take economics anymore and make it totted ansa placemats and economics, which is a different subject. but there are things they understand. one of the visualizer like to use in a recurring motif in my book as you all remember this oliver stone movie, wall street and the character gordon gecko who gets hung around our necks. what i'd like is the famous

poster of him using that rule the cell phone from 1984 because i am a nerd i have an interesting take knowledge she had cell phones and such. this is the 40th anniversary. it's been a mixed blessing obviously in some ways, but that motorola brick he had cost almost $10,000 in $2013. something like 42 minutes of talk time. couldn't play angry birds on it. for a trade a stock or check your e-mail or send a text message or anything else. he had to be gordon gecko two on one. in fact, the first one appeared within 60 candles and a rolls-royce. that's where they were. and i talked to college students, people who are not

millionaires and everyone has this in his pocket. there's a lady who runs a coffee shop down the street from my office in new york. she's an immigrant from bangladesh and she has the same sofa for president of the united states does. it's an amazingly egalitarian outcome, but you can bet everything that her kids don't go to schools that are as good as for the president or someone like that send their kids. her retirement certainly won't be as good. health care certainly won't be as good, at least health care financing and access. so they've got this via situation. was that friedman, jetsons or flintstones paying. one of those goofy things -- what of those as he a column, but it's kind of a useful idea, we've got to separate economies and one of them everything gets

better and cheaper and better and cheaper in the other one they don't. we've got three important sectors of the economy is largely dominated politics. education, which is almost entirely a local monopolies, 91%, 92% go to public schools. health care, which even before the aca was 50% government spending, have socialized system before we got around to making it worse three-quarter socialist system. and then you've got pensions, which is dominated by social security of course. medicare is a piece of that mark bradley. you've got a system in which people are paying 12.5% of their income for their entire lives and campaign some renown of it that is not at all related to but they put into it. one of the diverse to baser with the idea social security with an investment. this country is full of people

who believe there is a found somewhere to which social security taxes go and it's supposed to be there waiting for them. one of the great frauds ever perpetrated on the american people you try to explain that the social security trust fund is a figure of speech, an accounting fiction and you can tell them 100 times, thousand times and it's really hard to get people to appreciate that, that it just isn't fair. it's a thing that was made up. so we end up with the situation in the two got three important parts of the economy and some other important ones that are dominated by systems that don't work. there's a tendency among those of us who write about politics and yell about people about politics all the time to read all of this through sort of familiar ideological filters. i wanted to take the argument a little bit beyond bull markets

work in government bureaucracies don't and that's the end of discussion because there's a bit more to be said. it is something that is not always well to. most people think it's partially about profits than answers, but i don't get that tells the whole story. of course on the fa hayek auditorium, they're certainly more sophisticated versions of the argument made than mine, but not everyone is going to be reading that. so we have a problem that is related to something hayek got into, which is the problem of complexity. i started off the book with a retelling of letters great essay, which is on my favorite things they read when i was a kid and it's always stuck with me. she's got a process that'll let

the marketplace, but the nonprofit sector and things like wikipedia, kickstart precut lots of people working on problems of different angles. everyone making small improvements, things that have been the aggregate over a long period of time to real dramatic improvements for the motorola brick to the iphone from $10,000 to look if you want for free if you sign up with the service. itunes error-free yet though, are they? maybe a couple hundred bucks. are they free now? [inaudible] >> who wants a four? that's so six-month ago. obviously the schools aren't improving at the same rate. they're not getting better and better and cheaper and cheaper. we spend twice in real dollars will be spent 30 years ago. would be like in most places are very good in the same missiles we were 30 years ago. health care is one of those weird things where you've got a

system of paying for things that's very disconnected from the market itself. this guy really incredible things in the marketplace. simple little things, basically a strong with henderson implanted in it, but for a lot of people it had open heart surgery and unnecessary thing. it is to be something wrong with your heart they had to sell you up and comer preacher rips into open-heart surgery. it was crazy. that would have outpatient procedures, pitcher system of paying for that is of course 19th century, maybe early 20th century. it shows up throughout the marketplace. one of the things that i say crazy on life, should one day read a long long essay about this. if you go to doctor's office doctor's office they they had your clipboard and ask your medical questions and you fill it out with pen and paper for your medical records. if you owe them money, the use

of credit reporting system, which is the norm say sophisticated piece of information to elegy that can find you anywhere in the world and discover how much money you owe to and how long and white terms. when it comes to health records and stomach are to anything, this comment. we're just one step for. this is what happens when you have a marketplace when there's no need for consumers and producers to negotiate with one another, whatever his interests are adverse to everyone else's in the repeated relationships that make life so much easier everywhere else. so the thing about where we are with the money and of the situation is simply that these obligations are never going to do that. they're not. we've got the mic out something like $140 trillion of liabilities and $0 to pay for

them. if you ever tried to talk to people about the national debt in things related to it, numbers all sound alike at a certain point. as an english major, so anything above 16 i've got to check twice. 100 billion, hundred trillion. i was just over at the house speaking to a couple members of congress and they've got some level difference. although you wouldn't necessarily know what until you see how they operate. to give you a scale of that, $140 trillion is about two times gdp planet. it is approaching the value of all the financial asset than existing in the world. all the money and all the bank accounts, all the stocks and bonds, everything does not up to that. the thing to keep in mind as we are not the only country with liabilities. other countries with similar

liabilities going into the same marketplace looking to take a limited pool of capital and finance obligations better multiple of it. at about the global number adds up to, but you have to use scientific notation. it's going to be huge. so there's just a 0.0% possibility things like social security and medicare will ever be paid out in anything like your present value. this disinflationary race to do that, i actually am cautiously optimistic about what the process looks like by which we have blindness. if we had to guess i guess what happens is eventually interest rates go back up. they go back to their historical average, the panic has sized hole in the budget and people have to make difficult decisions about what's going to get finance and what is not.

if you're in the house or in the senate, the question you're asking yourself within 20 years which howling do i want a face? people expected of social security checks are the people and bonds and are expected to get paid back? social security is going to lose. don't bet on grandma in this particular showdown because the worst thing is to lose their ability because politics on a pay-as-you-go basis is not much fun. if you can't run deficits come if you can't give people something for nothing. the depth of the country as an unlikely outcome. we're not argentina or greece or any of those places, the reform to the benefit recognizability is a very likely outcome. i hate to sound like a mark

says, but almost historically inevitable. the problem for us and die as thinking about these issues who share certain sets of values and want to address robinson with his productive and fruitful and does the things they want to do is be ready with specific, or grammatic solutions. here's how they want to take care of education and health care. at least with some sets of intellectual guiding principles that allowed them to develop. we always run into this rhetorically as libertarians is to hate medicare, we hate this. what he wanted to? the problem is answering that question is part of the problem. the idea that there is a model of education for a model of

finance and health care for a model of what to do about people's retirement is an enormous part of the problem because there's no one in their than one company that makes cell phones are cars are 1% of wikipedia. it just doesn't make sense. our argument going forward is not so much about specific or grammatic outcomes, which will develop over time in various ways as different people contribute, but what political and economic environment will allow these things to emerge? one of those is what the political science, exit, which is giving people the opportunity to the programs behind an experiment for themselves. moving from a cash flow basis and that dealing to an asset base system, we make real investments on behalf of people who need it. rhetorically we've often allowed

ourselves to be led astray by this cartoons of the capitalism is come up of the jungle, competition is everything, every man for himself way of looking at the world is backward and it's actually not a real reflection of our values. i think we should come out to be talking about the sensitive a positive obligation to do things or people who can't do things themselves. that's a real thing for human beings. we don't expect children to be responsible. people who are 85 and could no longer do things for themselves and are disabled and people who are just unlucky and we are not the society that's going to let people not have health care cannot be educated. were going to solve this problem come address those problems, but we as libertarians should be a little more vocal about the fact we think these are problems that we want to solve and we think poverty is a problem.

we think these solutions have a pretty good chance to work. it's what's money, right? but it doesn't actually do things it's supposed to do. poverty rates are slightly higher rate now than they were before we launched foreign policy and apparently spent $6000 for every household in poverty since then, since the johnson administration. we could have written on the check, everything that has been poor and still financially better off than they would be poor anymore. some of them probably would. if you give me $500,000 when i was 18, i'd be broke and be worse off than i am. so i think we should not cede to the other side dhea would view the settlements applications,, the positive obligation and we

have a responsibility to human beings to take care of things and debate that's going to ameliorate the things who want to ameliorate. cautiously optimistic because election results notwithstanding americans are not. american voters are, but americans ever whilst they're smart people. we don't want to be poor, we don't want to be miserable. we understand what we do and have been doing doesn't actually work, doesn't solve the problems and if left unchecked will lead us to some sort of economic crisis. the koran say the worst-case scenario sake argentina, greece, cyprus, to reduce our worst-case scenario is not precedent in world history because it never seen an economic crisis in a country that accounts for one fifth to one fourth of the world's economic output.

that was never seen anything like that. it's something you don't really want to discover. it's not going to be happy if we get to that point. i still don't think that they will, but as the financial crisis pressure builds on washington, they will do the right thing once they've exhausted every other option. the good news is they are running out of options and is set to us to be there with better ones on the table. so with that, i'll bring a can of the conversation. they put this between us to keep nick and i from having to spirit it a debate. thank you, all. [applause] >> thank you, kevin. i do want to invite nick gillespie. we asked and here on an affirmative action program as part of those two, they have a few remarks.

nick is the editor-in-chief with reason.com, recent tv and another person moving away from the old-fashioned kind in terms of our future. you see them on tv, pretty much ubiquitous, also notes a major print media columns, so he's one of the all-time handsets a libertarian who's been laboring for a long time. that may give him his own unique perspective on this. >> i kind of shy away from the embassies you are putting on an old hand such as today's. i'm actually celebrating my 28th year in october with reason. i thought that was going to be a year and a half job. time has changed. i want to thank everybody for coming. a couple people in particular

and cato for hosting us. it's a real pleasure to be on a panel with you. i've used her work through the years to my advantage and i hope to public discourse advantage. it was michael's work that made me fully understand how bad a deal social security was for anybody under the age of seven d. and it keeps getting worse and worse. i also want to thank heaven for inviting me to discuss these books. i'm a big fan of his work and this is a really important book that is written and i'm going to pick some nice with it so they can have a discussion. i don't want that to get in the way. when i was reading this book, it's sort of coming back to me when i became the editor-in-chief is trying out different lines. with the new libertarianism doubled that the ball forward, change things? i'm obsessed someone with cold

war history and the later czechoslovakia in the 1960s i guess now going to present socialism with a human face and obviously that work out very well. it ended with a bunch of soviet tanks parking in prague. if you are going to show capitalism. that's a libertarianism really is all about. i didn't go over too well, but i was thinking about that because it's a great way of talking about capitalism. he gets to the value propositio of a system of voluntary mutual consent, innovation and change increases everybody's life chances and makes everybody better off and that's a really positive powerful message we often get lost in, especially in d.c. when we start talking about politics policies. i want to thank heaven for having me here. there's a bunch of people from ihs which kevin worked on for a

long time it was kind enough to have me on the bench of her grams and seminars they did another ihs people here. ihs is a hugely important institution within the freedom movement as cato is in a variety of other places. ihs personally helped me finish grad school, though i have feelings for that group, which is in its fifth get us here. it's great to be here. let me start off turning specifically to the book. kevin's two main points are both in our group went totally convincing them they are first at our current form of government and politics is simply unsustainable and unstable and that's a good thing. we're definitely going broke. you hear people at "the new york times," people like paul krugman talking about this in the nation, you name it that we are not going broke. the fact of the matter is we are

going broke in a very clear, unambiguous way. at the lease will be facing such tight constraints on government business that things have to change. we've ran out of thatcher a couple months ago. she was famous for saying when you are not a people's money, things change. just a very concrete example talking about social security and all have or to say. major changes to the tax rates charged or to benefit cut, social security surplus trust fund will be totally exhausted by 2033 and that's what they say now and we'll get closer as time goes on and that will mean an immediate cut of 25% and retirement benefits. similar issues for medicare and other major things with exhaustion dates closer to us. all of this is predicated on a budget in circles than interest

rates or affect the and the 1% or 2% range for government money will stay that way for a while. we are living a fan as the world that this bubble is going to pot pretty soon. the minute the cost of borrowing money for the government goes up in a well eventually, all this will happen much more quickly. so are definitely going broke and that's a good thing. that's the second half and i think is right because in these moments come in many things can happen. he's correct and appealing and optimistic any correct way that the end of business as usual is going to be bad news for a lot of people. bad news for politicians and cronies and it's going to be bad news especially for people dependent on the government.

one of the things that's interesting is it's not the usual suspects. his previous broadside or counter books, the dependency agenda is brilliant on this point. the real people dependent on government. it's not poor people that are the problem. it's middle-class and upper-middle-class people. we live in a society where 49% of americans live in a household that is a direct payment from the government. which helps explain why the nation is going broke. we pay money for everybody one way or another by large numbers of people are so resistant to change. change will come because that pipeline is going to run dry pretty soon. but his point is what's bad for the ruling class and the sponging class can be great for the rest of us. the serbs who are going to be set free when the revolution

comes and it's going to be a financial revolution. he makes a compelling case that the world we can create in the midst of this chaos will be ultimately predicated upon things that choice can send an voluntary exchange. uses all sorts of compelling examples of the commercial world as well as the social world. things like religious institutions and benevolent societies in history as always things going up now to offer a vision of a better world. he cited in your original comments. wire funds getting better and cheaper and cheaper and the things the government controls going wrong? at the next minute not going to change because government functions by radically different goals, which include force and coercion first and foremost. so far so good. i'm in total agreement and now i want to switch. i have a so i joke which i don't suspect is going to go over

well, but smx a lot once put it, i'd like to us. i want to raise objections. the first is that one point kevin asserts and again this is a richly textured book about human life as we live it and how government is a totally different beast and education, health care, pensions. i would be remiss if i didn't mention the book matt welch and i co-authored a couple years ago available in paperback, declaration of independence that we come to similar focus on education, health care and pensions. these are the places where life is not getting better even though we spend more and more money. most places has been asked to get more stuff. who also do great work guys to adjunct scholar kato works with her caitiff and whatnot has written a series of great books that focus on these issues.

this is just the way it is. government is screwing things up. but kevin at one point his third at politics -- politics of violence, but the department of education's bureaucrats and other federal officers are gangsters and use those terms. i want us to pause on that because there's a lot to agree with that and it's a great laugh line. kevin quotes the famous scene from the godfather, both in the novel and movie which michael corleone, the major mafia family tells his way prate idealistic wife, who is a kindergarten teacher and as a stand-in for nonethnic american and diluted because they've never been abused by government forces. she says come on, senators and presidents of politicians phase being naïve now?

this is undercard in a lot of kevin's argument that politics is violence. without blinding ourselves to the realities of tyrannical government, chewing up all government actions exposed everyday in our website and magazine, which are all online at reason.com. cato does that policy work exposes. national review does exemplary work. do we really deep down believe that? do we believe government is violence and that's it? if that's true, what i want to argue -- long to put it this way. coming from the most radical capitalistic cato may have hidden in the basement are buried in the foundation of this beautiful new building y narco capitalist and reason. that would be a strong statement coming from someone at national

review is that they really, really bold statement. the only other state in the book that comes close to equaling that this kevin defense in passing or he celebrates what's up one throughout the book and particularly the song, stairway to heaven. i was puzzling over that because it is a known fact that at least three of the four members of led zeppelin signed a deal with the devil. so they committed their souls to, but more importantly, bill buckley, the founder of national review hated the beatles. he caught them unconscionably awful and now we have a national review writer talking about but that blended stairway to heaven, which listen to it backwards and you'll be going to. that's to decide. do we really believe that all government is illegitimate ultimately because it's predicated of the world with the

dennis predicated on violence. men with guns take things away. i'm not necessarily disagreeing but that, but if that is the starting point, are we all just cowards then? so that's my first point of questioning the book. if politics is ask him what government is possible? to his credit, kevin does go to discuss this in the last couple of chapters particularly worth reading. kevin doesn't vote at least at one point, illegitimate and that's where the rebellion. the second point i want to raise its kevin is a vision of politics to one of the reasons we have the world with it than us because we are still trapped in a hobbesian nightmare scenario, where there's only two possible solutions to what goes on in the world. on one hand stated nature is a worthwhile look at all the

vicious chaos in people are killing each other or that somehow supposed as an an alternative to it, which is where this state, the leader is the embodiment. we all formed the body politics literally and mccain are the ruler we have to follow his rules or that's it. the state owns us and directs us what to do. he's writing same part of what he's trying to do is to replace that die out, these are two options. call them republican and democrat whatever, but it's a constrained vision of human society and he's trying to replace that. but he wants to replace it with a new model of negotiation of voluntary consent. his emphasis on the right of exit. throughout the book i was reading a brilliant essay.

i forget where it appeared originally about albert hirschman, the economist who died not too long ago called exit voice of loyalty. the rate of exit is by far and away the most important right we have. a preexisting psych freedom of expression or religion or freedom of assembly. i think it's great you focus on that. he's trying to replace a hobbesian view of earth are part of leviathan and do your part or get killed or your new morphology and stalled but this model of negotiation of voluntary can add. if that's so common now i want to ask him to comment on his recent escapade which is made a lot of headlines. i don't know how many of you are familiar, but kevin rooted at the national review of attending to play in new york city. he was bothered by a theatergoer who wouldn't stop using her cell phone and a disruptive matter.

as a side note a couple weeks ago i saw alan cummings and mcbeth on broadway. a one-man show, which i'm warning you i didn't know that going in. i find it terrible to be quite honest. there were people around me and i admit i don't have full knowledge. we will all falling asleep. i don't know if we would've engendered your breach. it was the right of exit for about 15 minutes or so. so this woman is using her cell phone in a distraught that matter. we've all been in these situations. ivan osorio has been setting secret hands signals and being a step as a festive affair. yes his companions to talk to management and tell me if i'm getting the main facts wrong. the management basically didn't do anything, so it continued, by which kevin grabbed the audience

members found an apparently break it. for this action, this is what's interesting. they even offered to pay his court costs. i'd hold onto that if it comes to that. the reason i bring it up is in this context of this government always forced, with some alternative vision of a society that is not taught down coercively based, what kind of world we live in? what is kevin's race-based argument and how does it bear in your book's argument? your book turns on an invocation nonaggression mutual consent. we are effectively living in moving more towards. i can't imagine a scenario under which kevin has the right to physically accost or destroy the

property. it seems to me your beef is really with the theater management and the rate that is your right of exit and getting a refund because they failed to deliver you be able to watch the downplay, which is very good and you recommended. doesn't his action may provoke the scenario re: inscribe it this book seeks to replace that we either have absolute power or absolute chaos, which leads me to a final point. as i noted before, kevin ms. bradley and completely right and appealingly right in his book, which is not only a stimulating essay, but all of us who read, especially for a living at, when you get a book and you want to read it and then it turns into liner notes from bob dylan or by genesis.

or at the needles that i can put in my eyes? this is a well-written book and it's very stimulating and provocative neckerchief you don't read it, buy a copy. what are the ways in which change occurs beyond encrypts the? the money runs dry and everything like that. what is your message specifically to conservative readers. to national review, republicans and conservatives because it seems like that to the book is speaking to. it seems to me many conservatives share an absolute fear of unstructured unregulated human interaction. i think we understand spontaneous order and we love it. we get the following analogies

and thinks like that, but actually conservatives and right-wingers in general don't. they're afraid of mexicans crossing the border. they're afraid of infecting schools in boy scouts and type of stuff and when it comes to the major drivers of debt, your defense spending, medicare and social security for the poorest among us. it's totally a moral on my part, but it's conservatives. they start wetting their pants when you say let's cut defense team to protect the borders of the country i suppose to screw up every country we can land a plane in. they are the ones -- aei went holistic. a guy who used to work at cato is a great scholar was so hot

and bothered about obama suggesting a chained cpi for future social security benefits. got to be kidding me. that's a no-brainer if you stay within the constructs. medicare the last time i checked, the republican party was running on a platform to say he was against obamacare because he was going to make sure nothing changed in medicare. obama would be the problem in six months or years when they get around to rolling out the first exchange should. the medicare is the problem. how do you teach this gospel of bottom-up happy libertarian libertarian creativity and all of that to conservatives? i'll leave it at that. thank you very much. [applause] >> kevin, if you'd like to take five minutes or so and respond to all of those points at the top rope fastened and take some questions.

>> i knew i wasn't going to get out of here without talking about that cell phone. you know what i was hurting before that was ellickson's great essay and i don't coffeyville read this essay, but one of his essays about potential property conflicts between ranchers and farmers, cattle tend to wander around, stomp on people's crops and things like that. his idea was if you had relatively low transaction costs and people consult these disputes themselves, property rights would essentially be respect and distributed in a way that made them. even if people are acting outside the law. years later went to california and found out how people did it. this is interesting essay he wrote. there are lots of property damage, but people are able to solve these disputes themselves.

sometimes they do it by breaking the law. for instance, someone put the animal wanders onto your lawn once the ticket back to the owner and a good for any damages done to your friends. if it happens a couple times, kill it or they do some discrete property damage. i think i was doing an experiment, so you think a theater management does the government and maybe we were not asking permission to solve our problems, which is kind of worth it to go. in terms of conservatives and republicans specifically, one of the things that i tried to emphasize the national review and try to keep foremost on everyone's mind is that there is a key critical important difference between the conservative movement and republican party. i used to be a republican and i

left the party around -- was not long ago, 2000 or something like that over the issue spending primarily. last time i had a republican government with bush, delay and most are yours, it was not exactly the outcome that fiscal conservatives were hoping for. i think the unfortunate fact is the exception of a few really philosophically driven officeholders and relatively safe seat, that there's really very little hope for getting a republican party that will behave any differently than anyone else in congress because their incentives are the same people respond to incentives and follow their own self-interest as we all know from having better public health books. it's kind of weird wherein politically because i'm very

conservative, including socially conservative. my views are about which you would expect. i've questions about how much we can make politically actionable. you know, one of the things that drives me crazy as we've been in this debate about marriage and the conservative movement and the question if we should extend certain legal marriage benefits to same-sex couples can you hear people like my colleague, maggie gallagher who i like very much talking about were going to lose the institution of marriage. where have you been since the 1960s? regardless how you feel, and very much a traditional summit views on a range. we kind of lost that one. we lost that in the days of no-fault divorce and all the subsequent mastery. i take it contracted marriage. people should get in whatever contracts they like him buying

name. the argument in the deal i made this face. we can have a voluntary contract rights-based regime is something which the government finds everything for us in washington will decide that a marriage is an honest in the sacramento. from a purely pragmatic one of few, if you're a social conservative come you got to know you're going to lose. there's no way you're going to come out ahead. what is actually interesting is that what they conservatives to put the remaining three market tests. if the social agreements we believe in, family arrangements we believe in will produce outcomes that are desirable in a measurable kind of way come happier people, more prosperous people, more stable communities, that should show up in the data.

there should be a way to look at that outcome. one of the things i talk about self-assurance. self-assurance is to be really good thing. i was caught in large system. people do want to fraternities and really, really high numbers. a third of the country, particularly affect minorities, immigrants from europe and african-americans who have their own systems. in philadelphia and the late 19th or d. at 1020 sentry comes something like 90% of households had some form of health insurance, almost always done through the fraternal system. good pay x number of dollars per member per year to adopt an exchange for them being able to make house calls and doctors visits. young doctors didn't have to take 10 years to build a practice to people he didn't have a lot of money could get some level of health insurance.

there was a great deal of self policing involved in that because if your insurance company is also your neighbors, the people you go to church with an work with come you got strong incentives not to abuse them, to commit fraud and various other things. on their side they have strong incentives to be decent as well. the american medical association holds cow that they have been in the system and various government and regulatory initiatives. now we have this weird system for somebody else pays, someone receives and nobody has any relationship with one another that makes any sense. but if you're going back and doing something like that, if you are social conservative, it would be an interesting opportunity to test out social theories about whether they are true. coca-cola has a really good health care system for employees.

where they ranked their health care system, their health program are highly than the management of their company, which maybe is no surprise if you worked anywhere. the reason they get good outcomes is 110,000 of them or something like that. nobody wants to be the guy to lose that account. but it's got that big a share come you've got bill incentives for people to produce for you. there were millions of catholics in the country, millions of religious jewish. they be 600,000 people belong to the malraux road association, but these check it used to. that's one experimental outcome. maybe the optimal social situation as something other than what traditionalist conservatives saying, but even if we are right about that, that's not necessarily an argument for imposing on politics. and it's the sort of propositio

that you might like to test. so i think maybe that answers nick. i'm actually it and much better coach than a led zeppelin fan. this is a totally cheap attempt to sell books with led zeppelin, something popular than the misfits. >> can ask you something about your early readers and early reviews from the right, what is the attitude towards things like making radical changes to medicare and social security because these are real second points. >> if i cannot do that, we went through an election campaign in which the centerpiece of that romney and paul ryan subjection to obamacare was they were cutting $716 for medicare, to which the president said i would never cut that. medicare's $42 trillion in debt.

[laughter] >> in terms of movement conservatives, radical change of entitlement program is actually quite popular. the republican party not so much. people really like to be social security reform because that is seen as the ec one. ..

that's both from a -- >> is that growing in popularity. having that discussion. i was think, among the republican party -- you're right. the republican party and the conservative movement are -- the right are not exactly the same any more than democrats and the left are. but at least among republicans and because of people like rand paul and a number of others that the republicans are actually involved in a really row but and interesting debate d row roe v. wade bust, -- robust, and people would ask about the leaders of the republican party, and ted cruz, and who are the young leaders of the democrats. hillary clinton is the youngest democrat who anybody could name, and she is six or seven hundred years old at this point, and i don't say that as an agent.

she is getting up there, and at least the republicans are debating this type of stuff. is there sense that he's heritage propose sals -- ben and jerries his one percent for peace. it that popular and. >> there are people -- we are having this debate on the right, right now. rand paul, probably being the most prominent spokesman for a more reasonable defense and foreign policy. people like ted cruz, who -- he is not as far out there as, say, rand paul is, but also not where george w. bush and paul wolfowitz were. i think there are at least a few of us who think that maybe '08 was the election to lose simply because a president public

public, wouldn't publish president mccain, wouldn't have been as bad on health care and would have appointed better judges, iran, is there a place we wouldn't be at war? might be a bit much. so i think there's an argument to be made and evangelizing for conservatives, if not on a moral basis, which it's funny, for a conservative catholic guy to be saying this but one point in the book is that i really just want to drop moral and ethical and metaphysical arguments. i think they're fundamentally important but just it's impossible to change people's mind on subjects. we have been having ethical debate about the role of government for a thousand years or more. but there are some really good consequencallists and pragmatic arguments and we i can take toes

arguments to people on the right and say we need to spend x, y, z, on the military. maybe every now and then there's a particular situation we want to be prepared for, and maybe belt and suspenders prepared for. i can see that argument but what was it in for us in iraq, libya? we have troops in africa right now which confusions me, people in the congo. when you're in the congo, that's the end point. that's a bad sign for your country. nothing good -- >> belgium is a european problem. >> yeah. so, it's an argument that has to be continue to be made and all all fronts, whether it's actually in the national interest, economically smart, and the think people forget is the issue of opportunity cost on that. which is there are some things we want government to be doing, but things we want to do with the capital, and even when you

are dropping a bomb on someone for a really good reason, still from a capital point of view it's a net loss. a million dollar piece of equipment you acknowledge get to use once and its only product is dead arabs. >> or the occasional american, it seems. >> four of them, yeah. >> that we know about. >> and when should be having the debate with someone later today. >> all right. [applause] >> let get you folks involve. we have time for a few questions. go ahead, when you stan -- stand up, wait for the microphone, identify yourself, and please just ask a question, don't make a speech. i'll cut you off on that. >> this is a really short speech. just kidding. this is lucas with the american spectator, and, kevin, i'm a huge fan. i like the writing about health

care and prices and how those two things don't belong in the same sentence at this point. my question is -- this will sound con pierer toal but you're very optimistic that when the end does come, it is going to be awesome and we're going to be able to step in as libertarians and make some beautiful new thing that is voluntary and i'm like fully onboard with that ideal, don't get me wrong. it's huge question i think about a lot. but i mean, the history of events like this, where all the fundamental institutions of society break down-that tends to predate totalitarianism. it's not like society collapses and then all of a sudden everybody is really, really free. usually goes in the opposite direction. what do you have to say about that? >> well, i would challenge the premise of your question, which is that i don't think that the

state really represents the fundamental institutions of our society. they don't make anything useful. they do some useful things. i'm not saying that law enforcement is good for nothing, that courts are good for nothing, and if you have been in a place with bad law or unreliable courts, or police that are worse than our police are, you see the value of that. certainly. but the things that really make modern, 2 century life what it is are independent of the state. so, i'm not expecting total collapse of government or anything like that, although expecting a retreat, and i'm also not saying that i don't have some ammunition boxed up just in case. and some maps of walking trails in northern maine in case we have to get away for a while, although i don't expect to have to use those. what we're really talking about

is things here, like are we going to have monopoly schools local level, social security, medicare. those will go away, i think, and cowboy poetry festivals funded by the federal government, and as much fun as those things are they don't add up to squat as everyone knows in terms of the budget. the military spending down to 17%? so, if i thought we were going sort of somalia route, with the actual collapse of law and order and society and all that sort of stuff, i'd be getting my 'swiss german thing and locking for apartments in europe. but i don't think that's lookly. we aren't as dependent on the welfare state as people would think we are and not as dependent on government as washington would like us to

think we are. a lot of this stuff could just, poof, go away the day after tomorrow and life would go on just fine. if it goes away in a slow and controlled fashion, that much less disruptive and there's a really good chance we can still make that happen. not 100% chance, though, i'm like to emphasize. congress and in the bureaucracies are capable of making the problem bad and disruptive and causing a great deal of social disorder if they choose to go that direction. >> all the -- speaking on my open behalf, picking up on the last question, isn't there a risk that, for instance, let's say, obamacare collapses. might move to a single payer system. isn't it's a risk that major economic disruptions if you have low information voters and state

is officials, might say this means we have to start taking over, having the state more and more involved, not crony capitalism but move closer to socialism. how do you deal with that real risk? >> i think it's a risk. i don't think it's that large a risk, actually. so, the people can vote for members of congress who then vote to go borrow money and keep doing things the way wear doing it, but at some point they hit economic reality, which is that people don't want to lend them money i'm, at least not at 1.1% or 1.2% or wherever we are. so we have these debates every six months about the statutory debt ceiling but there's a legal debt ceiling, which doesn't party, and an economic debt ceiling which does, and you run up against it. so people can vote for keeping things they way they are or vote for doing x, y, and z, but once

the assets and resources aren't there, they're not there. the people of greece would like to vote for something other than they're going to get and various other places as well, but they're not going to get it because it's not there. >> now, also add in an -- compliment complimentary way to the process, many of the technologies and new social organizations kevin talks about in his book, they empower a distype of political response, and if you -- let's say the obamacare exchanges, which i -- their own people are calling them train wrecks, and the hindenburg and this stuff. when those fail, it's not going to be simple for the government -- they might try to say, okay, now we have to go to a single payer system, but the same kind of ad hoc, temporary coalition of a broad group of people can come together and

organize to put down legislation, i think we saw that with the stop online piracy act a year and a half ago, and things like that. you see odd coalitions that come together for specific purposes for short periods of time in places like california, and places like colorado and washington in terms of medical marijuana, where other types of things. and the technology that has made our lives better also has -- it couldn't really 20 years ago, even. >> one thing we haven't got into too much, if i can add to that, partly technology, partly changing nature of how people work, for whom they work, the emergence of things like currency substitutes, the emergence of more alternatives for truly private and secure banking and things like that. 25 years from now, i have my doubts about whether the government is going to be able to really do a very good job of collecting taxes, much less trying to manage the healthcare

system. i think that the balance of power has definitely shifted in an important way and it's not going to go back. we have spent 20 years talking about gun control, and what we should do, should we do this or that? and then there's the guy with the 3d printer and it's not what should you do, what can you do? do you think you can regulate this? pass all the laws you want, you're not going to stop it. i think that's going to be an important political factor in moving forward. >> let me ask you this. so much of your argument here is based on the idea that, this cannot go on forever and eventually stops and we have a debt problem that will force action. the counterargument is paul krugman, who suggests we don't have a debt problem. we can spendman infinitely, which the real problem is the fact we're not spending enough and the whole crisis in europe is caused by the harsh austerity where they have slashed spending, almost impossible to

fine any spending cuts but assume they slashed spending and that is causing the problem. how do you respond to that? there's no debt problem. >> well, that's a theory. and i'm willing to see that theory tested. >> if i can add to that, too, you're right, obviously, that there has been -- austerity is most quickly defined as a specific attempt or explicit attempt to reduce the debt to gdp ratio. there have been attempts to do that in europe but their fundamentally and overwhelmingly done through tax increases. they're not cutting spending. they're not savagely cutting spending but they are cutting disposable income. in the ute it's fascinating because it's clear obama wants to spend more money. he put out a budget plan that wine crease spending by $2 trillion over a ten-year period and would increase spending for next year. under obama, when jaw adjust for inflation, spending has been

flat and going down since his first year when he got everything he wanted. and we know republicans want to spend money when they can, or if they can direct it, and they haven't been able to increase spending, so regardless of -- we are in a place where kind of spending has maxed out. at least temporarily. >> him christopher from the urban libertarian based in new york. my question is, a lot of the sort of -- this is predicated on what will happen now if we ask the by-x-rays as libertarians we're talking about what is going to happen 20 years down the line. so the argument of fear resonates more in the now than in the future. what do you think we can do to highlight the benefits of the now of acting as opposed to talking about what is negative in the future.

>> well, the downside of that is there aren't a whole lot of benefits of acting now. we just have a problem. and it's got to be sorted out but it's not be to be very much fun for anybody. politically there's not a lot of traction to be gained from, we're going to take this away from you. economically there will be real downsizes as people have made plans for their lives based on faulty assumptions about their social security and medicare and other benefits would look like. it's not going to be a fun unwinding in any way. one of the things i think we should try to do, though, is emphasize the things we want to put in place of these things. whether that has to do with well-organized voluntary wealth transfers for dealing with certain kind of poverty problems, problems related to

disability, certain kinds of policies related to taking people out of traditional education system, allowing people to set up self-insurance cooperatives and other sorts of healthcare alternatives. it's not like we don't have any good ideas and things we could start doing right now that would produce real social benefit and not just economic benefit but actually making people's lives better in meaningful ways. but as for the first part of that, that equation, just how do we undo this horrible thing that the federal government, he state governments and city governments and counties and school boards and special bridge district and every other political entity you can think of has done, it's just not. just not going to be any fun thing for doing that. >> i would like to answer that. i think it's a really difficult question to answer, but the first thing that we need to do, especially -- defense is not hard to cut, and historically defense spending gets cut a lot. it got cut a lot after world war

ii, after korea, after vietnam, after the cold war ended. that can happen and there's not a lot of dislocation, couple of contractors get thrown out of work for a while but things come back. with the other major players and drivers of government debt, you know, medicare and social security, we need to start talking realistically about what position seniors are in. seniors are not poor. these are programs that were designed -- went online, social security, during the depression. medicare was explicitly talk about as the final act of the new deal by people liar -- people like harry truman and lbj. old people are not for people and we need to sever that and talk about the reality. and you look like you're under 60. you got to build up some generational warfare. your parents spent a lot of time guilting you into certain behaviors. it's time for younger people and wealthy seniors who know they don't have a right to their

children's future which is what they're doing for entitlement programs. you have step up, mom and dad, and throttle back. >> i'm sure they're wonderful people and raised a wonderful child, but i'm just saying, we need to start having this conversation, and the other thing i'll just throw out. reason does a quarterly poll, and it's online, and we did a bunch of questions about social security. one of the things that is fascinating is that most of us in this room understand, and i think i understand it -- although i'd like -- like kevin, i was ang an english major i am not certain. we understand social security is a form of pops si scheme, and ponzi schemes are -- at least they're voluntary and social security is not. so it's even worse than a ponzi scheme, but most people in america, young people, we found out that -- okay, most people think it's a retirement account.

then when you explain to them what it actually is, and then you ask them, what do you think about this option or that option? there's a huge appetite, a majority appetite for reforming and addressing these. so, there's still a lot of education on the facts of this kind of horrible, horrible program. that needs to get out. >> we're standing right between you guys and food, so i'm going to take one last question and we're going to take a short question and short answer and then we can go eat. >> hi, i'm matt with ihs. something that nick said, seems to be maxing out of the spending, and assuming we do remember from our public choice vote is when we max out spending, as you say, the urge to legislative appears in other ways, sometimes in regulations. when you hit a ceiling of spending and taxing, also then get overflow into regulation, i was wondering if there's going to be an end, do cow you see the

end of a regulatory state or in the middle ages you don't have to be very rich in order to control people's lives. >> both of you take this as a chance for last statements. they're hungry. >> i'll quickly give it over you shed light on why we have had so much legislation starting under bush and through this. irwe've tapped out on spending, the regulation is comping. but as kevin was pointing out, the 3d printer of the gun, is great, both because've what it says about guns but more importantly it's over. it's not the end but it is over for the traditional power relationship between government and the governed. and in a broad way, there will be more regulations and more ways to escape more regulations, i think. >> kevin, last word. >> i will just answer that by saying that the constraints on resources that limit what government can do for us also

limit what government can do to us. it takes money to regulate, takes money to police people, and it's gone. and so i think that -- it's not yet safe to start just ignoring the government. we have to keep on eye on it still and kick it in the shins when we gate charges but i would not be at all surprised if 30 years hence -- we're still going to have corruption, still going to have inefficiency, still have abuses, but we have a big that is yea birth versus yea -- yay big verse yay big -- if -- i could be a fulltime theater credittic. but they are where they are so we have to deal with them. >> i want to thank you all for coming. we are going to have lunch upstairs. kevin will sign copies of his book "the endes near: it's going to be awesome." kevin wilson, and we're delighted to have him here, and

nick to be on a panel with you is a thrill. thank you all for coming. [applause] >> what are you reading this summer? booktv wants to know. >> i have two books on hand, one pleasure read and one that is more brainy that i'll read on commute. my pleasure book is the interestings. so we're following a group of teenagers into adulthood as they're striving to be exceptional people, and the protagonist starts questioning this idea of balance or lack thereof, between ambitious and

happiness. an interesting theme, it's pertinent to washington, dc and that's what i'll be reading on the beach. and for my brain food, unwinding, by george packer. he grates report for the new yorker and it will be interesting to see his story-telling. using different vignettes and narratives around america, including in youngstown, ohio, which is where i'm from, to explore bigger themes about the decline in america, increasing polarize. >> lack of trust in government and how that progressed. so, pretty pessimistic theme. >> let us know what you're reading, tweet us at booktv, post on our facebook page or send us an e-mail. >> now from raleigh, book tv sat down withensly wegner to explore

artificial limbs during and after the civil war. >> contain sort of to answer my own questions, i started my first job in the office archives and history. one of our charges was to find a project to work on, and there had been from the time i started a series of five boxes, kind of in the bottom of a shelf that said, artificial limbs collection, and this is great. here are records that are arranged by people's names. confederate veterans, and the records started in 1866. the federal government had already been doing a similar program so it wasn't that we came up with this on our own. during the war, in fact, the federal government was providing amputees with artificial limbs. we were the first of the former

confederate states to pass legislation to get a prism for artificial limbs for veterans and what happened after that is the stipulation for the -- the resolution was that the sheriffs in each county were to go out and count maimed veterans in their counties. but they also decided that at the time the arms weren't that useful. so they were going to really focus on the legs because the importance -- the government's drive was to get people back to work, and they felt that getting people legs to walk on was more important than an arm that wasn't all that useful. so, the focus initially was just legs. the state chose the patent leg company, not necessarily the best leg out there. it was a fine leg, but another citizen in the state who had purchased a leg from the company

wrote to the governor and said, well, there's this john t. ball who works for that company and he wants to come home. and he would be really willing to come and set up an office in raleigh and manufacture limbs here. by putting the book out, a few of the limbs have surfaced. duncan hannah from red springs, wrote in a letter, when you -- if you can't come to the archives to do your research, you can write and say, i would like -- he said i would like the confederate pension for my grandfather, robert alexander hannah, and i've got his leg if anybody cares. mr. hannah did not have access to e-mail. i wrote him a letter and told him that, i cared. and i didn't really know if he would be able to take pictures and e-mail it to me or anything like that, but a few weeks passed, and i got an e-mail one

day that just said, the title was, duncan -- the subject line was duncan hannah no message at all and just a series of photographs taken in a feed store, so it was this leg and all these feed bags and you could see somebody's hand holding it, and it was just a variety of angles and then there was this one picture that showed the bottom of the foot, and i could see the screw holes and i knew how the patent worked and i knew where the cables went, and i knew it was one of the patent legs. the stumps were so ragged and painful that putting this big wooden leg on it to get around was often not desirable for them. they were hot. they hurt, the stumps. they just come up with something at home. or walk around with a couple of crutches. the state paid for them. they had a -- they had two options going into it.

they could have purchased the patent and then purchased the kits, the wood blocks and everything for a little less. obviously the most cost effect if the thing is what they did and that is just having somebody from the factory could tom down and they paid $57, -- $75, and if you lost your leg from too far down in your leg, what we head commercially available wouldn't work for you, you could just take the money. the legs today versus the legs then, some of them are really high-tech. vowsly -- obviously everybody has seen somebody walking down the street with a metal six million dollar man looking contraption that is very high-tech and if you didn't know differently you wouldn't know they were any -- they're walking comfortably, with the leg that might seem a little stiff but offers them a natural gait and

it's lightweight. not everybody has access to a leg like that. when an amputation is done today, it's -- they're able to do these flaps of skin that are sewn together carefully, and during the civil war the surgeons didn't have a lot of time for reconstructive surgery. things would be ragged. the skin tucked-under and sewn and bones fairly close to the surface and made it very hard for them to utilize artificial limbs. the phantom pain, the name of the book, has to do with the pain of a missing leg or missing arm. it's universal. almost all amputees report sensing pain in an area that has been amputated. it just -- the people at the amputee support group described it. it's -- you wake up in the middle of the night and your leg hurts and it's not there but it's