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June 14, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
56:07
799 The Argument from Morality and Friendships: A Listener Conversation
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Time Text
Hello. Good morning.
How are you doing? I think I'm still in your line.
I'm alright, thanks. How are you doing? Good, good, good thing.
Let me just turn up your volume here.
Yes, no. Maybe it's C-Sephams.
There we go. You had a 5-on-1 last night.
How did it go? Oh, tonight.
Oh, yeah, well, it went like a 5-on-1.
I don't think I lost any friends.
Well, that's not best then at all.
Yeah, no, it went okay.
I think we all got something out of it.
Yeah. And what did you get out of it?
Um... Well, it being, I think, the second time I've actually discussed this in any sort of detail with anyone.
Probably just getting a feel for people's most common responses to it, and good ways to counter that.
Right. All those responses. You're insane and satanic, that was the...
Oh yeah, everything along those lines and all that stuff.
So what were the main issues, what were the main objections that people had?
One particular friend of mine went down the road of just sort of insistence that eventually businesses would become like authorities.
Right, right. That is the most common objection for sure.
Yeah. I think I counted that by trying to take it back to, well, let's start at the beginning when everything's working properly and you can tell me how you think this is going to come about.
And I thought that would be a better way that I could explain the way I think the system would stop that from happening.
Yeah, he was sort of making that initial assumption that this would happen and therefore it would continue to happen.
Begging the question, I guess.
Right, right. And so how did that go?
Well, it went for a while.
I don't know. I mean, he certainly wasn't convinced in the end.
How did he think it was going to come about, all of this terrible stuff?
Do you mean what the order of events were?
Yeah, like how is it that we go from a whole bunch of free market DRO to some monopoly?
How did he think this was going to work?
Yeah, well, I mean, that's what I was trying to squeeze out of him for a good, I don't know how long we spoke, probably good, you know, two or three hours or something like that.
And I think I kept every issue he'd say, well, eventually it's going to end up like, you know, all the, everyone's a drug addict or, you know, there's some sort of, some sort of huge monopoly, all that sort of stuff.
I'd always take it back to, well, how's that going to come about?
Let's, you know, tell me the story and we'll decide whether or not that story is, you know, But no, I never quite actually got anything out of him.
So it was more frustrating than the arguments were sort of the debating techniques, where you don't really get many logical arguments out of people and And in the end, one person accused me of, which might have been true to some extent, criticizing not people's arguments but their argumentative techniques.
Or I was apparently, ostensibly, claiming that people's arguments were false because the manner in which they put them forward wasn't valid enough.
Right. But, I mean...
That's not incorrect, right?
I mean, the terrifying thing about learning to really think and this conversation that we have at Freedom in Radio is not fundamentally about the free market or dream analysis or any...
I mean, fundamentally, it's about thinking, right?
I mean, which means reason, evidence, and, you know, logical syllogisms and all that.
It's fundamentally a show about thinking.
And... Whether, you know, let's say that every single conclusion that we've come to is completely wrong and so on.
The real challenge about really starting to think and getting into conversation with people is it's really shocking how many people think that they're thinking.
Yeah. This guy just has a conclusion, which is, I'm just going to do a video this afternoon ranting at the YouTubers, these ADD kids who come on and say, well, it's not going to work because, right?
I mean, that's just a knee-jerk reaction.
It's not like they've examined the evidence, thought things through, and this is the conclusion that they've come to.
It's just a knee-jerk reaction with emphasis on the phrase jerk.
It's really tough to think that they're thinking.
And they don't know because they've been so badly educated.
They don't know that they're not thinking.
They don't know that they're making up a conclusion and then just justifying it, which is not thinking.
Scientifically, that would be completely invalid.
Yeah, that sounds very true to me, just based on the way things went tonight.
They have an opinion, and then they'll fight for it, they'll fight for it, and you push to get the rationale they used to come to that opinion or that belief, and there's nothing there, probably.
Well, maybe that's... Maybe I'm jumping to conclusions, but it certainly seems to me that there's nothing there in terms of rationale or logic or any valid arguments or statistics or evidence or anything like that.
It's just, yeah, like you say, just the opinion.
Right, and so it's a sad conflation of two horrible thought patterns called faith and bigotry.
Faith is just belief in something because you want to believe in it.
Or it just sort of vaguely makes sense to you and so you don't go any further.
And bigotry, of course, is having moral judgments about people and thoughts or things without ever having worked through the logic or worked from any kind of principles or looked for any kind of evidence, right?
Oh, black's real easy or whatever.
It's like, well, where does that idea come from?
I mean, when you start to ask racists or bigots, I'm not saying that your friends are like bigots or racists or anything, but it's the same thing that when you ask people for the source of their opinions, They're too embarrassed.
They know enough to know that they can't just say, well, it's what I think, dammit, and I don't have any reasons for it.
They know that if they say that, that's pretty bad.
So they know they have to have a veneer of logic over what it is that they say.
Nobody just says, this is my bigoted opinion, so there.
They always come up with something, but it's reasoning after the fact.
The opinion or the bigotry comes first, and then the reasoning is like the attempt to wallpaper.
It's like trying to put wallpaper when there's no wall.
Right? For sure, that is a very, very frustrating phenomenon.
I would certainly hope that Maybe that's why I thought it would be useful to chat, is that a lot of new people are coming to the website as I'm advertising, like I'm blowing all my money on advertising, right?
So I'm trying to draw a lot of people to the website.
And so some of the stuff that you're facing or stuff that when people first get excited about thinking philosophy and so on, they go charging, as I did and everyone in the future will also do, go charging in to talk about these ideas, which are fundamentally very thrilling, right?
The idea that you can sort of You know, parcel out or parse out the world into some components that make sense so that it doesn't seem quite so random.
It's a thrilling, thrilling thing.
We go charging out there and try and talk to people and, you know, I hope that, you know, maybe we can talk about a couple of ways to spend a little bit less time running into the wall, right?
Yeah. Or the wallpaper.
Whatever it is. Right. Running into the wallpaper that thinks it's a wall, right?
And says, wow, you must be Superman.
You're going right through. One of the things that can be helpful is...
When I debate with religious people, which is not something I do as much as I used to because you try not to stick your fork into the same electrical socket your whole life.
But I'll sort of say, well, how do we know what's true and what's false?
Like, how are we going to know who's right?
Scientists already have that, right?
I mean, that's the great thing about science.
Mathematicians, they also already have that, right?
So nobody sits there and says, well, 2 plus 2 is 5, and that's the basis of my series of equations, and, you know, I know that I'm right.
Because people will say, well, if you think that 2 plus 2 is 5, clearly you're wrong.
And everyone agrees with that, right?
So, in science we have that, in math we have that, in a couple of other disciplines.
In marketing, believe it or not, in business, they have that.
So, I spent $10,000 and generated $3 in sales.
It's objectively a bad marketing campaign.
Objectively, if there was nothing else that you gained, that was really, really bad.
And so, you know, our incomes work that way.
If I'm spending more than I'm making, things aren't going to be working out too well for me.
So in most areas in life, there's this kind of agreement.
You go into a store and you don't say, I want to pay you in haikus, right?
I mean, there's an agreement that people have about what the objective value is called.
You guys are dollars, right?
It's the same thing as... Yeah, we got the dollar.
Right. The terrible thing is that in the realm of philosophy, and even in the realm of economics, in psychology there's double-blind tests and so on in medicine.
In medicine, of course, did the person get better or worse?
There's objective ways of measuring the value of propositions.
Take antibiotics. Well, you know, we know that it makes people better.
But in philosophy, there's not that, right?
That is not generally understood.
If you say to the average person who is interested, obviously your friends are very smart, well-educated, so on, say to the average person who's really interested, In discussing ideas, say, well, how do we know what is true and what is false?
And you'll get that thousand-yard stare.
You know, their eyes turn into doll's eyes, you know, and they don't blink.
Because I don't think that people have an answer.
And in a sense, that's kind of the most important thing to establish first, right?
Which is, if you're going to be in a boxing ring with someone and you think there are rules, but they think they can, like, you know, bite you in the kneecap and stomp in your crotch and stuff, Then it's not going to be as much of a fun fight, maybe for the spectators, but not so much for you.
And so I think that first question is, you know, the first thing to talk about in philosophy with people who you want to have a productive discussion with is how do we know what's true and what's false, right?
Because everyone puts forward these propositions.
They say, well, this is true, such and such.
It's just because all these DROs are going to turn into governments.
That's a true statement that, you know, whatever.
But how do you know that's a true statement?
And if you ask people the methodology at the basis, when I do this introduction to philosophy series, I start with, you know, does the banana exist?
Not because I'm thrilled about fruit.
It's just that you can't really get much more complex without the basic stuff put in place.
The how do you know question, that's what got Socrates drinking the hemlock, right?
Because it's a really annoying question for a lot of people.
How do you know what you know?
How do you know that that's true, what you're saying?
What's the difference between what you're saying is true and what you're saying is your opinion?
Like, 2 plus 2 is 4 versus I like ice cream.
I mean, I like ice cream is not an objective syllogism.
It's just a statement of personal preference, right?
Now, is it when you say, I believe all DROs will turn into governments, is that like I like ice cream or is that like 2 plus 2 is 4?
And how do you know the difference?
And most people... Won't be able to tell you that.
In fact, like, maybe one-tenth of one-tenth of one percent of people will have a reasonable answer about that other than, God told me, I read it somewhere, Paris Hilton came in a dream and whispered it in my ear or whatever.
There's not a lot of people who are going to have a real clear view of that.
But that's, in a sense, the first question.
And people find that question really annoying for obvious reasons.
Yeah. And, uh...
Well, I mean, if you don't have a mutual method of deciding what's true, I guess you would be lucky to get that question itself about how do we decide what is true and what is opinion answered.
So, you know what I mean?
The first hurdle relies on itself.
Yeah, exactly. And if you don't...
I mean, this is what's so frustrating about religious people, right?
Like, I mean, if I argue with religious people, there's two things that I have to have right up front, right?
First of all, I don't get into arguments with people if they have faith in the back pocket.
Like, if I disprove...
Like, I don't mind spending two days disproving somebody's religious premises, saying that it's completely false, self-contradictory, and so on, right?
But then if they say, well, that doesn't matter, I'm going to believe anyway because of faith, like I say up front, you can't back under faith, right?
Like, if I spend this time disproving your ideas, what is the consequence going to be?
Like, if I prove to you that there is no God, will you give up on your religion?
And if the person says, no, I'm not going to give up on my religion, then it'd be like, okay, well...
Then I'm not going to waste my time pretending to have a debate that's going to have no effect on you, right?
So then you might as well be, you know, I might as well go and do a lecture to a bunch of Arabic speakers in Hindu, right?
I mean, there's no effect.
They won't even process what I'm saying.
So there has to be something at stake, right?
There has to be something at stake, right?
And most people debate sort of purely intellectual, purely abstract.
The second thing that I ask of religious people is, you can't then say, there may be no God, but religion has utility.
It gives people comfort, it gives people meaning, it makes people moral, blah, blah, blah.
Those are just arguments from effect.
But they're all based on people believing that God is true, or God exists.
You can't fall back on faith, and you also can't switch the argument from, does God exist, to, is God useful?
Is the belief in God useful to people?
It cures cancer, right?
I mean, because those two are completely unrelated to the logical question, does God exist?
And so those kinds of sort of basic methodologies, you know, how is it that we're going to know that the statement all DROs will turn into governments?
How are we going to know whether that's true?
Or whether that's false.
There's lots of different ways that you can disprove that.
Logically, historically, economically, philosophically, you can accept the premise and still destroy the argument.
There's lots of different ways to evaluate that argument.
When someone has a bad argument, you can let them pick the methodology they want, but they do have to stick to it.
Yeah. I think...
Well, getting that far was actually the challenge, I think.
I mean, once they put forward some proposition, like...
Actually, I think it wasn't necessarily the DROs that they were so worried about.
It was things like security organizations or the largest businesses would take over and start to build a militia or...
Science fiction crap, really.
I didn't think it was based on anything, but...
Yeah, so once I say, okay, let's address that and let's see if that's historically the way things happen or if that's currently the way things happen or logically, And I think almost every time I was met with a change of subject, basically.
So we'll be talking about whether or not security firms will take over or DROs will take over.
So I'll say, okay, let's talk about how that's going to happen.
Tell me the story of how that's going to happen.
We'll see if that's viable or if that's something that would be likely to happen.
And then we start talking about the sick No, that's entirely right, and that's entirely natural for people who are bigoted.
When I say bigot, it just means they don't have any reason for what it is that they believe, but they believe that they do.
So they're not looking, because they think they already know, so they stop looking.
When they don't know, that's really dangerous.
If you've got a toothache, it's when your tooth stops hurting that you're really in danger.
That means that everything is dead and spreading.
So, I mean, I'll just give you one very, very brief example if you want.
And it really is hard to keep people on topic with this because it is like grabbing an eel, right?
I mean, they just want to throw up some other thing, right?
I think I was just listening to you talk about some analogy about, you know, building a house on water.
And that seems so true.
Yeah, no, it is very hard.
It's very hard. And this is the part of the incredible wisdom.
Like, fundamentally, this is why I can tell you that your friends are perfectly brilliant.
Because they know what to avoid.
Right? Like, if they genuinely didn't know how important this was, then when you brought this topic up, they'd say, like, wow, I've never heard of that before.
Like, tell me more. Right?
They wouldn't immediately object to it.
The reason that they immediately object to it is they get...
That it's about ethics, it's about truth, it's about their relationship to their government, and fundamentally, it's about their relationship to their families, which means even more fundamentally, it's about their relationship to themselves, right?
People want to avoid looking at their own enslavement because That's kind of insulting to the South.
Once you get that it's not due to any virtue that you have to pay taxes to your political masters, but just because they have guns, people then start to feel rebellious, and they start to feel humiliated, and they start to feel put down.
So they want to avoid all of that, because it's not a pleasant thing for many people to stand themselves up against their society or whatever.
But I'll just run through a very, very brief one, which is just one of dozens of examples.
I'm going to do a video on this later on this afternoon.
I'll send you the link. You could say to somebody, so somebody says, well, DROs are going to turn into governments.
You say, well, why would they want to do that?
Well, because they want to make a lot of money, right?
And if they turn themselves into governments and get rid of all their competition, then they want to make a lot of money, right?
We say, okay, so if I understand it correctly, you say that the people who run the DROs want to make a lot of money, and that's why they'd want to become a government, right?
And you say, yes. Well, they have to.
They have to come up with some testable methodology.
If they just start switching their stories then, they just say, well, we have to come...
I can't argue everything, right?
You have to pick one reason.
And if I disprove this reason, it doesn't disprove the whole thesis.
It just means that this one reason doesn't work.
So if you can get them to agree and say, well, yes, DROs want to take over the whole society because people who run the DROs, that DRO want to make a lot of money.
You say, okay, well, is the preference for making a lot of money, is it singular to just those few people running that DRO? Or is it common to everyone in the world who's involved, who's not like a Tibetan monk or what is involved in the economic life?
And I think logically they're going to have to say, everybody wants to make a lot of money, right?
It's like, okay, so everybody wants to make a lot of money, and there's a bunch of evil guys at some DRO who think that it'd be great to make a government out of this DRO so that we could make a lot of money, right?
I say, okay, so what they have to do is they have to provide their services to their customers, and they have to buy all these weapons, right?
Like, they're not going to become a government by sending out stern letters or Cloning doves.
They have to buy weapons.
They have to buy guns and bombs and RPGs and helicopters and all this kind of stuff.
They have to arm themselves.
So what you're saying is that there's an investment that the DRO is going to make in buying weaponry, which is going to pay off by becoming a government, being able to tax everyone and so on.
Now, is it true, of course, that the people who are the customers of that particular DRO also want to And is it true that the shareholders of that DRO also want to make money and don't want to lose money and so on?
They have to say yes, right? I mean, because you can't just sort of make up different rules for different people.
And you can, but it's not logical.
So since everybody wants to make rules, sorry, everybody wants to make money, I'm spending 90 cents on the dollar providing services to get that dollar.
I got a 10% profit, which is high, but my math isn't great, so let's keep it on 10 digits.
Somebody said, you're making 10 cents of profit.
Of course, some of that you have to plow back into your business and some of that you pay out in bonuses to get the best employees, all these kinds of new advertising, new competition, research, R&D. Lots of things you need to spend, even over and above.
Let's say that it's just 10 cents free and clear, right?
So then how much is it going to cost you out of that 10 cents of profit to buy all these weapons, right?
And let's just say, we'll make it easy, it's just a nickel.
So you have 10 cents of profit as a DRO, and you have to spend a nickel buying all of these amazing weapons that are going to allow you over a certain 10 years or whatever to amass enough to turn yourself into a government, right?
So what that means, of course, is that your shareholders are unhappy, right?
And why your shareholders are unhappy?
Because you're not making as much money.
Your profit has just gone down by 50%.
And this doesn't even count.
You've got to hire all these people.
You've got to train all these mercenaries.
You've got to have these Al-Qaeda camps in the hills or whatever.
You've got to do all this stuff.
But basically, you're spending a lot of money buying all these weapons.
Now, your competitors... Aren't doing that.
Your competitors are plowing all their money back into satisfying their customers or buying villas in Greece.
That doesn't really matter. But the point is they don't have all this massive expense of arming themselves, of training an army, of getting all these mercenaries and so on.
And so, given that everybody in the society wants to make money, how are you going to pay for this military?
Are you going to raise prices?
Well, you can't do that because then you lose money because people go to your competitors, right?
If I double your rates because I have to build an army, then I'm just going to lose all my customers, right?
If I say, well, I'm not going to raise my rates, I'm just going to cut the salaries of my employees, then you lose all your employees, right?
They go elsewhere. Other people come in and poach them.
And if you say, well, I'm not going to raise my prices and I'm not going to lower my salaries, I'm going to stop paying benefits, I'm going to stop paying dividends to my shareholders, well, then your shareholders sell all their shares and your stock price crashes and you go out of business, right?
So if the motive for the DRO leadership is to become a government because they're greedy and want to make lots of money, and that motive applies to everyone else in the economic equation, it automatically becomes impossible.
Yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
I mean, I would never, to be frank, I'd never have gotten that far, you know, without the subject being changed to minimum wage and, you know, a hundred other things, but...
Well, sure, but you can also do a role play, right?
So you can say, okay, you be the DRO. And you can say to your other friend, you be the customer and I'll be the shareholder.
And say to your other friend, okay, you be the competitor.
And you just put some numbers down.
And it actually can be kind of fun if you've got poker chips and stuff.
Okay, so it's $500 a month for me for the DRO services or $100 a month or whatever.
And just say, okay, so what are you going to do?
Well, I'm going to buy arms. Well, how much is it going to cost you?
So how are you going to pay for it?
It can be more engaging and fun for people.
So you just see that your competitor has doubled his prices.
What are you going to do? And of course, because all the DROs want to make money and they're all aware that if a new government comes along, they're toast.
Then they're all going to make sure That no one's buying up any military stuff.
If this was even an issue, they'd all say, well, I don't deal with DROs unless those DROs open up their books and make sure that an independent auditor makes sure that they're not buying any weapons.
I don't deal with those DROs.
Customers might also say, I'm not going to buy your DRO services unless you submit to independent arbitration to make sure that you're not buying weapons.
Because if everyone in the table, like all five people, if you go and say, you know, raise your hand if you're worried about DROs becoming a government, everyone sticks their hand up, right?
And then you say, so you wouldn't sign a contract with a DRO unless you had some reasonable guarantee that this wasn't going to happen, right?
And they'd say, well, yeah.
It's like, well, so problem solved, right?
Even if, like, at any level, at any argument, the problem doesn't bear out, right?
And the reason that people stick to their guns so much is that fundamentally, deep down, they know they've said something kind of stupid, and nobody hangs on to an argument like an intelligent person who's taken a bad position, right?
Like rim death. They're like a shark on its last fish, you know?
Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
I mean, and there were...
That seems like one of the less ridiculous arguments too.
I mean, there are other stuff like, if drugs are illegalized, then the pharmaceutical companies are going to be making methamphetamines and they're going to be marketing these to all the people who are most likely to be addicted, the poorer people in society and stuff like that.
And then they're going to offer them homes and food and all that sort of stuff.
And, oh yeah, if they work for the pharmaceutical companies and they're paid in, you know, a home and food and methamphetamines, I mean, it's just ridiculous stuff.
But I'm curious about that, too, because the amazing thing is that, I mean, the exact opposite is true, right?
I mean, and this is always the case with these kinds of physicians, right?
So, at the moment, right, I mean, you wouldn't know these stats and God forbid you ever have to look them up, but In the 1950s, before heroin was made illegal in England, it used to cost 25 pence for three hits.
You could buy it in a drugstore.
There was no profit.
No more profit on heroin than there was on aspirin because it was legal.
Everyone could make it, could sell it.
You made a couple of percentage points of profit on your heroin.
There was no point getting people addicted because you'd spend more money trying to get them addicted.
Than you would trying to get them, like profiting from them being addicted.
Because there was competition, you could get someone addicted and they could just go buy someone else's heroin.
And so because you made like 2% profit on your heroin, if you gave someone a free shot of heroin, they then had to buy like 40 or 50 of them for you to make your money back.
So there was no point trying to get people addicted when it was a free market.
Now the difference is that you can make like 300 bucks a day off someone who becomes addicted to your heroin and because there's no competition or the competition is very volatile and the quality is uncertain because it's illegal, somebody has a fixed relationship with a dealer.
You don't just go wandering off to buy heroin from someone else because you don't know if it's any good.
And so now, because there's so much enormous profit in illegal drugs, what they do is they get people hooked.
They will give them three weeks or a month's free supply of heroin because then they can give that stuff away because it's pretty cheap for them, but they can charge an enormous amount when someone gets hooked.
So the amazing thing is that the exact opposite is true.
There were almost no heroin addicts in London in the 1950s.
By the 1960s, when it became illegal, instead of it being three Heroin hits for 25 pence.
It was 10 pounds to buy one.
The cost of production had actually gone down because it became illegal, so you don't have advertising and all these other expenses.
It's in people's basements rather than in a factory, and quality control is out the window.
So it's cheaper to make, but the profits are enormous, and that's why it becomes profitable to get people addicted.
It's just amazing that the exact opposite is true, and deep down they kind of know that, right?
That's why they keep changing the subject.
Well, I mean, that's what I would have thought as well.
And I didn't see how they couldn't grasp the concept that, I mean, drugs are only really profitable when they're illegal.
I mean, they're profitable because they're illegal.
And, you know, I argue... They've never seen the untouchables or never heard about prohibition or anything.
I mean, what do they think?
That's when the mafia came to America.
Well, I mean, over here, maybe we don't know as much about that.
But I mentioned that, about, you know, prohibition of alcohol and how that...
That only, you know, resulted in more crime and more violence and more money for alcohol and all that sort of stuff.
And one of my friends who I thought was, you know, more learned than this said, you know, well, wait, did that happen?
They banned alcohol? What?
What? Huh? I thought, no.
I mean, what are they basing their arguments on?
Well, fear, right?
Yeah, exactly, yeah.
But the reason that people don't want to get involved in this is, let's say they join you over in thinking land, what happens to all their existing relationships?
Like, what you're doing, I mean, this may not feel this way, and I'm really not trying to blow smoke up your ass or anything, but what you're doing is incredibly courageous, right?
I mean, this is how the world gets saved, right?
One human being at a time, and this is how things really, really change, and there's just no other way to do it.
There's no... There's no magical article that people can write or even the podcast.
There's just no way to do it.
You're willing to say, I choose the truth over conformity.
I choose the possibility of losing my friends because I'm really, really fascinated by and want to live according to what is true, not just what is accepted or conformist or whatever.
That's incredibly rare.
You're built of very stern stuff.
You're built of very strong stuff, although it doesn't really feel, I don't know about you, it doesn't feel that way all the time, but You're built of very strong stuff, and most people are not.
And so most people, when they hear an opinion that's unusual, which they deep down get, is kind of important.
They'll just reject it, and they'll throw whatever they can, right?
It's within intellectual elevation of monkeys throwing poo at a stranger, right?
Because they know that if they join you on the good ship philosophy, What's going to happen to all their relationships?
What's going to happen to all their chumminess?
What's going to happen to their family?
What's going to happen to their dad who might support the war in Iraq when they start getting into philosophy?
I mean, people get that deep down and they're just like, ah, run!
But they don't admit to themselves that they're running away from the truth because they're afraid.
Because nobody wants to look in the mirror and say, wow, I'm really an intellectual coward.
They don't want to say that.
So they make up all these reasons as to why they're running away from the truth.
And so you should really look yourself in the mirror and I think be very proud.
I mean, this is a very difficult thing that you're doing.
It's incredibly rewarding and it makes you happy in the long run, but it's not easy for people.
Yeah, I mean, I think they can already see that it's a six-on-one argument and it's probably more comfortable on the side of six instead of, you know...
Five on two. Doing some math.
Yes, both make seven. Haven't made a blunt of that.
No, I think you're right.
I mean, people, there is a herd mentality, and there is a desire not to rock the boat.
But nobody wants to say that to themselves, right?
Everybody's a coward, but they don't want to look in the mirror and say, I'm a coward, so they have to pretend that they're a coward.
They're not a coward, that they have good reason for what they believe, and that's why they keep changing the topic, and you can't nail them down on anything, and any time you get close to the end of an argument.
Like, I had to debate with this guy about praxeology recently.
And he said, well, you can't use historical evidence to prove your point.
And then he would use historical evidence.
And I'd point it out, and he'd say, well, that's different.
And then he'd say, well, you have to use self-referential syllogisms in order to prove your point.
So it's not to use self-referential syllogisms.
And then he'd say, but there's no historical evidence for that.
So he just sort of went round and round, right?
I mean, it's kind of maddening.
So I finally just said, OK, well, actually, I said it even earlier.
Well, what is your criteria for proof?
Because obviously, I thought we were on the same page.
But if we're not, you need to tell me.
What your criteria for proof is.
And if you can't tell me that, then I'm not going to debate with you because then it's just a game.
It's a silly game. Yeah, I just listened to that actually and it sounded like a familiar frustration when Yeah, like nailing jello to a wall, that sort of thing.
Right, right. And having a tango with a strong bank of fog.
So yeah, and the reason that I posted that and went on for so long is just to know that it doesn't matter how good you are as a debater.
I mean, if people just keep changing their stories and not being logical, you just can't get anywhere.
And even the stuff that that guy admitted to in that debate, you know, that there was a contradiction in saying violence is good and violence is bad...
He later just repudiated it, right?
So I mean, I cornered him in a sort of way, and then later he just went on as if that exchange had never occurred.
And so I challenged him and said, well, you had accepted this very fundamental issue that there was a logical contradiction in supporting Ron Paul.
And he's like, well, no, I just realized that was incorrect later on.
No argument or anything, right?
So there's no point to that other than to demonstrate to other people what a pointless debate looks like.
Yeah, yeah. If we've still got time, I wouldn't mind hearing your thoughts on the best general method to take.
I mean, you've definitely argued for the virtues of the argument for morality.
I mean, maybe I'll understand the virtues of that more once I've had these discussions more with people.
But it seems to me like other people's arguments against libertarianism are more often than not, like the vast majority of the time, arguments from effect.
And so it seems to me that the best counter-arguments would be, like counter-arguments from effect.
Whereas I think yesterday when I was speaking to you, you seem, I mean, tell me if I'm wrong here, but you seem to be telling me that repeating, giving them arguments from effect and return wasn't an effective thing to be doing.
No, I do agree that.
I think it's good to know the arguments from a fact, and sometimes it can be helpful to challenge somebody's assumptions.
I get a guy on the Sunday show who said that raising taxes has no effect on consumption.
Now, you know, I could have gone and said, well, tell me what is true, what is false, and tell me what is good and what is evil, and so on.
But he would never have gone there because he just was certain that he knew all of that.
So I countered his statement, you know, because obviously it's nonsensical from an economic standpoint.
And, you know, if somebody's going to slow down and say, well, gee, you know, I guess I hadn't thought of that, then at least they have the intellectual integrity.
So opposing someone using an argument from a fact can be very helpful in gauging whether or not they have the ego strength and the maturity to say, I'm wrong, right?
I hadn't thought of that or that's interesting or whatever, right?
Because, you know, nobody's omniscient, right?
We all make mistakes all the time and that's why we've got to watch each other's backs and, you know, take it and I thank people who correct me because, like, I don't want to live in error, right?
I don't care about being right.
In terms of my ego, I care about being right in terms of reality.
So it's worthwhile checking the argument from a fact.
So if somebody says, well, the free market was tried and it resulted in the Great Depression, therefore the free market doesn't work, it could well be worth saying, which there's a lot of heavily revisionist economics history that's been going on over the past 20 years, which is actually blaming the government for the Great Depression.
It seems to be the case. They cut the supply of money by a third.
The whole boom in the 20s was due to overprinting of the money supply.
They got control of that in 1913.
So you can throw some stuff like that.
And if they say, well, I think that stuff's all just bullshit, then I would just not debate with that person.
So if they can't even deal with one opposition from the argument from the fact, there's no way they're going to have the integrity or the strength to deal with an argument from morality.
But you can't fundamentally change someone's mind.
And I've got an article on my blog called Forget the Argument from Efficiency.
Because everyone says, well, we should have a free market because it's more efficient.
But people don't care about efficiency, fundamentally.
I mean, having children is not economically efficient.
They're very expensive.
And when people are told to go and join the army in a draft, most of them go.
Well, that's not economically efficient.
So people are run much more by the argument.
Deep down, we're all run by what we believe to be moral.
No one I've ever met in debating thousands of people over decades, no one I've ever met, It's going to say, this is evil and I advocate it.
Everybody has to transform it into good.
This is good. I advocate what is good.
If you can get someone to redefine what they mean by good, then it's like turning the wheel of a supertanker rather than swimming and trying to push it.
It just turns of its own accord.
So if you can get someone to redefine what is meant by the good, then they will change their mind of their own accord about far more than what it is you're arguing about.
There's this old apocryphal story about Ayn Rand who was arguing with someone about steel tariffs.
This guy said we should have steel tariffs, and she argued and pointed out how bad they were and this and that and the other.
And he's like, yeah, okay, I finally get what you're saying, that we should not have steel tariffs, but we really should have iron tariffs, right?
So, I mean, that's the problem with the argument from effect, whereas if you get someone to understand that force is wrong and tariffs are force, they'll apply that everywhere they see that and in other places as well.
But people avoid the argument from morality because it detonates relationships.
I mean, I'll tell you that up front.
I don't want you to go sailing in without knowing this, right?
If you pull out the argument, it's the biggest sword, right?
And it doesn't go back into its sheath when it comes to a relationship.
If you say to your friend, the initiation of the use of forces is immoral, and by advocating a government solution, you are advocating that I get thrown in jail.
And if I resist getting thrown in jail, you're actually advocating that I get shot.
Because that's the fundamental reality of a state-based solution.
The fundamental reality is, someone's going to pull a gun out, and if you disagree with that person, You're going to get shot.
It's kind of hard to have a palsy-walsy friendship with someone who wants You shot, right?
I won't change that opinion based on the fact that they understand that you're going to get shot for disagreeing with them.
That's why people don't use the argument for morality because it's a make or break for a relationship.
I mean, fundamentally. I mean, you can still continue to sort of fake it, but it doesn't really last, right?
I mean, as soon as you pull that out, like if you'd said to your five friends, like, you do realize that you're advocating that I get thrown in jail for disagreeing with you, and if I resist that, you're advocating that I get shot down like a dog, like a rabid dog.
If they get that, and they still advocate it, I mean, what does that do to your relationship with them?
Yeah, I see where you're coming from.
Oh, who's going to speak?
There was something else I didn't want to forget.
I don't want to jump away from this if you had more to say.
That's about it. Just be aware.
That's the only thing that's going to win or not.
But the other thing, too, is that although it's very painful to look at your relationships and say, well, so you guys are happy with me getting shot if I disagree with you?
I can't sustain a relationship with you.
It's painful, but it's good to know that.
Otherwise, you can waste a lot of time in your life hanging around with people who don't really care about you.
Do you reckon that's the way to go?
I mean, I've heard you talk about defooling and that sort of thing.
I haven't heard much about it.
But, I mean, when you come to that point with your friends where you say, well, if you advocate this government, then you advocate me getting shot if I disagree with them.
And they say, yeah, I guess.
Like, is that where you go from there?
To walk away from those friends?
Where would you go from there?
You heard a podcast, right?
If I did a podcast saying that all Australians should be killed, all Australians should be driven up into the Great Barrier Reef and fed to the great whites, right?
Or whatever. If I was for the genocide of Australians, I don't think that you'd think I was a great friend of yours, right?
Yeah, but if I have this particular discussion with my friends, and that's the way the conclusion sort of comes, I think I would take that in the context of a political argument over beer with friends, and I don't think I'd read into that that they would like to see me shot, or that they even think that this would happen.
Well, it's not that they would like to see you shot.
I mean, obviously, I don't imagine that you have the kinds of friends who tell you to go and pick on bikers because they enjoy watching you get beat up.
I'm not saying you have any of that.
But the reality, right?
I mean, this is not something I invent.
I'm just trying to read reality as honestly as I can.
The reality is, though, that the...
The system that your friends advocate, and they may not get this in the first conversation, they may not get it in the tenth conversation, but at some point, and you'll know when it happens, they're going to get it.
They're going to get that if they stick to their guns, their guns are turned on you.
At some point, again, this is total hyperbole, so this has nothing to do with your friends, but at some point...
The Jew can't be friends with the Nazi, right?
At some point, the black guy can't be pals with the KKK guy.
Now, if the KKK guy doesn't have any clue or the Nazi doesn't have any clue that Nazism is about killing Jews or whatever, I know it's about more evil stuff even than that, but Like, if the Nazi just genuinely doesn't know, he thinks, well, it's a nice brown shirt and I really enjoy the sing-alongs and so on, right? But if at some point the Jew says to the Nazi, look, it says right here, Adolf Hitler says he wants to kill all the Jews and blah, blah, blah, right?
And if the guy who then understands what the Nazi party is all about looks at the Jew and says, yeah, I'm still staying.
Like, I'm okay with that.
Well, where's the Jew going to go from there, right?
Yeah. Yeah, I'm formulating something in this brain of mine.
And sorry, the last thing I'll say about this, just as you formulate, is that you might say, well, it's just an abstract discussion, right?
It doesn't have anything to do with reality.
Well, of course it does, right? Because people who advocate state solutions do advocate that people get thrown in jail.
But even more fundamentally, of course, if it is a meaningless discussion, then don't have it.
But the fact that you're having the discussion means that you think it has meaning, which it does.
But then you can't just sort of retreat and then say, well, but it's just over beer.
There's nobody serious about it.
It doesn't matter, right? Because it kind of does matter.
Otherwise, you wouldn't be having the discussion for the length of time that you did.
Yeah, that's true. I am formulating some sort of exception in my mind, and maybe I'll think more about this, but I'll spit something out now, and you can chew it up and spit it back at me, which I'd probably enjoy.
So, I think the exception might be that we're currently living in this In this democratic society, this state society, and the fact that I am in this country says that I should be subscribing to it while I'm here.
if I'm not then I'm sort of forming my own my own stateless society which I think I can be a part of and everyone else can be exempt from so I can drive on the public roads and not pay tax and I can get public health and not pay tax and all these things and for somebody to say that I can be thrown in jail for that is different to them saying I should be thrown in jail for having a Having this idea or this dream of a stateless society.
You get what I mean? Living in a state society and actively opposing it by not paying tax is probably something which you could be thrown in jail for if you are taking advantage of stuff that other people are paying tax money for.
Right, right. No, I mean, that's an excellent, excellent point.
So it is theft of sorts, I think, is what I'm getting at.
And therefore, it is a crime.
If you don't pay any taxes, you drive on the public roads, you take the water, you take the medicine, and you're not paying anything back, right?
Yeah, which is totally different to not paying tax in a stateless society, which I don't think they would want you thrown in jail for, just holding these opinions or having this great idea.
Well, sure. Now, but I think that the same argument could be made, though.
You know that there are these child brides in India who were sold to their husbands when they're six years old, right?
And they're contracted, right?
The parents take the money and the child must then go and live for the rest of her life.
I think that's sort of like saying that the woman who was sold into basically sexual slavery called marriage, right?
The woman who was sold into this horrible arrangement by her parents must stay with her husband because her husband has put a roof over her head and is feeding her.
The difference is that you didn't agree with the contract to begin with.
Nobody ever said to you, do you want to pay taxes?
You were sold into the income tax by the generations that came before, who didn't stand up on principle when the income tax first came in.
It was like 2% on the super rich, so nobody cared.
They didn't stand on principle. And so the difference is that you didn't agree, you were born into this system of coercion, and so you can't be held responsible for the results thereof, any more than the girl who ends up being sold into marriage has any responsibility to stay with her husband, even if he's given her money.
Even if he's paid to have her teeth fixed, even if he's got her appendix out, she didn't consent to the contract to begin with, so she has no obligation based on what occurs subsequently.
Maybe the only difference there being that...
She? No, wait, no, I don't know what I'm talking about.
I think people would then say, well, if you don't like the contract you were born into, you know, bugger off and live in Jamaica, that sort of thing.
Well, but why is it that some people have that right and not other people, right?
Why is it that the people in the government have the right to say, pay me the money or leave the neighborhood, but the guys in the mafia don't?
Or why is it that you can't say to your friends, each of you give me 500 bucks, and if you don't, you have to leave this city?
Why is it that only some people get this right?
I mean, it doesn't make any sense, right?
I mean, they're not superheroes.
They're not, you know, gods.
They're just people, right? The guys in charge of your country or whatever, right?
Why is it that some people get this right to say, give me money or leave where you were born, right?
I mean, you own your house. You own your...
Even if you're renting, you have a right to live there.
Who is it who gets to come along to you and say, give me money or if you don't leave town, I'm going to shoot you, right?
I mean, that's the mafia, right?
Yeah. And we obviously find that despicable when the mafia does it, so how is it suddenly okay when the government does it?
Yeah. Well, I see what you're saying much clearer now about the, it's a big sword.
Yeah, it is, right? Because basically when people are talking about government solutions, they're talking about obey or get shot, obey or go to jail, right?
You know, and you can also say to your friends, right, I mean, how would you feel if I said that you have to agree with me or I'm going to shoot you down in the bar, right?
You'd feel pretty shocked and pretty horrified, right?
Now, what if I said, well, you have to agree with me or my friend is going to shoot you?
You'd still think I was pretty vile, right?
And I said that the reality is that when you say to me I must obey the government, you're saying obey me or this guy is going to shoot you and I approve of that.
So as much horror as you would feel if I sat across from you at this table and said obey me or I'll shoot you, I feel when you say obey the government or I'll support you getting shot.
Yeah. Yeah, I get that.
That's why it's so volatile. That's why people don't use that argument.
That's why they like to argue about DROs and the drug war and they like to deal with the argument from effect because it's not as personally volatile.
It doesn't make philosophy real.
It keeps it sort of abstract and safe, if that makes sense.
Do you think the argument from morality is a more effective argument in changing people's minds?
Why is that, do you think?
Well, first of all, I'd like to compliment you on commingling the argument from morality with the argument from effect by saying that the argument from morality is more effective.
That's very good. Oh, you lost me there.
What are you talking about? Oh, just because you said that the argument from morality is more effective, right?
But the interesting thing about the argument from morality is that it sort of specifically rejects the argument from effect.
So if you said that we should have a state of society because people's income would go up, or people's drug use would go down, or there'd be fewer abortions, or we'd all have the ability to turn into butterflies, that would be an argument from a fact, right?
Yep. And so you're saying that there's an argument for morality is...
What is right and wrong?
What is moral and what is immoral?
Forget the effects. Somebody could say, well, I don't think we should get rid of slavery because a lot of the slaves wouldn't be able to get jobs because they're too old or they don't have the skills or whatever, right?
And then in order to change that person's mind, you'd sort of have to guarantee that every slave would get a great job, which is impossible.
So that's just another way we should never get rid of slavery, is to say that the effects of getting rid of slavery could be negative in some areas.
So you can never win those arguments, because you can never prove whether the effects of slavery would be right.
You can't prove to someone beyond any shadow of a doubt that no DRO could ever conceivably become a government.
I mean, it's impossible.
I mean, there's tons and tons of reasons.
Like, the same way you can't prove to someone that everyone tomorrow is going to die of a heart attack.
It's possible, right? It's just not likely.
It's so unlikely as to be statistically impossible.
And the same thing is true of a DRO becoming...
A government. The reason that I made that comment was because you were saying that the argument for morality was effective, which is a mingling of the argument from effect with the argument for morality.
Oh, I see. You don't use the argument for morality because it's effective.
You use it because it's true. Now, truth is effective, for sure, but you use the argument for morality because people want to be good.
Everybody wants to be good. If you say to Jewish parents that to be good is to cut the foreskin off your son, guess what they go and do?
The power of defining what is good is just so incredibly fundamental to human nature.
Everybody just yearns and dies to be good.
And the reason that the argument for morality is so powerful is because if you can get someone to change their mind about what they think of as good, Then that changes everything about them.
That enlightens them.
It's not like a light coming on slowly like a dimmer switch.
It's like this supernova in their brain once you get them to understand that morality is universal, morality is logical, morality is reversible, and so on.
Once they personalize the ethics that they talk about and the abstract, like the state and the religion and so on.
It changes everything about who they are.
Because just looking at the world, it's fairly easy to see that if you can get people to believe that it's moral to detonate yourself in a Jewish pizzeria, You know, you won't run out of people who'll do that for you, right?
If you can get people to believe that something is good, you'll always find people willing to do it, and that's why the argument for morality, we can't live with ourselves if we don't think that what we're doing is good.
Even Hitler, right? Hitler got up in the morning and said, well, you know, the Jews are killing all the Christians in Russia, and they want to come and invade here, so I'm going to kill all the Jews here.
I mean, that was his self-defense, was his insane justification for what he did, right?
So, at least one of them.
So everybody believes that what they do is good.
If you can get people to change their definition of good, you change their direction completely.
Yeah, or if they don't change their direction, then, well, they turn on you.
For sure. Yeah, for sure.
And there's lots of people.
Everybody deep down knows how volatile this issue is, which is why everybody kept very nimbly redirecting you in your conversation tonight, right?
It's for you this evening. Yeah.
Right. I mean, everybody pretends that they don't know where the basketball is, but everybody plays basketball perfectly, right?
That's the amazing thing.
Everybody understands the argument for morality.
They just want to avoid it, and they're incredibly good at avoiding it, which is because they know how powerful it is.
Everybody knows that, I think, deep down.
Yeah. Still, I think, in a later podcast, I'd like to hear more about the way a state of society would work.
More about how the arrows wouldn't become governments, how.
Drug addiction wouldn't be as big a problem, how we take care of sick people and poor people and old people and all those sorts of practical bits.
On the website, it's relatively new, there's these categorizations of podcasts.
You can just look under the anarchistic ones, you can do a search in your browser, there's healthcare, there's drug wars.
The first half dozen or so or dozen podcasts are really around.
There's one on how DROs would deal with international contracts.
There's one on how DROs would help prevent child abuse.
There's lots of different ways about how this could work.
And I think that's definitely the right approach, right?
You want to make sure that the theory works before you start communicating the elementals and putting your relationships on the line because, you know, I agree with that for sure.
Plus, I mean, well, not that I want to trivialize it down to this, but it's certainly a great intellectual exercise to come up with a system that works.
It is, absolutely.
I mean, this goes back to my Dungeon Master days, I'm afraid to say, but yeah, building a believable world is kind of cool, so I agree with that.
And it's a lot less science fiction than pharmaceutical companies paying people in crack cocaine or something and housing them and all that crap.
Right, right, like the Road Warrior, the pharmaceutical edition.
No, for sure, I mean, that stuff is just, that's real heavy made-up stuff.
Yeah, but I mean, it's the stuff that you face, I guess.
It's the stuff that I was facing, so.
Oh yeah, no, it's, I mean, the fairy stories about, the fairy tales about the state are second only to the fairy tales about religion, right?
So for sure, it's a tough thing.
Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, was there anything else you'd like to add?
I think that's good. I mean, I think it's great.
I certainly do appreciate that you have the time to have these chats.
It's certainly useful for other people to hear this kind of stuff as well and then to remind them that, you know, the argument from morality is a great thing to use, but it's radioactive, so just be aware of what's happening when you bring it up.
No, I appreciate it very much, and I enjoy it.
Thanks a lot. Talk to you soon.
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