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June 13, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
49:12
797 The Coma Test, and Debating Women - a listener debate

An examination of ethical obligations, and ways to debate ex-girlfriends

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Time Text
Hello? Hello?
Hello? Hey, must avoid carpal tunnel syndrome.
Thank you so much for having the chance to chat.
I'll tell you what, I was actually enjoying hiding behind text.
You get a lot more time to buy time while you collect your thoughts.
I don't know how you manage it to talk for 40 minutes without pausing it at great length.
Right, even for Brett sometimes, and it's very kind of you to assume that there's some collecting of thoughts going on in there.
I certainly do appreciate it.
Some people might disagree, but that's very kind of you.
Oh, well. So, well, I got a notepad open here, so I can at least, you know, collect my thoughts in that 30 seconds I had, and I think I failed.
But maybe I can try the ad-lib thing.
I bet you that you're better at this than you think.
You're a very smart fellow, I think.
Cheers, I hope so.
So if a man in a coma A man in a coma is not morally responsible, and therefore valid moral rules shouldn't incriminate a man in a coma.
But I think the other possibility in my mind is that a man in a coma is exempt from moral rules, including valid moral rules, and that would invalidate the coma test.
I think that's an excellent objection.
Can you just tell me a little bit more about it?
I can try.
So you mentioned also that Similar to biology, morality isn't an exact science, and there are exceptions, like two-headed horses.
I don't quite know what exactly you were making reference to.
Oh, sorry. Let me just explain that very briefly.
What I mean by that is there are questions which you cannot answer objectively in the realm of morality.
So, for instance, when does a child become a morally responsible agent?
Clearly, a baby is not.
Otherwise, when they pee on you, you'd be a little more upset.
A baby is clearly not an independent moral agent, but a 20-year-old of average intelligence is.
Is it midnight when they turn from 17 to 18 that they suddenly go from 0% to 100% moral agent?
It's a shade of grey.
I mean, there's a gray area in the middle.
And it's sort of like the difference between seawater and Evian, right?
No water is pure, but there's gradations, but there's still quite a difference between seawater and Evian if you try to drink it.
So there are certain areas in morality.
Also the idea of proportional defense, right?
If you put one little toe on my lawn and I shoot you, that could be considered a slightly volatile response to trespassing.
But at the same time, is a woman who thinks that she might be in the danger of getting raped, does she have the right to shoot?
There's lots of complications in ethics, so it's not exactly like physics, or I guess it's more like quantum physics.
But it's closer to biology.
We know for sure that a human being is not a horse.
But there are horses that form two heads.
There's unusual situations. So I didn't want to imply that because I've gotten stuck in this sort of area before with people that there are objective lines that you can draw like on graph paper to sort of decipher good from evil.
Certainly, you know, I mean, most of the things that people deal with in their lives are pretty cut and dry.
You know, taxation is evil and so war is evil and so on.
But there are areas where people get really fussed up around, you know, is it this shade of grey or that shade of grey?
And I just sort of point that out to begin with so that people don't get too lost in that.
Because, you know, for me it's like, yes, if you're a nutritionist it would be great if people ate better and exercised more, but right now we're kind of in the middle of a plague, right?
I mean, governments are getting bigger, wars are getting more prevalent.
Crazy stuff like Islam and fundamentalist Christianity is on the rise.
So we've got lots of black and white issues that we have to deal with before we get to all of the grey issues.
Now, this coma test I don't consider a grey issue.
It's pretty core. But I sort of like to say, yes, there's lots of grey areas in morality, which we can get to after we've dealt with, you know, let's deal with fire prevention after we put out the raging inferno.
That's sort of my... Yeah, yeah.
But the validity of the coma test is pretty fundamental.
And that's the only reason I really want to spend so much time on it.
Sure. No, you're absolutely right to do so because it is very much the difference between a free society and a status society.
Because a status society includes positive and moral obligations, right?
And a free society does not.
And the coma test is just a way to metaphorize that so it doesn't become too academic.
That's true and probably to get caught up in the specifics isn't a great idea.
So you're saying that, say a child or a baby, doesn't have the same moral responsibility as an adult, right?
Sure. So, we wouldn't invalidate proposed moral rules by applying them to children or babies.
Well, no, because you can differentiate species in biology based on objective differences, right?
Objective, real, not slight variability differences, like you don't look at a black horse if you've only seen white horses and say, what the hell is that?
You say, hey, it's a black horse, right?
But you're not going to confuse a horse with a platypus, right?
So where there are objective biological differences, you can have different rules, right?
So you can say, well, children are objectively and biologically different from adults of a particular species.
So we can classify them differently.
We're going to, you know, give them different rules and so on.
And that's because there's an objective difference, you know.
To contrast that, if I say, well, human beings don't have the right to murder, but if I put on this green costume and learn how to salute, then I have the opposite rule of everybody else, right?
But putting on a costume, that doesn't change my fundamental nature, whereas being a child has objective biological differences.
Putting on a green costume and saluting doesn't change my fundamental nature, so you can't have opposing rules, if that makes sense.
Sure. So, just as being a child is an objective biological difference, and putting on a green uniform isn't an objective biological difference, which is the basis on which we decide whether or not moral rules are applicable to certain species, isn't being in a coma an objective biological difference?
Absolutely. It certainly, certainly is.
It certainly, certainly is.
But it's also, I mean, the coma is an exaggeration of the sleep situation, right?
Which is also, you know, a slight derivation from the idea of the mentally ill and so on, right?
So it's definitely a permanent condition.
A coma is certainly a bit more of a permanent condition.
And it certainly is an objectively biological difference.
And what that means, of course, is you certainly could come up with a moral rule that says, except for people in a coma or who are asleep.
And that certainly does have an objective kind of biological difference to it.
And so let's put that to the test.
And that's a perfectly valid and very intelligent objection.
So if you could come up with any kind of moral rule that you would accept someone who's in a coma from, then we could look at it sort of in practice.
Shall we go with the ridiculous one of people should kill?
Murder? Sure. Absolutely.
Absolutely. That's an excellent one.
And let's hope that we can't prove it.
Because that might change quite a bit.
Bring a two by four.
Okay, so, I mean, of course, the coma test just is one approach, right?
And you're absolutely right to say, yes, there's an objective medical difference that is occurring when somebody is in a coma.
So of course the challenge with positive moral obligations is that It's sort of like jumping rather than breathing, if that sort of makes sense.
Breathing is a continuous state, right?
And that's sort of like, thou shalt not kill is a continuous moral commandment that you fulfill by doing everything except killing, right?
Thou shalt not is much less restrictive than thou shalt, right?
If I say you can live anywhere except in Washington, that's not very restrictive to you, right?
If I say you must live in Washington, That's much more restrictive.
So the thou shalt not kill is something which sleeping people, babies, people in a coma are all sort of fulfilling.
Thou shalt kill is something which only somebody in the instance of actually taking someone's life, like jumping, right?
There's a moment in your jump where you hit the highest point, you fall down again, you've got to rest for a bit, you jump up again, you get tired, you fall asleep, and so on.
So when you have a positive prescription like thou shalt kill, then a person is only moral in the instant that In which they are giving to, sorry, they're taking the life from someone.
One second before someone dies, they're not moral, right?
Because they could stop, they haven't killed the person yet, right?
And then one second after, a millionth of a second after the person has died, they're no longer moral again, right?
So it's just that one split second that the person crosses over and meets his relatives that the thou shalt is moral, right?
And so that's the challenge when it comes – and the coma test doesn't answer all the questions.
It's just a way of beginning to think about it.
But that's the problem that you have with positive moral prescriptions, that only in the instance that you are committing that particular action can you be considered moral, and all of the other instances – In which you are not committing that action, you're less moral.
And the other challenge, do you want to respond to that or there's one other sort of major thing?
I was just going to say, maybe if it saves you a bit of time, I think the concept that it's not generally valid to create positive Sorry.
Yeah, positive moral prescriptions.
I think I get that, and I don't disagree with that.
It's really just, and I'm probably getting caught up in an important specific here, just my thinking is that the coma test isn't a valid way of proving that theory.
Or maybe just isn't a very effective way, given that I can't grasp the difference between The objective biological difference of someone with some form of mental retardation and the objective biological difference of somebody in a coma.
For, say mentally, a mentally retarded person, we would exempt them from moral rules, which we wouldn't invalidate due to their condition, but for the guy in a coma, We don't exempt him from the moral rule.
Instead, we prove the moral rule invalid.
And it's just that line of logic that's getting me tied up.
Does that make sense? Yeah, it makes perfect sense.
There's a little bit of a difference between somebody who's...
Like if we say, thou shalt not kill, then the guy in the coma doesn't kill and he's fine.
And the person who's fully conscious, who in a nasty way plans out some murder and carries it out, obviously has some sort of moral responsibility if they fulfill other criteria like they knew it was wrong, they tried to hide the body, whatever, and they had financial motive or whatever.
But the difference is that somebody who's retarded, we exempt them from the moral judgment, but we don't exempt them from the moral rule.
In other words, if somebody who's retarded runs around strangling children, We don't just say, well, he's not responsible, look the other way, right?
I mean, society would still have to do something to prevent that recurrence.
It just wouldn't do it in the sense of punishment.
It would be sort of like, if you have a dog that bites every baby it sees, that dog probably would have to be taken someplace safe, whether that's, you know, the woods or the afterlife, I don't know, right?
But you wouldn't say, that dog is evil, right?
That dog is violating the moral rules and the social contract and so on.
You'd just say, well, that's... That's bad, right?
The same reason we don't wear tinfoil helmets during a lightning storm.
It's not that the lightning is evil. We just don't want the consequences, right?
So I think the moral rules, thou shalt not kill, still apply to people who are mentally retarded.
It's just that we don't blame them as sort of free will and morally choosing actors of their own decisions and so on.
We just recognize that a schizophrenic might think that his kids are in danger of being eaten by the Year of the Virgin Mary or something and might try and put them into a small trunk or, you know, whatever, right?
And it's not a man who's reasoning through anything, but we still would have to restrain him from doing that, right?
So the moral rules still do apply to where there are biological differences like mental illness, retardation, schizophrenia and so on.
Then we still have a responsibility to act, but it's just not with the same kind of moral judgment.
But do we then say, given that the moral rule is applicable to that person, and from a biological standpoint, we'll say they cannot help violating that rule, which is the reason that we don't pass moral judgement on them to the same extent,
we don't then decide that the rule itself was invalid because one of the human species is unable to avoid Violating the rule.
You get what I mean? I think you went one step further than my little brain can handle, so if you could just go through that a bit more slowly.
Yeah, for sure, sorry. I'm making that up in my own brain as I go.
It's very good, it's very good.
So, somebody who's mentally retarded, say, we'll assume, if this is alright, we'll assume they cannot help but kill someone, yeah?
Yeah, sure. Okay.
So then, our universally applicable rule, which is, thou shalt not kill, is, uh, this person is unable to avoid, uh, moral judgment, right?
Because of a, uh, because of a variation in the human norm, yeah?
Yeah. Uh, not a moral judgment, but they, they, they're still violating a moral rule, they're just not responsible, right?
But from that, okay, so we've got some person who from a biological standpoint is something different from the norm, and they can't help, because of this condition, they can't help violating a moral rule.
Which is the same as, in my mind, some guy in a coma, he is something biologically different from the norm, and if we had a positive assertion as a moral rule, he would be unable to avoid Breaking that moral rule.
Got it, got it. For the first instance, with the mentally retarded person, we don't then say, therefore, the moral rule must be invalid.
Right. We just say, well, that person is, to some extent, exempt from that moral rule.
But with the case of the guy in the coma, we, instead of saying, well, I guess the moral rule that you should kill somebody every day or something like that, We don't say that, I guess that rule doesn't apply to him to the same extent, but the rule is still valid.
We take a logical standpoint and say, well, because of this coma guy, the rule is invalid, and therefore applies to nobody.
Right. Do you have my reasoning?
I think I do. Have you ever seen the movie Brazil?
No, I haven't. In the movie Brazil, and this is just a metaphor about how my brain works and I was sort of patiently waiting for it, they have this, and this is what used to occur in the 50s as well in offices, there'd be these tubes in the wall and you would put your little document in the tubes and they would be whisked up a floor or down a floor and so on and they'd just spill out on someone's desk.
When I get a really brilliant and challenging question, which of course is that I sort of have to just sit there dumbly staring at the tube that comes up from my unconscious.
Hey, any time you want to kick up an answer, that would be great.
And I just got a tube, so to speak.
So let me just sort of go over why I think that at least a possible answer for an absolutely excellent question that, you know, perfectly frank, completely stumped me there for like five or ten minutes.
And it may have still continued to stump me, but let me sort of explain what I'm thinking of and you can tell me if it makes any sense.
Yeah, go for it. What the coma test as a metaphor does is it says if you're going to put a positive moral obligation onto people, what happens when they can't fulfill it?
I mean, that really is sort of the criteria that the coma test brings about, right?
So if somebody says, you know, you should kill, well, somebody in a coma can't kill, right?
So when you put forward a positive moral obligation, then the coma test says how are you going to deal with With the situation wherein somebody is unable to fulfill your positive obligation.
Does that sort of make sense? Yeah, yeah.
Okay, so you're absolutely right that you could make up a rule which says a person in a coma is exempt from my positive moral obligation because they're unable to fulfill it.
Yeah, just as we've made the rule that a person with mental retardation is to some extent exempt from, what do you call them, negative moral prescriptions?
Well, yeah, I mean, it would certainly be moral prescriptions.
I call it sort of universally preferable behavior, like thou shalt not kill or whatever, but yeah, moral rules we can just sort of say for the sake of ease.
So what the coma test helps bring out, or brings into the conversation, is the challenge, what happens if you put forward a positive moral prescription?
And somebody is unable to fulfill it.
Now, the coma test is just the most obvious example of someone who, you know, can barely keep their own heart beating, let alone get up and strangle a nurse or something, right?
In the sort of moral thing that we're talking about.
But I can think of, you know, we could spend a week.
We won't. We could spend a week going over all of the reasons why people could not fulfill the thou shalt kill commandment, right?
So... You know, people who live alone.
It's like somebody who lives alone in the woods can't find someone to kill every day.
I mean, just sort of one example of many, right?
Somebody who's in a full-body cast can't find someone to kill.
Someone who's surrounded by people who are much stronger than he or she is is going to have a little bit of trouble getting them to...
you know help him squeeze or whatever it is right yeah so and you could you could sort of go on all day people who are blind to can't find people who you know to kill or you know whatever right the people who have arthritis and can't strangle you know this just millions of of ways in which people can't fulfill that moral obligation right and that that the coma test you're absolutely right It's an objective biological difference and so on.
But the problem then becomes, when you have a positive moral obligation, you have to invent a rule which says, we take something like give to the poor, which is probably a little bit more common than strangle someone every day or whatever.
When somebody is unable to fulfill that moral commandment, then they can't be judged negatively in terms of morality.
And you can't even punish them, really.
If you say you should give to the poor and you have no money to give to the poor, you can't say, well, you're bad.
You say, well, you can't do it, right?
So a positive moral obligation, I mean, just for this, because I do believe in certain kinds of preferential behavior that's positive, like tell the truth or whatever, right?
Which is a little bit more specific than don't kill someone, right?
I think that, but those to me are preferences, like it's nice to have, not like, you can't shoot someone for lying, but you can shoot someone who's trying to kill you or whatever, right?
So... There are positive moral prescriptions, I think, but they're a little bit more on the side of aesthetics or preferential stuff or nice to have.
Like, it's a positive moral prescription not to pick your nose at dinner, as I keep finding out.
So, you know, that's sort of a...
But that's more around the realm of aesthetics and politeness and, you know, preferential behavior for society and so on.
But when it comes to sort of the core moral rules of society, which, you know, bring the guns out, like self-defense and don't rape, but you can shoot someone who's going to try and rape you or whatever...
Then I think that's where the challenge arises.
And if you're going to have positive moral obligations that are universal, then you end up having to create so many exceptions that they no longer are a universal moral rule and everything becomes subjective, if that makes sense.
Because everyone could claim, well, it's impossible for me to find some guy to strangle today, so I'm exempt from this moral rule.
Like, it becomes impossible to maintain it from a standpoint of universality, if that makes any sense.
Yeah, so you end up having to add that justifier to the extent to which you are able or something like that, the money's towards us.
Well, and you can see that when governments turn from the original Lockean fantasy of they're just there to protect your property, right?
And they then start to turn towards positive moral obligations, right?
So when governments are essentially...
In the minarchist fantasy, there are tiny little things that just have a sheriff and a jail and a court maybe, and they sit around until somebody's rights get violated, in which case that person goes to complain to them and says, I need you to punish whoever violated my rights.
That's sort of one aspect of things where governments don't get too complicated.
help the poor and the sick and the old and to fund soldiers and to, you know, do all of this, fund people in Africa and foreign aid and all this kind of stuff, then what you see is, of course, you get this incredible asymptotic complexity in terms of legislation because, you know, you get these tax codes because there are so many exceptions to every single rule once you create positive moral obligations, right?
So, I mean, there is a logical problem insofar as you're saying this is universally preferable behavior, which has to be the definition, I think, of ethics.
And now here's like 10,000 volumes of all the exceptions to that.
It's sort of like saying, you know, here's my definition of a horse, says the biologist.
Oh, and by the way, here's 10,000 exceptions to that definition.
Well, it's like if there's that many exceptions, it really can't be called a definition.
Basically, the biologist is saying, You know, a dark horse that's 12-qubit high is a horse.
You know, 12.1 is not a horse, and, you know, Ash Gray or Palomino is not a horse, and at some point it becomes so complex that it's no longer a concept, if that makes sense.
Yeah, yeah. So I think I'm seeing now much clearer that the virtue of the comatest isn't sort of an infallible line of logic which disproves positive moral prescriptions, but really it just brings out, or brings into light the fact that positive moral prescriptions run into so many inevitable exceptions that really they just become...
Opinion. Yeah, they just become an opinion and really just aesthetic things.
Which I totally agree with.
And in which case, of course, and this to me I think is part of the magic of the, you've heard about or talked about the DRO concept, that's something that...
The DRO concept is like that.
You could join a DRO in your neighborhood that says everyone has to paint their garages pitch black or like the jaws of a shark or whatever.
That's not universally moral behavior, but it's something that everyone, particular shark lovers or whatever, might prefer.
The DRO thing allows you to codify the positive moral obligations that you may wish to have in your community or your neighborhood or whatever.
But it's a contract, right?
You enter into that voluntarily, and the universal preferred behavior there is to keep your contracts, right?
It's not the content, it's the form of the contract.
Yeah, yeah, that's... I mean, I tell you, I can't get over how nice it is to have everything neat and tidy and objective.
I mean, I could be wrong, but I just don't see how that could fail.
Well, tell me, and now tell me, if you don't mind, if you have a little bit more time, tell me about your, you said you had a conversation with somebody about libertarianism?
Yeah, yeah. Well, I don't know.
I didn't feel really as if I could claim it as something I truly believe at the moment, given that, I mean, not only am I new to libertarianism, but new to really taking much interest in politics.
Right, and you didn't stop at the easiest stuff, right?
This isn't exactly Social Studies 101.
Sorry? She didn't start with the easiest stuff.
She's very enthusiastic about migrants and immigration and homeless people and all that sort of stuff.
Enthusiastic about them like she thinks there should be more of them?
Oh, like she's just desperate to get into that line of work and help the homeless people and do all sorts of stuff.
I mean, that's her thing.
She loves it. And sorry, who was this that you don't have to give a name?
Oh, an ex-girlfriend of all things, if we needed more fuel for the fire.
Right, right. Well, my wife has worked with a lot of social workers, and she knows quite a bit about the personality type.
Not to be over-generalizing, but the ex part might be a real blessing.
But anyway, go on with your conversation.
How did that go? Yeah, yeah.
So, well, inevitably, before I could really get to what I feel is the good stuff of libertarianism, everything being objective and I mean, we already got caught up on things like, you know, how are we going to take care of the sick and the poor and the old and all those sorts of things.
Right. Which, well, to me, libertarianism stands.
Pretty solid, and then people should take these difficult questions to it, and then those are questions to be answered.
But when you start off, you know, that's the first question you answer.
Oh yeah, I've had that one a few times.
But then DROs just become governments, right?
And it's civil war, and Mel Gibson has to be your best friend, and all this kind of stuff.
Ah, you must have had this conversation before!
Oh yeah, no, only about a million times.
And so how did you approach this tricky question of helping the poor in the absence of a centralized state?
I argued that, as you did, well, I don't know to the extent to which I'm just regurgitating things, which doesn't sit right really with me, but if I'm regurgitating things, I believe, I guess that's alright.
But, yeah, arguing that The state doesn't necessarily take care of the poor as well as it could.
The methods and employees aren't as good as they could be.
Whether or not we feel that it's right, forced association or being forced to help the poor isn't moral.
I mean, that argument wasn't going to go over with her for a second because she thinks that, you know...
Right, so you're saying...
Come again?
Well, then she's like, oh, so basically you're saying I'm joining the poverty SS, right?
It's like, well, that can be tricky for sure.
Yeah, exactly. I mean, and she's saying, well...
You know, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
Well, to some extent, maybe they do.
I don't know. That certainly is true.
It certainly is true, and it certainly is true that the more that state power grows, the more that that happens.
Everyone blames the free market for what the government does, right?
The free market is like the younger brother that can't quite talk yet, and every time a lamp goes down from the older brother, the younger brother gets blamed.
I mean, that's just inevitable, right?
Because the free market doesn't have a voice, but all the government workers do, right?
And the academics.
But anyway, go on. I forgot where I was now.
Sorry, go ahead. Oh, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
I mean, maybe that's the case with libertarianism.
I'm not quite sure. I'm sure you could explain it to me.
But even if that were the case, if that's congruent with valid moral theories, then so be it.
I mean, smart people are smarter and less intelligent people are less intelligent, and that's not exactly fair.
That's the way it is. What are you going to do?
Right. Yeah, that argument will never work with a woman.
I don't mean to be overly sexist, but the rough and tumble, wild west, you know, live and let die evolutionary argument, I certainly agree with you at a fundamental level, but I just don't know if it's a hardwired thing, and I'm sure I'll get,
you know, if we publish this as a podcast, I'm sure we'll get lots of complaints, but I just don't find that argument works that well with women, and the reason for that generally is that It's easy to be the independent Darwinian fellow, but if you keep getting disabled with pregnancies and need to be taken care of and so on, women have a kind of distaste for that sort of live and let die capitalist ethic, if that makes sense.
Oh yeah, I can understand that, especially this one.
Yeah, it didn't work with that.
No, that ring's very true.
Right, right. Do you mind if I throw an idea your way?
Just see if you wanted to.
So I can give you more to regurgitate, right?
Let me just lean over and program the back of your head.
But you can try this, right?
If you can try working with metaphors, particularly with women, I mean, I just think you need to adjust, at least I found it useful to adjust my conversation with women, and sort of say that, work with metaphors that are a little bit closer to women's hearts than some of the dog-eat-dog capitalist stuff, and say, well, you know, it's generally nicer if people have happy marriages, right?
If people get married and live in love, it's preferable.
And of course, there's not many, maybe a couple of radical feminists to whom heterosexual marriage is institutionalized rape.
I don't think she's one of those. But they say, yeah, it's better.
I would prefer it if people had happy marriages and so on.
They say, well, yeah, so would I. I'd prefer it if people had happy marriages and got along and got along.
We had their 50-year anniversaries and cake and all that.
And to say, well, sure. So we have this thing that we would both prefer that we think would be better.
And of course, it is better for the kids if the parents are happily married and it's better for the economy because divorce is messy and expensive and all that kind of stuff.
So it's better for the kids as a whole and more stable.
So we have this preferable thing that we would like in society, which is happy marriages.
And yet... You would probably not think it would be a good idea, oh lady friend of mine, if the government chose your partner for you and forced you to get married, and if you didn't get married to whoever the government chose, then you would get thrown in jail.
That would not be a decent or reasonable way to deal with the problem of how to create happy marriages.
Yeah. And so she would agree with that for sure.
I mean, no woman is going to say, yes, let the government choose my maids, and if I don't get married, I'm thrown in jail, right?
But of course, that's exactly what she's proposing when it comes to helping the poor.
We would all prefer that there not be poor and unhappy people in the world, for sure, right?
But the solution is not to force people to obey a particular program run by the government or throw them in jail, right?
It's a lot more complex than that and it's a lot more challenging than just pointing guns at people and say, do this!
You may think that the problem is getting solved.
If you say, well, we want to create happy marriages and the government forces people to get married and anybody who says I'm unhappy gets thrown in jail, well, lickety-split, boy, doesn't it look like you've just created all these happy marriages because there's all these people walking around married who have these fixed grins on their faces who...
I'm so happy I could spit.
That's what they're going to say, right?
But you haven't really solved the problem.
What you've done is you've just forced people to obey a particular set of rules basically on threat of violence, right?
You're thrown in jail if you don't say you're happy and don't stay married.
And that's what happens with poverty programs, right?
So it's a lot more complex, a lot more messy.
If you think that you're solving poverty by pointing guns at people and forcing them to obey certain welfare programs or certain redistribution income schemes or whatever, then it's no more likely to work than forcing people to get and stay married and say that they're happy is likely to produce You know, a whole swatload of happy marriages.
In fact, it's just going to make things appear better while actually making them worse.
And I think if she can make that connection, and I'm not saying you can do it that easily, but that's a metaphor that I found.
No, that sounds like a good one.
Yeah, yeah. No, it's a challenge, you know.
It's not so much a challenge to know the truth, it's a challenge to get the truth across to people in a way that works for them.
That's the real sweat for me.
Yeah, shouting over a bar doesn't help either, but, you know, it wasn't too big a deal.
Well, at least you get straight to shouting, and you don't have to go through the inevitable slow escalation.
Just kidding. How does my voice sound?
Does it sound like I've been shouting for a few hours?
I thought you were just like a heavy metal singer, so I was going to ask you to belt out a few tunes, but...
Oh, that's true, but I'll save it.
I also touched, of course, on, you know, well, there can be private donations, or if there's not, you know, forced wealth distribution and that sort of thing, then, you know, there can still be private donations and there will still be money for poor people and sick people and that sort of thing.
If people aren't, you know, being forced to pay tax for these sorts of things, they'll have higher incomes and then be more prone to, or more willing to give to charity as, you know, statistics, according to Stefan, say so, which I'll trust on that one.
Stat stiff, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And how did that book? Well, that was met with a fair bit of skepticism, which I couldn't really counter.
Right. No, I don't think that's a good approach.
I mean, I totally understand it, and it's a non-controversial approach, but I don't think that's what I call the argument from effect, and that doesn't work.
At least I have not found maybe there's some way to make it work.
I've never been able to find a way to make it work.
Another thing that you can say is that, you know, do you think that people should be allowed to disagree with other people without getting thrown in jail, right?
Now, if somebody says, no, I think that people who disagree with me should be thrown in jail, the next word out of my mouth would be, check!
Right, right, thanks. It's been a slice.
Let me hope I get out of here without any bullet holes.
So every sane human being is going to say, yes, I think that people should be allowed to disagree with each other without getting shot.
So if you have one way to solve poverty, which is to get money from people and to give it to the poor, and I have a different way that I would like to solve poverty, I would have no problem with your ex-girlfriend going around to people saying, if you give me 10% of your income, I'm going to solve poverty.
Sign here on the dotted line and away she goes.
I would never say, boy, if you do that, I think you should be thrown in jail.
But at the same way, if I don't think that's a good way to help poverty, am I allowed to disagree with you without being thrown in jail?
If I believe genuinely and totally, like I care about the poor, you care about the poor, we'd all be slightly happier, if not much happier, if there were fewer poor, the poor had more opportunities, so if I disagree, With the way that you want to solve poverty, am I allowed to disagree with you without getting thrown in jail?
Now, they have to say yes, right?
I mean, nobody except like, I don't know, Stalin's granddaughter or something, nobody's going to say no, you can't.
And then you've just won the argument, right?
Because as soon as you said, I have to be allowed to disagree with you, I have to have that right.
I'm certainly willing to extend that right to you.
You must... As basic common courtesy, extend that right to me.
Well, you've just killed the welfare state, right?
Because the welfare state is, we do it this way, and if you don't pay the taxes for it, you get thrown in jail.
If they accept the premise that universally preferable behavior is also applicable to the government.
Well, sure, but the consequences are the same, right?
She certainly has to say, because she believes that the government should do it this way, right?
So yeah, you can just say, can I disagree with you without being thrown in jail, right?
It's like, well, if I can disagree with you, then I disagree with you based on this program, which means I must be able to disagree with the program, but the government doesn't let me disagree with the program.
Because the problem is that the metaphor generally is put forward that The left-wingers care about the poor and the libertarians or the right-wingers care about freedom and it's sort of the opposite.
I've got mine, screw the poor is the way that libertarians are portrayed.
I think quite the opposite is true.
I think that libertarians really do care about the poor because when the market is freer, poverty was being reduced 1% a year after the Second World War in America and that stopped when the welfare state came in, as you would naturally expect.
So poverty was being helped by the free market and then when the welfare state came in, people stopped getting poor, stopped getting out of poverty and now they get stuck in it, right?
So the free market has a much better empirical track record of dealing with poverty than all the government programs in the world, right?
And so, I mean, but people don't like those facts because it seems kind of risky and it goes against their moral...
You have to find some agreement in the element of morality in order to really gain traction with people, I think.
Yeah, to start with what they agree with and then build on that.
How would you counter the argument from effect?
If they're arguing that, well, if we do it this way, then all the poor people are going to die because there's no money from the government, no forced association basically, or no forced wealth redistribution.
So that's the argument from effect, isn't it?
It is the argument from effect, for sure.
And the first thing, I mean, there's a number of different ways of dealing with it, and it depends, you know, what your level of time and so on is.
First of all, I'd ask someone, well, is that an opinion of yours or is that a fact?
Is that just something you think might happen?
Maybe you think there's boogeymen under the bed when you're five.
Is that a scare thing that you're afraid is going to happen?
Or is that something that you absolutely, genuinely, and certainly know will happen?
If there's no government programs, the poor will die in the streets and whatever.
Now, if they say, well, it's just something I'm afraid of, Then you can say, well, the evidence counters that.
The poor tend to do better.
In fact, almost universally, the poor do a whole lot better when welfare programs aren't trapping them in poverty and government schools aren't trapping them in ignorance and the special favors that big corporations get aren't trapping them in bad jobs and taxation isn't trapping them in low incomes.
The poor do a lot better when they're free.
The poor are not sheep.
The poor are not slaves.
They're not like retarded herds of people that we have to keep in pens.
They do totally fine with freedom.
They can handle being free.
So if they say, well, it's just I'm scared or whatever, and if they say it, well, it's a total fact, they'd say, well, what are your statistics?
And if somebody is basing their whole argument on statistics and you don't have any luck with the argument for morality, you can just ask them for their statistics.
You know, what's your source, right? How do you know that this is true?
Like, what's your proof? Right?
And then they'll say, well, you know, in the Industrial Revolution, the poor with this, with that, the other.
It's like, oh, well, that's interesting. Because you can't compare the Industrial Revolution to today, right?
You have to compare the Industrial Revolution to something that came before.
You don't say to somebody who's really sick from chemotherapy that the doctor is killing them.
You compare it to them dying of cancer and say, "Well, they're still alive.
That's better." So you just ask them a series of questions about where they get their facts and you'll very quickly find that they don't have any real facts.
This is just a scare story that is believed.
You have to chisel away at people's certainty.
If you can't create any doubt in someone, you can't teach them anything, right?
Like, if they're absolutely certain of something, then they're never going to learn, because there's no...
Right? There's no reason, like, asking somebody who's, like, 100 pounds to go on a diet if they're not interactive, and then I'm already thin, right?
So that's sort of one approach that you can take to that sort of question of, well, they're all staffed.
The other thing that you can do is use the argument from hypocrisy, right?
Which is to say... Well, you care about the poor, right?
You'd say to your girlfriend, she'd say, well, yes, of course, this is why we're talking about this.
I totally care about the poor, right?
So then you say, so you'd help them, right?
Like if the government wasn't there, because otherwise it would be completely hypocritical, right?
She says, I care about the poor, but if there were no government programs, I wouldn't lift a finger to help them.
They'd be like, well, then you don't care about the poor, right?
That's sort of like, that's just basic logic, right?
So she'd have to say, yes, I do care about the poor.
And then you say, and do you think that you're the only person who cares about the poor?
Right? And she says, well, the people who care about the poor are in a tiny minority.
Right? And then you'd say, well...
Exactly what she'd say. Well, sure.
But then she has the logical problem of saying, well, if people who want to help the poor are in a tiny minority, how did the welfare state get voted in?
Right? Because in a democracy, if the people who want to help the poor are a tiny minority...
Then welfare programs would never get voted in, right?
Yeah. So, I mean, it's my belief that people do care about the poor, and it's their desire to help the poor that have resulted in the poor being sold down the river for the sake of illusory conscience, the illusory comfort of conscience, right?
But she'd have to say, look, if you want a democratic solution, you have to assume that the majority of people care about the poor, right?
I mean, she'd have to, because otherwise she's going to have to advocate a dictatorship of people who care about the poor, and that's deranged, right?
I mean, if she goes to that level, then she's never going to change her opinion about anything, because She's kind of mental.
I'm not saying she is, right? But if she says, I want to put the poor in charge of Stalin, right?
Under Stalin's care or whatever, that's not going to work.
So she's going to have to advocate a democratic solution, right?
And so a democratic solution means the majority of people want to help the poor, right?
And so she wants to help the poor.
Lots and lots of other people want to help the poor, and they will help the poor, right?
So the idea that the poor aren't going to get help in the absence of blood money being moved around at the point of a gun is not true, right?
And, you know, the more you debate this with people, the more every single person says, what about the poor?
Like, if no one had ever asked me, what about the poor, I'd be a little less certain about this approach, right?
Because then it'd be like, well, you know...
But every single human being asks about the poor and the sick and the old.
Everyone cares, right?
And it certainly is empirically true that when taxes go down, charitable donations go up.
It certainly is empirically true that charities have a far better record of getting people out of poverty than the government does.
And so, yeah, I think if she says, well, who will help the poor?
I'd be like, well, you and everyone who voted for the social programs.
Either you will help the poor, in which case the poor are going to be taken care of, and far better.
Then they are right now, or you're not going to help the poor, in which case you've got no right demanding that other people do it, use guns to do it, like if you don't, you can get a lift your finger, right?
Yeah. Well, you've got no right to say that the thing that you're proposing is bad because the poor won't be taken care of.
Right, because you obviously don't care, right?
So that's just, I mean, there's a couple of different ways to do it, but you can also, again, just so you don't end up having to run around doing all this infinite research about the rates of poverty in this 12th century or whatever, you can also just say, well...
I know that you think that there should be collective action.
You can put it as nicely as you want.
You say to your ex-girlfriend, you believe that there should be collective action to help the poor.
I disagree. Am I allowed to disagree with you without being thrown in jail?
And that can be the answer to everything, and it really will get annoying to people, but you stick to your guns, or stick to your non-guns, I guess.
But that's the important...
You can answer every objection with, you and I have different opinions, right?
The beautiful thing about libertarianism...
Or, you know, anarcho-capitalism is you and I can have different opinions and both be happy and both pursue.
And, you know, if my way of helping the poor, i.e.
spending my money starting companies or whatever, turns out to be better than your way or some combination of my way and your way turns out to be better, fantastic, right?
That's what will happen.
But am I allowed to disagree with you without getting thrown in jail?
That's what the whole question of statism versus freedom comes down to.
Can we disagree without me being thrown in jail?
And not about, like, you know, can I rape you or something, but just about ways to solve really complex problems like poverty, right?
So she says, well, you know, they won't be taken care of.
It's like, well, I think they will be taken care of.
Am I allowed to disagree with you without getting thrown in jail?
And because people always want to deal with these abstracts and statistics, And not recognize the simple reality that there's a gun in the room, right?
There's a gun in the room. And if you talk about the government, people are getting thrown in jail.
And they always want to ignore that and focus on statistics and helping the poor and so on, which obscures that central issue that you're using force to solve problems.
Yeah. Yeah, I agree.
Well, I think, yeah, next time I chat with her, which I hope will be soon, I don't think I pushed her too far away.
No, no, listen, it sounds like you did a very, very good job, and you enjoyed it, right?
That's the important thing, right?
Because, you know, if you end up beating your head against the wall, it sort of gets frustrating, right?
But just, I'll tell you in advance, like, when you start talking about, can I disagree with you without being thrown in jail, things get volatile very quickly.
Just be prepared for the emotional volatility of that.
People get really upset.
Oh, yeah. Because you're bringing out a sort of core immorality that people kind of know deep down.
Like, they really get it deep down.
Because otherwise, they're just like...
Wow, I never thought of that before.
But they don't.
They get really hostile because deep down they know that they're trying to use force to solve problems, but they want you to pretend that they're not, so they can feel like good people.
But when you bring that up, and don't even get me started on what this does to people's family issues and so on.
They don't learn from the government that you have to pretend that bullying is not being used.
They learn this from families.
Again, you know more about our family history than I do, but it tends to get right down to the core and be very personal for people, so...
Just be alert to that.
Maybe it won't happen, but often it does.
Yeah, for sure. All right, man.
I'll tell you what. It's just hit 4 a.m.
No, really? Oh, my God.
Sorry. No, I mean, no.
I've enjoyed it very much and plenty of the good stuff.
Great. I did record this.
I won't post it, though.
I'll give you a chance to listen to it, just in case there's anything you want to change.
I don't think there was anything personal, but just have a listen.
Yeah, for sure. Thanks. Okay, thanks, man.
Happy stuff. Good night. Yeah, you too.
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