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Jan. 23, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
33:20
65 Roads (Part 2)
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Time Text
Good afternoon, everybody!
It is Monday... Wait, I'm gonna find this on my computer, I really am.
January the 22nd, and it is...
19 minutes before 5 p.m.
I'm heading to the gym before heading to vote and there was a I guess I got an email from somebody the other day saying you know what's your opinion and voting and so on and I've done a whole podcast on voting but one thing that may be more specific which this person was asking was Well, you know, should you go and vote, or should you not go and vote?
You know, does it sort of make a difference?
Well, obviously it doesn't make a difference, but you know, what is your opinion on it?
And my opinion is, you know, whatever you feel is going to make you the most credible in the, uh...
In the eyes and ears of those who you're talking with, that's what I would say you should do, right?
So, I mean, going to vote is not that big a deal.
It's a walk and a scratch for some idiot.
I spoil my ballot, actually.
I just go out and sort of say, none of these idiots can represent me.
That's mostly because Christina likes to go out and vote and say that she went and voted and spoiled her ballot.
It doesn't really matter much to me, but I enjoy spending time with Christina, so off we go.
But, you know, as to whether you should or shouldn't vote, obviously don't vote for a major party.
I mean, don't vote for anything like that.
You know, spoil your ballot and so on.
I think that says something.
Stay home.
Perfectly valid.
Stay home and work on a libertarian article or read or become more educated or just kick back and relax.
It's going to do a lot more for your personal and for social freedom in general than going to vote and so on.
So I would work from that angle, and if you happen to be among a group of people with whom, you know, they're going to say, well, you know, did you go and vote, right?
And if you feel like, if you say no, then they're going to say, well, then you have no reason to complain, right?
If you're amongst idiots like that, then, and you want to sort of talk to them, then I would say go vote so you can at least get over that hurdle.
And if you feel like you can comfortably say to them, no, I didn't and here's why, and credibly sort of make your case, then, you know, I would say don't bother if you don't want to.
So, again, it's really just a matter of the choices that you want to make versus the effects that you want to have, right?
I also do sort of go and vote because people do hear say in Canada, well if you don't vote you can't complain and obviously as you know I'm filling up the internet with complaints.
So why would I want to deny myself that pleasure if there's absolutely no reason?
So let's continue on with roads and we'll top off roads with another sort of mistaken bit of economic misinformation that you'll constantly get which is the conflation of Physical force with economic necessity, which was another question that this gentleman who sent me the email had.
So with roads, right, there's tons and tons of different ways to make roads pay.
Roads are sort of an essential human service.
The first roads in North America were built by private industry, right?
There was a big sort of toll and you'd drive up to it and they'd raise the toll gate.
They'd raise the toll gate if you paid the toll and so on.
So that, you know, the fact is that there's Always been roads they've always been produced by private organizations and you generally wouldn't get the big sprawling mess of roads that you have at the moment unless they were paid for by you know trucking companies or you know people who wanted long-term hauling of goods or farmers you know that kind of people.
But, you know, who's to say that that's optimal anyway?
When something's free, it's always abused in terms of need, and demand is always very high, and we don't know the sweet spot for supply and demand in roads because it's been so long since they've been charged for that, you know, who can tell?
But for sure, you know, the optimal solution will be far better than the current solution.
So that's sort of one answer to have about the roads, right?
Now the other answer, you know, which you can have is, you know, as I've mentioned before, You know, just use the argument for morality, for people who talk about roads, like roads are needed and blah blah blah blah blah, right?
Well, okay, so...
You know, the problem with taking the argument from a fact like, in other words, how would the free market deal with roads and this and that, is that you then have to become an expert on everything, right?
You have to know something about everything, which is kind of a drag, right?
Running around the library or searching over the internet, trying to figure out, you know, how would the free market deal with intellectual property rights?
And how would the free market deal with copywriting over the internet?
And how would the free market deal with roads and sewers?
It'll just drive you completely insane.
It's a fool's game to some degree.
And I know this because I've played it for many years.
So please don't think that I'm calling anybody a fool other than myself for falling into this trap for so many years.
But it doesn't matter because people don't make their decisions on what's economically efficient.
It wasn't like they said when they decided to have the government run the roads.
It wasn't like anybody said, The problem is that these private sector roads are just so gosh darned inefficient that we really need to transfer them to the state.
I mean, of course, that's not what happened at all.
The state would bully and pressure people to go out of business and then take over the roads as a source of revenue, as an excuse for taxation, right?
Everything the government does is an excuse for taxation.
And you know that, because no matter what it does, taxes always go up, right?
If programs succeed, theoretically they could, I guess.
Well, not really theoretically, but even if we can imagine a government program did succeed, well, then the budget goes up, right?
So, you know, let's say that we can call the moon landing in 1969 a success, well, the government budget goes up.
And then, you know, the program fails, well, the government budget goes up.
I mean, I was at a meeting today talking with the Toronto District School Board and they were talking about, you know, sort of a general discussion about how to improve schools and they were talking about the need to maintain them well and have clean facilities and up-to-date equipment and so on.
And, you know, I was so close to... I mean, it's sort of pointless because they're all public servants, but I was so close to saying, you know, what you really should have is, you know, the functionality of teacher's review, right?
Because what really matters is great teachers, not, you know, do you have a new computer with a bad teacher?
But do you have a great teacher?
Which, of course, you know, would be, you know, they can't affect any of that, right?
Because of union agreements, all they can do is futz around with the exteriors and the paint and, you know, stupid crap like that.
They can't actually deal with the heart of the problem of modern education, which is that the teachers are all half retarded.
Sorry, that's not fair.
Some of them are completely retarded.
But we can save public education for another time.
My point is that by using the argument for morality, you don't have to become an expert on all these things, right?
So then you say to someone, okay, roads are a necessity, and you're saying some people have the right to use violence to achieve the building of roads, and some people don't, right?
So you've got the government, you've got everybody else.
Okay, well, under what moral law do some people have the right to pull a gun out and stick it in somebody's neck and say, you better give me money so I can build you a road, and other people don't, right?
I mean, you don't have to know smack about smack, I guess is what I'm saying, other than the argument for morality.
And if the person can't answer the question or they say, well, it's just efficient and this and that, it's like, well, that doesn't matter whether it's efficient or not.
What matters is you've got a moral theory advocating the use of violence to achieve a particular end.
It doesn't matter whether that violence does or does not achieve that particular end.
The problem is that you're advocating violence to begin with.
So you get out of the argument of worrying about how can roads be handled by the free market and what are going to be the effects of collapsing trade barriers to Campechea and I mean that's like a scavenger hunt that people who oppose you politically will send you on and you'll have arguments and you'll get to the end of your knowledge and then you'll End up having to get back to them, and you'll always be playing a defensive game, right?
The whole point of the argument for morality is to get the other jerks to start playing a defensive game, right?
So, instead of you trying to have to figure out... I mean, basically, when somebody says, well, how would the free market handle this?
And how would the free market handle that?
And how would free market handle the other?
What they're asking you to do is to be the combined intelligence and self-interest of millions of different people.
I mean, it's completely impossible, right?
How would you build a jumbo jet?
How would you drain a swamp?
How would you build a space shuttle?
How are you going to invent the successor to the cell phone in terms of gotta have electronic devices?
They're just going to say, well, I don't know.
It's like, well, you're asking me to do all of these things simultaneously to be the complete intelligence of millions of people operating in a free market situation based on their own self-interest and tell me how that would work.
Well, I can't.
Right?
No more than I can act all the roles in a movie, and direct it, and be the cameraman.
I mean, it's just silly, right?
You're asking me to take on all these roles that I can't take on.
The real question is, the moral theory that needs to be explained in those situations is, basically, some people can use violence to achieve something, and other people can't.
Because if it's moral to use violence to build roads, then everybody should be able to do it.
I could say to my neighbor, look, I want to walk away up my front lawn, and you better get to work, or I'm going to kidnap your children and shoot your dog.
And, of course, we don't allow people to use violence for things like that.
So, of course, since we're all human beings, you can't carve people up into one section of people and another section of people.
But you can't just say arbitrarily, well, if you call yourself a road inspector, then you have the magical right to call the police to use violence to get your roads built.
And if you don't have this magical title of road inspector, or whatever the hell it's called, Then you don't have that right.
I mean, you explain to me that moral theory and I will get behind any state program you want in the world.
Anytime you explain to me why some people can use violence and some people can't, then I'm perfectly willing to accept the state.
Personally, I'm obviously leaning a little more towards the argument for morality because I don't have to worry about being an expert on everything.
And basically put the other person on the defensive, right?
So they have to, I'm asking them the questions, right?
So that's one approach.
Another approach that you could take is, you know, say to the person, well, let's say that I was going to pay you $10 million to come up with a great way to have the private sector run the roads.
Well, how would you do it?
You know, make it kind of like a game and get them into looking for solutions rather than, you know, just fetching and bitching about problems all the time, which is, you know, you're a free market person and everyone's like, Yeah, the free market can't handle this.
Yeah, the free market can't handle that.
Yeah, it's not going to work.
Yeah, there's going to be violence.
Yeah, there's going to be civil war.
It's like, oh God, you know, like you're a bunch of negative nannies.
You know, it's just a bunch of weenie, weenie kind of thinking.
You know, just people solve problems every single day, you know, I mean.
So, you know, first of all, don't spend your time with these kinds of low-rent pseudo-intellectuals, but if you have to, put them on the defensive with the argument for morality, and it will be most interesting for you.
So let's turn to another issue that this gentleman had regarding the problem of, you know, pseudo-compulsion in the economic sphere.
And what I mean by that phrase, and sort of what he referred to in his article, was he said, well, he was trying to talk to his dad about, you know, how roads could be handled in a free market and so on.
I'm sorry, I don't mean to laugh.
I mean, I just think it's kind of funny, you know.
I mean, we have a government about to collapse, you know, like a sort of a reversal of Krakatoa and bring the entire structure of Western society down upon our heads.
And people are worrying how tolls are going to be paid in 2050 in a private road situation.
I just think that's kind of funny, you know.
But nonetheless, you know, I mean, if it floats your boat to talk about these things, then by all means, obviously, enjoy.
I mean, it doesn't do any harm, right?
So he's chatting with his father about the role of the free market in dealing with road issues.
And his sister, I think, was listening in on the conversation and was talking about, you know, well, you know, what about unemployment?
My town, in my town, there is a 47% unemployment rate.
And so what are you going to do?
There's no way people are going to want to support 47% unemployment and this and that and the other and so on.
And so, you know, the charity isn't going to work when there's such a high level of unemployment, I guess was her sort of phrase.
Well, the simple question is, how on earth did a town end up with 47% unemployment?
It's like saying, when you've already had a heart attack, you don't talk to a nutritionist.
You talk to someone with a defibrillator.
You don't talk to a nutritionist or go to yoga.
Because those things are all preventative in the long term, in the past, and by the time you're having the heart attack, it's sort of pointless to say, well, how is nutrition going to help me?
It's a little too late, right?
So, when a town has gotten to 47% unemployment, I mean, it's a crap heap, right?
I mean, it should, by all rational standards, be a ghost town, right?
But it's not, because, you know, that's 47% unemployment, which is probably, you know, everybody else is just working for the people who get the welfare checks to supply them with, you know, whatever it is that they need to buy, or want to buy.
So, you know, you look at these things as a continuum, right?
So you say, well, you know, something like this could be an answer.
I mean, obviously you come up with whatever you want, but an answer could be to say, well, how did the town end up with 47% unemployment?
Well, you know, the factory closed down and this and that and the other, right?
Okay, well, the factory closed down and then everybody who had a job at the factory Even if we accept that the factory closed down without any problem with certain government regulation or environmental standards or health and safety OSHA standards or EPA nonsense or high taxes or any of the crap that the government does which just kills manufacturing in particular or unions of course.
Let's just say the plant closed down because some free market thing.
It was making doodads and then doodads went seriously out of fashion.
So in a doodad-less world we don't need the factory and everybody is thrown out and they're behind.
Well, of course, any sane human being would say, okay, well, so the town is toast.
And I've been working for, whatever, 10 years at this doodad factory.
So I'm going to take my savings and I'm going to go and move to some place where there is a town.
I'm going to retrain myself or whatever.
I might live here while I retrain because it's cheaper.
Because, you know, housing prices are going to go down once the doodad factory closes.
So, you know, you sort of take your steps logically to sort of get yourself into a new position.
I've done this a couple of times in my life and it's, you know, it's a pain in the neck.
But, you know, it's kind of fun to start something new.
So that would be sort of the logical thing to do, right?
So your unemployment would go from like, I don't know, 10% or 5% or something to, I don't know, 25% or something like that.
Because the doodad factory closed down and then, you know, it would quickly go back down to 5% because people who couldn't get a job would use the savings that they had while they were working, the savings they created while they were working, and just move, right?
So it's not a question of like, The factory has closed down, and I have no equity, and I have no savings, and nobody, no family member is willing to sponsor me to go to another town, and I'm not part of any charitable organization that will give me any help.
You know, like, I can't hitchhike, and I can't... I mean, all this kind of stuff, right?
I mean, it all just gets very silly when you look at the facts of, sort of, human risk, and these things are sort of silly, right?
So, you know, I would say, well, how did the town get there?
Well, obviously what happened was, when the town, when the Doodad factory closed down, Then what happened was people got unemployment insurance, and then they got welfare, and they just kind of malingered in this sort of dead town.
And I mean, I know this because I worked up north when I was in my late teens and early 20s, and you've got all these towns up north where there was like a mine 40 years ago or something, and everybody's just still hanging out because they're on the pokey, right?
They're getting state aid of one kind or another.
Regional redevelopments and the doctors are subsidized.
I got free health care up here and everything.
The roads are subsidized.
Even silly things like the postage is subsidized, right?
I mean, houses cost like 12 bucks up there, but I have to subsidize their postage.
I think that's pretty funny.
So, you know, the fact is that people have made stagnating economic decisions because it's possible to make them, right?
So they just sit there, and the unemployment just creeps up and up, because more and more productive people are leaving town, and more and more sort of deadbeats are staying behind.
And they have kids, and then when they have the kids they get child supplements, and then, you know, the standard of living is so low, And what they do is they start to ease into a lifestyle.
Because, I mean, if you're living in a dead town where nobody wants to live, and you're on welfare, yeah, it's not too bad, right?
I mean, it's not great.
But, you know, I'd rather be on welfare in Moosejoy, Alberta, than I would be in sort of, you know, downtown Los Angeles, right?
Because, you know, in Moosejoy, Alberta, I can at least get an apartment.
But, you know, in downtown Los Angeles, I don't even get my own cardboard box.
So, you know, that's what happens, right?
It's the people sort of, they let themselves go.
They just kind of get by on, you know, odd jobs, plus welfare, plus some charity, plus, you know, maybe they start a business and get a federal loan or, you know, and it lasts for a year or something like that.
They just kind of decay into this economic oblivion, because it's a reasonable economic choice, taking away the morality of the stolen money they're paid with.
You really should try and do something with your brain rather than just let it turn into cabbage soup.
But from a pure economic calculation standpoint, you can get by.
You can get done what you need to get done, and you can survive, and you can raise your kids.
Of course, the government is subsidizing the school pretty much for free.
Certainly not like the property taxes are being applied to the cost of schools and, you know, you've got a hospital probably still and a doctor or something like that.
Certainly in Canada, maybe in the States.
So you've got this kind of decaying but survivable economic life, and of course you end up with a town with 47% unemployment, but it doesn't just sort of spring out of nowhere.
I mean, this is the result of an enormous sequence of choices that people make based on the existence of this sort of blood money of state coercion and government programs.
So that's sort of one issue, sort of one question, right?
So, of course nobody's going to want to support a town with 47% welfare, right?
This is exactly why you don't want welfare, because you don't want people sliding into this sickly, anemic, ghost-like, half-lived economic existence where they've been five years without a regular job and ten years since their last training program, and of course they become unemployable, and of course their brains rot in their skulls, and of course they become And of course they become, you know, kind of dullards, right?
I mean, that's exactly why you don't want welfare, right?
Because it turns people into turnips.
And again, you know, people are going to email me and say, well, I know people who went on welfare for like 16 seconds and got themselves a university degree at that time and were great people.
Absolutely.
Sure.
No problem.
And some people win the lottery, right?
But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't save some money for a rainy day.
So don't bother me with your exceptions to the rule, because I know for a fact what happens to these people.
I knew them when I worked up north, and I've seen it happen to people who were on welfare when I was growing up.
It's just, it's bad for the brain, right?
I mean, it's exactly the same as being a couch potato and what it does to your body, right?
It just turns you into a big bag of liquid goo.
And pretty similar to what happens to your brain without any exercise or challenges or creativity.
So, yes, when you are in a situation where a town has now got 47% unemployment, you know, that's the result of years of rot that is entirely funded by this coerced taxpayer money through the state.
And, of course, it's exactly what the state wants, you know, so fundamentally that's what the bureaucrats want, which is for there to be lots of poor people who are dependent on them so they can continue their careers and get lots of money from the state and, you know, think that there are some sort of higher plain do-gooders that, you know, we all just couldn't get by without.
So, that's sort of one approach.
Now, another approach is to say, okay, well, how could there conceivably be unemployment when there are people who want to work and things that need to be done?
Right?
I mean, this is a fundamental issue around unemployment, which, you know, we can talk about in more detail another time.
But, you know, there's always something that needs to be done.
I mean, you look around in your life, your to-do list is forever, right?
I mean, I've got to paint my top hallway.
I've got to paint the underside of my archways.
I've got to organize my basement.
I have to plant some trees in my backyard.
I have to put up a fence.
I have to understand how my dehumidifier works.
I mean, there's a million things.
My wife's list would go on like your brain would explode, which is why I try not to listen to it too much, rather than the stuff that I can do.
There's always something that needs to be done, and there are always people willing to work.
So, there's absolutely no reason for any unemployment whatsoever, except for unemployment by choice, or unemployment by sickness, or unemployment by other circumstance, like you're in transition from job to job, or whatever.
So, you know, the real question is, how could there conceivably be unemployment?
Right?
I mean, the town costs like eight bucks a month to live in, if it's that rundown.
And, you know, so this is, you know, how much money do you need to live?
Right?
I mean, this this sort of trading spouses show that I mentioned earlier with this burnout case of like going to rock concerts, his rent was like 160 bucks a month for a house.
I mean, I don't even want to think where he was living.
I'm surprised like trains went flying overhead and caked excrement from planes was not dumping in his backyard or something.
But, you know, this is sort of what it took for him to live where he lived.
So how much work do you really need to do?
Well, you know, go mow some lawns, go wash some cars, go clean out people's basements, go...
Tutor people's kids.
There's always work to be done.
There's always things that need to be done in human society and there are always people willing to at least trade service for service.
You want some ears of corn?
Then go and help the farmer weed some doodads back 40 kind of thing.
So there's always work that needs to be done.
So how is it possible?
How is it possible that unemployment could exist for people who want to work?
That's what I was talking about two weeks ago with the Great Depression.
Well, of course, there's two reasons why there's unemployment.
The first reason is that people aren't allowed to work for a wage that would be attractive to other people.
So, as I mentioned before, I took a pay cut to take my current job because there was no demand for me in the market for the amount of money that I used to make.
So that's fine.
I mean, I really have no fundamental problems with that whatsoever.
And I wouldn't have any fundamental problems if it came about that I had to take another pay cut, right?
You know, find some way to make it work.
And, you know, it's always nice to have the opportunity to have a job.
So, you know, people aren't allowed to work because of minimum wage, because of unions, because of regulations, because of minority hiring practices, because, I mean, there's like 8,000, 1,000, 1,000 regulations that are in the way of people getting a job, right?
You want to become a plumber?
Oh, sorry, maybe you could learn it in a couple of weeks if you're really bright, but I'm afraid you're gonna have to apprentice for 92 years to become a plumber.
I mean, a guy I drove to the meeting with today was telling me that his son had to apprentice to put Granite countertops on?
I mean, please!
Okay, so they're heavy, right?
But other than that, it's really not a big deal to figure out how to put a piece of rock on top of a piece of wood.
And, you know, relative to other jobs, you know, like being a surgeon or running a big business or whatever, the idea that you need to apprentice is obviously just silly, right?
It's just stupid rules put in place by insecure people who don't want competition from the young and the hungry.
So, you know, you've got all that kind of stuff, all these apprenticeship rules and so on.
So, you know, people are just barred from working, right?
Unemployment is not a natural state of human affairs.
It arises because people are not allowed to work.
So that's sort of one reason.
The other reason, of course, is that they're paid not to work.
Right?
I mean, we all know the problem of welfare, right?
Which is you get paid, I don't know, like a thousand bucks a month and then if you earn 200 bucks a month, lo and behold, you get taxed at 100% and therefore you get 800 bucks a month, right?
It's the problem of the welfare cutoff, right?
I mean, at what point does it become beneficial for you to stop taking welfare?
Well, you pretty much have to have a job that pays you like double what welfare pays you, right?
So you're in a tax bracket and you don't get all the benefits and you don't get the free health care and free dental care or whatever.
So, you know, the problem is you're stuck in this economic rut.
You're not getting any real training.
You're not getting any real growth in your career.
But then, lo and behold, you're supposed to be able to suddenly vault out of that and get some fantastic job at double or triple the welfare rates.
And that's the only thing that makes it worth your while.
Well, it's not going to happen, right?
This is how Bureaucrats trap people in the welfare state, right?
That's sort of what their job is, right?
To keep you trapped in that, right?
So, you know, that's the second major reason is, you know, people have a negative incentive to work and that they'll get thrown in jail if they try and be a granite countertop installer without permission from the local guild or union or whatever.
Or their minimum wage is such that they simply, you know, can't You know, just go out and get a job for four bucks an hour, three bucks an hour, whatever, which may be perfectly fine relative to their cost of living, right?
And the other, of course, is that they're paid not to work and the incentive to work, you know, gets smaller and smaller, right?
So, I mean, that's what causes unemployment.
There's absolutely no reason whatsoever for unemployment.
I mean, I remember one summer, gosh, I graduated from my undergraduate degree Oh gosh, 91?
92?
Something like that.
Oh, there was just a terrible recession.
And this is before I'd sort of moved into, you know, white-collar office work.
And I tried to get waitering jobs.
I tried to get... I even tried to get office jobs.
I tried to get all this kind of stuff.
And boy, there was just nothing.
I couldn't get anything.
So what did I do?
Well, I sort of went off the grid, right?
I mean, I got jobs, paid cash.
And, you know, to our friends in the IRS, of course, I did pay all the taxes you can imagine on this money, just as I did when I was a waiter.
But so I sort of went off the grid, right?
I worked cash jobs.
I did weeding of gardens.
I actually spent two weeks taking somebody's grandmother around town because they didn't have any time to spend with her.
I just did, you know, anything you can think of, right?
I mean, and I ended up getting a little bit of a better job later on that summer.
But, you know, that was pretty desperate times, right?
I mean, I wasn't desperate because, you know, I had still had some money.
I knew it was going to sort of pass, but it was a tough time to be looking for work, and a lot of pounding the pavement, a lot of sleazy people out there offering you work, which is just nonsense, right?
Like 100% commission on stuff that'll never sell, whatever, right?
And so, you know, but I mean if I hadn't been able to go off the grid, then I simply would have remained unemployed, right?
So if I hadn't decided to work for cash or work for work in kind or whatever, then I simply would have gone off the grid and been unable to work.
I would have been unable to work.
So, you know, people will do whatever it takes, right?
I mean, to get a job, to do whatever, right?
You'll do what it takes.
And if people aren't working, it's because either they're not allowed to or they're paid to not work.
So that's sort of another example, right?
That you say, well, you know, we need welfare because unemployment rate is at 47%, you know, without realizing that you've completely reversed the cause and effect, right?
Unemployment rate is at 47% because there is such a thing as welfare, unemployment insurance and subsidies and road subsidies and all the subsidies that go out to small communities and subsidies for farms.
It all just completely distorts people's decision-making to the point where, you know, staying in a town with 47% unemployment, you know, seems like an economically viable thing to do.
And, you know, the only consequence, of course, is that you become completely addicted to state power, right?
I mean, that's the main reason that the government wants this kind of stuff, right?
I'm not saying it's white-boarded and all planned out in some mysterious, nefarious, mustachio-twirling kind of way.
But, you know, human beings are very good at exercising power over other human beings.
It's been a perfectly viable strategy from an amoral standpoint for hundreds of thousands of years, so it's not like we've lost that habit or that ability.
You know, what the government does.
I mean, the kings always want the people to be dependent on them, right?
The rulers always want people to be dependent on them.
That way they always have the willing, cheering crowd for, you know, the exercise of state power.
And so, you know, what's happened to this town of 47% unemployment is the moment you start to talk about freedom, these people all get up in arms.
Because they've let themselves waste away to the point where they're, you know, pretty much unemployable without a huge amount of intellectual and emotional effort, right?
I mean, they've kind of pissed away a decade of their life.
And, you know, that's pretty bad, right?
I mean, you're not going to feel real good about that if you sort of have to look at yourself in the mirror and say, okay, well, I've kind of been a potato for a certain amount of time.
And there's going to be a lot of hostility and fear and anger.
And I mean, you know, the moment you sort of say to somebody who's parasitical, you got to stand on your own two feet, well, they don't tend to like you very much, you know, to use a very technical sociological approach.
They're going to get kind of mad, they're going to be kind of cheesed off, they're going to be aggressive.
And you know, that's exactly what the government wants, right?
They want They want society to be this, like, minefield of hostility towards any limitation of state power.
And the best way to do that is to make people dependent.
Of course, people with children, people who are sick, people who are old.
I mean, nobody really enjoys picking up these people and saying, look, you can have a moral problem with the way that you're approaching your own sustainment.
Because, you know, you're a monster and you're a bad guy or whatever, right?
So, you know, to look at something like unemployment in this situation is, you know, you have to really sort of look at the history, right?
You don't just sort of take a snapshot and say, ah, well, you know, here's where we are, right?
I've thrown myself off a cliff and now how am I going to be saved?
Well, you know, what you want to do is sort of figure out how You end up throwing yourself off a cliff, right?
You can't jump out of a plane and then say you want insurance.
I mean, you have to look at the progress of things.
You can't just look at a snapshot and say, well, how would this be dealt with, right?
You don't do, as I said before, you don't go to a nutritionist and say, how do you deal with a heart attack, right?
You say, well, because the nutritionist is going to say, well, by the time it gets to a heart attack, you know, it's kind of past my capacity to fix, right?
So, you know, the free market can fix this town, right?
It's just not going to be a town anymore.
Or if it is, you know, people are going to be... It's going to be a sort of closed economy, like not a whole lot coming in and coming out, because people aren't really going to want to drive to that town, and the cost base is going to be different, and the income is going to be different, and the cost of living is going to be different.
So, it's certainly not going to look anything like it did before.
And, of course, people's social lives are going to get messed up because, you know, people are going to leave.
Deadbeats are going to wake up and sort of come back to life.
And those who don't are going to feel even worse.
And, you know, there's lots of complicated sociological stuff that's going to go on.
But the basic fact of the matter is the free market can solve anything.
It seems the free market will solve the problem of this town and the high unemployment very easily, right?
It'll just provide jobs elsewhere.
It'll provide moving incentives to people who are willing to work.
You open up a factory 50 miles away.
You can't get anyone to work.
You realize this is a town of underutilized people.
You'll pay for a bus to bring them in.
You might bus them back and forth if you want.
There's always ways to make things work in the free market.
If it's remotely profitable for someone, it's going to happen.
So don't worry about that.
The free market will find some use for these people or they'll find users for themselves if they wake up and start to get their energies going again.
That's really not an issue at all.
And of course they're gonna do it kicking and screaming, right?
I mean, when you have not used your limb for a week or two, if you've been in hospital, when you have to go to rehab to get it moving again, yeah, it's gonna hurt like hell, right?
But, you know, you still gotta do it, right?
I mean, it's not that much fun to get your teeth drilled, but you gotta do it.
So, you know, that's sort of my approach to this issue around You know, unemployment in the situation of the free market versus, you know, 47% unemployment in a town that's totally stagnated, which is, you know, look at it in the long view.
You can't just sort of take a snapshot and say, ah, you know, you can't get rid of the welfare state because of this.
You know, this only exists because of the welfare state.
And it's a lot kinder to never let people to get into that situation than it is to continue to pay for them when they're already there.
And that's really the approach that I've always tried to take.
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