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April 15, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
45:03
1039 Intellectual Entrapment

An examination of career motives in the realm of academics.

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Good afternoon everybody, it's Steph.
Hope you're doing well. Back at the gym to hoist around my little soap bubbles on sticks.
And it's Sunday, 13th or 14th of April, 2008.
And this is a...
I guess you could say a warm-up podcast, or a personal slash ramble tangential spittlefest.
Really related to this question of intellectuals that haunts and doth trouble me with much ambiguity and hostility and, to some degree, sympathy.
And let me sort of tell you before I decide whether or not I want to go into the details of getting these quotes and so on from these various sources.
There's a guy, let's call him Bob, who's written a book on the tragedies of foreign aid, and how foreign aid has just resulted in endless disasters for people in the third world, and so on.
And his world, or his life, is kind of associated with being a professional economist and academician, and he's also worked at the World Bank and the IMF, and he's traveled to these places and so on.
And he, to me, it's jaw-droppingly discontinuous, which is another way of saying that I'm stupid and blind in this area at the moment, which I'm perfectly content with, since we can't shine the light in all directions at once.
But I'm missing something sort of fundamental, which I'm going to try and figure out with regards to intellectuals.
Now, I must confess that To me, there's still a degree of credibility and being impressiveness.
When I look at somebody who's got, like, a PhD from Harvard or Stanford in economics, who's worked at the World Bank, who's traveled to, you know, I just...
It's hard for me to just sort of say, eh, state hack, you know, because I recognize the considerable technical intelligence and ability that is required to snake your way through this kind of stuff, the considerable amount of personal initiative that is required to go and get a PhD from these kinds of places.
I... Also, and to some degree working from the depot position, that these people do care about the poor and so on.
So, being impressed by all these kinds of things, and this also partly has to do with credibility as well.
Not just to myself, but to others.
Like, if I just go and say, you know, the entire phalanx of economist PhDs or A bunch of state-sucking hacks.
It's not particularly going to open people up to hearing reasoned arguments, but, you know, up here in the post-1000 podcast series, perhaps we can sneak a few in.
And again, just to sort of work empirically, as I always do, not to be impressed by credentials, because Lord knows, I mean, if you look at the People got PhD programs in the 1930s in Germany and did some terrible things in terms of justifying state power, particularly in the realm of eugenics and biology and so on.
Higher education is no shield against corruption.
And in fact, higher education, particularly at the highly accredited, like highly respected institutions, it actually makes you kind of a bonus to state power if they can get you to agree with them, right?
I mean, you can see the number of times that Christians try to Hijack Einstein to make him religious.
You can also see that anyone who's got a scientific PhD is highly, highly regarded and desired by anybody who's in the religious world, right?
So the guy who runs a Human Genome Project.
If you can get him to say that God exists, then how many people are going to be cowed by this argument from authority, right?
And say, well, this guy's a hell of a lot smarter than I am, and he believes it, so maybe I should go for it.
Or who am I to say that this guy's full of crap, right?
I'm... also...
this is just by the by, and between you and I... I'm...
not ignorant of statistics, and...
Let me tell you the caution with which I approach this topic.
Rightly or wrongly, maybe it's cowardice, maybe it's common sense, but I'll tell you at least the way that I approach it.
Maybe it'll make some sense to you.
Let's just say that if we look at it objectively, as objectively as we can, what...
I don't even know where to begin with this, but let's just see if we can make the case, right?
So, objectively and fairly frankly, let's ask what the odds are that some poor art broke kid from the projects with no Now,
let's just say some poor ass semi-welfare kid from the projects who worked as a paperboy and a barker at a carnival and who worked as a waiter and worked in a bookstore and worked as a gold panner, a gold prospector, worked as a temp and all that kind of stuff.
What are the odds that this guy who didn't go to any prestigious schools Who has some...
somewhat of a minor pedigree, though I was not aware of this particularly at the time.
Something of a minor pedigree when it comes to a familial history of intellectual achievement.
One of the odds that I'm...
I'm not going to be able to do what I do.
Not coming from an intellectual community.
In fact, coming from a community that was resolutely anti-intellectual, as many poor families and poor environments tend to be, without any encouragement, in particular, from people around me.
Without any mentoring on the part of Other intellectuals and so on?
Frankly, what...
What are the odds that...
And somebody who, you know, kind of got by with an A in his master's but without any help from professors and was never encouraged or accepted or mentored towards a PhD program and so on...
What are the odds that I was gonna just pop up and...
Be able to do what I'm able to do.
A history of, you know, failed actor, failed writer, failed director, failed academic.
To some, I mean, to some degree, let's say.
It's not that I was particularly yearning and burning to go and do a PhD.
But, when we look at that situation, This is not a pedigree to inspire confidence, right?
To say, ah, that guy is the guy who's going to revolutionize ethics and other areas of fields of discipline.
So, recognizing that basic reality, I think, is really important for me.
You know, I mean, the Internet, right?
She be full and full and full of people who claim to have alternative views of physics, let's say, right?
This is all not particularly encouraging, right?
I mean, I can think of a number of people who've dropped by the board or the chat window with their own, let's just say, alternate theories of reality, which do not seem particularly credible.
In fact, are fairly particularly not credible.
The amateurs, the self-taught, the people without rigorous peer review, or what do I have?
No peer review, right? What are the arts, right?
So, I'm kind of aware of all of that.
In fact, more than aware.
And in putting forward the theories that I have put forward, and the revolutionary stuff that I've worked on over the past couple of years, I don't have the markers, right?
I mean, Nietzsche was recognized as a genius in philology very early on.
I mean, Bertrand Russell was a math prodigy, spoke a number of languages, and had achieved credibility in particular disciplines.
George Bernard Shaw was an internationally recognized playwright when he started spewing out his...
or getting involved in his Fabian socialism.
So these people had credibility, right?
Now, Keynes, a famous award-winning economist, Mises, and so on.
Hayek, Nobel Prize, I think.
So, all of these situations were...
Even John Rawls, my Harvard professor.
Sam Harris, PhD in, I don't know, some genetics, something like that.
Richard Dawkins, a recognized and famous biologist prior to, right?
So these people all have a kind of credibility.
Now, I mean, there are some people who haven't, obviously, right?
Ayn Rand didn't have any more...
actually she had less education than I have in terms of formal education.
But I would say that she's done an enormous amount to raise awareness and appreciation of philosophy.
But I'm very aware of that aspect of things, which is why I don't flash credentials, although I have some minor ones.
And it's also why I'm forced to rely on first principles.
Right? I can't rely on a first principal called I have a PhD from Harvard.
Which, in many ways, has only been to my, and hopefully our, advantage.
So... I'm really, really hyper aware that the odds against me being able to do what it is that I claim I'm able to do are ridiculous.
ridiculously small.
You would expect to win the lottery three times in a row, more so than to be born out of this environment under these circumstances, with the culture and lower-class values that were around me, be able to do what it is that I can do.
Now, of course, it is a peculiar, I mean, just sort of by the by, it is a peculiar intersection of talents and skills that have it is a peculiar intersection of talents and skills that have allowed me to be able to do
I mean, there's not a whole lot of people who, a couple of years ago, would have been comfortable with and able to run a podcast from the car with all the technical challenges and difficulties that that entails.
And to set up all of the websites, the coding, the XML, you know, all that kind of stuff, right?
What would have happened is they would have had to hire someone to do that, which would have cost thousands and thousands of dollars, very likely, to help get them set up and manage it all.
And that would have been too high a barrier to entry to get this whole thing started, right?
It was only because I had skill and experience in software to begin with that I was able to get this thing going from scratch without having the barrier to entry.
Of high expense combined with an uncertain future.
It is my experience as a DJ when I was in university.
I had a radio show.
It is my experience as a debater that I entered and became a sixth or seventh best debater in Canada the first year that I tried it.
It didn't continue after that.
Too many politicians, too many political wannabes around.
My experience in sales.
My experience programming.
All of these things had to kind of come together.
And my experience acting.
And, of course, my therapy, my marriage with my wonderful wife, who is the backbone and bedrock of what it is that I do.
This is, um...
All stuff that had to come together for this to work, to become with a time...
Of course, I had to not have kids, right, very early in my marriage, which would have nuked this pretty effectively, right?
So, an enormous number of really freaked out coincidences, and of course, I had to have a desire to do it and all that other kind of stuff, right?
So an enormous series of really, really freaked out coincidences had to kind of come to pass in order for this to be possible, to be achievable, to turn into what it has turned into, right?
And of course, the foundational, fundamental bubbling up of abilities.
So it's really interesting to me.
I mean, I don't believe in any of this cosmic stuff, but In hindsight, I certainly do believe that we may have a purpose sometimes that we only discover later, but in hindsight, everything that I did prepared me beautifully for what it is that I'm doing now.
Everything. Everything.
Sales, the entrepreneurial, the technical, the personal, the emotional, the psychological, the philosophical, the educational, all prepared me for what it is that I'm doing now.
And the other interesting thing is that if I had actually achieved What it is that I wanted to achieve in the past, I would actually not be able to do what it is that I'm doing now.
It simply would have been impossible.
I mean, if I had become an academic, there's no way I'd be free to talk this openly and freely about this kind of stuff now.
For reasons which we'll get into a little later, perhaps.
If I'd become a businessman, I would have been too much in demand in that area and too thrilled with the financial success and all of the attendant stuff that comes with that.
If I had got everything I wanted in the business world.
If I had got what I wanted in the acting world.
I mean, no actor is going to come out as an anarchist unless you're a complete Oscar-caliber dude, which is not me.
TV character actors, which is probably where I would have ended up, do not Take those kinds of risks, right?
because you're optional.
So...
The weird series of coincidences that had to float around to end up with me being able to do what I'm doing, with all the freedom to be able to speak, And of course, if I'd taken the route to be dependent on advertisers, I would then be bound By that situation as well.
If I had become a psychologist or a psychiatrist, I would be bound by that professional stuff, too.
So, all of the coincidences that have resulted in this are staggering and monstrous, and it takes...
I think, frankly, I think it takes enormously Brave and rational people such as yourself to say, okay, well, let's go with it.
Crazy guy on the internet, let's see what he's got to say.
So, with all of that having been said, with the requisite and absolutely genuine homage to you wonderful people, let me continue with my self-queasy-inducing critique of academia.
Because I really do want everyone to understand that this is not sour grapes.
I actually look with dread upon the idea of being an academic.
Somebody on the board said the other day, why would you ever teach at a private university?
To which, of course, my response was, what makes you think I'm not at the moment?
That's certainly how I approach it.
Alright, so, sorry, look at that.
Only 18 minutes to get to the point.
But I wanted to put all that stuff out there just so everyone knows that I'm not wandering into this situation.
Casting stuff out without forethought or caution.
I'm enormously cautious about making claims related to my own abilities.
I certainly hope that the abilities speak for themselves.
If the abilities don't speak for themselves, of course, my claims will mean nothing.
And if they do speak for themselves, then my claims will mean, well...
Other than to say that I don't believe him, either.
So, that having been said, let me talk about, and I just call this by Bob, Guy Bob, I can't remember his name, but I'll maybe put this in a more detailed podcast or presentation.
So I have two major sources for this guy.
One is this EconTalk podcast at econtalk.org.
You can look for the podcast, I'll make a note of it on the Diamond Plus board, and listen to this guy talk about foreign aid programs and their problems.
I'm about a third of the way through his book.
And this guy is an economist, and he's actually into free markets.
So he's not some socialist who's basically in the Jeffrey Sachs model just saying, you know, well, to be even remotely moral human beings, we need to give our money and our firstborn to the third world.
I mean, he's highly critical of Foreign aid programs, and I won't get into his whole thesis.
I'll just point out a couple of things that really fundamentally kind of trouble me.
So, on the EconTalk program, he's talking with the host, and they're both talking, in fact, about the evils of the IMF and the World Bank.
This is just money that's handed out willy-nilly Without it actually helping the poor and the fact that where the foreign aid is greatest, the growth is the least or even negative.
And then, literally without missing a beat, they go on to say, but we have good friends at both the IAF and the World Bank.
And then later in their conversation they talk about how the IMF and the World Bank are similar in concept and execution and in effect as the Soviet-style plans under Stalin, right?
So they're basically saying that these are brutal and corrupt technocrats who do enormous amounts of destruction towards the poor.
50 trillion dollars been pumped into the...
No, not quite that much.
50 billion? Well, massive amount of money being pumped into the third world over the last 50 years.
Nothing to show for it. In fact, the countries that receive the least foreign aid, India and China doing the best.
So, at the one hand, they say this is evil, it's destructive towards the poor, and it is dictatorial and Soviet and communistic in its essence.
But we have good friends who are running these programs.
And I found that jaw-dropping, which again is to say that I am cautious about my own perception of corruption.
I try not to use that term willy-nilly.
I certainly don't want to come across as, you know, everyone but me and maybe you is corrupt and sometimes I'm not so sure about you.
That's a recipe for disaster in terms of credibility.
So... So I was kind of shocked at that, right?
And so I thought, well, what would be the following scenario, right?
Because the following scenario in...
FDR land, or the FDR approach, would be something like this.
So you go up to your friend who works at the IMF, let's say, or the World Bank, and you say, look, not only is the source of your income based on blood money that is taken from the poor,
or from the taxpayer, sorry, at gunpoint, but how you deal or produce this money is destructive to the poor, and so you're in effect a kind of fascistic or communist-style oligarchical bureaucracy that is doing an enormous amount of harm towards the poor.
And this is a highly corrupt and destructive situation.
Not only is your funding coerced, but the effects of what you do with it are almost uniformly destructive towards the most vulnerable people in the world.
The poor in dictatorships Right?
And you have that conversation, right?
And the guy says, well, I'm trying to do my best, and, you know, I'm trying to make the best of a bad situation, and I think there's still some stuff that we can do that's good.
And you say, well, no, see, the money is coerced, right, to begin with.
It doesn't really matter what you can do with it, but the idea that you can turn bad money into good effects.
More so than you could with charity, would be to say, well, I'm not going to give money to a charity that helps the poor.
I'm going to give money to the mafia and hope that they give it to a charity that helps the poor.
Right? I mean, this would be an illogical thing to do.
So, no good can come out of this money.
And so, since you're involved in a situation where the money that funds you is coerced, and you are doling it out in ways that are actively destructive to the poor, and there's no way that that can be affected or altered, because we can look at the last 50 years, and the thousands or probably millions of people who've been involved in this stuff over 50 years, and say, well, none of them have been able to achieve the good that is promised.
So, I'm afraid that you're going to have to quit your job.
Or I'm going to have to not be your friend, because I can't be friends with people who do corrupt and destructive things, right?
Well, can you imagine having that kind of conversation if you're an academic?
Can you imagine it?
Well, it would be beyond shocking, wouldn't it?
To have a conversation with a friend where you said, my friend, I'm afraid that you are doing evil with evil money, and that you are little more than a mafia accountant.
In fact, a mafia accountant is far more benevolent, because at least they don't pay off other gangs to repress their own people, as you do with governments, foreign dictatorships.
Well, what would happen to somebody who went up to a friend of his and said, you can't be my friend if you work for the IMF? Or the World Bank or who are involved in these vicious and destructive, quote, anti-poverty programs?
Can you imagine what would happen?
Well, I know what would happen. I can tell you exactly what would happen.
What would happen is your friend would look at you Like you had just told him that space aliens lived in Uranus.
Your ass, not the planet.
He'd be like, "Are you crazy?" What are you talking about?
Are you okay? What?
I'm supposed to quit my job because you're offended by what I do?
Because I'm trying to help the poor in a tough situation?
What, do you think my quitting my job is going to get rid of foreign aid?
Do you not think I should stay where I am and do the best that I can, given the situation that things are in?
Am I supposed to conform to your wild-ass moral judgments?
Am I supposed to give up my career and give up my...
History and my resume, and I'm supposed to quit and go and get a job in some other field, in some other place, with all of my resume and experience pointing towards this field.
I'm supposed to give up half my income, my accumulated pension, my...
I'm supposed to move because I'm only living here because of this job, and I'm supposed to pull my kids out of school, and I'm supposed to...
because you find what I do somewhat questionable, which is itself a subjective opinion.
Are you gonna lump me in with all these people who do these terrible things, or bad things, or corrupt things, and I'm supposed to quit to satisfy your conscience?
And by the by, my friend, if you're so concerned about living off blood money, how the hell do you explain that 90% of your funding comes from the government, too?
Because you work for a university, and universities are between 80 to 90% funded by governments.
Or by donations that are tax-deductible.
So, I guess you're quitting too.
Why don't you show me how effective it all is to go and quit your job if you're so offended by government money?
I mean, you're teaching students mostly funded by government money or who are getting government loans or government grants, so everything that you do is involved in blood money.
So how is it that you get to do all of this good and lecture me about quitting when you're doing exactly what I'm doing?
How completely insane and hypocritical can you be?
And so on, and so on, and so on.
And because you will have touched a very powerful and sensitive nerve, what will happen is the word will spread like wildfire around this community.
An academic community is not particularly large, right?
What will happen is the word will spread like BANG! Like wildfire around the community.
And that word will be, my god, Can you imagine?
Can you picture? This guy, Bob?
He's, uh...
He's saying that I have to quit because there's something corrupt about the World Bank?
I gotta quit my job?
To satisfy him?
His conscience? What kind of lunatic is he?
He's taking all this goddamn government money and he's running around lecturing other people to quit their jobs?
Give up their entire careers.
Everything that we struggled through in our 20s and 30s and lived on Kraft Dinner and finally got myself a decent job.
I'm supposed to give it up because she's troubled by the funding methodology which he himself is paid by.
Right? So...
You would have to be discredited.
Especially because you were speaking an essential truth, you would have to be discredited like crazy.
Right? So...
The word would spread.
And people would be embarrassed for you.
And you would be viewed as somebody who'd lost it.
You'd be viewed as a kook.
You'd be viewed as a crazy guy.
And what would happen is that your articles, you'd suddenly find it a whole lot harder to get people to co-author or sponsor or work with you on articles.
And also, another thing that would happen is that your assumptions, and every article that you ever write in academics, every paper, carries within it a number of assumptions.
It has to be. You can't prove everything from the ground up, right?
And within academia, certain assumptions are taken for granted.
There's an efficiency principle in academia as well, right?
For instance, if you say in an academic article, the government is necessary to solve the problem of the commons, to supply public goods and services which cannot be effectively supplied by the free market because of the problem of collection for use or the problem of the commons.
If you say the government is necessary, you don't have to prove that, because everybody just believes that.
Everybody just accepts it.
You don't have to prove that when demand goes up, price goes up, all other things being equal.
I mean, that's just something that's accepted as an axiom.
And this, of course, is one reason why academics tends to reproduce the same goddamn thing over and over again.
Because everyone takes stuff for granted, and anybody who questions it has a massive burden of proof.
But everybody who parrots the party line is going to get his stuff across.
It's much more efficient, right? You just accept it.
And so the principle of efficiency is if you want to be creative, you either have to strike off in a completely new direction, which is massively uphill and will face enormous opposition, or you just build on the bullshit that everybody already believes, and, you know, it's hugely efficient because you're appealing to people's prejudices, right? Or government is needed to supply goods and services that can't be covered by the free market because of market failure with regards to the problem of the commons and these kind of...
Everybody's like, yeah, yeah, okay, don't even need to say it, right?
Don't even need to say it.
And so what will happen is if you take this approach, you start to question the ethics of those who work for these corrupt organizations, what's going to happen is that when you start to submit papers, nobody's going to accept the implicit premises in your argument.
They're going to ask you to spell them out.
So you're not going to be given any free passes in terms of your assumptions.
This is, I mean, an effective way of keeping anybody out of academics whose ideas you don't like, is you just start to say, well, I mean, you say the government is necessary in this area because of the problem of the commons, but I don't think you've established that beyond a shadow of a doubt, right?
And, of course, if they like you, they'll let that go and say, well, of course, that's accepted by everyone.
But if they don't like you, they'll say, well, you haven't made that case, right?
And then when you try to make that case, they'll say, oh, well, you know, there's a whole different article, and this is too long, and you haven't made that case.
So you just get, your stuff will get bounced, right?
Your stuff will get rejected.
And then you'll be tempted to submit stuff anonymously, and this, that, and the other.
But there will be this problem.
Word will get around, right?
I mean, there's no such thing as anonymous in academic circles when you get right down to it.
I mean, how can everyone end up with the same goddamn opinions?
If stuff was truly anonymous.
as well.
Of course, there's a huge weeding out process at the beginning as well, right?
So then you'll find, gee, you're just not able to get stuff published, right?
And it's publish or perish in academia, right?
And then you'll find that you're not getting invited to speak at conferences, right?
So you're not getting stuff published, you're not really getting a chance to go and speak at conferences, and then your sabbatical is rejected, right?
And then what happens is that word gets around the student community very quickly, right?
I mean, these people are very keen on making sure that their investment in grad school pays off, because nobody more bitter, as Matt Groening has pointed out, nobody more bitter than a grad student who didn't graduate or who graduated With a degree that turned out to be not particularly valuable.
So what's going to happen is, well, the fact that you're becoming discredited and rejected and become spurned or scorned in the academic community, that's going to start spreading around your students, or the students, right?
And so what's going to happen is, You're going to very quickly find out that, lo and behold, not so mysteriously, the students no longer want to take your courses.
And why do the students not want to take your courses?
Because they're perfectly aware that if they say, oh, I studied under Bob, people will go like, Bob?
I mean, really? Bob?
And then they're going to say, well, geez, maybe he's another one of these morally self-righteous nutjobs who demands people throw away their careers to appease their conscience while taking the same money that they criticize other people for taking.
And so your degree, the years and years of labor and poverty that you endured, your thesis, because it's been poisoned by the lack of credibility of your advisor, nobody's going to want to take your courses anymore, right?
And who can blame them, right?
I mean, from a purely pragmatic standpoint.
I mean, they're not doing it for charity, they're doing it because they want a good job at the end of it, right?
So, you're in this situation now where, gee, you're not getting paid...
Sorry, you're not getting anything published.
You're not getting asked to speak at any conferences.
When you go to conferences, people just avoid you, don't talk about you.
You're kept out of the loop.
You're dropped from email lists.
So you're not getting published, you're not going to conferences, not getting your sabbaticals, and nobody's showing up for your classes anymore.
And so you're just not able to sell yourself in this market, and you're gonna lose your job, right?
And then what are you gonna do?
I mean, even with tenure, if nobody's showing up for your classes and you can't get anything published, you're gonna lose your job, right?
And the unions cannot protect you, because everybody is annoyed by you, right?
For speaking the unspeakable, right?
That we sit on blood money, right?
I mean, this is why I know DROs work.
This is why I know that exclusion works.
Because we can see it in the very conformity of those who claim that DROs won't work.
So then what happens? Well, you're 45, or maybe 50, and you just don't have any skills other than academics, right?
So what are you going to do? Are you going to go and become some consultant at a think tank?
Well, that's very likely going to be government money, which is exactly the criticism of which is exactly what got you in on this, and how's that going to feel, right?
When you have blown your whole career for saying to someone, you need to quit this job or I'm not going to be friends with you anymore, then you end up having to take a job with one of these organizations that's state-funded anyway.
How's that going to feel, huh?
Not too good, I'm going to tell you.
And then, of course, everybody's going to laugh.
And that's going to torture you, right?
Everyone's going to chortle, and they're going to say, ah, well, yeah, Bob, all high and mighty about not taking government money now.
He's working for this government think tank, or quasi-government think tank.
Right? And you're going to serve as an object lesson for bringing ethics into your relationships.
I may tell you, I wouldn't do it.
Wouldn't do any good.
And would simply destroy my life.
I mean, it's sort of very...
Shallow yet not shallow way.
I mean, what are you going to do?
Going to go and work for a brokerage company as an economic analyst with a PhD?
Well, they're going to call for references and they're going to say, well, he just has weird emotional problems.
I can't really say anything about him.
He's a smart guy, but emotionally volatile and highly critical and nobody likes him.
So, what are they going to do?
Hire some 45-year-old PhD with a chip on his shoulder to do a junior analyst work?
Thanks, but no thanks, right? And your kids need braces, and your house has its mortgage payments, so you're going to move...
I mean, what a disaster, right?
What a complete disaster, and for what?
The system hasn't changed a damn thing.
You've just been ejected.
So, When these people say, they criticize the institution, not the individuals, right?
as if the institution exists without the individuals.
So this is how beautifully self-sealing the entire environment is, right?
I mean, it's really, really magical.
This is how I know that anarchism is going to work, without a shadow of a doubt.
And I got this latter part of the discussion here, I got from the book, where he's got examples of ways in which things work or don't work.
They're little sort of vignettes scattered throughout the book.
And at one point he talks about, I think it's Shell, the company Shell.
One of the biggest problems in the third world is Lung infections caused by toxic levels of smoke exposure.
These people cook inside with these stoves that produce so much smoke.
It's like 60 times the recommended amount of smoke inside, and they have these horrible smoke inhalation problems, and they die from these kinds of things.
And this kills like 1.1 million people throughout the Third World every year, and it's completely catastrophic.
And, of course, the planners versus the searchers, basically it's free market versus searchers of the free market, the planners of these status intellectuals and bureaucrats, that this problem has attempted to be solved by the planners who buy these smokeless stoves and hand them out, but people don't find them that useful because there's no feedback for bureaucrats, right?
They just do what they want. People live with it or they don't.
There's no feedback in the way that there is with the market or any voluntary interaction.
And he says, well, this shell, a private charity came up with a solution with the stoves after consulting with people and it works and this and that and the other.
And they've done a huge amount to deal with or solve.
Or at least address these problems.
And then, of course, he says, well, of course, I mean, we absolutely need, we can't replace government funding or foreign aid programs with private charities, but this is encouraging as a, you know, adjunct to government programs, right?
Which, of course, is a completely counterintuitive I mean, you say, well, he spent a quarter of the book talking about how government programs don't work at all, and then he talks about a private program that works, which of course would lead one to the conclusion that at least the question should be open as to whether or not foreign aid programs should be ditched in favor of private solutions, because of course foreign aid programs crowd out private solutions, right?
Just as welfare crowds out friendly societies and other kinds of associative charities.
So, of course, it's completely counter-intuitive, and his own example is counter-logical.
It's completely insane, right?
It's like saying, arsenic kills people when it's put in the water supply, and removing it makes them healthier.
So, of course, we should put it into the water supply.
This is completely counter-logical, right?
But he can say that because that's one of these assumptions that is just taken as a given, right?
Any objective third party, who wasn't inculcated with this kind of nonsense, would say.
What are you talking about? You've just proved the exact opposite case.
How can you just blithely say, oh yes, well then of course we can't get rid of government programs.
There are no substitute for government programs, which you've just proven are counterproductive, to say the least.
Result in the deaths of millions and the enslavement of billions, almost.
But, because that is the dominant ideology, he can say that and get away with it, right?
And this stuff is just crippling to people's creativity and thinking.
But, of course, he doesn't want to even go that direction, right?
Even close to that direction.
So if he says, Well, these programs should be abolished, even if just on practical terms.
They're destructive to the poor and so on, right?
They should be abolished because they do the exact opposite of help the poor.
Well, what's he gonna say to his friends?
Right? His friends at the World Bank when he says, look, what you're doing is counterproductive and just plain evil.
What is he gonna say to his friends?
When he says that. His friends are going to say, so you're saying what I'm doing is counterproductive and corrupt and evil and destructive?
He says, yeah, well, that's the same thing.
He's back to square one. So he's saying I should quit my job.
And it becomes a conflict. So of course he has to, or at least he wants to, claim that these things don't work.
But then he says, of course, like everyone else, the Mafia is evil, so we should reform the Mafia.
The Mafia hasn't worked with countless approaches.
Countless different approaches, countless different people.
These programs have not worked for the past 50 years.
So we should, of course, reform them, right?
Intellectuals can't say abolish when they're being paid to be part of this system.
It puts them in direct moral and practical conflict with other people.
That doesn't work too well for your average intellectual, right?
Well, for any intellectual.
So, I'm gonna open up on these people.
Not because I don't have sympathy for the mess that they've gotten themselves into, but it's just time.
I mean, yeah, I'll piss them off and this and that and the other, but...
They can handle a few broad signs.
I mean, they've got tenure.
I sure as hell don't have tenure.
What do I have tenure? I have tenure for, like, if people continue to like my podcast, they'll give me money voluntarily.
I have the complete opposite of tenure, so it's okay for me to blast at these people a little bit.
But let me know what you think. And thank you so much for listening, as always.
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