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April 16, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
46:02
712 Sarcasm...

Where does it rank in the moral hierarchy?

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Time Text
Good afternoon, everybody.
Hope you're doing well. It's Steph.
It is the 16th of April, 2007, and we're going to have a little chat-o-rama about an interesting topic that came up on the boards relative to, I believe it was Podcast 704 or 70-something, the one that was related to the...
The free rider problem, where I use the do-do-do voice to talk about particular kinds of corrupt intellectuals.
And I got some excellent feedback, which I'll just share here, and I thought about it, and I let it sit for a couple of days just to see if anybody was going to come to the same conclusion that I did.
Didn't find that to be the case, which either means that my conclusion is computer nonsense, or there may be something of value to offer.
You can tell me which is which.
So here, somebody posted, is it just me?
Or am I detecting a hint of sardonic attitude in Steph lately?
Now I hate to speculate about what Steph did on vacation, though if I did, a battle between lesbian ninja vampires and space pirates would probably come up.
But normal people are supposed to come home rested and recharged from vacation, eh?
So, how are you doing, Steph?
You need someone to talk to? Perhaps a bit nervous, excited about going full-time with FDR? And somebody posted back and said that anybody who's come this far is not going to be offended by mocking a statist.
He said, I normally listen to Steph's podcast as if it is me talking to a statist or religious, but well-meaning friend while drinking tea on a couch in my hypothetical living room, and how would that friend react?
Obviously, the you-have-to-be-as-dumb-as-a-credenza-because-the-solution-is-so-blindingly-obvious approach wouldn't sit well with most people.
And somebody else said, actually, I was thinking of posting something like this.
I think I would say that the sarcasm was laid on a little thick.
At one point, Steph used the retard voice to characterize the free rider argument, and I found that it really turned me off of the podcast.
Steph usually says how this stuff isn't intuitive and how we should not demean people just because they haven't been exposed to these ideas.
I'm not saying that it was over-the-top bashing, but it was very subtle, and I hope it doesn't get worse in future podcasts.
The last thing we need this conversation to become is an anarcho-capitalist high-five fest.
Well, first and foremost, of course, thanks everybody so much for posting thoughts and ideas regarding the podcast.
As always, I will share with you my thoughts about what I was up to and my response and why I waited for a couple of days to see what other response there was.
And some people said, no, no, no, I thought it was fine and blah, blah, blah.
But I'll sort of share with you what my thoughts were, and you can let me know if it makes sense to you.
So, basically, what was occurring for me is that it is interesting, and I think very interesting, to see what happens in Circles are devoted to sort of freedom when temper or anger or sarcasm or some sort of I guess hostility is I think it's just fascinating to see what happens in this kind of context.
Because there is an enormous amount to be learned, I think, from getting angry.
So I sort of wanted to point out the difference because, of course, a listener quite rightly points out that I do say that this stuff is not intuitive, that it is complicated and challenging.
And so on. And what right do I then have to mock people who don't already know this kind of stuff?
Well, it's very true. A lot of the stuff that we talk about is difficult.
And a lot of the stuff we talk about is not difficult at all.
And the difference between those two things, I think, is quite important.
I was not mocking the average person on the street who has been told a million times over that the government does X, Y, and Z and should do X, Y, and Z because of A, B, and C, and so on.
I was really talking about the intellectuals.
Now, those who haven't heard me talk about intellectuals before might want to go back and listen to some of the earlier ones on statist intellectuals and the metaphor of the doctor who prescribes...
A poison instead of penicillin to sick people.
That you take your expertise and your knowledge and value of rationality, evidence, and the scientific method and you use it to verily corrupt rationality, evidence, and the scientific method.
So I won't go into that whole detail here, but what I am interested in talking about is...
My relationship and perhaps your relationship too to the difference between error and corruption, error and evil.
I do believe that the intellectuals are the ones who are the most responsible I think that the intellectuals are the ones who are the most to blame.
And, of course, most of them are paid state toadies who lick the boots of the emperor in order to get tenured positions and in order to be part of the chattering classes and to get access to power and to be able to write columns and...
To be able to teach children, and they basically rub up against the filthy, hoary, blood-ridden, pestilent leg of the state in order to be able to get their goodies.
Now, of course, they don't necessarily think of it in those terms consciously, but whether one is conscious of these things or not is not entirely beyond one's power to differentiate.
So I'll sort of give an example of what I mean, and then I can talk a little bit more about my approach to it in the previous podcast.
And then I'll tell you why I let things settle for a couple of days, because I was performing a wee little experiment.
And you can let me know if you think it was useful or worth anything.
In the podcast that I talked about in terms of...
Public goods. We talked about the lighthouses.
That lighthouses are considered to be one of these axiomatic facts that you need a government because of things like lighthouses.
And, of course, people use roads and sidewalks and so on.
Now, there's a story, and I can't remember who told it.
Someone at the Mises Institute, I do apologize that I can't remember your name.
It could have been Walter B. But...
There is a textbook, a very common or very widely used textbook in economics that starts out with just this very thing.
Well, lighthouses, you need a state for lighthouses.
Lighthouses couldn't exist in a private situation because of the problem of the free rider and the problem of the commons.
So it has to be a public, blah, blah, blah.
And what happened was this economist, who's more from the Austrian school, looked up the facts behind the matter and found that, of course, as we talked about in that podcast, that the lighthouses were present and operated on private funds long before the government took them over and got rid of all of the private.
It's like welfare, right? Once you get the welfare state going, you get rid of the friendly societies and all of the institutions that people used to We have to have a welfare state because no one does it privately, but just as bad money crowds out good money, bad state policy or just state policy drives out voluntarism.
Violence drives out voluntarism.
And so when you survey a society that has had violent solutions for a lot of voluntary problems, you see no voluntarism and you forget the cause and effect.
You say, well, not you.
One, it's easy to say, well, we have to have the welfare state because, look, nobody's helping the poor, more or less.
Whereas, of course, the opposite is true.
Nobody's helping the poor because violent solutions like the welfare state have driven out at least a good deal of private charity.
So this...
This Austrian economist then wrote to the gentleman who had written the economics textbook and said, well, you say that there's no such thing as you can't have private lighthouses.
And he got no reply back, and the guy didn't respond.
The next edition or two of the textbook that came out, Had exactly the same sentence, that we need government for things like lighthouses, and the example is this, and blah, blah, blah, despite the fact that clear evidence, clear, unambiguous historical evidence, had been provided to the contrary.
And that is really quite fascinating when you think about it.
Just sort of slither into that little truffle of mental corruption, and you get some quite instructive, though ugly, views out of it.
So this gentleman put forth a proposition that's based on there being no private lighthouses.
An esteemed economist in the field provides him primary source information that says there are private lighthouses, and they predated public lighthouses by many, many, many years, decades.
And the man won't change his text.
The man won't change his text.
Well, what that means, of course, Is that he's not interested in saying, I believe in the state because the state must provide lighthouses.
Because once he finds that out, he would change his belief in this area and he would say, huh, gee, I wonder if there are other areas and he'd go and become an Austrian economist.
But instead, what he does is he says, I praise the state and this is a good excuse for For me by which to do so.
I praise the state and this is a good excuse or a good way for me to do it.
And if that turns out to be false, I'm going to ignore it, I'm going to diminish it, I'm going to scorn it, I'm going to whatever.
Finally, the guy who wrote the textbook did throw this in a footnote or an endnote at the back of the chapter in like two-point, saying, well, you know, there did appear to be some private lighthouses, but they weren't very efficient.
Just stuff that was subjective and sort of made up and so on.
And you see this all the time.
You see this all the time.
The truth is mapped by reaction.
The truth is a dark, shadowy continent outlined by people's flickering, sparky reactions on the edge of it.
This is really quite fascinating.
Whatever you say that people get upset by is very likely the truth.
It's very likely the truth.
You only know the truth by what people react negatively to.
And that is really, really interesting.
And that tells you an enormous amount about the role of the intellectual in the modern world, which we'll get to very briefly, sort of a little bit later.
So when I use the voice to talk about an intellectual's resistance or hostility towards the truth, then it is a very real phenomenon for me.
I have a great deal of anger towards intellectuals.
Who say they believe in the state, or they believe the state is necessary because of X, Y, and Z. So they say, well, I'm a rational guy, I'm a scientific guy, I'm an empirical guy, and I believe that the state is necessary because of X, Y, and Z. That's their approach.
They say, well, I have in a value-neutral way come to the conclusion that the state is required because of X, Y, and Z. And then you say, well, X, Y, and Z are false, and here is the evidence.
And they say, well, that's not really very good evidence, and then there's this issue, and then there's that issue, and it's like, no, no, no, no, you told me.
You told me you believed in the state because of X, Y, and Z. I have now disproven X, Y, and Z, and you're just making up other stuff as to why you believe in the state.
So clearly, clearly, X, Y, and Z had nothing to do with you believing in the state.
And you can piss away 500 lifetimes a century with people like this.
With people who tell you, I have reached my conclusions based on evidence.
And then you refute the evidence and they maintain their conclusions.
This, of course, is a fundamentally religious perspective, and fundamentally it's a defense around the family, as we talked about with Susie a little bit further back, right?
Susie says, well, my family was great.
She put all this evidence to the contrary, and she says, no, my family was great.
My family was great because my parents are close.
Well, but they live in separate continents.
Well, that's not why my family is close.
My family is close because my siblings are happy.
Well, one of them's an alcoholic and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Well, that's not my... The axiom then, the starting point is the defense.
My family is close. God exists.
The state is required. I am virtuous.
Soldiers are noble. That's just the axiom.
That's the axiom. Now, the part that I want to tease out and why I was aggressively sarcastic in this podcast, which, you know, may have been the right thing to do, may have been the wrong thing to do, but at least I sort of explained where it is I was coming from.
Somebody who says, I believe in God, as we've talked about before, faces this fundamental problem.
Do you believe in God just because you want to believe in God and it's kind of fun?
Or do you believe in God because there's evidence and God exists independently of your consciousness?
Is I believe in God the same as I like jazz?
It's just a subjective opinion.
The I like jazz does not float around out there, right?
You say, I believe it's raining and the water's splashing down and, you know, you're dancing and singing in the rain.
Fine. Well, you've got external evidence and you believe that it's raining because external evidence is hitting your senses and giving you the information, which, the logical conclusion of which is, it is raining.
Not, I'm on a movie set with Gene Kelly.
So when you say, I believe that it's raining, it's because you have external evidence.
That's why. If I say, I believe that 2 plus 2 is 4, well, it's because I count out 4 and divide them into two parts, and there are two there, and 4 is just another way of saying 2 and 2.
It's just a metaphor for 2 and 2.
It's just another way of saying it. Now, if I say that God exists, I believe in God.
Or I believe, in this case, that the state is required, then you're saying that from a value-neutral and merely curious standpoint, you examined the evidence and found that God exists, or that the state is required.
But it is a very different thing to say, I believe that God exists and that the existence of God exists external to my consciousness, there is reasons for it, and I have then derived that belief in God from an analysis of these external causes and evidence and logic and so on.
It's very different from that to just saying, I just believe in God because that's what I'm told to do.
In other words, I believe in believing in God, not I believe in God because God exists.
I do what I'm told is very different from I do what I want to.
You could say, well, what I want to do is exactly what I'm told, but that's a bit sort of specious.
Now, the fascinating thing about...
We'll use the religious argument because we're more familiar with it, and then we'll tie it back into the argument from The Economist.
The absolutely fascinating thing, in my opinion...
If an economist says the state is required because of lighthouses and roads and this and that and the other, or if a religious person says God exists because of Aquinas' argument or because of some other ontological proof of God or whatever,
whatever sort of argument exists or because I have God whispers in my ear what the stock prices will be tomorrow and is always correct or whatever, Then what they're saying is, God could exist, God could not exist, but through reason and evidence, I have logically and rationally determined that God exists.
That's how you differentiate a belief that is founded on science and logic and truth rather than a mere bigoted opinion.
So when somebody says, I believe in God because of X, Y, and Z, they're saying, I don't believe in God because I want to believe in God.
I don't believe in God because I'm told to believe in God.
I don't believe in God because I like the hymns.
I don't believe in God because I'm afraid of my priest.
I don't believe in God, or I don't say that I believe in God because I'm afraid of my parents, or I don't say that I... Believe in God because I want to get married in a church or I don't want to be disapproved of by my grandparents if I don't baptize my child.
They don't say that. They don't say, well, I just mouth these words for the sake of social conformity.
They say, no, I believe in God for objective reasons.
So when someone says that, this is where corruption really is at its root.
When somebody says, my belief is caused or results in a clear manner, in a clear objective and independent manner.
When someone says, my beliefs are derived from logic and evidence, implicitly stating and fully understand that logic and evidence are a just and the only causal and just reason by which a belief can be achieved or validated.
Somebody just says, well, I believe in God because I'm told to.
I don't even know what God is, just a word that I say.
Then they're not saying, I believe in God and understand what it is because I have examined the evidence and gone through the logic and this and that.
So when someone says, but nobody ever says that, right?
So when people say, I believe in God because of the evidence, they're saying logic and evidence and empiricism and rationality are how you determine truth from falsehood.
So they're making an appeal to the scientific method.
They are recognizing, recognizing the value of The authority, the independence, the objectivity, the empiricism, and the rationality of the scientific method of logic.
They are cloaking their prejudice in the opposite of prejudice.
Science and logic are the opposite of prejudice.
The opposite of mere faith-based stupid assertions.
So, people who say the highest value and the only way to validly believe something is to subject it to logic and evidence that the scientific method is the only way that you can believe something to be true.
People say that they praise and hold up as the highest possible standard the scientific method and they use that to fuck up Everybody with regards to the scientific method.
They use the scientific method to destroy and undermine the scientific method.
And that is a really fascinating phenomenon.
A really, really fascinating phenomenon.
Somebody who asserts on the basis of faith, who says, I believe in God because of X, Y, and Z is saying beliefs must be justified by reason and evidence.
And they therefore are saying that reason and evidence is the key.
So they recognize the value of reason and evidence and they use that to cloak over their blind assertion of bigotry.
So they recognize the value of the scientific method and use the value of the scientific method to protect and certify and justify their beliefs which are based on the complete opposite of the scientific method.
When I want to be a counterfeiter, I don't counterfeit monopoly money.
I counterfeit money that looks real.
I recognize the value of real money and attempt or make as close as possible I want to make my counterfeit money look as close to the real money as humanly possible.
Why? Because I recognize that real money has value.
And that's, of course, why somebody who counterfeits is immoral.
Because they recognize the value of money and they put their effort into making their counterfeit money look as close to real money as possible without it actually being real money that's earned through labor and trade.
Or investment or whatever.
You would never imagine a counterfeiter would say, oh, I have no idea that money is valuable.
You wouldn't see that in a defense, in a court, any court.
A counterfeiter is hauled up in front of the court and the counterfeiter says, oh, no, I had no idea that money, you can actually use money to buy things and the money has value.
No idea whatsoever. So I can't be guilty.
It's just a little portrait painting, photocopying exercise for me.
I had no idea that I could actually use these things to go out and buy money, or buy things with them.
And of course, any judge would then say, well, my friend, if you had no idea that money was valuable, why were you attempting to mimic it?
Why were you attempting to produce counterfeit reproductions of money which you would then use to buy things with if you had no idea that money had value?
When somebody counterfeits, the first thing that you know is that they understand that money has value.
And that it's a whole lot easier to photocopy a dollar than to earn a dollar.
And that as you spread your counterfeit money around, You drive out the good money, you debase the currency, you make people uncertain and afraid and they don't know whether the money that you put a lot of overhead on everyone.
So as the money supply is inflated, so is the bullshit supply.
And the people who do the counterfeiting In the world of ideas, counterfeit exactly the same way the counterfeiter does.
Counterfeiter knows the value of money in attempts to make his look the closest to and passes it off as if it is real.
The intellectual counterfeiter, the modern intellectual, knows the truth and legitimacy and truth value and validation value of the scientific method, logic, empiricism, and therefore he puts his counterfeit ideas In the cloak of the scientific method.
He's saying the scientific method has value.
So I'm going to use it to pass off my bullshit as science.
My irrationality as logic.
My slavish state toadyism as concern for the welfare of society.
What's that old phrase? Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Turn to the last century. Taxes are the price we pay to live in a civilized society.
No. Right?
No. Taxes are the price we pay to buy our way out of ass rape in jail.
That's the reality. So he's saying, well, to be civilized, right?
He says being civilized is a value.
The price we pay, we buy civilization with taxes.
So he's saying voluntarism is important because he uses the word buy.
He doesn't say taxes are forced upon us so that we can have a civilized society.
He says, oh, the price we pay, voluntary pay, uses voluntarism as a value.
Civilized. He uses the word civilized as a value, as if sticking a gun in somebody's chest and demanding their tax bill be paid is civilized.
And he uses the word society, not government.
So in everything that he says there, he's saying, well, voluntarism is better, free trade is better, exchange of values is better, civilization is better, society is better.
All of these are highest value.
He doesn't mention anything about jails or police or guns.
So this very statement is the worst kind of corrupt propaganda because it uses everything which it is denying to give it legitimacy.
It uses everything which it is destroying to give it legitimacy.
Now I mentioned a little while back about parents who say to a child, you are bad, in order to control and humiliate and bully the child.
And of course the parents say you're bad only because, they only use that as a strategy, because the child wishes to be good and has a moral nature.
So, to control and manipulate and bully a child based on the child's desire to be moral and good and then to call that moral is a complete contradiction.
You are using the legitimacy to destroy the value.
Using the legitimacy to destroy the value.
Now, what the hell does this have to do with my podcast on the free riders?
Well, people who say that The problem is that people attempt to get something for nothing, which is the basics of the free rider.
It's the basis of the free rider problem and the problem of the commons, right?
People will attempt to get something for nothing if at all possible.
If they can dilute the costs of what they steal among the general population, then they're stealing a dime from everyone and ending up with 30 million dollars.
The problem of the commons and the problem of the free rider all rolled into one.
That people like to get something for nothing.
And if they can dilute the costs to a general collective while accruing the benefits to an individual, they will absolutely, completely and totally do that.
And that's, of course, the problem of the free rider, problem of the commons.
That's why people say we need a government.
My question is, once you've studied any kind of economics, and once you just even open one squinty, crusty, clear eye at the issue, and these are people who've studied economics for decades, they have taught economics for decades, the people who make these claims in these economics textbooks are not fools.
They're not stupid. If people like to get something for nothing, and if people like to dilute the costs to the general population and accrue the benefits to a group of individuals, what do people think is going to happen with the state?
The state is the free rider, and the problem of the commons encircled, enforced, and made a rigidly bloody violent absolute.
It is exactly the same as a parent saying to a child who has just softly hit his sister, don't hit, and punching him full in the face, and then getting a baseball bat to finish and punching him full in the face, and then getting a baseball The state is the same as a parent, and the child is the same as a parent.
If the solution is an exaggeration of the problem, Then it is pretty clear that people aren't that interested in solving the problem.
If I say I have a cure for cancer, it involves shooting people.
Or, more importantly, I have a cure for the common cold, it involves shooting people.
Can it be said that I'm really interested in curing the common cold?
Or can it really be said that I just want to shoot people?
So when people say...
That the free rider problem and the problem of the commons is why we need a government.
Clearly they're not very interested in the free rider issue and they're not very interested in the problem of the commons.
Because if they were, they would immediately recognize that every problem they're trying to solve is vastly exacerbated and locked in and turned wholly cancerous and destructive by their solution of granting a monopoly of power.
People like to get something for nothing?
What do you think taxation is?
People like to dilute the cost of things and accrue the benefits to individuals.
What the hell do people think that taxation is?
Or printing the money supply?
Or borrowing from the future?
Deficit financing?
What do economists think this stuff is?
So, it's not hard to see unless you don't want to see.
And it's not like, I don't know, maybe there's lots of other people.
I'm the first one to, for my own thinking, I'm the first one to use this argument, but I'm sure it's been made dozens of times before.
So why is it that intellectuals don't want to see it?
Well, because they're paid not to examine the truth.
They're paid to justify the state.
They're paid to justify the state.
A priest is not paid to examine the existence of God.
A priest is paid to justify the existence of God, to inflict the fantasy of the existence of God primarily upon the young.
He's the head bully of social ostracism through which people end up believing in God.
Expecting that an intellectual is interested or a teacher or professor is interested in truth rather than is a slave-spouting, strangling puppet of the state or of the powers that be is incomprehensible.
And the reason that we know that they're responsible and that they can be blamed is that they use truth.
The legitimacy of the scientific method to destroy the scientific method.
They use the legitimacy of voluntarism to destroy voluntarism.
When I was in university and a socialist, as they all were, a leftist socialist professor or at least non-libertarian professor would say, well, we needed the welfare state in order to help the poor.
Naturally, I would say, well, gee, you know, I mean, you could be right, but the information that I've seen is that poverty was declining by about a percentage point a year from 1946 until the early 60s, and then when the welfare state programs came in, poverty ceased to decline and in fact increased some.
Then the professor would say, har har, well, you can't believe every right-wing book that you read, har har har, and the whole class would laugh and blah blah blah.
And then I would be in a course on race relations.
And the guy would say, well, the disintegration of the black family is the result of the effects of slavery.
And I would say, well, wasn't there like a hundred-year lag between the end of slavery and the destruction of the black family?
And wasn't it more coincidental with the civil rights movement and the welfare state?
So help me understand that hundred-year gap.
Because if you're saying this is causal, I don't understand the hundred years in the middle.
And he would say, well, you know, you can't believe everything that you read on those right-wing websites.
Or he would say, well, it's more complicated than you're putting it in an oversimplistic manner.
Or he'd say, well, these are very sensitive issues and I wouldn't just run roughshod over with an amateur's grasp of statistics.
It's much more complex.
I'm not actually answering the question.
Someone says 2 plus 2 is 5.
You say, well, no, by my calculations, 2 plus 2 is 4.
No, no, no, no. It's much more complex than that.
But these are people who said that they had looked objectively at the facts and had, in an emotionally neutral manner, in an objective manner, had...
Derive their opinions from the facts, from the evidence, from logic.
And, of course, that's what they asked for in their papers.
So you put a paper in, and when I was studying history or whatever, and you put a paper in, you've got to have a logical argument supported by evidence.
You can't just go in there and say, well, I just believe this because it's true.
Now, you could do things for that.
Like, if you then say, well, the welfare state was put in place to deal with the problem of poverty, then, of course, you're going to get an A, right?
Because that's That's natural, right?
I mean, the bromides don't need proof.
Anything that is original needs proof, and that proof is near infinite because society is so corrupt, intellectual life is so corrupt.
So these were people who said, I have derived my opinions from the facts, and then you present alternate or contrary facts, and they don't change their opinions.
So clearly, their opinions are not derived from the facts.
Clearly, their opinions are not derived from the facts.
And you know that the only facts that are out there, the only valid facts that are out there, are those that are being attacked and mocked down and kicked around and mocked and laughed at and humiliated and eye-rolled at and all this and that, right?
It's not a cliché to be a leftist, but apparently it's a wild cliché to be a libertarian and not co-capital.
And that is something that's very important to understand, I think.
I mean, I think it's very, very important to see why I use sarcasm and mockery on these utterly corrupt individuals who lead the lambs of the non-intellectuals to slaughter.
Who destroy children's minds, who destroy the minds of adults, who spread their cancerous infection throughout society and create entire generations of people whose only relationship to thinking is that they attack it in an uncomprehendingly brutal manner whenever they encounter it.
But they call themselves thinkers.
Now, the last thing that I'll say in this area, and I thank you for your patience with this podcast, but the last thing that I'll say in this area is that, why did I leave it for a couple of days before responding to these questions?
Well, I was kind of hoping and thinking maybe.
I was doing an experiment, because I like to work empirically, people.
I like to have a look at the facts as they present themselves and see where people are in their thinking.
So, what I was sort of hoping for was that there were people who said I was being mean and sarcastic, and there were other people who were saying, no, I thought it was funny and blah, blah, blah.
But there wasn't anyone, and I just put this out there.
I could be wrong, but I just put this out there because I want to sort of feel where the listeners are.
Where are you people in terms of what I at least view as moral clarity, right?
Nobody said the following, which I think would be a valid approach or valid response.
Nobody said, you know, I was irritated by this sarcastic podcast that Steph did.
And so I thought to myself, I thought, okay, well, why am I upset?
Well, I'm upset because Steph is being sarcastic, and being sarcastic is wrong.
It's either wrong from an argument from effect, like it's not going to achieve what we want and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, or it's wrong morally.
Now, if it's wrong from the argument from effect, then we have a great deal of difficulty understanding why sarcastic intellectuals are so successful around the world, right?
So, clearly sarcasm works.
We've all faced this in school or university or from our parents or anyone we explain.
Sarcasm is a very effective way of bullying people.
So if you're just looking for effectiveness, well, sarcasm is a damn good thing.
If, on the other hand, you had a feeling like there was something moral about it, then you say, well, Steph should take the high road.
He should not be sarcastic, but he should take the high road.
Well, that's fine. Then you've got a moral criteria.
In which case you're saying that the sarcasm is rude or disrespectful or wrong or whatever.
And that's totally fine.
I'm perfectly willing to have that debate.
You could well be right.
But the question is, what is the morality of sarcasm relative to the morality of selling the world into slavery?
By dressing up bullshit in the scientific method, lying, corrupting and bullying children to believe false things and to lick the boots of their masters.
If morality is something that comes into that podcast, then what you're saying is, I wish to speak out against something that is immoral in this podcast.
And nobody...
Nobody once said, and maybe somebody's posting it right now, in which case that's great, nobody once said, well, I wish to speak about what is immoral in this podcast, so I'm going to speak about the corrupt intellectuals who sell our slavery down the river.
And I'm going to talk about that for quite some time.
And then when I'm satisfied myself that I have said everything that I need to say about the evil of the intellectuals who support the tyrants, then, oh then, I might mention something to Steph a little bit later.
Oh, actually, it'll be quite a lot later because there's a lot of evil to chew through, a lot of corruption to chew through.
Because, of course, my sarcasm doesn't sell anyone down the river.
My sarcasm doesn't justify any form of taxation.
My sarcasm doesn't ennoble soldiers and policemen, and it does not support wars, and it doesn't put yellow ribbons on anybody's car.
My sarcasm is just a little voice out on the Internet that is railing against this kind of corruption and injustice and brutality.
So for me, and this is a hyperbolic example, I do apologize for that, but it's the one that pops into mind.
If somebody is on your lawn and screaming, I think that you have the right to say to them, listen, can you keep it down, please?
I think that's perfectly valid.
If somebody is on your lawn and screaming and you open the front door and it's a woman getting raped, is your response going to be to say, listen honey, can you keep it down a little please?
I'm trying to sleep. No.
Because yes, let's say even that there is a minor rudeness going on with her screaming, but if you miss the greater evil...
Then I would say you may want to have a look at your moral hierarchy a little bit more closely.
Because to me, it would seem to be a little bit out of whack.
Actually, enormously out of whack, to be frank.
So there was some not inconsiderable debate about whether or not I should be sarcastic.
Because that was the moral question that was being focused on.
Not... The corruption of the intellectuals who sell the freedoms of everyone else down the river for the sake of bloody state cash.
And I think that's instructive.
I think that's important. And this is why I put this thing out there and let it sit for a bit, because I don't want to say stuff that isn't useful to people that they already get.
So I put this out, I sort of shot this flare up so that I could see the landscape.
And, you know, maybe you've never, whatever, right?
But if you listen to that podcast and you didn't say, wow, you know, Steph is pretty sarcastic, but if I'm going to start applying moral criteria to this podcast, I think it's far more essential that I talk about the moral iniquities that Steph is attacking rather than the manner in which he is attacking them,
right? To lash children to the master statism as the ship goes down and to get them to love those Who threaten them with violence and enslavement if they don't pay up their taxes and join the army and so on, submit to the power of the rulers.
Those who serve the children up to their masters with their minds broken and flayed May be considered a little bit more immoral and not inconsequentially take blood money for doing so and rely on the protection of the state, either in public schools or in universities, to maintain their positions that those people, the people that I'm railing against, might be just a little bit higher on the sought-by-moral-inequity query than I am.
And I think that's important.
I know that people want to focus on what it is that I'm doing and want to give me corrections.
And look, I mean, I've been less sarcastic.
I think it was a reasonable thing to say.
I mulled it over. But I sort of got very quickly that people wanted to criticize me rather than those I was attacking.
Which is exactly the same as saying to the woman who's getting raped, can you keep it down a little?
Because it's kind of rude to raise your voice when I'm trying to sleep.
You're disturbing the peace.
Well, if that is your response, then I would say that your moral hierarchy...
We don't want to become isolated in here.
This is sort of what? We don't want this biosphere of anarcho-capitalism and freedom and radio to close around us.
We really don't. We really want to keep comparing what it is that we're doing to the world outside.
We really, really, really want to keep doing that.
The insularity that occurs...
Within movements, and what the hell, let's call it a movement.
The insularity that occurs, which brings down libertarianism all the time, the infighting, which brings down or brought down objectivism to its current feeble and enshadowed state.
It comes from not comparing internal disputes to the iniquity that is going on outside the movement, that which the movement should be focused on.
So, yes, we may say, and of course this is why I rail against the lifeboat scenarios, right?
What if you're a lifeboat and there's only food for 10 people, there are 11 people, and...
Whatever, right? One of them was a midget who wasn't tasty.
The reason that I keep saying, forget this stuff and focus on comparing not our internal morals to perfect behavior, but our internal morals to the external world so that we remember to focus our moral energies on the true inequity and not get lost in internal debates and internal criticisms.
And I have no problem with those internal criticisms.
If somebody had said, Steph, I totally got...
That these people are enslaving you, they're enslaving me, they're the reasons why there are taxes, they're the reasons why you have to live in a socialized healthcare system where people get treated worse than cattle.
I totally get that these intellectuals have the key and primary responsibility for the enslavement of the world.
And I'm totally with you on that.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. By the way, I wonder if you might not cut back on the sarcasm a little and here's why.
Because it's immoral. And here's the moral argument.
And somebody could even say, well, I totally disagreed with your moral argument about the intellectuals being the causal, responsible, blah, blah, blah, and here's why.
And put out the argument for that, and then say, oh, listen, by the end I also found that the sarcasm was blah, blah, blah.
But people focus on the sarcasm, and I think that is because people are getting disconnected from where we are and what we're talking about relatively.
To the society as a whole, relative to the state, relative to the war in Iraq, what we rail against, what I rail against in this podcast is the real evil.
How I may or may not rail against it slightly more optimally is not the real question.
I think we always want to keep comparing what we're doing to the outside world.
Thank you so much. Listen, if you feel like donating, I would be more than happy.
I haven't received any donations since last week, and that's rather surprising to me.
I am plowing into this full-time, and I've been working on it very hard.
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