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Sept. 3, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:04:09

397 Call In Show Sep 3 2006

A great debate with a scientist/teacher - don't miss this one!

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	Hi there, it's Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio at www.freedomainradio.com.
	Thank you so much for listening to this upcoming debate.
	I have to do a little bit of historical reconstruction here because there were some audio problems in the Skype cast which caused some dropped packets in the introductory speech or the introductory chat.
	That I had to Sunday, September 2nd, 2006, 4pm call and show.
	So I'm going to recreate what it is that I was doing and then we'll move into a debate that was certainly quite a thrill for me and I think will be very interesting for you as well.
	So the topic that I opened up with was this question.
	It's a definition that comes out of Maclean's magazine is sort of the Canadian equivalent of time.
	So time light, perhaps you could call it.
	And in it, there is an article called, We Have to Defeat Fear, by Alexandre Trudeau, who is a son of ex-Prime Minister, think of El Presidente with some maple syrup, of Canada.
	And he wrote, I thought it was a very interesting definition of terrorism, he wrote this I thought was quite interesting.
	Terrorism is a crime explicitly connected to fear.
	A terrorist terrorizes us.
	Granted, the word terrorist has been sorely misused over the years, but in essence it usually means someone who uses violence, or the threat of violence, against civilians to try to influence political realities when other means of change...
	That's just wonderful.
	I'm just going to read that once more.
	In essence, it usually means someone who uses violence or the threat of violence against civilians to try to influence political realities when other means of change are available.
	Now, the topic, then, which we talked about on Sunday, which I'll try and encapsulate very briefly here, or at least the introductory words that I had, were to do with how we can look at our own state-run, state-enforced, state-coerced, state-monopolistic educational system as a possible definition or a possible institution which fits the definition.
	It is someone who uses violence or the threat of violence against civilians to try to influence political realities when other means of change are available.
	Now certainly there are other ways to get children educated than forcing them into state gulags at the point of a gun.
	And if the parents don't pay for the taxes, which are used to support state schools, even if they choose to homeschool, they are still required to pay these bills.
	And if they don't pay the bills to support the state monopoly, then they are thrown in jail.
	And if they resist the people who come to throw them in jail, as you normally would any other home intruders, Then they will be gunned down.
	So I just think it's very interesting.
	As libertarians, it's a lot easier for us to see this kind of stuff because we're fairly well versed in the basic reality of the state as a coercive institution.
	But if we think about this idea...
	The terrorism or a terrorist, someone who uses violence or the threat of violence against civilians to try and influence political realities, I don't think that there's an intelligent person alive who could imagine, even remotely consider, the possibility that public school education does not do something to shape or influence political realities.
	When I went through, when I went through close to half a dozen public schools and I guess one private school, When I was a toddler, because we moved around quite a bit, this would be up to the time I graduated high school in Canada, I went through an enormous number of different kinds of public schools, and all of them had one and the same message.
	They would say the same things over and over again.
	Basically, the free market is unstable.
	Government is required to save us from violence.
	In the absence of the free market, rapacious capitalists will take over.
	That government bureaucrats are required to help protect the environment, to heal the sick, to give food and drink and shelter to the poor.
	To aid the elderly, the indigent, to bring justice to all the four corners of the land, and in the absence of the government, and in the absence of bureaucrats and regulations and taxation, that life would be a sort of Mad Max apocalypse where armed and shaven-headed gangs would roam the streets in bizarrely done-up Humvees terrorizing poor innocent civilians.
	And it seems to me that that would be a fairly strong attempt to shape political realities, to influence political realities, to force-feed thousands upon thousands of hours of the most puerile propaganda into the minds of the young, so that anytime anybody talks about the possibility of limiting the coercive violence of the state in society, that people have a knee-jerk reaction.
	As if you were talking about returning to the days of slavery and women in chattel.
	And that's a pretty strong way of influencing people's realities, thinking as most students, almost all students of the public school system do, that before the government expanded its mighty muscles of benevolence, there were children working in mines and everybody was...
	Sooty and grimy and coughing up their lungs and dying of black lung at the age of twenty and there were slums and there were Dickensian nightmares and this was the lot of the poor until the noble guns of the state were drawn against the rapacious greed at the capitalist and blah-de-blah-de-blah and the The Great War was a capitalist thing,
	the 1914 to 1918 war, and then the Great Depression was a capitalist thing, and it was only saved by the war in the Second World War, and then, I mean, all of the same propagandistic nonsense that you expect coming out from any state institution,
	any kind of agency or instrument of totalitarianism or The goal of totalitarianism is basically around making people frightened of freedom, and of course now we have a wonderful war on terror which is helping to accelerate that process even faster for the possible benefit of freedom in the long run.
	So I mentioned this in the beginning of the show yesterday, and then I finished up with this point, and then we'll move straight on to the debate that I had with a very intelligent and erudite and well-spoken gentleman who runs a physics department.
	And what I said was, or what I put out, was something like this, and this might be something to mull over.
	We can't see...
	As a society, we can't see the violence that is inherent to all of our own institutions.
	I mean, with the exception of libertarians and some other political philosophers, we really can't see, as a society as a whole, and we all know this is libertarians who speak in the social sphere, when you bring up the fact that The government is violence.
	People are baffled, bewildered, vaguely guilty, because deep down they know the truth.
	But there is no conceptual reality to the idea.
	It's like bringing up the scientific method to somebody living in the 9th century.
	They have no idea what you're talking about.
	And we, as a society in the West, are absolutely unable, in general, to see the violence that is at the core of the vast majority of our social institutions, especially, of course, the ones I'm talking about in the public sphere.
	Education, healthcare, roads, garbage collection, tax breaks for charities, taxation as a whole, all of these sorts of things.
	We simply can't see the violence that is inherent within these organizations, the violence that is at the basis of everything to do with the state.
	And so what I put out there to the listeners was the question...
	Do we think, as libertarians, that since our own society is so completely and totally unable to process the violence at the core of our social institutions, in the same way that prior societies were unable to process the concept of children's rights,
	or women's rights, or human rights extended to both women and children, which would probably be a more accurate way of putting it, Or such a radical concept as property rights, as borrowing or lending at interest, of perhaps the idea that slavery might not be the royal road to heavenly virtue.
	So if we are completely unable, as a society, to look at the violence within our own institutions, Do we think that foreign societies have any more luck with this?
	And I don't know, I mean, because I've never lived, I've visited, but I've never lived in, say, a Muslim country.
	Do we think that when the average Muslim gets up and goes to the madras or talks to the iman or whatever, that he or she is aware of the violence within the institutions within his own society?
	Because it seems to me, if we who are far more free than the Muslim world, if we can't see the violence when we are not shot for speaking out the truth about it, if we can't see the violence within our own societies, it seems to me that To be rather a mad dream to expect or anticipate that Muslims and communists and those who would do us harm,
	you could say, that they have any clue whatsoever about the violence within their own societies.
	And, of course, if we can't see the violence within our own societies, we have absolutely zero chance.
	Zero chance!
	Of defending ourselves against more violent societies.
	So I put that out as a question, not that I have a very strong answer for it, and then we entered into a most wonderful debate, which I will now let you hear.
	Thanks so much for listening. Oh, and by the way, I am also going to join the conversation just as this gentleman was complaining about the audio quality, so forgive me for that if you don't mind.
	Hello. Yes, I'm hearing you, but occasionally it is cutting out reasonable portions of time, so my mind is having to fill in the gaps when you're constructing phrases.
	You know, that might actually be a whole lot more intelligent than what I'm saying, so that might actually work out for me.
	It's kind of like a gestalt approach.
	Can I just ask, whilst I'm talking to you, if there is one unifying theme to this Skype cast, or is it just whatever kind of philosophical debate emerges, or is it mostly, it sounds like you're talking a lot about economics.
	No, what I'm doing is actually going to be...
	I'm talking about definitions of terrorism.
	Okay. This introductory chat up, and then I'll open it up.
	All right, well, we'll have to press on.
	I'm sorry that if a few packets get dropped, we shall do our best to try and fill it in, and maybe what I'll do is have a nice, exciting go after I've...
	when I deal with the recordings, to try and fill in the appropriate words, but...
	It would seem to me fairly certain there's an enormous amount of work done in the state educational system to obscure the brutal violence that is the nature of government and also to exaggerate the threats and dangers of the free market.
	And I think that when you look at this definition of terrorism, it's kind of hard for me not to sort of believe or not to see That state educational systems in particular do conform to this definition of terrorism, that a terrorist is someone who uses violence or the threat of violence against civilians to try and influence political realities.
	Now this idea that when other means of change are available is nonsense.
	The state is a self-perpetuating, self-controlling mechanism, and there is no capacity for states to shrink in size.
	They just never do.
	I mean, very occasionally at the end of a war, they'll do it, but that's only because they need taxes to pay off the war debts.
	So I think that it's sort of an interesting approach.
	When you ask people, when people talk about the war on terror, and when people talk about the dangers facing us from outside our own societies, I think it's very important to ask for a definition of terrorism.
	And I think that any definition of terrorism that you're going to come up with, using force to influence political goals or change political systems or influence people's thinking about politics or their society, it's very hard for me not to understand how you wouldn't innately include within that government-run domestic educational systems.
	And so the war on terror, I would say, would be far more profitably pursued against our own state-run institutions, particularly those that influence and, I would say, destroy the minds of children, which, of course, pretty much is the most precious resource that any society has is the minds of children, which, of course, pretty much is the most precious resource that any society has is the minds of children, which, of course, Hello.
	It really is very frustrating because I'm interested in hearing what you have to say, but the proportions between the dropped packets and the received signals kind of swang in a very bad direction so that I was not hearing you more often than I was.
	So that was...
	I'm getting threads of your thoughts there, but not understanding what the origins of some of your ideas are.
	And, you know, I think people may have left the Skype cast.
	It says on my system you've only got one now, participants.
	Is there anyone else here? Yes, mine says there's eight people in here.
	Ah, okay. Well, okay, I'd like to say a couple of things.
	First of all, I'm a former scientist who now is an educator in the state system.
	So I'd be very keen on hearing what it was you were saying about what you believed was happening in state-run educational institutions in terms of destroying minds.
	Hello? I'm wondering if you...
	Did you hear what I said?
	I was just saying that in terms of my background, I'm a former scientist who now works as an educator in a state-run educational institution.
	So I'm very interested to hear, because I didn't earlier, it dropped out.
	I'm very interested to hear what it is you think is happening in state-run educational institutions that constitutes killing young minds.
	Well, I would say that first and foremost, the major problem, the ethical problem that I have with the state-run educational systems is the coercion, the violence that really is at the root of their funding, insofar as if the parents choose not to pay, For the state-run system that they're going to get thrown in jail, right?
	If they don't pay the taxes to support the state-run educational system, then they're going to get thrown in jail.
	And what I find particularly problematic with that is that that's never communicated to the students, that they're there because they're forced to be there.
	And that their parents are going to suffer significant sanctions, you know, thrown in jail, if the parents don't pay for the system.
	Well, there is homeschooling as an option.
	I'm sorry? There is homeschooling as an option.
	Well, sure. And can you just tell me which country you're from?
	I'm actually from Great Britain, but I'm now residing in Canada.
	Oh, okay. Well, homeschooling certainly is an option for sure, but you don't get to not pay for the state system if you homeschool.
	So what would you propose as a viable alternative to that, bearing in mind that education is a costly business and it does need to be financed?
	Do you not think people should make a contribution, a financial contribution to the system which is going to educate their progeny?
	Well, you know, let's get into it.
	And I'm very glad that you're calling.
	And, you know, we haven't had somebody who's defending the system.
	So absolutely, let's have it out.
	Well, I will defend whatever the contrary opinion is just because I like playing devil's advocate.
	Beautiful. Okay. So we have Satan on the show finally.
	This is wonderful. I really appreciate that.
	You sound younger than I thought you would.
	But the first thing that I would say is if you're going to use things like the terms like the words financial contribution, I'm going to start taking issue with that just sort of from a definitional standpoint up front.
	I mean, if I stick a gun in your ribs and say, if you don't give me, you know, 50 bucks, I'm going to pull the trigger, I don't think that you would characterize that interaction.
	As a financial contribution, would you?
	So you're suggesting that integral to the definition of contribution is volition.
	Can you just tell me what name it is?
	Because we're getting some echo and I just want to make sure that I can unmute you by unmuting everyone else.
	The name that you have in the Skype.
	Quinn of Quebec.
	All right, fantastic. One second.
	All right, baby, it's you and me staring each other down like gunfighters in the Old West.
	So, yeah, as far as, you know, the problem that I have, and I would assume that you've been educated within a state-run system, is that it's hard for you, and look, I mean, I'm not saying that in any kind of disrespectful way, because it certainly was hard for me as well.
	No, I can preempt what you're going to say, that being a product of the system, it's hard for me to see beyond its presets and parameters as I'm a product of the same system.
	And that it is, in that sense, a kind of self-feeding entity.
	Am I right? No, I wasn't going to get that abstract.
	I was just going to say that it's hard to see the coercion at the very root of it, right?
	I mean, we would be against something like a forced marriage, right?
	That if you have a daughter that she grows up, that the state chooses her husband for her.
	And if she doesn't obey the state, then she's going to get thrown in jail.
	We would consider that to be barbaric.
	But the state has no problem choosing...
	Where the children get educated, how the children get educated, at what price the children, what subjects the children get educated in.
	And the parents have to pay or go to jail, and I would consider that to be as barbaric as allowing the state to choose your spouse and throwing you in jail if you didn't obey.
	But, I mean, let's just widen this because surely this is not a problem that is inherent to education.
	This is when it comes to paying for any kind of services, be it people collecting your garbage or whatever.
	You know, we live in a society that, all right, perhaps in many ways it's a pseudo-democracy and I believe it's a pseudo-democracy because I think that people generally lack the requisite intelligence or knowledge to make informed decisions.
	However, Given the system that we find ourselves within, all of these services, be it from education to street lighting to maintenance of the roads, if we leave it to be volitional and voluntary and therefore we square ourselves with your definitional problem that you had, How does it work?
	Surely we end up with anarchy.
	We explain the rationale to people of making a financial contribution.
	We cross our fingers and hope for the best and just pray to God that perhaps we might get a financial budget.
	Consequently, that will permit us to deliver an educational program or to keep the streets clean.
	What is your alternative?
	I'm interested.
	Well, I certainly would be more than happy to chat about the alternative, but let me just ask you this.
	I mean, I'm guessing that if I... I mean, I don't sort of want to waste my time and give you an alternative that, you know, if we don't sort of agree that the problem that at least I'm trying to solve is an important one.
	If there's a way that these services, as you call them, can be provided in a way that does not require sort of a centralized coercive monopoly called the state, That would sort of be better, right?
	I mean, I'm not going to say that it would be ideal or that you then have to change your mind, but it would sort of be an improvement on things if we didn't have to point guns at citizens to get them to fund things.
	I will accept that, although I would try and steer away from language like pointing guns, because capital punishment is still not really implemented very much when it comes to non-payment of school taxes.
	But yes, of course it would be better.
	I mean, that's a utopian situation.
	Whereby, you know, people in a living together community will see the rationale of making contributions and the justice of making equal contributions and would therefore do that with their own free will.
	But I'm not sure in light of, you know, evolutionary biology, etc., and human psyche if that could ever happen.
	But carry on anyway. I'm interested to see where you're going with this.
	Well, I certainly appreciate that, and it's great to have you on the show.
	I really appreciate your perspective.
	Now, and again, I don't mean to sort of keep hiccuping too much at the beginning, but when I say point guns at people, I'm not necessarily talking directly about capital punishment, but if you take away the sort of idea or this concept...
	of the state as some sort of entity that exists independently.
	I just had a request to turn the volume up a bit.
	I'm sorry if I blast your ears.
	Anyway, I'll just speak up a little.
	If you take away this idea of the state as an abstract entity that exists independently of human beings, right?
	I mean, there's no state that exists in reality.
	It's just a concept, right?
	It's like a country. It's just an idea.
	Then what happens in a sort of direct, physical, tangible way is if I withhold the money For paying my taxes to the state educational system, then I'm going to get a letter, I'm going to get another letter, and eventually somebody's going to come to my house to say, pay the taxes or we're going to take you away to jail.
	And they're going to be armed, right?
	I mean, is that a fair characterization?
	Okay, yes, I'll go along with that.
	That seems like a reasonable line of logic.
	Now, I certainly haven't entered into any kind of contract.
	I mean, I believe in private property.
	I believe in the free market. So I have no problem if I, you know, buy a car and say, I'll pay you later, that somebody might come and try and collect.
	I mean, I'm certainly fine with that.
	But what I will say, though, is that if I do try to resist arrest, right, if I don't view the moral authority of these guys in uniform who represent something called the state, which doesn't exist...
	If they come to my house and try and take me away when I haven't done anything, I just haven't handed over money to people who I haven't got a contract with, then if I do try to resist arrest, if I pull out a gun, then I'm going to get shot, right?
	I think that's a reasonable assumption.
	I would strongly suggest that you don't try.
	Right. Now, I certainly agree with you there.
	But, you know, because otherwise I'll really feel stupid for having paid my taxes all these years, right?
	Because I live in Canada too, so I know a little bit about the tax structure here.
	Now, if I don't pull out a gun and try and resist arrest, as you quite wisely advised that I don't do, which I completely agree, then they're going to take me away and they're going to throw me in jail where, you know, really nasty things overall are going to happen, right?
	And then if I try to break out, then they're going to shoot me.
	You know, in a lot of ways, this would just be called kidnapping in uniform.
	I mean, I'm not trying to sort of be inflammatory.
	I'm just sort of trying to make sure that at least you, even if you don't agree, that you understand the problem that I'm trying to solve.
	I certainly understand.
	I certainly understand the sort of theoretical framework that you're laying down.
	As you say, that's mutually exclusive from whether or not I agree with it, but I certainly understand what you're saying, so do continue.
	Okay, well, thanks. I appreciate that.
	Now, when it comes to interacting in sort of a civilized manner with your fellow human beings, we would generally think, I say, I'm sorry, we would generally think, I believe, that if we could not have guns pointed at people, but instead have a sort of voluntary mutual benefit kind of interaction, that that would be preferable, right?
	Again, I'm not saying that this is, you know, I'm going to wave my wand and turn the world into this kind of utopia, but if we could have...
	Well, of course it's possible, and I'll give you an example of how human beings can work on disputes without using weapons.
	Can I assume that you're not currently armed?
	I've got a laser sight right on your forehead, so be very careful.
	Well, you know, if you've seen my picture, you'll know that's a fairly big target, so I'm sure you'll be able to...
	Well, I mean, let me just say this.
	My first question to you is, do you think it's possible, which is a very big, open-ended conversation, and But secondly, do you think the likelihood of success of such arrangement is a function of population density and size of settlement?
	Because I think when you've got a lot of people living together, as that number of people increases in some large conurbation, I believe that the chances of what you're proposing becomes increasingly less likely to succeed.
	But anyway, carry on. Okay.
	No, and those are certainly very valid questions, which I can certainly take a swing at to varying degrees of satisfaction.
	But, I mean, I do get this question quite a bit where people say, well, is it possible for human beings to interact in a civilized manner?
	And we're usually having, at least what is for me, a very pleasant debate at the time.
	So it seems like people are sort of pointing at me and saying, is it possible for people to have fingers, right?
	So... It just seems like a little self-contradictive from that standpoint, but I think if I can characterize your question, your question would be sort of, obviously non-coercion would be better, but there may be certain situations like education and roads and garbage collection and so on, where coercion is the only viable solution for these kinds of things, because otherwise society would fall apart, there'd be anarchy and so on.
	Violence is generally better, but there are times, like too much non-coercion would be bad, right?
	Yeah, although I would say, again, I'm maybe being a bit anal here, but I'd steer away from the word violence, and I'd say rather than saying there'll be violence, there will be certainly a sanction of some sort, because the violent part of it, I mean, using your kind of little...
	An example there would be that if you resisted arrest and pulled out a gun, yes, of course, things could turn nasty, but for example, I come from the UK where the police generally are not armed, and so there would be no violence necessarily involved, but there would be a sanction, there would be a consequence of your omission to contribute, or to pay, I should say, because you don't like the word contribute.
	Well, but I mean, in England, even though the officers generally come from the UK too, so even though the officers aren't directly armed within England, I mean, they certainly call for armed backup if you have a weapon, right?
	I mean, so...
	Yes, but in both cases, be it your scenario taking place in North America or in dear old England, in both cases, it only gets nasty in your kind of hypothetical scenario when you pull out a weapon.
	Now... In which case that's threatening and violent behaviour on your part, which of course would be countered with some kind of What I'm saying is maybe I shouldn't do this because maybe it's not allowing you to flow and carry on with your train of thought.
	Your questions are perfect.
	Your questions are absolutely perfect.
	There's no point for me charging ahead if we can't do the basics.
	Your questions are absolutely perfect.
	I have no problem with them. In fact, I hugely appreciate them.
	It's just that I feel that to say that there's some kind of inherent terror and violence in the system, and using this example of payment or non-payment of school taxes, is perhaps, let's not say overdramatic, But I think it's just easier if we say that there is going to be some kind of consequential sanction rather than saying that there's, you know, because you don't have death squads, you know,
	like you would have had in Nazi Germany or the NKVD or the KGB in Russia coming around, you know, like you would have had in Nazi Germany or the NKVD or the KGB in Russia coming around, you know, the back of utility vehicles with submachine guns, just, you It's not quite as shockingly violent as I believe you're suggesting it is.
	There are certainly consequential sanctions for non-payments, but I'm not sure if that equates to terror, but do carry on anyway.
	Okay, got it. Well, of course, now I'm going to have to ask you another question, if you don't mind.
	And this is sort of a definitional question as well.
	If, again, I'm sort of a mugger, and I slither up to you in a dark alley, and I take out a little knife and press it against your ribs, but I don't stab you, and I say, give me 50 bucks, and you give me the 50 bucks, and then I walk away, no violence has actually occurred, right?
	Or there's been a threat. Yes.
	But you believe that the threat is going to be enacted, and that's why you give me the 50 bucks.
	And at that point, it's impossible to distinguish between the two.
	And of course, getting back to the theme of this discussion, that's one of the key features I would suggest is part of terrorism.
	It's the uncertainty that it breeds.
	That gives it its power.
	But notwithstanding some guy, us Europeans, we have sometimes this painting in our minds of some rednecks in the USA, these militia sort of elite guys.
	They've got all these shotguns and weapons in a gun-obsessed country.
	Notwithstanding those individuals who would start waving around some kind of magnum or something like that, generally, I'm not sure if it would be justified to use such dramatic language as a threat of violence if you didn't pay your school taxes.
	There would be a sanction, there would be a legal penalty which may involve incarceration.
	But unless you resist that, then violence will occur, right?
	Well, now we're getting into another difficult area.
	What do you suggest violence actually is as a definition?
	If I'm an officer and I've been sent to your house to apprehend you because you have not paid your school taxes, if you run the other way, yes, I'm going to run after you.
	If you try and hit me, yes, I might pin your arms behind your back and put cuffs on you, but is that violence?
	I don't know. Well, sure.
	I mean, certainly, if I do that, like, let's just say I'm not an officer, right?
	You know, we can get into the definition of that in a sec, but if I just sort of come to your house and say, look, you owe me $3,000 because I'm going to call myself the local government or something, and if you don't, Give me the money, then I'm going to drag you off and put you in my basement.
	I mean, I'm just sort of trying to take some of the mythology of the state and just sort of look at the sort of physical actions of human being to human being, that I can't unilaterally impose a bill upon you and then demand that you pay it, and if you resist me kidnapping you, then I can shoot you.
	That would never be considered something which we would sanction from a moral standpoint from a private citizen, and I'm not sure why that would change because somebody puts a uniform on or somebody calls himself the government.
	I mean, maybe I've missed something here.
	I'm totally open to the opposite argument.
	No, no, but I understand entirely what you're saying, but I mean, I guess it goes back to kind of utilitarianist philosophy, you know, the greatest good for the greatest number.
	I think it's fair to say that if any individual within our society was to try and exercise the same rights and powers that the government or state has, then yes, that would seem pretty horrendous.
	Right, I can't go and declare war on Iraq, right?
	I mean, and force you to pay for me to go and hire all of these...
	Like, I can't force you to pay me to hire all these mercenaries to go and shoot Iraqis, right?
	That would be considered like a kind of private mafia hit squad evil thing, right?
	And so the way that most people solve that problem intellectually is they create an entity called the government, which, of course, you know, epistemologically doesn't really exist, right?
	I mean, what exists is people, and there are certain people who claim to have certain rights...
	That supersede the rights of others, right?
	So I'm Tony Blair, I get to do X, Y, and Z, but you don't, right?
	And sort of that seems to me kind of like a recipe for long-term disaster, right?
	That kind of disparity of power.
	And it seems kind of illogical to say that certain people have these rights to do, you know, to charge taxes, to declare wars, to run welfare states, to run health care systems, which they specifically and legally deny to everybody else.
	That just seems rather sort of morally hard to defend, right?
	And I would certainly argue, and maybe we can move on to this, sort of the practical solutions that could be incorporated through a voluntary kind of mechanism, I think would be far superior.
	But do you not think that compliance with such a proposed putative alternative would necessitate a certain amount of intelligence, you know, kind of modal level of intelligence that Well,
	I was just going to say, it certainly is the case that there is a bell curve of intelligence throughout society and there's lots of people who can't make change for five bucks without getting it wrong.
	And there certainly is a risk which is easily identifiable if you're not familiar with the theories of saying, well, the reason that we have the nanny state is because people act like three-year-olds, right?
	So we kind of need to have social protections in order to avoid people doing damage to themselves.
	But the problem with that, of course, is that we allow people to have children, we allow people to choose their own spouses and so on, and surely those are very important decisions.
	So I can't really sort of understand, if we allow people to make very important decisions, choose their own careers, choose their university programs, choose their spouses, choose whether to have children and so on, if we allow people or say that people have the right to make those decisions, I'm not sure why they can't choose which garbage collector to come to their house or they can't choose which school to send their children to.
	Because if the population in general is too stupid to make those kinds of decisions, then I can't imagine why you would ever support something like a democracy.
	Wouldn't a total dictatorship of the intelligent in the sort of platonic model be the inevitable result?
	I believe a benign dictatorship is the ultimate formal government.
	Ah, well now we're getting somewhere.
	And can I guess where you would be in the hierarchy of a benign dictatorship?
	Would you be at the garbage level or at the philosopher king level?
	Just kneel before your new leader and pledge allegiance.
	You know, I'm picturing the postage stamp right now.
	I think you've got a fine profile for it.
	I got it. I got it.
	That's a hypothetical construct and that's an ideal.
	I'm not sure if that's...
	It's realizable in actuality.
	You mean the benign dictatorship thing?
	Yeah. Because it usually tends to go a bit animal-farmy on you?
	Exactly, exactly. I mean, that old chestnut about power corrupts and absolute power corrupts, absolutely.
	Oh, for sure, for sure.
	Now, let me ask you, if you don't mind, a couple of other questions before I'll open it up to other people.
	I do apologize to all other listeners if I'm hogging the floor.
	I'm sorry about that. No, don't apologize.
	Boy, you know, this is two British people, both being hyper-polite and one person criticizing the other for being hysterical in his definitions, which is totally understandable.
	It took me a lot of overcoming my own British conditioning to see things this way or even communicate them this way.
	But which do you think is more important, food or education?
	Education. Well, I would say that education has long term.
	If you educate people, you service them with the abilities and the prerequisite knowledge they'll need to nourish themselves.
	It's like that old Inuit phrase, you know, give a hungry man a fish and you feed him for a day.
	Teach a hungry man how to fish and you feed him for life.
	Alright, and you're absolutely right in the sort of larger societal sense, but let me sort of bring it down to the molecular level, if you don't mind.
	Do you believe that human beings have a more immediate need for food and water, or do they have a more immediate need for education?
	From a biological point of view, obviously, water and food.
	Can I ask you your name, by the way, because there's someone here...
	Andrew, who's writing quite abusive stuff in the text, I don't know if it's about you or me, probably about me.
	No, it could be me. Andrew would be nice.
	Anyway, so I would say that food is definitely more sort of an immediate requirement that people have than education.
	And so it would seem to me that if it's...
	And of course, people make really bad decisions about food all the time, right?
	You sort of have to fly over the south of the U.S. You can see the people from 10,000 feet.
	And so it would seem to me that it would be more logically consistent that if something that is very important and which people make bad decisions about should be run by the government, that the first thing that we should do is turn over food production and distribution to the state.
	Would that sort of make sense to you?
	Say that again. Since food is a more immediate requirement for people than education even, and shelter and so on, that what we should do is not so much worry about education up front, but we should turn over food production and distribution to the state, as well as the building of shelter and so on, that all of these things should first and foremost be the responsibility of the state, and education sort of as we go forward.
	Would you sort of agree that the logic of the position could be argued that it's more important to get the government to run food production and distribution than other things?
	I'm not sure if that is the logical consequence, but I will for the moment agree and say yes.
	Okay. Now, generally, when the government runs food and shelter in a society, right?
	So you think of sort of Stalinist Russia in the 1930s, where you have 10 million people starving, and then you think of sort of Red China in the 1960s, you have another 10 million people starving to death, and so on.
	that when the government does take over food, shelter and the construction of buildings, that bad things result from it, right?
	Okay.
	I mean, it's fairly universally true that when socialist systems try to produce goods, that they do an inferior job relative to a free market solution.
	Thank you.
	Yes. I'm just wondering if you feel that something like education would be an exception to that kind of rule.
	You complain about the stupidity of people, which I can certainly understand.
	Of course, all present company accept it.
	Apparently, I am an idiot.
	Let me just remind you of that, according to the omniscient Andrew.
	But anyway, carry on. It's alright.
	I'll open up Andrew in a moment and you can show people what happens when you pierce the good British demeanor.
	But if it's the case that whenever government takes over control of an industry or a process, that the resulting products or output is really inferior, you've got two airlines in Russia, you've got people starving to death in socialist economies, do you think that education would be an exception to that?
	I guess what you're saying is quite an enticing possibility, the point that if it does, in fact, fall into that same pattern, that perhaps we are having an inferior product than what we might have an alternative model.
	But what are you suggesting, privatized educational companies?
	Well, no, of course not.
	I mean, sorry, I shouldn't say of course not.
	Because that was the kind of free market solution to the problems you described in Russia.
	Yeah, no, what I would say is, look, I have no problem with something called the government existing.
	Like, let's say you think the government is the best thing since sliced bread, and I'm a little bit more into non-governmental or sort of free market solutions.
	Then it would seem to be entirely appropriate that you should send your money to the government, and I should send my money to a private school to educate my children.
	Right, so that you and I can agree to disagree about whether the government is good or bad, but it would seem to me that the real question then becomes, I'm not going to force you not to fund the government if that's what you think the right thing to do is.
	If you want to send them a check and you think they're the best solution for the problem, fantastic.
	My only question or concern comes around people who then say, well, Steph, if you don't fund the government, then I want you thrown in jail, right?
	That's sort of where the major moral issue and productivity issue comes for me, right?
	Right. So I would say that yes, absolutely.
	If you think the government's great, send them all the money in the world.
	I think that the government is sort of a bad thing, not just morally, but sort of from a productivity standpoint.
	And so I would sort of like to be free to educate my children in the best way that I see fit, whether that's homeschooling or a private school or whatever.
	So it's not really a question of privatization.
	It's just allowing people to make their own choices with their own money.
	So there's opt-out clauses available to the populace If they wish to, you know, to educate their children with some alternative and preferable method.
	Okay, fair enough. And I would sort of...
	Where does that leave us?
	Sorry. Well, tell me what you mean by where does that leave us, other than in what we got in the world, Liberatopia.
	I don't know where I'm living now.
	No. Okay, you're using this from...
	Well, at least, forgive me if I'm wrong.
	You seem to be suggesting that...
	This kind of inherent violence, as you describe it, in the states is in itself a form of terrorism, yes?
	Oh, absolutely, for sure.
	I mean, if you say to children, you have to come to the state schools, or your parents have to pay for the state schools, and of course, state schools are not neutral in what they teach.
	There is no neutrality, no value neutrality in anything that is communicated between human beings, I mean, around sort of ethics or politics or whatever.
	And so what I was talking about at the very beginning was that there's an enormous amount I'm sure that you'll think, and I can certainly understand why, that the term propaganda might be a little bit of a, I think you used the term dramatic, and I certainly understand that that is the case.
	But all the stuff that I learned in school turned out to be false, right, about sort of history and about sort of economics and about the state and about politics and so on.
	Well, you're speaking in absolutes now.
	All the things you learned?
	Some of the things you learned.
	Not all of the things you learned.
	Well, no, and that's why I sort of put the caveat in around the state and around politics and so on and economics.
	Sorry, go ahead. Sorry, but for you to arrive at that position where you could say that everything you learned was false, that suggests that you rather do know what the truth is by which you can contrast it.
	Yes, I would certainly agree with that.
	Yes, for sure. I certainly don't know all the truth, but I know certainly some of the truths that we're told that were false.
	Well, now we get into arguments about what truth is.
	I mean, it sounds wonderful for you if that is in fact true.
	At the same time, and please don't take this personally because we're talking in a kind of impersonal, objective way, it sounds a little arrogant in a sense.
	I mean, perhaps you do know the truth and perhaps, you know, you do have an enlightened disposition on these subjects.
	Some sort of epiphanic event took place and these things were revealed.
	But for you to say that everything you learned was false, you know, almost in the same way, because my background is in science, I'm not a philosopher, but for you to say that it's false with the same kind of certitude and objectivity but for you to say that it's false with the same kind of certitude and objectivity that I might say gravity doesn't exist For you to have that kind of certitude, I find that quite remarkable.
	Right. No, I certainly understand that.
	But the only thing that I would sort of invite you to think of as a parallel, and I'm not going to say that this is going to be anything that's going to immediately convince you, but the way that people looked at theories of sort of physics and chemistry and biology and so on in the Middle Ages, and medicine in particular, of course, with the bleeding and the leaching and all that nonsense...
	The way that people looked at the methodology that people used to understand the physical world in the Middle Ages was false.
	I mean, there was no experimentation, no scientific method until Bacon.
	People prayed for stuff.
	They consulted the Bible.
	And they asked the Pope.
	Now, sure, they may have come up with a few things that were true, but that was all purely accidental.
	The fundamental methodology was incorrect, right?
	And so, certainly within the social sciences, I would make the case, and if you like, I'll put on the chat window, I've done a series of videos on metaphysics and epistemology, trying to work on this very issue of discerning truth from falsehood.
	But even if you say that I'm totally arrogant, and I can totally understand why...
	Sorry, I don't mean that as some sort of derogatory personalised remark.
	Yeah, it's an arrogant perspective.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	It's not you that's arrogant, it just seems an arrogant perspective.
	I totally understand that.
	But let me just invite you, I'll open up the board in just a sec, but I sort of just want to invite you for one comparison, because it's not, I know this will be shocking to you, but it's not the first time I've heard that.
	And one of the things that I sort of would invite you to maybe think about as far as arrogance goes is that I'm sort of saying that people should be free to choose the education, free to choose the garbage collection, free to choose what it is that they want to pay their money for and so on, which I think is kind of humble because what I'm doing is I'm saying, like, I have no idea...
	What is the best educational system for your children?
	I have no idea what the best way to collect garbage is.
	You know, the arrogance to me of the state, part of the problem is that there's a whole bunch of people saying, we have a one-size-fits-all, perfect solution which is going to fit everyone, and if you don't pay for it, we're going to throw you in jail.
	Now, that perspective seems a little arrogant to me.
	What I sort of approach in this kind of way is to say, well, I don't know what the best thing is for you.
	I don't know what is going to make your children the happiest.
	I don't know what your values are.
	You should be allowed to choose those.
	And that seems to me a little bit more humble.
	Now, the methodology that you have to approach that has a certain amount of, you've got to work on the philosophy and make sure that you're making sense.
	But I think the fundamental perspective of a stateless society or a society that can run without a government is really based on humility because we don't know what other people's values are.
	I could never choose your wife for you, so why on earth would it be possible for me as a bureaucrat to choose the education that your children should receive?
	Well, perhaps the answer to that is in terms of the consequence for society as a whole.
	If you have a whole generation of people...
	I don't know really.
	No, forget that. That's a half-baked thought.
	Oh no, give me a half-baked thought.
	Come on, give me something. No, no, no, no.
	I'm going to put it back in the oven and when it's baked fully, I'll reveal it.
	Fantastic. Listen, I'm going to...
	Sorry, go ahead. You had one more comment?
	No, I was just going to say, I mean, obviously you're an eloquent speaker and obviously well-versed in philosophy.
	And getting back to the Gaussian distribution curve of intelligence, I'm sure if people with similar levels of intelligence were all placed in a certain locale, they might be able to rationally come to some kind of voluntary libertarian society.
	But again, as a function of the fact that a lot of people aren't On those upper percentiles of intelligence, that's where I think the problem is.
	Do you think that the people who are in government are generally more intelligent and more ethical and more moral than the average population?
	We'll forget moral if we may for a moment.
	In terms of intelligence, if you could quantify intelligence psychometrically, which I don't believe you can.
	My background is neuroscience, by the way.
	But if you could come to some kind of arithmetic average of people in power, and you were to take an arithmetic average or a normal distribution curve of the population in general, then I would certainly suggest that they would probably be skewed on that graph to the right, to the upper levels.
	Is that an unreasonable thing to think?
	I think you're right.
	I would certainly put verbal skills.
	George W. Bush not included.
	We'll exclude him because he might skew the data.
	He's got excellent handlers, though, right, and good speechwriters.
	But I would say certainly in terms of verbal acuity, verbal intelligence, verbal skills, that people who are in politics generally, what do they call it, showbiz for ugly people, right?
	So they generally do have very high social skills and verbal skills.
	Which is the type of intelligence, if you look at how there are multiple intelligences.
	For sure. For sure.
	Now, would you say that, and I know this is a dangerous question, you don't have to answer it at all, of course, but would you say that virtue is associated with intelligence?
	I would say many people's is, but I'd say it's a false association.
	I don't know what that means.
	Well, I don't know.
	I mean, do you have to be intelligent to be virtuous?
	I don't know. I mean, Socrates said no one would knowingly do wrong, I think, if I'm paraphrasing him.
	But I'm not sure if that's necessarily the case.
	I mean, if you are I'm not sure.
	Well, certainly I would say that if you define at least some basics around virtue having to do with something generally called the non-aggression principle, which is like don't kill, don't rape, don't steal, don't initiate force against your fellow human beings.
	You can sort of respond to force with self-defense, but don't initiate force against your fellow human beings.
	I would say that, obviously, then a person in a coma can be ethical, right?
	Because they're not doing that initiating force against other human beings.
	So I think, you know, if virtue is like, you know, courage and wisdom and all these kinds of fancy-schmancy things, which, you know, it may have certain aspects of, then intelligence would be sort of required.
	But if virtue is simply, at least the basics of virtue is to not aggress against your fellow human beings, then I would say that Until you get round to like 70 IQ or something like really barely functional, like one step above the vegetable patch, then I would say that virtue is certainly within the realm or within the grasp of just about everybody.
	Yes, that seems entirely reasonable.
	Very interesting. Now, so the last thing that I would say, of course, is that if you believe that currently there are more intelligent people in politics, but they're not necessarily more virtuous, then it would certainly seem to me that you are not going to be too pleased with the current situation where a bunch of average intelligent people are voting to give over their powers of sort of sovereignty and property to other people who may have more verbal skills than actual virtue.
	Well, of course.
	Right, so that's a bad system.
	So let me ask what you would replace it with.
	I don't know. I'm coming in here to listen to other people's ideas.
	I'm not necessarily coming in here to furnish my own kind of grand unified theory or solution.
	I'm not sure. I'm not sure.
	I mean, personally, I... But you may not think so, because I've already said I'm a scientist.
	I do have some spiritual beliefs, and I... I tend to believe in some metaphysical drives which are, you know, conducive towards harmonious living.
	I don't know.
	I don't know what the solution is.
	I do believe, you know, if you, again, I'm not a philosopher, but I have read little bits, and, you know, if you read sort of Plato's Republic, You know, which many people would say is a kind of model of a Nazi state almost.
	You know, you have this idea of these people in charge who have got that greater wisdom and obviously that's one extreme on the continuum, but what's on the other end of the extreme?
	How do you devolve power to the individual in this way?
	Bearing in mind that not everyone has a requisite cognitive functioning to actually make choices that are good.
	Right, and we all have those deficiencies relative to particular skills, right?
	I mean, let's say that you and I are probably 0.001% above the curve of average intelligence, or maybe even more.
	Well, let's be humble. Let's say that you and I are above the average in terms of intelligence, I still don't do my own dentistry, I still don't do my own taxes, and I still don't do my own surgery, because even though I'm intelligent, there is things that I defer to other people who are more experts.
	So even though we're very intelligent, we still generally tend to defer things which we don't know to the expertise of others, and that seems to me quite a rational thing to do, but we don't do it at the point of a gun, right?
	We don't do it because we're forced to.
	We do it as a voluntary exchange of values.
	So what I think would be the best way in the long run to replace the existing system would be a system wherein there is no central government, wherein there is no central agency that claims or has the right to initiate the use of force, because that seems to me a very immoral action.
	And wherein, if there are people out there who aren't very intelligent in particular areas, as is the case, you know, Albert Einstein, you know, didn't rub his own back, right?
	I mean, he's going to pay someone to do it, right?
	So we all have those deficiencies in particular areas.
	So we need a society where we're free to choose to associate with those who fill up our own deficiencies with the division of labor principle.
	And what that means is a society where nobody has the right, institutional right, to use violence against other people because that, Plato nonwithstanding, always and universally seems to lead to corruption, right?
	We do know in history, and again I try to work empirically, I have a master's degree in history, And we do know that in history, when coercion is reduced within society, society flourishes, right?
	That was the Industrial Revolution, that was the Renaissance, that was the Enlightenment.
	When coercion, when the ability to initiate force in an institutional way, through a state, through a church, through organized religions of any kind...
	When that is withdrawn, society tends to flourish.
	And when a central organizing agency like the state, if you sort of think of communism or even the Muslim countries, when that state takes upon itself the right to initiate force against its citizens, then society tends to diminish and become worse and worse and worse.
	And, of course, the state continues to grow and grow and grow, just as the Roman Empire, the Greeks, the Macedonians, the Holy Roman Empire, all of these sorts of things.
	The government tends to grow and grow and grow until it self-destructs and usually creates something even worse after it.
	Like you think, after the hyperinflation of the 1920s in Germany, you had the Weimar Republic, which collapsed.
	And then along came Nazism, right?
	So states are inherently cancerous, right?
	Dangerous things to have around.
	You can certainly see this occurring within America, right?
	The empire, the massive deficits, the foreign aggressions.
	This is what happens when you give mortal, ordinary, fallible human beings these godlike powers to tax and control and coerce and enslave two million people in prisons.
	Sorry, go ahead. At what point does a leadership group Is there a kind of mathematical relationship where over a certain number of people it now becomes a government or state?
	Because anthropologically, if you look in all kinds of societies, primitive societies, all different continents, etc., there is always leaders.
	There is always people who make decisions for the group, be it tribal leaders or chieftains or whatever.
	So it seems to be Pretty much in the kind of psyche of man to have that arrangement.
	I mean, if you have a tribal leader, is he now the state or would it require a larger volume of people before it would kind of have that label attached to it?
	Well, no, for me at least, just sort of personally, and I'm not going to claim this as a universal definition because I don't think I've ever been asked this question before, so I'll just give you my first impressions and you can see if they're of any use, but for me, a state is an imaginary entity that is created that doesn't speak for itself, right? I mean, this Platonic, well, you're familiar with Plato, right?
	So Plato had this idea that there was this world of forms or pure abstract concepts which couldn't speak for themselves, right?
	And so when you have an individual who claims to speak for the social good, for the betterment of society, for God, for the race, for Germany, or any of these kinds of things, and through that claims the right to initiate force against the unarmed or the innocent or those who are not initiating any force themselves, Then you have a government, right?
	So if I'm taking you on a hike and I say I'm going to be the leader, well, I'm not saying I'm going to be the leader because God tells me that if you don't follow me, I get to kill you, right?
	There probably wouldn't be a hiking group that would last for very long.
	But to be a leader based on sort of I can add value because I know the hiking route is one thing.
	But if I'm a leader who claims the universal moral right to use force against others because of some abstract entity like a god or a government, that seems to me that's like a state or sort of an organized religious situation.
	That to me would be where the difference is.
	You talk about being an empiricist because you've studied history.
	Which is a whole other area.
	I mean, can you use history like science to actually extrapolate and have three points in a graph and therefore decide which way the graph goes?
	But anyway, that's another whole other conversation.
	But getting back to this idea of empiricism then, has there been any states Has there been any society, to your knowledge, that even approaches the kind of solutions that you would be comfortable with in human history?
	Oh sure, absolutely. So what would they be?
	My house. No, I'm kidding.
	Actually, my house has a female dictatorship on the Platonic model, so that's quite a little bit different.
	Benign, of course. Benign, absolutely.
	Benign and wonderful. No, I would say that, again, I can only use the broad sweep of history, and without a doubt, because history is sort of fundamentally a science about human life, or not even a science.
	It's a discipline around human life, so you can't expect the same degree of precision.
	From a biological discipline.
	Biology doesn't have to have the same level of precision as physics.
	There's lots of randomness in biology.
	There's mutation. There's all this kind of stuff.
	As far as that goes, you can only look at the broad trends in human society.
	When you look at examples like the growth of the economy during the times of the freest or smallest amount of government, the reduction in the size of government is always, always, always coincided with a growth in the economy.
	That's not really answering the question, though, is it?
	Because you're saying when the state is smaller, it's preferable.
	But I'm asking you, you seem to be advocating a no-state solution.
	Are there any examples of this that you know of?
	I'm not talking about having a minimalist state with minimalist interference.
	I'm talking about the kind of real extreme that you seem to be pointing towards, which is having no state at all.
	I'd be interested to hear if you believe and feel that there have been examples of that in history.
	If so, what are they?
	And also, if so, if we kind of apply a kind of Darwinistic natural selection kind of philosophy towards governments, why did that model If it is the fittest, not flourish.
	Right. Well, look, for sure there has been no society in history that conforms exactly with what I think would be the ideal solution, right?
	So I absolutely grant you that one up front.
	I don't consider that to be a huge problem because until slavery was banned, there was no society in history that had ever not practiced slavery.
	So for me, that's not too big a deal, right?
	Before women were allowed to own property rights, there was no society in history which had an untrammeled right for women to own property.
	So the fact that it hasn't existed in the past doesn't mean that it shouldn't exist in the future.
	But I will certainly say that an example of a stateless society would be your life.
	And the reason that I say that is that...
	Are you married?
	I am. Okay, yeah, so you know what I mean by the benign dictatorship.
	That's good. So we're on the same page as far as that gives us.
	Now, you didn't force your wife to marry you, I can assume.
	I plead the fifth. You might have lied a little bit about your income, but...
	Right, so you didn't force that.
	Now, you currently work as a teacher, is that my understanding?
	That's right, yes. Now, you didn't take any hostages in order to get your job, right?
	No, I didn't deem it necessary, but who knows what I was capable of.
	It might occur in the future, but so far, you're hostage-free.
	You're in a hostage-free life form.
	And I'm sure you get the general idea, right?
	Your friends are your friends because they find value and so on, and you buy them drinks and all that kind of stuff.
	But you are an example of how a non-coercive society can work and exist, in that you don't use violence to achieve your ends.
	You don't go over and say to your wife, I'm going to drag you off like a caveman to my cave, and if you resist, I'm going to do whatever, right?
	You are an example of how that can work.
	I'm not so sure that's true.
	Because, for example, I have people who answer to me, like the teachers, because I'm the head of the department, who work for me, I also have laboratory technicians who, you know, I'll ask them, would you please make me up some potassium permanganate solution?
	And although I'm not pointing a gun with a silencer at their temples or whatever, they don't just do it because, well, you know, Michael's a nice guy and he always asks us nicely and he always reciprocates and does us favors.
	Somewhere, you know, despite the fact that I'm a very easygoing guy and, you know, I'm not very much of a I do like to ask people rather than tell people what to do.
	But nevertheless, there must be some degree of their compliance attributed to the fact that they know that if they didn't do it, there would be a consequence.
	Now, what's the difference between that and the consequence that the average Joe will get if he didn't pay his school taxes?
	So how am I different in that sense?
	I'd say it's a microcosm of a state society in that sense.
	Okay, can you throw them in jail?
	No, but they can lose their job.
	Well, yeah, but so what, right?
	I mean, that doesn't mean that...
	So what's going to jail? Sorry?
	So what's going to jail? No, no, no.
	If I throw someone in jail, they have nourishment and they have shelter.
	If someone loses their job, then they have neither.
	Well, look, I mean, I've got to tell you, I know that you enjoy the devil's advocate position, but I think you might have gone just a little bit far by equating, you know, getting fired with being thrown in jail, right?
	There's a very big difference.
	If you get fired, if you couldn't get fired, you would have to use violence to maintain that right, right?
	All participation is voluntary.
	It's like saying, if your wife divorces you, that's exactly the same as if she shoots you.
	The two are very different.
	A marriage is a voluntary interaction between two adults, as is any kind of work relationship.
	But you seem to be dichotomizing this into kind of a binary system whereby, unless jail is at the end, then it's not defined as being coercive.
	But there's all kinds of interpersonal coercion that goes on in families, in relationships, And although the perceived putative sanction that may be kicking around in subconscious may not involve vertical iron bars, does that mean that it's not coercive?
	I mean, what I'm saying to you, is your definition of coercion, does it have to be an act Or a threat which necessitates incarceration at the end?
	No, no, mugging and rape, which would, you know, if I mug you, I'm not threatening you with jail, but I'm definitely initiating the use of physical force against you.
	Okay, and rape and mugging and jail, which are all pretty horrific outcomes, we'd all see, obviously, as things that are very unpleasant.
	On a sliding scale, on a continuum, are there not things that are less dramatic and less wounding, but nevertheless are still used in a coercive manner?
	I'd be more than happy to entertain that thought, but you'll have to give me some examples because it's open-ended for me at the moment.
	Well, I mean, for example, if you come to live in my town, you're a new guy.
	You've come to live in my town.
	You don't know anyone. You don't even know the language.
	I live up here in Quebec where they speak French.
	You come as an microphone. You come here.
	You don't know anyone else.
	No one is throwing you any lifelines to be integrated into the community.
	I come out and say hello to you and I act as your translator.
	I help you with all your paperwork, etc., etc.
	Now, if I ask you to do something for me, I might not say to you, well look, if you don't reciprocate some of the favours I've given you, I'm going to rape you or mug you or throw you in jail.
	But nevertheless, there will be some perceived negative outcome if you are not to comply.
	Like what? What negative outcome?
	Well, you might lose my friendship, you might be all on your own.
	Sure. I mean, it's the idea of biting the hand that feeds you, as it were.
	Well, let me ask you this.
	That's a very simple, off-the-top-of-my-head example.
	Sure. I would suggest that in that situation, when given the kind of dichotomy of possibilities, yes, I will lend Michael my power drill, or no, I won't.
	I mean, it's a very trivial, minor thing that I'm just trying to think here.
	But you might be influenced in deciding which one of those eventualities you want to pursue with the possibility of negative outcomes, which could be the loss of my friendship, lack of ability to communicate with the rest of the community because of the language problem, losing resources, whatever it is.
	So does that mean I've coerced you by asking you to lend me your drill?
	No. No, absolutely not.
	Why not? Because you're not initiating the use of force.
	Well, maybe not overtly.
	No, no, no. Maybe not explicitly.
	What I'm saying is...
	Yeah, go ahead. Well, no, let me just say...
	I'll see if I can come up with a very short parallel.
	If I send you 500 bucks a month out of the goodness of my heart and you get used to that kind of income, and then I say, I'd really like you to lend me your car for the weekend with the implicit sort of frown or vague threat that I'm going to stop sending you the 500 bucks a month...
	That's not coercion, right?
	Because the $500 a month, as is your time, your friendship, is perfectly voluntary.
	And to withdraw a voluntary benefit that you're providing to someone is not the same as, you know, sticking a gun in their ribs.
	What makes you say that?
	Well, because it's not. You can't say not because it's not.
	You're a philosopher. Well, because to initiate the use of force against somebody is to threaten directly their physical integrity, right?
	To stab them to whatever, right?
	And to simply withdraw a friendship doesn't threaten somebody's physical integrity.
	Well, I mean, it sounds like a very dramatic, if it would...
	But what I'm saying is on a sliding scale, on a continuum, perhaps there is coercion.
	Again, what I'm seeing to be understanding from you is unless there's something pretty dramatic like, you know, state stormtroopers coming to arrest you because you didn't do X, Y, or Z, then it's not coercion.
	But what I'm saying is I asked you for an example of a stateless society and you said that my life It may in itself be a model of just that.
	What I'm saying to you is many people do things for me which although I'm not actually wielding an axe or an Uzi or something pretty dramatic, they may be doing what I ask them because there is a perceived negative outcome which may or may not be reasonably founded and therefore that's just as much coercion.
	It's just to a lesser degree.
	It's just to a lesser degree.
	But if somebody does, like you say, you run a department, right?
	So if somebody runs a lab result for you because you asked them to, they may feel or believe, or you may indeed threaten them, that if they don't do it, you're going to fire them, right?
	Now, that is simply the withdrawal of a positive, right?
	An income, a job.
	as opposed to the presence of a negative.
	As opposed to the introduction of, like, they're in a state of dependence and benefit.
	Let's just say, I mean, I know it's the free market and you like them and they like you and so on, but let's just say, right, they are dependent upon you for the provision of a benefit.
	And if you withdraw that benefit, which you're perfectly free to do, as, you know, you can withdraw love from somebody who, you know, turns on you like a rabid dog or something, then withdrawing the positive from them is not the same as taking them from a neutral state and introducing a negative like, I'm going to, you know, blow up your dog if you don't do X, Y, or Z.
	But the absence of a positive is in itself a negative, isn't it?
	I mean, let's...
	Let's take a topical...
	Sorry, let me just give you an example from geology because I kind of want to nail this one.
	The absence of a mountain is not a valley, right?
	The absence of a positive electrical charge does not necessarily mean that it's...
	I'm just using sort of analogies, and I know that that's not the same as a proof, but I think you're saying that the absence of a mountain is a valley, and I'm saying, no, they're too...
	No, no, yeah, okay, fair enough.
	You're looking for a polar opposite as opposed to just, like, zero on the sine wave.
	I understand what you're saying. Okay, let's take a topical example.
	I mean, you've strayed into my area, which is science, by using geology.
	Oh, I shouldn't have come alone, should I? You'd be careful, boy.
	Let me just ask if there are any scientists on the chat room.
	Hang on. Sorry, go ahead.
	But getting back into more of an example, that would be more your territory in terms of geopolitics and sociology and economics, that kind of thing.
	Let's take... Let's take this big situation that's blowing up now with Iran, okay?
	If the rest of the global community says, right, from now on, you ain't having none of our food, you ain't having any of our trade, you're not having any friendship or favors at all, That withdrawal of a positive is pretty terrifying when you've got children and women who are going to die, perhaps as a consequence.
	Sorry, because you couldn't produce your own medicine or something?
	Well, if the economy of Iran...
	Is crippled to the point that its citizens are in a terrible state.
	You know, there's disease, there's food shortages, all kinds of things.
	That is, going back to this idea of me and my life perhaps being a microcosm and an example of a stateless society.
	That withdrawal of a positive, which is voluntary, according to you, wouldn't constitute terrorism and wouldn't constitute coercion.
	Is that right? Well, sure.
	Let's imagine that you have a store in a town, and I choose not to shop.
	No, I sort of want to break it down to a minor, because you're conflating a lot of things, right?
	And I just sort of want to break it down, and then we'll get back to your question in a sec.
	If you have a store in my town and I come and shop at your store, that's beneficial to you.
	And then if I choose not to...
	Let's say you have a vegetable store and then I start growing my own vegetables, it's definitely not beneficial to you that I'm growing my own vegetables, but by not coming to shop in your store, I'm certainly not coercing or using violence against you, right?
	Yes, but in the example I gave you, the compliance, for example, of the Iranian government, okay, will...
	Is basically being sought.
	By the withdrawal of positives, which is what the United Nations will do.
	Well, yes, but you see, then what you're talking about is if I want to then trade with Iran, let's say that the Canada Sciences UN treaty and bans all trade with Iran, which sort of make it up, right?
	Then if I trade with Iran, which is not a violent thing to do, right?
	The trade is not a violent thing to do.
	Then if I get thrown in jail for trading with Iran, then the problem is the initiation of force against me from my own government.
	I'm not so sure.
	Well, that's what I meant when I said you were conflating things, right?
	Because if everybody in the whole world voluntarily stops trading with Iran, I mean, not that that would ever happen, but let's just say, right?
	Because, of course, in the free market, when you stop trading with someone, the price that they bid for goods goes up until somebody will start trading with them.
	So it's not possible, but let's just say it was.
	If everybody just woke up in the morning and said, I don't want to trade with Iran, then sure, Iran's economy would take a hit and so on.
	But nobody should be forced to trade with anyone in the way that nobody should be forced We're good to go.
	Then if I get thrown in jail or threatened with jail for that, the problem then is the initiation of force against me, right?
	The problems that occur in Iran is simply a result of other governments using force against their own citizens to prevent trade with Iran.
	Okay, okay. May I just radically double back on myself and go back to earlier what you were saying about examples?
	Absolutely, yeah. Okay.
	I asked you if there was any examples...
	of societies that had a system which approached what you perceive as being an ideal which doesn't have this kind of pervasive evil terror-filled state and your answer was my life but my life isn't a society so that's not really answering the question.
	Are there societies in history Pan-cultural, in anthropology and anthropological history, are there societies that do not have any leadership at all, where there is no government as such?
	Yes, there have been those that have existed within society.
	For instance, in some of the original American colonies, there were certain states that had absolutely no government for up to about a dozen years until the federal government moved in and began installing politicians.
	If you have a look at...
	Can I just interrupt?
	You're telling me that at that stage, and by the way, I'm in no position to argue with you because I don't know enough about it.
	That's why I'm pulling out the obscure examples.
	Just kidding. Very good idea.
	No, and I'll send you a link if you like.
	Well, I just find it, I mean, just from a skeptical point of view, I just find it hard to believe that in that society, pre-wheeling in these federal representatives or whatever, I find it hard to believe there was no leadership.
	Whether it was the local minister or whether – sorry?
	Well, but as we talked about before, like leadership and government are two different things, right, actually?
	I could lead you on a hike, but if I have to drag you along in a burlap sack, that's a whole different thing, right?
	So you can have leaders. There were church leaders.
	There were business leaders. There were domestic leaders.
	There were educational systems which had leaders.
	But all of these were voluntary, right?
	You could participate or not participate in them as you saw fit.
	Like you can join a manufacturer's association that's totally optional.
	You can join, you know, even certain unions that aren't state-sanctioned can be voluntary to join.
	But the imposition of a social agency with the right to use force in a non-contractual way, in a coercive, top-down way against citizens, was definitely absent from these colonies.
	And it wasn't easy to install.
	There was quite a lot of work to get these people to accept the government again because they really didn't want it.
	Or if you look at some place like Singapore or Hong Kong, Hong Kong has, relative to Canada, it's like a 10% flat tax.
	The government is like 1 20th the size and so on.
	And of course, the economy is enormously beneficial, even though it's very crowded, right?
	And it's got no natural resources and so on.
	But because the degree of coercion within that society is far lower, even than here in Canada, it does that much better.
	I'm just, yeah, but even in Hong Kong there's coercion and there's a state.
	You may say it's relatively smaller, but it's still there.
	Absolutely, for sure. And even with your examples and some of the examples that my good friend Andrew has been typing in about Pennsylvania, etc., I cannot believe that there wasn't government of some form.
	It may have been less formalized.
	It may be more informal.
	It may not be in a form that you'd recognize it now, but it must be there.
	Well, sure. What I'll do is...
	Yeah, go ahead. Well, it's a bit like that old candid camera sort of gag where there's a car without an engine and guys, stooges, push it up a hill to a gas station And, you know, the guy in the gas station goes to fill up the car and there's no engine.
	You know, if you could believe that the car went against gravity and actually got to the top itself.
	Right, right. And this is just the doubter in me as a scientist.
	Yeah, look, you're a scientist.
	You're supposed to be skeptical, right?
	For sure. Yeah, exactly.
	It's a virtue. Yeah, it is, absolutely.
	I should be in government. But the point is, I don't know enough about it.
	I'm way off my own territory here.
	I'm not as well-versed in history as you or your colleagues in the chat room, so I'm kind of out of my depth quite a bit here.
	But what I'm just saying is, from a kind of anthropological perspective, I find it hard to believe that There have ever been a society without a government.
	It may be a government that's very almost unrecognizable in juxtaposition to what you would call a government today or what I would know as a government today, but nevertheless it is a government and I'm sure it involves some coercion.
	I don't know if you listen to the podcast, but I'll tell you what I'll promise to do.
	I've never encountered yourself or your podcast or anything before.
	I stumbled on this today and thought it might be fun.
	Okay, no, I appreciate that.
	Look, I'm certainly really enjoying this conversation.
	I hope it's useful for you too.
	If you can type your email into the chat window, then I'll send you a link to when I do the podcast where I'll go into more detail about the sort of stateless societies that have existed.
	But what I will say, and maybe you can, I'm not saying you will agree with this, but I think that we can say, I would certainly make a strong case for the following.
	That when governments get smaller, societies do better.
	And there has been no example in history that I've ever come across where the government has become too small to sustain society.
	Societies get better when governments get smaller.
	And so far, there's no logical reason, right?
	It's sort of like saying, I've got this pill that makes your tumor go down.
	And the more of this pill that you take, like the longer you take this pill, the smaller your tumor becomes.
	And then everybody stops taking the pill before the tumour goes away and then the tumour comes back, right?
	So there's no logical reason to say, well, if you kept taking this pill, the tumour would go away and you'd even be healthier.
	So every time the government shrinks...
	But let me give you another alternative.
	I think we'd all say, a counter-argument, I think we'll all agree that having as much oxygen as possible in your ambient surroundings for you to breathe in is a good thing.
	and people have, in an effort to combat disease or aging and all kinds of things, subjected themselves to hyperbaric chambers to breathe in more and more oxygen, wacko jacko, etc.
	I think he's commonly termed.
	And it's used medically as an intervention.
	People who have got problems with their blood gas proportionality will be given oxygen.
	However, to say, well, let's increase having this good thing, let's increase it and increase it, why not have a hypochloric?
	If you have 100% oxygen, surely that's logical, but in fact 100% oxygen will kill you stone dead because you'll lose a high-pothalamus.
	And therefore, maybe it's more like that than it is with your tumor analogy.
	Well, I certainly would agree with you, but now I'm going to try and wrestle your metaphor down and turn it against you.
	We'll see if I get thrown or not.
	But what happens then is as you increase the amount of oxygen that's going into somebody's system, they begin to show negative effects, right?
	I guess they get dizzy, they get oxygen-rich blood, they, you know, begin to have palpitations.
	And so you pull back from that, right?
	But in the example that I'm talking about of when you diminish the use of coercion, the initiation of force within society at an institutional level, right, in terms of the state and in terms of the church, every time that gets smaller and smaller, society gets better and better.
	So in the analogy of oxygen, when you increase oxygen, you start to get negative results, so you stop.
	Right? And so...
	But the difference is with the state, when you make the state smaller and smaller, there's no indication of a negative effect that shows up.
	Why people stop? The reason that people stop is because the government...
	No, I have to say... I have to say that's a false comparison.
	That's a false comparison.
	Because with the oxygen, the first sign you have that is negative is when the person is dead.
	Okay? It's pretty dramatic.
	And it's established and it's well known in physiology...
	That you don't give someone 100% oxygen because we have seen people with 100% oxygen die.
	We have that data that allows us to predict the future, that allows us to guide our ideas about how to proceed.
	However, we don't have that parallel when it comes to sociology and government insofar as Someone decreasing and decreasing governmental interference in the state down towards zero and then, you know, the consequence of that.
	We have no data. Well, should we do?
	Well, we do. I sort of have to disagree with you there because if you look at something like the late 18th century, the American government was about one two hundredth the size that it is now.
	Okay, but let me say I agree with you that small government is better.
	Let's say I agree with you that less obtrusive government with minimal state interference is a much preferable state of affairs.
	That's a big difference between saying that we should then take it all the way and have no government.
	Well, sure. Look, I'm not saying that...
	And it's a big pill to swallow, and I'm not saying that it's even the right pill to swallow.
	I'm just sort of putting the case forward.
	But I think that if you and I can at least agree that a government that's 0.5% the size it is now is a better thing, then we can argue about that remaining 0.5% when we get there, right?
	But I certainly think that if we can find solutions that involve non-coercion within society, voluntary kind of ways of doing things, then that's definitely better.
	I would certainly make the case...
	That you have to go to zero because governments always grow, right?
	I mean, it took like 150 years, actually it took less than 100 years for the United States government to break the bonds of the original constitution and have a huge federal government and a civil war and fiat money and public education and all this kind of stuff and now it's just gone completely nuts.
	So government does seem to be something which you can't just sort of reduce it down a little bit.
	You can't reduce it down even a lot because it always grows back and there's not much point fighting a big battle to get rid of an institution like a government or at least reduce it.
	Getting back down to tumors, coming back to my favorite field of science, you're saying there's no point in shrinking it to a small level because it's just going to come back.
	Yeah, the best you'll get is a remission for a generation or two.
	So let's completely cut it out completely and therefore preserve the status quo that will ensue.
	But the difference between this cancer analogy and society is spontaneous generation of governments.
	I believe that the governments will emerge anyway.
	It will happen anyway.
	It's almost like having a very specialized type of tune whereby even if you remove it, this person has a genetic marker which means they're going to develop it again anyhow.
	So whilst it might be a good idea to shrink it and resect it as much as possible, You're going to have to be resigned to the fact that this person is always going to be plagued by these growths.
	I certainly agree that...
	Yeah, go ahead. Sorry. I just think my personal perspective, and I may not have too much philosophical argument or data to back it up, my feeling is that woven in the psyche and the soul of mankind, in whichever way we've been constructed, is this natural tendency towards advocating responsibility to a leadership, which you may or may not call a government.
	And I think that even if you were somehow able to convince everyone in a big global Skype cast to throw off their governments and live in some kind of peaceful, harmonious trading of experience and attributes and skills that,
	you know, my plumber is fixing my faucets and I'm teaching his children science, etc., etc., I do believe that there would be naturally an emergent tendency towards this Just a moment.
	I'm just basking in the tan of your regard for your fellow man.
	Just a moment. I'm getting a good color in here.
	No, look, I certainly understand that empirically, you're absolutely and totally and completely correct.
	Everywhere across the world, there are hierarchical structures, whether they're theocracies or democracies or autocracies or dictatorships.
	Everywhere around the world and all throughout history, there are governments and this and that and the other.
	For sure, absolutely.
	But there is progress that is generally made in human society.
	As I mentioned, slavery, women's rights, even the scientific method, right?
	If you'd looked at the human race prior to, you know, 500 years ago, you'd have said that human beings are just naturally non-scientific because there's no such thing as science, or at least not in the way that we would recognize it today.
	But when there is sort of conceptual leaps made forward, then human nature does change.
	And the problem with trying to understand human nature right now, which brings us right back to where we started, is that human nature right now is heavily conditioned by, I would say, pretty wretched parenting.
	And also, you know, 14 years of being taught by the state about politics and all this kind of stuff.
	So I would be hesitant and maybe, I mean, you could be right, right?
	But I would be hesitant about saying this is human nature because right now it's like saying, well, gee, everyone who grew up in Stalin's time turned into a communist.
	So human beings are innately communist.
	It's like, no, that's just how they're raised.
	So I certainly think that you might not want to mistake what people sort of believe at the moment.
	And, of course, if you look at Germany, Eastern Germany, East Germany, in like the 80s, you'd say, well, look, everybody's a communist because they all go to, you know, they're communist cadres.
	They go to the evening meetings and so on.
	But the moment that communism was lifted, everybody said, great, I'm now going to be a capitalist or, you know, pretty much everybody.
	So I think that people kind of react a lot to their circumstances and the environment of thinking that's around them.
	I see what you're saying, but I think the communist imposition on people...
	I think that's quite true as well.
	Now, we're getting a little bit of grumbling because we've had a nice hour and a half long chat.
	I'm going to just open up the mics to everyone else.
	I certainly really appreciate that you've come in.
	I do apologize to other people if I have hugged the microphone.
	I would just like to say before I disappear...
	That Andrew seems to define successful conversation as one in which I fundamentally change my world view, which is kind of strange.
	Well no, because we've got next weekend for that.
	It's the process of talking that makes it a success.
	Right, and of course you...
	I think if I, you know, the other thing I'll say too is that if I had come across as somebody who just wanted to change you and had no doubt or uncertainty, that it would not have been a conversation that would have lasted or been enjoyable, right?
	I think we should get Andrew on the microphone because he's obviously got a lot to say.
	Andrew, are you mic'd this week?
	Yeah, I'm here. Ah, okay, go ahead.
	I'm just going to, you and the gentleman I've been chatting with have been unmuted.
	I don't really have much to say.
	I don't like to carry on conversations for such lengths when the person I'm talking to won't accept basic facts in the beginning of the conversation.
	That's just my style.
	But they're basic to people who are familiar with this particular approach to philosophy.
	They're certainly not basic to the general population, which doesn't mean that we're right.
	It just means that When you're unfamiliar with things, it takes a little while to understand them, and I'm not saying that.
	I think this gentleman did a very valiant effort of arguing the opposite position, but we also did.
	Can I just say, I wasn't trying to argue the opposite position.
	I didn't come into this thinking, well, I'm damn well going to try and refute everything you say.
	I'm interested in the search for truth, whatever that may be.
	And I like interchanging ideas with people.
	So I've conceded many points, actually, Andrew.
	I've conceded many points that Stefan made, so yes, I can see your point.
	So to say that I haven't actually modified my cognitive schema at all and I haven't budged at all is obviously would suggest you weren't really following what happened.
	And it does suggest, really, that this is a kind of process whereby participants, in order for this Skype cast to have been a success, We'll become apostles of a new way of thinking, which I would say is perhaps a bad way of looking at it, and perhaps the best way of looking at the skycast is that an interchange of ideas, even if they're not completely overlapping by the end, The interchange itself is healthy and stimulating, and that's how I would define it as being a success.
	And for me, for certain, it's very important that people who don't agree with the premises, that certainly I sort of take for granted, that having conversations around that is important, because you can never re-examine your own premises too often, right?
	I wanted to bring in one point earlier.
	Michael had said about, well, how do you know that it's I forget exactly how it was framed, but the point I wanted to bring in was about that at some point you have to act, and you have to act on what you know to the best of your knowledge.
	So I sort of wanted to bring the analogy in of if the best of your knowledge is Newtonian physics, then you're going to build a rocket ship based on that.
	If the best premise that you have is relativity, then you're going to build a rocket ship based on those mathematics.
	It's an issue of checking your premises and going on the best of your knowledge.
	The same applies to morality.
	And when we check our premises, you know, when someone says that, you know, government, or let's say someone says America is good, right?
	Well, as scientists, we want to check that premise.
	The premise is that there's such a thing as America, right?
	So how do we check it? Well, we ask them.
	We say, well, what do you mean when you say America?
	And we sort of draw it out, and we find that, well, people act.
	People are moral agents. And when you judge actions, you can judge people's actions, not America's actions, because there is no America to judge.
	And I think that was the...
	So I think that was one point that I wanted to get in earlier was that at some point you're going to have to act and the best of our knowledge is people are acting and that's what I'm going to act on.
	Can I ask you a question? Can I ask you a question, Andrew?
	Yeah? Yeah.
	You seem to be quite enthusiastic about me conforming to the way that you and Stefan see things, which is a reasonable desire because if you feel that you've got the right way of understanding something, you would like it if more people shared that idea.
	That's natural.
	In the textbooks, you called me a fucking idiot and a doof.
	Do you think that's conducive to that's making me be more aligned to the way you think or do you think that's a little bit self-defeating, not to mention rude?
	No, I don't think it's very conducive to anything.
	Okay.
	That's not particularly nice, is it?
	If we're honest. Your silence speaks volumes.
	Thank you. Right, and this is what I mean when I say that British people are very nice and yet have a bit of a sledgehammer as far as social stuff goes, which I certainly respect as well.
	I have no problem with people being assertive or even aggressive in conversations, but I think that it's something that you should carry to the person directly if that is your preferred method of interacting.
	So I'm going to...
	The value of judgment, a derogatory value of judgment given to someone just because they don't conform with your beliefs, which I think is a little bit sad.
	Right. And of course, as I've talked about in some articles that I've written for various websites, there was a time when I believed quite the opposite of what I believe now.
	And I certainly would not say that I was sort of an idiot beforehand.
	It's just, you know, I've tried to expand my knowledge and tried to be, you know, as consistent as I can be.
	And perhaps you would go through another reversal and have to look back on this and think that, you know, similarly, you know, you were not an idiot when you were...
	You might evolve beyond that, too, if that's the case.
	I mean, do you think we've reached your final kind of encapsulation of truth?
	No, that's actually scheduled for tomorrow.
	Oh, good. Obviously, I'm close.
	I'm just not quite there.
	No, of course. It's a lifelong process, right?
	I mean, you guys are like it, obviously.
	Certainly, yeah. I would put myself down as a market anarchist, which is not.
	There are certain kind of anarchists who believe that there's no such thing as property rights, which I find quite silly.
	But definitely I would put myself down as a voluntarist, sort of property rights-based organization of society as the best way for things to work.
	So, yeah, that's definitely the case.
	Let's put sort of...
	Sorry, sorry. Andrew?
	I'm sorry, somebody just jumped in?
	Hello? I think this was Adi.
	You know, it's always the case that the people ramp up right to the end.
	I'm not sure if I'm not getting my time zones across very well, but it always seems to be the case.
	Now, the mics are open if anybody else...
	I'm sorry, go ahead. No, no, Karen, open up to other people.
	I've taken...
	Well, no, it's okay. If other people don't have anything to say, for sure, go for it.
	Hello? Hello?
	I called you an idiot in response to when you said that you want the benign dictatorship.
	I'm sorry. Okay, but if I was to say...
	Okay, I'll just... Hang on one sec.
	I'm just going to mute everyone except you two, just because we've got an exciting amount of background noise there, so...
	I'm sorry, Michael. Please go ahead.
	Okay, if I was to say that I thought benign dictatorship was the ultimate form of government...
	You may find that concept and that construct in itself idiotic.
	I have no problem with that, in which case attack my idea.
	But to say, therefore, that I'm an idiot shows that you have a difficulty in separating people from their beliefs.
	Okay, I'm sorry. I retract.
	I'll just call that idea extremely idiotic.
	I don't mean to call you an idiot.
	In your opinion. No, it's not my opinion.
	Well, it is until it's proven, right?
	It's a identifiable fact, is it?
	The idea that a benign dictatorship could exist and would be the ideal form of government is not based on any fact.
	Well, we're talking about social sciences here, philosophy, which...
	No, we have to talk about epistemology.
	Everything we know is based on fact.
	Sense perception, logic, concept formation.
	That's the process of reason. Everything we know is factual.
	Everything you know is factual. No matter what area...
	It doesn't matter what area of science you're talking about.
	It can be biology, physics, morality.
	Morality is not science.
	Well, it certainly is the case that morality is not currently perceived as a science.
	I think that there are ways to approach ethics that can be a little bit more scientific, but certainly right now, the general perception is that morality is not a science, and there's certainly some progress that we're trying to make along those lines.
	Yes. Yeah, and preparing ideas about what is a science, a proto-science, a pre-science, that kind of thing.
	Right. Morality is just almost off the scale.
	It's something... Which doesn't even dwell in the same kind of universe as science when it comes to the idea of having to unify.
	Absolutely. Look, I mean, I'm totally aware that morality is considered to be, at best, a vaguely localized cultural preference by many scientists.
	And absolutely, for sure, when I say cultural preference, I definitely mean that it's generally perceived to be subjective, for sure.
	And I'm certainly, with perhaps the arrogance of the ages, I am trying to take a good swing at trying to define a set of ethics that is a little bit less subjective.
	That's sort of my life goal at the moment, which is causing me to break quite an extraordinary amount of mental sweat.
	And may all amount to nothing whatsoever, but for sure, the people who have listened to podcasts that I've worked on before, read some of my articles, know that I'm trying to grapple the beast of the ages and move ethics into a little bit more of an objective kind of realm, but that requires a quite lengthy discussion, which is certainly not the case that we can get into right now.
	If you're going to say that morality is not based on fact, then what is it based on?
	Well, I associate facts with things that are objectively and empirically demonstrable, and you cannot get that with morality.
	I mean, most of the things that we take as being morally correct, there is no equation or no data which suggests it is.
	It's just a received cultural wisdom.
	If I say to you murder is wrong, would you agree, Andrew?
	No, no. Received cultural wisdom has nothing to do with it.
	If I'm on an island alone by myself, I have to be absolutely moral.
	I have to find some food. I have to find some shelter.
	That's the whole point of it. I have to use my knowledge of my surroundings to...
	Can animals be moral?
	No, they're not moral agents. Find food and shelter.
	I just want to understand what you're saying here about being on an island.
	Well, morality is not something that comes from outside of you.
	Morality is, we're talking about the study of preferred human behavior and That exists whether or not you are in a relationship with other people at any given moment.
	A value is something which you work to achieve or gain.
	So if I'm working for food, that's my value.
	So what's right for me is to achieve my values, to work for this food.
	That's what's right for you.
	It doesn't make it an objectively correct course of action.
	But let me ask you a question, Andrew.
	Is murder wrong? Yes.
	And is that a fact that it's wrong?
	Yes. How could you prove to me that fact that murder is wrong?
	I mean, I agree with you that murder is wrong, but is it a fact?
	Well, murder goes against values.
	I mean, if I'm walking down the street...
	It certainly goes against your views and my values, but some people are quite happy with it.
	Well, values are, as I said, based on fact, and therefore are common just as all facts are common.
	Okay, so if murder being incorrect course of action is a value, and if according to you values are based on fact, what is the underlying fact that justifies the perspective that murder is incorrect?
	I agree with you that it's wrong, of course, but I wouldn't say that you can say it's a fact that it's wrong.
	I'd say that it is the modal perception of mankind, cross-culturally, that it's not a good thing to do.
	Of course, in history, that wasn't always the case.
	It was human sacrifice and all kinds of stuff.
	But what I'm saying is, you would agree that stealing is wrong, murdering is wrong, rape is wrong, etc.
	And I would agree with you, totally.
	But we are now in the realms of talking about sociology, and you can't say it's a fact.
	If I tell you that protons are positively charged, that's a fact.
	But if I say to you, Murder is wrong.
	I say, that's what I believe.
	They're in a totally different realm.
	There's a different order of certainty and certitude in these perspectives.
	And I think that's the problem I have with a lot of so-called social scientists, which I think in itself is a bit of an oxymoron.
	is that people are trying their best, and it's quite an honourable thing to do, to try and apply scientific method and methodologies in perceiving something as big as a society.
	But I don't think that you can say that morality is based on fact.
	Morality is subjective.
	I mean, Andrew, do you agree with abortion?
	Let me just ask you.
	Andrew. Hello?
	Oh, his mic's off.
	He's off the mic. Look, I mean, these questions that you have, perfectly valid, right?
	I mean, the fundamental problem of ethics is that you can't get an ought from an its, right?
	You can't get a should from the way that the universe actually works.
	Without a doubt, no question, completely concede that point.
	Sorry, I interrupted you.
	Addy wants to speak. Yes, sorry, just one sec.
	I just find it arrogant that social philosophers will talk with kind of certainties, as if they were in a laboratory.
	Right, right. And I think also without sensitivity to the fact that, let's just say that some mind-brain-spanning genius has managed to prove certain ethical theories of being objective, I think it's certainly very important to understand that that generally is considered to be fairly impossible and is rather a remarkable task to try and achieve.
	And if you have achieved it, then you need to be sensitive to the fact that it's quite a skeptical feat to...
	People can rightly be skeptical of the possibility of it.
	Sorry, go ahead, Eddie. Adi, your mic is...
	I'm sorry.
	No, your mic is off, Adi.
	Your mic is on. Hello, can you hear me?
	Yes, we can. All right, because it shows up, it's muted over here.
	So my approach here would be to apply some sort of discrimination.
	We can use that word.
	When I'm engaging in conversation with someone, I'm not going to my time and try to debate morality with someone who's trying to kill me, right?
	So, I think we can go on a person-by-person basis.
	I don't think it would be inconsistent, but it would show our unwillingness to engage in rational debate with someone who wants to take away our rights.
	By engaging in simple conversation, we recognize their uniqueness as a person.
	We recognize their autonomy.
	We recognize, for instance, their right to live.
	We don't kill them right away.
	We recognize their integrity as human beings, as persons.
	So there are a lot of things that we already concede just by engaging in conversation.
	And I think that's a point that should be into consideration.
	Yeah, no, I've definitely, this is a debate that's going on in another group that I'm involved in around argumentation ethics, that if I start to have a debate with somebody, then I'm accepting an enormous amount of sort of factual or logical axioms, right?
	That debate is better than force, that rationality is better than, you know, simple emotional assertion, and so on.
	And so there's a certain amount of things which we accept in the very act of debating that are values that we then have to remain consistent with through the course of that debate.
	And those certainly things are very true.
	It's not, I think, gets us to the place where we get to proving morality, right, which is the holy grail of philosophy in something which, you know, many people have died trying to get to that particular summit.
	And certainly we should take a swing at it if we like.
	It's a very... A very challenging concept to try and get universal ethics across in an unsubjective manner without reference to any sort of religious or spiritual authorities, and that's a real challenge, certainly something that I've been spending the last couple of years working on to various degrees of success.
	Because, of course, if you can solve that particular problem, then I think you've done quite a bit of good for mankind, but it's still something which remains not accepted by the vast majority of people as yet, which is perfectly right, of course, because it hasn't been proven to people's satisfaction in general.
	I'm going to unmute.
	Okay. We can reduce this to be individuals.
	I think it's also part of our general philosophy.
	We don't recognize the existence of abstract entities, just individuals.
	We don't recognize other kinds of actors or other kinds of beings, right?
	So I think we can also use this approach on individual by individual basis.
	We don't need necessarily...
	I think there's an interference here.
	We don't need necessarily to have any sort of absolute rights.
	Oh boy, if that was the answer, it was a real shame because you got kind of chewed up at the end there.
	Let me just...
	If you could just repeat your last sentence there, Adi, I'd appreciate it.
	I think we don't necessarily need absolute rules.
	I think we can maybe agree to some rules, but in morality, we can choose to engage in debates and conversation with people who agree at least on some of our I don't think it's controversial to say that murder is wrong,
	right? I think there is some commonality in human beings and even if they have grown in various different systems and under different kinds of I think there is some sort of common idea we can exploit here in conversation.
	It's not special.
	I think it's a human nature, but I wouldn't be so adventurous as to go down that path.
	So how does that idea sound?
	Well, for me at least, the idea that murder is evil, or murder is wrong, let's just say, to use a less inflammatory term, is generally accepted by most human beings.
	However, unfortunately, they invent other categories like soldiers and policemen and so on, to whom murder is not only legitimate, but absolutely required.
	And so this is where you have trouble when it comes to ethics.
	If everybody believed that theft was immoral and murder and rape were wrong, then we'd be on a much better footing.
	But unfortunately, people invent things like the state, which have totally opposite...
	The people who are in the state or the people who are in a soldier's uniform seem to have completely opposite moral principles that people accept, like you can go over and kill a whole bunch of Iraqis and so on.
	And so that's where the real challenge comes in, as far as I can see, for ethics as a whole, that there may be agreement in particular instances, but according to general abstract notions like armies and governments and so on, there seems to be people who, under the umbrella of those abstract concepts, have completely opposing moral rules, so I don't think it can be called much of a science at the moment.
	Well, we can appeal also to consistency.
	I think if an ordinary person observes some sort of contradictory conclusion in his premises, I think he will see that at least there is a problem.
	So that aspect can be touched upon as well.
	I certainly think it's the case that a logically consistent moral theory is better than one that's just a whole bunch of opinions, and that's certainly what we're sort of trying to work for, certainly what I'm trying to work towards in the thinking that I'm putting into the subject.
	Everybody else is unmuted.
	If you wanted to add any, we try and sort of wind up after roughly two hours or so, but if anybody has anything that they want to add or any other comments, the mics are wide open, everybody.
	Feel free to jump in.
	Hello, this is Laprafrax.
	Alright, let me just mute you.
	Sorry, let me just mute everyone and unmute you.
	Please feel free to go ahead. Yeah, hi.
	Yeah, as I say, I'm Laprafrax.
	That's a question for Quinn, basically.
	Yeah, I'm English too.
	I'm very popular on here.
	Everyone likes me. Actually, I think Brits have got the market cornered now.
	Yeah, I just want to say, well, this is a question about state education, basically.
	Okay. Do you really think state education teaches people properly?
	It just depends what you mean by teach properly.
	You have to define, obviously, at the outset.
	I believe that there is a problem with state education because it doesn't teach critical thinking skills.
	Even in my own subject of science, people are taught To internalize and regurgitate a body of knowledge content which calls itself science, which is not of course what science is at all.
	It's a way of thinking. So perhaps not, no.
	I never proposed that the state education system was in any way ideal.
	So don't you think or believe that that's one major reason why state education should not be continued or should be dismantled?
	Basically speaking from my own experience, in England, state education ranges from 5 years to 16 years, and I think most of the knowledge I value today, I did not learn in school.
	So basically, 11 years of my life, I consider wasted.
	Now what is the point of basically the government providing education?
	If it does not, as I say, it does not teach people properly.
	You mean in terms of thinking critically and so on?
	To a degree, yes.
	But, well, okay, in my opinion, education should be about teaching people or children about the world around them.
	And how they can probably interact as an adult.
	Did you not feel that you learnt that at school?
	I mean, forget the classroom.
	Just in the school yard, did you not learn the social skills?
	Well, of course we learned social skills.
	So you probably learnt a lion's share.
	May I just say, you probably learnt a lion's share of that.
	In an educational context, even if it wasn't in the classroom, plus skills like being able to read and write, I presume you learned within those times.
	So it's not as if it's a wholly wasted experience, even if it's far from ideal, which I'll agree with you on.
	Well, okay, yes, of course I'm not to read white, basic mathematics, adding, subtracting, etc.
	You have to watch your absolute statements around Michael, and I certainly appreciate that.
	I think that's quite correct, because he got me a couple of times, and quite rightly so on this.
	But to be honest with you, I agree with you that it's far from ideal.
	And I would say that the lessons that you learn in the schoolyard or on the school bus are probably equally important as learning basic mathematics and grammar and sentence construction.
	Because at school, as a microcosm of society, is a place where you're learning from the values of society.
	Biting your classmate will not make you popular, but giving him one of your chocolate cookies might make you more popular.
	And basic social skills like this.
	But I agree with you. It's far from perfect.
	But is that, therefore, does that give us the mandate to wholesale throw it out?
	I don't know. And, of course, I think what you're saying is that the best education goes on wherever the teachers are absent.
	Well, I don't dispute that, yes, I didn't have social skills, and you need social skills to exist in life.
	For example, if you were...
	Sorry.
	Carry on, sorry.
	But then again, the adult world is more extensive than simply possessing basic social skills.
	For example, why don't they teach politics in schools, for example?
	That is something that takes everyone else's life in the society.
	Oh, I agree with you, totally.
	It's only in the last, say, five years that I've become politically aware.
	And that was only by my own instigation, not by anything I was taught in a school context or setting.
	And I really find that sad.
	I totally, firstly, agree with you.
	That's why I think it's nonsense to say that we live in a democracy, because a democracy, in my mind, in my humble opinion, would be one in which every individual in society is free to choose.
	But the freedom to choose, you're only really free to choose if you know what the options are.
	And as most people in society are not significantly aware of the political arguments, then Are they free to choose?
	And if not, does that mean it's a democracy?
	And if not, what do we do about it?
	Do we do the kind of platonic idea of take away their vote and say, we'll decide for you?
	Well, obviously I don't believe in that, but what do we do about it?
	Well, I would say that where the freedom to choose and the right to choose shows up the most is in the supermarket.
	And I know that that sounds a little silly, but when you go to the supermarket, you can choose what you want to eat, and your choice doesn't rob other people of their choice about what to eat.
	And in the free market, you have all of these kinds of choices, and it's kind of like a dollar democracy, right?
	The things that succeed are the things that people actually want as goods and services.
	I think that's a fairly much greater representation of something called democracy than a sort of one-size-fits-all, winner-takes-all once every couple of years kind of first person past the gate gets to control all the guns situation that the state represents.
	So I think there are good models of working democracies.
	They just don't tend to be political.
	They tend to be more economic in my view.
	Well, Quinn, as a market anarchist myself like Steph, I'll do away with state education tomorrow if I have the chance.
	I just think that the free market could...
	I just believe that the free market could offer, basically, better education than the state can.
	In the free market, I believe, schools and educational institutions will not be mandated by, well, in England we have the National Curriculum, which is a, in reference to what I said earlier, basically does not teach you, well, to adult life, in inverted commas.
	Can I just ask you?
	Can I put you up now? Where is the deficiency?
	You say it doesn't teach you.
	Well, what doesn't it teach you?
	What is it that you felt was lacking?
	I mean you're obviously talking, in the first instance you're talking anecdotally because you're subjectively relating it to your own experience which may or may not have been a good one.
	Well, well, yeah, well.
	So what was the deficiency in state education?
	What did it not teach you that you needed to be taught, that you now know now?
	And if it's to be an anarchist, well, that's based on the assumption that anarchy is correct, which, again, you don't know as a fact, even though Andrew seems to think that facts abound everywhere.
	It's an opinion. It's a philosophy.
	It's your personal philosophy, which, of course, you'd be entitled to, and I respect that.
	But is it a fact?
	Of course not. Well, sorry, let me just interrupt there for one moment, because, of course, you're absolutely correct that anarchy is really just about respecting other people's opinions.
	If you want to send your kids to a different school, marry a different woman, get a job in a different neighborhood, trade with Iran, Iraq, whatever you want to do, as long as you're not using force against other people, that you can choose all of those things, whereas a state society is one where the opinions of the majority, even if we put it that charitably, are inflicted upon the minority, which is very intolerant.
	Well, we can talk about fat till the cows can't prove, but...
	We can talk about it until the cows come home, but whilst we're waiting for that herd to, you know, reappear on the horizon, in the time that elapses in between, very few people are able to actually give any examples of facts.
	You know, I mean, I'm a scientist, but even in science, we see that in quantum physics, what we perceive, you know, through the kind of Newtonian lenses, reading through Einstein and relativistic lenses, Yes,
	yes, I know that one. Now,
	I would say that I would love to get into the discussion of to what degree can facts be considered valid within social science because, of course, if they can't, then we might as well all just be speaking foreign languages to each other because there's no way to establish any kind of truth and we will have to kind of start from the basics.
	But for me, that would have to be a conversation that we could pick up next week.
	So I'd certainly like to thank everyone who joined in on the conversation, particularly our new friend Michael, who had some excellent, excellent questions and comments.
	And I think it's hugely valuable to get, obviously, a rigorous and logical scientist involved in the discussion.
	It can't do anything but help us, who are trying to put forward ideas in a consistent and logical manner, to have people who don't always agree with our premises come and bring very rational and intelligent questions to the forefront.
	So I really appreciate that, and I hope that it was as enjoyable for you as it was for me.
	And I hope that you'll join us next week, and we can have a chat about this question of facts within the social sciences, and at least approaches that we've taken to trying to solve this particular kind of problem, because it is a very pressing problem if you look at the variety of moral philosophies around the world, and the fact that we do seem to have because it is a very pressing problem if you look at the variety of moral philosophies around the world, and the fact
	But then we have institutions like armies and states, which seem to be perfectly comfortable to have not only the right, but in fact the obligation to do just that, and I think it's well worth having a chat about that.
	So I hope that you all will come back and join...
	Join us again next Sunday at 4 o'clock, the website of freedomainradio.com, where you can find the podcasts and the videos.
	And Michael, if you feel like falling asleep, I've done a couple on metaphysics and epistemology, which hopefully will at least tie in what we're trying to do relative to the scientific method, which is the system of belief that I have the most respect for in any kind of philosophy.
	So hopefully you'll give us a try again next week.

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