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April 20, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
41:03
722 The Government Versus the Environment

Really? They wage war and make prisons but they'll protect seal pups? :0

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Good morning, everybody.
Hope you're doing well. Steph, 20th of April, 2007.
And a tortured soul, and a very, very bright tortured soul who was tortured for entirely understandable reasons, has posted the following.
He was very complimentary towards the Introduction to Philosophy series, which, if you haven't looked at, I would suggest.
I just got to the end of the introduction series.
I felt a deep resonance with the logical outcomes of your thought processes.
Your theories on religions and governments in particular are very insightful.
I wanted to give you an insight into how I'm applying what I've learned and end with a cry for help, if that's okay.
As a spiritual humanist, my church has no deity.
We celebrate science and knowledge and base our ceremonies on scientifically important events such as solstices, for example.
We can also all become ordained and perform ceremonies so there's absolutely no prejudice, bigotry, or hierarchy in our religion.
We attempt to become better human beings through contemplation and internal dialogue.
Philosophical thoughts, processes based on logic, empiricism, and reality not only fit perfectly with the goals of my religion but are damn useful tools for the job.
But... As an environmentalist, I'm having difficulties keeping to a logical moral strategy because I have to lobby government.
Therefore, I have to a recognize its legitimacy and b push for legislation I know will be enforced with violence.
This is, of course, unethical.
Here's where I am in the thought process.
Logically, we can say that survival is a universally preferred behavior.
It is therefore also ethical to aid the survival of the planet.
If the planet gets totaled, we run out of food, oxygen, etc., we all die horribly.
So if I fail to aid the survival of the planet, I am acting unethically.
So a negative dichotomy arises.
If I act, lobby government to stop ruining the planet and start using its power to stop industry ruining it too, I sanction the violence inherent to the system that enforces legislation.
If I do nothing, I allow non-direct violence to knock off a few billion people instead.
This could also be considered a bad thing.
My gut says act because the consequences of doing nothing are too grim to contemplate.
But if I do, my head says I have created different ethical rules for different groups, and so I'm unable to proffer anything more than personal opinion in any debate about those issues.
I have barbed myself from intellectually sound argument.
Shit! How do I ratify my gut feeling, or how do I solve my conundrum and start being able to sleep again?
I absolutely, completely, and totally sympathize with this situation.
It is a terrible paradox and conundrum to be in.
And may I say...
that I enormously applaud your intellectual integrity and one of the reasons that I wanted this is a very very bright fellow actually dropped out of school at 15 and has really made something of himself We don't really have to get into the scientific religion that he is a part of.
I think that it's probably fairly clear where I stand on that, and there's really no need to go into it.
But there is no such thing as a religion of science.
There is like the pacifism of violence.
There is no such thing as the religion of science.
But let's leave that aside, and I've got enough on religion that I don't think he'll need any help in that.
The reason that I absolutely want to help you...
Hey, you know what?
He's called Bab. Let's call him Bab.
The reason that I want to help you, Bab, is because you have an enormous, churning, powerful, deep, and rich true self.
And I'm sorry if that term means nothing to you.
It's not something we've invented, it's something that we...
sort of the original self, the self that is free of hypocrisy, the self that is free of conformity, the self that is free of bromides and cliches and cant and so on.
That is what I'm talking about.
You obviously have an enormous amount of intelligence and ability and a good writing skill set and so on, so you are important...
You know, for a movement of any kind.
And that, of course, has been recognized by the political master that you serve, that you help to get elected, and I guess you hope to influence policy because you think that the West Wing has anything to do with reality or something like that.
And look, I understand that.
I'm not trying to be mocking. This is probably new ideas for you, and this is quite a revolution in thinking.
But what I really do is applaud you for not sleeping.
I absolutely and totally worship you for having insomnia in the realm of an ethical conundrum.
That speaks to a very deep and powerful philosophical sense.
That speaks to a true self that is yearning to burst forth from the ice of Inflicted history.
So, I have enormous respect for people whose neurological system turns on them when they act in an inconsistent or incongruous manner.
This is where the health of the planet is, right?
I mean, in terms of the real health of the planet, which is...
The truth. Obviously, we can't get anything done without the truth other than serve people who are corrupt and violent and degraded.
So that you have such enormous abilities, of course, is great, but that's not ethical.
But the fact that you are having trouble sleeping because of this ethical conundrum speaks to a very strong and powerful true self.
And there was other things in his history which he Wrote to me about, which I won't get into here.
They're available on the board if you want, but we don't need to talk about that here.
So, good for you.
Good for you. Good for you for struggling with this issue and for not wanting to do one of two things, and hopefully, definitely not both of them.
And that is either A, to spend your life in pursuit of government lobbying and so on and to find out that it does nothing to help the environment since obviously helping the environment is an important thing for you and there's lots of reasons for that which we can talk about another time But environmentalism, until you have dealt with family issues, environmentalism 99 times out of 100 is...
If you have a desire to clean up a toxic environment that you feel will destroy you, you're not talking about the planet.
You're talking about your family.
But people find it easier to join the Sierra Club and rail against capitalism and the government than to deal with their family issues.
But 99 times out of 100...
What is it I wrote? The opening lines of the God of Atheists.
Nineteen times out of twenty, the life of the mind arises from the grave of the heart.
Learning, in other words, is loss.
And that's a very, if I do say so myself, a fundamental and powerful statement about motives.
Everyone I've met Who is an environmentalist, has come from a subtly toxic family.
And this is why the environmental movement is so popular, because it allows people to bypass the toxicity of their family and worry about fluorocarbons and worry about CFCs and PCBs and all of this sort of stuff, when the reality is that the environment they live in that is toxic, that is destroying them, is not...
Iowa, but they're foo, they're family of origin.
And this is how they deal with those emotions, and it's very unproductive, of course.
And you can see the destructiveness in the environmental movement.
Insofar as, what do they do?
They don't lobby to privatize anything.
They lobby for more and more government power.
So, naturally, when the solution for everything is more power, people are dealing with covering up family crimes.
I mean, I know this is like, if you haven't listened to other stuff, then this is going to come at you out of left field, and I do apologize for that, but I wanted to sort of be clear.
Hey, and you're the one who's listening out of order, don't blame me.
So... So let's talk about this issue and let's talk about the surface area of this issue, just so that you can at least find some relief in the immediate, because insomnia, as I've suffered from in my life on occasion, is an absolute hell.
It is an absolute torture.
So let's talk about the surface area of environmentalism and lobbying the government.
Now, lobbying the government is one of these phrases that sounds so innocuous and vaguely civilized, or actually quite civilized, that you just know it's a lie.
You just know it's a lie.
It's like the way most people use the word love, which is fetishistic enmeshment and stalking.
So, when you say lobbying government, the first thing we have to do is break down that phrase.
The reason that you're not able to sleep is that your definitions are wacky, and it's not your fault.
This is just the definitions you've inherited from a pretty corrupt culture.
So, lobbying government, what is it that you're actually trying to do?
Well, as you know, and as you've understood through going through the Intro to Philosophy series, a government is violence.
A government is force. Now, those who use violence to achieve their ends are thugs.
Those who use violence to achieve their ends are thugs.
Those who call it virtue to achieve their ends with violence are hypocritical, self-righteous thugs.
An open thug is a paragon of virtue next to a corrupt philosopher and politician.
The guy who steals your wallet doesn't tell you that it's a moral obligation and it's for your own good.
And to resist him would be corrupt.
He knows it's a state of nature, that's why he carries a gun.
Someone who tells you that you must submit to their violence, but that it's not violence, it's free choice and it's virtuous, It's completely, totally and utterly corrupt.
I say this only because the identification of government with violence is not a massive secret anymore.
I mean, for most of human history it was obscured, but there's enough writing out there and the internet makes everything available at the click of a mouse, and therefore people who don't examine these issues It's sort of significant, right?
Like if you are a doctor and you prescribe leeching in the Middle Ages, well that's the best you can do given your knowledge and abilities.
So it's not bad, but if there is a considerable literature available in about five or ten seconds, Which tells you everything about how leeching is really bad for you, is really bad for the patients and is worse than doing nothing and so on.
Well, then you're morally responsible.
If the knowledge that leeching is bad is tied to the neck of a grey owl in the Amazon woods, Amazon forest, then obviously you're not going to go track down every owl in the world and look for messages around its neck.
So the knowledge exists, but you can't access it.
But everything that is out there is very, very...
It's simple and easy. Look at the Intro to Philosophy series.
I'm not saying it's famous yet.
There's a couple of thousand people who've looked at it, which I think is great.
It's only been up for about six months, and that's more than a professor would reach in half a dozen years.
But what does it take?
It takes a couple of hours of your time.
It's completely free.
You don't even have to get up from your computer.
It's a couple of clicks.
And this is just one of millions of examples out there on the web.
So the knowledge that government is violence is not entirely obscured anymore.
So as it becomes more and more common, and I would say that this conversation is doing its part to help that along, then people become morally responsible for obscuring the violence.
If you don't know you have an STD, a sexually transmitted disease, if you don't know and you have no symptoms and no reason to believe that you have it, then of course you're not morally responsible for infecting somebody else with an STD. I mean, that's a bit of a shallow example because, of course, if you've had multiple partners, you should get tested.
But let's say, right? Let's say.
You got it from a toilet seat or something.
But of course, the moment you have symptoms and don't do anything about it, then you are morally responsible because you now have reason to believe that you might be infecting people and so on.
So all that we're trying to do in this conversation is raise the symptoms, is raise the symptoms, frankly, to provoke anxiety.
And I'm sorry, I hope that this is helpful for you because I feel that I may have done my part in creating this contradiction or identifying this contradiction for you.
you.
So let me see if I can help you get some sleep.
So, there's no word that I know of.
And if you know of one, please let me know.
There's no word that I know of that encapsulates the hypocrisy of using violence, hiding violence, and telling everyone it's voluntary and virtuous.
Maybe we need a word.
Shut an arsehole or something.
But we need a word, and there is no word for it, because A, it's a tightly packed concept, and B, it's something that we are only sort of unearthing, not just in this conversation, but we're only unearthing in a very rigorous way sort of now.
So, I'm going to tell you what you're contemplating, And I'm sorry to be so blunt, but I don't have time to beat around the bush because you're not sleeping.
I'm going to tell you what it is that you're contemplating.
I'm going to tell you the solution and I'm going to tell you why it's going to be hell on earth to cure yourself.
Let's just use the word thugs, although the true nature of government is far worse than mere thuggery, but it at least encapsulates the violence.
Let's use brutal thugs.
A mugger doesn't imprison you for 20 years.
A mugger doesn't start a war.
So we're going to use brutal thugs, although it's an insult to brutal thugs and it doesn't encapsulate the moral hypocrisy and cowardice, but let's use brutal thugs as the phrase.
And lobbying is begging or threatening, but mostly it's begging.
But mostly it's begging.
Or bribing or whatever, but we'll just use the phrase begging.
No, let's use threatening.
Because when you lobby the government, you're saying that if you don't do what I want, then I'm going to take votes away from you, I'm going to give you negative publicity, I'm going to smear your name, I'm going to withdraw some public support that's important to you, or something like that.
And if you do do what I want to do, then I will deliver votes and money.
So they have the guns, you don't.
So let's go back to begging.
Sorry, let's stick with begging. Brutal thugs.
So what you're saying is, can I do good by begging and controlling brutal thugs?
By begging thugs, can I save the world?
By coercing, threatening, manipulating and bribing them to point their guns at people I think those guns should be pointed at, can I save the world?
Well, that's a short podcast.
Of course the answer is no.
Of course the answer is no.
So there's two illusions that you have which I'm going to dispel with fairly blunt instruments, so I apologize for that, but we just don't have a lot of time.
First of all, you think that the government Can save the environment.
Let's accept that it's really about the environment and not your family.
Let's accept that the environment is getting worse, and let's accept that the government has a role in that, obviously.
I mean, if it's about your family, but not about the environment, then you need to deal with your family and then get back to the environment when you're more clear-headed.
If lumping the government has no effect, then it would be a waste of time.
We might as well shout down a well to turn out the sun.
Doesn't work, I've tried. And thirdly, if the government has no role in this, either positively or negatively, then lobbying it is related to the last point.
So let's accept that all these things are true and that the environment is getting worse, which, of course, there's considerable evidence.
Read the skeptical environmentalists.
There's considerable evidence that this is not the case at all.
It's getting better. And not due to the actions of government.
Government always picks up a trend and then makes it worse and claims that it's safe to save the world.
When poverty is declining, government intervenes to stop its decline because otherwise there'd be less need for government.
If everyone got out of poverty, government would have to shrink and government never wants to shrink.
Every time a problem looks like it's getting solved by the free market, the government, quote, intervenes, claims credit for everything the free market did beforehand and kills the progress and usually retards it.
That's how it survives, right?
With the same reason that a cancer fights off any sort of cancer-fighting agents.
It wants to grow. That's what it does.
That's the nature of its identity.
So, the first question is, can initiating the use of violence achieve...
No, sorry, let's go back one.
Can the government say...
Make it more relevant to your question.
Can the government save the environment?
If we assume it's getting worse, if we assume the government has a role to play and that you can do something to affect that role in a positive way, can the government save the environment?
Well, the government, of course, is public ownership.
And public ownership that is combined with transitory ownership.
So the people who make the decisions in government, the politicians, do not own that which they have control over because nobody owns it, fundamentally.
The government owns it, which means nobody owns it.
But nobody else can own it.
So it exists in a forcible state of unowned-ness.
It's not owned, and it's fenced off, and no one's allowed to own it, and no one's allowed to use it in a consistent or productive way.
So that's the nature of the government.
It fences off property for non-use, non-ownership.
And it's also transitory.
So, naturally, the owners are passing through.
They're politicians, they get voted in, they're going to be around for a while, then they're going to be gone.
So here you have a dual combination of nightmarish property destruction.
The first is that something is not owned, and the second is that what is not owned is not owned in a transitory manner.
So if you want to know how well the government is going to protect the environment, I suggest that you look at the following.
Look at any city street.
Walk up and down a city street.
Residential is fine too.
But city street downtown is usually a good thing.
Look at any city street and then look at the vacant, unowned lot.
I guarantee you there's weeds, there's garbage, there's gravel.
It is completely messed up.
And it's got broken glass in it.
It's got cigarette butts.
It's got dirty condoms.
It might have needles. The publicly owned, forcibly unowned property is in the worst conceivable state.
It's not in a state of nature because it's where people want to be.
I mean, the government doesn't, I guess, own some godforsaken hell's half acre in the North Pole or in Alaska, but...
I mean, nobody goes there, so it doesn't matter.
Property rights only really matter where people want to be, right?
There's no property rights on the moon, because nobody really wants to be there, but they don't want the expense of getting there and staying there.
So, property rights are naturally only going to be invoked or valid where people want to be, and the more people want to be in a particular place, the more need there is for property rights, and the more destruction occurs in the forcibly unowned property, or the more indifference or destruction occurs.
So, the question is, can you make something better by turning it into a forcibly unowned environment, which is managed, quote, managed by temporary masters?
Is an apartment likely To be treated better or worse if somebody is only going to live there for a few months.
Are they going to steam clean the carpets?
Are they going to maintain it?
Are they going to deal with cracks in the wall?
Do you change the oil on a car you rent for the weekend?
Of course not. Because you're a transitory owner.
So transitory ownership means that the property decays.
And, of course, that's built into the price, right?
I mean, the oil changes are built into the price, but you're not expected to do them.
I have the dribble cup this morning.
So, transitory ownership causes property to decay.
And... Property that is forcibly unowned and transitory is the equivalent of an abandoned building that nobody can own, that cannot be policed, that nobody polices, and that there are no property rights for.
So basically what it is is a squatter's den, some abandoned ghetto squatter's den.
That's what you're hoping is going to save the city.
If we turn more of the city into transitory owned Forcibly unowned or transitively managed, forcibly unowned property, that's going to save the city.
What we need is more abandoned buildings and more squatters and more drug addicts.
That's going to make this city into a palace.
It's a great city hall, I think is the name of the movie.
Al Pacino has a great speech about a city.
Which he delivers with only the passion and clarity and precision that only Al Pacino can deliver when he's not delivering bullets to the head in one of his psycho movies.
But it just is wonderful to show just how an actor can do exactly what a politician does with very little preparation.
That's pretty cool. So, that's an important thing to understand, that what you're doing is hoping that when the government extends control over property, that transitory management and forcibly unowned use, or non-use, is going to be how it works.
And you say, well, there's public parks and so on.
Well, sure. Absolutely.
And you're relying on the government to handle all of this in a positive and productive and eternal manner.
You know once the government gets its claws into something, once the government expands its power into a particular environment, it's the death of government or the death of humanity or the death of the planet that will retract those claws.
It will never give up that power.
Never give up that power.
So you're saying, I'm going to use violence to turn property from privately owned into transitively managed and forcibly unowned for the rest of time.
And even if we don't use the violence thing, which we'll get to in a second, I don't think that that would be a rational standpoint.
It's exactly the same as saying, my computer is not running very well, so I'm going to leave it out on the street.
I'm going to hope that somebody fixes it and returns it to me.
I take my $3,000 notebook and say, well, it's not performing as well as I'd like.
I'm going to leave it on the street, and my hope is that somebody's going to fix it and return it to me.
That's exactly the same.
If we take the violence argument, that's exactly the same as hoping that the government will solve problems within the environment.
And you would never do that in your life.
You would never do that in your life.
So it's not going to work.
It's not going to work. The government is the greatest polluter in the history of the planet.
The government cannot solve...
Let's say that this global warming bullshit is actually true, which it's not, but let's say that it is.
Well, fine. The government's known about it for 20 years.
What's been done?
Nothing.
Nothing, except the government has expanded a lot of power and taken a lot of money.
It's like saying, "I want to increase my money.
I want to increase my investments.
I want to maximize my capital.
So I'm going to hand over my money to the mafia and hope that they give it back to me with interest.
Well, once it goes into the hands of the mafia, my friend, it's out of your control.
Now, they're eager to take it, and they'll tell you, oh, yeah, sure, you bet, absolutely, we're going to give you this back with interest.
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, baby.
Don't you worry about a thing.
We're on it. We're on it, eh?
That's my generic thug accent.
It comes from nowhere. But that's exactly what you're doing.
If you have a complicated illness and you just sign yourself into slavery hoping that somehow in that slavery you're going to be diagnosed and healed, that is madness, right?
So it's not going to work.
If the environment is an issue, the government is not going to fix it.
The government is never ever going to fix it.
The government's going to make it worse because we know that the only way to save, the only way to make sure that the environment is conducive to human existence and happiness is to privatize.
To privatize.
So that if the earth is dirty, or the water is dirty, or the air is dirty, you'll have a motive to fix it and to clean it, and you will have a mechanism by which this will happen, which is the DRO Society, or the Voluntary Insurance Society, as we've talked about, and hopefully you've had a look at that video I did at the Libertarian Conference.
That's the only conceivable way that the environment is going to be protected.
Just giving control to a bunch of thugs who have their own self-interest and who, by the way, being thugs are not going to have a moral self-interest or rational self-interest.
This is never going to work. So the idea of lobbying governments, of attempting to bully and control and manipulate and threaten and beg for virtuous behavior from brutal thugs, It's not going to work.
And again, the reason that you think it is going to work is twofold and we'll get into that in a sec.
The first, of course, is that it's your family and the second is that it's a socially sanctioned way of pretending to deal with family issues.
People who get into begging the government for virtue are, with the fantasy that government will do good, that violence will do good, are just people attempting to cover up the crimes of their parents.
And who spent their entire childhood begging their parents for better behavior and thinking their parents were virtuous, and that if only they found the right words, they could make their parents do right.
That just translates to begging the state.
The state profits from the fantasies about the family.
The state is the fantasies of the family, writ large with all the power of adulthood.
As our power increases as we grow, the power of that which we enslave ourselves to must increase as well, which is why we often shift from parents to, or supplement parents with the state, and for some people, parents with the prison.
So, let's look at the violent side of things.
You're hoping that giving people the power to use violence is going to produce good.
It's going to produce good.
And that's fine. I mean, you mentioned universally preferable behavior.
You don't use it correctly, which is not your fault.
It's a tricky concept.
It's got nothing to do with survival.
Universally preferable behavior has nothing to do with survival.
You could say everybody should want to survive, but...
Obviously, lots of people don't.
Obviously, lots of people don't want to survive.
They engage in risky behaviors.
They take a lot of drugs.
They have rough trade down by the docks.
They get involved in wars.
They suicide bomb themselves.
You could say everybody should, but clearly, empirically, people don't.
And that's not necessarily the perfect rejection of universally preferable behavior.
You could identify and say that there is a survival instinct in human beings that occurs for many people and so on.
That's not the same as a universal moral proposition.
That's more an identification of reality.
A people should respect property rights is something that is universal.
Property rights exist is a universal proposition.
Because the logical consistency of the existence has to be primed.
People should want to survive.
Well, yeah, I mean, maybe, but I'm not sure what morals come out of that.
I'm not sure. That's an identification of a trait, that human beings have a tendency to want to survive, but I don't know what morals come out of that.
Now, you're saying human beings should want to survive, and therefore we should get the government to control property so that we survive better.
But that's not a very good argument.
In fact, I'd say it's a very bad argument, and you know that.
I'm not telling you anything you don't know.
I don't want to insult your considerable intelligence.
But you know that. That's why you're not sleeping, and that's why you know that you lose credibility when you say that violence is the solution.
Now, everybody wants to fix these problems quickly, and I can't even begin to tell you the number of emails I get, which is like, yada, yada, yada, blah, blah, blah.
So much theory, theory, theory, theory.
Isn't that great? You wrote an article.
How are we going to save the fucking world?
Well, of course, everybody wants to fix things in their own lifetime, and everybody wants to make things better as quickly as possible, and so do I. I'd love to live in a free world before I'm dead.
But so what? What does that matter?
I mean, we have to deal with the facts of reality.
The facts of reality are that there's an enormous amount of lies out there and that there's a great deal of pain in waking up to the truth and that people don't want to do it.
And that human personality is extraordinarily...
The human psyche is extraordinarily inert, right?
It takes an enormous amount of effort and willpower to shift the personality from its habits.
So, these are just the facts.
And, of course, it's like saying, well, you know, we want to fly...
We want to send a rocket to Mars.
And people saying, oh, my God, you've now been planning for...
A week, for God's sake, let's just launch.
It's like, but we don't have a rocket.
We don't know how to get there.
We don't know how we're going to survive when we get there.
We don't know how to get back. We don't, like, if you go now, you'll just die in space.
In fact, you won't go anywhere because all we have is blueprints for a rocket.
You can't ride the blueprints to a rocket to the moon or to Mars.
So, yeah, we plan, because when intellectuals don't plan about how society changes, when they don't look at every objection, tens of millions of people tend to get killed.
Not tend to, do.
So when people say, well, the answer is communism or fascism or national socialism or even statism, the result is that pretty much tens of millions of innocent civilians get killed.
Look at that. I'm not the only person driving with a laptop.
This guy is actually looking at it.
I have stuff to the light. But that's important.
To me, this is much more important than any anti-cancer drug.
You wouldn't accept an anti-cancer drug that hadn't been tested extensively on people, right?
And now we've been in this conversation for a year.
We're talking about a complete rewrite of human society and human relations, which if it goes wrong, we'll get hundreds of millions of people killed.
Hundreds of millions of people killed.
The state killed, outside of wars, 270, 280 million people in the 20th century.
I don't want that blood on my ghost's hands.
So yeah, let's plan for God's sakes.
Let's get it right. Because when it goes wrong, oh man, is there ever hell on earth.
We're talking people eating their babies, hell on earth.
I mean, that's what happens when society goes wrong, when violence is considered virtuous.
So, the state is not going to be able to solve this problem.
In fact, if you lobby the state, you will only make things worse because you're handing power to corrupt, brutal, hypocritical, lying thugs for eternity or until the state collapses.
So, that's not going to work.
I mean, it's not going to work.
Violence is not going to solve the problem.
It's like saying, I'm going to make someone love me by beating the hell out of them.
Well, no. You might get the Stockholm Syndrome, but you won't get love.
So, I'll tell you now, and I know that you're very intelligent, and I don't mean to insult your intelligence at all by pointing out such obvious things, which you're perfectly aware of.
What you're not aware of, I think, based on your scant conversation with me, so I'm sorry that I'm wrong about this.
But I'll tell you why.
You don't want to accept this, even though you know it deep down.
You don't want to accept this because if the state is violence, and if violence doesn't work...
Actually, you don't even have to have if violence doesn't work.
Everyone in the world says that they're against violence.
Except in self-defense. That's why I hack the self-defense argument so much.
Everyone on the planet says, I am totally and completely against violence.
Violence is wrong. It's not a good way to solve problems.
And then they say, let's have a law!
Let's expand the powers of the government.
And the problem with identifying the government as violence is it catapults you right out of the bosom of comfortable and polite society.
And what it reveals is that everyone has lied to you from day one.
Everyone has lied to you from day one.
And they know it. And they know it.
Does that sound harsh?
Well, it may be. And I may be wrong.
But I'm certainly willing to be corrected on this.
All you have to do, if you don't believe that everyone knows that the government is violence, it's very simple.
It's a very simple experiment.
You can do this 100 times a day for the rest of your life.
I guarantee you, the result will be the same.
If you don't think that people know the government is violence, at a dinner party say, but the government is violence.
Now, if people genuinely didn't know that, they'd say, really?
What? No, I don't think that's right, is it?
But tell me more.
I mean, that's provocative.
Like if you said, to a scientific convention and you are you know let's say a respected scientist and you say I have discovered the unified field theory I believe then people would say wow that would be the most impressive achievement since relativity do tell to tell us more and you would be more than pleased to tell them I'm sure right so when people don't know something And are not repressing knowledge,
they react with positivity and curiosity.
Or at least indifference, right?
If you say, I'm a stamp collector on a first date, or I am the best dungeon master since Gary Gygax, then your date may not be impressed, but she's probably not going to be hostile.
She might roll her eyes or whatever. She's not going to be hostile unless she's chronically angry or something.
But here's the basic fact.
If people don't know that the government is violence, then when you say the government is violence, they're not going to react in a hostile manner.
And I'm sorry, I've been meaning to get to a gentleman's description of his dinner party.
Where this woman was saying, oh, and I'll get to it in more detail, this woman saying, oh, you know, spiritually we need to evolve and we need to realize that we are all one and blah, blah, blah.
And the guy said, well, that's very interesting.
What is the logical or empirical basis for these beliefs?
Everybody immediately got tense and hostile around the dinner party table.
Because they all know. They all know.
And they were all embarrassed for not calling this woman on spouting the most errant nonsense.
We are not one.
We're all pie. Mmm, pie.
But everybody knows the government is violence, and that is why when you bring the topic up, everybody reacts, boom, instantaneously in a negative or hostile manner, unless you're talking to an ANCAP, in which case it's like, well, of course.
An anarcho-capitalist, sorry to use that.
Again, not a term we've invented, but everybody knows.
Everybody knows that the government is violence.
They know this, and this knowledge is available to them within a tenth of a second, because that's about how long it takes for the hostility And scorn to emerge when you say government is violence.
So if everybody knows that government is violence, but everybody talks about how they're anti-violence and that they're so virtuous and they want nothing but the best for the world, then what is the reality of the situation that you live in, of the world, right?
The reality of the situation the world is in is that everybody is a vicious, lying hypocrite.
And I know that sounds terrible, but I'm just working empirically.
I'm not trying to make anything up here.
I'm not trying to impose any prejudices on your thinking.
I'm just pointing out the facts as I see them and as I've experienced them, lo, these four years.
40 years. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong.
Let me know. Let me know that you said to a dinner table, but the government is violence, right?
The government is violence. And if people didn't say, well, I've never heard that before, tell me more.
Which would be the reactions of people who didn't know something.
But obviously, it's something that's pretty important.
This isn't what's the best recipe for flan.
Or if you say, I have a great recipe for flan, people don't get hostile and irritable at you, right?
But when you say the government is violence, people get irritable and hostile and they don't want to deal with it.
Why? Because they know, they know, they know, they know, but they don't want to deal with it.
Because it leads them back to their family, of course.
And then their family lied to them about violence and virtue and this and that, right?
People don't want to deal with this.
They just don't want to deal with this.
But they want to... Have the virtue of pretending that they are against violence, when the moment that the central violence within society is brought up, they immediately get hostile and negative and critical and reject and so on, use all the mental tricks.
And that's what you don't want to see.
That's what you don't want to see.
That's what you don't want to experience.
And I understand that, waking up to the filthy falsehoods of everyone around you.
The hypocrisy and support for violence that occurs is a really, really grim thing.
It's a grim task. Nobody wants to do it.
I sure as hell didn't, and everybody else who wakes up to this doesn't want to do it.
The only problem is that the world won't change until we do.
Thank you so much for listening. I look forward to your donations.
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