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Feb. 13, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
33:40
99 Taking Back from the State
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Time Text
Good afternoon, everybody.
I hope you're doing well.
It's Steph.
It is February the 13th at 5.30.
I'm just heading home.
I made a lovely poem-based Valentine's Day card for Christina and so I stayed to finish it at work.
She also has a patient, so I can't get home too early tonight.
So, I hope everybody's doing well.
The topic for this afternoon is something that came up over the weekend.
A gentleman with whom I have the occasional MSN conversation, who pinged me on the weekend.
He found me through this podcast and I have a good deal of respect for his opinions.
And he asked me, he said, look I'm getting this grant from the government, or it's a partially subsidized grant from the government for my education.
Should I take it or should I not take it?
And, of course, I respect the moral question involved.
I had the same question when I took some, or had the opportunity, because I grew up so poor, the government offered me some money to go to university.
And I had the same question when I was knee-high to a grasshopper.
A wee lad!
And the way that I answered it, for my own satisfaction, and what I mentioned to this gentleman as well, is that if you're faced with this kind of option, or with this kind of problem, then, God, take it!
Take it!
Take it!
Take it with good conscience.
Take it with happiness.
Take it with joy.
Take it with a mild, tasty shred of vengeance, if you like.
And take it because you are going to be paying taxes for the rest of your life.
You are going to be under the thumb of the state for the rest of your life.
And you're going to be regulated and bullied and controlled and so on.
And your money is going to be deflated.
So, you know, take what you can.
The money that enters into the bosom of the state is in a state of nature.
It can never be returned to its rightful owners.
Its rightful owners can in fact never be identified.
And why would it be that only the bad people are going to take from this pile of money that is never going to go to any good use, can't go to any good use, so why not just take it and enjoy it?
That would be my particular viewpoint.
The argument to me is similar to if somebody steals my car and the only way that I can get it back, because the police are useless, the only way that I can get it back is to steal it back, well then I'm going to do it.
I'm going to do it with great joy and happiness and with a perfectly clear conscience.
This question of our relationship to the state as libertarians is interesting, but I think that it's a little bit morally oversensitive, and I'm sort of working this idea out.
I don't have a strong thesis.
It's just a gut instinct that I'm going with, so maybe it'll pan out, and maybe it won't.
Of course, I'll post it either way, because it's maybe helpful to realize that, you know, working things out is very important.
But trust your instincts on this.
We're very morally sensitive as libertarians.
Most of us, I would say.
And so, I mean, for instance, I had a productive discussion regarding self-defense, you know, because a number of people have had an issue with my criticism of self-defense and think that I'm a complete pacifist who says we should never fight back and it's wrong to fight back and so on, which is not my position.
I think that self-defense is a very dangerous topic and we'll get into this in emails of the week later on this week.
But it became close to being a hair-splitting debate.
And, well, what if this happens and that happens and what if somebody had a force field which they could push someone back in and so on?
And I really am very cautious about those kinds of debates.
I think that, you know, it's the old rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic as the ship goes down.
I think that the moral crises that we're facing in the West is so delineated and astoundingly clear enough That for us to argue over this, that, or the other, which we're so far from getting even the basics across to people, is, you know, let's deal with getting rid of slavery first, and then let's figure out, you know, how the states, how the races can more productively get along in the final nth degree of perfect racial harmony down the road, right?
So you got a burning house, and you've got a car door that's unlocked, you go and fix your burning house, or deal with your burning house, and then you go and deal with your unlocked car door, So my concern about some of the moral hair-splitting that we do as libertarians is that it is really counterproductive in terms of the major goals that we need to do, right?
I mean in medicine, as everybody knows, this is called triage.
You go for the biggest and worst cases first and the biggest and worst cases in medicine are Are not those people who are about to die, right?
So, if you're on the battlefield and you have a group of people who've been hit with a mortar shell, your biggest and worst cases are those people who've been barely injured.
No problem, right?
They can be dealt with later.
Those people who are about to die, well, not exactly no problem, but there's not much you can do about it.
But what you do want to do is focus on those that you can save.
Who will die otherwise?
And that is really my focus when it comes to communicating.
That we don't want to get into hair-splitting arguments, into scholastic kind of hair-splitting arguments, like they used to have in the Middle Ages, right?
The scholastic movement in the Middle Ages debated such fine topics as, did Adam have a belly button?
And this, I mean, was a very serious topic in the Middle Ages.
I mean, just briefly, I mean, we're supposed to be made in God's image, right?
So, you know, man is the image of God.
And so the problem is that God can't have a belly button.
Because God was not born, God is just eternal.
But if God doesn't have a belly button, but Adam and Eve do have a belly button, then how can Adam and Eve be said to be made in the image of God?
I mean, they really did think this is the angels dancing on the head of a pin stuff.
This is very serious stuff for Scholastic for medieval scholasticism.
And I know that there were some roots of modern science, and I'm not saying it was an entirely bad movement, but these are the people who just debated the thoughts of others and theoretical, theological constructs to, you know, a degree that would make you go completely insane with OCD detail.
But we don't want to become like that.
We don't want to be the kinds of doctors who, in the middle of a terrible plague with people dropping like flies, is sort of walking around counseling, you know, long-term nutrition rather than giving people aid to help them survive the next five minutes.
And our culture is certainly less than a generation away from a significant catastrophe, both economically, culturally, and fundamentally, morally, in my humble opinion.
I think if you just look at the rise of state spending and the amount of...
A generation on the outside, right?
30 years on the outside.
I certainly don't expect to leave this world in a similar situation to the world that I entered.
So, we are in a fairly dire situation and I think that it's very important not to worry about splitting hairs.
So, if you do get the opportunity to take back money from the state, then, by God, take it!
I mean, if I lose my job, or if I get laid off, or if the company goes under that I'm working for, you bet your sweet bunny buns I'm out tomorrow getting unemployment insurance, because I've been paying into the system for 20 years.
I've never collected unemployment insurance, and if I have the chance to, I'm absolutely going to.
It's money that was taken from me by force, and if I can get any portion of it back, I'm never going to get back the amount of money that I've paid into the system.
I mean, it's at my level of income, which isn't staggeringly high or anything, but in Canada it doesn't have to be staggeringly high to be in the top tax bracket.
At my level of income, I have paid so much into the state coffers that there's just no way that I could ever get even remotely close to the amount of money that I've put in back.
And so, I have no moral compunction whatsoever.
In fact, I'm eager to do so at any chance that I can get.
To get my money back from the state would be... I mean, I'll take it.
I'll absolutely take it.
And, you know, if you have a moral problem with that, which, I mean, I can certainly understand, then the only question I would ask is, do you accept a tax refund?
Right?
So, if the government taxes you and you overpay for X, Y, or Z, or you put money into an RRSP or a 401k plan and then they owe you money back, well, would you take that check and cash it?
And most libertarians would say, hell yeah!
And then you say, well, why?
Well, it's legal and the government lets me do it.
So then, of course, you'll take money from the state if it's legal to take the money from the state and so on.
And then this gentleman who IM'd me on the weekend was facing the same question.
Should I take this money from the state?
Well, is it legal?
I mean, I only say legal because it's practical, right?
Becoming a tax fugitive isn't my idea of fun and games.
So you would ask, is it legal for the government giving you the money legally, or is it sort of entrapment from the IRS or something?
And if the government is giving you the money legally, then take it.
Take it, take it, take it, take it.
Now, there are limits, I would say.
I mean, I'm not saying go to Iraq and become a war profiteer, but generally, I would say that, morally, I would have no problem with people taking an approximate amount of money out of the system that had been forcibly put into the system, or taken from them and put into the system.
That doesn't mean necessarily, though, that you go straight from university into becoming a war profiteer or, you know, you get state subsidies your entire life for some theatrical collective you're running.
I would say that that's probably not so right, although I really don't think that it's particularly wrong.
I just think it's kinda gross.
I mean, to use a morally not so technical term.
I knew a guy in theater school Sorry, after theater school, I was at McGill for a couple of years, and I was involved in theater there.
And I knew a guy who was in theater school, and then he did a theater program at McGill for a couple of years.
And then he got a state subsidy to go and study in Germany, to study theater.
And then he got another state subsidy to set up a summer troupe of actors.
And at some, I mean, I sort of heard about this and got progressively more disgusted with this parasite.
Because, I mean, it's kind of gross that so many people have to be taxed so heavily, and this guy gets a jaunt all over the place getting state subsidies.
I just think that's kind of gross.
I don't think there's any particular morality in this situation.
I wouldn't do that just because for me there's an issue of self-respect.
But I don't think... I mean, the money's in a state of nature.
It's just that he's never putting anything in and just taking everything out.
I think that's kind of gross.
Although, again, I don't think that it's a particularly morally important issue.
But, you know, I have... I got some pretty sort of bad and stupid education paid for.
And, you know, it was subsidized.
The money that I paid to the university was subsidized, so...
Is it okay to take the subsidy, which is in Canada about 80% of your tuition is subsidized, but not to take another couple of percentage points if the government is giving me some money?
I mean, it's all just so silly, fundamentally, whether you take this or whether you take that.
And it really doesn't matter.
And what I would say is that if you, to this gentleman, and I did say this to him, if you want to go overseas and study and the government is willing to subsidize that, then do it!
Take it!
Enjoy it!
It's just going to go to some crazy socialist otherwise.
And at least you'll get the chance to go and read books and travel and talk to people and spread the word.
And yeah, take the money!
Do it!
Do it!
Take the money and use it for some good!
I really strongly believe in that.
I think that splitting hairs over whether or not we take this, that, or the other is foolish.
I think it's an interesting question to ask, but I think that to worry about splitting hairs in the long run is foolish.
I am driving on a private road as we speak, but I take a lot of public roads.
In fact, I have to take a public road to get from the private road to my house.
Well, I'm going to be taking that benefit from the state, right?
Why?
Because it's legal.
And so if I get the chance to take unemployment insurance, then I will take it and enjoy it because it's legal and therefore I'm not running the risk of running afoul of the state and being thrown in jail.
And I can't think of the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars that I have been forced to part with at the hands of the state.
So to take a paltry couple of thousand back, perfectly valid, perfectly wonderful, let's do it.
The most important thing is not to worry about whether or not People might criticize us.
Oh, you took unemployment insurance, therefore you can't be against the state.
Or, well, who paid for your education?
The state!
And, you know, well, so you're a libertarian, but you're out here funded by the state?
For me, it's like, yeah, isn't it great?
One of the things that is amazing to me, and this sort of came up when I was researching my last novel, one of the things that's amazing to me is that if you look at the Nazi party in the 1920s in Germany, The Nazi party, and to a large degree the Communist party, were funded through unemployment insurance and welfare state programs.
As you probably know, Germany had the first welfare state in history, and it only took about 70 or 80 years for a dictatorship to emerge from that, which is a completely predictable and straight line.
1871, Bismarck put the first welfare state in history into existence at the state level.
And this was unemployment insurance, and pensions, and welfare, and child supplements, and all the goodies that you could imagine.
And, you know, it's no accident that that happened in Germany.
It's no accident that Germany then became a dictatorship.
But one of the awful, sick jokes of the rise of National Socialism in Germany was the degree to which it was funded by unemployment insurance and the welfare state.
After the hyperinflation of the twenties and the crash of twenty-nine, well, after the hyperinflation of the twenties, early to mid-twenties, the economy was a complete wreck and young people couldn't get jobs, so they were on unemployment insurance.
And they turned over a good chunk of this unemployment insurance to the Nazi party.
The Nazi party would put them up in halls or in sort of semi-barracks when they were getting unemployment insurance or welfare based on them needing rent and so on.
And the Nazi party would put them up in these barracks, which were very cheap of course, and then they would sign over the money that they got from the state, from the welfare state, to the Nazi party.
And it's one of the ways in which The Nazi party managed to become so successful.
It was the only party that really milked, well the communists did it too, but these two were the only two parties that really milked the welfare state for all it was worth.
And so when you think about the sick irony that Jews and homosexuals and political dissidents, who were all going to end up in concentration camps, We're all being taxed to pay for the growth and spread of power of their murderers.
I mean, it's one thing to be killed, it's another thing to be forced to fund the man who's going to kill you, and to give him the strength to train those who come after to organize, to grow, and so on.
So that's one of the awful things about the welfare state, is that generally the money tends to accrue to people who aren't necessarily the finest specimens in the world.
In the case of National Socialism, it was just a horrible abortive joke of history that the middle class paid for its own slaughter, or was forced to pay for its own slaughter.
And, you know, I would say, take the money, go enjoy yourself, take the money, whatever money you can, take the money and go to university.
And then this gentleman asked me, well, what about, you know, becoming a teacher?
My mother is a teacher and should I, you know, how should I look at her?
Well, the real question is, what is your mother's relationship to being a teacher?
If your mother believes that being a teacher is the most wonderful thing in the world, being a teacher in a state-run system is the only moral way to teach, that the government is everybody's best friend, and so on...
Well then all you have to do is ask her the argument for morality, right?
Which is why does somebody get to force other people to subsidize education when no one else can?
How could that be considered moral since it's a localized rule that only applies to one person in one particular situation during the time that they're in office?
So isn't that just the same as rampant subjectivism and therefore can't be called any kind of moral rule at all?
And you have that conversation with her.
Now, if after she's exposed to the argument for morality, she still says, well, to heck with all this fancy-schmancy Aristotelian logic, I'm just going to go and sit back and listen to all my unionized brethren and sistren, and who tell me that public school education is the most wonderful thing ever, and I'm the most noble human being ever to walk the face of the earth.
Well, then she's a bad person.
Then she's morally, intellectually, and spiritually corrupt.
And, unfortunately, she then becomes an opponent.
Nothing you can do about it.
It's just a fact of reality.
It's not your fault.
It's just the way the cookie crumbles at times.
Most times, actually.
So, the question isn't, what is somebody's occupation?
The question is, what is their relationship to that occupation?
Since there's no clear line that can ever be drawn between the public sector and the private sector, what does it matter which side you're on?
To some degree.
I mean, I'm not going to go a hundred percent this way.
I mean, if you can go to work in the private sector, but you choose to become a prison guard or a cop, then I would have some issues with that.
But generally a teacher is not somebody who's directly inflicting violence and coercion on other people.
And so I would say that if the only job that I could get was as a teacher paid by the state and part of a state union, then I would take it.
My wife worked in a state-run hospital as a psychologist.
When I met her, I didn't say, ah, you evil tool of the ruling elite.
No, I mean, I talked with her, and I mean, it was amazing how quickly she picked up on this stuff.
But of course, she's a genius, and I love her to death, so...
So, you can't draw a line and say, well, on this side is the people who are acting honorably in the private sector and on the other side is the people who are acting dishonorably in the public sector.
So, for instance, I work in the software industry, as you know, so it's one of the unregulated last frontiers of the free market in the world.
I can practice being a software entrepreneur without having to join a union or pass exams and so on.
But where does my money come from?
Well, some of it comes from the private sector.
We sell some systems to the private sector.
We sell a lot of systems as well to the public sector.
And what does this mean?
What could this conceivably mean?
I mean, does this mean that I'm sort of good when I'm working on the private sector accounts, but I'm corrupt and bad when I'm working on the public sector accounts?
Of course, the only way then to be moral is to go and live in the woods and to eat berries and catch rabbits and take no benefits or sustenance from the society that you live in.
And that doesn't seem to me to be a particularly good way to approach the world.
Because, of course, if you're not at all participating in society, you can't affect society for the better.
If I were off living in the woods and scratching myself with twigs all day, I wouldn't exactly be doing podcasts and doing the little part that I can to help get the word out there about freedom and passion and integrity and all the goodies that I'm constantly opening my coat to let you have a look at.
So, you have to participate in society if you want to affect society for the better.
For sure, society, because of the entropy that's caused by state power, the moral entropy, society ain't gonna get a heck of a lot better unless we exert ourself pretty strenuously to get the word out and to do the right thing, and to communicate, and to expose, and to undermine, and to do all the things that you have to do when you're trying to deal with the issue of coercive power, to expose the moral hypocrisy, to expose the falsehoods, to expose the lies and the brutalization and the reasons of propaganda, why people believe these things.
If you're not an active participant in society, then you can't do any of these things and society will slide into dictatorship and life will be hell for our children and their children and their children's children.
Now that's not a situation that I would consider to be an honorable course.
If you are a doctor and someone's having a heart attack on the plane and you're the only doctor, it seems to me kind of like the right thing to do to go and help that person.
You're not forced to do it, and anybody who has the capacity to argue for freedom who doesn't do it I wouldn't consider to be evil.
I just would consider them to be kind of bad, like not a very good person.
The same way that a doctor, if somebody's having a heart attack and there's one doctor on the plane and he says, no, I'd love to help, but this is a really great part of my audio book, which I can pause.
So I don't want to, you know, no, I don't want to go and help that person.
It's not evil because it's not forcing anything on anyone, but it's kind of like not a very nice thing to do, I guess you could say.
So you have to participate in society in the degree to which you are capable.
Of exposing the falsehoods and the hypocrisies of violence and of communicating with people and teaching them about goodness and virtue and honor and self-esteem and integrity and all that.
Well, I think you kind of should.
I think you kind of should.
And the same way that if you're a big kid and there's a little bully, you might want to go and have a talk with that bully to say, I really don't think that you should be bullying and if you continue to bully, maybe I'll bully you a little more.
I think that you can, if you're a good kid and you're a big kid, then you can help the little kids who can't defend themselves.
I think you should.
I think that would be a nice thing to do.
And so I think that if you have the capacity to learn about freedom and to talk to people about freedom, if you're born with this odd freedom tattoo on your forehead, which is what is bringing us all together and making this conversation so vital and powerful, then I think you kind of should pick up the sword and do what you can, because otherwise the world's just going to get worse and worse.
I'm not saying you have to, I'm not saying you're an evil person if you don't, but it seems like kind of the right thing to do, if you don't mind me saying so.
So, given that you then have to be in society to do that, you have to have an income, you have to have a house, that house is going to have water that is supplied by the state or you're not going to shower, That house is going to have roads that go to the state.
The state invented the internet, so you're going to not podcast because it uses TCPIP packets and protocols that were developed in state laboratories.
I mean, you could go on and on, right?
Eventually you kind of have to levitate and not breathe at some point.
Are you not going to heat your home in winter because the government regulates the price of heating oil?
Well, good luck, right?
Especially in Canada.
So, the way that I view it is that I don't think that it's ever going to be possible, as an honorable human being, that I'm ever going to get nearly as much money back as I've been forced to put into this sick system.
But whatever I can to get back, I'm going to try for.
If the government suddenly handed out free servers for libertarians, I'd be the first one to sign up and I'd try and get ten.
Because otherwise it's going to go to the leaf-eating, commie, feminist, environmental Nazis.
And what good has that done?
It's just put more strength into the hands of the enemy.
And it hasn't done anything to advance the cause of freedom.
All you've got is a smug little kind of anal, fussy consistency that most people adopt.
And I'm not suggesting this is true of the gentleman I talked to on the weekend.
Most people adopt that just because they can't handle criticism.
I know that Harry Brown, for instance, doesn't take any money when he's running for Libertarian office.
He doesn't take any money from the government, even though there's money to be taken from the government for his political... And I don't agree with that.
I think that's entirely incorrect.
I think that you should take as many state subsidies as possible because of the ballot access laws and so on, and say, oh yeah, we take as much money as possible because they make it as hard as they can, and why would we only accept all the bad rules but not the good rules?
It allows the government to then define what the morality of your actions should be based upon it being legal or it not being legal, and that's just not morally logical.
If you're going to take an income tax return because it's legal, well, then if it's legal to take money in other situations, do it too.
And if you're going to take the income tax return back because, well, it was my money to begin with, well, so is every other piece of money that gets taken from you, of which you can get some back.
And so I think that when it comes to dealing with the state, I think still I have some hesitations about advocating something like, let's go out and be war profiteers and take a hundred million dollars for pretending to supply army to the Humvee trucks in Iraq.
Well, I sort of have an issue with that, and I'm not saying that that's necessarily logical.
I just think that that's not so much getting your money back out of the system, but taking money away from other people.
But in my life, I've paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to the state under the threat of coercion.
Yeah, I'm not getting any of that back, really.
I might get a couple of bucks back, but so what?
I mean, if I'm going to put in my RSPs, which I mostly do to get tax refunds at the end of the year, of course I'm going to take that money and I'm going to cash it.
So, that would be sort of my suggestion.
Don't worry about this stuff.
Don't worry about it at all.
Learn as much as you can.
Communicate as passionately and as openly and with as much integrity and curiosity as you can possibly muster.
Get people excited about freedom.
Invite them into the movement.
Get them to wake up.
Get their brains burning with the joy of philosophy and ideas and politics and economics and integrity and intimacy and help them to understand the relationship between integrity and love and all of this good stuff that just makes life such a joy.
I would say spend your time focusing on that, and not on would I cash a check for $500 from the government or only $400 from the government.
I think that's a fussy approach to libertarian morality, or morality in general, which fails to see the forest for the trees.
The forest, of course, being that we are all facing a sort of pretty catastrophic situation of state power, and to worry about The pennies when the millions of dollars are at stake, I think, is just taking the wrong approach.
And if people are so anal and hostile that they, you know, you're a libertarian, right?
Oh, you're a libertarian.
And then, you know, let's say somebody, I become some big famous libertarian guy and then somebody says, aha, he took, you know, these thousands of dollars for his education.
Therefore, how can he be a libertarian?
He took money from the state and now he's against subsidies and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Well, guess what, friends?
Those aren't people you're ever going to be able to change, because they're hostile, bigoted, vicious little gnomes.
And that's, of course, part of why the state gives out money, so that everybody can be accused of being corrupt and having taken state money and so on.
But you're never going to have a chance with these people anyway.
I mean, it really doesn't matter.
Because if somebody takes that kind of attack-based approach to you, then they're not interested in reasoning.
If somebody comes up to you and says, OK, well, help me understand this.
And I mean this with all respect, but help me understand this.
You are against government subsidies, but it seems that in the past you took government subsidies, so just help me to understand that.
And, you know, what I would say is something like, yeah, absolutely, I took government subsidies.
I disagree with the entire system, but I was unable to find a line which was rational and possible wherein I could live in a situation based on coercion and not end up with any of the benefits of that coercive, the sort of fruits of that coercion, like You know, the fact that I can't get a private company to run water to my house means that I have to rely on the state for my water.
And I don't agree with the income tax but I will take an income tax refund because the government is giving me back my own money.
And therefore I was fully comfortable taking and eager to take subsidies because for me it's very similar to taking money back from somebody who took it from you.
There's no possibility of that money being used for a purely moral purpose because it's already been stolen from people, it's lying in a big pile and everyone's grabbing at it.
And so for me, if I can take some of that money and use it to further advance the cause of freedom and to communicate ideas that help the world in a way that makes sense to me and that I think is moral and just, I will take that money and I will take it with all joy and gladness in my heart and I would recommend that everyone else do exactly the same.
And I don't want to see that money falling into the hands of some crazy lunatic lefty or righty who's going to say, I'm going to set up a website to make the war in Iraq look even better to other crazy lunatic warmongers like myself.
I don't think that's a good way for the money to be spent.
I don't think the money should be stolen in the first place, but if it is stolen and it is being handed out, It might as well be handed out to people who are opposing that entire system, rather than being handed out to people who are simply going to use it to further expand the coercive nature of state power and argue for more programs and more intervention and so on.
So, I mean, I'm sort of perfectly comfortable making that argument.
So if somebody asks you that question, they're interested in inquiring, and then you can give them your reasons.
If they simply call you, you know, a foul hypocrite for taking state money when you're against state programs, well, Fudge them, I guess you could say.
I mean, what does it matter?
These people are, you know, hate-filled little venomous weasels, and you're not going to have any chance converting them anyway.
All they're doing is they're grabbing onto something with sadistic intensity and using it to attack you and to discredit you and to bring you down.
Do you really think that you're ever going to be able to convince these people or have a rational conversation with them?
Well, of course not.
I mean, it's completely hateful to just grab someone and say, You are a hypocrite, and so on.
I mean, the first thing you do is you ask them politely, and you inquire, and you try and find out their reasonings.
And only if you have completely proven them wrong, and they continue to persist in their error, and to act as if their error were in fact the greatest virtue, then you can call them corrupt.
Then you can call them evil.
But until that time, you work to establish the diagnosis.
You don't just randomly hand out this diagnosis of evil.
You work to find out what people's motivations are.
As I mentioned about the question of the schoolteacher.
You find out, well, what is the schoolteacher's... Oh, I hate the union.
Oh man, it's horrible.
Oh, I'd so much rather work in the private situation.
But I'm trying to do the best that I can, given that the state runs all of the education.
The least I can do is sit here and try and get some better ideas across to the students.
Good for you.
I think fantastic.
You're like a mole in the heart of the enemy.
You're like a...
A double agent, I think that's fantastic, good for you.
But if you are, oh yeah, the state should run everything, I rot these little kids' minds with everything I can do to do with moral hypocrisy and the trumpeting of state propaganda and state power, and if they continue with that opinion after it's been explained to them, then they're kind of stone evil and they're to be opposed.
So that's my take on this kind of conundrum.
Don't worry about it.
Bigger fish to fry.
You know, you not taking some particular state subsidy or whatever is not going to do smack to bring down the state.
It's just going to get handed to other people who want to make the state bigger.
And we should, to some degree, not worry about this kind of stuff.
Later on, you know, when there's a possibility of not, Strong possibility of not taking these kind of state subsidies because the private sector has come more in.
Like, let's say there's only one state subsidy left in the realm of education and there's 500 private ones, then, you know, go for the private one or maybe not the public one.
But right now, the government controls so much that rejecting any government money, to me, is simply riding yourself out of society and ensuring that the state will win.
And I don't think that's really what we're aiming at.
I don't think that's what we really want to have happen.
And so I would say don't worry about it.
Enjoy the money and go about your business with a clear conscience.
Thanks so much for listening as always.
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