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Dec. 6, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
39:12
545 Give 'Em GUNS!

The ultimate statist answer to every complex problem

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Good morning, everybody. Hope you're doing well.
It's Steph. It is 10 to 8 on December the 6th, 2006.
Thank you so much to the gentleman who suggested that a good present to get your humble host for Christmas would be an in-dash calendar.
I think that would be excellent.
And that would actually raise the chances, I think, of me getting the date right by about 20 to 25 percent.
So it would be useful.
So I hope you're doing well.
It's interesting, you know, in the great aftermath of the prostitution debate, the board has not gone quiet in that people aren't posting.
But there has been a...
A pullback in the level of emotional energy on the board.
And I think that's actually probably quite a good thing.
I think that there's a gentleman who posted this morning.
I checked just while I was brushing my teeth.
Unless I was from Alabama, in which case I'd be brushing my teeth.
But this gentleman said, you know, I don't get to see.
I mean, prostitution.
I mean, what about people who end up taking the garbage out?
What about people who end up being janitors and cleaning toilets?
I mean, aren't you exploiting them as well?
And why is it only that prostitutes get positive rights and so on?
Well, I mean, and I'm not going to reopen the debate.
I just sort of wanted to mention that...
The free market, like let's just say that the idea that I put forward in the third podcast on prostitution, That the question at the moment, especially for the people who are writing in from the countries where prostitution is illegal, the sort of central issue at the moment is that prostitution is illegal, and therefore you do not know who is being abused and who's been terrorized and kidnapped.
You have no idea.
You can't, because it's in the same way that because drugs are illegal, We have no idea.
You have no idea when you buy a drug.
You have no idea what the quality of that drug is.
No idea whatsoever. I mean, maybe you have some idea if you've had a long-term relationship with a dealer or something, but the fact is at the moment that prostitution is illegal and that removes an enormous amount of...
And nobody sort of mentioned that.
Everyone's like, well, prostitution is legal or should be legal and isn't wrong and so on.
But the fact is that right now it is illegal and therefore there are consequences to that illegality, mostly to do with the exploitation of the people who work in that illegal industry, right?
And so that sort of basic fact is there, and if there are people in some parallel universe who want to go to prostitutes and pay for sex and who have high self-esteem, despite the fact that there are many people out there who will have sex with you without you having to pay them and without them having to have pimps and so on, if there was a desire for sort of honorable prostitution, then of course what would happen is that you would end up with a...
A third party, if there was a desire for this, like if people genuinely respected the fact or the problem that you can never know when you go to a prostitute, certainly when it's illegal, and I would also imagine when it's not illegal, whether or not she's there because of a history of abuse, you would say if there was a demand for such a service that would certify,
that would put the prostitutes through counseling to find out if they had any history of abuse that was causing them problems in the present, And through this process of counseling them, they would find out whether or not they were there because they were the leftovers of child rape.
And then they would put their names in a database.
Yes, they've gone through 10 counseling sessions, and yes, that's raised their prices, but so what, right?
I mean, the price of aspirin is higher because they make sure that there isn't broken glass in it, and people find that to be a valuable thing.
So the cost doesn't really matter if it's a quality that people are willing to pay for.
So, that sort of fact would simply be, or that approach would simply be taken in the free market.
Somebody posted on the board this morning to say, well, why is it that only these particular groups of people have I'm not sure exactly what he means by positive rights, but I certainly have never suggested that.
Prostitution should be legal, and it is a crime that does not involve violence on the part of the John.
He is at the moment exploiting the violence that is He is exploiting the general attack in the same way that a slave owner, who is not the guy who's out whipping the slaves if they don't work hard enough, but is simply sipping his tea in his room, he is not the one who is inflicting direct violence against them and so on,
which of course is not to equate slavery with prostitution or say that slavery should be legal or anything like that, but That John is not the person who is attacking the prostitutes directly.
He is simply exploiting the fact that other people are attacking and enslaving them all the way, especially when it's illegal from the cops to the pimps.
But even where it's legal, this does seem to be an issue.
So I've never suggested that there should be positive rights.
And, you know, this is just a matter of introspection.
I mean, there could be a long argument that I could get into about this, but...
I'm a tad weary of the topic, so forgive me for saying this, but just sort of imagine this, right?
Imagine this.
Imagine if somebody captures you and puts you in a basement and you're sort of like a Woody Allen size or style of human being, like you're not the biggest guy in the world and so on.
And, you know, you don't know why you're there.
And then the guy comes down the stairs and says, he's, I don't know, he's like huge, right?
He's like bouncer, New York Club bouncer-style huge.
One of these sort of man-meet-mountains kind of guys.
Twice your size. And you're like, you know, I don't know, 125 of sinew and he's 250 of muscle.
And he says, well, you've got one of two choices, my friend.
You can either spread them and I'm going to rape you, or you can clean my toilet.
One of the two and you can go.
I gotta tell you, I can't really imagine...
And of course they say, if you clean my toilet, I'm going to give you rubber gloves, I'm going to give you a mask, I'm going to give you industrial cleaning solvents, I'm going to let you clean yourself up afterwards.
But it's one of the two. Either I rape you and throw you out on the street, or you clean my toilets and I throw you out on the street, right?
This is just a matter of introspection.
I mean, if that doesn't do it for you, no argument will, right?
If you don't sort of get which you would choose.
It's the same thing sort of with any service industry that's got an unpleasant task ahead of it, right?
There's no violation of your person if you're cleaning a toilet, right?
I mean, there is a violation of your person if you are raped.
And again, that's not to equate going to a prostitute with rape.
I'm not even going to get into the subtle shadings of that argument because for me it's a big long gray area.
But certainly it is the case that cleaning somebody's toilet is not the same as having sex with them.
If I can't convince you of that as a man or a woman, if you would choose rape over cleaning somebody's toilet, then...
Well, I could go through a long and involved argument about it, but it wouldn't matter.
I wouldn't waste both of our time.
We would just have to agree to disagree on this one, because I can't argue with people who would choose.
Getting raped over cleaning somebody's toilet.
So there is quite a bit of difference between sexual penetration and cleaning a toilet.
So anyway, I don't sort of view that as the same.
Now, where I do agree with that argument or approach is that, not that this means it's any right or wrong, it's just sort of my particular opinion, is that I think that people who have any kind of ability Who end up in really low rent jobs do come from a history of abuse.
So if you...
There was some movie with Jack Nicholson where he plays a guy who's a brilliant concert pianist and so on, but he also...
What he does is he slums around working on oil rigs with a pretty dull woman, a pretty dumb woman.
And... There's a famous scene.
Five Easy Pieces. This is the famous scene where he's in a restaurant and he orders toast and she says, you can't get toast, right?
And he's like, what do you mean you can't get toast?
He's like, we don't make toast.
Well, I tell you what, why don't you do this?
Do you make chicken sandwich? Yeah.
He's like, okay, I want a chicken sandwich.
I want you to hold the chicken.
Yeah. Hold the lettuce.
Yeah. Hold the mayo. Yeah.
Hold the tomato. Yeah.
What do you got? Just bread.
Great. Bring me that.
It's a funny scene, and it's a sort of heartbreaking film because you see somebody who's got a high degree of ability who is squandering it in a way, right?
He's just doing low-rent jobs and so on.
I mean, low-rent relative to his ability.
And that person, without a doubt, you don't end up that way unless you come from some sort of history of bad parenting to whatever degree, right?
So, is that exploitation?
Well, I wouldn't necessarily say so.
I think that generally what is the case is you're not responsible for the people who come into your life, but you have some non-coercive degree of moral responsibility for how they exit from your orbit, or how they are treated when they're in your orbit.
I've always been pretty sensitive to this as a manager.
So I'm not responsible for the emotional state of the people that I interview, right?
So if some guy's staring at the carpet and mumbling and is embarrassed to be there, then of course I know he's not been respected by his parents or his teachers, mostly his parents, or he's had some brutal sibling or something like that, who's sort of crushed the life out of him and so on.
And I'm not responsible for that.
I didn't create that.
I didn't do that to him.
Now, if I end up saying, yeah, I'll give you a job but for half the pay of everyone else because I think he's got really low self-esteem, well, Of course, the problem is that in the free market, it doesn't really work out too well to underpay people significantly.
Just because somebody who's going to accept a significant amount of low pay is not going to be a self-starter.
You want somebody who's going to be able to make decisions and evaluate things on their own, and this is true for just about any job you hire someone for.
And if they're willing to accept really, really low pay, I'm paying normally $40k, I'll offer you $20k, and the guy says, okay, because he's got no willpower, then he's going to be inert.
He's going to be one of these people who's going to be like a brick on a table.
You push that person, and then you stop pushing, and then he stops.
And then you go back and you say, well, what's happening with this?
And I had an employee once who was going through just an unbelievable divorce.
And he had no intellectual energy available for his...
Sorry, he wasn't going through a divorce.
I sort of found out later his marriage was in serious trouble.
For a variety of reasons that aren't important right now, and may never be important to anyone else, but this guy was absolutely inert.
Like, he would literally stare at his screen.
He had no intellectual energy available for his job.
And so, unfortunately, I mean, as a business, I sort of suggested he get counseling, and I talked to him for a little bit, but this was not something that we could sustain because we were a small company and, you know, you can't carry people and so on.
But if I had...
So that person you could pay less, but you'd also just get less out of them, right?
You want somebody who's going to proactively negotiate for a better wage because that means that they're going to be sensitive to their own self-interest, that they're not afraid to negotiate, that they're not afraid to push back, which is important, especially in the realm of programming, right?
Somebody from marketing hands them a list of things that their clients want done, or somebody from sales says, I need this done so I can close a sale.
You want someone who's going to say, no, I don't see how that's going to work.
Let's bring it to the CTO and see what the deal is, right?
You don't want somebody who's just going to sort of nod and smile and stick it in a growing pile of paper and not do anything about it.
That would be the actions of an insecure person, and that's going to cause you a hell of a lot of problems.
So you're not responsible for the state of the souls of the people who come into your life, but you are responsible for the degree to which you nurture that which is best in them.
As they're part of your life, right?
So I don't think I've had any truly broken souls come into my orbit.
No, one guy. One guy who I hired, who actually came out of a theater background like myself.
And so we had a real debate about this guy.
He seemed a bit hyper, but was obviously very creative.
And so it had a bias because that was my background and it worked out for the company to have me there.
So, well, it worked out for the company.
I co-founded the company, so I was going to be there anyway.
But that guy turned out to be a complete disaster because he was sexually inappropriate and his wife left him like two weeks after he got the job and, oh, just a complete mess.
He didn't even make it through the first three weeks.
So, yeah, there are risks and all this, but what you do have a responsibility for is how do people leave your orbit, right?
Do they leave your orbit stronger and wiser, and do you treat them with respect?
And firing somebody who's acting inappropriately after talking about things with them is, in fact, treating them with respect, which I sort of, it's a complicated argument, but you don't encourage that which is the worst in people.
You stand strong against that, which is the worst in people, and you outright reject it, and then what you do is you encourage them, and if they're able to take it at that time, great.
If not, and it's not economically or personally productive for you to hang out with them, As an employee or friend or lover or whatever, then you don't do that, right?
You don't reinforce the bad behavior with your continued presence and resources, but you leave them with enough nuggets of why it occurred so that in the future...
They can sort of maybe remember that, and if enough evidence accumulates...
I mean, if people just keep getting fired and nobody actually tells them why, then it's harder for them to fix the issue, right?
But if someone gets fired, like if I get fired and nobody tells me why, and then I sort of do the same thing at the next job, I'm going to end up just getting paranoid because I don't know what the hell's going wrong, right?
But if somebody's sort of honest and tells me, well, this is why...
Well, first of all, as Anderson tells me, this is what needs to change, and if I don't end up changing it, it tells me this is why.
You know, I asked for this, you couldn't give it, so no problem, but, you know, we can sort of continue our relationship.
Then, if that happens a number of times, at least I have an idea why, if I want to change, I have some ideas about how to go about doing that.
So... The question is, how do you treat people when they're around you?
So if I hired a janitor who was obviously a bit of a broken soul, then I can treat him with respect.
I can treat the waiters with respect.
I was on a date with my wife about a year ago, and I was pleased and thank you to the waiter, and the waiter just sort of...
He stood before me at the end of the meal and said, you know, you are like the most positive and polite person I think I've ever had as a customer.
You know, you've always asked politely.
You've always said thanks. You've always appreciated the service.
And he said, you know, I can't tell you how rare that is and blah, blah, blah.
And in a small way, I mean, I try to do this everywhere I go, right?
I mean, I try to give a laugh to people or make their day a little happier with a little joke or something like that, right?
So I was at the gym last night with Christina and...
I was starting to use a machine and the guy said, oh no, no, I have to wipe that down, right?
So he got a bunch of paper towels with the spritz cleaner and he wiped it down.
And so I turned to him, I stretched my arms out and I said, if you could do me a little, that would be fantastic.
And he laughed, right?
And that's not, I mean, you don't have to do anything like that, but...
It's not a bad thing, you know, when the woman comes in to clean out my garbage at the end of the day at work, I like to say thank you very much, right?
And I'll hold the door open for her if I'm leaving and she's got that big cut.
Just because in a little way you can put a tiny, I mean, this woman's life is obviously not the best, but at least somebody can show her a little bit of respect from time to time.
And this kind of stuff, I think, is quite important.
As I've mentioned before, philosophy is also about the little details as well as the big fights.
And virtue is also about the minor things, which build to the major things, right?
Real virtue is an accumulation of mostly small habits, mostly small decisions, right?
By the time we end up with the big decisions, we want to have had all the small decisions in the right way so that we have the strength and habit and so on to make the right decision.
But it's sort of like health, right?
I mean, you want to exercise so you don't want to survive the heart attack, right?
You want to have the exercise and eat well so you don't have the heart attack, at least not until you're 100.
So, from that standpoint, no, it's not exploitive to hire somebody who's come from a bad background with the recognition that you're not going to get quite as much economic productivity as somebody who's more of a self-starter.
So, it is only going to be in those jobs where being a self-starter is not really a valid kind of thing.
You know, maybe like a janitor, I don't know, just go around and do this.
I mean, I did that job, as I've mentioned before, I've cleaned...
I cleaned offices at night when I was a teenager after my brother and I kicked my mom out so that we could have...
I was working like two or three jobs at that point as well as going to school because we needed, well, kind of money, right?
Child labor, right? It's wrong.
It's wrong. Well, it sure beats having a bad parent around.
But it's still important that you treat that person with respect, right?
Even if you've hired them to clean your toilets, right?
It's still important that you treat that person with respect.
And if you find out that they're like a nasty person to have around, then you can, depending on your judgment, either talk to them or just discontinue the relationship.
I think that it is important so that they see that they could be treated well.
Just in a sort of minor way.
You just need one example against to break a theory.
So if there is a constant refrain running around in their head that I'm bad and nobody treats me well, then if one person treats you well, then, I mean, I'm not going to say that's going to change everything, but...
It certainly is a heck of a lot better than not treating them well.
And it certainly opens up a door, like it unlocks the door to a different kind of way of looking at yourself.
Of course, they may end up taking 10 years to walk through it, but at least there's a click that they hear, which is a countervailing example of how they're treated.
And I would say that you simply can't treat someone well by banging them for money, right?
Sort of where, like, you simply can't do that, right?
You simply can't do that.
It's like saying, I want to pay someone.
I want to stick their head in the toilet, but I want to do it respectfully, right?
I mean, that's just not going to happen.
The very act is disrespectful to the soul of another human being.
So... So I wanted to sort of mention that.
I guess it's more than a mention. And now we move on to the topic of the morning.
The topic of the morning is just...
I sort of figured out last night, and it's kind of obvious, and maybe everyone else has already thought of this, but I thought I'd throw it out there anyway, because it was a clarifying moment for me.
I was sort of wondering why a political theory just irritates me so, so much.
Oh, I can't even tell you. Like, it just makes me so angry!
Marvin the Martian could use some work.
But it makes me so angry, this political theory.
Just the way people say, well, we need the government to do this, or the government should do that, or we should allocate.
Like I was listening to Bill Moyer, I was listening to one of his books, and he's talking about how we can deal with the whole problem of security.
We just get 10,000 people, we pay them 100,000 a year, who are expert professionals, who know what to look for, like the people at Ben-Gurion Airport in Israel, and And so on, right?
And it's like, it's only a billion dollars and this and that, right?
I mean, it's just...
Oh, my God.
It's so freaking lazy.
That's sort of what it is that I realized last night that bothers me so much about it.
It's so freaking lazy.
You know the kind of laziness that occurs when somebody just does an ad hominem attack?
You know, like, you've...
I've spent 20 years or more than 20 years now coming up with theories about how society could work with minimal or absent government, and it's been a hell of a lot of hard work, right?
And, I mean, what you guys get is a tenth of a tenth of what I've sort of worked out on paper over the years.
So I guess that's...
Believe it or not, this 550 podcast is a filter.
I mean, that's shocking, I know, but still, it is.
It may seem like a tsunami, but there's a bigger tsunami that this is just the aftershock of.
So, yeah, it's been a hell of a lot of work.
But then when somebody says, you know, oh, so, you know, oh, so basically you just want civil war, right?
You know, somebody comes out, it's lazy, right?
It's incredibly lazy for somebody to do that.
And they do that for a variety of reasons we've talked about before.
That's not just that they're lazy.
It's basically because the argument disturbs them, but they have never been taught how to reason.
But it's just incredibly lazy.
And I'm not saying anybody has to expend one joule of energy rebutting anything that I put forward, but if they're going to take the time to read the article and write me and so on, then obviously they're willing to expend some energy, so then it's sort of lazy and vaguely insulting to sort of get that kind of stuff coming out of what it is that they're saying.
And so that kind of laziness I find sort of irritating.
To me, it's a little bit less irritating because people mostly just aren't taught how to reason and families operate almost exclusively.
I mean, families are just one biological bundle of logical fallacies, right?
I mean, if you go back through or if you haven't listened to when you get to them, of course you've gotten to them, I guess, unless you're really cherry-picking.
Hang on one sec. Copy time. When you get to...
To the logical fallacies, or after you've gotten to the logical fallacies, every single one of those is a family argument.
Like, without a doubt. Families are just wildly spinning biological attack dogs of logical fallacies.
There's no question of any of that.
I mean, it's all that families do.
Every family debate that I ever had ended up in this kind of mess.
It was kind of shrieky nonsense where people just end up getting angry rather than...
And, you know, without reason, right?
Getting angry and there's no rationality involved.
But... So, that kind of laziness really bothers me, but political theory laziness is just, oh, it's way, way out there as far as what bothers me.
And so, you know, the fact that it bothers me doesn't mean anything, but this is sort of what I thought about.
Maybe it makes sense to you, maybe it doesn't.
This is sort of what I got out of it, that it's just so goddamn lazy.
Basically, it's like, well, we've got these big complex problems like environmentalism, which, hey, I know the environment's getting better and I'm a pretty big skeptic about global warming, but there are issues of air and water pollution and so on.
And... The complex problems like that, complex problems like child abuse, complex problems like how to allocate resources in society and poverty and education and all these kinds of things, right?
All of these big complex issues that you need to at least have a framework in which to be solved, I would say.
Like, I mean, these are things that you at least need to have a passing nod to when it comes to here's how society could work rather than how it is now, which is not working.
And the solution that people who are interested in political theory come up with is absolutely horrible.
The solution is so incredibly lazy.
When you peel away all of the nonsense and the rhetoric and the language and the degrees and the Michael Ignidia from Harvard kind of nonsense, really all you end up with is, let's give a bunch of people some guns.
I mean, literally, it's like, let's arm a small but dedicated and hopefully virtuous mob and hope that something right occurs out of that.
That's really, I mean, as far as I can sort of see, and I've tried approaching this question from a number of different angles, that's really all it comes to.
People say, there ought to be a law, there ought to be an agency, or the government should do this, or the government should do that.
Basically, all they're saying is, let's arm a whole bunch of people.
And give them a wish list and hope it works out.
I mean, that's really the situation.
It's sort of like if you're a farmer and you say, gee, I really need to get my fields plowed.
And someone were to come up to you and say, you know, there's a bunch of migrant workers with no documentation lounging around under that cicatia tree.
I think what we should do is give them a whole bunch of guns and money and a list that says, here's how I want my fields plowed.
And that's how it's going to work.
I mean, can you imagine that?
Can you imagine that?
So if you want to, you know, maybe you're some group, you want to clean up a ghetto, whatever, whatever racial ghetto we're talking about, right?
You want to clean up the ghetto. You want to sort of get rid of all the burning cars and the oil drums that are, you know, cracked and broken and possibly burning too.
And you want to sort of clean up the graffiti and you want to fix the broken windows and so on, right?
Are you necessarily going to go to, you know, the local baggy pants hoodlums, give them a whole bunch of money and guns and a list of what needs to be done and say, great, I've solved the problem.
Because, I mean, that's really what's occurring when somebody says that there's a government that needs to be done.
The hoodlums are all in suits and jackets, of course, which is what makes them much more dangerous than the street thugs, right?
Because they have legitimacy and they have, quote, moral authority and so on.
But really, that's what the solution is.
And of course now it's gotten to the point where the government is sort of fundamentally centered around weapons of mass destruction.
I mean, that's why there's no civilian revolt when it comes to taxes that high.
I mean, the government is centered around weapons of mass destruction.
If the government only had six shooters, then there would be a whole lot of people who would probably take on the IRS. We know that throughout history.
That's exactly how the revolution occurred in America.
People took on people who were armed to a similar degree.
Of course, you know, right? I mean, I'm not saying anyone should, but you know that if you were to, you know, shoot a cop coming to collect your taxes, that the next thing that would come is, you know, 50 guys, and there would be attack helicopters if you held out then, and then there'd be scuds, and then there'd be, you know, there would just, you would not be able to, you can't sustain yourself against the violence that the government can bring to bear, right?
The government is, the power is centered around weapons of mass destruction.
Relative to the population, I'm not saying they're going to nuke a non-compliant taxpayer, but of course that is the final argument, right?
I mean, if the state were to secede, then the federal government would come in and would occupy.
I mean, no question, right? No question they're not going to allow a secession.
They'll come in and they're Occupy, and if people shoot back, then they'll start raining Scuds down, and if people find a way to deflect the Scuds, they'll...
I mean, at some point, it would escalate to that.
It's likely. I'm not positive.
Maybe that would be the sort of part that...
But definitely, it's the disparity of power that will cause that kind of compliance.
And so, it's even more ridiculous than just giving people a bunch of guns and money.
Maybe it's the equivalence of saying...
I mean, if the town is wild, the wild west town, the solution is always for the sheriff to shoot people, right?
But really what people are talking about when they talk about the government is, let's disarm all the citizens and give the guns and the money to whoever wants them the most.
And of course, the people who want them the most, who want guns and money and power, Are not the healthiest of people, right?
So, I mean, it's not like this sort of fantasy Gary Cooper virtuous guy.
What was it in High Noon? He's like riding away with his new bride, but he decides to go back and get the crap shot out of him, which is, you know, what would happen.
I mean, in real life, I mean, this gunfight at the OK Corral is a nice fantasy, but people don't do that unless they're homicidal, right?
I mean, people don't sort of say, hey, I could ride away, but I'm going to go back and get into a shootout with these bad guys.
And that's not a healthy decision to make, right?
So those sort of people don't exist.
There's a reason why that only occurs in the movies.
But let's widen the disparity between those in power and those not in power by giving those in power more money and guns, and let's disarm those who aren't in power.
So basically, let's just give people a whole bunch of weapons, let's disarm a whole bunch of other people, and we'll write down a mandate with the hopes that giving people all these guns is going to solve the problem.
And that's just a fundamentally funny idea.
I mean, it's a fundamentally funny, ridiculous, pathetic, lazy, stupid, slavish, licking the boots of power kind of idea.
And boy, it would be nice if people got out of that habit, or at least pointed the habit out, right?
So, you know, this is something that you might want to sort of play around with if you're arguing with a statist.
You might. I mean, maybe it would be helpful.
So, the status says, well, we need the government to do X, Y, and Z, right?
So it's like, okay, so I think I understand it.
So, your solution is we give a bunch of people a bunch of guns and money, and we write down what we want them to do, and then we hope that they do it.
Right? So this is public school, right?
Well, we've got to have public school.
It's like, okay. And so your solution to the question of education...
Is to give people a whole bunch of weapons of mass destruction and a whole bunch of money and a mandate that you've written down that you hope that they'll follow.
And they're going to say, well, no, I want to provide education for the poor.
It's like, well, let's say that you do, right?
I mean, I have no problem with that. Let's say that you do.
Well, the way in which you're going to provide education to the poor is you're going to give the government, a bunch of people, a whole bunch of money and guns.
And, you know, you're going to say, use this to educate children.
Right.
And then the power passes completely from your hands.
Right.
And so once you've handed over the money and guns and disarmed everybody else, then you have no way really of influencing the government.
Right.
You have no way of controlling that sort of stuff.
Right.
So.
From that standpoint, it becomes a pretty ridiculous argument.
I mean, obviously it becomes a pretty ridiculous argument.
Everyone's got to have health insurance, right?
So we need government-run health care programs, right?
It's like, okay, so your solution to the complex problems of how to allocate health resources is to give a bunch of people a bunch of guns and money and hope that they do the right thing.
And, of course, if they don't do the right thing, what are you going to do?
Because that's another question which is important to ask people who like this sort of guns and money to a thug's solution to complex problems.
It's sort of like, I don't know whose physics theory is right.
Let's just arm one guy to the teeth and say that he should figure out the right physics theory.
And he's not a physicist. That would not be particularly...
I mean, that's not how they solve problems in referee journals, right?
For instance, they don't sort of say, well, I don't know whose theory is right, but let's just arm one guy, and he will then figure out which theory is the right one, and we'll publish that.
That's not a shootout situation when it comes to figuring out right theories of physics, right?
Much less important than things like educating the young and providing health care.
But really, that's all it comes down to.
Let's give a bunch of people a bunch of guns and money and hope that they do the right thing.
And then the question to ask is, well, what if they don't?
So what happens is that when somebody says, we need public education, they'll be like, okay, well, let's assume that you can set it all up.
You give all of the people the guns and the money to get things done.
You give them the mandate. But let's just say they don't follow the mandate.
You know, as people who are really interested in guns, money, and power...
People tend not to be that receptive to people's requests, right?
They tend not to be interested in win-win negotiations, because if they were interested in win-win negotiations, they would have distinctly less interest in guns, money, and power, right?
I mean, that's, you know, guns, money, and power.
The government's not interested in negotiation and win-win, because people in the government, if they were interested in negotiation and win-win, they would not be drawn to the government.
That's just an absolutely guaranteed basic psychological fact.
So... The people who rush forward to grab the guns, money, and power are probably not, actually I would say definitely not, the people who are going to end up being very concerned with creating positive situations for others, right?
The people who are rushing forward the fastest and elbowing other people out of the way to get a hold of the guns, money, and power are not the people who are going to be particularly stable, positive, wise, and virtuous when it comes to the exercise of that.
Because, of course, the question is, why would you want it to begin with, right?
What the hell is the matter with you?
That you would want this kind of power to begin with, right?
I mean, you have no problem talking about the corruption that is involved in politics, but of course the corruption involved in prostitution.
Well, that's a different matter. But, of course, what happens then if they don't, right?
So you say, okay, well, so public education needs to be provided by government, or it looks like, okay, but what happens if it doesn't get provided?
Oh, we need the government to provide public education.
Okay, let's say that we accept that and then we give government all the guns and the money and the power to create whatever kind of public education it feels like.
And then people say, well, yeah, but they are providing public education.
You can't say they don't care about it at all.
It's like, well, of course they care about it, right?
People in power very much care about educating the young, right?
That's how they stay in power.
They don't care about educating.
They care about indoctrination, right?
I mean, that's all the public schools are about.
Indoctrination and boredom and making you feel small, right?
That's really all that...
All that it's about, right? It's a massive training pen on how to stay inside the electric fence and pretend that there is no electric fence and you're free, right?
I mean, that's really all that public education is about.
So yeah, they do absolutely care about indoctrinating the young in the virtues of democracy and the wisdom of the leaders and how wonderful and free they are and how patriotism is a great virtue.
And so on, and how the soldiers are heroes and so on.
I mean, the police are your friends.
Of course, absolutely, totally, they're into that, right?
No question, right? But that's not the same as educating.
It's quite the opposite of educating people.
The question then would ask is, what happens if it doesn't work out?
What happens if they don't provide the kind of education that would be a healthy thing, a healthy amount of education or the right amount of education?
What happens then? So you've already handed over the guns, money and power, disarmed everybody else, relative, right?
And everybody, I mean, I know America is like the gun-happy capital of the planet, but relative to the government, they're totally disarmed, right?
I mean, just look at Waco. Relative to the government, everyone is disarmed.
It doesn't matter if you've got an Uzi, right?
Relative to the government, you're totally disarmed.
You don't have attack helicopters and submarines and B-52s and bunker buster bombs and nukes and so on.
Everybody's disarmed. But...
The question, well, what happens?
Well, of course, you know, the average idiot says, well, you vote in someone who does do the right thing.
Well, what happens if that person doesn't work out?
What happens if the only people attracted to power are those who aren't very interested in helping children?
Right, which shouldn't be that hard a thing to grasp, but for a status, of course, it is.
But what happens, right?
What happens if everyone, well, you know, I don't know.
You can have an insurrection. But there's no real answer to what happens if handing over guns, money, and power to people doesn't solve the problem.
Well, what do you do?
So, of course, if it's a free market and you say, well, the school that's providing education for your child is not doing the right thing, is not doing something that you want.
Then the solution is dead simple.
Well, yank your kid.
It's easy peasy, nice and easy, right?
I mean, it's not that complicated a thing to figure out.
If the school isn't providing you what you want, Well, it's real easy to figure out what should happen next, right?
You take your kid to another school, right?
It's like saying, what happens if the grocery store doesn't stock the kind of cheese you like?
It's like, well, if you want it, you go to another store.
It's no biggie, right? It's no complication, no mess, no fuss.
But that's not what the status solution does, right?
I mean, in the status solution, if you end up not...
If the gang you give the guns money and power to doesn't...
And the list of your wish list...
Thank you.
Thank you.
Anyway, I hope that that helps.
I really appreciate you listening.
It's been a little dry on the donation front, so if you're thinking of donating, perk up my spirits and pay for some of this stuff.
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