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Sept. 19, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
57:10
867 Dismantling the State

Dealing with a core illusion

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Good morning, everybody. It's Steph.
I hope you're doing well. It is the 18th, I think, of September 2007.
It's a Wednesday, I'm fairly sure of that.
Christina has gone to do her supervision of other psychologists, so she just dropped me off at the office, and away I get to work on Free Domain Radio.
Thank you, as always, so much for listening, and thank you so much to all my donators who are making all of this possible.
I hope that I'm doing you proud, and I also wanted to mention that I have upgraded the FreeDomain radio server to 100 megabits per second.
That's just because we're getting a heavy load at the moment, and I hope an increasing load as we move forward.
So I wanted to upgrade that so that we get all of the tasty podcasts nice and quickly.
Now all that's left is for me to monitor the bandwidth, which could jump fairly considerably.
Before it was throttled by 10 megabits per second, so it should be faster now. - So I had an interesting exchange with a gentleman on the board whose board name is LIMI. So we have, of course, the tragic irony of Fruity Brit Boy here calling somebody Limey, but that is exactly what I will do to keep things straight.
And he came into the board and started asking questions that go very much to the core of what it is that we're doing and how to bring about...
A free society and so on, and he found that the interaction became progressively frustrating, as perhaps I think I certainly did found that to be the case.
And I sensed sort of trap early on, so I wanted to sort of step you through his questions and his objections to my responses, because this is the kind of stuff that I think you'll get a lot of when you start talking about Freedom, truth, and integrity, particularly around the anarcho-capitalist aspect of the philosophy that we work with here.
And so I wanted to give you some tools or ways of looking at it that I think will be helpful.
So his thread question started with basically the question, what is your specific program for getting rid of the state?
What is your specific program for getting rid of the state?
And... I find this to be a...
My alarm bells go off when I get that question, which doesn't mean anything other than my alarm bells go off.
And I'll tell you why.
Because, of course, it is fundamentally a question without an answer.
It is fundamentally a question without an answer.
And whenever people ask unanswerable questions, you know, give me your 12-point irrefutable plan for getting rid of the state, which is impossible.
You know that they're just out to undermine whatever it is that you're doing.
So with those questions, and there's a number of questions that this gentleman poses, you just know that there is something afoot, something that is going on that is not objective or supportive or reasonable, because of course it's impossible.
And everybody with half a brain, and this gentleman is very intelligent, Anybody with half a brain knows that you simply cannot demand or ask for and receive a 20-point plan on how it is we're going to get rid of the state.
We're kind of at the beginning of things here, right?
So that's like asking Francis Bacon in the 16th century, give me your 20-point plan for getting rid of...
Getting rid of religion, right?
Well, he's going to say, I don't know.
I can't conceivably give you a 20-point plan for getting rid of religion.
I do know that this concept is false, and that all we can really do is speak the truth, right?
So, if you say to Francis Bacon, I don't even know if he wanted to get rid of religion.
This guy is a rationalist, scientific method, and so on.
If you say to Francis Bacon, Or, you know, any atheist, really.
What's your 20-point plan of getting rid of religion?
Well, you can attack, like, no matter what you put forward.
Like, no matter what. If somebody says, what's your 20-point plan, Steph, for getting rid of the state?
Then, of course, there's going to be a lot of surmising, a lot of assumptions, and a lot of imagining that you can predict the future, right?
And since I believe in free will, I believe that I cannot predict the future.
So... So anything you come up with is like, okay, well, prove to me how this necessarily follows from that and how no other alternative is possible in this net, right?
And basically, you know, this is the funny thing about people and sort of when they come across this site and perhaps when it is that they talk to me, is that there's a lot of people who will want to, and I use this in a non-pejorative sense, right?
But they kind of want to put you to work for them, right?
Right? They kind of want to put you to work for them, right?
So they'll come and say, oh yeah, well prove to me that the government caused the depression and prove to me that the society can work with that.
Then they kind of want you to go to work for them, right?
Do my homework for me.
And it's like, no. There's a gun in the room which is called government.
And there's a gun in the room which is called parenting.
And there's a gun in the room when you're a child that is called parenting plus religion.
And if you want to look at the details of the consequences of using violence, then you are welcome to do so.
Lots of resources out there on the web that you can avail yourself of to figure out how all of this stuff could work and so on.
But this idea of...
Having other people sit there and do all this work for you to prove to you stuff, it's like, no, you can go and you can figure this stuff out for yourself, right?
And so, when somebody comes in and says, well, you know, give me your plan about how it is that you're going to get rid of the state, then...
You just know that they're going to be giving you lots of work, lots of criticism, and for no real purpose.
And of course, the whole point of freedom is not to sit there and have to prove things to other people because they ask for it or want it or whatever, right?
I mean, we don't sort of defoo or get rid of those people in our life who make us run around in circles for their own pleasure and then replace it, right?
We replace that with somebody else.
I'm not talking about this guy in particular.
It's just that I get a lot of this kind of stuff.
And when you start talking about...
Freedom and truth and integrity with people, you'll get a lot of the same kind of stuff.
You prove to me. You make me like, no, I don't work for you.
I don't work for you.
This is something that's hard for people to grasp.
It's hard for people to grasp.
If I don't enjoy debating with you, I'm not going to debate with you.
If I don't enjoy debating with you, I'm not going to debate with you.
I don't owe you debating.
I don't owe you answers.
I don't owe you participation in a thread.
I don't owe you a response.
I don't believe in unchosen positive obligations.
So the fact that you post a question saying, you give me your 20-point plan and so on, if I have problems with that or I don't want to respond or I'm suspicious about your motives...
I don't owe you anything.
You don't owe me anything, of course, right?
But I don't owe you anything.
But the way that people operate, a lot of people, right, is this way, right?
So they say, you proved this to me.
And I say, well, I reject the premises of the question.
And then they say, stop being evasive.
What's the matter? Can't answer the question?
Never thought this through? Huh!
Here's a big resource that proves you wrong.
Or something like that, right?
But when you disagree with the premises of the question or you feel suspicious about the motives of the person, I mean, you can say it if you want, but you don't owe them a response.
Don't turn other people's requests, let's put it that way, into obligations for yourself.
If you're enjoying the debate, then debate.
And if you're not enjoying the debate, you can say, or you just don't have to respond, but you can just say, I'm sorry, I'm not enjoying this debate, so I'm not going to continue.
Now, naturally, what's going to happen then, almost inevitably, is the person's going to say, oh, so when I start to prove you wrong, you get testy and you run away.
I guess I win, right?
And you can let them have that victory if that's what they want, right?
It doesn't really matter.
That's just their false self attempting to call out your false self.
Anyway, so with enough sort of theory behind us, let's delve into the content of this conversation.
So he said, you know, you give me a 20-point plan or whatever.
I'm paraphrasing a little, so forgive me.
But he says, give me your plan about how...
And he says, Roderick Long, who's the director of the Molinarian Institute and a professor at Auburn College, has written an essay which I talked about in a Silver Plus podcast yesterday about why we need to use politics to get rid of the state.
He's sort of analogizing the state to a big combine harvester that's coming into town and We should knock the person off the combine harvester and steer it in our own way and so on, which is a completely incorrect metaphor.
Because the state is not a machine.
It's not a ship that you turn the wheel and it turns.
The state is a wildly competing ecosystem of self-interest.
So if you gain control of the state and you say, I want to privatize education, then all that happens is that...
The teachers all go on strike.
The economy grinds to the halt because the parents who both have to work have no place to send their kids.
Kids get left back a year.
I mean, just nobody's got the time.
You try and privatize the road system, there'll just be, quote, emergency repairs all over the major arteries.
And the highway system will grind to a halt and nobody will be able to get to work and everybody will start losing money.
I mean, you can't hold out against these people, right?
So, I mean, people don't obey the president.
If Ron Paul gets elected, it'd be a complete disaster for libertarianism.
Because either he won't try and implement freedom, in which case people are going to get cynical, say the ideas don't work, or he is going to try and implement freedom.
And he's going to try and privatize education, the schools are all going to shut down, the kids are going to lose a year, the parents are not going to be able to get to work, the economy is going to grind to a halt, he's going to increase the national debt because the governments won't be able to get their income, and it'll be a complete disaster.
And the unions will win because they have a monopoly and the force behind them.
Well, let's say he tries to get rid of welfare.
Well, you have riots in the streets.
You have people blocking traffic.
You have people throwing Molotov cocktails.
There's violence. There's blood.
Well, what happens?
Well, everyone says, oh my god, remember when that libertarian came in and society just went to hell and gone and there was riots in the streets and peaceful postal workers were out there setting fire to cars?
It's just not going to work.
People at the bottom, sort of quote, at the bottom of the state, they're not in the government to obey the politicians.
They're in the government to get things that they wouldn't otherwise get.
They're in the government to use the force of the government to get what they want.
And if you come in and say, I'm not going to use the government to give you what you shouldn't have now, they'll just get rid of you.
I mean, it's just a weird kind of fantasy and a weird kind of lack of empathy.
To sort of not understand why people are working for the government or why people take benefits from the government.
They use the government to get what they want.
And if you try and use the government to take away what they want, they'll just screw you up.
They'll screw up society. They'll make things ugly.
They'll make things petty. They'll make things brutal.
Right? And that's why I tell people to go and talk to their families first.
Go and try and overthrow the, quote, tyranny of your parents and you'll see how well hegemonic power structures respond to this kind of influence.
Anyway, so this guy wrote and I said, I wrote back, I said, I believe that we will get rid of the state when we get rid of all the illusions that underpin the moral justifications for the state, and that is primarily a personal project, not a political one.
We must outgrow the state through the acquisition of wisdom, just as in very many ways we outgrew religion through the acquisition of science.
The state is just a state of mind.
The government is just a collective fantasy.
How do we overthrow the state?
Well, once you understand that the state is a collective fantasy, you understand that you overthrow the state not through force of arms, but through knowledge, through wisdom, through courage.
It is a fantasy, and the only way you combat fantasy is with rigorous, analytical truth and passion, evidence, insistence, I mean, how do you combat an illusion?
You don't shoot it. You can't shoot it.
Because it doesn't exist.
And you can't get rid of an illusion with weapons.
And of course, even if the illusion is that weapons are justified, you can't get rid of a false concept by shooting at it because it doesn't exist and it is not valid.
It's like trying to take antibiotics to get rid of the concept of infection.
It doesn't work. You can't get rid of God by blowing up churches.
I mean, the communists tried that in Russia, 70 years, threw all the priests in jail, prosecuted anyone who was religious.
It just went underground. You can't do it.
You can't do it. You can only combat illusion with truth.
What we are tyrannized by is not the gun in the room.
The gun in the room is just an effect.
What we are tyrannized by is two things.
The first is that there is no gun in the room.
And the second is, even if there is, it's morally justified.
I mean, there's two sides of the same coin, so to speak.
But that's what we're tyrannized by.
Philosophical error. Illusion.
Fantasy. Corruption. False thinking.
That's what we're tyrannized by.
We can't overthrow the state until people know better.
Because if we overthrow the state, they'll just set something else up that's tyrannical.
Local cults. Family cults.
And the state will just come back again.
So then, that's a longer version of my shorter post.
And of course, it's all in my podcast, nothing particularly new in that.
And so Limey writes back and he says, and how do you believe you can do that en masse when the state controls education and intellectuals and the MSM? I'm not sure what that is.
And when it has all the people with guns and so many interest groups with a stake in the continuing existence of the state, Robert Long at least addresses these issues in his article.
So I do not see why it would be impossible for you or other FDRs to address these questions.
Now, that is really quite a remarkable thing to say.
Right.
And, of course, here you can plainly see that this is not somebody who's interested in the truth, to be perfectly frank.
They're interested in dominance.
They're interested in attack.
And if I were to put on my psychological hat, I would say that this person is surrounded by corrupt people, has a corrupt family structure, corrupt parents.
And... Wants to defend all of that or maybe he's involved in politics and of course we know why people want to be involved in politics to pretend that they can reform corrupt structures so they don't have to deal with their family and so on.
But clearly this is not somebody who is interested in the truth or who has any sort of real sense of how he comes across.
And the reason that I say that and I apologize for being so harsh but the reason that I say that is that...
I have, you know, I know I normally use the we, and this is a conversation, but let me just talk about myself for a moment if you don't mind.
I have created the most intense, personal, deep, and rigorous philosophical conversation in centuries.
And it's not just, you know, me, me, me.
I mean, the technology is what makes it all the more possible.
But, you know, 200,000 to 250,000 podcast downloads a month.
We just have over 100,000 video views.
I've written over 100 articles.
I've written six books.
I've quit a job that paid me a freaking fortune to live on donations, which can't be predicted.
I've gone from commanding an executive salary to asking for money from people who often don't have a lot.
So, I've got skin in the game, let's say.
I've got some money in the pot, so to speak.
And so, it's staggering to me.
And it's a very significant aspect of this gentleman's personality.
And he asked me sort of what the issue was, so I'm sort of saying it.
So, I'm actually changing.
We're actually changing our lives through this conversation.
And we're not imposing more obligations, like now I've got to go and hammer posts into the lawn full of Ron Paul and donate to his campaign and talk about Ron Paul and watch YouTube videos about Ron Paul.
We're not imposing additional obligations, right?
This is logically and empirically proven to liberate you, to get you out of corrupt, negative, difficult, problematic relationships, to free you, save you time, save you money.
Somebody who's 30 ditches bad parents, let's say.
Bad parents are going to live for another 40 years.
Sorry, bad parents are going to live for another 30 years, let's say.
Parents of 50, they might live to 80.
30 years. Of presence, 30 years of visits, gas money, mileage, unhappiness, misery, time wasted, undoing the conversation, problems caused in relationships.
All of that, mostly gone.
Well, that's pretty significant.
That's why I say you almost couldn't give too much money to this conversation, I believe.
That's sort of my opinion, but this is net positive, right?
This is massively net positive.
And so, I've worked like a dog over the past two years, because most of it, until the last couple of months, was with a full-time demanding job, plus FDR. There was a staggering amount of work.
And it was not easy to make the decision to come full-time.
And I don't charge.
I don't charge. Don't charge a penny.
You have to buy my book. That's because it takes money to produce and ship.
But it's free. I have never once asked somebody for money up front, even for the personal conversations which people say have been enormously illuminating and have changed their lives.
A gentleman wrote to me and said, I think I would not be alive without FDR. Because he was depressed.
Because he had not been taught how to use his mind.
And he has a stellar mind. So...
We know this is working, for sure.
We know this is working. And so when somebody says to me, basically, how do we get rid of tyranny?
How do we get rid of that which controls us?
How do we make ourselves free?
When somebody asks me that, me, me, when I'm actually doing it, When I'm actually influencing people's lives through reason and evidence to free themselves,
when I've absolutely thrown myself off the cliff for this project, somebody is asking me how to be free, and when I give them the response, they say, well, if only you could rise to the standard of this guy who wrote an essay.
Oh, Steph! Oh, Steph!
If only you could deliver as much freedom to people as this guy who wrote an essay about using political power.
So yes, it's true that you've got hundreds of thousands of downloads a month, and 1,300 board members, and you've got all of this conversation that's going on where people are absolutely applying and actually applying philosophical principles to liberate themselves in their own life, and you've taken on the personal, which is the most volatile stuff of all.
If only, Steph, you could rise to the level of the guy who wrote an article.
About an abstract situation that is inaccurate, impossible, and has worked to enslave people, i.e.
political participation, oh, for the past 2,500 years.
Or 150 years if you want to count classical liberalism and libertarianism.
Oh, Steph, if only you could rise!
to the level of liberating people that is displayed by a guy who wrote an article about imposing additional obligations on you, which in fact will enslave you further, both in terms of demanding more of your time and money, and also feeding the beast called state.
You can't say, I'm praying to God to get rid of God.
*laughs* I'm going to use the power of God to get rid of God.
I'm going to harness the power of God to limit the power of God.
No. The way that you get rid of God is you say over and over and again, there's no such thing.
There's no such thing. There's no such thing.
It's all in your head. That's how you get rid of God.
You don't pray to God to get rid of God and you don't try and harness political power to limit or get rid of political power.
You just say there's no such thing as the government.
There's no such thing as the government. So I replied to him and I said a central part of what I'm up to is trying to teach people to trust their own instincts and keep corrupt people out of their lives.
This makes the necessity of the state much less because it reduces conflict and unhealthy entanglements.
But the more human conflict there is, the more people feel that the state is justified.
The more that people get knotted and bound up into the lives of destructive and difficult and dangerous people, the more people feel that the state is needed.
And so by trying to teach people about how to use their instincts and their gut and their social sense to steer clear of bad people, to not get married to that woman who's a mystic, to not have babies with her, to...
Then that's one less single mom, one less broken marriage, one less conflict-ridden divorce.
This is how you save the world.
This is how you save the world.
I'm so totally open to better solutions, but this is how I believe you change the world.
And he says, yes, but there will still be people pointing guns at you, and the question is how to get rid of those.
And it's an amazing thing to ask me...
How do you believe that you can educate people en masse when the state controls education at intellectuals?
At the MSM, whatever that is.
All the people, guns, somebody interested in the state.
I mean, what astounding lack of insight.
I mean, this is amazing, because the guy's very smart, great language skills.
What amazing lack of insight does it take to post on somebody else's free forum after listening to somebody else's free podcast without state interference, which are available anywhere in the world, no charge.
What does it...
I mean, what kind of madness is it To post on somebody's free, non-governmental controlled forum the question, how can you educate people en masse when the state controls education and intellectuals?
I mean, that's amazing!
That's not easy! And the reason that I want to point this out Is that, no, I don't want to debate with this guy anymore.
Because that's so mad that you just know you're going to be fighting quicksand, you're going to be fighting fog, that the story's going to keep changing, that this amount...
I mean, this is like the Tennis Anyone podcast or the one about education.
Everybody writing in to me saying, well, how are the poor going to get educated in your society?
By the way, thanks for the 850 podcasts that you gave away for free.
But my question is, how are the poor going to be educated in your society?
Right? I mean, that's just an astounding disconnect from reality.
That you just, I mean, you can't say anything to that.
You can't say anything to that.
As I said in the podcast before, it's like, I've got this free buffet and all these people are eating for free.
And with their mouths full, they say, well, yeah, but how are people going to get food in your society?
When he says, I do not think it would be impossible for you and other FDRs to address these questions.
Yeah.
So I provide an answer, and he doesn't like it, so then he says, well, I don't think it should be impossible for you to address this question.
That's very belligerent.
It's very belligerent, and it's very dismissive, and it's a put-down, right?
It's a total put-down.
So anyway, I said, well, what a strange question to ask me of all people.
I've quit my career to work on teaching people about freedom full-time, and it's working beautifully.
200,000 to 250,000 podcasts download a month, have 100,000-plus video views, dozens of articles, books.
And I said, see, when you're actually doing stuff, you don't have to worry about stuff that's going to get done.
And this is why I keep making the case that you need to donate to this conversation or whatever other conversation.
Or you need to start your own conversation.
You need to get some skin in the game.
Once you've got some skin in the game, you get a beautiful thing called certainty.
Right? You get a beautiful thing called certainty.
So let's say you give $100 to Free Domain Radio and I use some of that to eat and I use some of that to advertise and some of that to pay for bandwidth or whatever.
And then somebody says, well, how are the poor going to get educated in your society?
Then what you can say is, well, I've donated to this site that educates people for free.
It's high, high quality education too.
Totally free. Thousands of hours of free audio and video articles.
Free! I've donated to that.
So what have you done? Because if somebody says, well, I'm really concerned about the poor getting educated in a free society, and you've actually done something to help the poor get educated, you can bring that up!
That's the beautiful certainty that donation gets you.
I wish I could show you what's on the other side of donations, right?
But you can bring the argument out of the abstracts and into the personal.
You don't have to worry fundamentally about how the poor are going to get educated in a free society because you're participating in the solution.
And when you're participating in the solution, you don't have to worry about whether there's a solution or not.
And so I said, well, what are you doing?
So this is a reasonable question to the guy.
So the guy says, how on earth is this going to get done?
And I say, well, I'm doing a hell of a lot.
I'm devoting myself full-time.
I gave up three-quarters of my income, blah, blah, blah.
So I'm working like a dog to get this transition underway.
So what are you doing?
And it's a reasonable question, right?
And so he replies, he says, is this how you answer scientific questions?
Why this stubborn refusal to answer these questions?
Seriously! What is going on here?
Is the question taboo?
Do you not have a good answer to give?
Are you teasing me?
Testing me?
What is it?
Oh, and worrying about how stuff is getting done is not the same as asking how stuff is getting done.
I don't know what that means. But this, of course, is somebody who's never going to be enjoyable to debate with, right?
because they're not interested in the acquisition of knowledge.
Right?
Right?
Like if you have an anvil to carry from New York to San Francisco and everyone says that it's the most important thing to carry this anvil from New York to San Francisco.
Nothing is more important. We've got to get this anvil to San Francisco.
God, it's heavy, right?
And you're humping your way along and you're dragging this thing and you're carrying this thing and your back is burning and your shoulders are aching and your joints are creaking.
Right, someone comes dancing up and says, oh yeah?
How are you going to get this anvil to San Francisco, huh?
How are you going to do it, huh? How are you going to do it?
And you say, well, I've already come three miles.
I know there's a long way to go, but we're moving.
We're on our way.
Maybe what you could do is you could take an end of this anvil and give me a hand.
And they say, huh, how come you're evading the question?
My question is, how are you going to get this anvil to San Francisco?
Why are you evading the question?
Is this how you answer a reasonable question?
Maybe you don't even have an answer about how to get the anvil to San Francisco.
Huh? Huh? You say, look, just take an end.
It'll be a whole lot easier. We'll get there a whole lot faster.
Well, that's not what I'm asking.
How come you're evading the question? Why don't you have a good answer?
This shouldn't be that difficult a question to answer.
Because, see, I got this guy, this guy, Roderick Long, he wrote an article about how maybe what we should do is get genies to carry the anvil to San Francisco.
I'm like, well, that's great.
I'm not going to wait for the genies to come and carry the anvil.
I'm not going to wait for a political solution to the problem of personal liberty.
Because I'm not going to make my personal liberty dependent upon the whims of other people and the salvation of politics.
I'm going to do it now!
Now! Because I don't want to wait for something that will never come.
And I don't want my freedom to be dependent on everybody else voting for some guy who maybe in some manner might be able to reduce the load a little bit, possibly, who knows.
No, I can take my freedom now.
And I can give freedom to others now.
So if all these people are dancing around, and you say, well, I'm doing everything I can to get this anvil to San Francisco.
So why don't you give me a hand?
No, no, this guy, how come you're not addressing the question of the guy who wrote an essay about how genies are going to get the anvil to San Francisco?
It's like, Jesus fucking Christ, pick up an end!
Or at least hire me some movers, if you're so fucking interested in getting the anvil to San Francisco.
But stop floating around and bitching and sniping, because some of us are actually trying to move the goddamn anvil.
Some of us aren't just talking about it.
And some of us aren't just reading articles about it.
but we're doing the back-breaking labor of moving the goddamn anvil and help or get out of the way.
So this gentleman then also wrote somewhere else about...
Thank you.
He says it would be a good thing to have, one, a scientific theory about how there is a monocausal relation between the injustice in the realm of families and the injustice in the realm of the state and religion.
and two, a strategic theory about how one can change the family despite being in a statist and somewhat religious world.
So I wrote in response, I said, I'm sorry, but are you asking me to repeat the contents of my 850 podcasts, 100 articles, and a book?
I said, if you buy the book, that would be a start.
In it, I make logical and testable arguments regarding the family and how to achieve freedom.
For the stage, you'll have to wait for my next book.
And he said, I have read your book.
Sorry, I have your book and read it and liked it.
But for the umpteenth time, he says, in your post, you are changing the question I asked.
I did not ask about how to achieve freedom in my personal life.
Instead I asked two concrete, specific, and scientific and relevant questions, yet so far you have refused to answer them, or point out where I can find the answers, and so have other FDRers, and that makes me wonder, just what is going on here?
And I wrote, I said, I'm not ignoring your question at all.
I just have too much respect for your intelligence.
To imagine that you are asking me whether or not I have performed double-blind psychological experiments on thousands of people all over the world over decades, which have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt the theories that I have proposed over 850 podcasts, because that would be a complete scientific proof, right?
So this is just an aside, right, Christina?
My wife, of course, is a psychological associate, practices psychotherapy, and she did these experiments, right?
Psychological experiments. If you're talking about science in terms of psychological theories, causal theories, and so on, then it's not just saying, well, it seems to me this would be the case if, right?
You actually have to have rigorous testable proof, which would be multicultural, possibly multigenerational, but no small matter, right?
I said, instead I have repeatedly pointed you towards the only evidence that exists, as you well know, which is rigorous theory and personal and anecdotal evidence.
I am a philosopher, not a scientist.
I certainly respect the scientific method, but I am not a scientist.
I respect the science of medicine.
That does not mean, of course, that I am a doctor.
And he writes back, he says, this is a straw man.
I have not asked you for a complete scientific proof, proof beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Now, of course, when I say scientific theory about the monocausal relationship, monocausal means that the injustices of the state only come from the injustices of the family, right?
You can't prove that from first principles.
You can certainly obviously understand that our experience of authority is primarily our parents, first and foremost, that almost all children go to church because of the authority of their parents, right?
So, a child who is raised with no knowledge of religion would not say, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, I want to go to church.
It's unheard of, right?
And, of course, parents put their children into government schools, right?
So, for sure, it's the authority of the parents that is prior to the authority of the state and the church, right?
So, If somebody doesn't understand and agree with that, then they're just working on a different kind of reality or non-logic that I can't really help them with.
So then he says, well, you don't need to do double-blind experiments and blah, blah, blah.
I'm on a course of relationship.
He says here, even if you understandably do not have time to do scientific research on the question, whether there is a monocausal relation between corruption in the family and belief in the state, then it will be still possible to think of some ways in which this could be tested.
You do not have to do the tests yourself.
I would be more than happy to think about what kinds of experiments could test the theory and post my thoughts.
Well, but I have done the test, right?
That's why I talked about personal rigorous theory and personal and anecdotal evidence, right?
He said, instead, as I have repeatedly pointed you towards the only evidence that exists, as you well know, which is rigorous.
Oh, sorry. That was me. Oops.
And I said, well, I'm a philosopher, not a scientist.
And he says, I have repeatedly heard you call yourself a scientist.
I understand your point, though. And as implied above, I think that it is valid, although it does not undermine my points.
And so somebody suggested some podcasts and he said, thanks for the links.
I listened to two of the family and state podcasts and found them interesting in the sense that they discussed the question, how in the life of an individual the first type of authority they encounter is his parents and how the patterns in that relationship, to an extent, fit the patterns of the relationship between individuals and the state.
And that was helpful. I failed to see, however, how this answers the two questions that I asked.
And then he repeats his questions.
Then I offered him a Skype chat, which he...
Which he rejected, right?
Because, I mean, this kind of stuff can go on forever, right?
But we're completely missing each other's points, so to speak.
And I have no respect for his points.
And clearly he has no respect for mine, which, of course, is an absolute prerogative.
So then he writes, he doesn't feel comfortable with a verbal Skype chat, and I'm not going to get involved in a written one, which would just go on forever.
He says, one, if I understand you correctly, you say that your approach to creating anarcho-capitalism is working on the family first, and that all other approaches are doomed to fail.
But correct me if I'm wrong.
So then the task is to show why all other approaches, including combinations of approaches, are doomed to fail.
For this, you would need an economic or praxeological or public choice theory to show that, for example, political action by itself or in combination with non-political actions such as the grassroots movement cannot lead to beneficial consequences in bringing down the state, something like Mises' calculation argument that shows the impossibility of socialism, for example, but then in this area.
You would also have to show why other non-political actions like protest movements, education without the family bits, controlling more media, etc., is equally doomed.
And you would need a similar sort of theory for that.
B. You would need to establish that the relation between corruption in the family and the belief in statism is mono or unicausal.
That is, only through getting rid of corruption in the family and or helping people escape the corruption in their family can the belief in statism be eradicated.
I think I'm somewhat caricaturing a theory here, but I'm not sure where, so do correct me if I'm wrong.
So you would have to have an explanation why a lot of seemingly intelligent and happy libertarians, for example the ones at the Mises Institute, are libertarians even though they may not have dealt with the corruption in their families or are still religious.
And you would have to show why the corruption in the family is not the result of statism, rather than vice versa, or not a complex intertwined web of relations.
Like I wrote in other threads, and directly above here, it seems to me that the institutional environment itself changes people's feelings and actions so that the relation could work the other way as well.
How is it possible to eliminate corruption in families or help the people in corrupt families escape their families in a statist and religious society where the state controls blah blah blah blah?
How is it possible for these new liberated people to bring down the state or make sure that once the state collapses under its own weight, an anarcho-capitalist society could be formed?
blah, blah, blah... He said you're doing wonderful and very useful work with FDR, and in terms of productivity, you have yet to meet your match, but that in itself does not mean that this type of an approach and this type of approach alone will save the day.
Of course, it does help in making people a lot more happy and independent, which is even more important than the whole idea of dismantling Leviathan, but that is not the question I am asking.
I am also aware that it is a lot of work to come up with complete theories answering these questions, and I am not asking exactly that.
But I would like to see some structured thinking in these areas with regards to these questions, like Roderick Long does in his article.
And so far I have not seen much of that, even though you and others seem very sure if you're positive that your approach is correct and workable, and negative that all other approaches are doomed, views, and even though you seem to think that these issues are important, if it was only for your strong dismissal of other approaches.
And so... The idea...
See, this is the amazing thing.
This is the amazing thing about this kind of thinking.
He says, well, if I come up with a very strong praxeological reasoned theory, like Mises, proof that socialism cannot work, that this will help to bring down Leviathan.
And this is a very smart fellow, very well read, knows his stuff.
So, I mean, the obvious question that pops into my mind, of course, is, so, Mises did all this work to prove that socialism is impossible.
So did that bring down socialism?
Fundamental question.
I'm going to go to the next question.
Somebody says, you need to do what this guy did so that you can prove how to bring down the state, or that your way of approaching it is the only way.
You need to do what this guy did, who completely failed.
Mises, brilliant fellow.
Absolutely, right? No question.
But started writing all his stuff over 80 years ago.
Proved socialism is impossible.
Proved that without price there's no conceivable way to allocate resources.
So what's happened? In the last 80 years have we become more socialistic?
Have we become a bigger government?
Or a smaller government?
And he's perfectly aware of this, right?
Again, this is a very smart fellow, right?
He's just blind to his own motives.
Mises wrote over 80 years ago, started writing over 80 years ago, and it has been an unmitigated disaster for freedom ever since.
So saying you need to do what Mises did is saying you need to spend as much time putting futile bullshit together that's not going to convince anyone, or if it does, it only convinces them in the abstract.
So you need to do what these other thinkers have done, and they have worse than failed.
Mises wrote virulently against socialism, and socialism has expanded massively since Mises wrote, despite the fact that his price allocation theory is virtually uncontested.
So that's the amazing thing to me.
Somebody's asking me to reproduce a methodology that completely and totally failed.
Now, I mean, there's this question of bringing down the state.
I mean, this side is not devoted to bringing down the state.
I don't devote my time and life and energies, and I would suggest or invite you not to do the same.
I don't surrender my time and energies to that which is outside my control.
Bringing down the state, having that as a goal, it puts me completely at the mercy of other people, and usually irrational people, and I had enough of that in the first 35 years of my life.
There's no rational, conceivable, achievable goal called bringing down the state.
There's no rational, achievable, goddamn goal called changing your parents, let alone bringing down the state.
The only person you have control over is yourself.
You cannot have as a goal the fundamental alteration of other people.
That's not my goal.
My goal is to speak the truth with as much rigor and honesty and compassion and empathy and sensitivity and rigor as I can.
That is my only goal.
Not to free you.
Not to free the state.
Not to tear down religion.
Not to any of those things.
Because I have zero control over any of that stuff.
In fact, it's a negative control.
If you're in a car that's starting to roll down a hill and you're stomping on the brakes and the brakes don't work, But you think they do, what happens?
You end up rolling down the hill and bursting into flames at the bottom when the car crashes.
if the car starts rolling down a hill and you say, hey, you know what, these brakes don't work you open the door and you get out prior to injury if your goal or focus is altering other people you are stomping on a brake that isn't even connected if It's worse than a waste of time.
It actively creates frustration, hostility, problems.
It's a drain on your time and your money and your resources.
Life is finite.
Joy is hard.
So you don't have a goal if you're sensible.
You don't have a goal called changing other people.
You don't. That's why...
The site is free domain.
The domain is you.
And freedom is main.
The main thing. And that's why the motto of the site is the logic of personal and political liberty.
Personal first, personal first.
This is not a site which says how to bring down the state.
*sad* Because I don't like to enslave people to impossible tasks that they have no control over.
We're a lighthouse, right?
The way that you keep ships off the rocks is you put a lighthouse up and you hope for the competence of the captains.
What you don't do is see a ship coming and swim out and try and take the wheel away from the captain.
You'll just end up in the brig and there won't be a lighthouse.
Just put up a lighthouse. That's all I'm doing.
I'm just broadcasting the truth with as much rigor and passion and clarity as I can.
And with bad jokes.
That's all I have control over.
Can I do the best possible podcast that I can?
Yes. Can I trust my instincts?
Can I be passionate? Can I be entertaining?
Can I be compelling?
I can work my hardest to try that.
Can I compile it? Can I post it?
Can I advertise? Yes, I can do all of that.
Can I control one little bit about anybody else's behavior?
No, I cannot.
I cannot. That's why I say to this guy, look, my goal, my program, he says, well, you know, your focus is to control the family.
Or to work on the family.
It's like, no, you can't work on the family.
You can't control the family.
You can't work on the family.
You can't alter a bird's flight by using your mind either.
You cannot control other people.
So you can't work on the family.
You can't work on the state.
You can't work on religion.
You can't work on the behavior of anybody else.
You can't even work on the beliefs of everybody else.
All you can be is a lighthouse.
And if people want to steer clear of the rocks, then they'll guide themselves by your lighthouse.
And if they don't, they don't.
There's nothing you can do. There's nothing you can do.
And so then, of course, we get some sort of ad hominems, right?
So he says, if you want to learn, you have to respond to questions and arguments.
You'd have nothing to lose. Because you are not emotionally or ego-invested in any position and only the truth to win.
But because of the defense mechanisms that get erected quite quickly, evasive behavior and at times psychological tricks, I get the feeling that something else altogether is going on.
I don't know what it is, right?
So this, of course, is protestations of innocence with projection.
So... Yeah, I'm not, as I said to this guy, I mean, I find him too aggressive, and I find that he's not interested in exploring the truth.
There's no curiosity. There's just, you know, you need to provide this, which never worked in the past.
And there's a lecturing, there's a kind of, you know, I know so much more, and you need to be scientific, and so on, right?
And then when I correct him, it just changes his stories, right?
He says, your belief is you need to work on the family.
I said, but you can't work on the family.
He says, you need scientific proof.
It's like, well, this is what scientific proof would entail.
And he's like, no, it wouldn't.
He's like, but I know. I mean, I know.
He says, you're a scientist.
He says, I'm not a scientist. I'm a philosopher.
I don't have a degree in science.
I don't work as a scientist.
I'm a philosopher. He's like, well, you call yourself a scientist.
He's like, well, no, I don't. So, this is all just a bunch of nonsense, right?
And this is somebody...
And you get these people. I know, guys, they fill my inbox, right?
These people who bungee in and talk about how you need to provide them this, that, or the other, right?
And my question is, why?
Why do I have to provide you a sort of, quote, scientific, monocausal, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
Why? Why? Because it's objectively correct?
Well, the thing is that we're actually achieving things here, right?
So if somebody comes in and says, like, if I've got the anvil 20 miles towards San Francisco, and someone comes in and says, you're not moving the anvil at all, then I have to sort of question that,
right? So when I have the most successful philosophy conversation in the world, with your wonderful participation, thank you so much everybody, but when we have the most important, rigorous,
deep, empowering, liberating philosophical conversation I think the world has ever seen, mostly because of the technology, then when people come in and say, well, you need to do more of what Mises did, Because Mises achieved less than nothing with his theories, and you're achieving a hell of a lot with your theories, but you need to abandon your theories, and you need to do what these other people did.
You need to do what Roderick Long is doing.
You need to write essays about grabbing control of the wheel of the state, which people can't do.
And even if they could, it wouldn't work, but nobody's about to grab control of the state.
So what you need to do is you need to put in an enormous amount of intellectual effort, proving things that completely reverse what it is that you want, don't achieve freedom but instead enhance enslavement, or you need to write essays about situations that will never occur.
The fact that Mises failed, and I don't know anything about Roderick Long, but the fact that Mises completely and totally did worse than failed, Not only did he not cure the disease, the disease spread more rapidly after he wrote.
And I'm not saying he caused it, but certainly he did not, which was his aim, cure him.
Everyone's like, ooh, the road to serfdom.
It's like, well, great book.
I think badly written, but a great book.
But so what?
Didn't do a goddamn thing to free us.
Far less free now.
I mean, if I go in saying, I'm going to free the slaves, 40 years later, 10 times the number of slaves are enslaved in far more brutal conditions, and then somebody says, when I'm actually building an underground railroad and getting slaves out, and somebody comes up and says, oh, Steph, you're all wrong, you've got it all wrong.
What you need to do, see, is you need to stop getting people out from the Underground Railroad, and you need to go back to writing theories about it, which caused more and more people to get enslaved.
The arrogance. Staggering.
Absolutely staggering.
Not one shred of curiosity about, hey, How did you make this work?
But an endless trumpeting of failed thinkers.
Brilliant men, no question.
Complete failures in terms of their goals and objectives.
Complete and total failures.
Not because they had bad intentions, I don't think.
Don't know. Who knows what their intentions were?
Well, we know what their stated intentions were, which was to free the world, which they completely failed to do.
My monocorsel answer, as I mentioned in one of these threads, is all the other approaches have been tried.
All the other approaches have been tried.
The one thing that hasn't been tried is liberation from personal corruption, where you actually have control.
Lots of people write essays about the government and socialism and How bad foreign policy is and blah, blah, blah.
So fucking what? And all those dead trees haven't built one bridge to freedom.
In fact, they just settle on our chests like heavy logs.
And there's no curiosity.
Just come in, lecture me about the principles of failed thinkers and Ignore the progress that's being made.
Every time you get an answer, just say it's an invasion.
This is not somebody who's at all interested in freedom, interested in being superior, interested in lecturing, interested in being pompous.
And you just know this is somebody who has not confronted freedom.
Power structures in his personal life.
Because that humbles you, boy. Boy, does that humble you.
You try and reform your parents, you give up on the state.
You give up on your parents.
And you work on yourself.
Thank you so much for listening.
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