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Oct. 10, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
46:19
454 Anarchy Is What We Have

If you think that anarchy is something to be feared, take a look around...

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Good morning, all you fine people.
I hope you're doing very, very well.
It's Steph. It's October the 10th, Tuesday, 2006.
Just had a lovely long weekend with the wife, and I hope that you're having a great, great day, evening.
And I'm very happy that people are picking up on the whole YouTube thing.
We've hit almost 6,000 hits, which compared to a YouTube video of somebody, say, picking their nose with a pencil, that's not very good, but compared to other philosophical, maybe the one other or two other philosophical shows for a couple of weeks of YouTube, that's not bad.
subscribers, which is double plus good in my little book.
So I hope that you're doing very well.
I wanted to talk this morning.
I was sort of interested in, I've been watching Prison Break.
And that's, I also would recommend the show Boston Legal, which Christina and I watched the first season of over the past couple of weeks.
And I'm going to be a little Very, very good show.
Very intelligently written and annoyingly non-partisan in a way, but I think they did use the word libertarian once, so I've got to give them props for that, home fellows.
So... I wanted to talk about this question of anarchy this morning.
It's really, really quite a fascinating question and a very powerful way to look at how propaganda works.
It's really, really quite fascinating because, in its essence, Is that not right?
No, no, no. Oh, bad host.
Bad host. If I wasn't driving, I'd give myself a self-spanking, but that's really for an entire different YouTube series.
But I also meant to mention that somebody who was watching the YouTube videos had a very, very excellent and intelligent comment to make regarding masculinity part one, the you are essential one, wherein I was talking about how women...
Are not taught to be very assertive or aren't very assertive in some manner and also aren't really very much at the top of science in terms of science categories.
And this gentleman said, I can't believe that Steph didn't notice this very obvious fact, which I certainly can't help but appreciate being told because it is a very, very good fact, which didn't cross my mind at all.
And he said that because women are not comfortable with being assertive, they generally don't tend to be drawn towards sciences where there's a right or wrong answer.
They tend to be drawn towards softer sciences where there are inferences, there are statistical trends, stuff like social work and psychology and English literature and so on.
Where, you know, every voice is valid and your perspective is, you know, and that's one of the reasons, actually, sort of funnily enough, just thinking about it now, that's one of the reasons that I got out of an English degree as a writer myself.
it's rather hard to not get an A on an essay you're writing about a writer.
If you're a good writer and you have a fairly decent understanding of art, it's hard not to pass an English degree with flying colors.
And I just didn't feel that I was really getting any traction in my university degree, so I switched first to theater school and then to history.
History, at least, you can get something right and wrong, and you have to look for evidence in a larger context.
But English, really, I totally understand.
It's really like you're dancing in zero gravity in the dark, you know?
It's like, yeah, great dance.
Good, bad, who knows?
Who can tell? So, I think, I talked about this a bit with Christina, and I think there's some truth in that.
I do know a woman who is the wife of a friend of mine who's a professor, and she's a scientist, and so she can, some people can do it, obviously.
I mean, there's exceptions to all trends, just about.
But, except for the one that power corrupts and so on and so on.
But yeah, I thought that was a very, very good observation, and I certainly invite female listeners to give us a shout and let us know what you think.
We're certainly not trying to put women down in any way, shape, or form.
We're just trying to respectfully sort of examine the differences between men and women to find out whether or not The stuff that we've been told, you know, about the sort of fundamental equality of men and women is true, or it's just a bunch of nonsense that's sort of cooked up.
And by equality, I don't mean political equality.
I always have to put these hedges in, right?
I don't mean political equality, which of course is taken for granted, property rights, intelligence, all of that is equal, but if there are certain traits that men and women have that are different that make the genders complementary, or whether rolling the dice, bisexuality, is really the way to go.
That's my fundamental question.
Are we different or should we be bi?
That's, you know, that's sort of the things that keep me up at night, so to speak.
So anyway, I would like to, I just sort of wanted to mention that.
And welcome to the gentleman who gave me an enormous compliment on the boards.
He said that he, that the videos that were there...
On YouTube were sort of just about the most exciting thing he'd ever come across, and he's an Ayn Rand fan, so, you know, to sit even anywhere near the dais of the mistress is quite a thrill for me, so thank you very much.
That's a very, very kind thing to say.
I appreciate it, and hey, I try.
I'm sure if Ayn Rand had a longer commute, I wouldn't be anywhere close, but anyway.
So, to get back to this question of anarchy, it's really a fascinating question when you think about it.
This idea that, which you generally hear fairly well espoused across the spectrum of intellectuals and thinkers and so on, the idea that Anarchy is chaos and government is order.
This is the fundamental thing that you get.
And of course, when people think of anarchy, they think of all of the standard propagandistic images, which are far more powerful than just about any argument for most people.
Of Molotov hurling, spiky-haired, feral-faced people in black turtlenecks, overly thin, living in communes, muttering bitter, angry, vicious, undermining, and culty, and quite possibly sexually promiscuous.
And all of these sort of images go around with the idea of anarchy or of anarchists, right?
I mean, so you have idiot posers like Sid Vicious and Johnny Rotten and these sorts of people who are considered to represent anarchy in its sort of fundamental philosophical roots.
And you hear about Bakunin and Nakhayev and people like that in Russia who are considered to be on the anarchistic side.
And then... You have anarchism, of course, particularly well suited to socialism, right?
So there's leftist anarchism, which is no government.
And this is where Chomsky's background comes from.
This is where you have no government, no property rights, and no...
It's the sort of...
It's the ideal of where communism was supposed to end up after the state sort of withered away, after Stalin had a change of heart and became the good fairy of infinite commune bliss.
And this was really associated with a kind of anarchy that Lenin sings about in Imagine, you know, Imagine there's no possessions, no gods, and all this sort of stuff.
And I don't think he mentions a whole lot of gulags until the third verse.
But, This idea of anarchy is very, very much centered around violence, resentful bitterness, and the violence is fascinating because the violence is not a problem for metaphors, right?
Everybody knows that soldiers are, you know, murderous, right?
Soldiers will shoot people, and of course we try and divide those into just killings, i.e.
those sanctioned by the state, and unjust killings, i.e.
they're killing someone that they're not allowed to, right?
I didn't tell you to kill that guy.
I told you to kill that guy.
And then only if they get caught.
So it's like the mafia hit guy is told to go and kill Giuseppe and not Raul.
And he goes and kills Giuseppe and Raul.
And he only then gets punished if the body of Raul shows up.
And the rival family gets angry and traces it back.
Then, of course, there'll be punishment.
And the punishment is simply to prevent a wider...
It's the unsanctioned use of violence that is a problem.
Just so you understand, the problem that's associated with anarchy is not violence, because the cops and the soldiers are violent.
That's not really the central issue.
The central issue that's associated with anarchy is that It's that of hatred.
And it's very clearly portrayed when you look at the metaphor surrounding anarchy.
It's very clearly portrayed that these people are acting out psychological issues.
That they don't really believe in anarchy from a philosophical perspective.
They're just sort of bitter losers who are loners, who can't fit in anywhere, who can't get a decent relationship going, who would never be employable.
That sort of idea that people are anarchists because they're losers and they're resentful of people who are successful.
I mean, this is the level of argument that politics, frankly, lives on.
I mean, that just about every argument for morality lives on.
You never hear about soldiers that they become soldiers because they're losers and they're unemployable and they have, you know, intense rage against X, Y, and Z that they're acting out by blowing people away that other guys in uniform tell them are bad, right?
Like, they've really evaluated all of this.
No, no. Soldiers in the general lexicon, whether or not, I mean, politicians and the leaders in war are allowed to be weaselly, but the soldiers are always honorable and so on.
And the soldiers are all considered to be disciplined, right?
All considered to be disciplined.
And because they obey orders without question and don't shoot back at the people who are pointing guns at them saying, go kill that guy.
So that's considered to be discipline.
Of course, we would never hear the mafia referred to as a tight, honorable, disciplined unit.
You do get a little bit of this in some of the stereotype-busting Scorsese films.
But in general, the positive traits are associated with the military in that they're considered to be following a creed, semper fi, and huah, and all that kind of stuff.
And, you know, it's all about the honor and the patriotism and service and so on, right?
But the anarchists are considered or portrayed as bitter loners who can't get by in society and who are cloaking their innate hatred of X, Y, and Z, the society that they're opposing, that they're emotional in nature.
So the soldiers are philosophically excellent.
They are warrior philosophers.
They understand their virtue to such a degree that they're willing to shoot people and not...
I mean, gee, I'd have a great deal of hesitation shooting someone, and I consider myself quite an ethicist.
I would be very hesitant to shoot someone.
You'd have to be pretty sure of what you were doing to take a human life.
That's after over 20 years of studying ethics in great detail.
I'd still be pretty cautious about going and shooting a guy.
Whereas you have these, you know, pimply-faced 19-year-old guys who, you know, maybe got out of grade 11 with a few grades intact who are so certain of their ethics and so certain of their honor and their morality that...
They have far more confidence in taking human life than I would, and I believe in self-defense, and I believe very much in, you know, if bad people are doing bad things, you stop them by whatever means you can.
But I would have a great deal of hesitation pulling a trigger.
Because I understand the complexities and the possibility being set up and the possibility of misunderstanding a situation and the possibility that proportional force might be too much force.
There's all these complexities.
It doesn't mean that I wouldn't pull the trigger if I absolutely had to.
I'm sure I would, but it would be a pretty unpleasant experience, one which I would definitely not seek out in any way, shape, or form.
I'm pulling a Charles Bronson and Cruising the haunts of low lives looking for bad things to happen so I can pull the trigger.
That's certainly not my particular goal in life.
So these 19-year-old, uneducated, unread, barely literate guys are viewed or portrayed as the very height of philosophical depth, knowledge, and honor so that they can, without a second thought, they can take human life and feel that it's perfectly moral and it's not just obedience to other people.
It's always considered to be personal honor.
Honor is obedience and rigidity within a hierarchy.
And that is considered to be rules, right?
Sort of the fundamental thing that I'm getting about how anarchy as a concept is portrayed.
And you're going to have to deal with this As you get into dealing with or talking with people about anarcho-capitalism or however you want to market anarchy or however you want to talk about it, I prefer the stateless society because it still has the word society in it, which is what people kind of want, right?
We don't want government, we just want society and government is the means to that end.
So, however you're going to talk about it, you are going to run up against this, well, that would be anarchy.
With all of the emotional connotations that that entails.
Anarchy! Oh my God!
Anarchy! It's Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome!
It's Tina Turner's hair!
It's anarchy! And you're going to have to face this question when you talk to people about this kind of stuff, this emotional prejudice, right?
And of course, you get...
It's always worth starting off with a definition of rules, right?
Rules! Oh, my God!
Apparently, when you turn 40, puberty strikes again.
I'll be auditioning for the role of the kid in The Simpsons next week, so I'm just warming up my pre-teen falsetto.
So... So you'll get this sort of, oh, but that would be anarchy, right?
That's what people say. And, you know, as is usually worthwhile when you're talking about philosophical issues with people, it's well worth asking them to define their terms.
So you can say to people, fantastic, maybe it would be anarchy, but let's make sure that we're both talking about the same thing.
And you can then say, okay, well, give me your definition of anarchy.
And most people will say, well, it's a society without rules of any kind.
It's a society that's in chaos, it's violence, it's infighting, it's civil war, it's a war of all against all, it's the Hobbesian state of nature, it's all of these unpleasant and ugly things.
It is the society without rules.
Right? And the fascinating thing to sort of ask...
Is, okay, so you're characterizing that it's a society without rules with our current and existing society, which I assume you feel is a society with rules.
And maybe you can tell me what those rules are.
Well, they'll say, you know, well, you're not allowed to kill.
And, of course, that's not true at all, right?
I mean, if you simply look at...
The war in Iraq, then people are certainly encouraged and paid to kill.
If you look at not paying your taxes, then you get assaulted and if you resist, you'll get killed.
If you don't obey any of the hundreds of thousands of federal regulations, then you will eventually get a gun pulled on you and you will get killed if you resist your fine or your sanction.
If you trade in marijuana, if you smoke a joint, whatever, whatever, right?
So people can certainly get killed in modern society, and they'll say, well, yes, but there's due process.
There's due process. And I say, well, that's the form of the rules.
We're talking about the content of the rules, right?
I mean, if you had a group of wife beaters who got together every Sunday to pass new rules that their wives had to follow in order to avoid getting beaten, and those rules kept changing, and half the time, in fact, 99% of the time, they never informed their wife of the rules other than to beat them and say, well, you broke the rule.
Can I see the rule book? Well, kinda, kinda, but maybe not.
Here's the 500 volumes, go find the rule.
Or, you know, trust me, it's in one of these 500 volumes, you did a bad thing, right?
There's this whole question about are you legally obligated to pay income tax in the U.S.? Nobody will actually point to the rule, but it gets enforced nonetheless.
So... This question of sort of what are the rules is really, really quite fascinating.
Yes, there's a thou shalt not kill in there in terms of murder is illegal and this and that, but it's really not enforced with any kind of consistency.
Sometimes you're praised and given a pension for murdering people and other times you're thrown in jail.
So there's really no rules in that realm.
And then they say, well, theft is outlawed.
And of course, that's even more ridiculous when you think about just income tax or gasoline tax or liquor tax or property tax or...
Capital gains tax.
I can't remember if I mentioned that. It is the millions and millions of taxes that get layered on people without their consent to then say that theft is a rule in society that a sanction against theft is there.
It is perfectly ridiculous, right?
I mean, there is no sanction.
Again, there's an encouragement. The people who come and take your property, if you're self-employed and don't sort of cough it up voluntarily, The people who come and take your property are well-paid, well-praised, called the most moral people in the world, and so really there's no prohibition against theft.
In fact, the volume of theft that is performed by the government is far, far in excess of anything that could be pulled off by any private gang in a free society, in a stateless society, in a society without a government.
So we for sure can't say that there's any rule against theft in society.
In fact, just as the murderers committed by governments far outstrip the murders committed by private citizens, the theft that is perpetrated by the government far outweighs any theft that could conceivably be perpetrated by private citizens.
And so there's really no prohibition Against these sorts of things.
There are no rules. And even if we could freeze the current situation where there are You know, who knows how many laws currently draped over the population.
I mean, we really are like the Robert De Niro character in Brazil getting eaten alive by paperwork, right?
I mean, we really are in that world in that we simply, you could study for your entire life like 14 hours a day, even if you froze the current situation of legality in the world.
You could study for your entire life for 14 hours a day and you would never get even a tenth into an understanding of what was legal and what was not legal in society.
There's no capacity for any citizen to know the laws that he or she is governed by, right?
So it really is after the fact that all of this stuff occurs.
That's why, you know, tax increase, I don't know if it's constitutional or not.
I don't know if it's... I just pay the damn thing, right?
And if you ever really want to get a sense of what this means, then go into starting to try and get a manufacturing plant or, in particular, say, an oil refinery going in the United States and see what kind of laws and rules you are going to be obligated to obey.
You will never, ever get to the root of them.
It's like trying to figure out Title IX in the school system, right?
You'll just never have any luck whatsoever, and that's why you just overcompensate and hire all these consultants, so at least you'll have a viable defense when it comes to, I tried to do my best.
I did my due diligence. I did my sort of best efforts.
I put this and that system in, and I hired these and that consultants and followed their advice and so on.
So at least you have some kind of defense when the shakedown inevitably comes when the government needs some money.
But even if we were to freeze the existing system, citizens have no capacity whatsoever to have any idea, even one one-hundredth or one one-thousandth of the laws that are possible and should be obeyed, that are possible to obey and stay out of prison.
And of course, that's exactly how the government wants it, right?
That they can nail you for something at any time, keeps you nice and jumpy and obedient and not wanting to criticize the state.
And... Of course, the fact of the matter, though, is that we are in no way, shape, or form, even remotely frozen in time, when it comes to laws.
That thousands and thousands of laws and regulations and directives are constantly getting piled on every single year onto the backs of citizens.
So we would be in a state of lawlessness, right?
It's certainly, if you can't have any clue what's legal or not, and if laws get passed without your consent and you don't get informed, right?
Every citizen, ideally, I mean, if it was even a remotely fair society, should You should be forced to take law and economics and politics and so on in school, but these things are generally not taught because that would actually make you an intelligent citizen in ethics or whatever.
Of course, you can't have any of these kinds of things, and I certainly would not think that it would be a good thing to have kids forced to be taught this kind of stuff.
But you're not taught laws.
Ignorance of the law is no excuse, but nobody can ever know what all the laws are.
And, of course, new laws. When new laws get passed, you should get stuff in the mail going over in detail now what your legal obligations are as a citizen and so on.
But none of that ever happens, right?
You've got to dig them up on the Internet and hire high-priced consultants who make a killing out of not getting you killed.
So, as new laws get added all the time, citizens don't get informed of those new laws.
I mean, who could wade their way through another $2,000 defense appropriations bill, or whatever your particular local constituency forces, which is then enforced by the constabulary?
There's no possibility that anybody has any comprehension of the laws.
There's no citizen participation in the creation of these laws.
And so this really is anarchy.
Like the system and society that we live in now is anarchic.
There are no laws.
There are no laws. If you can't comprehend the laws, and if the laws contradict each other, i.e., thou shalt not kill, thou shalt kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt kill, thou shalt steal, and so on, you know, thou shalt not rape, but then we have all of these two million American citizens in prisons getting raped on a regular basis, and the state has total control of the prisons and doesn't do anything to prevent it or stop it, because it's another way of keeping the prisoners cowed and aggressive and so on.
And so we really do live in a situation now where there are no laws.
That we live in a state of anarchy right now.
The currency is constantly being debased.
Wars get unconstitutionally declared.
And even if they were constitutionally declared, there's no referendum from the citizens.
There's no question about whether you have to pay for these wars or not.
You simply get forced to pay for them.
And if you don't, you get thrown in jail to get raped repeatedly.
This is a situation of pure anarchy that we live in right now.
And by any definition that people are going to come up with, it's a system of laws.
Well, do those laws have to be stable and predictable, or can it be any kind of law?
Can anyone make up any kind of law?
Well, no, that would be anarchy.
It's like, well, that's what we have right now.
That's what we have right now.
Anyone can make up any kind of law, like anyone who's in government can make up any kind of law, and if they can find sufficient people who want that law enacted, in other words, who would benefit financially from that law being enacted, then they'll do that.
There are these... The congressional pages call them juicers, and it's not who you think.
The congressional approach to getting money, like every now and then, when they need to get elected, in fact, just about every time they need to get elected, they will start putting out draft bills that harm a particular industry.
And when they put those draft bills out, that industry gets terrified, the medical industry, the insurance industry, the financial, the banks, whoever, right?
Those industries get terrified...
And they begin showering the politicians with money, right?
So in the 90s when the healthcare industry in the United States was in the sights of Congress in terms of legislating capping prices, right?
I think it was they tripled, right?
The donations from the healthcare industry to the congressmen tripled because they basically just bought them off, right?
So, oh my God, are you coming at me with a gun?
Here, here's some money. Don't go.
Go away. And that's anarchy, right?
You just make up any rules that you want.
And they're called juicers because they really juice up the campaign contributions, right?
They put out there, you know, as feeler bills or as, you know, draft bills.
And then, of course, the people get the crap scared out of them who are in those industries that Congress is targeting.
I bet you the same thing's happening right now.
With the fast food industry, as happened with tobacco, where they're paying a quarter of a billion dollars to governments over the next 20 years, it's a perfect and classic shakedown.
And... That is something that is anarchy, right?
When you can pass any kind of draft legislation that you want, and people will shower you with money in order to get you to avoid regulating them.
And, of course, this only happens in organized fields.
That's why they don't put a whole lot of, except for Microsoft, they don't put a whole lot of stuff against the computer industry because it's more fragmented and is not very politically aware.
It's not been around long enough or gotten big enough to end up being that embedded in the government.
It was just the Utah guys, the Utah posse, the Sun and Netscape, that began the process of getting the DOJ to start putting the screws into Microsoft.
And so right now we have the shakedown operations.
We have rules that are, you know, tacked on to defense appropriations bills which can't be rescinded according to the current laws in place.
And so everyone tacks on their, you know, I want to have to these particular bills.
And they have no rhyme or reason.
Laws get passed.
This isn't true just in the U.S., but in other countries as well.
Laws get passed that nobody has any clue what's in them.
We've talked about this before.
They're making amendments, making last-minute deals, and the bill gets voted on.
Everybody just scans it down.
They're like really insecure actors who get a script and scan it immediately to see how many lines they have.
These people just go down through the bill and it's like, well, is the stuff that I promised the guy who gave me money there?
Did I get him out of the bill or did I put him into the bill?
Is all that stuff there?
In other words, have I shaked enough people down to get money to get re-elected?
That's all people. They don't look at the whole bill and nobody could.
Hundreds or thousands of pages long with all of these clauses and ramifications.
Like the Patriot Act. Nobody has any clue what's in the Patriot Act.
Nobody. Not one single person has any clue what's in the entire Patriot Act.
It's simply impossible, including all interpretations and all possible ramifications.
There's just no way. There's just no way.
And so we have a system where nobody understands the laws.
The laws are put in pretty randomly for shakedown purposes, and citizens are not informed of changes in the laws.
And it's really hard for me not to think, well, that's just anarchy.
I mean, by any situation, by any definition of a society without rules, rules that are in constant flux, that are never communicated to the citizens, that are passed without the citizens' consent, of which there are hundreds and hundreds of thousands of rules, What is it?
There's some famous quote.
I can't remember exactly how it goes.
It was like the Declaration of Independence was a couple of hundred words long.
The most recent federal regulation on the transport of cauliflowers was 250,000 words.
I mean, that's the kind of society and situation that we live in.
There are no rules.
There are only competing interests and a formality of shakedown, right?
And so... This is exactly how you would expect organized crime to work, right?
Except organized crime uses the argument from a fact.
Government uses the argument from morality, right?
So organized crime will shake you down and you'll pay them off because they'll say, well, otherwise your store might accidentally burn down and that would be a real shame now, wouldn't it?
So they just use an argument.
They don't say, you have to pay us because it's moral to pay us.
The government is distinguished from the Mafia, only that the government uses the argument for morality.
And that, of course, is why the government is bigger than the Mafia.
I mean, the Mafia uses the argument for morality internally around squealing and so on.
You go to jail and keep your honor rather than sending me to jail.
But in society, or in sort of the outside view, The government is really only different from the Mafia in that it uses an argument for morality and, of course, has the children for 14 years when they're young.
So I just sort of wanted to go over that, that we really do live in a lawless society.
You can get forced to pay for a war, for foreign murderers.
You get forced to pay for foreign murderers, whether you approve or don't approve of the war or the sort of murder, the genocide.
There's no laws then, right?
When somebody can bypass the Constitution, pass rules, do whatever they want.
We're no longer in a society of laws, the sort of ideal, but a society of men.
That is, the individuals that you have to look out for and what their particular preferences are on any given day.
And this competing interest where you have a society where the laws are self-contradictory, right?
I mean, that would be pretty important as well, right?
If the laws are self-contradictory, then it really is a society of no laws.
Any more than a mathematical proposition where the premises contradict each other is a valid mathematical proposition or a scientific theory which requires that rocks fall away from the ground would be a valid physics theory.
But this, I think, is a very, very important Part of understanding where the propaganda is.
So, a society where people voluntarily get together to solve problems without a central coercive agency like the state, without paid murderers like the soldiers and the police, where there's voluntary contributions to society, that is called anarchy.
There are no laws there.
However, a society with An enormous amount of completely contradictory, absolutely incomprehensible, unfollowable, non-communicated, self-interested, shakedown laws.
Well, that is considered to be a society of laws.
And that's considered to be an organized and ordered society.
Which really is a rather fantastic formulation when you think about it.
Let's not even get into...
What happens when the government runs out of money, right?
I mean, obviously, if anarchy or society without laws is bad, then a government running out of money is really the worst thing that can happen because everybody's been sort of tuned and conditioned to obeying government edicts.
And then the government goes out of business or, you know, almost completely goes out of business.
And surely that's, you know, that's really a bad thing.
And so, you know, the other question which I'll just sort of end up with is something that's fun to ponder.
When you're talking about things with people and they have this or that opinion about the state and what it should do or, you know, well, we've got to have this state program, we've got to have public health, we've got to have education, you know.
Well, the simple question is, okay, well, what would you cut?
What would you cut to pay the deficit, right?
What would you cut to pay off the national debt?
That's a pretty important thing.
A lot of people get confused. It's like, well, there is no national debt because we have a surplus.
It's like, dude, not quite.
And that's a very, very sort of important question, right?
If people don't like anarchy, if people think that a system of chaos and dislocation and so on is bad, then it's, you know, okay, so you think that the government should continue.
I think it shouldn't, and I have pretty, I think, strong reasons as to why that is the case.
But if you think that the government should continue, well, that's all well and good, but you then have to make the case as to what should be cut in order for government to continue.
And to pay off the debt, like 90% of existing government services and bureaucracies have to be axed, right?
So, you know, given that you want to save the government...
What are you going to cut to save the government?
The onus is always on those who are interested in freedom.
The onus is always on the nonviolent people to prove that nonviolence will work.
But a very useful question is, look up a little bit the costs and expenses and departmental budgets of your friendly local state.
And you can then get involved in discussions where people say, well, I think that the government is great and you can't get rid of the government and so on.
It's like, okay, well, you have to cut like 90% of the government in order to...
In order to pay for the national debt.
So what 90% of the government are you going to cut to pay for the national debt?
Just tell me. Let's go down the list, right?
You've got the Department of Education, like $200 billion.
That doesn't even cover half the interest payments.
So you're going to get rid of the Department of Education.
If you get rid of the Defense Department, then you at least get rid of the amount of money that's spent to pay the interest on the national debt, but you're still not touching the principal.
You know, let's go through the list.
What are you going to cut? Right now, if they can't cut, if they say, oh, I shouldn't cut that, we'll just raise taxes.
It's like, well, you know, we can't really raise taxes because then you're going to end up crippling the economy, more people on welfare, it's revenue neutral, that doesn't work.
And so...
It's a good way to get other people to sort of figure out that it's not quite as simple as they think, that things can't trundle on indefinitely the way, right?
Mathematically, anything which can't continue won't continue.
And if people are really keen on saving the government, then I think it's sort of incumbent upon them to say, okay, what are you going to cut?
What are you going to cut? What are you going to get rid of?
If you're the dictator of the universe in your country, what are you going to cut?
You can just snap your fingers and get rid of it.
How are you going to save the government?
If you're the financial advisor to the government, then how are you going to get the government to continue?
Because, of course, if the government suddenly goes bankrupt, then absolutely very bad things are going to occur.
We all accept and understand that.
That would be a kind of anarchy because you have the sudden ending of a violent entity That has conditioned everyone to obey it and now has suddenly up and vanished.
Well, that's not good, right?
I mean, so we don't want that for sure.
and let me just do my merge you know so we're all keen on that for sure We're all aware that if the government suddenly vanishes, then things are going to be bad.
So what we want is a soft landing.
You say this to the people, what are you going to cut?
And if they say, well, I'm going to cut this, that, and the other, and it's like, fine, okay, who do you think is going to support you in that cut?
Because if you can get people to understand and say, oh, I'm going to cut the Department of Defense, it's like, okay, how do you think that's going to happen?
You've got all of these companies paying all of this lobby money, all of these politicians who are only in there because of defense lobbying.
So how do you think politicians are going to suddenly change the entire habits of all of human history and defy all the psychology of all the science of human motivation?
How is it that these people are going to suddenly reverse everything and get these bills through?
So once they realize that the government is doomed anyway, right?
I mean, this is sort of a fundamental to the facts, right?
This is not even my opinion, right?
The government in its existing form is doomed, right?
I mean, the people can argue all they want, right?
You know, but it's like...
It's like you're wondering, you're looking at a picture of a guy who's fallen out of a plane with no parachute, and you're saying, gee, I wonder which way he's going to go.
It's like, well, there may be a little bit of left and right, but I tell you there's a whole lot of down, right?
There's a whole lot of down in where the government's going to go, and there will be a whole lot of splat, right?
So to me it's kind of fun to listen to people talk about, you know, well, I think the government should do this, and I think the government should do that.
It's sort of like watching...
The guy in free fall and saying, well, I think he should go this way or that way.
Well, okay, I guess he could angle his hands a little and change his trajectory by a degree or so, but it's all kind of nonsense when it comes to his final destination, right?
He's still not going to slow that much down.
And so that's sort of my, you know, recognizing that we do need to start designing what comes after, right?
If you know that your house...
Is in the path of a hurricane, you know, starting to think about, and you can't move it, and you can't stop the hurricane, and your house in no way, shape, or form is going to survive it, then it's not really the end of the world to say, gee, I wonder what house we should live in next, right?
Because this house is done, right?
This house is done like dinner.
Stick a fork in it, turn it over, it's done.
Well, it's not the end of the world to start thinking about what comes after, right?
Because this thing is totally toast.
One more metaphor. A plane with no wings.
The wings have fallen off, and people are strapping themselves in saying, I think this might make us a little late in our landing.
It's like, no, it'll actually make it quite soon for your landing.
And you might want to take a risk and jump, even if it looks dangerous.
Maybe you'll hit some water.
Tuck and roll, tuck and roll.
Maybe you'll hit a nice, soft, snowy mountainside and roll down.
But, you know, it's like, why do they jump out of the Twin Towers on September 11th?
Because, you know, death was certain one way.
And, of course, that's not the best metaphor for anarchy, but...
It is important, I think, for people to understand that, you know, where we are is toast, complete and utter toast.
And getting them to sort of understand that means that it's, you know, you have to look at viable alternatives.
I mean, you don't have to. But then you're just not recognizing and dealing with reality at all.
And I mean, the state was toast, fundamentally toasted itself like over 100 years ago.
Actually, not quite. I would say the introduction of the Fed in 1913 in the U.S., plus the introduction of income tax, which I think was somewhere...
I know in Canada it was 1917.
I can't remember when it was in the U.S. But these kinds of situations, you know, it's done, right?
It's totally done. It's like Jerry Garcia's body, like, five years before he died.
There was just no rescuing him from the life he'd led, right?
This is not going to happen. And so this, you know, it was staved off.
I mean, I think it would have happened like 20 years ago if it wasn't for the computer revolution.
But, yeah, the computer revolution is like the static electricity generating magic machine in Atlas Shrugged that has kept society alive.
But it's totally done, right?
I mean, anarchy... In other words, a lawless society like really what people mean by that is coming for sure and we really do need to figure out what we're going to do given the variables and just saying, well, anarchy is bad, anarchy is bad, let's just cross our fingers and stick with the current situation is really extraordinarily irrational and not something that should be given any credence from a sort of philosophical or logical standpoint.
It makes no sense.
It's totally impossible that the current situation will continue.
There is going to be an enormous and wrenching change.
And this is not any kind of paranoid conspiracy theory.
You just have to look at the numbers and you have to look at history.
Governments that get themselves into this level of debt never survive.
It's absolutely impossible, right?
If you're a million dollars in debt and you make $10,000 a year, bankruptcy is your only option.
There's simply no possibility.
You won't even be able to pay the interest.
And this is an individual who might have some capacity to rein in his spending.
But the government, of course, is a massive nexus of cash grabbing where everyone's in there for the moment.
And so there's simply no possibility of the government reforming itself from inside.
So I hope that when you have conversations with people about anarchy, you can start to put the onus on them just a little bit to explain what is not anarchic about our current mad, chaotic, quote, legal system and how they imagine that this system is going to survive in the future Given the kind of debt that it's in and given the kind of motives that are going on, and given, of course, that the higher the debt gets, the more that people start grabbing at the till, right?
So, I mean, that kind of situation is pretty important, right?
I mean, if the more you get into debt, the more you blow on your credit cards, it doesn't take Warren Buffett to figure out what the end result is going to be for you in terms of your liquidity or your stability as a financial entity, right?
And so the debt is going up, and the pillaging is going up, and of course there really is only one way that that ends, which is in bankruptcy, which is not what people want.
And of course if they're frightened of anarcho-capitalism, like if they're frightened of a stateless society, Where there has to be a gradual and philosophical transition.
There has to be re-education to people about what is really going on in the world.
There has to be a greater understanding of the universality of the argument for morality and its reversibility.
And there have to be all of these things.
So there's a kind of transition going on that's important.
If they're frightened of that, if they're frightened of a managed landing of a plane that's smoking, then basically just hanging in there and not even noticing that three of the engines have gone down, not even noticing that is going to result in a really horrible crash.
So we can either have a managed landing of this thing and look for an alternative or we can just pretend that nothing's wrong and go straight into a mountainside.
And that's the chaos and that's the anarchy that people are really afraid of.
And it is one of these sad situations where...
What people most fear is what is inevitably going to happen, right?
I mean, people's greatest fear is an openly lawless society, and by sticking with this sort of government fantasy of continuation, or the fantasy that the government can continue, they're absolutely going to bring about what they fear the most.
And, of course, the ironic thing and the thing that makes it hard to spend your time sometimes working hard to save these people, the thing that is sad about all of that Is, of course, that they will end up blaming the freedom for the exact mess that their addiction to slavery and statism has brought about.
And that's the part that makes it a little bit tougher to work hard for their freedom, right?
Because everyone gets out of this boat if we make it.
So thank you so much for listening.
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