Well, that all applies ten-fold to the state because you can't opt out of funding them and they have no competition. Do you think there's anything that uniquely applies negatively to the free market that justifies the existence of the state?

Art Carden: I really don't think there is. I tend to believe that states are kind of inevitable and there's always going to be an organization with a comparative advantage in violence – that's the way that my advisor defined a state when I was in graduate school, but I don't think it's necessary.

Sort of like the song in the Sound of Music where the girl's singing, "anything you can do, I can do better," I would say anything States can do, markets do better. I don't think the state is necessary for any of the problems that we want to fix or any of the problems that we want to solve. I think the last four years have been a really nice illustration of the difference between the market and the state when you consider the administration of Donald Trump.

A lot of people are horrified at Donald Trump as just a crass human being who is just an opportunist. Assume for the sake of argument that everything everybody says about Trump is right, that he's the worst of the worst. Okay, well, would you prefer a world in which he's doing suspect real estate deals in New Jersey and New York to a world in which he has his finger on the nuclear button? I think the answer is yes. I would much rather Donald Trump confine his efforts to trying to make money in the real estate market rather than trying to make America great again by pursuing all sorts of boneheaded policies like immigration restrictions and tariffs.