Ep. 743 Has the State Reduced Violence?

The Tom Woods Show

Tom Woods

Politics, Economics, Libertarian, Government, News

4.8 • 3.3K Ratings

🗓️ 22 September 2016

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Harvard's Steven Pinker has argued that violence has been drastically reduced over the course of human history, thanks in large part to the rise of the state. Is this checkmate for libertarians? Stefan Blankertz says no.

Show notes for Ep. 743

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Tom Woods Show, episode 743.
0:03.6	Prepare to set fire to the index card of allowable opinion.
0:08.2	Your daily dose of Liberty Education starts here, the Tom Woods Show.
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0:44.8	Hey, everybody, Tom Woods here talking today to Stefan Blankertz from the Murray Rothbard Institute
0:51.4	all the way in Germany.
0:52.8	And we're going to talk about the thesis of Stephen Pinker, the Harvard professor, who, among other things, wrote the book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, Why Violence Has Declined.
1:04.0	And this has been cited often against people who favor the stateless society, because they say, look, violence has declined,
1:12.1	and what has been the predominant institution, as this violence has declined, well, the state.
1:17.9	And so what the state brings to bear to society, whether you like all the things it does,
1:24.1	the fact is it's given us peace, it's given us by and large. It's given us
1:28.9	less violence. That's the thesis that has come out of that tradition of thought. And Stefan
1:35.1	Blancertz has actually written quite substantially against this argument. He's written an
1:40.5	enormous amount in general, but he's also written on this topic in particular. I'm going to be linking to his work and where you can find out more about Stefan Blancertz at Tom Woods.com slash 743.
1:53.8	Stefan, welcome to the show. Yeah. Thank you for inviting me. I wish my reading German were stronger.
2:02.5	As I told you before we went on, I did actually study German for reading knowledge, and I even did a translation of a German text into English, so I got pretty good at it.
2:12.1	But then I didn't do it for a long time, and I just don't think I would be prepared to read your book.
	...

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