be a sequel or volume two, that's where i would pick up the story. in the early 2000s. my assumption would be yes, but i can't definitively say. >> okay, thank you. >> thank you. >> okay. thank you. >> thank you. thank you. appreciate you coming. [applause] >> 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 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 count move, privatize d if it doesn't move, privatize it. provetize everything. why privatize stuff? 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 open them. so non-ownership is not good, and governor ownership -- each is worse than the other. as far as i'm concerned as a libertarian, government is a highly problematic institution which is based on coercion, and the libertarianism ethos is volunteerism. i'm sort of against public ownership, government ownership and non-ownership, so i face-to-face private for just -- favor private for just about everything. >> host: what was the first book about? >> guest: the first was why we

should privatize roads, streets and highways. oaand my main impetus, first of all, to 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? 1,900. and that's a one-shot deal. this is 35, 38,000 every year.00 you might say, well, it's sort of like death and taxes, it's inevitable. but my view is, no, no, no, it's not inevitable. if i owned a highway and you owned a highway, we were competing, and one of the ways we were competing was who could reduce death 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 i-5,

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. whereas if you try that and it didn't work, well, you'd lose customers, and i'd try something else, maybe i'd gain customers, we would learn, maybe we'd have a laboratory experiences. 50 states, not even 50 states, but as many laboratories 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. my second impetus 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. we're right now at a hotel during the busy season the price goes up. but we don't have that on highways, roads or streets. if we did, is and we would with private enterprise, that would solve that problem. so that's the first book, privatizing roads and 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 tnew orleans, we had katrina. katrina missed us, it hit 40

miles east. the he sees fell. that was why -- levees. who is responsible for the levees? army corps of engineers, which is a government enterprise. the hour to record, for most people, was that 1900 people died because of that. for me as an economist, the horror is they're still there. imagine if mcdonald's killed 1900 people. they wouldn't be in business anymore. 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 lock january homesteading principle, namely he who mixes his labor with the land or the water or whatever gets to be the owner of it. so theit people who put those shipse 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 that's the mississippi river corporation. again, it soundsin 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 last, finally, 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, okay. >> 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 private property rights view, only now not to roads, lives 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 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 nag there, but you own -- flag there, but you own maybe a couple of square miles of it. and the same with mars when we get to mars. i'm a humanist, i love human beings, 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 humankind. i'm, you know, 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. thee other aspect is, well, how to we get there? the stations. so far, what was it, 234969 -- 1969 when the first man arrived on the moon? it was a government employee. my hope is that we do this

private enterprise. why again? well, it's more efficient. rnand it's also more ethical because the government demands taxes from us whereas if somebody has a private rocketship, 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 because i'm sort of a weirdo that way. i like human beings. sue me. [laughter] >> host: walter block, we -- 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 sbeen 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 wallou 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. ing a lot of times people give the government credit are. 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. p just because the government did it and it was a success and even ayn rand who shouldn't have applauded this because it's incompatible with her so-called views of free enterprise, she applauded this? i didn't applaud. that 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 if 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 billion over the years. >> guest: and not one shred of benefit occurred? that would be amazing. even the government, if you take enough money, they'll 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 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 host $14 1 billion. they lost $14 billion. whereas in theue market you get

more value, typically. you have a lovely tie, a nice green tie. it cost $30. you valued it at $50, otherwise5 you wouldn't have bought it if you didn't value it at more than 30, so there was extra benefit created. my mentor, murray roth bard, 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 government is a negative. although in some sense it is. but that this is a loss when that occurs because it's in coercion. whereas in the market, like with your tie or my wristwatch, there's a benefit. every market transaction's mutually beneficial, otherwise it wouldn't occurred. whereas with the government you don't get that. >> so, professor block, when it comes to space capitalism, we're moving in that direction, aren't we?n

elon musk's spacex, etc. >> guest: that's interesting. we have a whole chapter devoted not just to elon musk, maybe 10 pages to him, and maybe 6 or 7 other space entrepreneurs who, like him, are building rockets. and we have to give him credit. i mean, with the government what they do is they shoot up a rocket, and then it's gone. of with elon musk, they shoot up a rocket, the rocket comes down, they can reuse it. imagine if every time you took a car trip, you had to junk the car.av [laughter] that wouldn't be a good wayo to go. so we have to give him credit for that, and he is a entrepreneur. on the other hand, he takes a lot of money from government. 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. in other words, if his money came from you and me on a voluntary basis, that would be one thing. but if it comes from you and me through coercive taxes that the

government gets and gives to him that's another. but in this chapter we do say there's nothing wrong with take thing 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 paradox here. but i insist that the government acts on the course, the basis like a gang, and if you take money away from a 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 because 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 he used it for this purpose, i would say, right on, ron, that's great, because nmu're a good guy. so now the question comes, is elon musk a good guy or a bad

guy? if he's a good guy like ron paul, he would be justified in taking money from the government, but if he's a bad guy, he's just arm in glove or hand in hand with the government. so what we do, we go over a whole bunch of e monoplussing's -- 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 recently he came us out as an avowed socialist, which is not a good idea with. not a credit on his blotter. so we do have a chapter devoted to all these people, and we say if they're taking money from government are they on the good side or the ledger or the bad side. so we deal with this sort of a question in that chapter. >> host: do you deal with should there be any regulation of space travel at all? >> guest: well, my view is there shouldn't -- not only should 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 courses i teach at loyola university-new orleans is regulation. you know, should we antitrust, minimum wage, rent control, this kind of regulation, that kind oo regulation. the market is the best regulator. the reason we have good quality from mcdonald's is not because the government regulates them, it's because if we didn't have good quality, they'd be out of business in a wink. so, yes, i favor regulation, and i certainly favor laws against murder, rape, theft, whatever, but government regulation is an entirely different kettle of fish. i would oppose government regulation. what is donald trump now 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. i'm a second amendment supporter, so if 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. i mean, there are some private roads. there are toll roads -- no? >> guest: there aren't any private roads. 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 directly deals with you. sometimes your municipality, whatever, 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 road book, could we build roads without eminent domain? if you have a holdout, we're now in las vegas, we want to build a road from las vegas to new orleans, how many people own land between here, i don't know, a million? and there's going to be a holdout somewhere. finish 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 goon under him or over m because we don't believe that you own all the way down to the core of the everett or up to the -- core of the earth or up to the heavens. so i claim, that was a single authorship, that we don't need eminent domain there. no, there are no real cases of private road ownership. there's this contracting out which is sort of an economic fascism where you have cooperation of mix and private -- of public and private

which i would certainly oppose. there might be, you know, one-millionth of 1% of, you know, 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: thy land? -- thailand? >> guest: we said nothing about anything else except those boys. well, i'm exaggerating. 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 book what i do is i compare sanitation, how much does it cost to move 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

dying on the roads now. in private enterprise would there be zero? no, there'd still be fatalities because people are doing 60, 70, 80 miles per hour. but i extrapolate from the ratio of costs in sanitation and anywhere elsewhere government and private work -- compete or are both in operation, and it's 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 10,0000 deaths. but 10,000 is better than 40 40,000. ..

>> host: professor, why did you open space capitalism talking about knowing bernie sanders and protesting ayn rand? >> guest: oh, what happened was that the publisher subject to put some personalized stuff in there. it did 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 his wife and kids. so i gave my personal story. the publisher asked, when the publisher asks -- >> host: it tells the story of economic views and how they changed over the years. >> guest: when i went to. high school i went to bernie sanders, we were on the track team together. my views were roughly his views. i was a pinko communist

socialist liking. then i met ayn rand and then i went to her house and they converted me with two books. one was "atlas shrugged" by ayn rand, the best novel ever witnessed was unconcerned and the other was economics in one lesson, which also profoundly affected me and got me out of philosophy and into economics. these personal stories are just i guess to humanize the author that it nothing to do with the book. it was added on right after the book was written. >> host: and the third in the 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. [inaudible conversations]