All Episodes
Previous Next
March 13, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
30:47
138 Propaganda Part 2: Positive versus Negative Economics
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Good afternoon, everybody.
It's ten to four on Monday the 13th of March 2006.
I hope you're doing well.
I am heading home a little early today.
I have to emcee a funeral tonight, as I'm sure those who've been catching up on the podcast know.
There is much woe in the land because of the death of my friend's, my best friend's I think, mother.
So I'm going to go and emcee her service tonight.
And so of course I have to make the last minute arrangements to get the karaoke machine and the belly dancers.
So there's lots of work.
To get together this stuff, which is needed for, you know, a ceremony that we're kind of making up ourselves, which should be fun.
So I was just listening to a podcast today, the one I did this morning.
I was listening to it as I was editing one or two things out.
At lunch, at pauses where I was trying to think and to sneeze, you know, the usual stuff.
The screams of pedestrians, the thuds.
And I noticed I sound really tired.
I really do.
And I sort of noticed that when I sound tired, I actually sound a little gay.
And perhaps that's a British thing.
If you put British together with tired, you seem to get sort of gay.
And I think that That was kind of interesting.
So I do apologize for any slightly lethargic language that's going on at the moment.
I am tired, of course.
It is both emotionally and physically draining to be doing the deathbed thing and doing the endless rounds of a funeral homes thing and so on.
So I'm going to go home and see if I can't have a quick nap before I have to go out and get ready both in terms of picking out the the poems and getting the speaker's order and making some notes about things that I'd like to say.
Have a short nap and then I'll head out tonight.
So, interesting.
I'll try to sound less tired.
I don't care about the gay thing.
Because, you know, as I've mentioned, I love the singer Freddie Mercury.
Wasn't exactly the straightest arrow in the quiver, let's say.
So, I'll try and sound less tired, though, because I don't want to become one of those podcasts that people put on when they can't get to sleep.
You know, freedom is really important and you want to not be so much with the government, eh?
So, let's plow on to the second half of propaganda, which is the relationship between propaganda and something which I've mentioned before called negative economics.
Now, negative economics is the economics that is associated with a great chunk of our lives.
Sometimes it almost feels like the majority of our lives.
And negative economics, I'll give a couple of examples because I actually had somebody ask me on an email to explain it a little bit more some time back.
And if memory serves, I didn't really get around to it.
If I did, I hugely apologize, but I don't think I did.
Negative economics is the situational transactional analyses which occur within our own minds when we are attempting to avoid a negative rather than to gain a positive.
Now there's no sort of black and white line.
down the middle of these two sort of spheres.
The positive economics is, I want a car, so what kind of car do I want?
And I balance the features and requirements and so on.
That's sort of positive economics.
And then the people that I trade the car with, so I go and buy some second-hand car, and we arrive at a price of $10,000 for the Lamborghini, because I'm lucky.
And so I buy the Lamborghini for $10,000.
$10,000 large.
And then what happens is we both walk away from that transaction happy.
I've got the Lamborghini for $10,000 large, which I'm happy about.
And the woman who sold her philandering husband's Lamborghini to me, which actually did happen on eBay, and it wasn't even $10,000 large.
It wasn't a Lamborghini, but it was some kind of sports car.
That a woman sold on eBay for like five bucks because it was her husband or husband who put it in her name and he was a philandering seed sprayer of decadence and much traveling.
So I thought that was kind of funny.
So I'm happy to get the Lamborghini for 10k and the wife who sold her husband's prized Lamborghini is happy because she gets to exact her revenge upon him.
And so we both end up better off.
And we know that we both end up better off because it's a voluntary transaction.
As soon as you apply force to the transaction of property, there's simply no way to figure out who's better off and who's worse off.
So, once it's voluntary, you know that everybody prefers to do it of their own free will.
So, that's positive economics.
Voluntarily, you choose to deal with and to trade with the people you deal with and trade with and everybody's happy.
Now, negative economics is when a guy sticks a knife in your ribs and says give me a wallet and you give him your wallet and you in a sense buy your life with your wallet.
Or you buy your lung, your punctured lung, your rib or your kidney or something with your wallet.
Now that's negative economics in that you are acting to minimize a negative rather than to gain a positive.
So those are two sort of very important and distinct situations.
So as I've mentioned before, I buy my freedom from the government with about fifty or sixty percent of my income.
That's the negative economic situation for me and I'm happy to do it relative to going in jail and not getting to go home to my wife.
That's a sort of an example of negative economics.
Another example on a more emotional level, well actually that's pretty emotional for me, but at a more familial level, would be if I went to go and see my mother, because when I didn't go and see my mother, she would call up and sigh and moan and complain about her bunions and be negative and say, oh, you never come to visit and blah blah blah, and I would feel guilty and trapped and airless and oh, I can't seem to breathe.
And the big maternal bosom would pour over me like a cascading waterfall of matriarchal flesh, and I would not only exaggerate... This is the day of wildly exaggerated metaphors, so I think that I'll try to refrain from them, since I can't seem to manage them.
They seem to get away from me or throw me violently.
So, if I can't handle my mother's disappointment in me, or unhappiness, or the guilt that I feel, then I will go and see my mother.
Not because I wish to gain a positive, but I wish to avoid a negative.
Now, two ways in which I find that the state and the family are somewhat complementary is that they both function in the realm of negative economics.
Now the free market functions in the realm of positive economics because in positive economics you can do anything you want and whatever you do you've chosen because it's got the greatest benefit for you at that moment that you're making the choice based on what you know.
So, my friend, whose mother just died, and he went to go and see her, say, six nights a week, except when he was out with the boys, he would go and see her, and he would have dinner with her, sometimes he'd watch TV with her, until like ten o'clock at night.
Now, she was also saying to him, you should go and give grandchildren, and get married, and so on, and as my boss pointed out when I mentioned this to him, he said, well, you know, the one thing That the mother could be sure of is, uh, don't come to my house in the evening.
I love you to death, but I want you to meet a woman, and I can guarantee you that there are no women, other than the inhabitants of Biddyville, there are no women in my house that you can marry.
So, wherever you are and I are together, I am together, there are no women, so go elsewhere to find the women.
But she didn't do that, she's like, oh, come over, I'll make you food, and I'll put you...
Put the TV on, and it's comfortable, and it's nicer than your bachelor dump of a place.
So, he went to see her.
Let's just say he went to see her because he couldn't stand the idea of her being alone.
He couldn't stand the idea of her padding around that apartment, and sort of slow maternal tears of regret and lonesomeness dropping from her face.
Or perhaps he went there because he bought into that sad, pathetic myth.
And I don't think he did, but let's just say that he did.
That he bought into that sad, pathetic myth that, oh, you're gonna be sorry when they're dead.
You're gonna be sorry when they're dead.
I mean, I'm just sad that it's this guy's mom and not mine.
It would be just too wonderful if my mom went.
And yet another reason how we know there is no God or Satan rules the world.
So if he went there because he was afraid that if he didn't see his mother six nights a week, he would be depressed or feel like he should have done more, could have done more, when he was older and she died and afterwards he'd just feel, oh, he's such a bad son or whatever, then that is negative economics.
You are avoiding a negative rather than to gain a positive.
Now these two things are directly related to the difference that we talked about this morning between advertising and propaganda.
So in positive economics you can do anything you want.
You can do anything you want.
As I mentioned during the Responsibility and Personal Freedom podcast a couple of days ago, I can stomp this car, I can hop the railing over to the side of the highway, I can march off, find a hot air balloon, and pay some guy to take me around the world in a hot air balloon.
I can absolutely do that.
I choose not to because it's raining.
Otherwise, I'd be gone, baby.
Podcasting from the skies!
So, if you are looking at the realm of positive economics, you can do anything that you want, anything whatsoever.
In negative economics, you can only do one thing, and one thing only.
And that's why I'm telling you that it is similar to propaganda.
Propaganda says you have to do one thing, you have to obey the state, you have to give up your money, you have to give up your rights, you have to obey, you have to obey, you have to obey.
And they also like obedience.
But in positive economics, you can do anything you want.
So positive economics would be to sit down with my friend and say, dude, what do you feel like doing tonight?
And we could sort of do just about whatever.
Negative economics is, oh, I have to go and see my mother because otherwise I'll feel guilty.
Do you see there's sort of only one path that you can take in order to avoid the negative?
So when you have a couple walking down the street, like Christine and I walking down the street, and we're saying, oh, should we go to a play?
Should we go to a movie?
Should we go dancing?
Should we go play pool?
Should we do whatever?
Well, then sort of a mugger comes in and says, give me your wallets.
Why then our conversation tends to focus a little bit.
And we don't say to this guy, hang on, we're trying to figure out if we should go to a play or to a movie or whatever.
Because he's going to say, give me your wallet, I'm serious.
And so we then have to deal with that situation.
That is absolutely the thing that we have to deal with.
We have no choice about that.
I guess we can run, but even that's a choice.
But we have to deal with that situation immediately.
So we've turned from a situation of positive economics, sort of, what should we do, to negative economics, which is, how should we get out of this situation alive or intact?
And so you end up having to do just one thing.
So if I'm sitting down with my friend and saying, what should we do tonight?
That's one thing.
We can do anything we want.
But if he's sitting down and saying, oh, with me, we have to go and see my mom.
We have to have dinner with my mom because I feel guilty otherwise.
You're in a situation of profound non-freedom.
Now the vast majority of families that I have seen Our families in which people see each other out of guilt, fear, obligation, a projection of future remorse, or bullying, or whatever.
And that is something that you see a lot of.
So, for instance, when my brother and I were still in contact, I would not want to go and see my mother.
And my brother would be like, well, we have to.
We just have to.
We're her sons.
Don't be so selfish.
That kind of stuff.
So it wasn't like he was giving me any kind of positive value.
He did try, as I've mentioned in one other podcast, but basically he was offering me no positive value whatsoever.
All he was doing was saying, "You have to, otherwise you're a bad person, a bad son, you'll whatever." And then later he turned to, "Well, you'll regret not doing these things when she's dead." And as I sort of pointed out at the time, "If I don't like her when she's alive, why would I regret not spending time with her when she was dead?" If I don't like skydiving, then I'm not going to regret when I'm dead, never having gone skydiving.
Especially when I've gone skydiving for 20 years and hated it every single time.
When I stop doing it, I'm not at the end of my life then going to say, you know what I'm really sad about?
I'm really sad that I didn't do skydiving.
Once I decided I hated skydiving after being forced to do it for 20 years, I then said, no, I don't want to do skydiving.
That would be sort of a rational thing to say.
But if I then said, when I was on my deathbed, damn it, I really should have, even though I hated it for 20 years and nothing was going to change, I really should have continued to do my skydiving.
That would have been excellence incarnate.
Well, it would make no sense.
Somebody would say, well, you didn't like it, you decided not to do it, so why would you regret that now?
And same thing with seeing my mother.
I didn't see my mother for... I saw my mother for 30 years odd, and then I haven't seen her for, I guess, about eight years.
And I'm not at the end of my life, or the end of her life, I guess, hopefully, the end of her life, I'm not going to say, gee, this woman who I really, really despised at every level, I didn't see her more, even though I had 30 years of seeing her and hated it every time.
This wouldn't make any sense.
So, the realm of negative economics is a really important realm to watch out for.
And this is sort of one of the reasons that I focus on the logic of personal liberty in these podcasts.
To say, do not accept any obligations from others whatsoever.
Do not accept any obligations from others whatsoever.
You are owed precisely nothing.
You are owed precisely nothing.
And you owe people precisely nothing.
I do not ever I don't ever expect that Christina will stay with me or spend time with me or live with me or be my wife for one second longer than is beneficial to her or that she really enjoys.
I would be appalled if I found out that she had stayed with me because she was sort of guilty that I would be alone if she left.
God, how horrible would that be?
And I really don't think, or would never imagine, that she would be with me for any other reason than the selfish pleasure that she takes out of being with me.
And that's the best and most solid foundation for our marriage, or I would say just about any relationship, is selfish pleasure.
Not obligation, not guilt, because none of those things exist.
You don't owe anybody anything, and they don't owe you anything.
Nobody owes you a job, or nobody owes you going on a date with you, or nobody owes you wanting to be your wife, and nobody owes you Anything!
And you owe them precisely nothing as well.
And in this tangled, sticky, ugly, squalid little grove of tentacle-bound obligation is where the realm of negative economics exists.
And that's why I sort of point out with your family you owe them precisely nothing.
They owe you precisely nothing.
And we already have enough of this forced, coerced interaction with the government that we absolutely should not add one scrap or iota More of it to our personal lives than we absolutely have to.
And if we do end up doing something based on negative economics, we at least owe it to ourselves to be honest about it, not to put it down as some kind of virtue.
So if my mother did die, or when my mother dies, and let's just say I decide to go to her funeral because of whatever, I'm not going to say, well, I guess I was wrong.
I should have seen her.
I'm going to say, well, you know, I'm going to go to a funeral.
I hated the woman, and I'm glad she's dead.
But I'm going to go to a funeral because of whatever.
Christina wants to go.
I should make something up, right?
Then at least I'm going to be honest and say it's not any particular virtue that's driving me there.
It's just the fact that there's some other consideration that I'm taking into account.
So, the realm of propaganda is to create these artificial obligations and to bind you down in the chains of guilt and in the chains of the argument for morality, the false argument for morality, and to make you feel like...
Yeah, I guess.
I mean, I should really want to, but I don't really want to.
But I should really want to go and see my mom or visit this sick person in the hospital or do whatever.
I mean, if you want to go visit your mom or visit this sick person in the hospital, by all means do so.
Nobody was forcing me to go and hang out by this friend of mine's mother's deathbed.
I was there because I cared about him and because Frankly, I was a little curious to see what happened.
I've never before been in that kind of situation.
So, I mean, I'm not going to wander around the hospital and come into it, but it's a sort of minor side benefit of being in this kind of situation.
It's additional experience and I found it quite a moving experience.
And I think I got a podcast out that at least a few people have found quite useful in terms of seize the day.
What are you going to leave behind?
Don't get consumed by pettiness and so on.
So when you are dealing with the state and with the family, you really have to be careful of this problem of negative economics.
Negative economics is always based on the false argument for morality.
And so it's the idea that a good daughter does X, a good son does Y.
If you were a good daughter, you would visit me more often.
You'll be sorry when I'm dead, because you'll feel guilty, and that you weren't nicer to me, and you should never have a disagreement with me, because we shouldn't be petty, or whatever, right?
So these shoulds, these arguments from morality, are absolutely asphyxiating.
And the state is really just an effect of the family, as I've said, ooh, I think at least one or a hundred times before.
The forced and coerced obligations that the state imposes upon us and we just accept are absolutely derived from the propaganda about the family that causes us to bow down, to kowtow to family obligations that bring us no pleasure.
But all they do is remove from us for a short period of time a negative.
So, for instance, In the family, let's say you're a woman and you've got to go and see your mother every couple of weeks.
And if you don't, you begin to feel guilty and you get those long sighing.
It's okay.
I just want to know if you're... I just want to know that you're okay.
That's all I want.
It's all I'm asking for.
You start to get those claustrophobic and horrible phone calls and then like, okay, I've got to go and see my mother.
And oh God.
And then you come out.
It's like, oh, done with that for another couple of weeks.
I can, I can laugh.
I can sing.
I can float like a butterfly and sting like a bee once more.
Then, you are in a situation of negative economics and it is actually completely identical to being an addict.
So, when you're initially an addict, you get a high and then, you know, when you get addicted to a very addictive drug like crack or heroin or something, when you get addicted to that drug, what happens is you are no longer chasing a high but avoiding a low, right?
So, chasing a high, you're like, I could do anything but what I really want to do is cocaine.
And then when you have been addicted or you become addicted and a certain amount of time goes by and you build up an intolerance to it, then what happens is you are no longer chasing a high but avoiding a low.
So you need a fix in order to avoid the DTs.
And that is really a situation of negative economics as well.
If you are someone who goes and sees a family member because of blind, depressed obligation, Then you are in a situation of negative economics as well, and you are absolutely in the grip of an addiction.
So instead of trying to get something positive in your life, you're simply running around trying to avoid a negative, and that's not going to work.
I mean, it's going to work in the short run, but it's going to corrupt your life and your capacity to love in the long run.
It's very cowardly, and I say this having been a well-publicized coward for 30 years.
I shouldn't say that, it's a bit harsh.
I would say that for about five years or so, once I really began to understand how little I liked my mom, I still went to see her out of obligation.
But hey, half a decade of cowardice makes me at least somewhat of an expert, wouldn't you say?
So it's sort of cowardly to say that I am going to avoid a negative and give bad people power over me because they're able to make me feel bad by having me accept a premise that I don't agree with.
I don't feel bad loving Christina because she's everything that I ever dreamt I could have in a wife and she's absolutely perfect and flawless and a goddess.
So I feel no compromise there.
She's not getting me to believe in anything I don't already believe in.
To go and spend time with my mother, who is the exact opposite.
And I'm sure that's not psychologically significant.
She's the exact opposite.
Vile and hateful and corrupt and evil and violent.
Exactly this kind of stuff.
So, of course, for my mother to try and make me feel guilty in the end turned out to be quite funny.
Because she could only make me feel guilty if she was willing to manipulate me.
In other words, if she was a bad person.
And if I were willing to be manipulated, in other words, if I were a sucker.
So you have a corrupt person and a sucker.
And that's not exactly a great foundation for a loving and productive and positive relationship.
So it's kind of ironic that the argument for morality is used by a corrupt person.
In other words, the mother would say, you should see me because you're a bad son if you don't.
But of course, only a bad mother Would use an argument like that.
See me because I'll curse you with immorality if you don't.
Only a bad mother would say that.
And so she has immediately invalidated her capacity to use the argument for morality because she is not a good person.
I mean, that's sort of important.
And it's sort of similar to something I was chatting about with a friend of mine, and he was saying about his daughter, who's older, about 17 or so, that he still wanted to control his daughter to some degree.
First of all, he started off by saying, well, I can't understand why parents have such bad relationships with their children, but it does seem to be kind of inevitable in a lot of cases.
And I think when he said a lot of cases, he meant all cases.
But I said that one of the things I think that happens between parents and children is that parents enter into this paradoxical situation wherein they say, I was a good parent and I'm a good and knowledgeable and wise person, so you should listen to what it is that I have to say to you.
And the young adult, who's over the age of 15 or 16, says, and I think quite rightly, they say in return, I don't want you to tell me what to do.
And the underlying message from the young adult side is, if you were a good parent, then you gave me the right values, and you let me develop my own capacity to make independent and logical decisions, all by my very lonesome.
So if you were a good parent, You should not need now to tell me what to do.
It's sort of a logical thing, right?
It's like if you're a sculptor, you can't say that you hate the sculptor.
I mean, you can, but you can't say somebody else is responsible for it, that you hate your sculptor.
So if parents are still telling their children what to do when those parents get into their mid to late teens, then
There's a real paradox, because you're saying, I'm a wise person and a knowledgeable person and you should listen to my advice, says the parent, and therefore you should do X, Y or Z. However, if the parent was a good, wise and intelligent parent, then they would have already instilled those values in their children and would no longer need to hover over them trying to correct their every single move and facial twitch and finger twitch and everything.
On the other hand, if the parents were not good parents and did not instill the proper values when the children were young, then what on earth are the parents telling the child what to do when the child is older?
It doesn't make any sense, right?
It's kind of like one of these sick jokes that's in the world.
You should listen to me because I'm your father, Luke.
Of course, that's kind of funny.
It's like, well, I did listen to you and therefore you don't have to keep repeating yourself like a broken record because I kind of got it when I was five that I should be responsible and considerate or whatever, right?
And if you didn't tell me when I was five and I'm making bad decisions now, who on earth are you to tell me, like, did you just suddenly wake up and become a good and wise person?
no.
Who are you to tell me how I should live?
If you didn't raise me right, who are you to tell me how I should live?
And if you did raise me right, there's no need to tell me how I should live.
So I think what happens is for a lot of these parents, they actually, I mean, sort of psychologically, I think what happens is that they end up looking at their children and seeing the effects of their own parenting, right?
So, They were sort of bad parents when the children were young, and so the women end up doing this, and the young men end up doing that, and they're not proud, and they feel guilty, and they feel like the secret is out, like their bad parenting is out.
But rather than face up to the fact that they were bad parents and get their kids some counseling, heaven forbid they do that, what they do is they then start to try and control the manifestations of their bad parenting.
They control the children's behavior so that nobody will imagine that they were bad parents.
Of course, thus making themselves even worse parents and ensuring that the family is going to fracture either physically or emotionally completely.
So there's another situation of propaganda and negative economics.
So the whole point of learning values is so you have lots of choices which are going to be positive, the outcome of which is going to be positive.
Or if the outcome is negative, you at least know it in advance and can make an informed choice.
So if you have values, you can make lots of choices.
Like if you know how to drive a car, you can go just about any place a car can get you.
But if you don't have values, or all you have is obedience, or being brutalized, or whatever, then you can't make any good choices.
And so you're kind of paralyzed.
Like, you don't know how to work a car, but you've got to get somewhere, so you just push it, and hitchhike, and you know, whatever, dangerous stuff.
So values breed choice, and obedience breeds paralysis, or rebellion, either mindless rebellion or mindless paralysis.
So one of the things that happens with parents in the realm of negative economics, and it also happens in the realm of the state, is that you're simply ordered to do what other people believe is the right thing, but it's still called virtue.
It's not called obedience.
Because you're old enough now that you're not just going to be able to be bullied and dominated the way you are as a child.
Like, do it because I say do it.
It always becomes, like, do it because I know better, say, the parents in the States.
And then when you start to question that, do it because it's the right thing to do.
You say, well, why are you forcing me to do the right thing?
It's like, OK, you shut up.
Get back in the box.
We're not going to listen to you because you're asking questions that make us a little uncomfortable.
So this relationship between positive negative economics and the state and the family in the realm of negative economics I think is very strong and very powerful and something that is well worth examining within your own life to say well what is it that I'm doing that I do not to gain a positive but to avoid a negative.
Because wherever you're doing that, you have a catastrophic, in my humble opinion, catastrophic diminishment or restriction on your freedom.
And that's not really what we want.
In order to be free, in order to make the world free, the whole idea is for us to be free.
You want to teach by example, right?
You want to show people freedom before you argue freedom.
So there was a question which I'll pick up again in the morning, which I put on my Libertarian Love Doctor hat.
It's actually a bit of a pimp hat.
It's kind of like a Stetson with a big feather.
You'll love it, baby.
When I put on the Libertarian Love Doctor hat tomorrow, what I'm going to talk about is somebody who said, well, when exactly during a dating relationship do you actually end up talking to your potential girlfriend or boyfriend about your ideas about freedom?
Now, my particular answer to that, of course, is that what you should do to set the mood is put on a couple of Free Domain Radio podcasts.
You know, they're about as sensual as you can get.
They're erotically charged.
They are savagely sexy.
And so, you know, just put me on in the background as I shriek about Dr. Phil, and I mean, you're going to score like Wayne Gretzky.
It's just going to be staggering.
In fact, I'm imagining that out of the results of these podcasts, there's going to be at least You know, 500 to 1500 children all named Stephan or Freedomain Radio Stephan or something like that.
So, of course, that would be my first.
Put me on in the background and just say, hey baby, do you agree?
Do you agree with the big chatty forehead?
I'm still working with that as my rap name.
But actually, no, don't do that.
What I would say is that you want to live free.
You want to live free.
Live free.
Be free.
And then people will be like, huh, this guy's kind of free.
Tell me more.
Tell me more about this mysterious freedom of which you possess and manifest.
Sorry, I've suddenly become a sort of badly dubbed kung fu movie, like there are any really well dubbed ones.
But you want to show freedom, and then have people be curious about it.
Ideally.
I mean, this is sort of like, not exactly black belt, but not green belt either.
This is slightly advanced, but you want to show freedom, as I think that I try to show in my podcast, where I sort of try to be free in what it is that I'm saying.
And except for the whole Judaism-Communism thing, I think I achieved it fairly well.
But you want to be free in your being, and then people will be interested in your ideas.
But if you're not free in your being, if you're stuck in large realms of negative economics, then people aren't really going to take your ideas as seriously, and they aren't really going to believe you when you say you're that into freedom.
But I'll talk a little bit more about that tomorrow.
You know what?
Actually, I wonder if I even need to.
Maybe I don't need to.
Gosh, now there's a thought.
Maybe I went on too long, or sometimes do, about particular topics.
I'll have to think about that.
But right now, I'll have to have my nap and then get ready for the funeral.
Thanks so much for listening, as always.
iPod, Upod, we all scream for iPod.
▲
Export Selection