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March 8, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
44:20
131 Does Government Decrease Violence?
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Good evening everybody, it's Steph.
It's triple play time.
I have to make an emergency drive to help a friend of mine out, so I'm going to finish off one last topic which occurred to me today, which I was going to do in the morning, but heaven forbid we might have another topic for the morning.
Now this is a topic that goes back to the beginning of the whole process, which is the DROs, the stuff that first got me going probably about a year ago, a little bit over a year ago.
The DRO questions that first got me going down the road to anarcho-capitalism, wherein we have a society that is going to be organized and run without a central government.
And I do find that sort of question when people say, but how would society be organized and run without a central government?
To be somewhat, let's say, disingenuous, because what it does is it packages in the concept or the idea That society is managed and run at the moment by a central government.
And that's sort of the first thing that I would like to discuss before we get to the joyful and exhilarating topic of how does the society run in terms of police and military and so on.
How does it defend itself against armed bands of thugs roaming the countryside and you know this sort of Mel Gibson post-apocalyptic cyberpunk world of shaven-headed goons running wild and Raping and pillaging and all that.
And the first thing that I would like to sort of point out is that when you're talking about this topic with someone, there are the inevitable knee-jerk reactions.
And it's important to understand that people are not applying rationality to this question.
And not just because they're disagreeing with us, but also because they don't have an answer.
That's very important to understand up front.
These people do not have an answer at all to the problem or an answer to the question, why do we need a government?
And the reason that they don't have an answer to it It's because they have never really thought of it.
They simply have assumed that we need such a thing called a government.
They have not started reasoning a priori and ended up with the existence of a government.
Because it really is not a logical construct at all.
A government is a result of the grabbing of political power through force.
It is not a logical construct in any way shape or form which people would come up with if they started reasoning a priori.
And the reasons as to why it would never be a priority, we've gone into it another time, and in another place, at lewrockwell.com, you can find articles on all this kind of stuff.
But it is something that you just wouldn't think of.
And that's something that's very important to understand.
When people are confronted with something they have never thought of before, But which they consider to be essential just through force of habit or through the fact that it exists in the world, or they perceive that it exists in the world, then the inevitable reaction that they have is to simply come up with justifications after the fact.
This is sort of a well-known psychological phenomenon where people do stuff and then make up reasons why afterwards.
Or they believe stuff and make up reasons why afterwards.
It's called rationality ex post facto.
And rationality after the fact.
So if you see experiments wherein people are hypnotized, then they will do this sort of absurd things like pretend to be a chicken laying eggs and this that and the other.
And then afterwards they will sort of give you a long detailed explanation as to why it was essential that they do that at that particular time.
This doesn't mean that human beings are innately irrational.
It just means that we're not taught how to be rational and there are enormous payoffs for being irrational in the modern world.
So I think it's fairly safe to say that irrationality is something which is inculcated in people, and this is why you see this kind of reaction.
So when you come up with something like, we don't need a government, a government is an evil institution that defies all logic, both moral, practical, cause and effect, whatever you want to throw at it, then people really have trouble with that.
But rather than admit that they have trouble with that, they will simply immediately come up with justifications why a government should be instituted, or why a government probably is instituted in some sort of moral sphere.
And of course the first thing that people do is they say that a government must be instituted Because without a government, you know, chaos and gang warfare and so on would ensue.
Now, I've dealt with reasons as to why this would not happen in a general sense.
We can talk a little bit more specifically.
But if they say that a government exists to prevent general predation of the strong upon the weak and so on, then they do face a logical problem, a logical contradiction, which they will, I'm sure, have the intellectual integrity to admit, if you point it out.
So, for instance, a basic argument about this would be something like this.
So, you say, well, we don't need a government, and a government is not only unnecessary, but immoral.
And people say, well, we do need a government to minimize violence within society.
So then, you know, this is a sort of Socratic method of arguing.
What you have to do is you have to set up the null hypothesis with people.
So this is sort of an example of how this might go.
So person A says, we need a government because it would be a sort of universally violent society in the absence of a government.
So then you say, well, what you're saying is that if violence in general is reduced by the existence of a government, Then a government is morally justified.
You just have to get to the premise.
You have to get to the root of what it is that people are saying and thinking.
This is a testable hypothesis.
So if you say that violence within society is diminished because of the existence of a government.
Therefore, if it can be proven that violence in society does not diminish because of the existence of a government, or if it increases along with the size of the government, then that person has a thesis which becomes undefensible, you know, without additional criteria or thoughts or approaches or examples or whatever, right?
So this initial statement.
So this person says we need a government because without a government everything would be violent.
And then you can bring up, of course, the tasty 170 million to quarter billion people murdered by government in the 20th century.
You can talk about the millions of people who are thrown in jail for non-violent crimes through the government.
You can talk about the fact that people have half their incomes taken from them at the point of a gun by the government.
You can talk about deficit financing and the fact that governments take from future generations without any consultation and taxation without representation in the most foul and corrosive and subversive kind of way to steal money from future generations in the form of deficit financing.
You can talk about governments are the only institutions that have the ability to wage war and you can talk about governments usually being the agencies which disarm the citizens within a society.
That's very important.
Because I think most people would say that where there is equality of capacity to do harm, there is a minimization of violence.
So if you have a gun and somebody who is going to attack you thinks that you have a gun or knows that you have a gun, then they're less likely to attack you.
Where there is equivalency of the capacity to do harm, Then there is usually a diminishment of violence within that situation.
And if they question that, then you could simply point out that governments which have nuclear weapons never declare war on each other.
So this is sort of a simple example of that situation.
So, if governments exist in order to prevent harm, then you would expect that it would be the case that governments would prevent harm by allowing citizens to fully arm themselves so that there would be a balance of power among everyone and so on.
Well, if the person doesn't like that, right, if they say, well, no, the governments need to disarm the citizens, then you are creating a very interesting situation.
You're saying, then, that where somebody has ultimate power and authority, i.e.
the state with its sort of weapons and military and air force and navy and so on, nuclear weapons and wiretapping abilities and gulags and all, if you have all of the apparatus of state power on the one hand, and you have a legally disarmed citizenry on the other hand, That this is a situation wherein the citizens are the best protected.
And, of course, that's completely illogical.
I mean, if you simply were to say that the way that citizens should protect themselves is by arming a particular group within their midst, you know, just sort of pick a group, right?
The Elks Club.
That we're going to give the Elks Club all the weapons and complete legal power to do whatever they want within a particular jurisdiction And not only are we going to give the Elk Club all the power and the weapons to do whatever the heck they want within a particular geographical area, we are also going to legally disarm absolutely everybody else so that there's no possibility of resisting the armed expansion of the Elk Club, or whatever you want, however you want to put it.
And so you end up with a very untenable situation, logically.
So you know that you're dealing with people who are reasoning ex post facto.
They just haven't thought things through.
They're just sort of, well, there is a government.
There must be a good reason why there's a government.
Well, what does the government say?
What does all the propaganda say?
What do the cop shows say?
Well, without the government, you know, the thin blue line can't hold back the tide of seething evil that lies in the heart of everybody's breast and so on.
The other logical problem that you're going to have with people who say that we need a government in order to diminish violence is they do have to answer all these questions of genocide and war and the 170 million to 250 million people murdered by governments in the 20th century.
You would not necessarily call that a particularly good record.
for agencies or social organizational structures like governments whose sole purpose and sole reason for being is to protect the lives of their citizens.
You would say, well, I got to tell you, I don't really think that that's a very good job.
In fact, given that corporations kill almost nobody and governments kill just about everybody, if you were interested in having a social organization that was not innately violent in nature or did not have a terrible track record of unbelievable, multi-hundred-million-murder-genocidal tendencies, you would actually turn to corporations.
You would never turn to governments for that kind of protection.
You would absolutely turn to corporations.
So, there is a strong logical problem with saying that governments exist to protect people, and in the absence of governments, we don't get any kind of protection.
And then, of course, you start with the argument for morality, or the argument for ethics, right?
It's sort of an argument from utilitarianism, or an argument from effect.
If you say, well, the reason that we have governments is to protect the citizens, and therefore governments have to have this monopoly and so on, but what it really comes down to is saying, That in order to avoid general violence, we wish a monopolization or a monopoly of violence.
And that is a very interesting situation.
It's a very interesting logical construct to sort of pick apart and look at from every angle.
In order to avoid general violence, we wish to have a monopoly of the capacity to initiate violence, which is the state.
In other words, some people are not allowed to initiate violence.
Those who are the citizens.
Other people, those who are the politicians, the policemen, the jail guards, the military, and so on.
These people are allowed to initiate violence.
So, it's hard for me to understand how you can logically categorize people into two opposing groups.
People with two completely opposing sets of moral absolutes.
You must not initiate violence to the general population.
You must initiate violence to the policemen, right?
To obey the laws of the state and so on.
And it's also very hard for me to say that if you divide people into these two categories, right, you must not initiate violence, you must initiate violence, that's a logical contradiction to begin with.
I mean, it just doesn't make any sense.
Unless you can prove some sort of genetic basis to all this, of course, which would completely eliminate something like democracy, and you would have to institute a hereditary ruler of the philosopher kings, a la the sort of republic, the Plato's Republic model.
So that's sort of the one division that makes no sense logically, that you must not initiate violence.
Oh, you must initiate violence.
The other one that makes no sense whatsoever is that The people who are allowed to initiate violence cannot choose to do so of their own accord.
We generally don't think that it's moral, even if we believe in a state, to say that the police should have no rules whatsoever.
The police are armed, the citizens are disarmed, and lo and behold you have these roving gangs of people who are preying upon the innocent and so on.
And so you have this other group of people called the lawmakers, whoever they are, politicians, the Supreme Court, whoever comes up with all these crazy laws.
You have this other group of people who can choose who and how and under what circumstances and in what conditions and with what penalties and what rewards and so on.
All these people who can choose where the violence can and cannot be initiated.
Under what circumstances a policeman can or must pull his gun out and shoot someone, i.e.
they don't pay their taxes, they broke a regulation, they didn't do X, Y, or Z that's somewhere in the federal registry.
If this other group of lawmakers has the right to dispose of violence or the capacity for violence everywhere in society, universally and monopolistically, Then it's hard for me to imagine how you can differentiate these people from any sort of biological or rational standpoint.
It's sort of the basic argument for morality.
If one human being has the right to say, yes, the police should all go and shoot these guys.
These guys being whoever.
They passed some new law, right?
All brown-eyed people are evil.
You have one guy who says, I can wave my hand or write in a book and magically, lo and presto behold, all of these people are going to go charging out across the landscape, armed to the teeth, and start dragging down legally disarmed citizens into gulags and shooting them if they resist.
And by gulags, I'm not referring to the Russian ones, although they're a prime example of state evil.
But, you know, the millions of people, say, for instance, in the US prisons because of harmless drug offenses.
So you have these people who have this godlike power to wave their hand and have Hordes of thugs, of armies of thugs in blue uniforms swarm across the landscape, putting guns to the temple of everybody who doesn't agree, and that that power is not going to corrupt anybody.
That that power is not going to cause any problems.
That the power to abuse people, the power to hold guns to their heads, the power to rob them blind, the power to rob future generations blind, that none of that power is going to corrupt anyone, and even if they say, no, I don't think that power is going to corrupt anyone, then they have the rather tricky logical problem of explaining just why, throughout history, in all times and under all circumstances, that power has done exactly that.
That power has absolutely corrupted and destroyed human beings and drawn only those who are corrupted and destroyed and sadistic into the fine circle of ultimate state power.
So, when you start to break it down, the idea of protecting yourself from violence by giving a group of people the ultimate authority to use violence in any way that they see fit for their own material gain upon a legally disarmed civilization or legally disarmed citizens, you can quite clearly see That that is completely insane.
That no rational human being or nobody who was actually interested in reducing violence would ever come up with a situation like that.
So if the question is that you need a state because armed gangs are going to take over the society, what they're saying is that what they want to do is fast forward.
In order to solve the problem of violence, they want to sort of fast forward to a situation where one gang has won completely.
And in fact, they've won so completely that they can actually legally disarm every other gang until the end of time.
Now, even the Mafia can't disarm the Crips.
And the Crips can't disarm the Bloods.
And so there is a kind of rough protection of territory, even within the black market, even within criminal activities or organizations with no recourse to any kind of DRO or legal system or anything like that.
The Mafia cannot win to the point where they can disarm everybody else.
So, basically, people are saying, in order to avoid the problems of armed gangs, we want to promote one armed gang, called the State, to ultimate and complete and total domination.
And that is something that is very, very, very interesting when you look at it logically.
So people don't mind violence in this situation.
What they don't like is violence where people have a chance to fight back.
Adamus, this is all so closely related to the stuff that we've been talking about the family that I'm sure I scarcely need mention.
Why people feel that an ultimate dominant all-powerful authority is somehow moral.
Just look at their parents and the lies that they believe about parental power and you'll get the answer right there.
But just looking at it from a purely logical standpoint, how on earth could it be conceivably called a diminishment of violence to have one gang have complete and ultimate authority to use violence in whatever way it sought fit for its own profit and gain with no consequences and no repercussions against a legally disarmed population?
That's not any way to get rid of violence.
That's a way to ensure that violence is going to continue to the point where society completely and utterly and totally self-destructs.
That's something that's kind of important to understand when people are talking about the state.
Some people should have the awesome power to use violence in whatever way they see fit for their own gain and everybody else should be legally disarmed and that's what people call eliminating violence.
Now, they're right on one level.
And that's, you know, important to grant them.
I mean, and I would absolutely grant this to somebody who's a statist.
What they will do in that situation is they will ensure obedience.
And that is a very important distinction.
This is sort of where they're coming from in this sort of not too detailed or deep review of this question.
If one gang has the ultimate power to use whatever violence it wants against whoever it wants for its own gain, and those enemies or those people that they're preying on are completely disarmed and helpless, why then, I bet you, you're not going to have a lot of open shooting because nobody can fight back.
And what they're talking about when they say that a government is required because otherwise there will be violence, what they're saying is that a government is required because otherwise there will be rebellion.
A government is required because otherwise there will be disagreements which can be enforced through violence.
The government is required because otherwise there will be no obedience.
And that is a very interesting distinction.
So if, by this logic, right?
If somebody tries to take my wallet, I'm sort of an idiot and I'm walking down a dark street in a bad neighborhood in the middle of the night.
If somebody wants to take my wallet, and I'm some jiu-jitsu master, and they come up to me and they say, give me your wallet, and I say, I'm sorry, You're gonna have to make a decision, because if you want my wallet, you're gonna have to take it from me.
That is violence in this situation.
That is violence because there is the capacity for resistance.
There is the capacity for an outright fight.
There is a capacity to react to violence, to respond to violence.
So that is violence.
However, If 19 guys with bazookas and snipers and helicopters with cluster bombs sitting overhead say to me, or somebody in a megaphone says, drop your wallet, or drop half the contents of your wallet if you want to be accurate with the tax metaphor, drop your wallet and keep walking.
Well, I have absolutely no capacity to fight back.
So in that situation, Under this rule of the government exists to prevent violence, that is not violent, because I have no capacity to fight back, and therefore I'm simply going to drop my wallet and keep walking.
I'm not going to take on 19 guys with bazookas and helicopters and snipers and cluster bombs or whatever.
I'm simply going to drop my wallet and say, OK, well, I guess there's no point fighting this, because I'm so completely overwhelmed that there wouldn't be a chance in heck.
I remember some comedian saying during a hurricane in Florida, he was saying that he read about a guy.
This is vaguely related, but I thought it was kind of funny.
He read about a guy who said, I'm going to lash myself to a palm tree during the height of the hurricane because I want to feel what a hurricane is like directly.
And people are saying, you're crazy!
And he's like, no, I'm an Ironman.
I do Ironman competitions.
I'm incredibly fit.
I will be able to withstand the wind.
This comedian said, I thought it was pretty funny, he said, well, I gotta tell you, my friend, it's not that the wind is blowing, it's what the wind is blowing.
If a Volvo comes somersaulting towards you, it doesn't really matter how many sit-ups you did that morning now, does it?
Which I thought was pretty funny.
And it's, you know, vaguely related to this idea of overwhelming force, right?
Where there is overwhelming force, and people's capacity for resistance is completely eliminated, then there is no violence.
And of course then, by this argument, there is no violence when people obey.
Which, of course, is illogical.
It's irrational.
It's crazy.
It's wrong.
It's false.
It's silly.
Of course there's violence.
If I have my wallet taken from me and decide not to fight back, and somebody's got a knife to my throat and I decide not to make a go for it, then, of course, violence has occurred.
Just because I've obeyed doesn't mean that there's no violence.
And it's that lack of understanding about the nature of violence that is so important.
So, for instance, in this situation, in this sort of formulation, the institution of slavery is not violent.
Why?
Because most slaves did not require constant compulsion.
In fact, I can guarantee you that almost no slaves required constant compulsion to be slaves.
Why?
Because slavery would be completely economically unproductive if you actually had to have someone standing over the slave night and day to get them to be a slave.
So, for sure, most slaves just kind of went along with the program and were slaves and did not require shackles or beatings or anything like that.
Why?
Because if they ran away, the slave catchers would go out and drag them back and they'd get beaten or whatever.
But in a situation where obedience is occurring, violence is not required.
But situations where obedience is occurring almost always occur only because of the overwhelming force involved.
And this of course takes us right back to the issue of children and the overwhelming force and power of parents.
This is why people are blind to this, right?
They don't recognize the power disparity in their own parents' behavior and therefore they're completely unable to process from a logical standpoint the power of the state and the disparity of that power relative to a disarmed citizen.
So this issue of obedience is kind of central.
So if you can get them to understand that violence is occurring even when there is obedience, and in fact it could well be said, it could well be said that if people do obey, the rewards of violence become that much greater.
I think most people would respond positively to these sort of set of premises or these arguments.
You could ask someone, tell me this, if somebody can be violent and face no consequences, would it be more likely or less likely that they would become violent or they would use violence?
Well, of course, any logical person would say that it is more likely that somebody is going to use violence if they can get away with using violence and escape the consequences, escape the consequences of their violence.
So, for instance, if I knew ahead of time that if I were to steal your wallet, I would never, ever, ever, ever, ever go to jail.
Then surely I would be more likely to steal your wallet.
I mean, would people generally agree with that?
And I think that they probably would.
And that would make sort of sense.
If you are paid to use violence.
In other words, even if you just threaten people and don't actually steal anything, if you are paid to use violence, then would you say that people are more likely or less likely to use violence?
And of course, any sane, logical person will say, yes, you are much less likely to use violence if you're not on the salary for using violence.
And also, if violence is hidden from you, But you gain the benefits nonetheless.
In other words, if you yourself don't have to go around waving guns in people's face, but that happens out of sight, out of mind, and you simply reap the rewards with no possible repercussions to you, would violence be more likely to increase or to decrease?
Well, they're more likely to increase, right?
What about this?
If you could perpetrate violence against people who are further away and more defenseless, then would violence be likely to increase or decrease?
In other words, if the use of violence never occurred to you, but basically you got 50 bucks from a guy in Timbuktu that you were never going to meet, would you be more likely to do it?
Well, yeah, I would say that people would be more likely to do it.
Would you say that it would be more likely for you to use violence to the degree with which you did not face any personal threat of violence yourself?
Well, all of these sort of questions are in the positive.
And this is all, of course, the situation with the government.
A cop is paid to use violence to threaten... The cops in the military are paid to threaten violence against citizens.
There are no repercussions to a cop for threatening violence against citizens, as long as he's sort of roughly or more or less following the rules of engagement, and even if he's not, nothing really bad happens to him at all.
So, a cop uses violence to both get the money to pay his own salary and to get the money to pay his political masters, who are the prop, who are the cover for this violence.
Then, of course, you have set up a situation where people are well paid and face no consequences for increases in violence.
You also have a situation where people do not see, do not have to directly pursue violence themselves, do not see violence occurring, but gain all the rewards.
So, I mean, to take a vaguely silly example, but a very real one, let's just talk about some feminist collective art group that's going for a Canada Council grant, or I guess this would be in the States, an art grant of some kind.
Well, it seems unlikely to me that the feminist collectivist art group would go and beat up people for their money in order to pay for their performances, to pay the salaries for their people and to pay the rent on the space they wanted to perform in.
However, if they go to the Arts Council, the arm of the government, the cultural arm of the government that gives grants to these kinds of things, then the government passes a law which filters all the way down to the police who hold the guns to the necks, real or imagined, or not imagined, but real or because of being obeyed.
They're not directly in your face, but you're only obeying them because they would be if you don't.
These people get the benefits.
They get their $50,000 or $25,000 which allows them to carry on for another six months.
And they never have to face any of the actual violence themselves.
They never have to perform any of the violence themselves.
So they get these enormous benefits.
And they never have to do any violence themselves.
The money just gets handed to them in a nice civilized manner.
They don't actually see the gun being held to anybody's neck and they for sure don't see anyone being shot for resisting paying taxes.
So we've sort of established that if people do not actually have to face the consequences of violence or perform violence directly, but They instead can get the benefits with violence that's being perpetrated by other people that they never see, that they're going to be more likely to use or deploy that violence, or the use of that violence is more likely to increase.
Again, this is exactly what happens with the state.
People all cluster around the state wanting this, that, or the other.
Let's increase aid to education.
And nobody ever thinks about the guns being held to people's heads.
Nobody ever thinks about the people who are thrown in jail for not filing their taxes correctly and missing some godforsaken little hook or rule in one of the 10,000 tomes on tax law.
So this is another example of how the existence of a government vastly increases the use of violence within society, the threat of violence within society, which is sort of one and the same.
So we also asked, if people could steal from people they didn't know very well, would you expect that violence would increase or decrease?
The further away people are, the less they're involved with it, the less that people are involved with the people who they're stealing from, would you expect more violence to occur?
With the government, you get to pass along debts from an intergenerational standpoint.
So you get crushing national debts passed on to the next generation, who then have to deal with the social collapse, while everybody who stole from them seems to be doing just fine.
Now, this is just one example of many, but the next generation is a really abstract concept.
They can't vote.
Some of them can't even get out of their diapers.
They're pooping themselves.
There's not a whole lot of defense, even if we had absolutely open gun laws or no gun laws.
There would be no defense that little toddlers could do against the predation of their futures based on the existence of this problem.
So that's another example of how it is that violence is increased through the existence of a government.
So we've got a whole series of things that are occurring which, by the person's own admission, who is real keen on having a government, is going to absolutely, geometrically, asymptotically increase the use of violence in society.
So it's really hard for me to understand how people say we need a government to lessen the prevalence of violence within society.
We have also said that violence is going to be likely to be used more if people are using violence against other people who are legally disarmed, who cannot fight back.
And if people are legally disarmed, the use of violence is going to increase.
Well, that's exactly what a government does.
A government will legally and slowly and carefully disarm every single one of its citizens so that it can prey upon them with no opposition.
So again, it seems a little difficult for me to understand exactly what people mean when they say we need a government to diminish the capacity for people to be violent.
So there's countless examples you could bring to bear on this.
But if you get people to understand that every single thing that they are giving to the government in terms of power is something which is going to inevitably escalate the uses and abuses of violence within society.
And if they doubt that as a theoretical construct, well, gosh, no problem.
Then, given that this theoretical construct nicely and tidily and accurately explains things like the escalation of public debt within society, the expansion of laws, the increases in prison populations, the increases in the prevalence of participation in war, everything that you can think of, then
It seems to me hard to understand, if people don't like this as a theory, what on earth they're talking about, or how it is that they would be able to explain something which this theory completely predicts, and which their theory completely predicts the opposite of!
This is just sort of thinker, so it just drives me a little crazy.
Because if you just say stupid crap like, we need a government to diminish violence.
Well, you're dealing about life and death.
You're dealing about guns pointed to people's heads.
You're dealing with teenagers thrown in prison to get raped.
You're dealing with war and bombing and the murder of tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, hundreds of millions of people.
You better damn well figure out what the hell you're talking about.
Before you start spouting off about the need for a monopolistic agency of pure violence and corruption within society, because it's a pretty goddamn corrupt thing to say that we need a state unless you know what the hell you're talking about.
Now, I may also know not what the hell I'm talking about, in which case I will be cravenly apologetic to everybody I've ever talked to, and I will email personally everybody who's ever downloaded my podcast that I can find, To tell them how incorrect I am.
Because I am not talking about violence in a way that is going to escalate it.
I believe that I'm talking about violence in a way that is going to diminish it.
Which is surely what every intelligent and responsible and moral human being wants to achieve.
So I get just a little bit impatient with people who just talk about the need for a government and justify genocide, murder, slaughter, mayhem, destruction, predation and the destruction of millions upon millions of people Because they feel a little bit more comfortable and they haven't examined their own family.
I mean, I just have no respect for that whatsoever.
So please, I do apologize if you are listening to this because somebody sent it to you.
And you have changed your mind already.
Good for you.
Fantastic.
I mean, how exciting.
How wonderful for you.
This is not for you.
This ranting part of the podcast is not for you.
But if you're out there still thinking, yeah, well, so what?
You know, there's still going to be lots of problems and we need a government.
Then you are really pretty corrupt.
And give me an email if you think that I'm wrong, and if I'm wrong, I will apologize to you from now till the end of time.
But if I'm right, then you're pretty sick and corrupt, and you are adding to violence, and you will never be happy, and your legacy be one of shame, destruction, and evil.
So that's my gypsy curse on you.
So let's have a look at people who say, well, I don't believe that something called the balance of power will ever work within society.
And this is something that's very important.
What is the answer to the problem of violence?
Well, the answer to the problem of violence is the balance of power.
It's the fear of repercussions.
It's the fear of problems.
I mean, this is something absolutely evident that millions of crimes around the world get prevented every single year because people have weapons.
And you can see videotapes of this, and you can see statistics of this, and you can see it just about every which way you want.
You can easily see, and this is a topic for another podcast on gun control, But you can easily and immediately see that all over the world, everywhere you go, wherever there's no gun control or wherever there's little gun control or less gun control, you have generally a smaller government or a government that's growing less fast.
You have a diminishment of crime.
You have whatever it is you want to call it.
You have a minimization of violence.
And people say, well, I don't think the balance of power is true.
Well, that's fine.
I can prove it to you very easily with the aforementioned example of the fact that nuclear-weaponed powers do not attack each other.
There's no single history or evidence in history of a nuclear-armed country attacking another nuclear-armed country.
Well, why?
Because of the balance of power.
Because of the ability to inflict harm upon each other equally prevents or denies or undermines the rationale for the rewards of the use of violence.
This is only for the immoral, or those who are tempted to use violence.
You couldn't pay me enough money to use violence, and you couldn't apply enough force against me to use violence.
But for those who are immoral, who are more interested in violence as a means to an end, what is it that stops them?
Well, the fact that they could get shot back is what stops them.
The fact that they themselves can get hurt is what stops them.
I mean, I'll tell you this.
I know for a simple, absolute and honest fact that if everyone had a button that could immediately kill everybody else, you would not believe how polite society would be.
Like, if you had a little button on your leg and you could sort of mutter a certain word, point at someone, push that button, and they would fall down dead?
There would be no rapes, there would be no muggings, there would be no fear of these things, and there would be no paranoia either.
That's what people don't understand about the capacity for mutually assured destruction causing civility within society.
This is exactly what makes society civil, is fear of consequences.
For the immoral, for the moral you don't need any of this stuff, and this is the vast majority of the population, but for the immoral, If you had the instant capacity to kill anybody you wanted, nobody would mug you, nobody would try and tax you, nobody would try and rape you, nobody would drag you off to prison, nobody would do anything to you.
Because it would be instant destruction for themselves.
That would be a perfect and wonderful paradise.
If I could snap my fingers and have that happen tomorrow, I would.
Because it would mean the beginning of a free and rational society and the absolute end of dictatorship and of the hundreds of millions murdered because they could not defend themselves.
And the next time a cop came by to pick up my taxes, I'd say, I don't really think I'm going to do that.
I tell you what, though, I'd be more than happy to hire you to protect theft or whatever, you know, like...
Let's work in some other capacity with each other, but there's just no way you're going to take all this money from me, because I'll just, you know, I'll make you pay.
And people don't understand that this would be an incredibly civilizing effect on people.
And we know that for a simple and honest fact, simply looking at that chilly amoral spaces that occur, or the chilly amoral social space that exists between countries.
That we know is for a simple and absolute fact that countries will not declare war on each other if the leaders of those countries face obliteration and the loss of their political power, which is sort of not what Churchill or Hitler experienced through the declaration of war.
They just don't declare war on each other.
They're perfectly civil to each other.
When was the last time that England and America drew swords against each other?
I mean, America, when it's facing someone like Iraq, will sky-bomb these poor hapless peasants into oblivion.
And when the French piss them off, they call French fries Freedom Fries.
That's their response.
I mean, people, what do you think the difference is?
The difference is that the French have nuclear weapons.
And if you think that what happened with Iraq, which was defenseless, is somehow more civil a level of disagreement than getting mad, pouring wine in the gutter, and calling French fries Freedom Fries, then you're morally not too well.
This is how countries deal with each other when they have mutually assured destruction.
They deal with each other nicely.
They have trade disputes.
They sit down at the negotiating table.
They don't invade.
They don't send armies over.
They don't bomb Paris because Paris could bomb Washington.
So that's how people disagree when they have the power to inflict harm upon each other.
And people don't see this, of course, because they don't remember or haven't processed what it was like as children and how brutalized a lot of us were because we had no power.
So they don't remember that this helplessness that we had as children is something that we need to process and understand so that we can not have this happen in the adult world.
So this proliferation of the ability to do harm to one another It produces a wonderful, civil, benevolent, polite society.
Yes, I know, it seems like a paradox.
But so what?
Competition, in a sense, should not produce improvement.
The world looks flat, not round.
The sun and the moon look the same size.
But they're just not!
So I don't care if it's non-intuitive.
Most of the major truths that are worth having at any way, shape, or form are non-intuitive.
Capitalism is non-intuitive.
Rationality is non-intuitive.
Physics is non-intuitive.
Biology is non-intuitive.
So, the non-intuitive nature of it, or the fact that it seems paradoxical that an increase in the capacity to do harm results in an increase in civilization and peaceful means of resolving disputes, sorry, it's just a fact.
It's well-proven, it's well-documented, you can't argue with it.
Yes, I know that America has the highest level of gun ownership in some ways, and has a very high level of murder, but this is not what we're talking about.
It's not what we're talking about at all.
Canada actually has a higher gun ownership than America and has a much lower incidence of murder.
So it's not gun ownership and there's many reasons why America is so violent.
I think largely it's two factors which I'll talk about another time.
One is the fact that it killed all of the inhabitants of the country that it came to.
Kind of the first genocide in history.
It leaves the culture a little bit twitchy.
And the second reason is that American foreign policy makes everybody terrified because There's so much violence that's going on in American foreign policy that people are just kind of jumpy and scary.
Not to mention the fact that America is the biggest market for drugs and therefore drug gangs and drug warfare comes all the way over to America and lodges within the bosom of the body politic.
So there's lots of reasons as to that.
It's got nothing to do with the fact that citizens are all equally armed as with them that there's no government.
So I think it's sort of very important to understand all of this.
That it is not a situation Where you can never get peace without equality of armaments.
You can never get peace without the equality of people who can do each other harm.
I know it sounds paradoxical, but it's just a fact.
And you're not going to get that with the state.
The state is the complete opposite.
The state is the complete opposite.
So there's just no way to be able to do it.
If you give people a monopoly of power, all you're going to do is you're going to guarantee a complete expansion in state violence and state power, or violence and power in general.
And you're just never going to get the kind of peace that can come through a situation where, if everybody had an atomic bomb, I swear to God, the world would be a paradise.
The world would be peaceful and wonderful, and there would be no war, and there would be no genocide, and there would be property rights, and there would be no rape, and there would be no murder, because everybody could do everybody else ultimate harm, and so there would never be any question of people initiating violence against others.
It just would never happen.
And that's really what it is that I would like to see achieved within the world.
You're absolutely pursuing the complete opposite of what needs to be pursued if you were talking about the government.
And so that's what I would like to say about that.
I hope that it makes sense.
I know that it's a little bit of an unusual approach.
I think that there's excellent evidence for it logically, empirically, morally, epistemologically, metaphysically, however you want to put it.
There's an enormous amount of evidence for this.
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