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May 13, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:18:50
1066 Everyday Anarchy - The Conference Call Part 3
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Alright, so, yeah, sorry, this is just a...
This will not be long.
I'm going to bed shortly, but I just wanted to finish up the thoughts that we were talking about earlier.
So I'm just going to run through the last conversation really quick.
And now we can continue with the idea that...
Yes?
Could Warger mute?
Oh yeah, sorry, if you're not talking, if you could just click on the mute, that would be great.
And, yeah, so I don't know if people have read, everyone in the call has read Everyday Anarchy or not, but it's the first book that has flown like a crop duster over the collective mental wheat of the free debate radio community, and that, of course, has nothing to do with any limitations of the intelligence of the people in the conversation, because...
You're all brilliant, and so that's not the issue, but something is, right?
And one of the things that we were talking about earlier was that one of the approaches that I took in Everyday Anarchy was to have entirely self-contained arguments.
So, for example, there was this guy who was just in the chat window who was talking about, well, is it evil to redistribute If socialists believe that it is evil for there to be unequal distributions of property in society, then how can we respond to that argument without bringing in anything other than his own premises?
And he was playing devil's advocate, I understand, but the approach, if you saw in the chat window that I took, was to say, well, since property is control over goods...
And the inequality of goods ownership or control over goods is considered to be bad.
The only way you can solve that is to have a super property owner called the state who shuffles things around to equal them up.
But if inequality of property control or ownership is bad, then how does creating the very largest inequality of property ownership or control called the state solve that problem?
Because you're defining if something is evil...
And then creating an excess of evil in the hopes of producing a good, and that can't work.
And that's the kind of argument that I'm really starting to work with, with people that I talk to.
And that was really the core of everyday anarchy.
And that has flown by at least most of the people that we've talked to.
And I think that it's easy to see how effective that is, if that makes sense.
But I think that it's causing some anxiety in the community, I guess, would be sort of my thought.
And I think people are giving the book to other people, which is nice, and firing the book at other people, but...
I think it's like, okay, it's really, really hot, so I'm going to have somebody else hold it, so to speak.
And I think that that's not particularly helpful in the long run, I guess, if that makes sense.
And sorry, we have somebody who's not muted.
If you're not talking, if you could not mute, just click on the little...
Down on the bottom left of Skype, there's a little pause button, two vertical bars just to the right of that.
There's a microphone with a slash through it, if you could.
Please click on that.
That would be great. Thank you.
Unless you're talking. So that was the thought, and there's a chat window up.
If you have something that you want to say, just let me know.
So, these are just very efficient ways of bringing...
I'm really interested in this idea that we can teach without learning.
And that's something...
I just talked about that in the chat window briefly, but...
It's the idea that we can teach other people about the falsehoods of their beliefs without learning anything.
I mean you should be able to teach someone about anarchy without knowing anything about anarchy because since – for the last couple of years, I've been working on these arguments from morality rather than arguments from effect.
And as you saw on the – if you saw the Robber Baron video or listened to the podcast, there's a way of teaching people about – and that's actually teaching people to think rather than giving them answers because libertarians are notorious for being god-awful lecturers and fact mavens. there's a way of teaching people about – and that's Notorious for being, you know, god-awful lecturers and fact mavens.
And to me, I just don't know that the transfer of information and of historical facts and of, you know, Mesian or Austrian economic theories...
I don't know that that's going to do a damn thing to set anyone free.
And I think that the argument can be well made that it's quite the opposite of setting people free.
So I guess I've been really working lately on the idea of how is it that we can really get people to think for themselves rather than give them answers.
And that is a real challenge.
And I think that is something that is tough for the community.
Like I'm always trying to do these...
I'm always trying to keep my ear to the ground, you know, like those Native Americans who would listen for horse feet or horse hooves on the trail and so they could listen to a train track and know if a train was within 40 miles or something.
I'm always sort of trying to listen to the community and try and figure out how things are landing or where things are going and My books have mostly landed with a big splash, and this one kind of went like a straight javelin from a great height into a deep pond and left fairly a ripple, which was unusual.
And I think it's because of this idea that we can teach without learning beforehand, without learning all the facts beforehand, but we can teach people how to think just by asking questions, just by pointing out contradictions with no reference to historical facts.
So that's what we were talking about earlier, and we just got interrupted because I went out.
So that's sort of where things are going, and I think it causes people some anxiety, but that was sort of the thought that was floating around, if anybody wants to comment on that.
Well, sure. I'm curious.
I asked sort of this question in the first call, and I think the question's still lingering.
What does it mean for our relationships to ourselves, first and foremost, if we accept the contents of everyday anarchy?
Because that seems to be what we're avoiding.
Does that question make sense?
It does. I mentioned, as a possibility in the first call, If it has something to do with our ecosystems, if we're not allowing anarchy in our ecosystems, or does it mean something with regards to basically deeper than just the fact that we might have to debate more,
or not have to debate more, but that debates might go more quickly, so we can debate more people within given amounts of time, if that makes sense, if it's deeper than that.
I think it is. I think it is because if that were the case, there would be – it would not be unconscious, right?
Like the way that this book was avoided in a sense – and I don't mean avoided in terms of people saying, ooh, good book or this could be improved or whatever.
But the content of the book was really glossed over and it really had a kind of family feel to it.
Like a dysfunctional family feel to it, if that kind of makes sense.
You know how when you bring stuff up in a dysfunctional family, people are just like, oh, that's interesting.
And then it just kind of vanishes and never returns.
And that was sort of the content that sort of passed along.
So I think it is pretty deep.
And I think that it is...
I was thinking about this a little earlier, and this is going to sound kind of weird, but this is sort of what I was thinking.
I don't know if it makes any sense. But I think that this book takes some real love for humanity to bring these types of...
Teaching without learning arguments to people, it takes some real love for humanity.
Because you can't lose with these arguments.
You just can't lose.
Whereas with libertarian arguments, with the look-up arguments, the historical facts arguments, and even things like UBB, which is really complicated and really challenging, with these arguments, you simply can't lose.
And I think that's kind of stressful in a way.
So in a sense, the arguments from a fact and really complex moral arguments are sort of designed for – not intentionally or not consciously, but they're sort of designed as a kind of – They're intended to produce defeat.
Right? So that it sort of validates a kind of preconceived notion about the capacity for humanity to understand this stuff or to maintain some sort of resentment toward humanity?
I'm sorry, there was too much packed into that.
If you could just try taking another run, I couldn't quite follow the thought.
Or which thought?
Alright, so if I spend all my time failing to convince people using huge, complex arguments from effect or really difficult economic theories or long-drawn-out historical examples, And I keep doing that, and I keep doing that.
It must be the case that I actually want to fail, right?
Well, I don't know that you want to...
I wouldn't say necessarily that you want to fail.
It's just that, you know, like somebody who's addicted to heroin doesn't want to get sick from being on heroin.
They just find the alternative worse in the short run, right, of quitting.
So I don't think it's true that people are involved in FDR. I mean, I'm sure there are some, right?
I don't think that people are involved in FDR are a philosophy because they want to be rejected by society and continue to beat their heads.
I mean, some people, yes, to beat their heads against the wall of indifferent, popular, propagandized opinion, right?
I mean, there are a few people, but I don't think that's the majority.
So I think it's that people do want to have these amazingly watertight arguments.
I think it can be very easily done.
And since the social contract myth, the idea that you owe the government allegiance or you can leave the country because you stay at the country, therefore you're subjecting yourself voluntarily to the government through a social contract, that is the biggest barrier to statelessness, to an argument for a free society.
And if you can overturn it in a couple of minutes, using only the premises that the person who advocates the social contract brings to the table, what does that mean?
I mean, what does that mean emotionally?
It's not that people want to not succeed in this quest, right?
I mean, nobody who's been around here for more than 20 minutes is, you know, sitting there going like, man, you know, I'm really happy to sacrifice a lot of, quote, friendships and maybe even some of my personal familial relations and my chances of finding a compatible partner and enjoying popular culture and, you know, I'm going to give up all of that and, dear God, I hope I fail too.
Right. I mean, that would just be masochistic, right?
Right. Well, it's certainly not...
I wouldn't suggest that it's conscious.
Even if it was unconscious, if it was a group of masochists, we wouldn't have as much fun.
Right. That's true. That's true.
But libertarians as a whole, though, engage in that a lot, I would say.
The The big L folks.
Well, for sure. And we know that because every time they come past FDR and we try to pry their hands off the illusionary...
We'll have the state and put it on their own personal lives.
They hit the eject button, right?
Yeah. Bunch of cultists.
Bunch of cultists. I'm going to another Ron Paul rally.
Right? So that for sure is the case, but not the people who are involved in this conversation.
At least not who stuck around and who are going through the grueling task of examining their personal relations, their relations with themselves, with their histories, and so on.
Those people aren't going through all of that net negative philosophy with the hope or with the goal of failing to convince anyone as well.
Well, could it also mean that...
Oh, I thought you were going to say, well, I am.
Can I just dispute that one, Steph?
Because, man, it gives me the shit...
I just have to be the difficult one.
Could it be, with regards to this watertight argument, could it be a sense of fear that if this argument doesn't work, nothing will?
Because if the arguments from effect don't work, then there's a sense of, oh, I just didn't give them the right facts, I didn't Give a compelling enough argument, but if this doesn't work on someone, nothing will work on someone.
You lose the illusion of control over the debate.
Which, you mean, and you're right, it's an illusion.
You can't control the debate.
Right. I mean, when I'm excited, I can barely control my bladder, let alone somebody else's thinking and reasoning processes.
Well, because to say, you know, if someone goes away from a debate with you not convinced to say, well, maybe I didn't have the right facts, or maybe I didn't use the right arguments, or maybe I didn't take the right approach, or maybe it's all about you, right? Right.
Right. And if we don't bring anything to the debate other than an analysis of what the other person is saying...
So when this guy came in, devil's advocating the socialist position, I did not argue for him the validity of property rights, because that wasn't what he brought to the conversation.
Right, just an analytical approach to his argument.
Yeah, I'm really hoping down the road, as I sort of work to get better at this, that people can have a debate with me for an hour and have no idea what my positions are.
Well, that would be interesting.
Yeah, I mean, that's the goal, right?
For me. Because what I want is for people to think, not to learn what my opinions are.
I mean, okay, I'm saying this at Podcast 12 Million, but from now on, you know what I'm really hoping?
But I've never really tried for people to be interested in my opinions, or where I have said they're my opinions, I say, they're my opinions, don't mean anything, right?
But... But that's the goal, is to turn ourselves into a mirror, right?
Not into, you know, somebody who's shaven head and bedsheeted at the airport pressing flowers and pamphlets into people's hands, right?
Right. I've kind of been thinking about what you said about this being really emotionally volatile because...
You know, what we're going to do now is more ask people to think for themselves or that kind of thing.
It sort of shows to themselves how rarely they do that and how unfamiliar it is.
I think that's true.
And they probably don't know that they're not thinking.
Mm-hmm. Oh dear, she's umming me.
Did your mom used to say that to you too?
Go on.
Well, yeah, I mean, I just think like with the sort of more complicated UPB arguments, like people's false selves can sort of see it coming and they can debate my new show with you.
like we've been seeing a lot on the boards, and, you know, that sort of debate can end up just being kind of frustrating and boring, but...
When they can't even do that, then you might get to see a real ugliness in people.
I think that we will.
I think that we will see a real ugliness in people.
But we already have, right?
More ugliness? Sorry.
Sorry, go ahead. Just what I meant by that was that all you did was put out one little five-minute snippet from the book of the anarchy argument, and look what happened, right?
You got all kinds of ugliness there.
Well, sure. I mean, that certainly is true, and it certainly is also true that that was pretty much the root of the Ron Paul thing, too, right?
Because I wasn't arguing against Ron Paul.
I was taking the premises of political action and saying, here's where they conflict.
Here's where they're contradictory.
Right. Right.
I wonder... I wonder for, you know, in our own case, if this is maybe has something to do with...
I don't know, I'm just grasping at straws here, but I mean, implications for things like free will, right?
Because if you have an argument that is literally – I mean literally airtight to the point of – I mean the next step down would just be axiomatic, right?
And people are still rejecting it, right?
I mean...
I mean, that's a pretty powerful statement, right?
Because on the one hand you're saying it takes some real love for humanity to do this, but then on the other, you know, to do this and to be continuously faced with anything but that love in return, right? That's pretty...
That's pretty ugly. Well, but, I mean, that's like saying that, you know, if your child is on the other side of ten hissing snakes, right, that it's like, well, I don't love my kid that much, right?
I mean, that's not what we would say, right?
What we would say is...
I can make more. Right.
I have the test tubes.
I have the test tubes.
I have the electricity.
And I have a Bible.
But what we would say is that if a man braves ten hissing cobras to save his child, that we know that his love for his child is very great, right?
Sure, sure. Whereas, I mean, let's say wife rather than child.
Whereas if someone's like... You know, it's a couple of flights of stairs to rescue her.
There aren't any snakes, but I don't know.
I'm a little hot and I don't really feel like climbing, right?
Right. Then we would say that's a typical marriage.
I know. So then we would say that the love is measured to some degree by the obstacles that we're overcome, right?
Okay, sure, sure, sure.
And so that's what I mean.
If this approach, right, and I was making a list the other days of the ways in which everyday anarchy is different from other books and works that I've done, including podcasts, but if the book is going to provoke more ugliness, then we're going to need more love to go that way, right?
And not love for those who attack us, right?
But love for those we can get through too, right?
Oh, okay. It's like, I mean, how many YouTube slow peas on my forehead do I have to take in order to get one guy give me a smile, right?
Right, right.
At what point is the minefield not worth it anymore?
Well, the minefield is always worth it for me, right?
Because I just, I mean, it's like, to me, it's just wade through the shit to get to the silver, right?
Sure, sure, sure.
You know that what's ever in that bag at the beginning of the first Indiana Jones film is valuable because he's willing to go the poison darts, the big rolling testicle thing and all that, right?
I mean, it's worth it, right?
Yeah, yeah. Well, in his mind, it's worth it for sure.
Right. And in this case, I mean, what are the options?
I mean, either we surrender the world to all the crazy-ass bad people, you know, or we just say, okay, well, like every encyclopedia salesman has to make a thousand calls to get, you know, 20 visits to get one sale, right?
Don't use that metaphor.
Yeah, right, right. No, that's true, right?
That's like a fact of sales, right?
I mean, 10,000 people hit the site and hopefully from that you get a hundred of them to stick around and enjoy it and subscribe, right?
Right, right, for sure.
You have to really love, right, especially because this is an unpaid position, right?
So you have to love the people that you finally get through to enough to go past the ten or a hundred or a thousand hissing snakes, right?
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
So, do you think a lot of the resistance to the book comes from the fact that we realize it's kind of saying, you know, how serious are you?
Well, before we get to that, because it's really sweet of Colleen to try and move me along to the actual point.
Highly optimistic, I could certainly say that.
If not, downright.
So cute. Sorry?
Sorry? Well, I was just going to say that that's certainly been a question mark in my mind as well.
Well, and the different thing with the Everyday Anarchy book compared to everything else is that there's no positive prescription, right?
What do you mean by that?
There's no positive prescription, right?
I mean, there's 500 positive prescriptions in OnTruth, 10,000 of them in UPB, 50,000 of them in RTR, and zero in Everyday Anarchy, right?
Oh, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I see what you're saying. Yeah, yeah.
So, it is a work with greater, and I use the word loosely, with greater faith in humanity.
See what people are willing to actually sort of step up and do on their own.
Well, it's the idea that if you have healthy food in the house and you have junk food in the house and you take the junk food out of the house, people aren't going to start eating cushions and wall plaster, right?
Right. That's not the theory, right?
The theory is they eat the healthy food, right?
Right, right. And so the idea is that this is the first book that's pointed out of the community, right?
This is the first book designed for general consumption, pointed out of the community.
And has no positive prescriptions.
Because when you point a book out of this community, right?
Because you had to have some podcasts or some exposure to FDR with the previous books, not with this book.
The idea... Is that if you pull down people's illusions, what's behind them is the truth, right?
Right. But that's not true for most people.
What's true for most people is that when you pull down their illusions...
There's nothing back there.
There's nothing there, right?
Yeah. That's true.
That's true. Both intellectually and psychologically.
Yeah, and we know that, because we've seen it a whole bunch of times.
So we know what's going to happen when we pull down these illusions with people without an agenda of our own, right?
And that's what the Everyday Iron Key thing is about, right?
It's like, I'm not going to tell you what's true.
I sure as hell am I going to tell you what's not true, though, right?
Right? Right.
And then you leave it up to them to decide what to do with that information.
Well, I think that's entirely too optimistic.
I don't think that people will, quote, decide what to do with that information.
Because I'm actually not providing any information in the book.
Oh yeah, that's right. You're right.
That's exactly right. No historical examples, no prior arguments, no...
And no sort of, well, here's how the roads will be built, right?
Right. Right.
And no future prescriptions, right?
Right. There is no God has to occur before UPB, right?
And there's 300 years of agony between there is no God and UPB, right?
Yeah. Because there is no God does not create UPB. It just gets rid of the illusion of the deity, right?
Right. Right.
And then we wallow through a 20th century full of nihilism.
Right, right. And, you know, then, again, this is all putting me as a ridiculous bookend to the Enlightenment, but what the hell, right?
It's like, what the fuck, right?
I mean, let's just be ridiculous about it.
But those are the facts, that if you simply pull down people's illusions, most people will get enraged, right?
Right, because you're taking away the handrails.
Well, and isn't this what we've all experienced, those of us who have gone down this road?
Isn't this what we've experienced with our families?
Isn't everyday anarchy the closest thing?
Because we never got to the positive prescriptions with our families, right?
Those who did the untrue thing with their families, talk about ethics, their history, and so on, right?
Yeah, it was just a constant process of tearing down.
Well, and being ejected.
And we never got very far in the tearing down thing, right?
Right. And we never got to, okay, so that family situation or that family structure or that family machine doesn't work.
And we all agree on that, yes.
We all agree. So now, how can we build one that does work?
Because we never even got to any kind of agreement that the family doesn't work.
It's like, this family works fine.
You're broken, right?
Right. Right.
Right. And...
And even beyond the particular, I mean, there's just...
I mean, until you can get past the particular, there's really no way you could even suggest a generalized example for that, right?
A replacement for...
Hold on, sorry, just one second.
Just grab a drink. I'm claiming to bookend the Enlightenment.
A truly intelligent man would actually put his drinks in range of his headphone cord.
But that's another question entirely.
So, yeah, so I think that this non-positive prescription book is just – it's hard for people.
Thank you.
I think it takes a higher degree of self-esteem to not bring a solution to a debate.
Or, to put it in a better way, it takes a greater capacity to stand in the face of somebody else's anxiety and not alleviate it.
I think I would agree with that.
Because if you go through the everyday anarchy thing and you say, well, democracy doesn't work and political action won't solve the problem, what happens is people freak out.
And you can see a lot of that just going through the Ron Paul thing, right?
People are like, oh, so basically we're fucked and we just got to sit around talking philosophy until we're dragged after the gulags, right?
Right, that's exactly how they would respond.
And so saying, look, and there's a guy who had a quote, he hasn't been around for a while, he says, the fact that I don't have an answer to these problems does not mean that your illusory answer is any more accurate, right?
Right. So when we say stuff like, democracy is false and corrupt, and we refuse to give a solution...
Or we refrain from giving a solution.
Because what always happens is we say democracy is false and corrupt and people say, oh yeah, well, you know, society can't function without a government because we need law courts.
And we'll say, well, but there are these DROs and then we end up talking about DROs, right?
Well, this is exactly the problem that I was running into with the philosophy club that I was involved in in Chicago, is every time I would bring this stuff up and point out the inconsistencies and point out the logical flaws, these guys would all agree with me, but then they would demand an answer, right?
Or say, well, you know, hey, it may not be the best tasting food, but it's the only food, and is your alternative that we starve to death?
Right. That's the argument, right?
The Winston Churchill phrase.
The worst but everything else, yeah.
Yeah. Right.
Exactly. Whereas I think that what we most want to sink our joyful little anarchist teeth into is the people who are comfortable with I don't know.
Or, not comfortable, nobody's comfortable with I don't know, but who can handle it, right?
Right, willing to actually sit with that and not attack it or run screaming from it.
Right, because the people who demand an answer are not demanding an answer, they're avoiding anxiety.
And the fundamental anxiety is not lacking an answer, but lacking the capacity to think.
Well, what I got out of everyday anarchy was, you weren't imposing your views, you were just merely suggesting a different way of looking at your life.
Like, in your personal life, it's basically anarchy, and you would oppose any kind of Authoritarian type, you know, rule coming into your personal life.
The thing is with people is if they accept that, then they look for answers right away because the tradition, religion, the state kind of provides them those answers even if they're wrong.
You know, they want an immediate replacement for those answers.
Then you're always posed with the question, okay, what are your answers?
Right, right. Sorry, go ahead.
I was just going to say, we're conditioned to believe that being without an answer is a bad thing, and so you take away their answers, and they get anxious, and that's why they demand replacements, right? Right, and it's a lot easier to debate...
How jails will work in an anarchistic society than it is to accept the ambivalence that we both love and fear.
Anarchy. Because out of that complex soup of ambivalence comes real creative thought, right?
The tension between two opposites is where real creativity comes from, right?
I mean, a lot of the early astronomers were motivated by a desire to find The truth about the universe because they believed in God and they wanted to prove how God's work was mathematically consistent in this and that and the other.
And they were bothered by the Ptolemaic system because it required so many circles within circles to explain all this nonsense, right?
So it was out of a desire to prove the glory of God that they ended up doing things like figuring out the sun-centered solar system and all that kind of stuff, right?
So it is ambivalence.
It's like, well, it's got to make sense rationally because God would want it that way.
But of course, God is completely irrational, so there's ambivalence.
But that drives a lot of human progress.
And a denial of ambivalence, where people just think they have the answers, is always associated with endless stagnation, or virtually endless stagnation in human thought.
Sorry, I sounded like I was finished.
But if we vault people over this ambivalence, if we vault people over the anxiety of recognizing not just that they don't have answers, but that they've been lied to about these answers, that's the really volatile thing that's at the root of this, right because if if i believe all these things are true and then five minutes thought with no outside examples can prove to me that it's simply not true
that democracy is virtuous that the social contract is valid that anarchy can never work that violence is both evil and a good simultane if we can say to people look within a few minutes i can prove this to you with no with access to nothing other than what's already in your head then they have to recognize or they will emotionally recognize that they've been lied to by everyone around them right
that's the same nihilistic rage as uh someone who um deconverts from uh christianity typically too I think it's a good thing.
Yeah, because they get that they've been lied to, right?
Right, exactly.
Exactly. And I don't know how to get the gold without going through that nihilism.
Not the gold in each individual, but the gold of the individuals out there who can handle this.
I'm sorry, you were going to say... I was going to say, how do you convince somebody that it's okay not to have all the answers?
I mean, how many of us have talked to people about anarchy and even kind of lured them in and kind of saw the logic and reason behind it?
Right? And then they demand those answers because they go, well, okay, you got a point, but then what would you recommend?
And if you say, well, you can never really know until the day actually comes, then they go, well, maybe you ought to go rethink your philosophy because you don't have a strong position.
Well, me, I do have a strong position, but then I can't jam that down people's throats either because that's That's almost, you know, pointless, because it will drive them away.
Well, but see, and this is the third idea in everyday anarchy that nobody's commented on, right?
Which is that if I say to somebody, there should be no government, and they say, well, how would this work, and how would that work, and how would the other thing work?
The answer that I give in everyday anarchy is, if I could answer that, there should be a government, right?
If I could answer how everything should be organized, I should be the dictator.
The whole point is, it's impossible to answer how everything should be organized.
Because that is making decisions for society as a whole.
It's like saying, we should have a free market and then saying, well, what would the advertising budget of Coke be?
And how would this truck be delivered?
And how would that price work?
And how would this be made?
And you'd say, well, this doesn't matter.
The whole point is that the free market will figure this stuff out.
If I continue to give you answers as to how it's going to work, I am actually reinforcing the idea of statism and not of anarchy.
No, that's true. That's true.
I mean, that's basically what the free market is.
It organizes itself on the individual level, but I think some people are kind of afraid of that, even though they actually do that in their personal lives.
They're just kind of afraid to take it one step further.
Right. I mean, one of the central points of what Mises and other Austrian economists have talked about is that nobody is intelligent enough It's a spontaneous order.
Right. Right. And the more – I mean I'm not saying that we should never give any answers and ask people to sail off into the – just jump off the earth blindfolded and don't worry.
The angels of anarchy will carry you off to paradise, right?
But – I do remember this problem of – oh, sorry.
Go ahead. Well, I was just going to say that – And that's, again, there's a lot in everyday anarchy that people aren't commenting on, right?
And it has to do with rejecting answers, and I think that makes the community as a whole anxious, right?
But, I'm sorry, Greg, were you going to say?
Well, I was going to say, I do remember a while back getting into this problem of debating anarchy with people as though it were a system, right?
Mm-hmm. And kind of realizing that it's not a system.
If it were a system, then like you say, then arguing against the government is kind of ridiculous because all we're doing is just arguing one system versus another and not really dealing with fundamental principles, right? First principles. Right.
And it's like if you were to be a communist and you were to, you know, before the free market comes into a communist system and you were to say, well, what is the price of wheat going to be?
If someone were to answer that, that would be an argument for communism, right?
Right. Right.
If they thought they could answer it accurately and effectively, yeah.
Well, even if they could answer it accurately and effectively, then for sure it would be an argument for communism, right?
Right. But the whole point is it's completely impossible to answer that accurately and effectively.
And that's the whole point of the free market is that nobody can figure out what the price of anything is going to be.
That's why you absolutely need a free market because otherwise you're asking for the impossible which is for people to understand how goods should be allocated based on shifting demand and a whole bunch of things that they just don't know.
And so this is why I didn't want to give answers in the book because it's like – and I sort of talk about this in the book that To be asked to describe how an anarchistic society would be run is a very subtle trick to put you in the position of dictator.
Right. I was going to say, I think Greg brought up a good point.
It's people think that when we talk about anarchy, we're talking about another government, exactly as he said, a system, which they perceive as a system, a political system as a government to them, right?
So they think we want to replace it with a different government, and that's not the case.
Right. We have one machine for producing roads at the moment.
How would your machine produce roads?
Yeah, this is the exact same problem as, again, with the theism, where you get stuck, trapped in the problem of burden of proof with them all the time, right?
Right, it's the same thing exactly.
And what we're saying is, yes, we have a machine that produces roads at the moment, but it's an evil machine that feeds on the blood of human beings, right?
We don't have a machine that produces roads.
We don't. Anymore, we say, well, we have a Politburo in the Soviet Union that determines the price of wheat.
What Politburo in your system determines the price of wheat?
There is no Politburo that determines the price of wheat.
Right. And Greg, you bring up a good point about the burden of truth in theism debates, because in this, it's almost like we're going from the argument of, well, We don't know how DROs would do this.
And now with everyday anarchy, it's like the strong atheism proofs that God is a logical contradiction.
It's like bringing those to bear on an argument, and that gets a lot more volatile than just saying, the burden of proof is on you.
Right, right.
That's a good point. This book makes it so that you can't be politically agnostic anymore.
Right, right. I think it's interesting that like this book presents sort of, I mean, we're presenting the system, the political system of anarchy this way while simultaneously creating anarchy with the self, like because we're not providing answers.
So it really just launches people that much more directly into it, if that makes any sense.
Into what? Into anarchy, because by not providing them the answers, they're sort of experiencing the anarchy of the mind that we talk about with the ambivalence series.
Right, right. That's a good point.
I'm sorry, go ahead. I was going to say, when people bring up arguments about providing the services, the so-called public goods that the state provides...
I mean, I say, well, if the people deem it absolutely necessary to have something, you know, for everybody, then doesn't it make sense that the people provide themselves with that?
I mean, how can you force somebody to want something they already want, I guess?
Right, but that still is sort of around giving an answer, right?
And you could have, you know, when people sort of, and I've done this obviously tons of times, and I'm still just sort of mulling it over as a new approach, but just to say, well, it doesn't matter how national defense is provided in a free society.
It doesn't matter at all.
It does matter that there's a normative contradiction When someone says, I have to steal your property in order to protect your property.
That's not an answer for sure.
Now, I mean, when we get rid of that, we have at least gotten rid of a false and violent and evil answer, right?
And I don't know. It doesn't matter what's on the other side of that.
The first thing is that we understand that right now we're killing the patient, right?
Leaching kills the patient.
Now, you don't have to invent a cure for cancer in order to say, stop leaching the patient, right?
Right. You want to show them the current answer right now.
The current solution, so-called, is the wrong one.
The wrong prescription, so to say.
Right, right.
But it's the wrong prescription before we even apply it to the patient, right? Yeah, because once we apply it to the patient, it's an argument from effect, right?
But yeah, it's the wrong question.
It's like we're treating the patient's desk, right?
You know? And hurting the patient, right?
So, you just have to recognize that we're just not...
Like, that's a total unanswered.
If people can accept that the current, quote, answers are not answers, then what we hope...
It's that it will open up something in them which will allow them to think more, right?
That's why I say in the book, I don't want to give answers about anarchism because I don't want to cheat you of the incredible excitement that comes from not knowing the truth, but knowing that what you used to believe is not the truth.
There's a lot of instability in that.
Yes, there is a lot of instability in that, but isn't there a lot of fertility in that?
And not the bad kind, like when you've got a schnauzer on your leg, but the good kind.
Oh, sure.
If you – How do you put it? If you think you're already home, you're not going to keep driving, right?
Right. If you think all the answers are already – you think if all the problems – there's already answers for all the problems, then you're not going to bother working on it.
And there are a few people who love that excitement of the undiscovered country, right?
Right. Oh, right, right.
Exactly. I mean, we are the guys who would have strapped ourselves to the hull of the Pinta to try and get to the new world, right?
Absolutely. But most people, it creates a huge amount of anxiety, right?
Right, right.
Right, because most people are, you know...
I don't want to be an explorer.
I just want to stay here and...
garden, or whatever.
Well, but you see, those people we never meet.
Those aren't the people that we're scared of.
Hmm? We never meet those people.
I have never once met somebody...
Who says, I don't care how society is organized.
I just care about what's on TV tonight.
Right.
Because those people will never be around us or anyone, right?
Right.
They'll be home watching TV.
No, they'll be doing something in sports games or I don't know, wherever we're not, right?
That's where they'll be, right?
So those people who genuinely don't care, those people we're fine with.
I mean, it's like a duck hunter doesn't feel a competitor from a guy who likes his Wii, right?
Right. It's somebody else who's trying to bag the same duck that he's concerned about, right?
Right, right, right.
You're right about that. Sure.
So it's the people who come out and who believe that they have an answer and are, quote, certain of their answer and, of course, many times are hoping to make a career out of having this answer in the media or in academia or something like that.
Or politics. Yeah, or politics.
That's right. Or who at least want to have a, say, professional or business career or teaching career where they're not going to ruffle too many people's feathers, right?
Right, right, right.
Adopting the answers of the academes and the politicians as a success strategy.
Yeah, I mean, even, I mean, just being an anarchist businessman is tough enough, right?
It's like, hey, who are you for, Obama or Hillary?
Well, I'm actually for chalk outlines where they all should be, right?
So, that's a little tough to...
A little tough to slip that into the conversation without causing a big smoking hole where your credibility used to be, right?
Want to buy my software now?
Who are you phoning? Can I talk to them?
Actually, they do want to talk to you, sir.
They ask you to hold onto this phone and stay on the line for another 1.2 minutes.
Yeah, we don't do business with anybody who's got the FBI on speed dial.
Right. Well, at least they know you won't use coercion to get their business.
Right, right. Unless that's what they want, right?
So, it's tough.
And a lot of people want to avoid it, but there are those people, because, and this is, again, partly to do with what we were talking about last night, I mean, when the smoke clears, it's going to be us or them, right?
It's going to be the people, it's going to be us or the priests, it's going to be us or the academics, it's going to be us or the politicians, it's going to be us or the civil servants, it's going to be us or the military.
Yeah, yeah, that's absolutely right.
And I think they get it, right?
Because they're more hostile than we are.
And I think they get it.
Well, I shouldn't say we. I think they get it more than I get it.
I have to keep this on my list of podcasts to do.
It's like, you know, only one shall pass, right?
Only one shall be left standing, right?
And it's just that they get it, right?
Like, if we go to a free system where students pay teachers for the value and the joy and the excitement and the thrill and the learning that the teachers are providing, is Donnie with an egg going to get a job?
Is Conrad or David or all the other academic trolls who've come through, are they going to get jobs?
Probably not.
Definitely not. Definitely not.
Well, at least David's getting his income from a private organization.
You mean the Mises?
Yeah. Well, but it's religious, right?
Oh, yeah. I mean, he had to convert to Christianity to get that gig, right?
Yeah, that's pretty weird.
It's not weird at all.
I just can't understand how somebody can go back.
Well, but see, his alternative is to put out a podcast, right?
And keep asking people for money every day, right?
Sure, sure, sure.
Now, that's not easy if you're a vain human being, right?
It's not easy every day to take a deep breath and say, please send me some money.
I'd like some money. I'd like to eat.
Please send me some money. And to know that you can't control that, right?
Well, I mean, yeah, unless you could turn it into a moral obligation like preachers do, right?
Well, yeah, which of course would be the complete opposite of anything that I would want to do, right?
Right. Right.
No, that's absolutely correct.
And that's tough to do, too.
Sorry, he either accepts Jesus or steps up his game, right?
Right. And it's a whole lot easier to accept Jesus and get paid, right?
Well, for him, maybe.
I could never do that.
Yeah, for him. That's all I'm saying, right?
That's the big speech that Rudy has in The God of Atheists, right?
All the art students come forward with one proud voice to their final destination in a free society and say, would you like fries with that?
Yeah, exactly.
Right. But the dirty little secret behind that is that there are too many of them already in the first place because of state intervention.
Yeah, for sure. For sure.
Right.
But that's, I mean, that's an extremely difficult thing to do, though, is to do what you're doing because, I mean, you really have to have something to say, right?
You really have to have something to teach.
Oh, they have stuff to teach.
I mean, they have Austrian economics, they have stuff to teach and so on.
But, I mean, this is the funny thing, is that, I mean, this is going to sound petty and vicious, and it is.
So, I'm not even going to pretend that it's not.
But it's like, these fuckers with their worship of the free market, you know, you want to be on the free market, go do a podcast and quit your job.
Yeah. You know, if you're also fucking all fired up about the free market, then really throw yourself onto the free market, right?
You learn a lot more about the free market from trying to provide value that you don't even charge for, right?
I mean, the donation model is the ultimate free market experiment in the realm of ideas, right?
I'm not charging for any of it.
Pay me what you think it's worth.
Right. Especially in an environment where you had absolutely no idea whether anyone...
Well, in fact, actually, sort of the negative experience that anyone would find valuable, right?
Well, and when I quit, I was not making a living deal out of it, right?
So, I mean... But that's what keeps me sharp, right?
That's what keeps me creative.
Right.
And so that's what I find so funny, is that these free market theorists all run to statist or religious institutions, right?
Right.
Security over...
Yeah, it's like I don't actually want to be out there in the free market.
I'd rather talk about it.
That's an abstract good than live it in my own life.
And of course, when you bring the free market principles to bear on relationships...
People don't like you that so much either.
But that's sort of by the by.
But I think what we're going to get as we move out into that realm...
There is going to be a lot of hostility when we say, oh, I'm not going to give you any answers, but I'm going to tell you that's wrong, right?
Right. It's going to appear profoundly arrogant to them.
I don't think it's going to appear arrogant.
I mean, maybe it will.
But I think, you know, I don't know if you ever had this in math class.
Where the math teacher would say, let's say you're up on the board, right?
And you're putting up some answer and he says, no, that's not correct because of X, Y, and Z. And it's totally obvious when you see it, right?
But then he's not going to tell you what is correct.
I mean, how does that make most people feel?
That's a great metaphor. That's, yeah, that's hugely anxiety-provoking.
Right. It's like, I gotta stand in front of all these people and think, what?
What? And I just didn't notice this totally obvious thing?
It's gonna feel humiliating, right?
And, well, actually, that's interesting because that's exactly the experience I had with, around these conversations about this book.
Huh? Huh? Well, you keep coming up with these...
There's no second edition.
I'm not slipping stuff in later and saying, hey, I can't believe people didn't notice it.
Well, you keep coming up with these arguments that I totally glossed over, but not saying what they are, asking for someone to say what they are, and then you feel stupid standing at the blackboard going, um...
I don't know. Right, right.
But, I mean, you can handle that, right?
And, of course, I don't torture anyone because, I mean, it's an open-ended question that's, you know, what did you miss?
It's like, well, if I didn't miss it, this would be hard, right?
Tell me what you didn't see.
It's like, well, if you saw it and I didn't, why don't you just stop fucking around?
Anyway. Stop playing these games.
But if you get to, I don't know, grade 10 or grade 11 math...
And you've had shitty teachers who just kind of socially upgraded you or whatever.
It was social promotion. And then you get some teacher who is saying, I don't care if you're going to become a mathematician or not, but you're going to learn how to think, at least numerically in this class, right?
Then what's going to happen is you come in there all cocky because you've been socially promoted and you think you know what's going on.
And then you're up on the board and all the stuff you thought was true just turns out to be complete nonsense, right?
And you're going to feel exposed and embarrassed and humiliated that people are laughing at you.
And the teacher's not laughing at you.
I mean, he's looking at you with, you know, concern, you know, whatever, right?
But he puts you in that position and your first impulse, right?
And this is all talked about in RTR for those who don't know.
But your first impulse is going to be lash out at who?
At him? Yeah, the teacher, right?
Not at all your previous teachers who screwed you over by not teaching you anything, or who told you you knew math and didn't, right?
Sorry? Right, because they're not there anymore.
Yeah, the person who is making you feel bad is the person you're going to get angry, and that's the buckshot that we're going to take straight to the nads, right?
And nadettes.
Sorry, I don't want to be gender specifically.
That's right.
And that's probably what we're having a tough time handling conceptually.
Thank you.
That was it for my thought.
Now, if the guy doesn't know what the answer is and we say, well, that's not correct.
Let me write the answer out for you.
He's like, right?
side.
Right, exactly. But he hasn't learned anything.
He's learned, actually, you know what he has learned?
He's learned that if I exhibit enough anxiety, somebody's going to give me the answer.
That's right. We're actually training them to be the opposite of philosophers when we do that.
Right. We train people how to treat us.
We train people, oh, okay, well, if I make this philosopher feel anxious, he'll just give me the answer and I'll feel smarter.
Right. And I think I've obviously been doing some of that, which is not good.
I mean, I think it's fine.
But I think that's another reason why EA came as a bit of a surprise.
And people were like, yeah, that's great.
I'll send it to people. Yeah, it's nicely written.
It's a good little book, I guess.
Yeah, nothing new. But it's good.
Oh, that's interesting.
Sort of exposing a deficiency on both sides.
Not a deficiency, but...
No, it's definitely...
I mean, it's a deficiency.
On my side, I mean, it's not a deficiency insofar as I wasn't sitting there going, I'm going to aim to do something deficient.
But, you know, with the benefit of hindsight, and I would say with some appropriateness to the conversation, because if my first podcast had been, democracy doesn't work, and I don't have any answers, what do you think?
Hello! Echo!
Echo! Right?
I mean, I think it's okay to have had that, right?
I mean, it takes a great deal of work to get to a place where you can put your ego aside and simply focus on the other person, right?
So I think that's...
It's deficient relative to the future.
I don't know. I wouldn't necessarily say it's deficient relative to the past, right?
If EA had been the first book, it would have been like, okay, well, I'm depressed, right?
Right. Right.
You may not think you're standing in shit, but you are, and it's all shit.
Right, well, and almost nobody would have gotten past podcast number one, right?
Well, for sure, for sure. And I would have been very frightened of those who did, right?
Right. Right.
You're right. Sorry?
And actually...
That's interesting that you put it in those terms because now you're asking everybody else to sort of take this approach with their podcast number one, right?
I'm sorry, Greg.
You cut off there because that was too intelligent to comment.
So Mental Note, edit some static in here to buy some time.
Psst.
Do it.
Well, that's right.
That's right. And I think that having the answers and knowing the answers...
Okay, this is where I get embarrassingly magical, so I apologize for those who are hoping for something rational.
But Pixies will solve it.
And that's really what I've been leading up to for quite some time.
And I don't mean any Pixies, I mean the band.
They're magic. But the fact that we have an answer will...
change the conversation even if we don't give the answer.
I'm not sure I follow that.
Well, if you're trying to teach someone how to do a math problem and you know how the math problem should be done, then you're going to be an effective teacher, right?
Oh, you'll be a more effective teacher, for sure.
Yeah, whereas if you're like, well, I know that doesn't work, right?
Then you're basically just like a rock in a stream that a boat has to steer.
I know that doesn't work. Well, what does work?
I don't know. Well, why doesn't this work?
I don't know. I just know that it doesn't, right?
Right. Right, that's a good point.
Just in actuality, it's not at all the same circumstances as your podcast, number one, because...
Well, no, we have answers, right?
Right. Right.
Right. That we're certain are actual...
Right. So if somebody says to me, well, how will law courts work in a free society?
If I have a good answer to that, and I say, that's not important.
You know, what is important is X, Y, and Z. Right.
That's one thing, right? But if somebody says to me, how will law courts work in a free society, and I don't have an answer, and I'm like, well, that's not important.
Let's get back to you, right?
That's just a different conversation that makes people suspicious, right?
Right, right. That's a good point.
That's an interesting question.
That's an interesting point.
That's getting back to what I was asking earlier was, I mean, replace podcast one with person one is when you go talk to somebody about anarchy and these are the questions that come up.
You show them why the current system doesn't work good, i.e.
democracy is bad.
Then they demand that answer.
And you might have a good answer, but It's like either way you answer, well, if you say that's not important, or if you give your good answer, that just kind of changes the whole dynamic of the conversation.
Then that just begs more answers and more answers and more answers, and you just kind of lose focus of what you're originally talking about, your original point.
So is there any kind of...
Is there any kind of...
I don't know. I guess that's up to them.
But any kind of answer that is...
I guess I won't beg so many questions, but stay on point at the same time.
I guess that's what I'm asking.
Sorry, go ahead, Greg.
I was just going to say, that reminds me of a couple of podcasts you did way back when on debating DROs without answers, right?
Yeah, and since the beginning, I've been like, well, how would you solve it?
If it was your DRO, I mean, what would you do, right?
Right, exactly. Which kind of reinforces in behavior the idea of anarchy, right?
Because whatever you want your DRO to do, do it, right?
Right. And you can also say, well, you know, people say, well, what if DROs got too big?
It's like, well, if that's a concern for you, what would you require your DRO to do to alleviate that fear for you?
Right, right. Turn around as a question for them.
Yeah, so how would you solve it?
Like, so you can start thinking about voluntarism and its effects on interactions without me saying, well, here are the answers, so that you can just nitpicky yourself into the planet, right?
Right. And I think, like, when you give answers, like, you sort of short-circuit the emotions that they feel from, they couldn't, they're They should be feeling about realizing that their whole life was based around illusions.
And that's something that could be very informative for them to feel those emotions, but if we just provide answers they don't even get to feel that.
Right. Right.
That's a great point.
And also, if they can't handle the anxiety of not knowing, they're not going to do us any good as a cause.
Right. And if you up front short-circuit the opportunity for them to actually experience the anxiety, then you're going to miss the people who can handle it, too.
Right. Right?
Right. I mean, there are some people who...
Jump up and down with excitement when they come across this kind of stuff, right?
And again, I also say that in the book, right?
Like I sort of say, look, there are some people who when they come across a contradiction, they're like – they pull a Walt Whitman.
They're like, so I contradict myself.
So what?
Oh, there's a contradiction in the idea.
So what?
It's messy but it works.
Democracy is messy but it works, right?
It's like, well, that's fine.
But if you are one of these freaky anal people who's like, contradictions must be eliminated.
There will be no contradictions.
We will get contradictions.
We will round them up and we will club them with syllogisms.
Then this is for you, right?
And I think that's where we need to find those people who are just freaky Vulcans like us, who just can't leave a contradiction alone.
Because we're the caterpillar that moves the social engine forward, right?
And the caterpillar tracks, not the little wriggly thing in the ditch.
Anyway. But so we need to find those people who are like, when you hear about a contradiction, it keeps you up at night.
Because those people are the people who are going to dig in, right?
Right. It's like, well, what about DROs?
We can do this. Well, what about that? We can do that.
That's not an exchange which is going to train the trainer, so to speak.
Because we're not nearly big enough as a movement that we can do anything other than train the trainer.
And that's sort of what I've been focusing on for the last couple of months, right?
We can't train people to like anarchy.
We can only train people to train people to like anarchy, right?
And so anybody who's not going to become an effective communicator about this is not someone we can afford to waste time.
Sorry, go ahead. I was just going to say...
It gives us the capacity to learn from other people then, too.
I'm sorry, say that again?
Well, it sort of gives us the capacity to learn from other people, too.
That's not good cult behavior.
We have nothing to learn from outside the biosphere.
There is nothing outside the biosphere except ghosts with money that we can manipulate.
That's page 38. Maybe you haven't got the latest revised edition.
I'll make sure to get that clip over to...
It's more of a tattoo on the retina.
But anyway, no, you're totally right, of course.
Yeah, I mean, somebody else, if we say we don't know and stimulate somebody else to think of something, they're doubtless going to come up with, you know, I mean, the Borg brain of people who are excited about ideas is infinitely better than anything we can come up with, even as a small group, right?
Mm-hmm. No question about it.
And I think, I mean, I think this is why it doesn't work, because we try to convert people rather than to enable people to convert other people, or convert them to, and convert is all a weird way of putting it, if you don't mind, but you understand what I'm saying, right?
And this, where we don't give answers, it's the best way to figure out people who are going to get excited and stick with it versus those who, you know, they're like a rock.
You push a rock and then you stop pushing the rock and it just stops.
In fact, these ones tend to roll back downhill.
Yeah, we've had a lot of that.
Yeah, I think when you talk to somebody about that, that's a very good approach.
You kind of want to get them over on your side to kind of think it out with you.
But I think you want to also kind of maintain control of the conversation if that's possible.
I mean, I talk to people and they use the bailout.
They go, well, I don't want to think about those things.
That's why we have a government.
Yeah, and they say, well, I fear monopolies, but if you really fear monopolies, then why do you support the state?
You know, I don't know.
I guess I'm saying, like, you want to maintain the steering wheel of the conversation, but you want to, you know, kind of drive with them, I guess.
Well, I think there's some truth in that, but certainly if somebody were to say to me, I don't want to think about these things, that's why I want a government, they'd be like, okay, so I'm not going to drag you off to medical school if you don't even want to be a doctor, right?
Yeah, that's true.
I mean, I guess I'm one of those people that I get so much into it, and then when I have success, you know, then I'm happy, and then when I don't, I'm a little let down.
Yeah. Oh, sure.
Yeah, I know. We've all been there. Okay, well, this is good.
That's all I had to say about it.
If anybody else wants to add anything.
OK, well then I'll close the call down.
And obviously, thanks very much for listening.
I think it was a very, very helpful call and thanks so much to those who came to drop by to chat about this.
I think it is a very, very important thing to be talking about as a community and I really do appreciate people staying up late too to talk about it and I will send this around to the people along with the last one and we can take a step.
Thanks everybody. Good night.
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