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Kibbe on Liberty
Ep 314 | Being a Libertarian Takes Patience | Guest: Ron Manners
00:51:50
Ron Manners, author of “The Impatient Libertarian,” sits down with Matt Kibbe to talk about his long life fighting for liberty
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- [00:01]
Kibbe
Welcome to Kibbe on Liberty. This week I'm talking to my friend.
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Ron Manners
Ron Manners, the author of the Impatient.
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Kibbe
Libertarian and an OG Libertarian who actually got the party with Friedrich Hayek. Check it out.
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Ron Manners
Welcome to Kibby on Liberty.
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Kibbe
Ron, how are you doing?
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Friedrich Hayek
So far so good.
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Kibbe
So far so good. Did you just. You just got into New York from.
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Friedrich Hayek
Texas, you were from. From Perth to Dallas direct and down here and then off to London tomorrow.
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Kibbe
All right, so you're, you don't know what time it is at all.
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Friedrich Hayek
It just doesn't matter.
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Kibbe
Yeah, yeah. So you have a book. I saw you speak at the Mont Pelerin Society in India. Just a couple, actually, just a couple weeks ago. So you're, you're all over the world all the time and you're, you're kind of an OG libertarian, The original generation of, of troublemakers.
- [01:35]
Friedrich Hayek
And I knew all the guys that they speak of reverently.
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Kibbe
Yes. So you can tell me the real stories about Hayek. And did you meet Ayn Rand?
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Friedrich Hayek
Never met Ayn Rand. Never that. She, she influenced a guy that became a Prime Minister of Australia, A very disappointing prime minister, I must say, but never met her.
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Kibbe
So the story I want to start with. And you've written a new book called the Impatient Libertarian. And I would have named it differently, I would have called it the Energetic Libertarian because I've never met someone with as much energy as you alone. I very much resent you for this. Not that much. But your origin story, how you discovered liberty is fascinating to me. We're both old enough that we had to discover liberty the old fashioned way. We had to read about it and so tell the story about. So you're working for your dad in the mining industry?
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Friedrich Hayek
Well, this is after school. I was 16. After school I'd spent a few hours. At the end of the day, main task was to unpack big timber crates that had arrived from usa. And the particular crate I remember arrived from a company called Timken Roller Bearing Company in Canton, Ohio. And one of the joys of opening these crates was that these are the days of wrapping material. Pre bubble wrap, no bubble wrap, no plastic. They were crumpled magazines that I used to smooth out, take home and read. The magazines were called Freeman, the Freeman Magazine with tapes from the foundation for Economic Education. And I loved those. The words of liberty, the words of individual responsibility. And I just loved that stuff. And about two years later, I ended up going to the Kalgoorlie, Australia in the School of Mines I was studying there. They gave me the job of Being the editor at that School of Mines magazine. Well, I started using some of the stuff, perhaps Australianizing it in some ways from the Freeman magazine. And I got into all sorts of trouble. There was a highly unionized town, and people say, you can't suggest that people can make it on their own without union muscle behind them. I had no idea what they were talking about. So at probably age about 17 and a half was the year I wrote to the president of the foundation for Economic Education. I said, listen, my friend, your ideas are getting me into trouble. They can't be much good. And the president, Leonard E. Reed, wrote back. Probably didn't know I was only a kid. So he called me Mr. Manus. He said, no, our ideas are okay. They started by perhaps Aristotle, may be polished up many times through many generations since then. The ideas are okay. Perhaps it's just that you have insufficient knowledge to defend your position that may be the problem. He said, well, with that in mind, we put you on our mailing list, and here's a few books to start with. And you can always write to me if you have any questions. Well, that started, I wrote letters to. Letters read at least every month right through from those early days, right through his death in 1983. And he was always patient enough to reply. And then he. Actually, the interesting thing was he invited me to New York, to the foundation's headquarters in Irvington on Hudson to give a little talk to the board of fee. And he said, rod, you just tell them how you open the cases. Did you discover the Freeman magazines? I said, that's a pretty corny story to Mr. Telling your board. He said, you just tell them the story and I'll finish it off. And he finished it off after my story. He said, gentlemen, here our motto is ideas have consequences. You know, Kramer magazine goes to the Timken Manufacturing Company, goes right to the Star. Everyone ticks it off. And then he goes to the packing department, crumpled up, goes to the other side of the world. The young fellow picks it up. Then he goes out and he started his own foundation modeled on the foundation for Economic Education. Gentlemen, he said, our ideas have more consequences than we'd ever, ever dreamed of. So he made it into a good story.
- [06:13]
Kibbe
So I went back and watched a lot of the old videos of Leonard Reed and Ben Roge, who were tremendous storytellers and very much an inspiration for me because they had a certain infectious way of.
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Friedrich Hayek
Ben Roge was incredible himself. Tell me, he died very. I regarded very young. He died at the peak of his career.
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Kibbe
Yeah. But he was, he was almost a comedian, right? Like a, a very talented economist and, and a serious academic thinker. But what he would do for his students is just get them excited about the ideas. And, and Leonard Reed was the same way. It wasn't he, he never talked down to people. He was engaging people where they were coming from. It's always been an inspiration.
- [07:02]
Friedrich Hayek
Never lecturing, never lecturing. Whether they were just teasing people on an adventure, you could hardly wait for the next chapter. Really exciting. And that's why I think I was so lucky to have been introduced to the free market and the freedom movement by people like that.
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Kibbe
But they kind of ruined your life because once, once you saw it, you couldn't unsee it, see? And you had to think about the world in a different way.
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Friedrich Hayek
Now it worries me that other people may never make those same discoveries.
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Kibbe
Yeah. So are you impatient? Your book's called the Impatient Libertarian.
- [07:41]
Friedrich Hayek
Well, I'm impatient because I'm 88, but you get to be 88, you realize you can't wait. You can't wait. You'll do that in 10 years time. You can't do, you can't plan ahead. You gotta move fast. So that's why Impatient. Well, that was my eighth book, but the previous book was called the Lonely Libertarian, on the COVID of which I'm surrounded by a group of young man cow scholars that we'd sent to different places. The people said, ron, how could you be lonely being surrounded by a whole bunch of people like this? And I said, I've told them, I've told them all, if they're going to be libertarians, if they're going to develop their own philosophy of life and follow it, they abound to feel lonely from time to time, because you're not you stepping aside from the mob culture. It's your own focused philosophy of your life that you're following all the way, irrespective of the clamor. People try to view you to the left or right, you know exactly where you're going. That's a lonely path. But after a little while, you realize that your loneliness is your strength.
- [08:48]
Kibbe
This is one of the things that Ayn Rand taught me or her characters. Howard Roark was kind of a mentor to me, one of her fictional characters from the Fountainhead, because he taught me how to say no, and he taught me that it was okay to stand alone if you had to.
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Friedrich Hayek
Yeah.
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Kibbe
And, and, and, and I was sort of marinating in this idea and, and feeling fairly alone as a young man with these ideas. And eventually Hans Sendholz, who was a mentor of my Grove City College, he took me to the foundation for Economic Education. And I joke about this, but it's true. And I was going to Grove City and there were a couple of my friends and colleagues that shared these ideas. But it wasn't until I got to fee that I realized that there were dozens of us, maybe there was two dozen other libertarians in the entire world. And I think about the way that you discovered liberty by reading crumpled up copies of the Freeman. That was the packing material for the machine parts you unpacking. And I accidentally discovered one of her books at a used garage sale after reading the liner notes on a Rush album dedicated to the genius of Ayn Rand. But today you can just Google that, Nick. You can, you can. There's a story that the congressman, former Congressman Justin Amash used to tell that he was looking at the, the political parties in his community, Republicans and Democrats, and he said, I'm definitely not a Democrat, but I look at the Republicans and these are country club Republicans that, that they, they weren't really speaking to him. So he typed in what he thought he was philosophically and discovered Friedrich Hayek through the Internet. So he just googled it. And he's self educated. So you have to be a little bit optimistic about our ability to spread ideas because we don't need to uncrumple copies of the Freeman anymore. We could, we could just teach ourselves maybe.
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Friedrich Hayek
Yeah, it's a, it's. You stumble along the Lynda Dred introduced me to the Mount Pillarin Society and took me to the monster first meeting in Hong Kong in 1978. And I was surrounded by these legendary people. I was overwhelmed by almost by some of the people who I'd read about, I'd read their books and there they all were at the Montpellierin Society meeting. I had no idea. I ended up being a director of the Mont Pelerin Society. And it's just an interesting observation, I noticed that, that Argentina has a new president. And I learned from his, from Bertie Benigas. Lynch runs a rock band in Argentina called the Mises Rock Band. And his father was also director of the Montpellier Society. So we've been exchanging compliments. And it's his father's influence on Malay as an economics teacher that's brought Milei to Austrian economics. So it's just incredible the way this thing follows on this elite doesn't need a lot of people does it's cross pollinizations. Like a bee going from Bush to Bush taking seed of a thought from as they go. You never know where these things are going to pop out.
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Kibbe
I got to find the Mises rock band and they were telling me that Javier Mule apparently will.
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Friedrich Hayek
He sings, he comes along to Seedville. I've got it. Bertie was telling me he's the member of parliamentary speaking in Texas with me.
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Kibbe
Yeah.
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Friedrich Hayek
And he was telling me this. I said what the president sings with your band was that before he was present? That was the other, just the other month. So he sent me, he sent me a clip to prove it and there it is.
- [12:59]
Kibbe
I got to find this because one of the guests on my show and a friend of mine is a guy named Eric July who is. Is now a tycoon in the comic books world, but he is also an Austrian in his persuasion philosophically and he has a hardcore band that actually has a song called Praxeology, believe it or not. So I will share that with you or we gotta run.
- [13:25]
Friedrich Hayek
What rhymes with Frank Hills Somehow he.
- [13:29]
Kibbe
Managed because it's, it's. I can't really describe the genre but it's, it's, it's, it's half almost heavy punk like music and half hip hop. So he, he raps, he screams so but that, that, that to me says something about the power of our ideas if we're, if we're penetrating popular culture. We have a president in Argentina whose dogs are named after Murray Rothbard and Ludwig von Mises.
- [14:01]
Friedrich Hayek
I was nearly late for the session this morning because Fee has put on their daily email today. The lead item is the best interview I've ever seen and I don't remember the interviewer's name but it's a lengthy. It's about a 40 minute interview with Milei where he digs deep into M beginnings. What influenced him and how he does it. His career as an economics teacher. And it was an intensely interesting interview. The star was phenomenal and that ran me late for the session this morning. But like why not? Regret was with. With. With the sacrifice.
- [14:44]
Kibbe
So I want to hear some of these stories about. And you. Your, your book talks about some of the people that influenced you most in terms of your, Your philosophy, your business strategy, your. Your process of, of building institutions. Let's, let's start with Frederick Hayek because you, you met Hayek.
- [15:05]
Friedrich Hayek
Sure.
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Kibbe
I'm a little jealous. Oh she's a good friend I miss at George Mason. He had visited a year before I got there.
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Friedrich Hayek
We brought him to Australia in 1976 I think it was a few of us sponsored him and we brought. His wife came along and he was in Australia for about a month. And there's a great photo, a great photo in the book. Well, I might, I might just. So if I can find it easily, I'll show to you. He had a tremendous sense of humor. And we had my friend this Hayek with a. Holding a bull by the balls. Now you might say, what on earth that's about? The bull was called inflation because it was raging. The bull was growing very quickly. So they named it inflation. And inflation was a problem in Australia this year, 1976 and the hike. Suddenly he said, I have my photo taken. I go behind the ball. And he said, I will then be able to say that I have inflation by the balls.
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Kibbe
So he has a book called the Tiger by the Tail, which is about inflation. Was it inspired by this, this particular ball's ball?
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Friedrich Hayek
It's crazy as ever, that. Yeah, but Hayek was an interesting guy. In one of my discussions with him, I said no, slow down. I'm not the economist, you know. And he looked at me, he said, oh, I'm so glad you were not an economist. He said, we economists are useless. We just dream our dreams and Eric's our ideas. But we said we never do anything. We need people like you to fire the bullets. I felt as though he'd given me a job.
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Kibbe
Yeah.
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Friedrich Hayek
So I took on the challenge.
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Ron Manners
The Free Life Portrait of an Artist is the new documentary by Free the People, the story of Cuban born artist Carlos Luna who fled socialism under Castro to find his free life in America. You can watch it exclusively@civil.com C I V L.com throughout the month of December for free at civil.com check it out.
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Kibbe
What specifically about Hayek's mentoring or his ideas frame the way that you build what you build.
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Friedrich Hayek
What I'd done here I've analyzed. On the back there was the book. I gave a talk in Guatemala about how Mancal foundation, where we started it 30 years ago. And at the conference somebody wrote to me and they said we need more. We need you to tease it. We not we want more. That's keep going. So and I said well, I'll write the book as long as I can use your email request to write the book as a. As the forward to introduce the book. So that's my invitation. And they the why they asked me to give the talk in Guatemala was they said your think tanks a little bit different to all the others. Mostly the think tanks are based on the thoughts or procedures of one person and that reflects One person, that person or that person. But yours, you got more. You're multi dimensional. I said, that makes sense because we were influenced by five people. Firstly, Leonard Reid from the foundation for Economic Education and who I've covered. And then John Hospice, the philosophy teacher, who was my philosophy teacher. He was the University of Southern California and I can talk to you about him. And the. Hayek was the third one. And the fourth one was Prince Philip, the Queen's husband out of England, and I'll come to him in a moment. And the fourth one was Anthony Fisher, who started the Institute of Economic affairs in London and the Fraser Institute. Then he went on to. He formed what is now the Atlas.
- [19:21]
Kibbe
Network, which is where we're at right now.
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Friedrich Hayek
This is why we're here. This is amazing. And now it's 600 think techs all around the world coming together into this wonderful Atlas Liberty Forum.
- [19:34]
Kibbe
Not so lonely anymore.
- [19:35]
Friedrich Hayek
No, man. So they're the four of the people then suddenly realized they are all about as different as you can imagine from one another, but they're all successful, but they have a different formula for success. And I analyzed how do I pick the difference down? Instead of me saying, Matt Kimmy, there's 10 metrics by which I'm going to measure you. I broke it into two metrics. Ideas on the one hand, and strategy on the other hand, and the weak ethic, for instance. Leonard Reid, 50% ideas, 50% strategy. John Hospice, 100% ideas, no strategy. His ambition was simply to be the best philosophy teacher in the world. End of story. Where it went, it was of no concern to him, but that was it. You get to Hayek, 75% ideas. But he knew that the ideas would not go anywhere without the messengers, people like me and Anthony Fisher, to go forth with Hayek's ideas and plant these seeds all around the world. He knew that the academic side was only perhaps 75% of it. Then you get to Prince Philip, 100% strategy, no ideas, no philosophy at all. And I think I probably said five times, I was lucky enough to be involved in his Duke of Edinburgh Study Conference, where he trained us. His concern was that he was not going to be satisfied with walking five paces behind the Queen. He was too smart for that. So he created this Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh Study Conference. And his worry was that in the Corals there were bright people in the government, bright people in industry and bright people in the unions. But he said those three sectors of the economy, they wouldn't talk to each other. And in fact he said they hated each other. So he gathered together 100 of each of us from the industry, government and the unions. Then he locked us up for three weeks. We lived together, traveled together, dragged together, and then he broke us up into subgroups of three of each of that category. And he gave each group a full time secretary that had been donated by industry. And he sent us out to various locations to answer the questions that he'd trained us to ask and then come back and report to him with our findings. And as you said, a dudwaffle. So he, he was implacing in that he didn't want that whole story, he just wanted the facts, bring back the facts now. He said, and I talked to everyone. I said, I have trouble finding out what your belief system is. He said, you're not going to find out. He said, for me to reveal my belief system, he said the minute I did that I would lose what he said was 2/3 of his constituents, because if the unions thought that he was on the boss's side, they wouldn't trust him. He said, nobody knows what I'm thinking, but I'm here to bring you all together. And that's complete strategy, no ideas. That was very clever stuff. Then you go on to Anthony Fisher, who was the exact opposite to Hayek in that Fisher was 75% strategy. There were ideas that he gathered like a harvester gathering those ideas. But 75% of his effort was to finding the right people to.
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Kibbe
And a businessman like you.
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Friedrich Hayek
Yeah, businessman. He didn't go on the boards, he didn't want to be the chairman of any. He just wanted select the right people and then get out of the way. Yeah, completely set. Each of those were absolutely superbly successful in their own right, but with a different formula. And I'm amazed at the feedback I'm getting on this book from people who say they read it. First thing they do is then analyze themselves, construct their own pie chart and then they say they know what's going on. So they vary their pie chart a little bit, this way or that way. They're writing back and telling me it's made all the difference. So it wasn't set out to be a management manual or an advisory document of any kind, but it's turning out that way. So if you're an author of anything, it's very satisfying to get feedback like that.
- [24:14]
Kibbe
So where are you in this pie chart?
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Friedrich Hayek
Well, before I wrote the book, I was a little bit like Leonard Reid. 5050 ideas and strategy. Now I'm moving more and more, increasing the strategy component, yeah, I've got enough ideas and the ideas I've got are constantly being tuned up by this flow of information order, which is, I mean that's what we've got, the wonderful thing called the Internet. It keeps you adding to your sum of knowledge. So you're cranking up the strategy and we're doing that. We're doing a complete revision of our Mankel foundation and tuning up. What can we do better? Some of the things we're still doing as we did 30 years ago, we carry that forward and we're not changing those things. But the world's moved on and it's not a problem in the sense that we're doing some of the things. What I'm saying is, here's one idea, the first contact with young people. We're still doing it the old way with a little card table, visiting the universities to have a few scattered brochures. But alongside us, the Ernst and Youngs, the big accounting firms, the big legal firms, they too are seeking out the brightest young people. But they're using 20, 24 methods of engaging with young people. And here we are, we're still doing it the old fashioned way, so out of dose and we've got a guy, a young guy coming out of Perth next month, in January, actually coming to spend a few weeks at Atlas and his task will be to analyze what. There's 600 members in the Atlas network, but not all of them engage with young people. They were there for various purposes, perhaps 250, maybe engaging with young people. He will analyze what is their first contact, how they introduce the very complex ideas. We're trying to introduce people within 30 seconds. How do you do this? I'm sure they will all have their own methods, but he'll bring back a detailed paper, a document on, on how these people do it and they, this would be good for them to be asked that question because some of them may be like us and we, it's not a problem. So they haven't been solving it. But some of their methods may be dated. So it's a very, it could be a very useful document for them as well as us too. So everything we do, you've got to really analyze and do better because the world's moving on and last century's methods are not acceptable anymore.
- [26:56]
Kibbe
It's funny. So I would have been 100% ideas when, when I was a young man and I was inspiring to be an academic. But my career has gone in the opposite direction of that and I'm at least 80% strategy. Now, I don't hide my philosophy. I like, I like to lead with that. One of the advantages of being a libertarian is that a lot of people don't know what that is. And they might just be curious about something that they'd never heard of before because it's, it's not conservative, it's not liberal, it's not an aggressive, it's not in any way authoritarian. So they're curious about it. But the question of how you reach people that will never read the white papers or the books, we don't need more white papers and books to turn them on. We need something else.
- [27:53]
Friedrich Hayek
Well, there's some benefits. I continually stress that taking on the libertarian challenge could be good for you. It was good for me. My life would have been far less interesting without making the discovery of the free market movement and the way of thinking. And the other benefit is that you can develop a consistent philosophy that you can accept and use in your business life, in your private life, and in your social life. And there's a consistency between all those. Why I say that is that you often, you often people think in politics, for instance, they say a politician lied, but they say, oh, that's acceptable in politics. Or they might say in business, somebody cheated somebody, and they say that's acceptable in business. They think they can get away with it in business or in politics, but they would never do that in their private life. So there's no consistency in their philosophy through the different hats we wear in life. And so your life gets very muddled. You must spend some time thinking, well, am I making that decision as a business person or as a family man or as an individual? If you're a libertarian, it's the same decision you make irrespective of what hat you're wearing at any one time. So I think it simplifies your life. Yeah.
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Kibbe
So like, let's, let's follow this a little bit because I've thought that basic libertarian values don't hurt people, don't take their stuff, Keep your word.
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Friedrich Hayek
I wear that T shirt proudly.
- [29:47]
Kibbe
Yes. Mind your own business. Like really, really radical ideas. It, it's kind of a, I don't like the word self help, but it's almost a self help philosophy because it will help you get your own life in order if you live those values consistently across your relationships. But it is this, this paradox that we would never, in our families, in our communities and our neighborhoods, we would never hurt people or take their stuff. But when, when we go to the voting booth we will outsource hurting people and taking their stuff to some politician who we know is lying to us anyway. Why do we do that?
- [30:31]
Friedrich Hayek
Because we haven't got a consistent philosophy.
- [30:37]
Kibbe
So that's an opportunity.
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Friedrich Hayek
There's some things you can't delegate, isn't it? Crime is like in that sense of voting for a politician that you want him to do something to somebody else that you would never do. It's, it's, it is, it is really subcontracting crime.
- [30:56]
Ron Manners
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- [31:41]
Kibbe
But getting people to realize that inconsistency, it's almost kind of funny. The hypocrisy, maybe it's tragic, but I think it's funny that we're not realizing that that's what we do when we ask politicians just to plunder for us. So to me it's a marketing opportunity for people to say, you know, I never thought about it that way. Yeah, maybe I am being inconsistent, maybe I need to think about that.
- [32:11]
Friedrich Hayek
You're right. We got to think about how we ask these questions. On the matter of education. I'm sure in the US as it is in Australia Paris should be concerned at what their children are being taught. And some parents got a little insight into that during the COVID time when the kids were being trained online and they rec.
- [32:37]
Kibbe
They discovered for the first time what's going on here.
- [32:40]
Friedrich Hayek
This. And I say to a lot I thought that would have made a big difference, but it hasn't. And I've asked them are they really concerned about what their children, particularly in the universities, what they're, what their children are being taught at universities. And they think about it and the answer they give me is quite honest. They said no, it doesn't matter to them. As long as they're, as long as their kids are going to university, they're going to get the qualification and they can go and get a good job. There's not any concern beyond that. So I'm asking the wrong question. So we're getting that sort of bland answer to the wrong question. And when I asked them, I said, well, what. How would you think about if you're paying the university huge amount of money, which they are, to educate and train your kids to hate you as parents? And they say, what do you mean? I said, well, that's what they're doing. All this DEI and all that sort of stuff is, you know, the inacceptable of Western civilization, the western culture and the family concept of the family and all this, that's being destroyed and that's what you stand for. But so your kids really don't. They're really uncomfortable with you because you've got a belief system that conflicts with. So that you're paying for somebody to train your kids to hate you. You put it like that. Yeah, I don't like what's going on. Yeah, so, so there's a, somehow we, it's the matter of how to ask the question so they get an answer that they can really open up.
- [34:22]
Kibbe
This is, this is the Leonard Reed method.
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Friedrich Hayek
Yes.
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Kibbe
And, and it requires listening first, I think maybe, but there is, I know plenty of parents and we've, we documented some of the parents who woke up to high school education, the K12 education, as they sat through Zoom Schools. And, and they tell the same story over and over again that the, the regimentation like it, it felt like their, their kids were in prison because you just marched through the day without much thought about anything. And then they see the curricula and it's downright crazy. So there's, there's a lot of parents, new parents leaving the government school system in the US and at the margin that has tremendous impact on the behavior of the bureaucracy.
- [35:19]
Friedrich Hayek
I think, I hope, I'm encouraged at the emergence of all these new private non government schools with the total control of their own syllabus. That's very encouraging. Same is happening in Australia too. We were at this. You've got to spend a lot of money on the conventional university. He's quite happy to spend that amount of money on these new emerging schools. And I think Hillsdale College is probably the model on which just about everyone around the world that's starting a new liberal arts college, Basil and Grove City College that you attended. That's another model, isn't it?
- [36:02]
Kibbe
Yeah. Grove City is only a little bit better than Hillsdale. But I'm a partisan. I'm a partisan. Yes, but. So I want to go back to Hayek, because I forget you say he was 75% ideas and 25% strategy.
- [36:20]
Friedrich Hayek
And he recruited, he recruited people to be the strategist. He recruited Anthony Fisher. Yeah, well, Anthony Fisher went to him for advice.
- [36:30]
Kibbe
Yeah. But you will not be German politician.
- [36:34]
Friedrich Hayek
Yes. Gave us a very good advice and never left his mind. Yeah. From there on.
- [36:41]
Kibbe
But I got. Well, I think about. And again, like the, the first story you told was about reading those, those crumpled up copies of the Freeman. Arguably Hayek's biggest impact on the movement was his pop culture book the Road to Surf Dope. So even, even as a, as a serious academic who has written some of the, some of the thinking that has most profoundly affected the way I think about the world, it was his pop culture book. It was, it was his effort to translate these big ideas into a more readable short volume.
- [37:21]
Friedrich Hayek
You hit the spot there with me because my first introduction to hikes writing was a small, slim volume came out of the IEA in London. It was called the Choice of Currency. And I read that and it blew me away. We were back in an era of currency controls. You couldn't leave Australia with a pocket full of dollar bills and you couldn't if you're caught with US dollars, gold, it was illegal to own gold. You know, that's. We got a con. It's hard to believe that it was so controlled. And Hoyt felt in his choice of currency, he said we should be able to free. Free to choose what currency we have our dealings in and what currencies to own. And if you think your currency is crumbly, convert it into another currency that's stronger. And I thought this is absolutely, this is breathtaking. It's just by giving us a choice, it's a choice we could choose whether to survive financially or be wiped out. This is what I wrote to him. I said, your ideas are so good. Where in the world have they accepted this and put it into practice? And I've got, in one of my books I've recaptured. His answer to me was typed on his manual typewriter. It's just beautiful. I've taken a photo of his typewriter since then, but he typed. And he called me Mr. Man. He said, unfortunately, nobody has taken my book seriously.
- [39:07]
Kibbe
I wonder what he would think today.
- [39:08]
Friedrich Hayek
It was so novel. The concept of being able to free to choose your currency was so novel and so outrageous that nobody took the idea seriously. And yet we look at it now and say, how come, how come that it wasn't instantly executed?
- [39:29]
Kibbe
He, he's a Bit of a rock star in the cryptocurrency world today because. And I'm sure you've seen this interview that he did about the time that he wrote the Denationalization of Money, where he's saying, you know, we're never going to be, be able to get the government out of the business of currency. Unfortunately, that ship has sailed. They have a monopoly right now, but we need to think of some sneaky way to get around it. And now you have the blockchain and you have bitcoin and you have gold still matters. And I think, I think, I think if he was alive today, he would say, okay, people get this. And it's. And maybe they didn't read the essay until they had already started doing the work, but then they had the intellectual framework to think about what they had naturally done, just as free people seeking choices in competition.
- [40:27]
Friedrich Hayek
Interesting, Interesting. Hike asks me what I do, what is right, where I do. And when I said I was in the gold mining industry producing gold, he said, you are safe.
- [40:44]
Kibbe
You're literally producing value. You know, the, the. I talk about this a lot because I, I go back once in a while and reread his essay, the Intellectuals and Socialism and. And applies strategically in ways that he could not have imagined at the time because he was, he was talking about the corruption of the university system and, and how intellectuals tended to be socialist.
- [41:10]
Friedrich Hayek
Just. He was a lonely guy.
- [41:12]
Kibbe
Yeah.
- [41:13]
Friedrich Hayek
Until he got his Nobel Prize, he was like, far out. And you could tell that he'd spent some time in the wilderness and that he got that respectability through the Nobel Prize, which is amazing. Sure.
- [41:30]
Kibbe
But one of the observations in that essay, again, he's writing out of frustration that the socialists always win these debates. And he posits the idea that socialists were winning because they were offering a big, inspiring, utopian version of the world, which we knew was impossible and fantastical, but it was still big and inspiring. And utopian uses the word utopian. And he wanted us to do the same thing. He wanted us to think bigger. He wanted us to inspire people with this beautiful vision about how the world could be if people were free to live and prosper and choose and compete in all that.
- [42:15]
Friedrich Hayek
That's exactly the truth. The world is exciting, fancy not being alive at these times. We're really overwhelmed with good news, but it's not reported. Yeah, the good news is there, but it's not. They say it doesn't sell newspapers, so it doesn't get reported, but we don't have to concoct as the socialists did, they concocted a fantasy. But what we've got is a real story. If we can allow that to emerge and overcome some of the negativism that's being spread. All the crisis, the world's not collapsing, the climate's not collapsing. Where are going the opportunities that you and I and the younger people coming on? The opportunities to be seized are just breathtaking. You know, my parents couldn't dream of the opportunities that are presented to us, the range of the choice of occupations and professions that are just sitting there waiting for us to just take this chances. It's just, it's so good, we've just got to learn how to describe them in exciting terms.
- [43:36]
Kibbe
So that's, that's the strategy moving forward. You're impatient, but you're optimistic. What pass on this legacy to young people watching this show. Like what should they be doing if they're, if they're choosing a profession, they're choosing a career. And, and I'm Anthony Fitcher Fisher and you're a Frederick Hayek professor. Hayek, what should I do circa 2024?
- [44:05]
Friedrich Hayek
Well, quickly work out what you wish. What's your goal? Spend yourself. If you haven't got your goals written, committed to and also important if you write your goals. I've spent the first week of every year, as long as I can remember, locking myself up and committing those goals. And then you share the goals, give a couple of copies of those goals to somebody other in your family or your executive assistant so they know what you're trying to and they can give you a little needle if you're lay or something like that, but keep going. And then once you've got your goals, avoid all the stuff somebody said to me today, that was a long slide from, from Australia to the US and they said how many movies did you watch? And I said I don't think I've ever watched a movie on the plane in my life. And they couldn't believe, just never occurred to me to watch a movie because that's prime time where you're sitting in a playseat. The other quality time like that to me is sitting in a sauna. They can't come and get you. There you are, there's the you, the combination of you and your consciousness. That's the time you focus on what's ahead of you, how to achieve what you're trying to do. You would never get that time in normal life in traffic, in the office, of phone calls, emails. But that's quality. Why would you, why would you absolutely destroy that quality time with a movie. So I think that's my. That would be my thought to them. Don't leave everything till later. Just start doing it now. Because later it is later than we think. We've just got the. And I value birthdays because the scarcity factor makes each birthday more valuable than ever. You just learned to appreciate what's left because you've just got to maximize and avoid the sidetracked. Very easy to be sidetracked. I call them. Avoid other people's priorities. You know people, they rush up to you all day long. It's their problem. They bring it to you thinking that they can walk away because they've given it to you. Don't take possession. Ayn Rand said, and this is one of her best quotes, I think she said they will only do to you what you allow them to do to you. So don't take possession of other people's problems. Help them, but help them solve their own problems.
- [47:02]
Kibbe
I like it. So where did. How are book sales going? You said that you're having some success.
- [47:08]
Friedrich Hayek
Yes, yes, they'll be good. But once I won't do another reprint the other eight books, the minute they're sold, sold out. I just stick them up on my website as free ebooks and that's it. They're there forever. I don't have to worry about reprinting them. The thought of reprinting a book would tempt me into going and rewriting it. It's much more fun.
- [47:33]
Kibbe
Yeah.
- [47:34]
Friedrich Hayek
To do another book.
- [47:35]
Kibbe
Yes.
- [47:35]
Friedrich Hayek
What another topic. Bringing in all the things that I've forgot about.
- [47:41]
Kibbe
And people can find this on Amazon everywhere.
- [47:44]
Friedrich Hayek
Yeah, they go to my. My website is man west.comm a double n w a S T. It's Manest for the. The Man Vetted west From West Australia manwest.com and it's all the free books, free ebooks there and, and. And a lot of other range of other books that we've collected. Some are hard to find. There was a free money. We got a libertarian bookshop within that manwest.com site. So yeah. And yeah, we're getting some really amazing stuff in there. Somebody watched yesterday. They talked to me. They want to do a translation into Arabic that's very novel but they for some reason there's something in there that. But if it helps somebody, they can have it.
- [48:38]
Kibbe
And the think tank you found at the Man Cao center or find that that's Manchell.
- [48:44]
Friedrich Hayek
The ma n is again from Monet Manners and the kal is from the City where our company was formed, Kalgoorlie, that's Mantell. Mantell.org and our company, Manwest is celebrating 130th anniversary of being in business. It's one of the oldest West Australian family companies that's been completely family controlled over now three, three generations. So it's a 130 years of a long time, but we're still just doing it and how we enjoy it. A company is like a person that's got its own individual, it's got its own heartbeat. And I love companies in a sense that you develop the company, you can massage, you can a little bit more here, a little bit less here. But. And we've had some tremendous volatility, volatility in mining and commodities over the 130 years. Gold goes out of fashion. Gold becomes illegal. Nickel comes in. Now nickel's out of fashion because the Indonesians are producing it at half price. So the volatility is absolutely incredible. And we're all poised. We're always. We have a weekly meeting and we say a week. Are we in the right sectors? So we vary our pie chart. We invest in a whole range of things. Everything from octopus fishing just out of Perth to some iron ore mining in Brazil. We got a whole range of stuff. And it's like, do your allocations because you know, things have changed.
- [50:30]
Kibbe
Yeah.
- [50:30]
Friedrich Hayek
And by gosh, hardly a week goes by without some vital element of our business changing dramatically.
- [50:39]
Kibbe
Well, thank you for doing this and I look forward to someday coming out to see you.
- [50:44]
Friedrich Hayek
You'll be absolutely welcome. You would be up there giving a seminar to hear mencal scores. Oh, nice. They would tear it to you with questions because they are the most curious bunch of people and we harvest young people with curiosity as the main criteria.
- [51:05]
Kibbe
That would be beautiful. Thank you.
- [51:07]
Friedrich Hayek
Thank you, Ben.
- [51:08]
Kibbe
Yes.
- [51:08]
Friedrich Hayek
Such a pleasure.
- [51:12]
Ron Manners
Thanks for watching. If you liked the conversation, make sure to like the video, subscribe and also ring the bell for notifications. And if you want to know more about free the people, go to freethepeople.org.