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Did you know you can buy sriracha-flavored popcorn?
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It's true.
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Did you know that you can pay somebody to mourn at a funeral?
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The kinds of things that you can buy on a market, they're almost limitless.
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I mean, just today I heard that you can buy on Amazon a duck carcass press,
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whatever that is.
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But, should there be some kinds of limits?
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Like, consider this, should be allowed to buy and sell kidneys?
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What about sex?
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Now, these are questions that perplex me as a philosopher.
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But you know what, sitting in my office I thought was just not good enough.
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I thought I would take those questions to the people.
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I grabbed an easel, a poster board, a bunch of push pins,
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I corralled my friends from Learn Liberty and they grabbed a camera crew,
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and we went out to Red Square at Georgetown University.
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And I started to ask people a bunch of questions.
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Hey, can I bother you for just a second?
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Hey, excuse me.
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Yeah, come on over.
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Hi, how are you?
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Today, we're sort of gauging people's attitudes towards markets.
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Can you just put a push pin indicating either whether you think that
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things like kidneys, for example, should be bought and sold on a market?
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Like should you be able to buy a kidney?
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>> Yeah.
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What about sex and prostitution, massage, and hugs?
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I've got some pushpins here.
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>> Okay. >> Lots of people were interested in
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filling out this board, which is kind of surprise to me.
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And soon enough, the board started to fill up with all these pushpins.
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And I started to ask these students why they thought that kidneys, hugs, sex,
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etc., should or should not be for sale.
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What’s different about hugs and sex that makes it okay for
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people to sell sex but not hugs?
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>> Yeah, I think it’s the first level, so it’s basic need, like food.
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>> That’s really interesting.
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Okay, so in your mind, sex is a higher need.
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>> No it’s a lower need.
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[CROSSTALK] >> A lower need.
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>> It’s like food.
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>> It's like food so it's more basic.
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>> Yeah.
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>> So hugs, in your mind, are more intimate.
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It's more of an expression of something like friendship and
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a deep emotional commitment- >> Yeah, and
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also love and those things, yeah.
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>> Than sex. >> Yeah.
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>> Why no for a market in sex?
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>> I think that because of the culture of the current sex market, it would be so
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difficult to change that into a market that wasn't demeaning towards women.
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>> You think it's okay to have prostitution?
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You think that's fine?
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>> It's a very difficult issue, but when prostitution is legalized and
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heavily regulated and taxed, it can be safer for all parties involved.
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>> So kidneys is a no.
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People should not be allowed to sell kidneys.
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>> Probably. Yes. Oh, should be allowed.
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>> Yeah, I think they should be allowed to.
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I don't think that they should
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be determined by market forces in the supply of them.
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>> Okay, great. Thanks very much.
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Okay, now here's the end result, and I have to tell you,
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I was pretty shocked to see these outcomes.
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Most people said yes to these questions, and I expected most people to say no.
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So what I did, because of the small sample size,
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is I decided to as my students that same question, and here's their results.
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So I posted that on Facebook, and a bunch of my professor friends from
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around the country, they asked their students the same question.
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And here are the results.
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So here's why it's surprising.
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Most people who work on this topic, they all think that there need to be lots and
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lots of limits to markets.
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You shouldn't be allowed to buy and sell sex or kidneys and so on.
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The students in my classes, and the random people that we
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picked up at Georgetown University, They don't think that at all.
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They think that lots of things should be for sale on a market.
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So how about you and I have a conversation now?
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Why don't you tell me what you think about markets in kidneys, markets in sex and
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hugs and massage.
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And I really want you to participate by dropping a comment here using
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#keepaskingwhy on Twitter, and I'm not gonna give you my kidney in exchange for
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awesome comments, but you know what we can do?
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If you're in the Washington DC area, we'll send you sriracha flavored popcorn, right?
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That's cool?
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>> Yeah. >> Okay, good, good, good.
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So we will send you sriracha flavored popcorn.
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Drop a comment here.
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#keepaskingwhy on Twitter, and let's do this.
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Let's do it.
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Hey fans.
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I'm Scott Barton, director and cofounder of Learn Liberty, and I'm stepping in
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front of the camera for the first time in three and a half years to encourage you to
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participate in Learn Liberty Academy's on demand programs available here.
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This the easiest and
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fastest way to dig deeper into the ideas you see in Learn Liberty videos.
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So if you enjoyed what you heard here today, and
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you wanna dig deeper, click on the link here and sign up.
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And please, since this is a new program,
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let me know what you think in the comments below, right here.
