017 – Transcript

Just Right Episode 017
Air Date: August 9, 2007
Host: Bob Metz

Disclaimer:
The views expressed in this program are those of the participants and do not necessarily reflect the views of 94.9 CHRW.

Clip (Star Trek: The Next Generation S01E12 “The Big Goodbye”)

Holodeck Character:
Computer? I don’t know that word.

Commander Data:
An electronic or mechanical apparatus capable of carrying out repetitious or complex mathematical operations at high speed. Computers are used to control, process, perform or store.

Holodeck Character:
Enough! Let me kill him. He’s really beginning to irritate me.

Bob Metz:
Good morning London. It is Thursday, August the 9th. I’m Bob Metz and this is Just Right on CHRW 94.9 FM, where we will be with you from now till noon.

No, no, not right wing. Just right. Welcome to the show where you can call in at 519-661-3600 if you want to add something to the conversation or discussion today.

Or email us at justrightchrw@gmail.com. Morning Ira, how are you doing in there? Ira is our operator. He’s the fellow who’d be picking up the phone if you call.

Ira Timothy:
I’m wet today Bob.

Bob Metz:
Yeah, it’s a wet one out there isn’t it? Maybe we need some new inventions to keep that rain off us.

Going a little different direction today. Not that I’m not sticking to the right, but part of right is about technology and science. Technology and freedom and science and freedom very much go hand in hand. In fact, I’m quite convinced that were we not such a highly technological society, our governments would have bankrupted us a long time ago because we would never have been able to keep up with the productivity required to pay taxes at a rate of almost 50%. So in that sense, you might almost say technology has been our unwitting enemy in that way, but I don’t think you can draw a cause and consequence there.

The thing that drew my attention though, maybe I should start this way. You know, when I was a kid, I used to read a Gold Key comic book called Magnus Robot Fighter. I don’t know if you ever saw it.

Gold Key comics always had these great covers that looked more like art gallery paintings really while the inside art was a little more cartoony than you might find in the DC or Marvel superhero comic books of the time. But Magnus used to fight these evil robots out to destroy humanity and he had this sort of skill in martial arts and these robots would fall victim to him because he was a big tough guy. We’ve seen what robots can do to us in movies like The Terminator or TV shows like Battlestar Galactica. And of course we’ve seen the other side of the coin with characters like Star Trek’s Data whose positronic neural network gives him self-awareness but apparently without emotion. And of course the Jetsons had a household maid robot called Rosie.

But that’s sort of an issue I want to get into today. Can machines think? Can they become sentient? Can they become truly intelligent? We hear a lot about intelligent technology and smart machines.

And if you think these questions are rather rhetoric, well think again because welcome to the 21st century. You know it would be pretty difficult for me to pick a single quantum technological leap out of the 20th century that we could say changed mankind’s way of existence as never before. I mean from the very introduction of electricity to flush toilets to automobiles to telephones, radios, televisions, aircraft, spacecraft and of course computers and the internet.

None of these things existed in any previous known recorded history and many were not even predicted by the best of the science fiction writers. The idea of a cell phone or iPod has already surpassed the comic book fancies of Dick Tracy who used to have this two-way communicator on his wrist and everybody thought that was so cool. And then of course we thought we might get flying cars and boat cars. I think they had them for a while but the technology for these things apparently exists but interestingly enough there is no consumer demand.

So get ready for the 21st century quantum leaps and I think we’re already approaching a point where I think I can predict at least with some reliability one of the next great leaps as big as computers and internet were. And that is robotics and specifically robots who kind of look more like humans and act more like humans. You know there’s already been some problems associated with this very issue and they’re being discussed at very high levels and this might very much surprise you.

With that I draw your attention to an article that I dug up out of The Economist. It was about a year ago actually, the June 10th edition and the title of the article is called Trust Me, I’m a Robot. And what it talks about is that the question that faces the emerging robotic industry is whether new robot specific safety rules and regulations are needed and if so what should they say.

Now you might be surprised. Of course The Economist is a British magazine so some of these statistics relate to Britain though not all but it’s reported that in 2005 for example there were 77 robot related accidents in Britain alone according to the Health and Safety Executive and since 1981 people have been crushed, hit on the head, welded and even had molten aluminum poured on them by robots and man that’s got to be hot.

So now of course robots have been with us for some time. So I went to the dictionary and looked up a definition of what really we should be considering a robot and it was interesting they had three sort of distinct definitions and here they are. The first one is a mechanical man constructed to perform work in the place of human beings. Two, one who works mechanically, an automaton.

Now that would be a person in that case. And it’s interesting that in this regard the dictionary pointed out the Czechoslovakian word robota which actually refers to forced labor which of course kind of raises a labor issue with mechanical labor being regarded as sort of mindless which is why robots and automations seem to threaten physical labor. And why I think there won’t be really a labor shortage with declining demographics I think robots might make up a big difference in that area. But the third definition is any mechanism or device that operates automatically or is remotely controlled.

Now the new generation of robots that are emerging I think departs from the definition about remote control. Yes there are, that’s still a correct use of the word to say that a remote controlled device is a robot. In fact there’s an article in the Free Press just August 6th here, a robot newest tool in treatment of prostate cancer. But of course this isn’t a robot like Data that just walks into the room and does its own thing.

It’s controlled by someone. The fact is that they’re at a distance and that’s what makes the definition of robot apply in this case. You know if you really wanted to call your car a robot I guess you could because you are at some distance from the wheels. You don’t turn them directly. You give a command and then there’s a series of mechanical and electronic things that occur and your command is carried out in a chain of events. But of course we don’t look at cars as robots because they’re more in direct control.

But you know to me the new type of robot that we’re talking about and that I will be more focused on today is an automated robot which is similar to a remote controlled device but only in the sense that the human instructions passed on to it were pre-written and considered at a time prior to the robotic action itself. So in other words a command could be issued to a robot say in the year 2001 and not acted upon until late 2009 or later if you wanted to. There is in essence a gap in time between the instruction being given via a computer or a computer chip and when acted upon. So needless to say in addition to the many opportunities and benefits this can offer us it can also present some problems should any instructions prove to be harmful or destructive.

Whether that is intentionally or unintentionally. So you know the closest thing I think we’ve come to experiencing this fear was back with the Y2K bug. You remember that or the turn of the millennium which I think was one of the most misunderstood technological issues of its time. Fundamentally predicated on a false belief that mechanical devices and machines dependent on computer systems would be able to act or not act on their own simply because the digit changes from 99 to 00.

People were afraid that planes would stop flying, telephones would stop working, power outages would occur. But the plain fact is unless a computer has a specific instruction to issue a command to some mechanical device it just won’t happen just because a 9 turns into a 0. In binary all numbers look the same. The computer doesn’t know a 9 from a 0, from a 2, from a 5, from an ABC.

It’s all digital binary code at the basic level but nevertheless I digress a bit here. For me I’m going to take the definition of a robot and extend it a bit to what I think in terms of what we’re looking at in the future and the really impressive kind of robots that we’re going to be seeing. And this is sooner than you think.

You’ll hear what I have to say. This is what I would say about robots that I would add to the dictionary definition. First I would say that it’s a physical extension of a computer. That’s really what drives a robot regardless. There’s always a computer program there whether it’s a RAM chip, a random access memory or a ROM chip read only memory.

That’s not the point. It’s still operating independently from a human being remotely controlling it and it’s being given instructions from this preset of instructions that were created by a human being. And of course it implies mobility and action in addition to information processing.

I think that’s very important. Second I think a robot could really be very simple or it could be very complex and it can take any shape. Humanoid or otherwise. Many toys already qualify as robots including actual robot toys.

My grandson has one but it’s very mechanically operated. It doesn’t operate with a program per se. It won’t fall off the edge of a table but not because a program is telling it not to.

It’s because the legs are designed in such a way that when it reaches the edge it appears to be changing its mind and it just changes direction because of a mechanical device. Which is part of a sensory system of a robot that would not to me make the complete definition that I’m looking for. And of course the future of robots I think will be far more sophisticated and complex.

That’s pretty much a given. Now a third part of what I think would qualify for being a robot in the definition I’m looking at is that the work a robot does would have to be in a sense involuntary. I know robots don’t have free will.

That’s a big issue with this. It means that even the choices or alternatives that are exercised by a robot have all been predetermined by a programmer and thus have eliminated any option of free will. As in contrast to human action which though scientifically determined which is not the same as being predetermined is voluntary and is subject to free will or choice. And I know to a lot of people that latter statement may sound a little contradictory because here I’ve stumbled into one of the most profound and fundamental philosophical issues facing humanity. That conflict between determinism and free will which only to me goes to demonstrate how important philosophy is to every human endeavor. But that’s an issue I’m going to devote some real critical time and consideration to on upcoming shows in the very near future probably around September. The whole issue of free will versus determinism. But it hits this issue too in technology.

Now here’s what the article that I ran into in The Economist went on to say and I found much of this very interesting. Making sure that robots are safe will be critical says Colin Angle of iRobot which believe it or not has already sold at that time over 2 million Roomba household vacuuming robots. But he argues that his firm’s robots are in fact much safer than some popular toys.

He says for example quote a radio controlled car controlled by a six year old is far more dangerous than a Roomba. If you tread on a Roomba it will not cause you to slip over instead a rubber pad on its base grips the floor and prevents it from moving. So the first thing I’m thinking okay what if my foot’s under the rubber pad? Is it going to latch onto my foot and stick me to the floor and if it does who do I sue?

You know these are the kind of issues that are going to come up. But I found a statement about his robots being safer than a remote control device very interesting. I noticed that he specified that a six year old was controlling the remote control device. So in my experience any device in the hands of a six year old is a little more dangerous than the same device in the hands of an adult. So to say that a robot is safer than how a six year old might operate a machine isn’t really the comforting argument that I wanted to hear.

But in the realm of vacuum cleaners and toy cars point taken maybe not a big deal but it’s certainly not the kind of absolute safety that I think people will be looking at. Now the article carries on to say that quote robot safety is likely to surface in the civil courts as a matter of product liability. When the first robot carpet sweeper sucks up a baby who will be to blame asks John Hallam a professor at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense. If a robot is autonomous and capable of learning can its designer be held responsible for all of its actions.

You ever thought about that? What if a robot learns some new things and does it on its own? Does the guy who invented the robot get nailed for creating a robot that thinks on its own? And today the answer to these questions is generally yes. But as robots grow in complexity it’s going to be much less clear cut and this is an issue facing scientists right now. And right now of course no insurance company is prepared to insure robots according to Dr. Hirochika Inoue a veteran roboticist at the University of Tokyo.

But that will have to change he says. Back in May 2006 Japan’s Ministry of Trade and Industry announced a set of safety guidelines for home and office robots. And here are some of the things that they wanted to be sure that robots would have. They would for example be required to have sensors to help them avoid collisions with humans.

They will be required to be made of soft and very light materials to minimize harm if a collision does occur. And of course to have an emergency shut off button. And of course even Data has a shut off button and I know where it is but I’m not telling because that’s a secret.

So you got to watch Star Trek if you want to know where that shut off button is. But I would have just loved to have been at this apparently they had a robot exhibition in Tokyo in the summer of 2005. And it kind of raised the eyebrows of authorities at the time when they realized that there were definite safety implications. And that’s when you have a lot of people looking at robots but mingling among them. And apparently I guess they had a few incidents that brought some attention to the nature of the problem. But that’s funny. Blay Whitby, an artificial intelligence expert at the University of Sussex in England, believes that not enough is being done to protect us from these mechanical menaces as he calls them.

But things are changing. One approach which sounds simple enough is to try and program robots to avoid contact with human beings altogether. But this is very much harder than it sounds he says. Getting a robot to navigate across a cluttered room is difficult enough without having to take into account what its various limbs or appendages might bump into along the way. So regulating the behavior of robots is going to become more difficult in the future since they will increasingly have self-learning mechanisms built into them. They will not always be behaving in predefined ways but will learn new behavior as they go. Now I think that last statement actually is a little bit imprecise. I think robots can only act in predefined ways but those ways may not be predictable, which is a different thing.

I think that’s a more precise way of stating the case. Probabilities change, I think possibilities remain the same. You won’t find a vacuum cleaning, self-learning robot suddenly getting up and flying to the moon, for example. It’s not going to happen. It’s going to stay a vacuum cleaner. It’s not going to reinvent itself. And of course all of our video games operate on this principle.

Programmed unpredictability is part of what makes a video game interesting and exciting to those who enjoy them. Just take a quick break right now and I want to come back more on this issue because now we get into the more interesting part, dealing with the potential issues of morality and robots, but they’ll be right back right after this.

Clip (Louis C.K.)

We’re all getting older by the way, which is a good thing because the other option sucks. And you know what I found out when I turned 33? I’m no longer the generation the world is geared towards.

All my life everything was geared towards it. And it makes sense because I’m getting older, I can’t stand teenagers. Male teenagers drive me nuts. Everything about them, their music sucks.

Their pants look like they crap themselves 12 times. And way too much access to technology, just way too much, man. I’m walking downtown a couple months ago, 1:30 a.m. on a Friday, a 14-year-old little kid walks by me with a cell phone that rings and he picks it up. Whoa, when I was 14, do you know what the phone was? It was in the kitchen, on a wall, with the cord that long.

And if it ever in my house rang after 11 o’clock at night, oh God, Nana was dead.

Clip (Star Trek: The Next Generation)

Don’t you ever stop to think? This is a complex game, one must look before one leaps. Samuel Butler, 1600-1680, and look before you, ere you leap, for as you sow, ye are like to reap. Sometimes I wonder about you.

If I didn’t know better, I think some form of morality was accidentally programmed into you.

Bob Metz:
Welcome back. I’m Bob Metz, and you’re listening to CHRW at 94.9 FM. You can call in at 519-661-3600, or email us at justrightchrw@gmail.com. Don’t think you can accidentally program morality into a computer.

I don’t think that would be an accident. But here’s what the industry has been looking at, and one of the things they were looking at was, believe it or not, science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, who is known for his three laws of robotics, which in effect is another way of saying morality, a set of moral codes for robots. And here they are. They sound very simple, straightforward, and very logical, but wait until you see the problems with them.

One, a robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

Number two, a robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the first law. In other words, you couldn’t order a robot to do harm to another person.

And number three, a robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the first or the second law.

So now, I think, when I look at these three laws, I think you’ll know that when robots and computers become sentient, that is self-aware, able to choose and things like that, it’ll be when they place law number three above the other two, when they place their own survival above the other two.

That’s pretty much the rule of life when you get to that point. And that’s when we’ll be calling on Magnus Robot Fighter, because who knows what kind of issues we might have to deal with. Nevertheless, Dr. Whitby, one of the experts in this says, Asimov’s three laws of robotics were really a narrative device only, and were never actually meant to work in the real world. Quite apart from the fact that the laws required a robot to have some sort of human-like intelligence, which robots still lack, the laws themselves don’t actually work very well. In fact, Asimov repeatedly knocked them down in his own robot stories, constantly showing time and time again how these seemingly watertight rules could produce completely unintended consequences.

That’s the term you hear a lot in economics and politics, unintended consequences. But interestingly, these three laws of robotics, I think, are really a code of morality. The challenge of digitally programming a computer, that would be like the robot’s mind, with right and wrong, or even caring about its own existence, or having values, or placing any of those concepts into the proper context, I think is a bit of an impossibility. And of course the question is, is it only because it’s a technological impossibility, or created by our current level of technology, which we can overcome in the future, or is it a metaphysical impossibility?

In other words, that it’s impossible regardless of the level of technology you have. And that’s really another show in and of itself. Might even get into that bit in the future on that particular issue. So perhaps we can all rest a little better knowing that new robot ethics groups are forming around the world. One of them is called the European Robotics Network at the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, and it’s chaired by a fellow named Dr. Henrik Christensen. And he says, security, safety, and sex, are the big concerns right now, says Dr. Christensen.

And here are some of the questions that scientists are looking at as they have these symposiums and get-togethers all around the world. Should robots that are strong enough or heavy enough to crush people be allowed into a home? Would you want one there? Falls over and kills you or crushes your dog? Is “system malfunction” a justifiable defense for, say, a robot fighter plane that contravenes the Geneva Convention and mistakenly fires on innocent civilians? And should robotic sex dolls resembling children be legally allowed?

These are the kind of questions you’re dealing with. And believe it or not, sex robots will be commercially available within five years, according to that article, which was already published a year ago. Might robots be dangerous to humans in less direct ways?

For example, if you kick a robot dog, are you more likely to kick the real thing then? Are you going to be less respectful? I’ve always believed myself that respect transcends just humans. If you’re really human, you respect more than humans. You also respect animals. You respect nature. And believe it or not, you respect machines and technology. If you don’t take care of your car, your car won’t take care of you.

You’ve heard that before. If you don’t mechanically look after it, it’s going to go bad on you and it’s going to cost you or hurt you. And it doesn’t have a will. It all comes from the human being, these kinds of values and the things that we’re talking about here. So, what’s in store for the future? What can we really say that is in store for the future? “The idea that a general purpose robot capable of learning will become widespread is wrong,” suggests one expert. And that was Mr. Angle, who I referred to earlier. It is more likely he believes that robots will be relatively dumb machines designed for particular tasks, rather than a humanoid robot. He says it’s going to be some sort of heterogeneous swarm of robots that will take care of the house.

But, in the same article, according to the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe’s World Robotics Survey, in 2002, the number of domestic and service robots more than tripled, nearly outstripping their industrial counterparts. By the end of 2003, there were more than 600,000 robot vacuum cleaners and lawn mowers out there. Japanese industrial firms are racing to build humanoid robots to act as domestic helpers for the elderly. And South Korea has set a goal that 100% of households should have domestic robots by the year 2020. That’s not long away. Can you imagine that?

So, in light of all this, it is crucial that we start to think about the safety and ethical guidelines analysis, Dr. Christensen. I remember seeing on one of those technology shows, Sony and some of the other larger companies are already building these robots, and they look very human-like. They haven’t put faces on them and things, but they look more like a guy in a space suit.

And when you watch them walking, they go up and down steps. These were major technological obstacles that have just recently been overcome. And as such, we are going to have a very interesting future once we meld our computers with mechanical devices. So the doctors are looking for a code of ethics for computers, which I think I would go perhaps a few steps further on this issue.

Ethics, morality, or right or wrong, if you want to call it that, is really a derivative branch of philosophy preceded by metaphysics and epistemology, which are two areas of philosophy that deal with the very questions raised by the definition of robot, and which are sort of conspicuously avoided in most moral discussions. And that’s where you get into things again, like determinism versus choice and free will, consciousness, existence, reality, reason, these things. These are issues that make a lot of people very uncomfortable. And many people turn to other things to deal with this discomfort from religion to all sorts of other belief systems, which is why I think that one can never escape the responsibility of defining and understanding one’s own philosophy in the light of these ever-expanding knowledge and information in our society. So, whether specific robots or other technologies turn out to work for good or evil is completely a matter of the morality of those who create them and only of those. Is that a discomforting thought for you? Well, that’s one I will leave with you. And when we come back after this break, we’ll be talking a little bit about what’s been going on down at City Hall and we’ll talk about what all this screaming is about socialism versus the capitalists.

And we’ll be back right after this.

Clip (Yes Minister)

Sir Humphrey Appleby:
Have you ever known a civil servant to resign on a matter of principle?

Jim Hacker:
I should think not. What an appalling suggestion.

Sir Humphrey Appleby:
The first time I fully understand that you are purely committed to means and not to ends.

Jim Hacker:
Well, as far as I’m concerned, Minister, and all of my colleagues, there is no difference between means and ends.

Sir Humphrey Appleby:
If you believe that, Humphrey, you will go to hell.

Jim Hacker:
Minister, I had no idea you had a theological bent.

Sir Humphrey Appleby:
You are a moral vacuum.

Jim Hacker:
If you say so, Minister.

Sir Humphrey Appleby:
It’s time for your lunch appointment, Minister.

Bernard Woolley:
You’re keeping very quiet, Bernard.

Jim Hacker:
What would you do about all this?

Bernard Woolley:
I would keep very quiet, Minister.

Bob Metz:
And they sure weren’t keeping very quiet at City Hall over a little debate they had there over planning and things in City Hall there. Welcome back. It’s Just Right with Bob Metz.

You’re listening to CHRW Radio 94.9 FM, 519-661-3600 to call or email us at justrightchrw@gmail.com. It’s interesting. There’s been a debate going on at City Hall. You’ve probably heard about it. I discussed it very briefly last week on the show, and it was about Tom Gosnell calling a group of people in City Hall there socialists, the socialist cabal, because they’re opposed to some development, which apparently has been resolved, I understand, as of last night to this morning.

I think they’ve come to some sort of satisfactory conclusion over the issue. And interestingly enough, this new industrial mall they’re talking about has the potential, or I guess it’s already in the planning works, but guess what they’re going to be doing there? Robotics and high tech. There are going to be a couple of things that are going to be happening there, according to Gordon Hume, who discussed that on some of the news shows this morning. But what struck me very interesting about this whole debate was all the crying and screaming about labels and socialists. Don’t call me a socialist, etc.

Last week, August 2nd, Jonathan Sher in the London Free Press headlined, Socialist Council members hit back as the headline. Quote, I’m sick of name calling whenever somebody doesn’t get his way, says Controller Gina Barber, a long time NDP activist. Now she’s accusing Deputy Mayor Tom Gosnell of being part of an old boys network, as opposed to the whining socialist cabal that she’s been accused of being part of. So I guess she name calls even when she does get her way.

But Barber said that Gosnell should skip the rhetoric, quote, when people have what I can only describe as a hissy fit at planning committee, that doesn’t help, she said. Now for his part, Gosnell is quoted as saying, well, I’m just trying to put them in a category that makes sense to me. They’re about as far away from capitalism as anyone on council. And if that’s name calling, then I guess I’m guilty, but those are the facts, end quote Gosnell said.

According again, of course, I’m reading from the London Free Press. Barber along with the three other so-called killer bees, Barber, Branscombe, Bachelor and Bryant, that is where the bees come from.

And some people might say they’re killers of business too. But they claim that Gosnell’s accusations are wrong and they want London to grow in a way that’s affordable to taxpayers. Quote, the city’s planning committee opposed an industrial park on land that doesn’t permit development because it’s outside the city’s growth boundary, said the Free Press article last week, and that was central to the issue.

Now, in the other Free Press article that I very briefly referred to last week on this show, which was called Socialist Handcuff City, and that was written by Joe Belanger at the Free Press August 1st, it read, quote, Council is divided into two camps on growth, one that says growth should be managed, and the other that says it should be market driven. Well, to which I say if the ism fits, wear it.

Like I said last week, if you are a socialist and you believe in the values of socialism, you should not feel insulted when someone calls you that, if you believe in the values of capitalism, which are about private property and choice. So then you shouldn’t be ashamed to be called a capitalist, although that certainly you wouldn’t be in the popular camp these days. However, I look at this article, and even at that quote that I just read to you, and I looked at it twice, and I said, wait a minute, look what this is saying.

There’s kind of a moral and intellectual dishonesty displayed in the way that the thing has been expressed. Council divided into two camps, one that says growth should be managed, and the other one that says it should be market driven. Well, the idea of contrasting management with market driven forces as if to imply there’s no management in the private sector, and that all the management only occurs in government. And interestingly enough, the word government is conspicuously missing from any statement such as this. You don’t see it in there, which kind of reveals the bias or at least the understanding of the issue on the part of the writer. So the way I look at the statement is it should not read two camps on growth, one that says growth should be managed and the other that says it should be market driven. It should say two camps on growth, one that says growth should be managed by government, and the other one that says it should be managed by the individuals who are responsible for their business, because there is management going on either way.

So, the misuse of language is a very primary means that socialism spreads. Unclear thinking leads to unclear results. I was looking at this, if anything, governments do not manage, they control, they regulate, they limit, they tax, and that’s what they call management, but they don’t actually manage. They’re not there making sure that the revenue is coming in, because you don’t need to worry about things like that if you can just tax and take it from people. So, when it comes right down to it, you’ve heard the old statement, government could not manage a hot dog stand, it’s true, but it can control hot dog stands very easily. It can ban them, it can put them out of business, make it difficult for them to work. People, you have to understand government is always a negative force in the sense that it is a prohibitory force, and that’s not to me a necessary force, but it will not create a positive. It can only stop something from happening, and that’s generally almost any person who’s in business, anybody who’s working out there, what’s the first thing they say about what’s in their way? It’s always the government, biggest expense, biggest obstacle.

I found that myself when I tried to build a home myself in this city. It was just unbelievable what garbage you had to go through, and it was all garbage. It was all unnecessary, all the regulations and stuff. I’m sure somebody thinks they’re getting something out of it, but the end result was I was out a lot of money and still got my house built, but holy cow.

I think I’ve told it in the past. But, another way, of course, that a government could run a hot dog stand is by violating the rights of other people by subsidizing the hot dog stand by taking the money away from them. So we have to keep in mind that government is a compulsory, not a voluntary agency, whereas business and the marketplace are voluntary mechanisms. And that’s why it’s silly and incorrect to say, I hear a lot of people say, oh, government should be run like a business. Well, you can’t do that without making government voluntary.

And guess what? If you do that, it wouldn’t be government anymore. That’s what makes a government a government is the involuntary nature of it.

And that’s why you should have only a few laws, not a lot, because once you have too many laws, you’re back into a state of anarchy, really. In philosophy, this is known as applying the law of identity. A is A. A government is a government, a business is a business.

It is only on the market side of our equation where management does occur, which consists of careful, self-responsible management of resources, balancing them against specific goals. So, if you’re one of those people who thinks that socialism is just a meaningless label, hang on here for a second. Here’s another article that, well, first of all, before we do that, let’s go to the next clip then, Ira. Let’s go on to the one, the Dr. Walter Williams clip. And I think you might find this interesting.

It’ll run for about four minutes or so. And this is Dr. Walter Williams, a bit of an American perspective. This was recorded at a dinner, I believe it was in Kentucky about four or five years ago. And here he is talking about the nature of government and how government gets involved and how that relates to socialism.

Clip (Walter E. Williams)

Now, Americans, we support, we even beg government to do things that if a private citizen did the identical thing, we would condemn that person as a despicable, ordinary, common, low-down thief.

Let me give you an example of that. I could see a lady laying out on a grate in downtown Louisville. She needs, it’s a dead winner. She’s hungry. She needs some medical attention.

She needs some housing. I could walk up to any one of you with a gun and take your $200. Then having taken your $200, I could go down buy the lady some housing, get a little medical attention and some food. Would you find me guilty of a crime? Yes, you would. I’d be guilty of theft.

No matter what I did with the money, no matter what good thing I did with the money, I would nonetheless be guilty of theft, namely taking by force that which rightfully belongs to one person and giving it to a woman who does not belong. Now, most of you can agree with that. Here’s the hard part. Is there any conceptual distinction between that act where I walked up to one of you and took your $200? And when the agent of Congress comes up to me and says, Williams, you know that $200 you made last week that you had planned to buy some Lafite Rothschild Bordeaux wine with? You will not do that with the money.

You will give it to us and we will go downtown and help the lady out. I assert that there is no conceptual distinction between those two acts. They both involve forcibly taking that which rightfully belongs to one person and giving it to another to whom it does not belong.

Now, if you press me for a distinction, I can only find a distinction that should be trivial to moral people. And that distinction is, the only distinction I see is that the first act where I walked up to one of you, that is illegal theft. The second act is legal theft.

Both are theft and both are immoral in my opinion. Now, someone will say to me, well, Williams, it’s legal. Well, for moral people, legality alone cannot be our talisman.

Just because something is legal does not make it right, does not make it moral. Clearly. Slavery was legal. Did that make it moral? Apartheid in South Africa was legal. The Nazi extermination of Jews was legal. The Stalinist and Maoist purges were legal.

But were they moral? The question that we have to decide is, is there a moral basis for taking what belongs to one person and giving it to another to whom it does not belong? This also points out the immorality of socialism. Why is socialism evil?

The reason why is very simple. Socialism is evil because it uses bad means, coercion, to achieve what are seen as good ends, helping people. And that’s not the only reason. That’s just the net effect reason of socialism. Of course, socialism violates something more fundamental than that, and that’s the human mind.

The ability to judge for themselves what is the best action to take either in business or in personal discourse.

Bob Metz:
Welcome back. It’s Bob Metz here on CHRW 94.9. You’re listening to Just Right, a regular feature every Thursday between 11 and 12.

Full number to call if you’d like to call in is 519-661-3600, or email us at justrightchrw@gmail.com. It was interesting too. I was looking through the Londoner yesterday, and there was an opinion piece there by Clay Powell behind the bar. And he was calling Gosnell an income poop, which is a really very clearly defined term, isn’t it, to discuss ideas of this nature. And he’s clearly revealing his bias, basically saying he’s a socialist by the negative comments he has, and he’s even trying to name-call Gosnell here.

But the headline reads, “socialist on city council. Who knew?”

Well, yeah, we all knew. And nowhere in his article does he deal with the word socialist. Doesn’t define it. Doesn’t attack it. Doesn’t say anything.

He just uses it as a label to say, oh, no, nobody here is a socialist. What are you so afraid of? And the interesting thing is, what does he say? He picks on the word cabal, which talks about intrigue and conspiracy, he says, and shadowy corners and insidious influence. Well, that might be an emotional reaction to that word.

But, and he asks, and what about the city’s planning staff to carefully review the situation? I guess they must be part of the socialist cabal, too. Well, I would say, yeah, they are. And although he applauds the planning staff for their work and calls Gosnell and his cronies, he says, I keep saying, give the developers what they want because they know what’s best for the city. Again, I’m amazed at this attitude that’s just anti-development for the sake of being anti-development. Developers are the people that create the jobs, that create the taxes that the socialists want to take from them, that give us the opportunities, that give us jobs, that take the risks of possible loss.

It’s just to attack them because they’re developers is not reasonable. And let’s face it, if the economy is not market-driven, that is driven by the people who want to provide us with the services. Of course, they can’t build anywhere at any time and any place every time, but generally, municipalities should be accommodating to that, not the other way around.

And that’s where I think a big problem comes in with planning because when you get into urban planning, all kinds of disasters get involved. There’s a fascinating film or talk that happened to have on a DVD and it was actually produced by the Ontario government. And about seven or eight years ago, it might be a little longer than that now, they had some speakers in on a symposium and the title of it was called Rethinking Suburban Sprawl. And it was all about public and private developers talking about the issues that are involved with suburban sprawl as per se.

And why do we have all these problems and why do we need cars just to get around the neighbourhood if you want to get to the mall? And they show all these interesting plans of how urban planners make things difficult for people to get around. But basically, the bottom line of what they were saying in there, they didn’t believe in regulating for use, but they did believe in regulation for type of building and size of building. That should be relatively consistent, but there shouldn’t be regulations on particular uses. And they gave a lot of examples around Canada and the United States where you saw communities where residences were right in with industrial zones, or where you had rich and poor mixed right together, where people could actually not have to get in their car and they could walk to work relatively easily if they wanted to.

And unfortunately, a lot of modern planning gets away from that because it counts so much on the automobile. But again, that’s a separate issue from the whole labeling of socialism and socialists and all that kind of stuff. It’s really funny back when Bob Rae was elected. I can’t count how many times I used to get asked, well, so what’s wrong with socialism?

What’s wrong with it? Most voters just weren’t sure what socialism was or why they should be bothered by it. And to them, socialism was just some nebulous label that politicians used to belittle one another, even though they may all say and behave the same way. Socialism as an understandable concept to most people has little or no relevance to the average voter in his average daily life. But it’s important to realize that socialism is real and it always destroys anything it touches. There’s never been a socialist society that didn’t go down unless it either collapsed entirely, or changed its ways dramatically and changed the mix of socialism. Of course, we don’t live in a totally socialist society. We live in a mixed economy, but the socialist mix is getting much greater and it’s even turning into a worse mix, which is of course another word that people are very uncomfortable with, and that’s the word fascism. Fascism and socialism are essentially both about government control. The only thing that they view differently is the role of private property under socialism.

In fact, here’s the definition of socialism from the 20th century dictionary. The theory or system of the ownership and operation of the means of production and distribution by society or the community, rather than by private individuals, with all members of the community sharing in the work and in the products.

Or two, in the communist doctrine, the stage of society coming between the capitalist stage and the communist stage, in which private ownership of the means of production and distribution has been eliminated. Which kind of reminds me of, oh, 15, 20 years ago I was best man at a wedding. A friend of mine got married to a young lady who was going to the University of Western Ontario here, actually. They got married and she was from Beijing and many of her family and friends came over and I actually got to sit in.

Here I am, the best man. I was the definite minority there. But all of these folks, they could speak English fluently.

I couldn’t even speak one word of Chinese. But to a T, every one of them said that Canada was the ideal socialist/communist country and that they thought it was funny that Canadians thought that there was anything capitalist about the country. To them, we were an ideal in terms of socialism, not in terms of freedom and capitalism and all that sort of stuff. I just thought that was a very interesting observation that they made, to say nothing of their fascination with our electronics here, all having been from Japan and stuff like that.

And they see us basically an Asian invasion coming here to North America. Now, again, getting back to this word socialism, note that in the definition I read, how they so carefully avoid the moral dimension of what socialism represents. They just call it a theory or a system of ownership by society. Well, society never owns anything. It’s either an individual or government.

Those are the only two components of society in that context. So you’re either going to own it privately, which would be individuals or groups of individuals through corporations or partnerships or whatever. And the other option is government ownership. Now, I’m not opposed to government owning its own assets, but I don’t think it should be owning the means of production. And I think government, when it owns property, it should be subject to the same laws and conditions that private property is. And that’s the problem with a lot of government getting involved in economics, is that it’s specifically there to avoid the rules that they’ve created for the rest of us.

And then people wonder why things go wrong. Now, I mentioned there, that was a definition of socialism. I don’t actually have a written definition of fascism in front of me. But the distinction is that fascism, instead of ownership and control of property and the means of production, is only really interested in the control. Because fascists are a little smarter than socialists in the sense that they realize, hey, we don’t have to own it to control it.

We can just pass laws and force people to do things. And they still own it. That way, at least, they’ll have some interest in the property that they still own. And of course, that was the state in Germany in the 1930s under Adolf Hitler, and why so many people still to this day relate private property to fascism. When in fact, private property as such is completely a capitalist convention, has nothing to do with fascism, farthest away that you can possibly think of. But you can’t use that word anymore today because it’s so politically incorrect because it’s tied into all those other issues that Hitler made us so uncomfortable about racism, the Jewish question and all that.

But fascism does have a clear definition, and that’s what it is. So, it’s another form of government control in the way government is actually moving in that direction more and more. When you see more, a perfect example, for example, here in London, or in Ontario now, in Canada, is things like smoking bylaws in the sense of not allowing smokers to congregate in private property on private premises owned by private people. And yet you have a government that says, no, you cannot do that, even though everyone there might be consenting. Of course, the government makes up all sorts of reasons and they say, oh, the employees aren’t consenting because they’re under labor legislation.

Well, that’s all nonsense they could consent to and you can create the proper kind of contracts you need. But that’s a perfect example of government involving themselves in someone’s business. And effectively having ruined it in this case, they said, oh yeah, all those restaurants and bars will survive. Well, of course, a lot of them didn’t and that’s already history. But what can you do when people don’t understand the nature of those political systems that are being foisted upon us?

So, it’s certainly an issue or many issues that I will be dealing with on future episodes of Just Right and that’s certainly dealing with critical definitions, how they relate to right and left. And that’s about all I have to say about that this week. Next week, something a little different we’re going to be talking and have a guest in. A good friend of mine and also happens to be a leader of the Freedom Party of Ontario, although we won’t be talking about that. We’re going to be talking about what is, and it’s Paul McKeever, by the way, a lawyer from the Oshawa area.

I’ll introduce him more thoroughly next week. But we will be talking about, if everything goes well, what is the proper way to decide on how governments should make decisions? Should it be, for example, by faith? Should it be by consensus? Should it be by reason?

And should we be in an environment of free speech and all of that? I think there’s a lot of issues we’ll be able to touch upon. So that hopefully will be for next week and if not, we’ll get to it at some point. But I do have every reason to expect that we’ll be doing that next week. So if you want to tune in for that, make a point of doing that then. So, until next week, join us again when we’ll continue our journey in the right direction. Until then, be right, think right, stay right, and do right. See you then. Take care.

Clip (Brian Regan)

I’m with a girl now, right? You know what she loves to do every Sunday? Turns out to play games. Play games. Monopoly. Everybody has Monopoly. Okay. Everybody’s got it. Nobody likes it. And it’s simple why, right? Because this is anybody here two and a half hours into a game of Monopoly. Ready? I quit. It’s four in the morning, Grandma. You win. I’m sitting on Baltic with crap. I always bought the purples every time, you know, the projects, those were mine.