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March 23, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
31:10
155 The Social Contract Part 1: Origins

So it's like this - the government sort of takes out a 'contract' on you...

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Time Text
Good morning, everybody.
I hope you're doing well.
It is 8.37 a.m.
on the 23rd of March, 2006.
Yes, it's a Thursday.
I'm getting the hang of this thing now.
So, I had an email yesterday.
This topic was scheduled for a little later, but I thought I would move it up because it got my blood pumping, and Lord knows that's enough for me to want to get your blood pumping, so let's have a conversation about this topic.
The question of the origin of things is always very interesting to me because what it does when someone tells you about the origin of society or the origin of taxation or the misty historical beginnings of things in the social contract and all this kind of stuff it really is quite fascinating when you see people theorize in the absence of information It's always a psychological test.
I don't mean like a test like pass or fail, but I guess it is in a way.
But what I do mean is that when somebody theorizes about the origins of the government or the origins of the social contract, they're not talking with any facts whatsoever because there aren't any.
And 99 times out of 100, with those other social institutions, There also aren't any facts or they don't know the facts.
So what they're doing is they're revealing something about themselves when they talk about it.
And usually they're revealing something about their parents and their family situation.
So I got an email from a fine gentleman who's written a very interesting article.
Rebutting position to the question, are taxes theft?
So there's an article out there on the internet, and I'll post it on the boards if I get a chance, and he wrote a good rebuttal for it.
But basically the article had a couple of arguments, I mean, for want of a better word, about why taxation is not theft.
And I'm going to deal with those arguments in a little bit more detail this afternoon, because they're powerful arguments.
Not in terms of logic or facts, but in terms of propaganda, both familial and societal.
And obviously by societal I generally mean in the state schools.
And it can be very instructive.
But I think it's more important than first and foremost essential to talk about the beginnings of things.
Now, when somebody says to you that the government came about or a government came about because people got together and voluntarily decided to surrender some of their sort of quote rights or infinite freedom capacities to subject themselves to the tender mercies of a centralized state, Then, it's a very interesting approach to take.
It's not something that would ever be intuitive.
And so, because it's not something that's ever intuitive, or something where there's any evidence for it, and people are absolutely certain of it, you absolutely know that you're in the magic land of propaganda.
When people have unfounded opinions that they're absolutely certain about, you are in the realm of propaganda.
Now, the interesting thing about the origin of things in terms of the state is that it also ties in very much to the origin of things in terms of family.
So if you look at some of the arguments for the proposition that taxation is not theft, you see pretty much what teenagers get told by dumb parents, dumb brutal parents.
And so people are revealing a heck of a lot about their own familial situation, certainly a lot more about their own familial situation when they were growing up than anything to do with political philosophy.
I think that's kind of funny when you see people ranting on about the state, when in fact they're talking about their own family.
Fortunately, that's never happened to me!
So, no need to worry about that.
No, that's why it took so long to go public, because I wanted to make sure that I was not doing that.
I was not doing that.
And when I talk to Christine about her family, I'm always putting forward the caveat, but I don't think this has anything to do with my relationship with my original family, but It could do, so let's make sure that we keep an eye out for that.
So I've tried to become free of the foo and not base all of my opinions about the state on my own original family.
But I would say that because I think I've done quite a lot to process the problems that I had emotionally, or the pain that I had emotionally based on my rather brutal and inconsistent upbringing, I think that I'm more sensitive to arbitrary authority because I've experienced it I think that I'm more sensitive to arbitrary authority because I've experienced it and I haven't blocked it out or So having processed it, I think that I've achieved a sensitivity towards authority that not a lot of people have.
So maybe that's of help.
Maybe that's got something to do with it.
I think it probably does.
But when you hear the arguments that taxation is not theft, they tend to revolve around a couple of things.
I'll mention them briefly here as a tasty foreshadow of what we'll talk about this afternoon, and then we'll get back to the origin of things.
Now, the first, of course, is that it's for your own good, right?
I mean, this is not stuff the free market can provide, and this is stuff that has to be provided, and only the government can provide it, and so it's for your own good, and if you don't want to participate, then you're just selfish.
You just want to take from people.
Now, if that doesn't sound like a nagging mom or nagging dad about chores, I don't know what does.
Why do you have to do these things?
Well, why do you have to obey me?
Because it's good for you.
And you should just damn well do it.
And if you don't do it, stop being so selfish.
Get off that couch and get your crap done that you're supposed to get done.
And stop looking for reciprocity.
You've got all the freedom in the world.
So, so sorry if we have to impose upon you for a little bit here and there, blah, blah, blah.
I mean, this sort of nasty, sarcastic parenting is really common.
It's really common, especially in the lower middle classes.
It's a little bit less... I mean, the lower class is just plain brutality.
In lower middle classes you get this kind of sarcastic verbal brutality and it sort of gets more abstract and in some ways difficult to manage as you go up the class ladder.
But I can feel the tug of that tangent.
But I will resist.
I can survive.
I will be strong.
Without that tangent I will live.
I will find a way.
So, you know, I sometimes wonder how many voices I have inside me, but let's not try and find out.
Perhaps after I've been podcasting for a couple of decades, we'll come back to the beginning.
I didn't know about Southern Preacher Guy.
So, another argument that you'll hear is something like, You know, this is America, and you have all the benefits of citizenship, and that comes with responsibilities, and if you don't like it, you can just leave.
Well, boy, if that doesn't sound like, you know, while you're a member of this household, you will do as you're told.
And if you feel like leaving this household, you're perfectly welcome to.
You know, the difference being that the parents own the household.
It's kind of funny, right?
The parents own the household and have the right to tell you that.
I mean, let's not get into the complications of DROs protecting teenagers' rights or whatever.
Let's just say, for the moment, you have the right to do that because you own the house.
I don't remember anywhere in the Constitution saying that the government owns everything and can kick you off the country whenever you feel like it, kick you out of the country.
And the funny thing is that that's actually pure communism.
And yet the people who use this argument, you know, usually they consider themselves somewhat pro-freedom.
The other, of course, is that the majority should always rule, which is just brute majority rule, or might is right.
And the other one is interesting as well, which is, you know, the government runs the society for the people's own good, and you have to obey the government because the government makes the rules.
And the government makes the rules based on everyone's participation, and it's for your own good, and blah blah blah.
And of course, if that's not like, hey, while you're living under my roof, you have to obey my rules.
I mean, again, if this isn't just stupid parenting that people have experienced in teenagers projected onto something like the state, I don't know what is.
We'll come up with some rebuttals to these and other arguments this afternoon, but to me this is an example of when you get somebody's opinion about politics.
That you know for sure that they're talking about their own family.
And it's just important to know that.
For a couple of reasons.
One, if they're a nice person, then you can help them to understand this, right?
So if they're a civil, decent, good person, you can help them to understand this.
And just say, you know, I know a little bit about your family situation, or can you tell me a little bit about your family situation?
Well, my dad was a Marine, and I said, I wonder if this hasn't had something to do with your perception of authority?
Because they're not advancing any arguments other than emotional ones, you really can't respond with logic.
I mean, you can, but it's a square peg in a round hole.
It's never going to fit, and it's actually just going to end up annoying you both, because you're both dealing with different things.
He's trying to justify the brutality that he experienced as a teenager, and you're trying to argue from first principles.
These two things are not the way that things are going to go in a productive way.
So don't bother with that.
It's just going to irritate you.
It's going to discredit the movement, and it's going to discredit logic as a whole.
So, the next thing that you can understand, or communicate, if they're not such a great guy, like if they're kind of like a jerk, of which there are quite a few, it seems to be the vast majority sometimes, in political arguments, which is a real shame.
Now, if they're not such a nice guy, then you can just tell them that they are bringing emotional baggage to a philosophical conversation, which is not only illegitimate, but pretty corrupt.
So, if you have a doctor who has a patient who reminds him of his mother, and he then does a very bad job of treating her, and she dies, we would consider that to be pretty immoral.
And if you are bringing emotional baggage from your family, or from your childhood, to an intellectual debate, and causing it to go badly, or for people to not learn, or to get irritated, or to become angry, or to lose their temper,
then you're actually kind of corrupt in this area because the political stuff that we're talking about the philosophical stuff that we're talking about is a matter of life and death as I mentioned yesterday morning and bringing emotional baggage to it and undermining the quality or the pleasure or the knowledge transfer of a conversation is pretty corrupt and it's not that uncommon and I think it's a real shame
So, you can just tell them, look, you're pretty corrupt, I think, because you're obviously bringing emotional baggage to a political discussion.
You're not reasoning from first principles, or talking about any kind of logical consistency within your own framework, and you're appealing to authority.
It's like, oh, Adam Smith said this.
It's like, I could give a rat's behind what Adam Smith says about anything, other than he's got some interesting opinions which I can compare to the truth.
So they use the argument of authority, which is where you know that they're dealing with family issues, and then they'll just make emotionally powerful or passionate or sarcastic or abusive statements and hope that that passes off as an argument.
Which, in this realm, if you can't bring your best logic game to the fray, you better stay out until you've figured it out how to do that.
And that's something I can speak about from experience, having not brought my best intellectual game to the fray at times.
That's something that you can just say to someone who's obviously bringing emotional baggage, to just say, this is a bad thing that you're doing, this is a completely wrong thing that you're doing.
You need to work out your emotional issues before you start talking about the government.
Because you don't want to be advocating the existence of an institution, even if you agree with things like the roads and That it inspects the meat, and it makes the water clean, and it's this magic, wonderful entity that does all of these things, despite the fact that, until capitalism came along, these things were never done by the state.
Somehow, the state was magically transformed by capitalism into this wonderful, benevolent, positive entity, and so we're not going to praise capitalism, we're going to give all the praise to the state.
I mean, it's kind of funny, right?
The state is a murderous, bloody, vengeful, destructive, genocidal entity for 10,000 years or so.
And then magically, when capitalism and the Enlightenment and rationality comes along, oh, you know, it becomes this wonderful, wonderful thing.
It gets turned around right away.
It's no longer murderous and destructive.
It's great!
Now, of course, something that exists for 10,000 years, that has now been vaguely civilized for 200 or 300 years, is not an entity that in its nature we can consider to be good.
I just think that argument is really funny.
Maybe there's another factor at work that we should explore and maybe give credit to, other than the state.
Oh, anyway, I won't get into that one either.
Boy, you know, it's just Tangent City.
I just had a really late night last night.
Not because I didn't go to bed early, I just tossed and turned, which has been unusual.
I've been sleeping really well for months, so I only got to sleep around three, and I've got to get up at eight, so I think tangent equals tired.
That might have something to do with it, but I will struggle to stay on the straight and narrow.
So let's talk about this origin of things, this idea that People have a social contract with the state that they voluntarily give up stuff.
This Hobbesian idea that in the absence of a state, everybody's eating each other and beating up on their babies and taking dumps all over the fire and the food supplies and everybody's just a bizarre, weird, nonsensical animal that's destroying its own nest and attacking its own kind and all this kind of stuff.
And people voluntarily subjected themselves to a state or a government in order to have rules that everyone could live by, in order to have a central authority that organized everyone, this, that, and the other.
That is a very interesting approach.
That nature is red in tooth and claw, as he says it, and also that life without a state is nasty, brutish, and short, which I think is a wonderful way of putting it, and has blown people's brains out as far as intellectual consistency goes for a couple hundred years.
But the basic idea is that we create or subject ourselves to the state so that we have some sort of consistent rules and don't end up in this sort of state of nature that you see portrayed in just about every cyberpunk postmodern film in the future that has anything to do with Mel Gibson or technology in any kind of way.
And it's a very interesting question, of course.
How on earth did these things come about?
It's not that we don't have any particular examples of states being formed in the modern world.
And that's sort of very interesting.
There's lots of evidence, but people choose not to look at that evidence.
In the present, there's no evidence in the past whatsoever, but people still, without looking at the current evidence, without admitting the complete non-existence of past evidence, come up with wonderful theories that justify the state.
If that isn't propaganda, I mean, come on, people.
You can do better than that.
I mean, if you're going to try and fool me about how great it is to be tyrannized, at least manufacture some evidence.
At least come up with something that's going to make me be able to swallow it without the bitter and acrid taste of complete intellectual humiliation and subjugation.
Work a little harder than that.
If you're going to be a conman, don't just grab at my wallet.
You know, spin me a little tail that's believable.
So let's look at the past.
We don't have any real, or remotely real, evidence about the origins of the state.
We just don't know.
Of course we can come up with theories, but it doesn't really matter.
The only reason that it would matter, of course, is if it made people feel something about a state now, then it would be important to come up with theories.
But since there are always and forevermore going to be theories about how the state actually came about, It's pretty irrelevant.
It's absolutely irrelevant.
You don't notice people trying to figure out exactly how mankind discovered fire, do you?
You don't see that coming up a lot in arguments.
Well, I think it was lightning that struck a tree, and I think a guy just happened to rub some sticks together idly, and it burst into flames, and then it fell on some meat, and they liked the taste of it cooked, and... I mean, you don't see lots of arguments and discussions about all of that kind of stuff, because it's irrelevant.
We know that mankind discovered fire.
How it actually came about is... Who cares, right?
And the same thing is true for the state.
We know that people did have a state imposed upon them or contracted out or whatever.
And the fact that we have a state, we can start to measure its effects.
And that's something which we can do.
There is evidence to see what happened after written language came about, what happened after governments came into existence and the effects of states and centralized tyrannies and so on.
Fantastic!
Let's start looking at that if that's of interest and if that opens up some new insights into the governments at present and in the future.
Wonderful!
But to talk about the origin of things is complete nonsense.
There's no evidence whatsoever, and the only reason that people are doing it is to make up silly stories like Old Testament-style stories to justify subjugation in the present and in the future.
So I don't generally get into discussions about what happened at the beginning of things because I just say, oh, do you have any evidence?
No.
Okay, so shut up.
I mean, I don't say shut up, but mentally I do.
Because I get angry when I'm in the presence of people who are just spinning me nonsense in order to ensnare me in state power.
I get sort of annoyed.
It is really an unctuous and vicious form of state flattery and courtier-like behavior, which I actually find more annoying than the police who'll just come to my house and say, get in the damn car.
So, there's no evidence about anything in terms of how a state came about.
We do see that governments do come about in the modern world.
So, for instance, a government was formed in 1917 in Russia.
A dictatorship was formed in 1933 or so in Germany.
Pol Pot in the 70s, I think it was, came into being in Cambodia.
Vietnam was taken over after the Americans fled.
There's lots and lots of examples.
Mao, in I think 1948, took over after the Long March in China and instituted a government there.
So there's tons and tons of examples, and they're all very, very well documented.
These aren't obscure things.
People don't have any clue that a state was formed in Russia in 1917, because they may remember a little thing called the Imaginary Cold War.
Where you could rely on the government for protection and hide under the desk for protection against a nuclear blast.
Both of which were, of course, equally effective.
So, to me, there's lots of evidence out there.
This is all very well documented stuff.
It's a couple of clicks on the internet.
It's as well documented as biblical skepticism and arguments against the existence of God.
So people are perfectly able to go and find out this information, they just kind of choose not to because it doesn't really comply with the theory that there's something like a social contract.
So, for instance, in 1917, did the Russian peasants engage in or enter into a social contract with the Mensheviks quickly followed by the Bolsheviks?
Is there anything written down where this occurred?
Well, not so much, right?
So there's no evidence of a social contract there.
There's a small evidence that the social contract existed in Germany because the majority of people voted for the Nazis.
Now, did the majority of people then vote for a complete dictatorship Did the majority of people then vote for World War II?
Did they vote for genocide?
And so on.
Well, no.
Of course not.
Because they got their rights taken away.
So wherever you don't have the right to participate in something, or not, you can't be said to have a contract.
Of course, right?
I mean, that's just so elementary.
It takes a real intellectual to ignore that.
It takes a really intelligent and sophisticated and well-programmed mind to ignore something that about a 7 or 8 year old could figure out in about 10 seconds.
So if you say to someone, so you're getting a dollar's worth of allowance as a kid, maybe it's more now, probably is more now, I don't know what a dollar can buy you these days.
But you're getting, I don't know, a dollar's worth of allowance and so your brother says, he grabs your money from your nightstand and he goes out and he buys two candy bars.
I know it's more than a dollar.
Go with me.
Luke, don't get lost in the details.
So he goes out and he buys two candy bars for a dollar and he gives you one.
And you say, I don't like that.
You can't do that.
And he says, what are you talking about?
I went out to the store.
You like candy.
I got you the candy bar.
I brought it to you.
I delivered it to you.
So what are you complaining about?
I've saved you like 20 minutes of walking to the store and back, so stop whining.
I'm providing you a service.
Mom!
He's being a jerk again!
Now, unfortunately, we can't call mom about the state because, as I mentioned before, mom is not exactly insignificant in the generation of mass obedience to tyrannies.
So, this is something that a seven-year-old can figure out.
It's not just.
Just because someone can't take your money and then provide you services and say, yeah, you now have to obey me because I've given you some services.
That's ridiculous.
I mean, there's nothing wrong if the brother comes up and says, Hey dude, I'm going to the store and I know you don't like to walk.
I know that you don't like going to the store.
I will go to the store and take your dollar and get you a candy bar as long as I get to keep one.
That's something you can negotiate and that's something that you can agree with and of course you can't change your mind when you've come back because you have already asked for the service and so on.
Now that's a voluntary engagement that people are going to have no problem with and of course the seven or ten year olds will have no problem with it either.
But the one wherein someone just takes your money and buys you stuff, which you may or may not want, and delivers it to you, in no way gets them to keep half of that, right?
So the fact that the government takes your money... I mean, yeah, they provide you a couple of services, of course they do, because they themselves consume those services and they want them.
But what they actually do is pay themselves.
They pay themselves first and foremost, and you know that for a fact, because what do they do when those services don't really work out?
Well, they pay themselves more.
I mean, this stuff is not that hard.
I mean, again, a ten-year-old can figure it out.
So it takes a really heavily university-educated intellectual to ignore this basic fact.
And generally, it really takes somebody who was brutalized by pretty verbally sarcastic and abusive parents as a teenager To not really notice so much what goes on with the state in reality, right?
Because they obviously are trying to defend their parents' actions by justifying what the state does.
But I don't see why the rest of us should have to be slaves because their parents were mean.
I just don't really see logically how that works out.
My parents were mean to me, so you have to go to a gulag, and you have to pay 50% taxation.
Sorry, but I'd rather you do that than me actually take any kind of therapy.
I know it sucks, but hey, that's the way I like it.
And so that's something that's very interesting as well.
So you can see states being created all over the place in the modern world.
Generally, they're bloody coups by paramilitary groups.
You can see this all over South America every 18 to 24 hours, it would seem.
And you can also see how states get created through foreign policy.
I mean, you can see how the U.S.
government creates states.
Saddam Hussein got the Ba'ath Party in power.
You can see how in 1953, I think it was, that the CIA achieved the holy grail of foreign policy, which is regime change by deposing the previous government and putting the Shah in.
And so there's lots of examples of how states get created.
I don't really see how any of those examples have anything to do with a social contract.
So the vast majority of states that are created are not created according to a social contract.
And this is absolutely as true of the American state as any other state.
There was no social contract that allowed Americans to create their own government.
It was simply that a bunch of guys shot the British until they left, and then said that they would shoot the Americans if they didn't pay them taxes.
Yes, it was smaller than all governments before in history, and all praise to them for that.
They figured it out 90% and that was great because it bought them quite a bit of freedom.
Us, not so much.
The only freedom that we have left is the momentum of the past from better intellectuals, far better intellectuals than we have now.
The current crop of vicious and verbally abusive intellectuals who are greedy for power and money and sell their souls for a tuppence could never in a million years create the kind of system that has given them the freedom to be such parasites.
So you know for a fact that nobody's looking at anything to do with evidence or logical theorizing in order to come up with this idea that the origin of things was a social contract.
Now in the realm of democracy, that's very interesting as well.
Of course, I've talked about this briefly before, so I'll just mention it again here.
The basic question around a social contract is, is it voluntary?
I mean, it's an insult to call it a contract if it's not voluntary.
If somebody has a gun to your head and you obey or die, oh, please, for the love of all that's holy, don't call it a contract.
Don't insult the free market.
Don't insult ethics.
Don't insult people's free choice.
Because it's not a contract if there's a gun involved.
Unless you've previously entered into the contract voluntarily and are breaking it in a DRO, you've signed the contract, whatever, right?
But when you're born into a situation, I don't really see how it's a contract.
So, for instance, children are forced to go into public schools, and if the parents don't pay for the public schools, and in many places don't send them to the public schools, well, the parents get shot, and then the children will get sent off to some sort of gulag.
Okay, sorry, not gulag.
Child welfare services.
It's very different, really.
And so, that's really not a contract for the children, it's not a contract for the adults.
I mean, even if we did go so far as to say, yes, okay, when 51% of people vote for something, it's sort of binding on everybody else, because majority rule, we're fine with might is right, they outnumber, and so on, and somehow the moral nature of mankind changes when one more person changes his mind, it changes for everyone, magically, it's beautiful.
Then what on earth does that have to do with subsequent generations?
So even if something like the income tax were voted on and was approved of by the voters of the time, which of course it wasn't, it was just imposed from above, then of course there is no such thing as a social contract for people that follow.
I mean, the next generation, the next guy who lands on the country and becomes, like, lives there, what on earth does he have to do with that previous thing?
What on earth do I have to do With socialized medicine.
I didn't vote for it.
I was never around for it.
What do I have to... I mean, even if they did vote for it...
Now another thing, of course, that would be interesting to ask is that people would say, okay, so if you buy a car from a car dealer and you then try and drive it off the lot and find that the seatbelt has constricted you so much, it's so badly designed that the seatbelt constricts you so much that it breaks three of your ribs when you try and move the car and then the engine explodes and you just sit there and you've got acrid fumes and it's all just a miserable experience.
So you've got this brochure which says, hey, this stuff's all great.
You're going to have such a wonderful time with these state programs on this car.
And then when you get in it, it breaks your ribs and puts smoke in your face and you never get anywhere anyway and you can't get out and so on.
Would you say that maybe you could get a refund?
Would you say that maybe you wouldn't have to pay for that car for the rest of your life?
Well, I would say yes.
If it's a valid contract, then surely advertising has something to do with it.
Surely the promises of what it is you're going to receive have something to do with it.
So if you are lied to in a contract, then you don't have to fulfill that contract.
So naturally, and I'm sure this is not a shock for anybody who's ever picked up the newspaper or voted, it may be fairly evident, of course, that politicians often don't do what they say they're going to do.
Or, they do the opposite of what they say they're going to do.
So, of course, income tax in Canada brought in in 1917 during the war as a temporary measure at 2 to 2.5%, actually 1% to 2.5%, I think, lowest to highest tax brackets.
Now, temporary may have a definition in politics that is not in milliseconds, but I bet you it's not really logically in centuries either.
Except, of course, when it comes to expansions of state power.
So a temporary measure, even if people did vote for the income tax when it was instituted, it was for a temporary measure for 1 to 2.5% And if it doesn't stay that way, if it ends up being, say, 50-60% and permanent, then even if they voted for it in the beginning, which they didn't do, then it's hard for me to understand how that's binding upon subsequent generations.
Even if you say the original contract is binding on subsequent generations, it doesn't really explain why.
If the contract changes and actually ends up being the opposite of what was intended.
So in Canada it was supposed to pay for the war.
It was supposed to be temporary and it was very low.
Now there's no real war and Canada has not been involved in a war since the Second World War.
But even if you say that it was put in to pay for the war, At the end of the first... in the middle of the First World War, and it's temporary, then the fact that it stayed means that there's no particular relation to its original sale, and it's not temporary, and the percentage has gone up multiple times.
Therefore, even if the original people voted for it, which they didn't, the fact that it has changed completely means that the original social contract can no longer be considered valid.
So, I'll get to more of this a little bit more this afternoon.
I hope you're doing well.
It's a very interesting topic, and it's very interesting and instructive in so far as it shows how people can become enormously corrupted by their desire to justify their parents slash the state.
This litmus test, this psychological test of seeing how people justify state power with reference to no facts at all is very interesting in terms of what it reveals around their psychology and their relationship to power.
So, I hope you're doing well.
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