american cousins. and they'd transcribe the play, went to their own theater, putting on performances. and so she sued john sleeper clark. i believe she won the case. that is an interesting connection play to win john wilkes booth, the person who shot lincoln had a performance of the same plight. another interesting volume was seven books i have here is the back for free of washington by john marshall. and just going to the share you, this is on the five regular text volumes.

and as a list of subscribers, the people that put up the money to have the published. it has also these very nice maps of washington's campaigns. and in ellis volume is quite uncommon. another one that is interesting is edward pollards observations in the north, eight months in prison on parole. and this book was published in late march of 1865 in richmond and is apparently the last book published in the confederacy.

i just had this warm restored a little bit by of binder that i used. one of the most unusual books that i have -- i should say, one of the oldest books that i have is aristotle's treatises on politics. it was published in venice pin 1551. ..

2013 marks book tv's 50th anniversary that debuted in 1998. that month p.j. o'rourke presented his thoughts on the american economy with a focus on wall street to the he spoke of politics and prose bookstore in washington, d.c. for about an hour. >> well, i wrote this book about economics, and i was trying to find out what to read from this book of economics that would introduce it to you. and it occurred to me that perhaps the introduction might make some sense because if that kind of explains why met to about this. so, i had one fundamental question about economics. why do some places prosper and thrived while others just suck? it isn't a matter of brains. no place is dumber than beverly

hills. [laughter] the residents are waiting in gravy. meanwhile in russia chess is a spectator sport and they are bewailing stones for soup. education can be the reason. fourth graders in the school system no about nine times seven. natural resources are not the answer. africa has diamonds, gold, uranium. scandinavia has nothing to it may be culture, but wealthy regions such as local mall, our famous. perhaps the great life secret lies in civilization. the chinese and agent sophisticated civilizations while they were hungry and naked in trees -- argument to believe that was last week that they had been drinking. [laughter] and 1,000 b.c. when the europeans were barely using metal to each other over the head, the chinese were casting

wine vessels big enough to take a bath, something else no other contemporary european had done. yet china thinks. government doesn't cause affluence and the totalitarian countries have plenty of government and nothing else anything else. absence of government doesn't work either. for a million years mankind had no government whatsoever and every once relatives were hungry and naked in the trees. plain hard work isn't the source of plenty. the poorer the people are the harder it is the work that they do, and it's better off to play golf. and technology i'm afraid provides no guarantee. the locales of the world are well supplied with the complex and fully up-to-date technology in the form of weapons. some places are wealthy and their faces are poor. it occurred to me after some fault on the subject might have something to do with money.

but i didn't know anything about money as a practical matter nor enough to meet the mortgage payment and i didn't know anything about money in a broad abstract sense and i didn't know anything about economic theory. i felt that i wasn't alone in this ignorance to the i couldn't answer the central question of my book, because i was an economic idiot and i got to be in economic aid yet by a simple and natural method of being a human. humans have trouble with economic says you may have noticed in on your own house but not just because economic circumstances caused humans to starve. humans have received an innate ability to pay attention to economic principles love, death and money. these are the three main human concerns. we are all students of love. we are fascinated by every aspect of the matter in a fury

and in practice maybe not quite as much but -- [laughter] no aspect of love is so ridiculous it hasn't been exhaustively reviewed by the great thinkers and artists and hosts of daytime talk television. as for death such as the public appetite for the investigation of that subject the highest-rated television program in america is about an emergency room. the most hard-headed and speculative person has notions of the adult mind that can reasoned expensively about what calls is kicking the bucket. diene sparks or intellectual curiosity and loved sparks our curiosity but money does not giving it all we care about is the thing itself. preferably in large amounts. now, we carry very great deal about that. but here our brain work stops. we don't seem to mind where the

money comes from and in an affluent society we don't seem to mind where our money goes. for larger questions about money we strata were shoulders and say i wish i had more. malae is it that we are ernest scholars of the nec process but we turn as a study hall in june when it is economics? i have several hypotheses none of them are very good actually. love and death are limited and personal even when the street loved was only in a certain number of people would allow us to practice that freedom upon them in my case i seem to remember the number was one. now a man in the throes of the christian evangelical experience he may love every creature in the world but he is unlikely to have to meet them all. and as it is with loved so is it

as a death and that is as high as it gets. it has closure plus the debt ratio is only one to one in occurrences' per person. economics has been somewhat more often and it involves multitudes of people. economics is just too complicated and makes our headache. whenever anything economic goes awry, we respond in a limited and personal way by searching our suit coats to see if they're more any wadded up five is in sidey and then we either price or vote for democrats demanding upon our personal convictions of faith. or maybe, economics is the sole ever-present, so pervasive in every aspect of our lives that we really don't perceive it. we failed to identify economics as a distinct entity. we can watch a man slip and fall and almost never hear him say

god damn gravity. [laughter] and we can launch a man fall ten times and not see him become interested in how gravity works. almost never does he arrived saying i went down at a rate of 32 feet per second the first being directly proportional to the product times am i bate and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between that patch of ice. no amount of losing our jobs on the nest eggs and the library for a copy of john maynard keynes the general theory of employment interest and money. this very pervasiveness of economics keeps us from getting distance on the subject. we can view death from as far from an average of 72.7 years if we are a male american and 79.5 years if we are female. and it is maturing as for funneling the brain.

the work in the short term unless you are the president i guess. but there's no such thing as a dollar of gas. the money is always with us. [laughter] what am i going to do to take off shopping? drinking and drugs, i suppose i can play with the kids. they need new shoes. constant money has a bad effect on the human psychology. i would argue there is more unbalanced thinking of finance and about anything else. that may be the mainstay of the psychoanalysis, but knows how to string shrinks asked to be paid. people will do some odd things for publishers political or religious. if you consider how people spend their dough it hard the covers it. the reactions to cash even when it is half a world away and belongs to perfect strangers.

in our heart of hearts we don't despise them for fooling around. but let a man get rich especially if it happens quickly and we don't understand how he didn't and how it fits into a psychotic rage. we aren't rational and intelligent about economics basically because thinking about money has driven us crazy. i am a mooncalf as anyone. i have no interest in economics as a kid as kids don't. children, lucky children at least, live in that ideal state of postulated by marks where the low was from each according to his abilities to each according to his needs. getting grounded joseph stalin and then we wonder why so many young people are leftists. i had no interest in economics in college. i belonged to that great

tradition of academic bohemia which stretches from the 15th century riots to the fish tours of the present day. for the university hipsters, there is no doubt the mentioned in the testament and taking the business courses. my friends and i are above that in our class is and we studied literature, anthropology, ceramics. we were seeking, growing, specifically we were growing sideburns and leg hair according to gender. it didn't occur that the tweetys to get on time with their square fashion were the real intellectuals. we never realized groveling with the concept of the aggregate supply and demand was more challenging than writing a paper about the effect of jazz on the

poetry. what the hell seven was being quizzed on wasn't only harder to understand and margaret mead's que these about adding that it was also more important. the engine of existence is fuelled by just a few things. unpoliced pottery is not among them. now, if the can me sally's had been taking love for death courses we would have been right with them. money was a different matter. we were not interested in the money. actually what we were not interested in was work as we recall. and maybe we would guess -- we guessed there would be a lot of work to get out of making such formulized price plasticity equals percentage change and supply deutsch slash the price. not that we were not up to the task light that equals wasting natural resources and the pollution thing if you're into the whole capitalist one of the leave request.

of course we were interested in money. i remember we would get excited whenever we got any. it just we were not determined to earn it. we would never go and search for the money. it was something the would come and look for us after we had choreographed a more modern dance recital or mounted our famous empty gallery show of the pre-conceptual post object just paintings or whether the group exiles and learns to play come by all. we were not going to settle the matter how much money was lavished upon us to get the business majors intended and was a loaded phrase to make money. they're going to do this even if it involved running ibm. it would have been shocked if anybody had told us and nobody had the nerve that making money was created and we would have been truly shocked to learn a fundamental principle of economics that the wealth is created when the assets was moved from will were to high

value is the root of all creativity be it to the ibm c, whatever. as far as we were concerned putting money i had was going to party with instead of drinking and making small talk he would just take out your unit's. see if they put that on c-span that was a blast. but going to business? never. if you don't count selling drugs which we were building. we know everything about the price elasticity when it can to potts not to mention aggregate supply and demand. we weirdos had more business experience of the many business major on campus. we all fancy ourselves to be marxists and marxist is the

canoli yet we were not interested in the economic ideas to read to be fair, the business majors or not either. economics isn't something the to because they were fascinated by the economic complexities of the relationship or because mankind cannot survive without economic activity. they took economics and forgot everything in the text so they could get a job from somebody else and from that forget everything in the text but i turned into a square myself as everyone that lives long enough does. i got a job as a journalist but without ever considering that journalism was a business. although we would have been unpleasant we surprised to get a hug instead of a paycheck at the end of the week. and i continued to ignore economic issues even though i had a trespass to the most spectacular extravaganza pity the was the 1970's and the economy was changing almost as often as bed partners were.

the great depression may have been more dramatic but it was the one trick pony. in the 70's globalization include it the other three-quarters of the globe. the places we used to make our windup toys were making automobiles. everything was being imported except for oil which had been given free with windshield washer at most gas stations. then one day you couldn't buy oil for money not that there wasn't plenty of and in the 70's it just didn't happen to be worth anything ppp had an unimaginable combination of hypothermia business slump. you could make more money by buying in treasury bills than by making into the treasury. the gold standard disappeared, maybe during the cold. currency rates were determined with mood rings. the most powerful nations of the world had at their homes and amazing connection of economic

nincumpoops. the computer and the media revolution was -- all that was under way so that ideas about economics or spreading around the world at near on speeds and i doze through it. and i was covering politics, too. evin i realized money is to the petition with the eucalyptus tree is to the koala bear. food, water, shelter and something to crack on. didn't hit me. it wasn't until the 1990's that i began to be a fourth correspondent that i finally noticed economics. i noticed in a lot of places i went there wasn't anything you could call an economy and i didn't know why. many countries seemed to have everything except food, water, shelter and something to crap on. i decided what i would do is go back to that texts that eliot finessed in college and figure rerned in full force except

this time it wasn't a business major i despised, it was the professors, the authors of the books. it turned up the professors are economic idiots, too. looking to a college tebo an adult is a shock and reminder of why we were glad to get out of school. the stifel is a once juvenile good night moon read written by henry james. [laughter] the professorial wit is more dull of unbearable numbness to the self importance with no idea however simple when there is more of something it costs less can be expressed without rendering it into a book photograph and then translating it into a puzzle fall of peculiar signs and notations.

otherwise the science of economics just wouldn't appear as profound as organic chemistry does. speaking of the matters economical there is the price. $49.95 for a copy of the economics 15th edition by paul samuelson. that book has been as its edition indicates in use forever that is since 1948 which counsels forever to the baby boom. it's considered a fossil by many economists now but it's worth looking at any way because that textbook economics is what the leaders will of the world were afflicted with when they were in school so why did look at it and he was another shock. professor samuelson turns out to be almost as as much of the deutsch as my friends and i were in the 1960's.

he says and i quote, marx was the most influential and perceptive critic of the market economy after one. influential, yes. he almost started world war iii. but perceptive i wasn't sure pete he goes on. he was wrong about many things but that doesn't diminish his stature has an important economist. well, what would wax he'd been wrong about many things. [laughter] samuel send says in the 15th edition he complains the action in the days of senator joe mccarthy the book got its share of condemnation and one should think so. it's full of passengers in the keating samuelsson disagrees with that reactionary idea of the market. the chapter titled supply and demand states restrictions not only raised the price of corn and other crops before farmers total revenues and earnings.

think about that for a minute. reduce the profit buy not growing corn. he's a great business we can get into every but can be rich if we do more of nothing. in the chapter with the title supply and allocation and competitive markets the book seems to be confused about the very nature of buying and selling things. samuelsson asked is the society satisfied with the maximum number of bread is produced and will democracies take the loaves from the wealthy and past not to the poor? why would they make the maximum amount of bread and have it hang around and groome old? that doesn't make sense. what are they going to do with this stuff or is he talking about charity? if he is i would like him to note jesus didn't perform the miracle of bill lucas and the texas. we all know how the modern democracy takes loads a week from the wealthy. it's the slip ups and pass them out to the poor department that

inspires the study. wasn't reassuring to learn the men that among the companies were my 401k invested and filled with junk from the attic of paul samuelson's economics. another new textbook for me to look at but what they said wasn't so obvious and what they said was not so obviously wrong but what they said wasn't so obvious period. here are the first three sentences of the book called macroeconomics by david colander. when an artist looks at the world he sees color and when a musician looks up what they hear music note that pronoun. when an economist looks at world, she sees a symphony of costs and benefits. a symphony of costs and benefits. some the textbooks were not good so this sent me to the regional source material. but here i had to admit as i was admitting 30 years ago that i

don't have the brains. the bulk of the nation's, the general theory more impressive works and they look swell on the bookshelf but they put me to sleep immediately, quicker than good night mallon. the popular books on economics or about extraordinary people doing extraordinary things and getting fabulously wealthy were going to jail preferably both and i wasn't interested in that. i was interested in ordinary people to an ordinary things and getting by and the less popular but worthwhile books on economics seemed to presume that i needed something like samuelsson's economics without blogging effuse which i haven't. sali gave up trying to be smart about economics and decided by wanted to know why some places were poor and some rich i should go to those places. i would visit economic systems. free-market socialist systems nobody could figure of. i would investigate the societies in the u.s., sweden,

hong kong and the unsuccessful economies, albanian, tanzania and societies that didn't decide whether to be successful or not, mainland china, russia. i was in russia to years ago and they made up their mind since apparently. i would look things over and i would simply ask people how come you're so broke or white you sitting on high cotton? so that everything i know about economics actually. [laughter] if anybody wants to ask any questions i will make up some other stuff if you like. thank you. [applause] before the questions start raise your hand if you have a seat next to you that's empty and maybe the back would like to come forward and take a seat. >> or not.

>> there are seats available over here. >> did your friends introduced to? >> my friends did introduce me to all of the works of ludwig von mises invited in to get really former. they are wonderfully smart libertarians but if you ever notice how they are so smart they are kind of keep a lot outsmarting themselves? cato institute people are pretty good to keep their eye on the ball but if you go to the libertarian party meeting coming to will inevitably end up getting cornered by the high school math teachers who wants to privatize the sidewalks. for alana it's a great idea but it doesn't really need for the fabulous cocktail party chitchat. i love the libertarians but i try to keep a small l on that.

dull >> i was down on my hands and knees looking for other stuff to in help. i certainly did. [laughter] >> no high government post for me. laughter cut >> have you been back to paraguay? >> i haven't. paraguay is the only arab world whole life into that i loved. the times were sort of frozen about the turn-of-the-century. have you been there? >> no but i heard that many times and i wondered if they had it -- had experienced that, too. i wondered if you had been back since because the last time democracy was going to bring some of the uglier things with it. >> apparently it did.

paraguay did get more space which is a good thing and also got -- and became a huge smuggling post for drugs and stuff and i don't think what you can blame necessarily one of the other. it was going anywhere and i think the dictators would have used that but the quiet backwater aspect. why does clinton get credit? that's a mystery to me because if we were to judge by the first thing clinton did when he got into office which was the health care reform policy he would seem to know nothing about creating a good economy. the motives behind the health care reform when program are not cynical about this or get into disagreements about policy but the economics of health care reform and the format came from and the administration were

nightmares. and i think he knew that. it's one of the reasons he used hillary as the point person sell to get blown up by a land mine. they look at them and they go know what. you could stand on that plan and paint the ceiling. it was incredibly complicated and issued a very little understanding of basic things about fixing prices, the danger of fixing prices if you fix the price of something to hide something disappears and if you fix it too low it disappears and to fix it to haul it comes out of everywhere. they tried to fix the price of oil above the natural market and all the sudden oil got to the price it did 50, $60 a barrel and people started looking everywhere, under their couch, behind the garage. all of a sudden there was only all over the place.

to fix the price below the market level as new york city did for decades with its rent control the thing you fix the price on simply disappears from the market and it's happened all over the soviet union communist world, too bye you had to kill somebody to get an apartment in new york and i shall no knowledge of that kind of stuff so i don't know why he gets the credit for this. he didn't get in the wake of the economy again. now was that out of principle or out of cowardice? it depends upon whether he voted for him or not i guess. [inaudible] >> it's really pretty simple. its property rights. property rights are extremely important to read you have to have some control over the goods that you've produced and the fruit of your labor. the idea is the you should have the rights to the front of your

labor as long as somebody else will descend get pasted in the face with a lot impeach. the will fall is really crucial and then there has to be some response of devotee, some responsiveness. the people who are ruled by that have to have some input into creating that. hong kong has an excellent rule of law without ever having been a democracy because the british government that imposed the cruelest always sensitive to public opinion in hong kong and that comes of the didn't behave in an arbitrary matter since a for instance the conservative libertarian would tend to disagree with sweden's system. that isn't the kind of thing i would like to have an 80% tax rate and they get enormous taxation and then enormous benefits back from the government, too but i would like to decide myself why do with my money rather than having parliament decided. i wouldn't necessarily want ice

skating in july but because sweden is a country with property rights and with rules law and a space country where the lawmakers are responsible, that country works. even though i would say on the fees of at the cato institute would say that its economic system is a surge. it is a pleasant and prosperous place you can imagine living. and the most important thing about a visit the decided isn't working and they don't like it, they can change at any minute. it is a democracy. you go to cuba theoretically governed by the same economic and political philosophies and it is a hell hole because there are no property rights. there is no rule of law. all power is arbitrary and people cannot change the government in any way. so it is amazing how important -- and it was an eye opening

because as a conservative libertarian i would be saying that the government out of my face, get the government out of this. and i wasn't wrong i don't think. if the government should get out of all sorts of things. yet it is a bit of an on the opener to realize how crucial a good government is to prosperity and freedom and not just its human rights, but to people getting fed and clothed and housed will. what a very good government. it's pretty important. yes, ma'am. >> in the united states and the institutions in canada as some think a lot of others didn't. looking at russia and the biography of lenin and stalin right now -- >> they really should approach reform. >> [inaudible] however, from what i have observed, the presuppositions

and working country is middle class [inaudible] >> i don't think so. hongkong is a good example of how important freedom and the orloff law is to the economic situation of people. hong kong not only had a working-class minister did not pay i think the history of hong kong hear from [inaudible] and coming to that. 1949 when they fell to the chinese, hong kong which had previously been kind of a backwater was in receipt of millions of refugees and impoverished refugees very few of whom were middle class and had the wherewithal to act middle class. the situation was so bad that everybody in the community assumed hong kong would be a basket case into one of the reasons the government that came in after the war didn't go in

and introduce the national health programs and income taxes and government economic programs was because they considered hong kong to be a lost cause. they figured it would be like the refugee camps on the west bank, permanent storage of people into the best we could do is barely keep them fed and eventually figure out how to give them back the mainland chinese or something. as a result of this, there was a young jongh copper wait that went out as a financial officer to hong kong and was a bit of a secret tory. when he got to hong kong he discovered that the chinese people, the most poorly educated people were making a tremendous use of the on corrupt ruler blah, blah, a decent civil

justice system and the legal system that the ever encountered and property rights the ever encountered in their history let alone in their life experience and we are already making the economy quick that there were no import taxes, no export taxes and variable restrain on the economy because the british didn't know there was any trade going on. copper waite said all he did was try to make sure the british didn't get in the way of this. i think the freedom ruler of all property rights and stuff can do wonders even in the most modest of the circumstances that you don't have to have some sort of middle class. sorry the was a long answer. >> i ebook like to ask which of the many who colleagues represented here have invited

you to lecture? >> i went to state school in ohio. i'm proud of that because miami of ohio is the best and brightest schools. i look at harvard and yale and the mess of the great society and all sorts of other problems some of which are going on in the white house the best and the brightest own large chains of muffler shops. it's good for them, good for the family and for your muffler. >> i don't understand this economics that either. what is the most fun car that you have ever driven recently? [laughter] >> i have a great one. i like cars. that is sort of my alter ego. land rover has a new vehicle come out called the discovery to that kind of looks like the current discovery but apparently the door locks work and stuff.

anyway the of a redesigned hearing and they are doing a stunned they are driving to of these around the world and i got on the leg from islamabad to call, and a bunch of us drove these two cars at the hottest time of the years before the monsoon season and the worst traffic you have ever seen the name indian roads come first you don't know whether they drive on the left or the right and it doesn't matter because everybody was standing in the road and we had left hand cars so we are on the wrong side of the road and the of these trucks which are just colliding everywhere. monday we counted 25. we weren't counting anything else. there had to be probable bowl loss of life on.

there had to be one for every 12 miles or something like that. it was extraordinary key. i came back and said i eat india. what i've done is just like driving from the outlet stores in freeport maine to miami on rte. one in august. i would come back feeling about america that had never seen this country then i decided i'd stayed in calcutta for awhile but don't go in june or july. >> what is the consequence of eating the rich? >> in digestion. the title comes from one of the basic things i was dealing with. i had some surprises as i read the book and one of the surprises was that if you try to make people rich by redistributing the wealth is that it tends not to work very

well and one of the reasons for that is that it's not as it initially seems easy row some proposition. if you have to many slices of people to the capito i don't have to eat the dominoes box. more can be produced. it's about creating productivity and if you redistribute the wealth right on the face of it you decrease productivity by taking more away from the more productive parts of society and giving it as a sort of reward for the lack of productivity to the less productive. it may be marvelously fair but it simply doesn't work so that is what the eat the rich thing comes from. in the back. >> [inaudible] to can't produce more fish if you don't regulate the fishing industry to be at the fish will become extinct if we don't do something. >> there are certain limited resources. not all -- it is an economy in in general that is not a zero sum game. it isn't any resources -- any

given resources a zero sum game ball of human beings have a remarkable way of dodging the exhaustion of resources. does anybody remember the moment we ran out of the oriole? have you noticed around the house to try to find anything in the supermarket even before the moral. they are substitutes and use petroleum. one of them from georgia's bank and one of the reasons is that it was being depleted and it is a finite resource is that a wasn't anybody is property and therefore it gets treated like crap. it's nobody's property like a piece of the ocean and also,

when it is everybody's property like a public restroom. another of the things i don't want to get into a big laboratory and it isn't a bipartisan book about an observational but not a partisan book, but that is the argument of the pro property rights, not just libertarians but people that have a lot of respect for the effect of property rights on an economy will make for giving people an investment and making sure that it matters to somebody. individually, what they're not just as a moral thing or because you loved fish and not you belong to that save the fish federation but it's really going to hurt you write in the wallet if they leave the bank. various people would have different solutions to this the libertarians would cut up into

the backyard size things and auction it. it might not be as silly as it sounds and then somebody would say your vote is a nice - yard. get out of here. i will shoot you. call the cops. of course there aren't any cops out there so never mind. >> has anybody figured out how to have a good economy? >> i don't think anybody has figured out a way to have a good economy with a stable population. the japanese had better and so have we. of course immigration changes that. we would be ase tero growth country. it is not critical reason you couldn't have especially in the electronic keep increasing productivity with fewer workers was going to be hard to do

especially if the older population killed of entitlement demands upon the younger population as i understand my generation is going to do on the generation that is younger than me and i can hardly wait. i think it is only fair for those nose rings and stuff. sure sir. >> due to advocate more money for the ibm es? >> those are two very separate question. i would say reform but it means taking a different form than it had before and i would also say reform that once they were threatening to blow up the world and now they're threatening to die of starvation and although i do not wish that on them by any means i have to say if i take between the 2i would pick them causing themselves trouble. what i loan than any money?

no. i don't have a philosophical or political problem with the imf or the world bank. i just have a sort of pragmatic common sense problem. what if my sister came to me and said give me a thousand dollars because -- and i will put the thousand dollars, too because we are going to put up some money to peru. why are we plan to loan money to peru? i am sure my sister and the imf would have a good dancer, too but i'm not sure what it is. i've never had it adequately explained to me why we need a loan a big some lump of money to russia. when i skirl of nobody comes around with a large amount of money for me. >> republicans are starting to talk about tax cuts. should be set on the debt first? >> i have no idea to the i think basically the reason i have no idea is that it doesn't matter. that is milton friedman's

argument. is that you either spend more than you bring in or you don't. it doesn't matter how you find it. it may matter to the individuals in this society that not to the overall economy because when the government spends more than it takes in tax revenue it doesn't matter whether it fun to sit with inflation or increased taxes is going to cut into the productivity of the economy any way. a certain individual may be hurt more by the tax increase or helped more by the decrease in certain individual may be like a person on the fixed-income hurt by inflation than somebody that's on commission and somebody else may be hurt more by a large national debt that drives down the pool of available land in front of the overall economy is went be hurt just as much and it's all a matter of not just how the

government does its overspending but whether the government overspending. it is a matter of who you want to get hurt if we should pay down the debt or taxes. i don't know much about the ins and outs of the business to say which one would be preferable. one thing we do know is it is a attack on the poor and the thrifty and that is one thing we do not want to do. my colleague has this william jennings bryan and think about increasing inflation about the poor man been nailed to a cross or something and that is because he is crazy. [laughter] he is a nice guy but he is crazy. >> you talk about the importance of intellectual property rights in general and what about the intellectual property rights because that is increasingly impossible. what doy predict -- >> as somebody that writes for a

living and occasionally i will cease that show up on the internet that i have done, you do think give me something for that. intellectual property rights certainly should be important that it's going to take somebody a lot smarter than me to figure this out. one of the problems with the internet is how the hell do you make money off the thing? a lot of people right now with stock holdings and will companies in silicon valley just beginning to think about we the minute they have a wonderful idea and marvelous technology and programming. that is a problem probably in the days of gutenberg they were saying the same thing. if somebody doesn't have to write this out, who gets paid? so i suppose it will be figured out years back they said we want to do a rolling stone thing on the internet. do you want to get in on that? i said my aunt because we're deutsch of royalties come from?

you pay me pretty well any way but what about a little free lancer that does refuse? you're current crow all this stuff on the internet. what do the writers get back from that? i don't want anything to do that and i still sort of feel that way. but i don't know the answer. >> why are all the mexicans trying to move to america and why is the government trying to keep some of them now? >> let's take the second half first. why are we trying to keep people out before coming to the united states looking to take the jobs that we refuse to take. i don't know. i'm just glad it didn't happen when they were on their way over to the family. yeah, you're hungry and you will do anything for a buck.

mexico isn't without economic opportunity. but mexico doesn't have the rolph law. everything is very arbitrary and mexico. i think a lot of them fear not only a cut in enormous effort into building the business in mexico that they can be taken away from them very easily by a mexican government that shows no disinclination to do that over the years so it's simpler than i can make money over the border because people do not willingly leave their homes, their culture and native languages paid the don't do that for fun to tester us. to cause the were read editorials at the time for me to pat buchanan mad. that is and what they are up to. it takes a strong motivation for people to leave what is familiar to them and then come to places that are unfamiliar. yes, ma'am. >> what about the countries that

you have toured the have the most potential >> it would have been except the got to get over by mainland china and put a sort of what blanket on the top of that. and indeed just in this past week, we saw the first major interference of mainland china and hong kong's ability to provide more or less perfect free trade. some regulations have been passed on capital movement and stock sales. that is the first time it's been done and this isn't the first time for the future other than that, it fell into the category of the places the were great but it was sort of up to the local people. and i mean, any country that falls into the category that we are talking about about being freed in having property rights and the rule of law has the potential to do what it wants. the french may want to prefer to have two months of vacation

every year than a certain rate and biggar willing to trade that for the structural unemployment to this very high bar standard. we would rather work harder and not have so much structural unemployment. so in certain ways i got less judgmental about other people's politics while writing this book is the in the began to realize. rather than its pragmatic aspects. like i said with sweden almost anything works if people are free. yes, sir. >> regarding the president's generally take the blame and get the credit without a deserving either? >> usually. roosevelt is a perfect example and people will tell you how they pulled themselves out of depression. it kind of got a better and then a kind of got worse.

then people say the war pulled us out of the depression. well yes if you don't count people getting killed as a cost. yes, sir. >> [inaudible] >> how much do i fear the president? well, a little bit. i really do. i read his earth and the balance look very carefully because i was writing a book at that time about the fashionable worries basically to the he had quite a compendium of them and i came to the conclusion that there wasn't ghostwritten because it simply wasn't good enough to have been ghostwritten and he was a very credulous thinking man. much inclined to not expect we believe the stones have souls

that sort of off in the department but he will send eight clear thinking man. and yes i am a little concerned. on the other hand, there are a lot of checks and balances with american politics and as the pro party business but after all, a very large part of the democratic party is pro labor and they want a sort of common economic sense, too. they don't want peta to have a cabinet position. i'm not too concerned but it's interesting at the moment because not to bring up the subject that we are all thoroughly sick of, but there's no questions and i would like to think all of you baleen minded group of people that you are. at the moment the international economy is a little shaky and there are some foreign policy

hot spots that are quite worrisome that a strong president with the backing of the congress and the nation that i didn't like might be preferable, certainly preferable to the weak one that i didn't like. but in a fury it was even preferable to one that i did like. i might not like the idea of the president but we might have to take that kind of change if we want to skate two years in a very strange presidency. >> [inaudible] >> i don't know. every now and then come every four years or so, i get out the binoculars and go watch the republicans build their societies and so on. [laughter] i really don't like -- i don't enjoy following politics much day today. i did it for about ten years and

that is enough. >> how bout bill bennett and gertrude? >> they would be very interesting. a very interesting ticket. the next time i talk to anybody over at the rnc conwell moved that -- i will moot that. [applause] book tv is a visit to annapolis maryland continues with the hope to the total of comcast. we take a look at the cultural and literary history of the area. prior to the civil war, maryland had more free african-american citizens than any other state. indianapolis, for hundred of the 400,000 inhabitants were

african-americans. next we will hear from the author of lincoln in annapolis to 20, 1895. >> lincoln and in nablus, february 1865. and i wrote this because while lincoln was in and not less the -- annapolis, i've been interested in lincoln ever since i was a little boy and had an interest in annapolis history ever since i moved here 23 years ago. but my curiosity was in a time when lamken was an annapolis. i found out that he had been by looking at the chronology of his life. the reason that he was and annapolis are passed through annapolis is because he was on his way to the peace conference at hampton roads, the normal route that would have been a beh, but it wasn't available because it wasn't iced over.

the chesapeake bay was open so he took a train from washington to annapolis and got on the steamer and went down to the conference at fort monroe and returned the next day. lincoln really had no intention of attending were going to the peace conference at hampton roads. it was only after the telegram from general grant, who expressed regret that there was no american official to meet them. specifically he thought it would be a nice gesture if lincoln would be there with them. so lincoln gets that telegram and about 8:30 on the morning of february 2nd, no intention prior to that of, you know, being involved in the peace conference. he gets the telegraph from grant and decides at that moment to go

and buy 11:00 he's on a train to annapolis. his secretary -- nobody knows that he has even left. so it's kind of a wonderful anecdote about john mcerlane who was his principal secretary. he is sitting in the office that had joined lincoln's office and one that his assistance comes in and says, you know, where has the president gone? he said what you mean, the president is right on the other side of this door. he said no, he's not. i just saw him leave the white house. so he stands up, opens the door and he is astounded to find lincoln. the other thing that happened is that the senate and the mayor and maryland legislature was debated on the 13th amendment, which