We had 120,091 podcasts downloaded from the Freedom Aid Radio site.
There are still a number of people and a number of podcast sites out there, wherein it is still pointing to my wife's site, mississaugatherapy.com.
So we had some downloaded from there.
We had about 6,500 or 7,000 video views, which is one of the reasons I don't do the videos relative to the podcasts anymore.
But it's been a good month.
It's been a good month. A few trolls.
Nothing that can't be handled in a decent way.
So just thanks to everyone, of course, for joining.
Thanks to everyone. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you so much for listening.
I know it's to mutual advantage, but hey.
Thank you. So, I wanted to go over something that, when we've touched on this before, I know it.
But unfortunately, now that we're cruising past 530, there's a little bing in the back of my brain as the podcasts that have already been completed, the thread has now cracked.
And it's sort of like you cut the cord of a big string of pearls and they just all go bing, bing, bing.
I'm jumping down a little metal staircase and that's sort of what's happening to me with the podcast and what's been done and what's...
I've got a vague... Like before it was pretty precise.
Now, I don't know.
I don't have a clue. I just roughly vaguely think that maybe we've done this before.
But the question has come up again.
So, I'm going to take a different angle at it again, because answering the old questions in a new way is all I have left in the realm of originality.
So, sorry. Looks like we're done.
So, it's like we're going to start the podcast again, but this time in Mandarin.
Anyway. So, the question is, how do I respond to somebody who says, but dude, dude, the government owns everything.
And, you know, we live here at the pleasure of our masters, and how do we know that the government is justified in owning everything?
Well, people vote the government in, and the government owns everything.
And this is something which, of course, you will quite often get from a statist.
Now, there are two package deals associated, well, there's more than two, but just the two that we'll focus on today, is there are sort of two package deals that are included irrationally in the word government.
And there's a reason why people use the word government rather than You know, dudes with suits or whatever.
Because government can be an abstract entity like God or culture or all this that somehow not derived from the people it represents, right?
Not derived from the instances it represents.
So people like to say forest and then give different categorizations to the concept forest that completely contradict the nature of the trees.
And this is one of the reasons, you know...
I sort of sometimes think that mankind invented concepts to rule over others, and they only later turned out to be accidentally useful through the scientific method and through logic.
I think that concepts were actually just introduced to the human mind as a tricky way of fleecing and pillaging others, and God knows, God being one of them, God knows that concepts have done more than just about anything else in terms of harm and good, but harm for the most part to the human species.
So, that's sort of my theory of concepts.
Concept formation is originally somebody invented, hey, if I call it a tribe, then everyone will obey me even after I get old and weak, because it's the tribe.
Ooh, if I invent God, then ooh, if I invent the government, then people won't notice that it's just people taking their stuff.
It's the government. So there are two package deals that are included in the realm of government, or the concept government, which are sort of relevant here.
The one is it's not just people, right?
It's not just people you're throwing a label on, and people without any differentiation, right?
Other than votes, which doesn't differentiate the nature, right?
Like if you and I sit there and we've got a horse, it's you and I in a field with a horse, and you and I say, we both vote that this horse becomes a unicorn, either A, it doesn't become a unicorn, or B, Man, we're going to make a lot of money with your amazing power to transformography things.
So I'm generally going to go with A, it does not become a unicorn.
And of course, if you had the power to wish anything into anything else, you would not likely be sitting in a field with me, but rather in a massive palace with baby oil and replicas of Heidi flies.
No, not Heidi Flies.
Wrong, Heidi! Heidi Klump?
Heidi Klump. Oh, Lord.
Oh, that joke was...
It had potential, folks.
But unfortunately, I clipped it.
I clipped it, and it has rolled, and it has died.
We shall move on. So you don't get to vote to change the nature of reality.
Voting doesn't change the nature of reality.
That's why scientists don't get together at a conference and say, what do we feel like physics should look like next year?
And then they all sort of get together and chant and have speeches and vote and then say, well, you know, we've decided to repeal the law of gravity so I don't have to get a chin lift.
So, you know, nature to be commanded must be obeyed.
Life to be commanded must be obeyed with philosophy.
Philosophy to be commanded must be obeyed with logic and evidence and so on.
You know that voting doesn't change the nature of reality.
So people like to invent concepts that they believe can be changed by willpower or can be changed by voting, right?
So the government is something that is composed of one group of people, right?
And then when you vote, the government sort of, imagine a shadow detaching itself from one man, hop skipping and jumping over to another man and attaching itself to him, right?
That's sort of what the government does when you vote, right?
The government now, bing! The king is dead, long live the king.
Or as the anarchists used to say, hey, do you ever notice?
No matter who you vote for, the government always gets in.
And that's very true, right?
I mean, that's sort of fundamentally true.
That what they say, what they mean when they say the king is dead, long live the king, is when the old king dies, they hold up the young king or the baby king or the child king and say, long live the king, right?
Because this king, this essence that, of course, has no reality whatsoever, This imaginary shadow or penumbra or aura has flitted, dissolved from one man, whether living or dead, and the mantle of power, the orderly transfer of power, yeah, orderly, right? Bribed transfer of illegitimate and evil power, but...
This sort of aura has dissolved from around one human being's spirit or soul and has flitted across the shadow of Sorin and now attached itself to another human being.
The only problem, of course, is that much like the supposed soul leaving the body on death, Nothing's actually changed in reality.
It's all in this bizarre fantasy, platonic form, imagination of collective decision-making that makes us think that some sort of legitimate transfer has occurred, right?
It's just, okay, well, now we're going to call this farmer God, we livestock, and we're not going to call the old farmer God.
And so, of course, the votes of the majority have no capacity to change reality.
The votes of the minority have no wishes.
You know, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride, as the old saying used to go.
So, that's sort of the one aspect of government that obscures things is that government's just a people.
It's just a label that you give to a bunch of people with no physical differentiating characteristics.
Like, at least if you say Orientals, then there's at least some physical differentiating characteristics such as an affinity either for math or breakdancing.
But if you, so at least there's a physical characteristic, or at least if you say short guys, then there's some physical differentiating characteristic there as well, or bald guys or whatever.
But if even George Clooney lookalikes, there's going to be some differentiating characteristics.
But government shares no differentiating characteristics other than A bizarre maze-like rule book that has been followed by a bunch of people, the rules of which have no existence in reality.
It's not like the rules of democracy are like the rules of physics.
It's all just a made-up bunch of stuff for an imaginary game where you don't even volley with real balls.
But this fact that it's just people is obscured.
The second thing that's obscured by the existence of a concept called government is government is believed to have some sort of geographical representation or it's supposed to represent some sort of geographical area, right?
And of course, in people's minds, it does, right?
Like there's this map with different colors on it, which means nothing, right?
Just look at the photo from space.
I think all you can see is the Great Wall of China and when my sunroof is open and the sun is shining, my forehead.
This combination of believing that it's an entity, the government, that somehow is not just a bunch of people that you've put a label around in your own mind and not even in reality, and through the attachment of that label to them have changed none of their physical properties.
That's sort of the one thing that it obscures.
And the other thing it obscures is...
It has an association with a geographical region.
The idea of government is from sea to shining sea across a differing degrees of gulag slavery status for each of the hapless citizens.
But neither of those things are true in reality.
A concept can't own property.
A concept cannot own property.
That's sort of pretty funny, right?
It's sort of like saying, I'm not going to pay my taxes to the government.
I'm going to pay my taxes to America.
Where would you mail those?
I'm going to pay my taxes to America.
I'm going to pay my taxes to Yemen or to England or to Australia, thanks to the guy who sent me this email.
I posted this week. It was pretty funny.
Good old Australian.
If you said, well, I pay my taxes to America, So, you put your money in an envelope, and you close up the envelope, you put your return address on, and where do you mail it to?
You can't mail it to any place because America is a country, right?
So, how is America going to cash the check and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
I'm sure you... I could go on, and I'm sure you know that I could, but I won't because I'm moving at a fair clip in traffic, so there's no need for, well, endless tangents.
Some, naturally, but...
Not endless, anyway.
I don't think so. Well, we'll see if we hit a traffic jam.
Ooh, look at that. I've made a tangent about how I don't need to make a tangent.
Oh, it's all too postmodern for words.
So, clearly, if you can get people to imagine that there's some entity that people represent that is both superior to or abstracted from their physical instances, like an individual politician guy, and also that it has some sort of geographical A limiter or some sort of geographical representation, then you're kind of at this place where you can get across the idea with less difficulty.
It doesn't take a lot to sort of bring it down, but you can get this idea across that the government owns all the land.
And we are merely tenants.
We are merely the recipients of the government's largesse.
And much like a tenant or a renter must pay the landlord, we must pay The government for the privilege of not going to jail and so on.
Now, it's not too hard to try and solve this conundrum.
I mean, it's hard insofar as we've got all this nonsense propaganda and so on, but it's not hard, like, logically to deal with this problem or this conundrum.
So, the first thing that you do is you say, okay, well, what is a government, right?
I mean, I used to, when I was a student, well, I guess a student in school, as opposed to just a student in my car, I would go up to people who were in third or fourth year poli-sci, or even grad students in poli-sci, and I'd say, what's a state?
What is a government?
And you'd get this thousand-yard stare, and people would mumble something about a group of people assigned power by the will of others, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and it's whoever you vote for, or whatever, right?
It's whoever called themselves the government, or it's the exploiting masses who serve the capitalists, right?
You get all this sort of stuff, right?
None of which had anything to do with what the reality of it was, right?
Because the true answer of what is the government, well, the government is a myth.
The government is a fable. The government is a species of imagination.
The government is like saying, what is Narnia?
Well, Narnia is a fantasy. It's just a fantasy.
At least a forest wraps around something that has distinguishing characteristics.
So the concept of forest or the concept of fishes or whatever.
At least it wraps around something, or oriental or short, as we mentioned, or bald.
It wraps around something that has a distinct characterization to it.
So short guys are all under, what, I don't know, 5'2 or something, or 5'4.
And so at least there's some differentiating characteristic.
It's not that the concept short guys exists in reality, but at least it describes something that has some discrete or measurable elements that differentiates it from, say, tall guys or dead guys or whatever.
I guess you have short dead guys or Napoleon and so on.
But a government is pure fantasy.
A government is exactly the same as if I said, I have an imaginary tribe of 10 random people I call the screaming banshee merchants.
What is it that differentiates the screaming banshee merchants from everyone else?
Well, SBM. Hey, it's my initials!
Look at that, it's all coming together now.
My middle name is with the basil.
So, the screaming banshee merchants, right?
It's like, well, how do I know which ten people are?
It's like, well, I just make them up in my mind.
Sometimes I don't even know them.
Sometimes it changes from one person to the next over the course of a day, right?
So, when we would say, well, what is the definition of screaming banshee merchants?
It's like, well, there is no definition of screaming banshee merchants.
It's an arbitrary collective concept that's simply made up and is not derived from From any physical or real characteristics.
And, of course, it doesn't really matter how many people vote for the screaming banshee merchants or how many people imagine that they exist or believe that they exist.
It still is a completely arbitrary...
And we know it's arbitrary because it's not...
It doesn't include any logical or physical characteristics that are objective, right?
Other than a bunch of people voted for whatever, right?
So it's like if I have a, as I've mentioned before, if I'm a biologist and I say that I'm going to define a fish as something with the feathers that flies in the air and lives in trees, then obviously the concept fish doesn't really mean anything.
And if I then define it also as a song, and I define it as tree bark, and I define it as the emotion of whimsical trepidation or bemused resignation, and it is also one of my teeth.
Clearly, the concept doesn't really make any sense.
But at least those are descriptions of things with discrete elements, right?
If I just say, you know what, I think you get the idea.
A government is a mere fantasy.
A government is merely a completely arbitrary made-up fantasy.
It's like classifying unicorns into different kinds.
It's like, well, how real is that?
Maybe it's an interesting mental exercise if you're absolutely completely bored and get to live forever.
You could come up with the family tree of unicorns on the moon in 12 dimensions or something, right?
But it's like coming up with a Dungeons and Dragons campaign when you live alone.
I mean, I guess at least then you end up with something physical, but of course government is purely imaginary.
So, that's the real answer, right?
The real answer is government is nothing.
Government is a species of arbitrary fantasy.
It's not even objective fantasy.
So, what does this sort of mean?
Well, can my group of screaming banshee merchants own property?
Do I make up so I say, okay, these 12 people who are my screaming banshee merchants, they own everything.
They own everything, and everyone has to pay them rent.
And I'm one of the screaming banshee merchants, and you owe me rent, and you better buy me a drink.
Or I'm going to attack you, hold a gun to your head, and throw you in jail.
You'll get raped. I mean, it's quite serious, but it's also pretty funny in the definition of it.
So if I get to sort of just make up and say, well, that's not valid.
That's not valid because you didn't vote for them.
But that, of course, is not the reality of the situation, right?
I mean, this is the fundamental cause and effect backwards thing that people get when it comes to the state.
Governments don't exist because people vote for them, right?
People vote for them because they exist.
I mean, this is a very fundamental cause and effect that's pretty clear, right?
I mean... If I say these screaming banshee merchants that you should vote for them and they'd say, well, why would I bother?
Like, they don't even exist, right?
And why would they, you know, and they would have to, let's just say we could agree that they would have to be voted on, right?
Then why would you bother to vote for the screaming banshee merchants?
Well, it would be because of two things.
Either A, the screaming banshee, I just call them SBMs, right?
The SBMs would have either the power to throw you in jail or they would have the power to reward you.
Now, having the power to throw someone in jail requires that you have a police force, and a jail center, and all this kinds of stuff, right?
And it also helps a hell of a lot if you have public schools which have indoctrinated kids into the ultimate virtues of the SBMs, and so on.
Strategic ballistic missiles, screaming badgy merchants, Stephan Basil Molyneux.
I feel a haiku coming on, but I will resist.
So, in order to be able to threaten people with jail or to provide them with rewards, you have to already have money.
You have to already have taken money.
The SBMs must already have power in order to have anybody be interested in voting for them.
Because if I said, the SBMs, you should come and vote for them, it's like, well, what are they going to do?
They're not going to do anything.
How is voting for them going to change my life?
Well, it's not going to change your life in any way, shape, or form.
It's like, would you like to vote for my imaginary herd of unicorns?
Well, why? What would the point be?
They're not going to have any effect in the real world.
It's, you know, getting an agnostic to vote is not too sensible, right?
It's like trying to get an atheist to pray or an agnostic to pray.
It's like, well, what's the point?
There's no possibility that anything is going to affect things in this realm, so why would you, right?
It would be a complete contradiction.
So the only reason that people vote is because governments exist and have power already.
That much we know. There's no question of that.
Because if you want to start, I mean, the Libertarian Party knows that, right?
They can bestow no favors, except on the general population, and they can punish nobody because they can't bribe anyone enough to vote for them, so they're not going to get into power that they can't reward their friends and punish their enemies and get that ever-escalating power and so on.
So big businesses and the war contractors vote for the Republicans and the unions and the teachers and all the civil servants, they vote for the Democrats.
Why? Is it because of some objective philosophy?
No, because they have particular benefits that they're going to get out of those in power.
So saying that voting legitimizes government is completely ridiculous.
People only vote for government because government already has power.
And the greater the power the government gets, the more certain people or certain special interest groups are interested in manipulating and controlling the political process.
So the idea that voting provides legitimacy to the government is ridiculous.
It's like me saying, vote for my imaginary unicorns, and then I'm going to fill it in with people later, and nobody would even bother, because forget it, I'm not interested.
So, the government has power and then people vote for it in order to redirect the stolen money that the government can get from people to redirect it to themselves.
That's why people vote, right?
So, voting does not legitimize government.
Voting is a result of governments already existing and being able to bestow favors and punish enemies.
So, there is no legitimization that occurs through the act of voting.
There is a redirection of income that occurs through the act of voting, for sure.
Or, if not directly, indirectly, a sort of feeling of threat or, you know, like if you want more social programs, so the tradition goes.
So, I don't really think it's true in practice.
That's the myth, right? The fairy tale is if you want more social programs and a softer stance on crime and a kinder and gentler redistribution of income, then you vote for the left wing.
And then if you want war and toughness on crime and fewer economic controls and union bashing, then you vote for the right wing and all this, that, and the other, right?
So, I mean, that's sort of why people do what they do.
It's because the government already exists and has power.
So... The question then becomes, of course, does everyone have this power, right?
Because who is it who nominates and creates the government to begin with?
Well, of course, there's lots of theories that lots of people have made up.
And I know I've done a podcast on this before, so I'm not going to.
Lots of nonsense that people make up about a social contract and so on.
But basically what happens is that people say that government has legitimacy because people want it to have legitimacy.
The government has legitimacy because people want it to have legitimacy.
That's the great lie of voting.
And that, of course, is pure nonsense.
Because if the government had legitimacy, genuinely had legitimacy, then you wouldn't need taxation.
It's exactly the same as the farmer saying, but my tigers want to live in this 10 foot by 10 foot square.
And the reason that I know that they want to live in this 10 foot by 10 foot square It's because they don't leave it.
They voluntarily stay in this 10 foot by 10 foot square.
And then you just sort of look at it and you say, well, you have electrified barbed wire and snipers that shoot them in the paw, in the paw, in the paw, if they step outside the 10 foot by 10 foot square.
And you say, well, sure, but the tigers want that.
Right? The tigers want that.
So you're saying the tigers want to live in a 10 foot by 10 foot square And so you have barbed wire, it's electrified, you have snipers that are going to really screw up, they're going to kill the tigers if they try and step outside the 10x10 square.
And the farmer says, well, sure.
And it's like, well, if they want to live in the 10x10 square, why do you need the snipers?
Well, I'm doing what the tigers want.
But you're not understanding the problem.
If the tigers want to live in a 10x10 square, why do you need the snipers?
Well, it's not me who wants the snipers.
It's the tigers who want the snipers, right?
It's completely contradictory.
If the snipers want to live in a 10x10 square, you don't need snipers.
If the tigers don't want to live in a 10x10 square, then the snipers are not legitimate, are not chosen.
That's a fundamental thing around the state, which is so impossible for so many people to understand.
It seems impossible. I'm sure it's got something to do with the family.
I'll check with Christina. But this is the fundamental contradiction of the state that just screws everybody up, right?
And this is what the state simply can't grasp.
And you'll go round and round and round like a whirlybird's helicopter blade when you try and talk about this with status, right?
So they'll say, well, the government is legitimate because people choose it.
It's like, okay, then why does the government have to force people?
Why does it need to indoctrinate them?
If they genuinely want the government, then people will simply give their money to the government, right?
That's... What people want.
And if they don't want it, then the government deploying force can't be called chosen.
You're either raping or you're making love.
You don't get to rape someone and then say, but she wanted me.
We get the immorality and insanity of that very clearly at that level.
But it's very hard for people to get that with the government.
For some reason, the moment I heard the idea, it was like, well, of course.
How could anyone even, like, as 15 or 16, it's like, how could anyone even think otherwise, right?
But then you sail off saying, oh, well, I'm going to enlighten you in the way that I was enlightened, and bang, you know, you get to say, hey, get back in the 10x10 square and pretend that you love it.
We don't talk about these things.
You're wrong. You're evil. You're bad.
All this sort of stuff. We all know this.
We've all been there. So, the first thing that it obscures is the fact that it's a cage and it's livestock and it's shooting people and it's throwing them in jail and so on.
And then they say it's voluntary.
That's a fundamental thing.
It's a fundamental lie that occurs.
And then they say it's geographical in nature.
Which is also just fascinating, and that's what gets the ownership, right?
That's what gets the ownership. The voting gets the ownership of people, and the geography gets the ownership of property, right?
These are the two sort of central lies.
The concept of the state obscures.
Because, of course, the question is, why there and no further, right?
The 49th parallel between Canada and the US. It's like, well, why there and no further?
Why there? Why? What is the difference between this inch of ground and that inch of ground that this imaginary entity ownership ends there and starts?
There's no physical difference whatsoever, right?
So, no difference in kind and all that, right?
There's no big sort of different dimension that pops up in Canada, so what's the difference, right?
And everybody kind of gets that that's where the Canadian government stops shooting you for not paying your taxes, and the American government starts shooting you for not paying your taxes.
I mean, it is exactly the same, as we all know, as the electrified fence between two farmers' herds of cattle.
And there is no reality to it, right?
I mean, you could say the farmers own the cattle and the farm...
I mean, I'm not going to get into animal rights here, but the problem is here...
I mean, the reason the farmer and the cattle thing works to a small degree in terms of understanding people's relationships to the state.
But, of course, the problem is that the state doesn't do anything.
The state doesn't have any existence.
The state is a species of rank fantasy because it's saying that these people have this magical ability that is granted to them by others to own everything.
In a particular geographical area.
And, of course, that's completely ridiculous, right?
I mean, if you're sitting down, you and an ANCAP or another anarcho-capitalist friend are sitting down with a statist for dinner, and you say, we own everything in this area, so give us your wallet.
We own from here to the next table, just past you.
We own to the back of your chair.
Now give me your wallet and your pants.
Well, I'd love to meet a statist who would ever go through with that.
But, of course, they would just say, well, that's ridiculous.
And you'd say, well, why?
Why? Why is that ridiculous, right?
It's like, well, because you don't own this.
It's like, no, no. We have voted, and we own it.
And he would say, well, I don't want to submit, or blah, blah, blah.
Maybe he'd be a real honest guy and give you his wallet and his pants, in which case you'd go and donate it to Free Domain Radio.
Not the pants so much, but the wallet.
And this, of course, is quite funny, but it's also genuinely serious, right?
I mean, why is it that one group of people, and this is the fundamentals of the argument for morality, why is it that one group of people gets to have this amazing power that is considered to be justly bestowed on them by the voluntary actions of others, Or voluntary beliefs of others through the act of voting, this magical power to just, bing, they own everything.
They just own everything in a geographical region.
Everyone else has to pay them. And then, bing, another group of people suddenly own everything.
I mean, it really is a psychotic fantasy, right?
That reality is somehow changing based on whim, right?
Democracy is fundamentally psychotic and deranged in its idea of the permeability.
Permutability. There we go.
Permutability of reality based on whim, right?
Like the psychotic thinks that he can fly and throws himself off a...
Unfortunately, it's not often too high a thing, right?
The psychotic imagines he can fly, imagines he hears voices and then thinks that they're really there and this and that, right?
He thinks that what occurs inside his head is this fundamentally changing reality.
And democracy is a psychotic fantasy, you know, in a social context, right?
That what we will somehow changes reality and changes the fundamental moral natures of other human beings, like the leaders and the politicians, all those sort of things.
So, of course, that basic principle that if there are two of us and we vote to own everything that you've got, or at least half of what you've got, would be laughed at, right?
It's like, well, how come you get to own stuff?
It's like, well, we voted for it, right?
I mean, that's kind of funny. In a more sort of funnier level, or at least for me, funnier, if you're just having an argument, you can say...
Well, let's all vote on whether the government is legitimate or not, right?
And then there's three of you at a table, two ANCAPs and a statist, and you say, well, we're going to vote.
And then the two ANCAPs vote that the government is illegitimate.
It's like, well, sorry, the government is now illegitimate because we voted for its illegitimacy, right?
And the statist is then going to say, no, the government's not illegitimate.
Right? And it's like, well, why?
He's going to say, well, you can't just make the government illegitimate by sitting there and voting.
Right? It's like, but if you can make the government legitimate through the act of voting, surely you can make the government illegitimate through the act of voting.
And since there are two of us here saying the government is illegitimate, and only one of you saying that it is, surely now I don't have to pay taxes.
Right? Because why would it be different depending on the number of people that vote for it, right?
I mean, everybody wants all these big abstracts, the majority, the state, the country, and all this.
But it all comes down to individuals, right?
And that which is writ large should also be testable in a smaller sense, right?
So, again, all of this stuff is just kind of funny.
I mean, it's like a ridiculous kind of joke that's thrown at people to try and get them to believe all this silliness, right?
And that's why there's so much pomp and circumstance and flags and anthems and all this kind of stuff.
But it's just... I mean, the same thing happens with church, right?
I mean... Church has its songs and its pageantry and so on, and all of it's sort of specifically designed to make people think that a whole bunch of nonsense exists that doesn't even remotely exist.
So thank you so much for listening.
I appreciate it. I had a bit of a dip into the boards today.
I'm pretty busy at work, so I don't have much time, but I certainly appreciate everybody's four new members the last 24 hours.
It's wonderful. Thank you so much.
I look forward to it continuing, and I look forward to your donations.