—–Original Message—–
From: G
Sent: Sunday, December 2, 2018 3:39 AM
To: Walter Block
Subject: Re: ethical problem on advising government owned firms

Dear professor Block,

thank you very much for your response. I think I will combine all your advice to guide my action.

1) I’m going to join the life science department which has no clients where the government owns a stake in them.

2) But if I’m staffed on a client where the state has a stake in it, I’m going to work on another project and I’ve heard that we always have the choice to decline being staffed on a project.

3) I’m going to donate money to the Mises Institute from the moment that I receive my first paycheck. As a matter of fact, for the past 4 years, all my Christmas present have been books that I have bought from the Mises Bookstore. Including books from you, of course (you should, by the way, make « Space Capitalism » available on the Mises store, I would be the first buyer 🙂 ).

4) My objective is to climb the hierarchical ladder in the bank so that at a certain point, I can have control over not only the clients of my department but maybe even over the clients of the whole firm. And by achieving that, I could decline every client where the state has a stake in it. I think by doing that, I would have done something great for the libertarian movement because I would have made a major investment bank compatible with libertarianism. Maybe by doing that, the others would follow. The clients might also want to separate themselves from the state in order to be advised, which could also be very beneficial.

Again, thank you very much for your time and advice. You’ve always been a great inspiration for me.

Kind regards, G

Dear G: Please accept my best wishes for the success of your career. Thanks, again, for your kind words. Best regards, Walter

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