beginning his own program, trying to end the war, what -- start what we now call the war on poverty and no one ever tried hard to eradicate poverty in the united states and at the end of the talking but johnson's effort to star to do that. >> booktv wants to know what your reading. lend us your summer reading list. booktv on c-span2, television for serious readers. >> now he professor walletter book who is book is call "space capitalism." this it noter only book. >> guest: i think the 25th 25th book. who it count using you have written new series. writing a new series. >> guest: well, this is a third

in a series of three. i've got 22 other books, but the series here is privatization and my idea is that if it moves privatize it, itself if doesn't move, privatize it, since everything doesn't move or does move, approve privatize everything. the only alternative is ownership or nonownership. nonownership no one owns the whales. that's why we almost ran out of buffalo because we weren't allowed to own them. so, nonownership is not good, and government ownership is -- i'm not sure which is worse. government is as far as i'm concerned is a libertarian, government is a highly problematic institution which is based on coercion and the libertarian ethos is voluntaryism. so i'm sort of against private own -- public ownership, government ownership and

nonownership which means private ownerson, so aprivate ownership for just at everything. >> prefer block, this the third the series. what was the first book about. >> guest: why we should privatize roads, streets and highways. and my main embus were two. first you realize how many people die on the government roads? almost 40,000 a year nor last umpteen years, goes up 35,000, 40,000. that's a lot of people being killed. and to just put that in spiff, how many people died in 9/11? just 3,000. how many died in katrina? 1900. and that's a one-shot deal. this is 35, 38,000 every year. and you might say, well, sort of like death and taxes, it's inevitable. new vie it's not inevitable. i you own a highway and i own a highway and we competed and one way we compete who other see who

could reduce deaths the most, and the point is right now, the rules the highway are made in washington for everybody. for example, on the i-10, the i-5, or any of those highways-the minimum speed is 40. maximum speed is 70 and that's it. would it be better if the right lane had to do 50, the left lane had to do 65 and he left lane had to do 80? i don't know. but the problem is, we'll never know. if you tried that and didn't work you'd lose customer and maybe i'd gain customers. we would have a laboratory experiment, 50 states or not even 50 states but as many laboratories as there were roads. that's one impetus for it. want to reduce death. nobody listening the broadcast who doesn't know somebody who was killed in a motor vehicle

depends and few i'm not talk about serious injuries because her to are legion. my second impetus nor book was congestion. i used to live in new york city. the fastest way to get around i by bicycle, not car. and the reason for that is we don't have peak load pricing. we're at a hotel during the busy season the price goes up during the -- we don't have nat on highways or roads or streets. and we would with private enterprise, that would solve the problem. so the first book, privatizing roads and streets and highways the second one was privatizing ocean, rivers and lakes. you can't advertise a river. that's -- privatize a river. that's crazy. some should own the mississippi river or the hudson river?

loan si? i say why? one recent is rear running out of fish and whales, the tragedy of the -- no one owns it. the second reason is we have katrina, katrina missed it. hit 40 miles east. the levees fell. who is responsible their he levees? army corps of engineers which is a government enterprise. the horror for most people is that 1900 people died because of that. as an economist, the horror is they're still in boston. imagine if mcdonald's or burger king killed 1900 people. they wouldn't be in business anymore. they go the way of pan am or somebody other company but anywhere business. if someone opened the mississippi river and did that, it would pass into other more competent hands. how can we have the mississippi or hudson river or the atlantic ocean owned? the same we get land owned, by the john walkian homesteading principle, he who mixes his

labor with to land or water or whatever, gets to be the owner of it. so the people who but those ships up and down the mississippi river, people who own land on the side of the mississippi river because we assume they're using it in some way, you have 100 people with 100,000 showers and the mississippi river corporation. again, it sounds weird know noninitiated or the inside weirdoes but i think it would save lives, and it would deal with running out of resource like fish and things like that. last, finally, the book now, let me wave this in front of the camera. >> host: we'll put it up. >> guest: unfortunately i don't have the book. just cam out yesterday or the -- >> host: how humans will colonize maintain is, moons and asteroid? now applying the same opened private property rights view but only now not to roads or rivers

or lakes but to space. and there are two aspects of space. one, the land on the moon and the land on mars, who should own that? well, again, i resort to johnlock and murray log and their views on homesteading. mix your labor with the land and you get to own it. you don't own the whole moon because you landed a flag throughout be you own a couple square miles. i'm a humanist, i love human beings and i'm afraid we're going to blow ourselves up and it would be nice have some people on mars or on the moon in case the earth ends for humankind. i'm really pro home, and this is sort of like an insurance policy. so i would like to see some colonies on mars and on the moon, and the question is how do we conduct business? hopefully with the least government responsible the most private property and free

enterprise. how do we get there? space ships in 169 of the when the flint march was on the moon it was a governmentee." hope we do this private enterprise because out more ethical because the government demand taxes from us, whereas if somebody has a private rocket shipp, he doesn't on his own account with his own money. so those would be me two ways of dealing with it, namely, the trip and what the do with the land there, and the impetus is to plant and human beings yes so god forbid if we blow ourselves up here, at least there will be some human beings. i'm sort of a weedsow, i like human beings, sue me. >> host: the bug for nasa is $19 billion over the years, about 600 billion or so has been spent on nasa programs.

in your view, hows has that money been spent? >> guest: well, not wisely. that money should have gone back to the taxpayers, and then the taxpayers would have more money and then somebody would go to the wall street and set up a stock exchange, and set up a company and get some more money than would otherwise be available. this is another problem. a lot of times people give the government credit. at least the government about people on the moon. can't deny that. but would the money have been better spent everyone stead of going in the moon in '69 on research in rocketry and protection of people on the planets? i think salt because the government did and it was a success and even ayn rand -- this is she applauded this. i didn't applaud that.

was against that because it was premature. the market not only has spatial allocation, grow oranges in florida and not in maine about also a time allocation, namely a right time do things and if you do something people premature you do it at the cost of more rational time element. >> host: haven't we learned and been able to adapt from our spending at nasa and have experiments and products in -- >> the amazing if you spent 19 billion -- >> host: 19 billion -- >> guest: and not one shred of benefit occurred? that would be amazing. even the government -- take enough money to do something. we do have roads. we do have -- i don't know -- museums. we have central park and audubon park with government money so it would be amazing if they do go

good with it. the point is they get 19 billion and get $5 billion, they worth 14 billion. in the market you get more value typically. you have a lovely tie, a nice green tie, costs 30 bucks. you valued it at 50, otherwise you wouldn't have bought if you didn't val it more than 30 so extra benefit created. i with the government you have a diminution, my mentor used to say we tooth have c-plus i plus convention mine are in government to calculate the gdp because it would be closer -- not that would just be a rough approximation make. wouldn't be we're saying every penny that goes government is a negative, although in a sense it, i but there's a loss because it's threw ozuckerberg and the market, luke -- it's through ozuckerberg and like in the mark, there's a benefit, every

market transaction is mutually beneficial. professor block, when it comes to space capitalism, we're moving in they direction? elon musk, spacex? >> guest: we have a whole chapter dough voted not to just elon musk -- many ten pages and six or seven other pace entrepreneurs who, like him, are building rockets and we have to give him credit. the government shoots up a rocket and then it's gone. with elon musk, they shoot up the sprocket the rocket comes down and you can reuse it. marching every time you took a car trip, you that junk the car? so we have give him credit. he is entrepreneur. earned he takes a lot of money from government. most of his money is from

government. it's more like crony capitalism. the money came from you and me on a voluntary basis that is one thing but itself comes from you and me through coercive taxes that's another. in this chapter, we say they're nose wrong with taking money from the government because we regard the government as a thief, because they it coercively and if you take money from. a thief, year good guy. again we have a paradox here but i insist that the government acts on the coercive basis like a gang and if you take money away from the gang, you're on the side of the angels. so the -- ron paul issue think he refused to take matching funds because he didn't want to take money from government. i wrote an essay saying, ron, take the money. better you have than the government. but i don't think he did that. the point is itself was ron paul who was running a space thing me

and took -- he took money from the government and used it for this purpose, i would say, right on, ron, because year good guy. now the question comes, is elon musk good guy or bad guy? if he is a good buy he would be justified taking money from the government. if he asia bag guy, he is just if he is a bad guy, it's hand in hand with the go so we dover elon musk's public statements and hunts do pass the smell test. not a good guy, not a libertarian and after the book was written, came out an as avowed socialist, which is not a good idea, not a credit on his blotter. we have a chapter destroyed all these people and say if they're ick i money from government are the on the good side or the bad side of the ledger? >> host: do you deal with should there be any regulation of space

travel at all. >> guest: my view is not only shouldn't there be any government ownership of anything there shouldn't be any government regulation. government is a bad institution. again, based on coercion. one of the courses i teach at loyola university new orleans is regular lake should we have anti-tryst, minimum wage, rep control, this or that kind of regulation. the market is the best regulator. the reason we have good quality for mcdonald's is not because the government regulates. it's because with didn't have good quality, they'd be out of business in a wink. so i say the regulations and think the laws against murder, rape, theft, whatever, but government regulation is an entirely different kettle of fish. would oppose government regulation. what if donald j. trump now going for? a fourth branch of the military. >> host: space force. >> guest: in addition to the army, navy some marines and now

space cadets out there? i believe that we should have a demile -- demilitarized zone. we should have gun control of government, not gun control of people. so here he's going in the opposite direction. saying we should have this fourth division or fourth branch of the military out in space. that is the exact wrong way to good as far as i'm concerned. >> host: given your views on economics, what are some success stories over the years? >> guest: success stories? well, your tie. my wristwatch. this hotel. >> host: let's go to roads and things like that there some private roads, toll roads. >> guest: there aren't any private roadses. there are what they caw contracted out roads. let's take sanitation. very rarely is there sanitation

with the sanitation company directly deals with you. sometimes year municipality, hires a sanitation company, taxes paid them is crag out. we do have some of that inch brazil they have roads like that but government is in control of it, the government exercises emanant dough -- domain could we build road without emthat's domain? that mind you have a holdout, we're now las vegas and want to bailed road from las vegas to new orleans, how many people own land between sneer millions. and there's going to be a holdout somewhere, and this holdout will say you can't go through my land, and then we have a special chapter on that one. where we say you can go under him or over him because we don't believe that you own all the way down to the core of the earth up to the heavens simple claim that was a single are to -- we don't

need emanant domain. there's no case of private road ownership. there's contracting out which an economics fast fascism and you cooperation of public and profit. there might be a millionn't of one percent of some farmer has a road somewhere that's very, very small, and this is a horrible thing. people don't talk about that. a little girl gets lost in a well and the boys in -- >> host: thailand. >> guest: ten boys got stuck nature cave and we said nothing about anything else except those boys. i'm exaggerating it but what about the road fatalities. 38,000 people die every year hope to government roads and nobody says squat. that's horrible. i wish were there some private cases and then they could compare. what we do is we -- in that book, what i do is i compare

sanitation, how much does it cost to move a ton of sanitation, private and public? and how how much does it cost to mail letter, private and pock. there are 40,000 people dying on the roads now. in private enterprise would there be zero? no. still be fatality basions people are doing 60, 670, 80 miles per hour. i extrapolate in costs costs ann usually three or four or five to one private enterprise is better. so my estimate is that if we privatize all roads, we'd still have something like 10,000 debts. that's better than 340,000. so unfortunately, i can't tell you, look over here, this is a private road and virtually zero deaths deaths and here people are dying

like flies on the government road. i can't do that. but with lakes there are some private lakes. very few but i don't have in the evidence to say on these private lakes it's better in some way. don't have that in the book. >> host: so professor block, why did you open space capitalism, talking about knowing bernie sanners and protesting ayn rand. >> guest: what happened was that at the publish are said you have to put some personalized stuff in there, and had nothing to do with the book. it's more like what belongs on the back cover of the book. this is professor jones and he did this and has a wife and kids. so, i gave my person a story. the publisher asked and when the publisher asks, the author --ite tells the story of your economic views and how they'd change over the years.

>> guest: when i went to high school issue went with bernie sanders, we were on the track team going my views were his. as a pinko come my socialist like him and then i met ayn rand. cam to boo and his hiss her and they converted me, one was there is some -- atlas shrugged and then -- profoundly affected me and got me out of philosophy and into economics. so, these personal stories which is through i guess humanize the authors, that had nothing to do with the book. added of after the book was written. >> host: the third on privatization is called space capitalism, how human its will

colonialize lapses, moons and asteroidses. thank you for joining us on booktv. >> thank you for having me. wait at pleasure. >> other book tv asked members of congress what they're reading. >> i'm fortunate enough i have men constituents to vet books for me so who books i was assured are good, and are, is a buying agoography of james poke who was meant you'red be -- james polk who was menguard andrew jackson, the tile before the civil war and we picked up california and at the intimidation game, book talk about the degree toe which people are outspoken conservatives now are intimidated by the government and by groups boycotting them. so we are trying shut down certain types of thought. >> book tv wants to know what you're reading send send it your summer reading list at book tv on twitter, instagram for

facebook. booktv on c-span2, television for serious readers. >> there's a lot of outrage around the world, number one, how can the united states go and indict people from other countries? they don't have rico laws in most parts 0 the world, don't have foreign corrupt practices acts law and the don't understand and these people barely set foot in the united states, some probably never but it's the wire tran ferred money through the fed system it would hit a united states bank in all likelihood, that's enough to get jurisdiction, which in the rest of the dollared -- the other part it bewillerring to us, you pick it up, about the fact that bribery is commonplace in the

world. that's the way day do business. this swiss law when this was taking place, did not make commercial bribery a crime. in fact, at one point you could actually take that cost as a deduction on your tax return. so around the world -- i'm not adopting it but that is how business is don and call is lip credits. i with we want come -- hypocrites. we want to come to the united states, we're told you have to hire this lawyer, and he'll tell you -- >> and buy a book. >> this is the lobbyist you should hire and then support this elected official and you'll get your deal. and so they say, well, we're just a little more straightforward about it. and so it really -- i'm not justifying it but some of the anger and perplexity's because

they do not understand our laws and the way we do business. >> that's right. i think a people, the foreign cooperators, took a lot of explaining to make them understand what they had done before they could confess to their crimes. that sound like the spanish inquisition but the way the prosecutors work it out, they used something -- used the wire fraud statutes but the legal hook and what they figured out -- >> what is manafort accused of dying. >> the wire fraud. and the got held called honest services fraud which is often used on politicians if you are an officer or elect official of some kind of institution, that has some kind of code of standards, then you are beholding as an officer on

fiduciary standard -- when the soccer officials say that's not the way you do business and that's true. but they also -- you can tell that they -- they knew it wasn't totally clean because they were really sneaking y but it. just the way you do business but they could do incredible thrown hide the money they got. they would send tote overseas accounts, they would take it in cash, there was one guy who got convicted who would send -- lived in -- get his bribes in bounce -- send his driver 15 hours each way to pick thin cash drive, put in the truck and drive 150 hours back. go down, spend the night and come back with a couple hundred thousand dollars of cash in his truck. doesn't smell like a legitimate way to be paid for your services.

>> anybody has anybody come up with a close estimate how much russia paid in bribes to get the world cub that's going on right now? >> no. there's a fun story about that. there was a lot of questions about both russia and qatar winning the world cup and there was an investigation, michael -- -- hired -- [inaudible]

prosecutor, the swiss don't have maybe as mum much vigor as us americans and he went and he said, okay, rescuer russians give us your book so we can tuned out whether it was clean expose russians say, funny thing you ask about that. we had all these computers and they're borrowed computers and when the -- when it was over and we won, we gave them back at the person who loaned them to souse the prosecutor says, great, we'll get them -- he goes, well unfortunately they destroyed the compute0s there's no computers left. there's nothing. there's no records at all of what happened. and then the fifa in a vary fifa way was no harm no foul. must be clean. >> one of the consequences of this scandal is that -- was then

banned from anything in soccer. but you might put the tv set on today and see who putin has as his personal guest. jeff bladder. >> a classic -- one of the greet troll moves of the year, i think. putin get his world cub probably by subterfuge. sets off an entire criminal investigation my book is about. and then has his world cup, and then opening game sits sentence to the current president of fifa who is in that position because of that criminal investigation, there's no way we have that job without it. then a week later sitting in a different booth with bladder who is the disgraced former guy who fifa said you're so gad you're not allowed back and you're banned from the sport entirely...

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