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June 10, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:38:39

794 Call In Show June 10 2007

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	Alright, thank you everyone for joining.
	Thank you for your patience. It is Sunday, June the 10th, 2007, and we are chatting from the Free Domain Radio show, which is available for you for free.
	All you have to do is put up with some whiny and pathetic begging for donations, and it is available at www.freedomainradio.com.
	And my name is Stefan Molyneux, the first, I believe, in a long line of hopefully future internet philosophers who eke out a living ranting up the airwaves with vaguely accented opinions and hopefully occasionally more than opinions.
	So thank you so much for joining us on this beautiful, beautiful Sunday afternoon, June 10th, 2007.
	I don't have a massive introduction ready for the show for a variety of reasons, which we don't have to talk about right now.
	And we can go straight to user questions, user comments, user issues, criticisms, whatever is on your mind that is related to philosophy.
	I am more than happy to listen to family issues, questions.
	My lovely wife is here.
	She just brought me an excellent cappuccino, which, as I drink, will allow me to speed up and speed up and speed up and take off.
	So, thank you so much for joining us.
	We have somebody already waiting here who has some questions or comments or perhaps just wants to say hello repeatedly with a vaguely Turkish accent.
	We shall find out.
	Carrie Ann, you're on. I hear some breathing.
	Hello. Hello.
	Hi. Hi.
	I'm very intrigued, very, very intrigued by the...
	by the newness of this concept to me.
	As I have become close to 30, I thought that I had an interest in most...
	Well, okay.
	I have 790 podcasts, so I'm going to start from the first one, but I'm going to go relatively quickly, and I'll just go through the first 300 or 400 or so.
	No, sorry. Do you have any sort of particular questions?
	Have you heard any of the podcasts?
	Do you know the general approach to philosophy and relationships that we take here at Free Domain Radio?
	Well, I haven't heard any of your cast before.
	I just saw it today that it was coming on and I was just very intrigued, as there are many useless things on Skype, so I was very intrigued to find something that was thought-provoking.
	In examining the subject, it seems to me that my knowledge leads me to believe that this particular I guess the particular, I don't know what I'm trying to say here, that maybe you're fiscally conservative but liberally socialized.
	I'm not sure if I'm, the concept is kind of deep and I was also interested in the fact that your wife is a psychologist and I wondered how she relates to philosophy and logic as Sure, sure. Now, if I understood you correctly, when you first started talking, you said that you had taken some pride in acquainting yourself with some of the more unusual ideas out in this wide world of ours.
	Yes, that's correct.
	Well, I'm going to try and blow the box of categorization wide open here, and I'm going to let you in on the approach that I take in particular to government, which is that I am what is technically known as a market anarchist, also known as an anarcho-capitalist.
	And so the purpose that I – the philosophy that I bring to bear on the state – Is that the state is morally evil and is wrong.
	You can't use force. I'm an extreme pacifist.
	Violence is only acceptable for me morally in an extremity of self-defense.
	The government is an agency which is a group of people who claim the right to use force to achieve their ends through taxation and regulation and so on.
	So when you take the principle that violence is a bad way of solving problems to its logical conclusion, some would call it an extreme, I just call it consistency, then you end up with the proposition that the existence of a government is a moral evil.
	Now, naturally I'm aware that this Sunday show, though occasionally it does go on for several hours, is not likely to single-handedly bring around the end of the state by this – at least by today, maybe next week, maybe the week after.
	You know, I want to be conservative. I have an open mind.
	I have an open mind. Sure, sure.
	So we obviously are not going to be able to get rid of an entity like the state in short order, but it's not that these things are impossible.
	Slavery was gotten rid of.
	Equal rights for women and children was accepted.
	All of these things were unprecedented in human history and human thought.
	So the real challenge is how do we achieve freedom within our own lives, within our own personal lives, Given that we can't get rid of things like taxation and throwing people in prison for, you know, non-crimes like smoking a piece of vegetation or whatever, how is it that we can achieve the greatest degree of freedom in our personal lives given that we live in a society where the use of violence in the state, in the form of the state, is pretty much accepted?
	And so that's where my wife comes in.
	And she and I sort of put together some ideas on how we can create maximum freedom in our own lives, despite the fact that there's a lot outside of our control.
	And that has a lot to do with accepting no positive obligations in our relationships.
	I mean, other than, like, if you have kids, you have to feed them kind of thing, but...
	Well, there's no positive obligations that we have to people like parents or to extended relatives or whatever.
	And if we take pleasure in these people's company, then that's wonderful.
	We should spend time with them, but then nobody needs a philosopher to tell them to do what is pleasurable.
	but if we don't take pleasure in our relationships, we're not positively obligated to spend time with people when we don't enjoy their company.
	So there's a sort of political aspect, which I bring to it, and then there's more of a personal aspect that my wife brings towards the philosophy, which is really focused around freedom and joy in personal relationships.
	And all that means is that you have to voluntarily choose who you spend time with, and there's no obligation that comes out of having parents or extended family or, you know, your parents want you to go to church or whatever.
	That doesn't mean anything, right?
	That's just their preference. So it's freeing ourselves from those kinds of stereotypes and those kinds of habits from culture, right?
	And culture, the root of the word is cult.
	And so that's really the approach that we take.
	And we've certainly taken this approach within our own lives and a number of listeners.
	This show goes out to about I don't know, 20,000 or 30,000 people and last month actually we had 210,000 downloads of the podcasts and video views and so on.
	So we're sort of trying to spread this word that you can get an enormous amount of freedom in your personal life just by rejecting unchosen obligations and living according to rational, sensible virtues.
	Okay, well, I appreciate your speaking so slowly because I was taking notes to interject a little humor, but...
	Oh, taking notes?
	Oh, sorry, then let me start again, but make more sense.
	No, it's fascinating to me because my father, who just passed away a couple of months ago, he told me that a day in which you don't learn something is a day that is wasted.
	So maybe that was a patriarchal thing that I was supposed to obey, but I find that that is a very...
	It's a logical thing to do.
	It's a good philosophy. So, you know, somewhere in here I agree with things that you're saying and then there's other things with which I may take a little more of a controversial stance, but I'm here to learn and I think that's what everyone should be doing every day of their lives.
	They should be learning what is available and accept what they want to accept and reject what they Well, that's interesting and I certainly don't want to start hempecking at every word that you say, but certainly what I believe is that there's no positive obligations, but you say that we should be learning.
	Can you tell me why you think we should be learning every day?
	Well, I don't want to get my brain on a snail note every day.
	I try to learn from every resource I have, whether it's input from My friends or its input from the media input.
	I negate a lot of that, but I do try to learn.
	I never stop learning.
	I think, you know, I have a master's degree.
	Having a degree doesn't mean that you're the most knowledgeable person in the world, so you have to continue learning.
	Even by listening to this, I'm learning.
	So I'm not obligated to learn.
	I feel it is my responsibility to learn.
	Everyone doesn't have to, but I think it makes me more aware of what is going on In my environment, and that is a good thing to me.
	I would not force that upon anyone else, but that's my choice, and that's why I'm here, to learn.
	Right. Well, that's wonderful, and I just have two minor issues with what you said, though I agree with most of it.
	First of all, as somebody who also has a master's degree, I think that we are mentally perfect, and there's nothing else for us to learn.
	We are pretty much gods of knowledge, and whatever knowledge we don't have, we can imagine and make it so.
	So, I just sort of wanted...
	We are sort of the holodeck of human knowledge, so that's sort of something to remember when you're talking with people.
	Well, can I just say this?
	I was invited to join MINSA, And I think it's ridiculous for intelligent people to sit around talking about how intelligent they are.
	And so I rejected that notion.
	I don't want to be in that cult.
	So, I mean, I don't think totally intelligent people should congregate, nor should...
	I mean, everyone has an IQ, but everyone can make their mind a greater place.
	So, I mean, I'm not disagreeing with you.
	I'm just saying that It's just like every other club.
	You can join or not join for whatever your personal reasons are.
	I like that approach that you're taking, the way that you say, I didn't want to be in that cult, which means that you might be open to being in this cult.
	Excellent. Excellent.
	We like that very much.
	Now, do you have razors in the house?
	Because the first thing that you have to do is shave your head.
	If you've ever seen a picture of me, you'll know that I didn't prescribe this to anyone other than myself first.
	But, no, I mean, I think that's interesting.
	I just would say that when you say we ought to learn every day, we should learn every day, I think that for me, the purpose of medicine is health and the purpose of philosophy is happiness.
	And I think that for people who enjoy learning and get a great deal of pleasure out of learning, I think that in a sense, you don't have to say to people who take pleasure in learning, you should learn.
	You don't have to say to kids on October the 31st, you should eat some candy.
	You have to sort of put some pretty strong iron bars between them and the remainder of the candy sometimes.
	So I think that Where there is pleasure, there's no such thing really...
	Yeah, but that would be enforcing your belief upon your children.
	If you told them not to eat candy on October 31st, that would be...
	Well, but I would say that you don't want to necessarily have them eat 20 candy bars, right?
	I mean, they're going to get sick. It's meant for their teeth.
	I mean, you know, imposing...
	But if they get sick, then they learn.
	They've learned something on October 31st.
	They've learned. I'm not saying that it has to be from a book.
	I mean, I could be in a tornado, and it wouldn't be a pleasurable experience.
	Yet I would learn that I didn't wish to be in another tornado.
	That's what I'm saying, that I don't mean I have to seek a book every day to learn something.
	I can just open my mind.
	I know the wind feels wonderful.
	Too much wind is not wonderful.
	I mean, I'm talking about learning from your environment, learning from whatever source you can other than the conventional ones like the media or, you know, specifically one book that someone has written that's supposed to tell me how to You know, obtain the perfect man, which is not in my criteria.
	You know, I mean, that's not something I'm looking for right now.
	So I'm independent, I'm a venture capitalist, and I'm fiscally responsible, yet I agree with some of the views that you have on that.
	I'm just saying, I guess when we're being open-minded, I suppose my question is, if you're a psychologist with a practice and you are listening to someone who has Do you say to them, this is a good way to go?
	Or do you let them open their minds by the fact that you're listening and you don't interject your personal beliefs to the patients?
	That's what I'm saying. I'm still here.
	I'm still here. Hi, good afternoon.
	I'm Christina and I am Steph's wife.
	I do actually have a private practice in technology.
	I have a variety of them.
	What we're trying to do in this profession is to be unbiased listeners and to help our clients work through their problems without imposing our own values on the therapeutic process.
	Now, they've done a lot of studies on this, and frankly, as hard as we might try not to do that, it's virtually impossible.
	As a therapist, you bring your own personal history, you bring your own biases, you bring your own culture, you bring your own thoughts, feelings, and ideas to every therapy session, and as hard as you can try to be unbiased, you're not likely to be 100% unbiased in a session.
	So, I'm not sure what it was that you were asking specifically around that issue.
	Well, I just think that someone who is seeking Psychological help, psychiatric help, or just wants the ability to be able to express themselves and kind of have maybe an evolving process of how they've come to the point where they feel that they need a psychologist.
	So, my assumption is that the role of a psychologist slash psychiatrist would be to listen and not to really, I think, maybe I'm incorrect, but I think the role Is to let the person figure out why they're having a particular problem they're having and not to really say,
	I mean, if you feel, if you have certain values, I just wonder how you take those values to the patient or if you say, or would you say to a patient, you would be less stressed if you accepted that yada, da, da, da, because of what you believe.
	That's what I'm saying as, you know, I think you did say that you leave This philosophy behind maybe when you're with a patient and I just wondered if that's how you let them work their problem out just themselves without your input.
	I mean other than professional Well, I mean, one of the first things, I don't know how other psychologists practice.
	I mean, I don't sit in on their therapy sessions.
	Of course, I was supervised when I was a student, and I've supervised a number of people throughout my career as well.
	But in terms of my colleagues and my peers right now, I don't know what exactly they do or how they introduce their therapy to their patients.
	I basically tell my clients that the purpose of psychotherapy is to empower them so that they can lead free and peaceful existences and free from external pressures, free to do the right thing, free to be self-motivated and that the journey requires a lot of self-exploration and introspection and it's not often a difficult journey that they're going to have to challenge some of their core beliefs about themselves, about other people and about the world.
	Which is the basis for cognitive therapy model and that they need to look at things objectively and logistically and realistically and not to impose emotions, just emotional reasoning on their conclusions.
	One other thing I'd like to mention as well, if I understand Christina's approach directly, and I do this mostly by trying to listen in through the vents on her therapy sessions and taping them for Freedom Main Radio listeners.
	So, for instance, if a woman comes into a therapy session and says, I love my husband.
	My husband is wonderful. He is the best husband ever.
	And she's got bruises on her face because he's hitting her, then there may be reasonable justification for questioning her definition of love, because that would not seem to include something like love.
	Well, I just think that I understand what your wife said, and I understand what you're saying, that you have to make some reasonable assumptions and, you know, suggest, make suggestions, but the power of suggestion is awesome, you know, and... I guess, like I said, I'm new to this particular area of life, and it's just interesting to me.
	I have a friend who really needs to see a psychiatrist or a psychologist, but she said to me, I hate to talk to a stranger because they'll probably just go, oh, she's out of her mind.
	And I said, no, I don't think that they'll feel that way.
	But she refuses to go because she said, I don't want them solving problems.
	Any problems they perceive that I have.
	I guess the whole thing is very convoluted, but she talks to me constantly about her problems, and I try to not impose my beliefs on it.
	Sorry to interrupt. We deal with whatever the client brings to the table.
	So I'm not going to be bringing things out for the client that isn't sort of in the therapy session.
	So whatever, for instance, your friend is talking to you about, she would come to a therapy session and talk about the...
	The issues that she's having.
	We do a lot of Socratic questioning and, you know, maybe guide the clients through the questions to look at things a little differently.
	You know, one of the basic rules is, you know, don't give the answer away, so to speak.
	And a lot of times, even when you tell something to a patient or a client bluntly, they'll hear, they'll nod their head, they'll say, yeah, yeah, yeah, but it doesn't ring true for them.
	And it could take several sessions and sometimes several months for the client to have an aha moment.
	So even actually telling somebody something point blank doesn't mean that they actually accept it and understand it right away.
	Exactly. Well, I mean, she talks to me ad infinitum until I'm almost clinically depressed after I'm through talking to her sometimes.
	And she's in a place now where she needs someone to talk to, but she says, I'd rather talk to someone who cares and by talking to me specifically, And she says, I can't go to a stranger because they don't care about me.
	And I said, well, then they carry a certain, you know, objectivity.
	I happen to be your very good friend, so I tend to empower myself, you know, with the knowledge of your past.
	And so I know how you've come to this place.
	And, you know, and I try to give her the best advice I can, but I do think that if she talked to someone, it would help.
	I mean, you know, like you said, I was just interested from that point of view, you know, if she goes, I want her to feel like someone cares about her.
	But I know that you can't have transfer...
	If she goes to a therapist and she feels that the therapist doesn't care about her, she needs to get out of that relationship.
	Therapy is supposed to be a safe place for a client to be able to talk about their feelings and their emotions and their experiences without feeling shamed or humiliated or guilted or blamed.
	It can be a very powerful experience for many people and the therapeutic relationship is one of the most important factors in positive outcome in psychotherapy.
	You know, the other thing I would say if I were you to your friend would be that, you know, you're not a therapist and there are limitations in terms of what you can do for her.
	And the problems that she's presenting you with would best be served for her by seeing a professional.
	Encourage her to do that. If she came to you and said, you know, I have all this pain in my right side.
	I don't know what it is. And she kept complaining and she said, touch it and look at it.
	You'd say, well, I'm not a doctor.
	You need to go and see a doctor.
	Right? And it's the same thing.
	You know, friends are fantastic.
	They can be social supports and moral supports, but they can't do the work of a therapist, which is, you know, psychotherapy is about changing a person's relationship to themselves and to other people and to the world.
	And the general population, we can be great friends, we can be great supports, but we can't be psychotherapists.
	And I would recommend if your friend is in great distress, and it sounds like it because she is bringing you down, that you need to set a limit.
	And, you know, the limit doesn't have to be punitive.
	I mean, it can be a very supportive thing.
	I can't help you. I want to help you.
	It's beyond my scope. You need to go and talk to someone.
	And she could start by going to her family physician and asking for a referral from her family physician from someone he or she strongly recommends.
	Okay, well, I appreciate it.
	I'm very eager to learn more about your ideas other than psychology, the ideas that are presented in this forum, so I shall be listening eagerly, and I appreciate your time, and like I say, I like innovative people, provocative people, and I shall be listening, and I have a lot of catching up to do on your podcast, so perhaps I shall be busy for the next five or ten weeks.
	Just kidding. I will look more into it, but I appreciate it very much.
	Well, thanks. It's freedomradio.com.
	Certainly appreciate you dropping by, as somebody said, two women talking to each other on this show.
	I believe history has been made.
	I just wanted to add one thing, too, that philosophy, of course, being a philosopher is quite different from being a psychologist, so it's true that psychologists do bring their own personal histories to bear on their patients.
	That's not at all true of philosophers, because, of course, as a philosopher, I have evolved to become a being of pure thought.
	So I actually come with no personal history whatsoever, and what I generally do is inhabit people's imaginations, And, you know, pretty much give them bad dreams when they don't donate.
	So that's a slight difference there.
	Corporeal versus incorporeal.
	That's one of the key things to recall.
	Now, do we have nightmares?
	And when I say give people nightmares when they don't donate, what I mean by that is generally me, a llama, a watermelon, and a Chippendales outfit.
	So, clearly, the waking up screaming is the best you can conceivably hope for.
	So, thank you so much for that very excellent set of questions.
	We have room for the next person who wishes to line up and chat with me or the brains of the outfit.
	Just click on Request Mike or ask for Mike and we will be more than happy to...
	No, they have to.
	They're still in listening. So, yeah, if you have questions, comments, issues about anything Free Domain Radio related or to do with your life, your issues, your questions, I don't have...
	An enormous amount of prepared material today.
	I could make some stuff up, but I'm sure that would be less than satisfying.
	This is the call-in show where you get to speak your mind, ask your questions.
	And while we're waiting for somebody to come on, we did have a gentleman who had sent me a question.
	And I think that it's worth talking about.
	It's a bit more of a sort of practical rubber meets the road sort of question.
	So what I'll do is read his email and then mention a little bit about what I could respond with.
	He says, I have a question regarding how to handle situations where you are at the mercy of someone with power, in this case in higher levels of public education.
	Due to an error I've made, Related to a plan and a web system for the courses I'm supposed to include in my degree and some requirements regarding including a course taken the semester before which is relevant to the degree, the person in charge of creating the diploma is refusing to do so.
	I think that sort of makes sense.
	I view this as a technicality and I do in fact have enough subjects of the right kinds to fulfill for the requirements of the degree.
	I will have to talk to these people on Monday, and confronting power-tripping bureaucrats who follow fictional rules isn't one of my favorite activities, nor something I'm any good at.
	I suppose an argument could be made that I haven't followed the rules of a contract and am therefore responsible, but regardless of which, I'm stressed out and need advice on how to talk to people in this kind of situation.
	Now the problem gets all the much worse when I'm already accepted for a position as a lecturer at another place in the country, and such a position requires that I have completed this degree.
	The contract for the job has been sent to me and I have not signed it and I have made my future employer aware of the problem.
	I will have to go talk to these people.
	What do I do? Well, Christina and I have very different ways of dealing with bureaucrats and something we've chatted about from time to time over the course of our marriage.
	You go ahead. Right, so I had a similar sort of issue in terms of my undergrad.
	I had problems with an exam, and not that I had problems passing it, but I had problems with an exam.
	I had to sort of go in and plead some special circumstances for a variety of reasons which aren't that relevant right now.
	First of all...
	It's not your fault that the system is the way it is.
	It's not your fault that the system is the way it is.
	So, if you have to go in and deal with some bureaucrats, the first thing that I think you need to do is to, as best as you can, and this is not an easy thing to do, especially if you're a rabid anarcho-capitalist, is you have to try and drop the attitude.
	The more human you are, the more you provoke humanity in others.
	The more The more deeply rooted you are in your own sort of being, in a sense, then the more you can evoke empathy in other people.
	So the first thing to go in is to say that, you know, I have no control over how this situation goes in the end, right?
	Because you don't have control. There's no button that you can push to make all of this stuff go as best as you can.
	So my suggestion would be something like this.
	Obviously, get all your facts straight.
	And then just sort of go in and say, look, I wonder if you could help me.
	I'm really in a bind. Now, of course, you're not blaming anyone.
	You're not getting mad at anyone.
	You're not getting testy or feeling entitled or anything like that.
	You're just speaking the truth, which is that you really are in a bind, and you really need someone to help you, but they don't owe you their help.
	This is just a realistic evaluation of the situation.
	You really need someone to help you, They don't owe you any help.
	And so you have to appeal to them as one human being to another.
	Like one human being to another.
	And so what I would do is go in and say, look, I'm totally in a bind here.
	I know that I've completed the technical requirements of the degree, but...
	I was totally high on crack and messed up the online form.
	No, actually, maybe not that approach.
	But just say, look, I made a mistake with the online form.
	Let me just sort of lay out to you what's going on so that you can understand the urgency that I feel about this.
	Not that you have to fix it or anything, but if you could really help me out, oh man, it would mean the world to me.
	I have this letter of offer to be a lecturer.
	Of course, in order to be the lecturer, I need my degree.
	Now, I know that I've completed the technical stuff, but there's a problem here, and I sure would hate to sort of waste another semester, both of this school's resources, which could be better applied to somebody who doesn't need to do this do-over or whatever it is.
	And I would really love to be able to sort of get on and get started with this next thing, but there's this problem.
	I view it as technical, and I may be wrong about that, but this is sort of how I view it.
	And, oh man, if there's anything that you could do to help me, sort of step me through how this problem might be solved, I would be so massively appreciative, I would send you like 12 bouquets of flowers, of course I couldn't because that would be conflict of interest, but, you know, I would name my firstborn after you.
	You know, you could even make some jokes, right?
	I mean, bureaucrats have a pretty crappy life, right?
	There's nothing wrong, I think, with taking that kind of approach.
	Throw yourself on their mercy, right?
	Because you're at their mercy, right?
	I mean, that's just a sort of factual evaluation of the situation, so that would be my suggestion of how to do it.
	You are in a very vulnerable position, but vulnerability has enormous power, right?
	Vulnerability, and I don't just mean manipulative, like you genuinely are in a vulnerable position.
	These people hold at least the short-term future.
	In your hands and, you know, if they say, well, there's nothing I can do for you or whatever, whatever, right?
	Then just say, well, I don't want to, obviously, I don't want you to do anything that you're not authorized to do.
	Is there anyone that I could talk to that I could go and, you know, throw myself on their mercy?
	You know, I'll cry right here in front of you.
	You know, come in with 12 teddy bears and a really unstable look in your eye or something like that.
	Actually, maybe not, especially if you're in Virginia.
	But is there anything that I could do?
	Any course of action that I could take?
	Just be very vulnerable.
	Be needy. Because that's the reality of the situation.
	And you don't have any control over the fact that they have power over your future.
	But I think just going in and being as vulnerable and as honest and as open as you can be in this situation.
	Human beings kind of deep down, even bureaucrats, they like to help people.
	They like to help people.
	And so if you say, I'm in a bind, please help me if you can, that's a whole lot better from, you know, this goddamn online thing was so stupid that I got it, you know, I got it quote wrong and now I'm screwed because of this.
	Like, nobody's going to want to help you, right?
	So if you go in and you're vulnerable, then...
	I had this thing with GoDaddy a little while back where I tried to order 24 months of additional bandwidth, and they gave me 24 units of additional bandwidth.
	I had like 12 terabytes per month or whatever.
	And so I just phoned them up and I said, you know, I tried to do the right thing.
	I'm not a dumb guy, but man, oh man, did I mess this up.
	And if there's anything you could do to help me, I'd really appreciate it.
	And the guy really wanted to help me, right?
	Because, you know... People will do almost anything that you ask them to, but they'll do almost nothing that you tell them to.
	So that would be my approach, and I hope that that helps.
	Alright, we have somebody else who may want to talk or may just want me to stop talking.
	Let's find out what that's going to be.
	Greg? Oh, we have Greg's song almost ready.
	Anyway, yes, Longside, you're on.
	Longside, you are absolutely amazing.
	I mean, I couldn't possibly talk that fast.
	I'm actually recording that sped up.
	I'm an 8-track player, but go on.
	You didn't actually say anything at all.
	Incredible. I mean, you talked for a long time, but you didn't say anything.
	I could have sworn I heard something.
	Maybe you can tell me. No, no, no, you didn't.
	If people with half a head were listening, you said absolutely nothing.
	Really nothing at all.
	But you talk really fast.
	I must say I admired that.
	I must say I admired that.
	Listen, I certainly don't want to interrupt you telling me that I said nothing because I may not be saying something now.
	But if you want to take a stab at this question, this problem that this person had, I mean, if you have better advice, that would be fantastic.
	This was just my take on how things worked for me in a similar situation.
	What exactly is the problem that you have?
	It's not a problem that I have, it's a problem that a listener has in which he needs to get a bureaucrat in a university to change things around because he made a mistake in an online application and thus may not graduate and he's got a job waiting for him if and when he doesn't.
	You mean your online application?
	No, it's just the listeners.
	Oh, right. Okay.
	Right. Application to what?
	Well, I was actually reading the letter, so maybe you're just not hearing stuff rather than me not saying stuff like I did actually read the letter.
	No, no, no. Honestly, I found it absolutely remarkable that you could talk so fast and say absolutely nothing.
	Well, I think that's fine, but you're just repeating yourself.
	That's pretty much what you did.
	I'm just saying it slower.
	Okay. Is there anything else that you wanted to sort of ask or any opinion that you would like to offer up in the realm of psychology or philosophy?
	Why are you doing this?
	Why am I having this show?
	Yeah. Oh, show, I suppose.
	That's how you see it.
	Right, a show. Well, it is a show.
	This goes out to about 20,000 or 30,000 people.
	I had almost a quarter million downloads last month of my philosophy podcast, so it's kind of like a show, yeah.
	Right. Hmm.
	Blimey, O'Reilly. Ah, well, I've got to say that you are a showman.
	Alright, did you have any questions about philosophy or politics or psychology or economics?
	How could I when you said nothing?
	Oh, alright, okay, I'll ask you something.
	Okay, I'll ask you something kind of philosophical, yeah?
	Why is a ball round?
	Well, by that, do you mean why does a ball have the spherical shape that it does, or why do we use the word round to describe a spherical shape?
	You could go on for about 20 minutes about this, couldn't you?
	Well, you know, much though I enjoy having people come in, Hey Stefan, how are you? I'm great, how are you doing?
	Yeah, well, I don't know.
	I mean, I was just sort of assessing the last speaker.
	He had some valid points, but he also went overboard on the negativity, I think.
	I think that you did repeat yourself rather a lot on the last section of what you were discussing.
	You said, put yourself at their mercy in about 12 different ways, but the last guy was overly negative, and as you say, he didn't have anything to add to the discussion.
	I'd like to bring up the possibility that, well, bring up the problem, because this is a problem that occupies most of my waking hours.
	The problem is the fact that the economic system is designed to entrap and enslave us within it.
	And really we have no say on how this system is run because we have no control over natural resources and we have to compete merely to get to the natural resources that we need to survive.
	And that leaves us very, very empty for doing any other resource acquisition, for doing any other activity beyond that.
	So, you know, people work all week to just put food on the table and pay the mortgage and so on.
	And at the end of it, they're totally spent.
	So they don't actually have any ability to do anything to resist or move or improve the system in any way.
	And I'd like to point to the fact that non-cooperation with the system has to be, not only non-cooperation, I'd consider dismantling it and sabotaging it in any way possible, in fact.
	But I'd like to point out that it needs to be stopped because people who go to work and think work is a solution Or a cover for their intellectual ignorance are actually incredibly dangerous in supporting the system when they go to work.
	I think I understand what you're saying and I think that there's probably a lot that you and I agree upon.
	The way that, and I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, I took out of that and then you can tell me where you stand.
	I certainly do think that people work far too hard, and the intellectual labor which most people are dealing with in their careers, you know, the white collar kind of stuff, is brutal and exhausting.
	And I think that the fact that, like you're from Britain, but here in Canada it's a similar kind of system, the fact that people get taxed at about 50% of their income means that they effectively have to work about twice as hard to make I actually disagree with that.
	I don't think that taxation actually affects your income at all.
	And the reason I don't think taxation affects your income is because I think that the market includes any of the taxes you've got to pay.
	So, for example, in England, where I live, I live in England, we have an incredibly high tobacco and, well, you call it gas, but we call it petrol.
	We have an incredibly high petrol and tobacco taxes.
	Now, by that logic, you'd expect that petrol salesmen and tobacconists Would earn an awful lot less than the rest of the population.
	Of course, they don't earn an awful lot less because if they didn't, then the equilibrium would mean there would be nobody in those trades.
	No one would work as a tobacconist and no one would work as a petroleum reseller.
	So, what I'm saying is that essentially, you've got to have an equilibrium.
	So, after he's taken out his expenses, his taxation, but say a manual laborer who, I don't know, works in a car manufacturing plant, and after you've taken out the manual laborer, the expenses of a guy who's working in a tobacconist, there has to be an equilibrium between the two.
	Otherwise, what would happen is gradually all of the car, all of the tobacconists would retrain as car mechanics.
	And vice versa.
	So what I'm really saying is the amount you earn after the amount you've got is actually adjusted upwards to include your expenses of being in business.
	So what I'm saying is that when you look at tax, tax is actually added to your income and then taken away from it.
	Hang on, hang on. You've got about 12 million points going there and I don't mean to interrupt your flow but I just want to make sure I understand what you're saying.
	So are you saying that the level of taxation has no impact on take home pay?
	Correct. So if you were suddenly given 20% higher taxation, it would have no effect on your take on pay?
	Correct. So listen, I got a great proposition for you because it sounds like you have an incredible system there and I've never heard of it, but maybe it's true.
	Why don't we do this? You send me 20% of your after-tax income, which is exactly the same as a tax, right?
	And your after-tax income isn't going to be affected in any way, so I get that extra money and you don't lose any money.
	No, that's incorrect. If I give you 20% of my untaxed income, then it would also have to be enforced on my competitors.
	If it wasn't enforced on my competitors, then I would merely go bust because I would be inefficient in my industry.
	If all of my competitors have to pay the same tax.
	If taxes were at 95% of all income, you don't think that it would have an effect on economic behavior?
	That's correct. It wouldn't.
	But that's not true. No, it is.
	Just look at the Beatles. Sorry?
	Look at the Beatles. The Beatles left England because they were in a 95% tax bracket.
	It absolutely changes people's behavior when they're taxed higher.
	Well, I think that's essentially ignorance.
	Do you think that the people are ignorant about their own economic interests with all the accountants and lawyers that they had on the payroll?
	Yes, I do think people are ignorant about their own economic interests.
	I think you'll find people who are working in a town where you'll find vegetarians working in hardware shops where the main product of that town is meat, the beef burgers. And they won't realize that they're part of the supply chain that's supplying meat for beef burgers while they're working in a hardware shop because they don't think about it.
	All they think about is the money they get in their cheque.
	And as long as that money's there, they don't really think about the practical implications of their actions within the overall economic framework.
	So yes, I'm quite certain that people are totally confused and bewildered regarding the economic framework and their interest within it.
	In fact, I think the politicians need you to be confused.
	Right. Well, I certainly agree with that, and I certainly would say that what would be far more, I think, you know, relevant to me, you know, just as a moral philosopher, would be the fact that the taxes that are extracted from people through the threat of force, right?
	I mean, it's always the threat of going to jail, and if you resist going to jail...
	Taxation is inflicted upon citizens at the point of a gun that I find morally abhorrent.
	And of course, when you pay your taxes, a good deal of that money will go to fund the purchase or sale of military hardware, both to go to the Middle East and to be sold to pretty despotic dictatorships often in Africa, which use all of that military hardware to further suppress their own people, which gives you these heartbreaking shots of kids with bloated bellies, which require What I'm pointing to here is that you never earned that money.
	Your customers paid that tax for you.
	It's not your money. Sorry, I don't quite understand that.
	Well, what I'm really saying is that the tax is part of the cost of your being in business.
	Let's say you need $100 incentive to work each week.
	If you need $100 to work each week, Your living expenses are another $100 and your work expenses are another $100.
	That's $300 you need to work each week.
	If you're only offered $280, you won't work.
	So if the tax burden is $100 rather than $0, then in that scenario you'll need $400 rather than $300.
	Right. And what I'm really saying is that your customers have to put that extra burden on you because you pass it on to your customers.
	Or in the case of employees, you'll pass it on to your employers.
	So you have never earned that money.
	Well, sure you have.
	Certainly, if the taxation were dropped, it's a generally accepted economic rule that that which you tax, you diminish and that which you subsidize, you increase.
	So, if you tax a particular good, you diminish its use or you raise the profits.
	Yeah, but most taxes apply pretty much across the board.
	We can talk about extreme examples where, for example, tobacco and petrol will be an extreme example.
	But your average sales tax is your average sales tax and it applies to more things than every other sales tax does.
	So for example, I don't know what it is in your state, but in Britain we have something called value added tax, 17.5% to everything.
	So when you're saying you diminish what you tax and you increase what you subsidize, in Britain what happens is everything gets taxed evenly so everything is diminished equally and having the net effect that nothing is diminished.
	No, no, no, that's not true at all.
	For sure, if the VAT, and I grew up in England, so I know a little bit about this, if the VAT were repealed tomorrow, consumption would go up.
	There's no question of that. No, I disagree.
	As a whole. Because there's still the same amounts of production, there's still the same amounts of demand.
	But the price of the good has gone down, right?
	And when the price of the good goes down, the consumption of that good increases, assuming that there's demand, which there obviously is, because people are willing to pay 17.5% more.
	Give me a second. Right, so the price of one good goes down.
	No, no, the price of all goods goes down.
	Oh, okay, the price of all goods goes down, but also the income of...
	The employers go down because they have less sales to make, because they're not taking the money in for VAT as well.
	No, no, no. If the VAT is eliminated, people buy more stuff, which means there's more sales, which means that there's more money going to the employers to pay their employees and so on.
	No, because there's less money, well, there's the same amount of money because the...
	I'm going to have to think about how to explain this to you because I've got the fundamental right.
	I'm just having difficulty getting it across to you.
	Give me a sec. I'll tell you what, I'll let someone else take the mic and I'll come back to you on it, alright?
	Hi, thanks, brother. Alright, so if you could just move in, too.
	And we have the true me.
	Wow. Hey, my true self's phoning in.
	How are you doing? Hello.
	Hello, the true me.
	you are on freedom and ready hello I'll get most code yet no I don't I'm sorry.
	I'm sorry. I have something wrong with my mic.
	So let me introduce myself first.
	My name is Al-Fatih and I am from Africa, actually from Sudan.
	I would like to maybe ask about something.
	My question is, how could we and the people of the world live together peacefully while we are watching all these offensive how could we and the people of the world live together peacefully while we are watching all these offensive actions from all the leaders
	Germany, France, of course both of the last two have just joined the club recently and in order to understand what is the exact situation What is going on?
	We need to firstly understand why these people are doing that and whether the whole world or the people of the whole world of what is so-called the free world understand what is actually going on.
	I think that's a wonderful question and I really do appreciate that you're calling in.
	I would just like to offer a white guy's apology for the complete and total cluster mess that the West has made of Africa over the past couple of hundred years and you guys are...
	Living under an uncredible bondage that is placed on you by the hellish monetary, financial, and militaristic policies that are pursued by our governments.
	And the only forgiveness that we as Westerners can ask for is that most of us Are completely ignorant of what is really going on.
	So that's the first thing that I would say is that you guys live in a living hell and the place should be a paradise.
	I spent some considerable time in Africa when I was younger.
	The place should be a paradigm.
	It's one of the most beautiful places in the world, and it is a living hell, and it's largely a living hell because of the actions of your local political leaders who are jockeying like crazy to get a hold of the billions of dollars available in sort of foreign, quote, aid and military hardware from the West.
	And that's on the one side of things that occurs, that we are completely screwing up the countries of Africa with all the money that we're handing.
	I'm sorry, you were going to say?
	Yes, I just wanted to say that I do appreciate what you have just said, but the question now is what to do?
	Because, you know, I just keep hearing about these grade-A, like all those summits, all those parties, but to be honest with you, and the Melinda Gates organization, all these things, but we do not feel something real in here.
	We can see all those stars like George Clooney, Angelina Jouni, and Brad Pitt, and all this showbiz stuff, but the reality of the situation is something that it's an easy thing to do.
	The United States can just ban a whole country like Iraq on some day but they cannot just ban a single leader maybe in a country like the United States like the Kingdom Saudi Arabia where they are molesting their people and they are doing horrible crimes over them and here in Africa also we got like Many leaders who are doing worse crimes than what's happening in Darfur and I'm from Sudan.
	And I'm just telling you, we have seen what happened in Rwanda.
	And you know, all these things that are just delivered to the West media is not actually true, because all those crimes in Africa have witnessed a lot of dirty involvement with parties in the West.
	And I would like also to, maybe I'm not pretty fluent in speaking English, but I will try just to put my point.
	The point is, what should we do?
	If we can make certain frameworks, or certain common understanding for the situation and common understanding for the solution because all the media initiations, all those initiations made by suspicious organizations are just drifting us away from the real solution because they are doing things that do not make a cure for the situation because you cannot cure a disease by You have to dig deep and take it out.
	Take the real bad thing out.
	I don't know if I can just deliver my message.
	No, that was great. Was there anything else you wanted to add to that?
	No, no. I just want to hear you.
	Sure, sure. The first thing that I would understand, this is in accordance with what I've researched.
	Fifty trillion dollars have been poured into Africa over the past 40-50 years and the standard of living now is lower than it was when all this began.
	And that's exactly as you would expect.
	We have the same issue here with Native Americans and Native Canadians that we pour enormous amounts of money into these communities through taxes and through the government.
	And they end up worse than they are before.
	And we pour enormous amounts of money into the war on drugs, which ends up with drugs being more prevalent and cheaper.
	We pour enormous amounts of money into welfare.
	Which ends up with people getting locked in poverty and getting poorer and poorer every year.
	The solution, my friend, is that we have to, we have to as a species, stop believing that pointing guns at people can solve problems.
	Now, you see this, I mean, much more viscerally than I do, and I know that the money that is poured into Africa does not reach you.
	I know without a shadow of a doubt.
	The money that is poured into Africa reaches a political elite, reaches a religious elite, and does not reach the people.
	And there is no conceivable way that it ever will reach the people.
	I think that the only solution that I've been able to think of is that we have to back away from the idea that using violence is ever going to solve Problems.
	And the violence that is being committed, first and foremost, is in the West here.
	The money that is stolen from people at the point of a gun, which is then handed over to your brutal dictatorships in your benighted continent, is the primary source of the problems that you are facing.
	That all the money and the wealth is stolen from people in the West at gunpoint, And then it is shipped over in the form of weapons, in the form of subsidies, in the form of bribes to get a hold of power within Africa.
	Natural resources, philanthropy of the worst kind and so on.
	The only way that I know how to help Africa is to try and talk about the fact that we can't have taxation here because it's taxation here that kills Africa.
	It's taxation here And the money that flows into these African governments and the weapons that flows to these African governments.
	Who's responsible for Rwanda is Western taxpayers.
	And it's not to say that Africans have no responsibility, blah, blah, blah.
	But when you have a situation where billions of dollars are flowing into a country, the most evil people in the world are going to do the most unimaginable crimes to get a hold of that money.
	You have to cut off this corruption at the source.
	And the source is Western governments.
	Who lend all of this money to these governments, which ends up being spirited away to unknown locations, Swiss bank accounts, and so on.
	Never makes it to the people, but then the people in Africa have to be taxed for generations to pay back the loans to the banks.
	It's not like the money gets stolen from us at gunpoint, and then it goes to these bankers who lend it, the world bankers lend it to us.
	We don't see the money coming back, right?
	So everyone except a small group of political and religious elites and financial elites are getting completely screwed.
	The only thing I can say is that you guys are getting screwed a whole lot worse than we are.
	But the only solution is for us to find a way that we can run our societies without taxation.
	Exactly. But you know, maybe there is something I would like to add.
	The United States It has forced the whole world to apply certain procedures in order to protect them from the threat of those Islamic terrorists, I guess. And you know, this happened in a matter of only one or two years from September 9-11, 2001.
	And by the same manners, They cannot force those countries to do the required things in order to get their What nations get forward to apply and force them to make good education and health policies, good policies in order to remove poverty.
	And as we know that the whole amount of money that was required to remove poverty, according to the project, or I'm not quite sure actually about the name, is maybe less than half of what have been spent over Iraq.
	You know, because...
	I'm sorry to interrupt.
	Go ahead. My point is that, yes, I know that the taxation is just what delivers to those forces The tools or the objective to go for,
	you know? Because when you take this money, you give it to the African leaders and the African leaders come again and buy it from you as weapons and as like things, cars, weapons, like everything they buy from the West back.
	So this money is taken from the regular citizen in the West and then just get back to Africa and then get back even in the West but this time in the pocket of certain individuals who benefit from this chaos.
	So my point is you at the West should do your best in order to expose Who benefits from this mess?
	Because everything bad happened has certain parties who benefit from it.
	So, like we know, maybe three or two years ago, the son of Margaret Thatcher had been involved in a certain scandal in Africa.
	I'm not quite sure where.
	And this story has been very influential in my country because now we know that those people who pretend and tell us that they are the protectors of freedom and those things are just pretending that they are seeking the good things.
	The reality is that they are using those metaphors and using those reasons in order to justify their bad things.
	Well, I completely agree with you.
	The only thing that I would suggest is that expecting that the violence of taxation and this forced redistribution of wealth and the military industrial complexes that are so cancerous in the West and which are hurting Africa more than they're hurting the West Expect, like you said, if only they could take half the money that they're spending on Iraq, they could make poverty disappear in Africa.
	I agree with you from a math standpoint, but it is never, ever, ever If you guys wait for Western government to start doing good things in your country, you will wait for an eternity.
	There is no possibility that money that is taken through the force of taxation can ever produce any real or long-lasting good.
	It is just going to be worse and worse.
	Stephen, there is something bad that you don't know.
	It's supporting our leaders, enforced by their police, enforced by their military forces, and they are just doing crimes on us.
	We are trying. I'm not silent in Africa.
	I've been trying my best within my community, within my school, within my college.
	I've done my best in order to get my voice heard.
	But here in Africa, because we do not have a voice, there is no democracy down here.
	We can do nothing.
	And this is the reality of the situation.
	You can see what's happening in Egypt.
	You can see what's happening here in Sudan.
	We do not have voices.
	We are trying.
	It's just you have to know.
	But those people are supported.
	Supported by the West media who's covering them.
	Supported by the West money who is just coming in forms of weapons, in forms of troubles that are happening and conflicts.
	which are just hated by the West itself and this is the true situation down here.
	So, what I'm asking for is to uncover everything.
	What I'm looking for is that certain people, regular individuals like you and me, I am trying now to shout, I'm trying to loud out my voice, but we have to find out what's happening now in Britain.
	Like this big one, I'm not quite sure about the name, the Yamama scandal, which is involving some kind of princes in Saudi Arabia.
	And this thing, the power of press is to expose that kind of things.
	The power of people.
	To force the governments in order to expose everything to the people because they are using us in order to achieve certain goals for certain parties and this is the major point.
	We have to uncover what is the reality of things.
	We know that countries like Sudan and Africa are just in depth for people.
	Who are those people?
	You know, I realized that all these African debts or all the third world debts, we don't know who is giving us money.
	We don't know who we are debited for.
	You know something? We hear about the World Bank.
	Who's the World Bank? Who's the guy controlling there?
	We need to see people.
	And that's why we are just shielded from the reality of things by names of organizations, by names of things.
	We want to know who is the people.
	Now when you get the political system, you get someone who you can blame.
	This is Bush, this is Putin, this is who and this is who.
	But when it comes to business, you don't know who to blame.
	And I guess this is the main disaster within the system, the capital system of the United States.
	Well, I certainly agree with you, and let me just apologize if I gave you at all the impression that I thought you didn't have a voice or weren't doing the right thing.
	The difficulty that you're facing in getting the truth out in your neck of the woods is about a million times greater than anything that I ever have to do, so hats off to you in total admiration.
	My suggestion would be, I mean, the solution that I work with is that...
	We have to get rid of governments.
	We have to get rid of governments.
	Governments as a whole are the great leech, the great cancer.
	You talked earlier about going in and getting the root of the infection, getting the root of The root of the sickness is governments as a whole.
	You know in Somalia, right, they've had no government for 15 years and there have been no genocides and they have the most advanced cell phone system in the Middle East, right?
	So it's not a perfect solution because they're still crazy, irrational Muslims, but I will say that it is governments as a whole.
	You can't reform a government.
	You can't turn the violence that a government represents into good actions.
	It's like asking the mafia to plant flowers.
	It's never going to happen. So my solution, and you're welcome to come and listen to the podcast, they're available for free, and if you want to send me an email, and if you have too slow internet, I'll send you DVDs, I'll send you CDs, you can hand them around.
	There's a way that we can work in society with each other, brother to brother, without there being these hellish, monstrous governments selling products.
	Arms and weapons and crushing citizens under their heels.
	There's ways that we can work in society without having to have a government.
	Every time we go to the government for solutions, we get more and more chains, more and more manacles.
	And so the approach that I take, which is admittedly a long-term approach, is to say that the only way that humanity can flourish is in the absence of these monstrous institutions called governments.
	Okay, in order to understand you, I'll definitely go and check your materials, but in order to understand you, what is your preference and point of view to the matters of religion, diversity, and things like that?
	Well, diversity is great.
	I think diversity is one of the great One of the great bonuses of living in a human society with many different cultures and many different languages.
	I am an out-and-out total and complete and utter atheist.
	I do not believe that there is any such thing as a god who observes or watches or judges or interferes in human affairs.
	I don't believe in gods.
	I don't believe in governments.
	I don't believe in anything called society.
	There's you and there's me and there's other people, right?
	But there's no such thing as society.
	There's no such thing as the group that we all have to obey.
	There's no such thing as a god in the sky who tells us what to do through priests.
	There's no such thing as governments who have the right to take our money at the point of a gun.
	There's you and there's me, and we should interact brother to brother as peaceful people who respect each other's rights.
	And the moment you bring gods in, you create priests.
	And the moment you bring governments in, you create armies and weapons.
	And we need to be able to deal as a species with each other without creating these fantasies of gods and governments, which always end up in lots of blood.
	Okay, there's something.
	I see that there's somebody else who's waiting.
	I would like to give him a chance.
	But there's something I just would like to discuss.
	If there is time and if I get my chance, I get a fair slot right now.
	And if there is a possibility, I would just try to come back and ask you something else about this particular subject, okay?
	You can ask now.
	I mean, you're our first caller from Africa, and if there's ever a place that needs the theories that we talk about here, I would say that Africa is it.
	So, please, go ahead.
	Okay, thank you very much.
	And I do apologize for Stephen.
	If he's just in a hurry, he could text me and I could leave him the place.
	The story now is that, you know something, Stephen, that people need somebody to lead them.
	People sometimes are so negative in a way that they need somebody to force them even to do the right things.
	And that's why Maybe throughout the whole course of civilization that people have developed those patterns of guidance like government, like religion, like all these, you can say, all these What I can say?
	They just need to follow some kind of supernatural powers in order to...
	And here in Africa, you can see this clearly.
	We get all these stories and rituals and that stuff because we need something to believe in.
	We need something to follow.
	You know something? And that's why when you are talking about individuals interacting with each other, there is a possibility of mess.
	There is a possibility of This or misguidance, because people will be misguided.
	There will be nothing to go for.
	You know, sometimes they are like insane leaders, but at least they are leading.
	No matter where they are leading us for, but people need to go somewhere.
	I'm not pretty sure if I can just give my point because But people need this kind of direction, no matter what is right or wrong.
	And this is the point.
	In such a system, I'm not pretty sure and I'm not just predicting, but I feel that we need to make a balance.
	The government should be there in order to keep the system, any system, a system.
	Whatever it is.
	But we need people to interact together in order to force the government to keep the right system.
	And this is my point here.
	I guess that we can just handle our chaos.
	We can just handle our mean desires because I think every individual has mean desires.
	He wants He has a burning desire to be better than his brother.
	He has a burning desire to take his brother's shelter, his brother's money, maybe his brother's even wife or woman, if you're not in a system with a husband and wife.
	And this is the reality of what's happening.
	And here in Africa, we get that kind of stuff.
	If you are weak, it's just like the forest or what I know, jungle.
	The strong is the weak.
	I just don't believe that this can...
	If we lift things to be that much open or loose, there is no way to control things.
	And I guess that's why the religion is there.
	No matter if there is a God or not, that's not the point.
	If there is a God, that's why it's here.
	If there is no God, that's why man has invented the religion, because it gives you a construction of life.
	I'm not pretty, if I can deliver my point.
	So what I'm talking about is What I'm talking about is that the government should be there, but people should interact with each other the right way.
	They should give and build their independent frameworks for every single subject the government deals with.
	Like your situation in Iraq, some people, the government has made all these false justifications for their Iraq invasion.
	So individuals should seek the truth through independent, I don't know what you can say, like committees and individual groups like committees and individual groups who seek to know the truth.
	the real truth and what's really happening.
	And we should also discover A solution for the balance and for the raise of resources.
	Because, you know, the United States, maybe when congressman or the congress was pushing Mr.
	Bush to come out of Iraq maybe like two months ago, I don't know, but he just convinced them.
	Because I can imagine that he sat with...and told them that if he didn't do that, China would take the whole world.
	Maybe this is a good reason.
	So we have to sit and face it.
	We have to face the real situation that those powers, those people, we as people are fighting each other to get the most resources.
	And this is the economic problem, I guess.
	The scarcity of resources are pushing us to fight in order to get the biggest stake.
	So my understanding or my perception for this point is that we have to realize Our world we're living in, the solution for our economic problem, I mean the scarcity of things,
	how we can optimize the things of the world like we and the available resources and the problems of the environment and all these things.
	How can we just fix them and do a fair solution?
	Because every community, every country, every nation should remove its greed.
	In order to live in peace with the entire world.
	And now, you know, Mr.
	Stephen, you are in maybe the United States of America, and now I'm in Africa.
	I'm right now in the inside of the mess.
	I'm inside of Africa.
	But you know, this is a blessing that I can talk to you right now over this amazing and incredible tool, which actually has been invented Not to give us these benefits, but it has been invented or it has been promoted in order to give a tool for those big and giant corporate companies to deliver us services, to deliver us their stuff and to market their things.
	But now we are just Using this tool in our benefit.
	So now, from the same point of view, we can use their own systems, like the government, like everything they have created in our benefit.
	And this is the way we can just face things.
	We cannot just change things, I guess.
	We can just face them and use them our way in order to get our benefit from them.
	Well, first of all...
	That was a great speech. I mean, I really, really applaud several things, right?
	Obviously, you have thought deeply about these subjects, and that is highly, in my view, highly admirable.
	Your English is great, better than some of the other listeners who call in, and you put forward cohesive and cogent arguments, which is wonderful, and you obviously, and I think, again, very admirably care About making the world a better place, and you have beliefs about how this is going to be achieved.
	So that was all great. Congratulations for that, for what it's worth.
	You and I would very much disagree on how we go about doing it, but that doesn't matter so much.
	What matters is that we both care about having a more peaceful world, and maybe I can convince you of a different way, maybe you can convince me of a different way.
	The couple of points that popped into my mind while you were talking Well, first of all, you said that people need a leader and they have to have a leader and so on.
	But that's not true because leaders are inflicted upon people at the point of a gun.
	Your people don't choose their government.
	The government just points guns at you and says, give us your money or we're going to throw you in the jail.
	So people don't need leaders.
	Leaders are inflicted on them, right?
	It's like saying that there is a zoo where the animals are kept in very small cages and someone says, but do the animals need to stay in cages because they don't walk around a lot?
	But they won't walk around a lot because they're in cages.
	So I don't think that humans innately need leaders.
	I think that you didn't choose a government, you didn't choose the religion that's in your country.
	This is something that was just taught to you and probably quite brutally when you were younger.
	So saying that people need it when it's something they have to be taught and it has to be inflicted on them and they have to have guns pointed at them to make them obedient, I don't think makes a lot of sense.
	Just in my view, right? But I go into more of this in the first couple of podcasts that you can listen to and hopefully that will make sense.
	A little bit more sense.
	I think you can never control a government.
	We here in the West, we can't control our governments.
	Nobody wanted to go to war in Iraq.
	Nobody wanted to go to war enough that they wanted to pay $50,000 for each family for the cost.
	If you'd gone to the American people and you'd said, you give me $50,000 to go to war in Iraq, they'd have said, forget it.
	The problem is that the government just takes our money to pay for the soldiers.
	Right? And if we resist, we get thrown in jail.
	So there's just no way to control a government.
	The government has prisons, it has police, it has an army, it has nuclear weapons, it has aircraft, it has aircraft carriers, it has...
	You cannot control a government.
	A government is just a massive gang of thugs who do whatever they want and cloak it in a kind of ethics, but it's all nothing.
	We can't control a government.
	No one can ever control a government.
	Once you put a government in place, It just goes and does its own thing at your expense, using all the violence at its control and its command.
	I think the fantasy that you can have a government that the people can control, I think will never happen.
	I mean, there's no example of it ever happening.
	It's never happened in Africa.
	It's never happened in America.
	It's never happened in Canada.
	Governments just keep getting bigger and bigger, causing more and more problems, enslaving more and more people, causing more and more wars.
	Until they collapse, right?
	And that's a very dangerous time for everyone.
	The best thing that could happen to Africa would be for the American economic system to collapse, which is, of course, where it's headed.
	So I just wanted to point a couple of things out.
	I'm not saying that you're wrong.
	That's just my particular opinion.
	But if you'd like to have a listen to the first couple of podcasts, I would be beyond excited if you would tell other people about This philosophy, it may be of great interest for you.
	You certainly are going to be more skeptical of the virtues of government than most of the people here in the West.
	If you'd like to listen to a few this week, I would be more than happy to have you come back next week and tell me where I'm wrong.
	Definitely, definitely.
	I would be so grateful if I have them and I would go and download them.
	I have not that connection and so I can get them easily and I do appreciate everything.
	Thank you, thank you, thank you very much.
	It's been a pleasure talking to you and I just couldn't believe that someday we can easily communicate together.
	We are people of Africa and you are people of the United States.
	And I think that this is the first wave of change.
	Unless they make A bigger tragedy than what happened in September 9-11.
	I just don't know what you call it.
	I'm so sorry. But you know, at least be comforted if you like.
	This podcast goes out to 20 or 30,000 people, so 20 or 30,000 people will at least hear the message of what's going on on the ground in Africa and I think you've done a very good thing today.
	Thank you so much.
	I do appreciate it. And just again, I would like to emphasize that we can do the change.
	I do believe that.
	And with the help of you and all the great thinkers right here in Africa, I consider myself a regular individual.
	So, I have just now checked your website and I found that you have done a great job, although I didn't just read them very carefully or in details.
	But I think that we can, just regular people can make the change and I hope that we can unite together and I will come here every time and I will just ask the people to make the change.
	We, the regular people, can make the change and I am a regular guy in Africa And I know that with other thousands of regular guys and regular women and men, we can just make the change.
	I'm pretty sure about that.
	I'm pretty sure about that. I agree. All you need to trust our governments to stop, quote, helping your governments, which makes your life that much easier.
	So again, thank you so much.
	I really do appreciate it.
	And we have a gentleman who's been waiting even longer than the gentleman who wants to come back, which is Mr.
	R. Yes.
	Welcome back from the kill from the lawyer's office.
	How's it going? Good, how are you doing?
	Top of the world, 10 feet tall and bulletproof.
	Excellent. You know, I feel a little inadequate after, you know, having witnessed the beginning of the saving of Africa that I'm just going to record on my little victories here, but I'm still having fun with it, so.
	The, um...
	After last week's...
	Oh, the chat window says they're not hearing anything.
	Am I... Are you here?
	I can hear you fine. Okay, cool.
	All right. I'll just ignore those guys.
	So after last week's chat with you and Christina, the thing that you got in my head about that simple little phrase that was the key...
	About me identifying with the people who had wronged me.
	And it was just absolutely amazing how that...
	I don't know, like the image that I had, it was in my mind.
	There was this huge boulder blocking my path and it was just like sticking dynamite under that thing.
	And suddenly the path was clear.
	Within a couple of days I filed my DBA. I got a little bit of information up on my website to get that going.
	I wrote a letter to the new CEO of that company that I was talking about, and then called up a lawyer to, you know, just get some opinions on it really quickly.
	And the lawyer was really cool.
	He helped me out. It was just a free call, you know, a 10-minute call, and he gave me all kinds of very helpful information.
	And I sent the letter off two days ago, I think, via registered mail, the receipt, and everything like that.
	Pretty much demanding my money within 15 days or I was going to open up a big can of whoop-ass on them type stuff.
	I was much more diplomatic than that.
	It was very...
	What's that?
	A medium can of whoop-ass.
	Yeah, yeah. It wasn't the family size.
	It was the individual package.
	But yeah, it was just a nice clear letter in very direct legal type tone that said that this is what Here's the judgment, there's a copy of it attached, and this is what I think you owe me, and all that stuff.
	So we'll see how it goes. But the lawyer said, yeah, it seems like you have a very clear case, and if the letter doesn't work, then come back and we'll get something going.
	So that's progress that was waiting to be made for four years.
	I can't thank you enough for helping me out on that.
	I still can't figure out why that block was there.
	Well, I think I do know why because you explained to me it last week and it worked after I heard it.
	This is the personal freedom right here.
	Gosh, I'm still levitating.
	It's so much fun.
	Well, that's fantastic. And I just sort of wanted to point out that there have been a number of people on the boards who've complained about issues like procrastination and so on, and they get sort of mad at themselves for the willpower, right?
	I don't want to do it and so on, right?
	And that's why we dig deep and we work from the ground up, right?
	So that instead of pushing a car that doesn't have a motor, you just put a motor in, right?
	And then you can just drive by putting your foot in.
	That's the difference, I think, between what a lot of people chastise themselves and others for in terms of a lack of willpower versus once you have unlocked a particular Right,
	right. Yeah, it's definitely not a willpower thing with me because when I have the will to do something, it's nearly unstoppable.
	But it's these crazy little tricky...
	Blocks that I've encountered in my mind, in my emotional energy and things like that over the years that have been my great white whale.
	They've just been my nemesis.
	For some reason, these things have been able to paralyze me.
	Once I get going, though, I have tremendous force and will.
	You know, one thing about this...
	Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead.
	I was just going to say, one thing that was really striking to me about this unlocking...
	The process over the last week was that somehow when I made that connection between that old boss and the fact that I was getting so hung up on what I wanted his reaction to be, I think part of it was even I was just thirsting for vengeance and I wanted this thing to be painful to him.
	I think maybe that focus on That vengeful feeling I think was also paralyzing to me because I don't like being a bad person at all.
	And I think that that was because I was associating this being assertive with being aggressive and saying, demanding what is rightfully mine, I was associating that with me being bad and vengeful.
	And so once I was able to unlock that, I was able to Pull the action away from the focus on how was he going to react to it, it suddenly just became like nothing.
	It was like this huge mountain turned into a tiny little speed bump that you wouldn't even trip over.
	It was a great liberating experience.
	And what I would guess from that is that if you want this guy to get hurt by what it is that you're doing, you're kind of surrendering your power to him in a different kind of way.
	Absolutely. When we want someone, we are then dependent upon them feeling hurt.
	And if they withhold that feeling of hurt, then we ourselves are hurt, right?
	It's a gun that goes off in our own hands.
	Exactly. So once you release that, and a good way of doing this, just to sort of conceptualize it to the widest level that at least I can do, a good way to sort of figure this stuff out is to figure out who's benefiting from your hesitation.
	Who's benefiting from your hesitation?
	So if you've got this lawsuit against this guy who owes you money, and you're hesitating to do it, who benefits from that hesitation?
	Well clearly it's not you, and clearly it's not your lawyer, and clearly it's not even his lawyer, right?
	It's him, right?
	So when you want to figure out who's in control of your emotions, who's running your emotions, just look for whoever's benefiting from whatever it is that you're feeling, right?
	So, you know, there's been a lot of volatile stuff lately since I've put forward this testable thesis for figuring out parental corruption.
	And people get sort of really upset and angry and, you know, lots of emails about this stuff.
	And of course, who is it who benefits from not being confronted?
	Well, it's not good people. Good people benefit from being confronted and being sort of challenged and so on.
	But bad people, not so much, right?
	So when people are very afraid to confront their parents or, you know, projected on this aggression against me, Then the real issue is, well, who's benefiting from you not pursuing this testable thesis?
	Well, people who will fail that test, right?
	And so it's not too hard when you get that habit to figure out who's running your emotions, right?
	Who are you covering for?
	And in this case, of course, the person who least benefits from you pursuing this lawsuit is the guy who screws you, right?
	And so he's probably the one, you know, and then it goes, well, why would I sympathize with someone who did me harm?
	It's not that bad.
	It's not that hard after you get the habit of it to get back to your family of origin.
	Yeah, actually, when I was listening to this recent series you did on the BAM and Ron Paul supporters, you were mentioning one guy who was saying, well, now that I know all this stuff, I'm going to keep living with my parents just because it gives me a sense of power.
	And it seemed to strike the same chord in me that what I was feeling with this situation of my own was that Yeah, I knew it was right and somehow there was a sick pleasure that I got in telling people that someone owed me money and someone was a jerk and all that stuff like that.
	Because I seem to have used this phrase so many times over the past four years.
	Well, yeah, the reason I'm not being successful right now is because some jerk owes me 20 grand.
	And it was an excuse.
	I was using it as an excuse for my own lack of progress in my life.
	It was a very ready excuse.
	I could pull it out at any moment to say as an explanation for why I wasn't further than I am, because I have the potential to go very far, I'm certain of it, and I haven't done so yet.
	I mean, I'm starting now, and so to eliminate this excuse is important, I think.
	Well, the excuse... Hi, it's me, Christina.
	The excuse was giving you something in return.
	I mean, you didn't have to face your fear, you didn't have to deal with these other issues, and so there was a lot of secondary gain associated with that excuse for you.
	You could hang on to that excuse and you didn't have to take any action, and thereby not taking any action, you didn't have to deal with all the other fears that were associated with that action.
	Exactly. Yeah, now that I have started...
	I'm just going for it anyway.
	I'm setting goals and I'm going after them.
	I'm realizing I don't need this excuse anymore.
	And when I don't need the excuse, I don't need the vengeance and all this other stuff.
	It became such a non-issue.
	It's just time to get going with it.
	Right. And was there anything else that you wanted to add about this?
	No, not much. I'm just, thanks again.
	I mean, this is, gosh, it's just like haymaker after haymaker.
	I'm just knocking them out of the park here.
	So it's all kinds of fun.
	Good for you. Now, Greg, I think he's not just have a microphone, but he's on.
	So, Greg, this song is going out for you.
	I like Greg's butts and I cannot lie.
	No, actually, I just got the first line done, but I'm trying to figure out the rest of the lyrics.
	Well, he'll maybe hear on the download.
	I'm still working on the remainder of the lyrics and also not sounding so tighty-whitey, but I don't think that's going to happen any time.
	So give him a beat.
	Yeah, God help him with a beat.
	Give him a beat.
	Wow, look at that. I have turned six black people whites just by doing that rap.
	That's pretty cool. Boy, that's quite the power.
	They call him Jamex boy.
	All right. Thank you so much, Rod.
	It was great to hear from you. If there was anyone else, we have the gentleman who is going to come back.
	But I just wanted to make sure if there was anyone else, because this may be the last caller for the show today.
	So if there was anyone else who wanted to come in with anything, that would be...
	Now's the time to do it. Were there any other questions that came in through the chat window?
	Just some ribald commentary?
	Nothing. Okay. Yes, you are back, my friend.
	Thank you, Stefan. How are you?
	Great. How are you doing? Yeah, I'm good, thanks.
	Okay, you said consumption, right, I mean I've got about a billion responses to things that have been said since then, but I'll leave those for a second.
	You said that consumption would go down if tax didn't exist.
	Can you explain where the money...
	Sorry, let me go back. The consumption goes up.
	Sorry, my fault.
	You said consumption would go up if taxes were reduced to nothing, yes?
	Correct. The taxes that are taken are spent on government employees and government subcontractors.
	Their consumption would go down by the same amount as the consumption that the rest of society would go up by.
	So the net amount that would go up.
	But that doesn't matter.
	I mean, for instance, if I pay someone $100 an hour to stand in my yard and pick his nose, then money is being transferred to him, but no particular goods or services are being added to society that people want.
	So, without governments, let's just say for the moment, right, that you wouldn't need much of a military if you didn't have a government or whatever, right?
	So, then you're not going to have all these tanks and bombs and planes being created and sent over and blown up and so on, that all those resources would then be diverted towards goods and services that people actually want.
	So the fact that fewer government employees are being paid is actually better for the economy because instead of walking around collecting taxes, which is not a good or service that anybody wants other than the government, they're actually out there creating shops or writing books or doing whatever it is that...
	Well, most people would say that they like having police officers that will turn up to take people away from their premises and to take burglars away from their premises.
	And most people would say that they like having lots of other government services...
	They would pay for that voluntarily if that's what they want, right?
	Yeah, yeah, I agree.
	Okay, well, I mean, but what I'm really saying is that your statement was that consumption would go up, and I'm saying that consumption would not go up because the net amount of consumption is the same, it's just that government is doing more consuming.
	Of course, government is a sort of sovereign entity, whereas individuals aren't.
	And individuals are forced to compete against each other in the way that landowners are not.
	So if you've got land, there can only be one piece of land in that particular location at any one time.
	Whereas if you're employed in any industry, whether it be software development or just any industry, technology is always underlying every industry.
	You're actually forced into a situation where you're competing against another person and therefore you're not really sovereign because the benefits of your competition with that other person get passed on to your customer.
	Does that make any sense to you?
	Well, I mean, I certainly agree with you that, you know, it's that old thing that they say in real estate, land, the one thing they're not making more of.
	For sure, there are some differences in the economics of land and labor.
	Land is certainly not something that is not subject to competition.
	So, for instance, if I have a farmland and it turns out that it's a very popular tourist destination, then there may be competition for that land in terms of a bidding war or if somebody wants to build a housing development on it or whatever.
	The use of the land is subject to quite a high degree of competition, but it certainly is true that land in India can't very easily compete with land in England in the way that tech support in India can compete with tech support in India.
	Also, the other thing I'm pointing to here is, like you correctly say, they're not making any more of it.
	So if you've got two theme parks in America, or you've got two bidders for a theme park, Basically, the guy who actually holds a theme park at that given time, even if there's another theme park that you can bid on down the road, actually has a permanent single theme park, whereas if you have a new piece of software that you've just developed, then there can be an infinite number of pieces of square, whereas there can only ever be two theme parks because there are only two plots of land that are suitable for theme park building, as it were.
	Do you see what I'm saying? One is finite, one is infinite, depending on how hard you compete.
	Well, for sure, but they're both still subject to competition.
	So if I build a theme park, I am competing with everybody's vacation dollar, with everybody who's renting villas in Tuscany, with everyone who's doing whitewater rafting trips down the Ottawa River.
	I'm still competing to try and get customers to come to my theme park, not just with everyone else who has a theme park, but also with just staying home and redecorating the house, which some people do on their vacation.
	God help me. Yeah, sorry.
	I'm afraid we got a little bit cut off.
	On this Skypecast, but please join us next week for a show that hopefully won't have such an abruptly terminated ending.

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