made me write papers on that. c-span's one of the great networks to help share deep ideas with more than 30-second sound bites. thank you very much, hope you all have a great day out there. >> booktv wants to know what you're reading.th send us your summer reading list @booktv on twitter, instagram or facebook. booktv on c-span2, television for serious readers. >> and now on booktv we want to introduce you to professor walter block whose most recent book is called "space capitalism." but this is not your only book, is that correct, professor? >> guest: this is, i think, the 25th book. who's counting? >> host: and you've written a new series, you're writing a new series. >> guest: well, this is the 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. if it doesn't move, privatize it. since everything either moves or

doesn't move, privatize everything. why the? because the only alternatives are government ownership or non-ownership. non-ownership you have the tragedy of the commons like that's why we're running out of whales because no one owns them. that's why we almost ran out of buffalo, because we weren't allowed to own them. so non-ownership is not good, and government ownership is -- i'm not sure which is worse. each is worse than the other, because government as far as i'm concerned as a libertarian, government is a highly problematic institution which is based on coercion. and the libertarian e nos is -- ethos is volunteerism. so i'm sort of against private -- public ownership, government ownership and non-ownership which leaves private ownership. so i favor private ownership for just about everything. >> host: so, professor block, this is the third in the series. what was the first book about? >> >> guest: the first one was why we should privatize roads, streets and highways. and my main impetus were two.

first of all, do you realize how many people die on the government roads? almost 40,000 a year for the last umpteen years, last 20, 25 years. it goes up 35,000, 40. i mean, that's a lot of people being killed. and to just put that in perspective, 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, it's sort of like death and tax the, it's inevitable. but my view is, no, no, no, it's not inevitable. if you own a highway and i own a highway and we were competing and one of the ways we competed was who could see who could reduce deaths the most, the point is right now the rules of the highway are made in washington for everybody. for example, on the i-10 or 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 the left lane had to do 80? i don't know. the problem is, we'll never know. if you tried that and it didn't work, you'd lose customers and i tried something else, maybe i'd gain customers, we would learn -- we'd have a laboratory experience. fifty states or not even fifty states, but as many laboratory the as there were private roads. so that's one impetus for it. i want to reduce deaths. i mean, there's probably nobody who's listening to this broadcast right now who either doesn't know somebody who was killed in a motor vehicle accident -- and now i'm not talking about even very serious injuries, buzz those are legion -- because those are legion. my second impetus for this book was congestion. i used to live in new york city. the fastest way to get around there is by bicycle, not car. and the reason for that is we

don't have peak load pricing. right now we're at a hotel during the busy season. the price goes up during the cooler season, the price goes down. but we don't have that on highways or roads or streets. if we did, and we would with private enterprise, that would solve that problem. so that's the first book, privatizing roads, streets and highways. the second one was privatizing oceans, rivers and lakes. which sounds even weirder to most people. you can't privatize a river. that's crazy. somebody should own the mississippi river? or the hudson river? that's lunacy. well, i say, no, no, it's not lunacy. and, you know, first, why should we do it? well, one reason is we're running out of fish, we're running out of whales, the tragedy of the commons. no one owns it. the second reason is i'm from new orleans, we had katrina. katrina missed us. it hit 40 miles east, the levees

failed. who was responsible for the levees? army corps of engineers, which is a government enterprise. the horror for those people, 1900 people died as a result of that, to me as an economist, the horror is they're still in business. imagine if mcdonald's or burger king killed 1900 people. they'd go the way of pan-am or some other company, but they're still in business. whereas if someone owned the mississippi river and they did that, it would pass into other more competent hands. so how could we have the mississippi or the hudson river or the atlantic ocean owned? well, the same way we get land owned. by the john lockean homesteader principle. the people who put those ships up and down the mississippi river, the people who own land on the side of the mississippi river because we assume they're using it in some way. so now you have 100,000 people with 100,000 shares, and then

that's the mississippi river corporation. again, it sounds weird to the non-initiated or to the non-weirdoes, but i think that it would save lives, and it would deal with running out of resources like fish resources and things like that. and and last, finally are, we get to the book now. let me wave this in front of the camera. >> host: we'll put it up. >> guest: oh, you're going to do that? >> host: yeah. >> guest: unfortunately, i don't have the book. it just came out yesterday -- >> host: space capitalism, it's called, how humans will colonize planets, moons and asteroids. >> guest: right. so now i'm applying the same old property rights view, 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 john locke and murray rothbard and their views on homesteading.

you mix your labor with the land, and you get to own it. now, you don't own the whole moon just because you planted a flag there, but you own maybe a couple of square miles of it. and the same thing for mars. and my main impetus is i'm a humanist, and i'm afraid we're going to blow ourselves up on this planet, and it would be nice to have some people on mars and on the moon in case the earth ended for human kind. i'm really pro-human, and this is sort of like an insurance policy. so i would like to see some colonies on mars and on the moon. and now the question is, well, how do we conduct business? hopefully with the least government possible and with the most private property and free enterprise possible. that's one aspect. the other aspect is, well, how do we get there? the spaceships? so far in, what was it, 1969 when the first man arrived on the moon? it was government. it was a government employee. my hope is that we do this private enterprise. why again? well, it's more efficient. and it's also more ethical

because the government demands taxes from us whereas if somebody has a private rocket ship, he does it on his own account with his own money. so those would be my two ways of dealing with it; namely, the trip and what to do with the land there. and the impetus for it is to plant some human beings elsewhere so, god forbid, if we blow ourselves up here, at least there'll be some human beings. i'm sort of a weirdo can that way, i like human beings. sue me. [laughter] >> host: walter block, the budget for nasa is about $19 billion, over the years about $600 billion or so has been spent on nasa programs. in your view, how has that money been spent? >> guest: well, not wisely. i mean, that money, it 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, wall street stock exchange and set up a company and get some more money than would otherwise be available. see, there's another problem. a lot of times people give the government credit, well, at least the government got people on the moon. can't deny that. but would the money have been better spent instead of going to the moon in '69 on research in rocketry and protection of people on these planets? well, i think so. just because the government did it and it was a success and even ayn rand who shouldn't have a -- applaud this because it's incompatible with her views, she applauded this. i was against that because it was premature. the market not only has spatial allocation, you know, we should grow oranges in florida and not in maine, but also a time allocation. namely, there's a right time to do things, and you do something

premature, what you do is at the cost of a more rational time element toward the goal. >> host: but haven't we learned and been able to adapt from our spending at nasa and have experiments and products? >> guest: well, it would be amazing if you spent 19 -- $90 billion? >> host: 19 in this year, about 600 over the years. >> guest: -- and not one shred of benefit occurred? that would be amazing. even the government needed to take enough money to do something. i mean, we do have roads. we do have, i don't know, museums. we do have central park and audubon park with government money. so it'd be amazing if they did no good with it. the point is if they take money and take $19 billion and get $5 billion worth, they lost $14 billion. whereas in the market you get more value typically. you have a lovely tie, a nice green tie. it cost $30, you valued it at 50

other side you wouldn't have -- otherwise you wouldn't have bought it. there was extra benefit created. with the government, you have a diminution. my mentor, murray rothbard, used to say what we ought to do is have consumption plus investment minus government to calculate the gdp because it would be closer. not that -- that would just be a rough approximation. it wouldn't be that we're saying every penny that goes to the government is a negative -- although in some cases it is -- but that there's a loss when that occurs because it's coercion. whereas in the market like with your tie or my wristwatch, there's a benefit. every market transis mutually beneficial, otherwise it wouldn't to you are can. with the government, you don't get that. >> host: so, professor block, when it comes to space capitalism, we're move anything that direction, aren't we? elon musk's spacex, etc. >> guest: that's interesting. we have a whole chapter devoted

not just to elon musk -- maybe ten pages to him and maybe six or seven other space entrepreneurs who, like him, are building rockets. and is we have to give him credit. with the government, they shoot up a rocket and it's gone. elon musk they shoot up a rocket, the rocket comes down, and they can reuse it. imagine if every time you took a car trip, you had to junk the car? [laughter] that wouldn't be a good way to go. so we have to give him credit for that. he is an entrepreneur. on the other hand, he takes a lot of money from government. a loot of money from government. concern a lot of money from government. most of his money is from government which is sort of problematic. it's more like, what do they call it, crony capitalism than real capitalism are. in other words, this money came from you and me on a voluntary basis, that would be one thing. but if it comes through can coercive taxes that the government gets and then gives to him, that's another. but in this chapter what we do, we do say there's nothing wrong with taking money from the

government, because we regard the government as a thief. because they do it coercively. and if you take money from a thief, you're a good guy. again, we have a little bit of a paradocks here. but i insist that the -- paradox here. but i insist that the government acts like a gang, and you take money away from the gang, you're on the side of the angels. so the question is, i mean, look, ron paul -- i think he refused to take matching funds. he didn't want to take money from government. i wrote an essay saying, ron, take the money. better that you have it than the government has it. i don't think he did that. nobody ever listens to me. but the point is, if it was ron paul who was running a space thing and he took money from the government and and he used it for this purpose, i would say right on, ron, that's great, because you're a good guy. now the question comes is elon musk a good guy or a bad guy? if he was a good guy, he would

be justified in taking money from the government, but if he's a bad guy, he's hand in hand with the government. we go over a whole bunch of elon musk's public statements. and, unfortunately, he doesn't pass the smell test. he is not a good guy. he's not a libertarian. and he recently, after the book was written he came out as an avowed socialist which is not a good idea. not a credit on his blotter. so we do have a chapter devoted to all of these people, and we say if they're taking money from government are they on the good side of the ledger or the bad side? we deal with that in that chapter. >> host: should there be any regulation of space travel at all? >> guest: well, my view is not only shouldn't there be any government ownership of anything, there shouldn't be government regulation of anything. government is a bad institution, again, based on coercion. one of the cases i teach at

loyola university-new orleans is should we have minimum wage, rent control, this kind of regulation, that kind of regulation. the market is the best regulator. the profit and loss system is the best regulator. the reason we have good quality from mcdonald's is not because the government regulates them, it's because if they didn't have good quality, they'd be out of business in a wink. yes, i favor regulations and laws against murder, rape, theft, whatever. but government regulation is an entirely different kettle of fish. i would oppose government regulation. what if donald trump, what is he calling for? a fourth branch of the military? >> host: space force. >> guest: space force in addition to the army, navy and marines, now we're going to have space cadets out there, you know? i believe that we should have a demilitarized zone, especially government demilitarized. i'm a second amendment supporter, so we should have gun control, we should have gun control of government. not gun control of people. so here he's going in the

opposite direction. he's saying we should have this fourth division or fourth branch of the military out in space. that's the exact wrong way to go 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 are some private roads, there are toll roads -- no? >> guest: there are, what do they call it? contracted-out roads. in other words, let's take sanitation. very rarely is there sanitation where the sanitation company correctly deals with you. sometimes your municipality hires a sanitation company, taxes you and pays them. that's contracting out. we do have some of that. in brazil they have roads like that. but the government is in control of it. government builds it. the government exercises eminent

domain. that's one of the things i do in that roads book, could we build roads without eminent domain? if you have a holddown, we're now in las vegas, we want to build from las vegas to the new orleans, how many people own land between here? i don't know, a million. and there's going to be a holdout somewhere. and this holdout is going to say you can't go through my land, and then we have a special chapter on that one where we say you can go you should him or over him because -- under him or over him because we don't believe you own all the way down to the core of the earth or up to the helps. i claim that was a single authorship that we don't need eminent domain there are. no, there are no real cases of private road ownership. there's this contracting out which is sort of economic fascism where you have cooperation of public and private which i would certainly oppose. there might be, you know,

one-millionth of 1% of some farmer has a road somewhere, but it's very, very small. and this is a horrible thing, you know? people don't talk about that. a little girl gets lost in a well, and these boys in -- >> host: thailand. >> guest: sorry? >> host: thailand? >> guest: ten boys got stuck under a cave, and we said nothing about anything else except those boys. well, i'm exaggerating. but what about the road fatalities? 35, 38,000 people die every year on those government roads, and nobody says squat. that's horrible. i wish there were some private cases and then we could compare. what we do is we, in that booking what i do is i compare sanitation, how much does it cost to remove a ton of sanitation private and public. and how much does it cost to mail a letter private and public. so i'm trying to extrapolate. look, there are 40,000 people die thing on the roads now.

in private enterprise would this be 0? no. there'd still be fatalities because people are doing 60, 70, 80 miles per hour. but i extrapolate the ratio in costs in sanitation and everywhere elsewhere government and private work together or compete in operation. and it's usually 3 or 4 or 5 to 1 private enterprise is better. so my estimate is if we privatized all roads, we'd still have something like 10,000 deaths. but 10,000 is better than 40,000. so, unfortunately, i can't say, well, look over here, this is a private road. and there are virtually zero deaths whereas here the government roads people are dying like flies. unfortunately, i can't do that. unfortunately, with lakes, there are also private lakes. thank you, but i don't have the evidence to say, well, on these private lakes it's better in some way. i don't have that in that book. >> host: so, professor block,

why did you open space capitalism talking about knowing bernie sanders and protesting ayn rand? >> guest: oh. that -- what happened was that the publisher said you have to put some personalized stuff in there. it had nothing to do with the book. it's more like what belongs on the back cover of the book. you know, this is professor jones, and he did this, and he has a wife and kids. so gave my personal story. the publisher asked and, you know, when the publisher asks, the author -- >> host: but it tells the story of your economic views and how they've changed over the years. >> guest: yeah. look, when i went to high school, i went with bernie sanders. we were on the track team together. and my views were roughly his views. i was a commie socialist like him. and then i met ayn rand. i came to boo and hiss her when

she spoke at brooklyn college, and then i went to her house, and they converted me with two books. one was atlas shrugged, the best novel ever written as far as i'm concerned, and the other was economics in one lesson by henry haslett which also profoundly affected me and got me out of place my and into economics. so these personal stories were just to sort of, i guess, humanize the authors that had nothing to do with the book. it was sort of added on right after the book was written. >> host: and the third in walter block's series on privatization is called "space capitalism: how humans will colonize planets, moons and asteroids." thank you for joining us on booktv. >> guest: thanks for having me, it was a pleasure. ..

>> at 11:00 with william's research on process of climate chaining. that all happens tonight on c-span2 book tv, 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books every weekend, television for serious readers. reminder that this weekend's full schedule is available on our