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May 18, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:46:10

1069 Sunday Call In Show 18 May 2008

The virus of politics, teenage depression - a pretty wild one, with some newbies and unexpected guests...

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	Okay, well, thank you everybody so much for joining us this fine Sunday afternoon on the 18th of April, 2008.
	And this is Free Domain Radio.
	My name is Stefan Molyneux. This is the...
	Number one philosophy conversation on the internet.
	And we are going to start with what is colloquially known as a Bar-B-Q. And this is just with reference to our good friend Bob Barr, the double B, who is a former congressman who actually looks alarmingly like a slightly aging and slimmer norm from Cheers.
	And who has at BobBarr, that's 2Rs2008.com, he has some of the issues, and I'm just going to talk about two of them, so that some of my skepticism, to say the least.
	With regards to the value and use of political libertarianism, can hopefully make some sense to some people.
	And here, we're going to just have a look at two minor little issues and see, just see, if you dare, if you can, actually come up with what is inconsistent between these two positions.
	So here, he says, the federal government must take the lead in making significant cuts in spending, focusing on earmarks, risks distracting attention from the broader problem of a government wildly wasted in the money of hardworking Americans.
	Tens of billions of dollars in corporate welfare, essentially aid to dependent corporations, should be eliminated.
	And he also calls for, we must have a national sales tax.
	One of the best approaches To deal with getting rid of the IRS and so on, getting rid of the income tax, would be to adopt some form of a consumption tax, he says, like a national sales tax, replacing the IRS in all federal income taxes as well as payroll taxes.
	So that is one of his issues where the federal government is by far the best solution that you could conceivably come up with in terms of being able to solve problems with people.
	So there is another issue, though, which is about gay marriage, which actually he takes a little bit of a different tack with regards to gay marriage.
	And he says that there's no way that we should ever allow the federal government to deal with gay marriage, to have legislation with regards to gay marriage.
	But this is an individual states' rights issue.
	Now, this basic contradiction, which I'm sure you can see very clearly, which is that A, the federal government is by far the best conceivable solution for the problem of taxation because we need a national sales tax, and the federal government is a terrible and bad solution to the problem of gay marriage, which should be left to states' rights.
	This is two web pages apart, I guess one web page apart, if you think about it, on this BobBarr2008.com.
	So why is this important?
	Well, me be philosopher, and if I put out even a mild contradiction, spaced 200 podcasts apart, what happens is I get a deluging flurry of emails saying, aha!
	Steph, you've contradicted yourself here, and 18 months ago in your car, you contradicted yourself there, and therefore, you know, this is a big issue that needs to be fixed.
	And I actually think that's fine.
	In fact, I think that's good.
	I very much appreciate those people who helped me refine and correct my thinking.
	So, that having been said, if I were to have on my website something which said, consistency, rationality, and evidence It's the criteria, are the criteria for determining truth from falsehood, separating truth from falsehood. And then you clicked a link on the very next page.
	I said, mysticism, dreams, and tea-leave reading is the best way of separating truth from falsehood because reason and evidence don't work and are counterproductive.
	Would you not come to my website and just think, what an idiot!
	I mean, if he's not even going to try and put a veneer of rationality on his perspectives and beliefs, why would I delve any further?
	I mean, either Steph doesn't notice that he's rankly contradicting himself one web page apart, or he does notice it and doesn't care.
	So he's either stupid or corrupt.
	Those are the choices.
	This is not a tricky or esoteric.
	This is not some sort of ontological, Pascalian, Kantian complex problem in philosophy.
	And, of course, we know what the real deal is behind this love and hatred of the fellow federal government.
	He, of course, is appealing to small-minded, bigoted, fundamentalist Christians, often rural people, which is a pretty strong libertarian base.
	And the reason they want the federal government to run the sales tax is that a lot of these states are net beneficiaries, particularly in terms of federal farm subsidies.
	So we wouldn't want the sales tax to be an individual state issue because then, well, the farm states would not be able to rip off all the other states.
	So that would be bad for his constituents, so he's not going to advocate that.
	Ah! But on the other hand, the small-minded petty...
	These Christians all up in arms about gay marriage?
	Well, he wants individual state solutions for that because he knows exactly who his target base is.
	These petty, vicious little cultists who have some goddamn problem with two people who happen to be gay who are loving each other getting married.
	Now, of course, the state shouldn't have anything to do with marriage one way or the other, but that's not what he's saying.
	And this is my problem, fundamentally, with political libertarianism, and we've talked about this before, and I'm sure we'll talk about it again.
	It is certainly one of the most popular threads in the Freedom Aid Radio Board.
	And my problem, my friends, is this.
	People who go to these kinds of websites, let's say that you're just some intelligent, rational, empirical, consistent-minded human being without any particular knowledge of philosophy or anything like that.
	You go to these sites and you say, WTF? What the frack is going on?
	We have a guy saying, well, federal government is a solution, federal government is the opposite of a solution.
	And of course, as you go further in, I mean, and this was true of the Ron Paul campaigns, true of all political campaigns, the amount of truth pretzels you have to push into a Mobius strip, n-dimensional, petty fog, Gordian knot, lower intestine map of the London subway system mess is legion in the realm of politics.
	Some Reasonably educated, reasonably intelligent, maybe knows a little bit of science, respects logic, somewhat secular, you know, maybe a deist, maybe a lapsed cultist or something like that.
	He comes to one of these websites.
	He's like, oh, libertarianism.
	Interesting. Okay, so get rid of this.
	Then he's going to notice his contradiction right away.
	And I know that this is true because whenever I contradict myself, I get six million emails saying, Steph, you messed up.
	It's great. We fixed it up.
	So I know that there's an enormous number of people out there who have a really great grasp of consistency.
	It's not the hobgoblin of little minds, as Emerson said, but it is the mark of a great mind to be concerned about inconsistency.
	So one of these guys comes to this website and he notices this frank contradiction.
	And he feels uneasy.
	I mean, who wouldn't, right?
	It's like all those Republicans who talk about being tough on crime and cutting back on the welfare state.
	Well, that to me almost just seems like code for anti-black, in my opinion.
	And so in this situation, federal government is the solution.
	Oh, no, no, no, federal government is terrible.
	We can't use that. Either this guy and all those who support him and have given all this money to him, either they don't notice that rank contradiction, in which case they're quasi-retarded ass clown fools, In which case, he's just going to roll his eyes and say, oh, so libertarians are kind of retarded because they don't notice this rank contradiction.
	Or, which is even worse, I think, he's going to come and say, oh, so there's obviously a kind of religious bigotry, homophobia, hatred of the inevitable and natural reality of homosexuality.
	And they're going to say, well, these people kind of speak in a weird and creepy code about their bigotry, hatred, fear, and hostility towards gays and lesbians.
	Ew, he's going to say, and he's going to go and rub himself off with a nice status loofah and exfoliate all of that small-minded religious libertarian bigotry from his mind.
	And this is going to be his formed impression.
	How's libertarianism in the future?
	It's the same thing where, you know, Ron Paul's a scientist who says that evolution is invalid.
	I'm not a scientist. He's a doctor, trained in science at least.
	Evolution is going to say, well, if they can't resolve that nonsense, then why should I look at any other thing, right?
	I mean, if the first podcast you hear me do says that 2 plus 2 is 4, green, blue, an elephant, and my dead grandmother at the same time, it's very unlikely that you're going to respect my capacity for math to continue on in the hopes that somehow my mad ramblings are going to turn into something coherent, rational, and useful later on.
	So, either these kinds of rank, bigoted, small-minded, cultist, religious, superstitious prejudices are going to come through loud and clear to people, and they're going to say, well, I guess these people are so stupid they don't notice their own contradictions, so libertarianism simply attracts the dumb, or they're going to think, Well, they notice the contradictions, but they don't care.
	Because it serves their superstitious bigotry.
	Or speaking in code and secret handshakes.
	There's a reason why libertarians are always so obsessed with the Illuminati and conspiracy theories.
	Jesus, H. Nine times out of ten, libertarianism itself looks like some kind of creepy Christian conspiracy.
	Ah, you say, but libertarianism, you see, brings people to philosophy.
	Absolutely, that's certainly true.
	That certainly is true.
	And you know what? A not inconsequential number of people have come to FDR, to philosophy, to freedom and radio, through the military.
	Does that mean we must support the military?
	Because they joined the military and they found out that it was kind of evil and they were interested in finding out the truth, so they came to philosophy.
	It certainly is true that some people will develop healthier habits because they have diabetes.
	Does that mean we should create diabetes in everyone?
	Of course not. My concern is not the people that live it well.
	It's partly the people who are turned off by political libertarianism and its rank contradictions.
	Non-aggression policy, let's deport the illegals.
	Non-aggression policy, we need lower taxes.
	I'm against slavery, we should beat slaves less.
	My concern is the people who actually come through from political libertarianism to philosophy and waste our time with their stupid ass, mealy-mouthed, weaselly justifications for their involvement in political power.
	Who come through and waste our time.
	Because they sail right through political libertarianism and don't seem to notice one little bit about its creepy contradictions, its outright pandering to small-minded religious bigots, This guy, obviously campaigning, aiming at rural, southern, Midwest, I would imagine, constituents.
	Who's he going to tax?
	Oh, those big corporations, the defense contractors, none of which generally happen to be in these states.
	What is he not talking about, cutting farm subsidies?
	Of course, he's just playing one place against another.
	It's exactly the same shit, it's just in a different package.
	And it doesn't teach people to think at all.
	It doesn't teach people to think, to be self-critical, to examine the evidence.
	Guy on the board says, oh, you shouldn't be against Ron Paul.
	He doesn't turn off atheists.
	Like, the majority of people polled who are Ron Paul supporters are atheists, as if that matters.
	And of course, when He wouldn't cough up the polls, and then one brave, brave listener went and dug them up.
	The average size was 280 people, I think, 273 people.
	It's not a poll. That's just a dinner party.
	Right? It's just a bunch of self-selected opinions, and the percentage wasn't even the majority anyway.
	So they just make up stuff, and they just waste people's time.
	I put an argument out about political libertarianism.
	Oh man, it's got to be at least, well, the podcast was over six months ago, closer to a year, but the video's been out for quite some number of months too, over six months for sure.
	And what happened was that I put a debate out or I put an argument out That says, well, government serves its constituents, and if you're going to grab a hold of the government as a libertarian and turn it against its constituents, those who donate money in order to receive government goodies, why start with the federal government?
	What a ridiculously ambitious plan.
	Why not just start with, you know, grab some Hispanic organization and infiltrate it and then make it turn against the interests of Hispanics?
	All are perfectly rational.
	Nobody's responded to any of those arguments.
	I've got a whole series of arguments on the internet about the futility and corruption of political activism.
	It's been out for month after month after month, and no one has addressed these arguments.
	Now, they all come swarming in and call me a disinformation agent and a tool of the great Satan of federalism or something like that, like some guy in Canada is in league with the CIA. But the one thing they don't do is actually respond to the arguments.
	And that's what troubles me about political libertarianism is that all of these staticky idiots come swarming into the realms of philosophy and they can't think worth shit.
	And they just put up a whole bunch of defensive misdirecting crap and they can't think.
	They don't notice the contradictions or if they do they don't care.
	So, if you hear this and you are a political libertarian, please feel free not to come by.
	Do not come to my website.
	My website, of course, nolibertarians.com.
	Do not come by the website.
	Do not pretend to be a philosopher.
	Do not pretend to be interested in truth.
	Do not pretend to be interested in ideas.
	Do not pretend to be interested in freedom.
	Because if you're not interested in the truth, you can't be interested in freedom.
	The two are one and the same. This is a formal invitation.
	To all political libertarians, please, there are lots of places where you can spit out your stupid ass mealy-mouthed crap.
	You don't need to come to a philosophy forum and repeat it all, make up all of these nonsense, ridiculous arguments.
	Without proof, Without evidence, without reason, with no first principles.
	It's just another kind of bigotry.
	Political libertarianism is just another kind of bigoted, stupid-ass religion.
	So go to the Ron Paul forums.
	Go to your little libertarian meetings.
	Go and PHP hack your little online polls.
	Call it a triumph for truth, virtue, and integrity.
	Make up all the lies you want, all the falsehoods you want about the great boon that political libertarianism has been to the cause of freedom, despite the fact that there is more hostility to libertarianism now than there was 30 years ago, that there's more misunderstanding of libertarianism now than there was 30 years ago.
	Philosophy is not about quantity.
	Philosophy is about quality.
	Politics It's about quantity.
	And wherever you have a focus on quantity, you have the inevitable human squalling sacrifice of quality.
	So that's it for my intro rant.
	If you are interested in talking, feel free to click on the request mic and I will be more than happy to talk to you.
	Alright, on deck we have Mr.
	D. Oh, I'm sorry. We have Busy Lizzy.
	I think that this is actually the Queen.
	Hello? Hello?
	HRH? Hello?
	Drop the corgi and talk.
	Alright, let's move her back to listening.
	We can go on with Mr. D. Oh, sorry.
	Mr. Sage. Parsley will be up.
	I think we have time. Rose?
	Can you hear me? I sure can.
	Oh, okay. Hey, how are you doing?
	Good, how are you? I'm really not sure.
	I'm not too sure the question I would like to ask, because I don't know.
	When I think of myself, I think of...
	Because, you know, life has lots of rights, wrongs, yes, no, appropriates, stuff like that.
	I don't have an appropriate base to judge myself.
	But as of lately, I've been really, for some reason, unmotivated.
	I usually just end up sitting and staring straight.
	I don't go to school.
	I don't work. I don't play games.
	Sorry, you don't play games, or you do play games?
	No, no, I play games, but...
	You play games, okay. Yeah.
	Are we talking English?
	Shut off my mind. And ping-pong and so on?
	No, just like EVE and World of Warcraft and stuff like that.
	Right, okay. If it matters, they're all games.
	And I really don't know what question to ask, but...
	I know my feelings are accurate to what I choose in my life, and I don't know what to say.
	Okay, no, that's fine.
	I can understand that if you're feeling demotivated, then summoning the motivation to clarify a question can itself be a challenge, and that's no problem.
	But can you tell me, why does it bother you that you're not motivated?
	What's wrong with not being motivated?
	Well, a while ago, sorry, it's kind of hard to talk, I don't know why, but a while ago, like when I was younger, I'm 18 now, I had that sort of childlike curiosity, that mentality of curiosity that you always have when you're young, and as I When I get older, I find that the more questions I ask, the more times I'm told them wrong.
	When I was at school, I asked the teachers.
	We were doing one English class.
	I don't understand because we do read books.
	Well, it's not really developing.
	Let me just copy down what we read.
	And it's really inert.
	And I asked the teacher, well, like, isn't there something better we could be doing?
	He's like, is there something you could offer me?
	And they're like, no, let's do this.
	Get back in the box.
	Yeah. Yeah.
	And so I dropped out of school.
	I guess it wasn't developmental enough.
	And when did you drop out of school?
	Well, I basically dropped out.
	Well, I didn't drop out yet, but I stopped going roughly like a month ago.
	Sorry, is it right to say that you have like another semester or term or whatever it is given that you're 18?
	Is it a year? Is it half a year?
	This was my last semester.
	But I find myself faced with the question every time I go there and every time I do the work.
	And basically, because the one project we had, it was...
	It was a final project, and it was all...
	She said, no, I think it was pronouns or something, no, I, we, or whatever.
	And that kind of disturbed me, because I've put a lot of time into myself to develop myself.
	And when I asked her, she said, basically, no, just go to a site, read something, copy it up, and just basically do that.
	But I asked her, well, no, most of this is my opinion, and most of this is what I've thought.
	And one of the things I put my time into is she said, well, you can't do that.
	And it kind of disturbed me.
	Well, yeah, sure. If you're putting original thought in, and I face this too, right?
	If you put original thought into something, then you require that the person who's reading it or listening to it also think for themselves.
	And for a lot of people, that's not exactly fun, right?
	Yeah. So, let me look.
	I mean, you don't have to convince me of the case that public school...
	I'm assuming it's public school, right?
	Yeah. Secondary.
	So, you don't have to push one breath to get my boat out of the harbor when it comes to the question that public school is trying to kill your brain.
	I mean, there's no question, there's no doubt in my mind that public school, you may as well have people taking a two-by-four to your exposed frontal lobes.
	There is no question in my mind that public school is absolutely, completely and totally trying to kill your brain.
	But, it is equally true that public school cannot kill your brain.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	Because there's a game in society which is a balancing act.
	And that game in society is, dear God, we have to do a lot of stupid shit, right?
	Yeah. But unfortunately, if we don't do that stupid shit, we have to do even more stupid shit later on, right?
	So let's say that you say, okay, well, I don't want to do this stupid shit in school.
	But then what happens? Well, you don't get your high school, right?
	Yeah. Yeah. Which means that you're going to have a tough time doing anything but stupid crap for the rest of your life in terms of a job, right?
	Yeah. So it's like a month of crap versus 50 years of crap, right?
	Yeah. Now if it's clear to you Like, if you go into a lion cage and you just, you know, la la la, you know, dancing and singing along, and perhaps some friends have helped rub you down with some marinade, and so on, right?
	And you're like going, man, I got a little extra roll of right tender fat here, boy, I bet you that would be good to eat, Mr.
	Lion. And then it's like, you know, you get eaten, but then it's like, dear God, I don't ever want to go back into that lion cage again, right?
	Yeah. I mean, assuming that you live through getting eaten, which I think you have to be gay and in vacas to achieve, but I think you can.
	So, but on the other hand, if you say, okay, I'm going into a lion's den, so I'm going to bring a SWAT team, 12 tasers, and some nerve gas, right?
	Yeah. Then you're going to feel less concerned or less afraid about being in that lion's den, right?
	Yeah. Yeah.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Sorry, what would the taser gas and SWAT team symbolize?
	Well, I'll get to that in a second, but we understand that with regards to the lion's den, right?
	Yeah. So, if you go in and you say, okay, they're going to try and kill my brain, but they can't actually kill my brain.
	Because your brain is in your head, and the 2x4, which we talked about earlier, is a metaphor.
	They're not actually able to kill your brain.
	Yeah. Able to stone at someone.
	Well, what they're able to do is to try and get you to shut it down.
	But there's no switch.
	They don't do open brain surgery.
	You don't get lobotomized.
	There's no switch. They're just trying to convince you that you should kill your brain.
	Yeah. Now, if you recognize, and I'm sure that you do to some degree, and I'm just trying to make that all more conscious, if you recognize that public school is a lion's den for your courage, for your intelligence, for your curiosity, for your joy of learning, for your depth of humanity, if you recognize that it's just a predatory environment, then you can go in there with your tasers, with your SWAT team, you know, with no marinade, right?
	Right. And maybe you're sort of jumping along like you're in a shark cage on land or something, making it move with you.
	But you're safer, right?
	And I would say that philosophy is that safety.
	You're new to this conversation, I'm guessing.
	So a lot of people think philosophy is just, you know, sitting around scratching at your toga and talking about the nature of ethics and getting nowhere.
	But the way we talk about philosophy here is that it's urban combat.
	It's an extreme sport.
	And if you fully recognize the danger of the environment that you're in, then you can go in and you can be under fire, right?
	You don't play hacky sack when you're under fire, you take cover and you can do the same thing in public school through a variety of ways.
	But I'm sorry, you had something you wanted to say?
	I was going to say that I've always been quite into philosophy since I was born.
	I was kind of inspired by my cousin because he was always one of those guys on the side.
	But I was going to say that I actually do kind of got a grasp of high school because one of my friends, as I talked to him, I didn't really realize myself and my type of arguments I'd bring up.
	But he used to be one of those kids who was a quote-unquote good child and And he would do his work, do all that stuff.
	He didn't swear much.
	But when I started talking to him, he started converting into this person with more rebelliousness.
	And I was like, why did he do that? Then I realized myself a little bit more.
	We always used to talk about the school system and how it was a little bit off.
	The Ministry of Education came over and all the teachers dawdled themselves up to make them look something they're not.
	A delusion to aim for some sort of professional look that isn't really there in my opinion.
	And he came up to me, and I was kind of losing my mind at this point.
	I didn't really know what I was going to do with myself, and I still don't.
	But he said to me, he came up to me, I was on the computer, and he said to me, like, did you hear the news?
	And I was like, what? And he's like, the Ministry of Education is here.
	And I'm like, oh, yeah?
	And he's like, well, don't you want to talk to them?
	And I was like, oh, no, not really.
	And he's like, oh, why? And I said, well, if you consider the way...
	If school is ran, and how they're so strict on it, it's going to be difficult, because, and, uh, especially if you're just one kid or two kids, with the latter, they've probably dealt with people like that before, and the kids probably, like, um...
	And they have their entire job based on defending this thing.
	I'm sorry to interrupt you.
	I really do apologize for interrupting you, but as I said, you don't have to convince me that this is a bad situation.
	But let me ask you one other question, if you don't mind.
	What I'm concerned about a little bit in terms of the way that you're talking about things is that I do get a strong sense of solitude or solitariness from you, if that makes any sense.
	I'm not too sure about the word solitary, but that's because I don't really understand my vocabulary.
	Oh, sure, okay. Let me ask you this.
	I mean, how are your parents doing with you not going to school?
	My mom, like, I told her that the reason, like, it's odd to focus on little things like materialistic things and focus on school, and you can look at the economy and the way everything's going right now, and I had a huge talk with her, and it was nice, it was quiet, it was mellow, there's no yelling, it was great!
	And there's yelling every now and then, and anger by my opinions only, I find the defensive's only lack of knowledge about what they're doing, or I find the offensive's like dominating, I guess.
	But I had a conversation with her that, I can't remember her that well, that basically was talking about How can I focus on doing anything when the economy is going bad or the average person's mentality in a high context like society and stuff like that?
	And then right after it, after going on about all this stuff and whatever, she basically said to me like, well, why don't you just go to school?
	Right, so she wasn't really listening to these sort of existential concerns.
	Now, you and I both know, and again, I'm perfectly comfortable with this, that there is a hell of a lot of corruption and ignorance in society, largely because the public schools are solely dedicated to crushing people's thought and curiosity.
	But my question to you is this.
	It's like, the fact that there is evil and corruption and stupidity in the world, why would that paralyze you?
	I mean, the fact that other people, it's like I'm saying, well, I can't read a book because other people are illiterate.
	Like, I'm not sure why the moral decisions that other people make would determine your direction.
	That's one of the things that's been messing with me the most lately is because I don't know why I'm so unmotivated.
	Like, before I was like, well, have you ever heard of, I'm not sure if you've heard about parkour, but I used to help people and teach them a bit when And, like, but I don't understand why I'm so unmotivated.
	It's like, I guess it's because I'm unsure of myself.
	I'll tell you this. It's not because the world is corrupt.
	Because you want to make sure you don't have the wrong answers for things.
	Because if you have the wrong answers for things, you stop looking for new answers, right?
	Yeah. It's not because the world is corrupt.
	Because a wise man, and it sounds like you're very intelligent, right?
	But a wise man says, the fact that the world is corrupt is exactly why we should pursue wisdom, right?
	I mean, we don't say, well, there's a lot of sick people in the world, so why bother being a doctor?
	It's like, we want to be a doctor because there are sick people in the world.
	Doctors are the most needed the more sick the world gets, and philosophers are the most needed when society gets more corrupt.
	So, it's not because there's corruption in the world that you feel unmotivated.
	Well, I've always tried to explain to people and to give people a perspective.
	I've always been pretty good when a person comes to me, because if they will, they'll be better.
	Of course, they're obviously already going to be better if they're willing and that dedicated and looking for help and aware of what they're doing, but I've noticed people and seen if they've been a little bit off, and I've tried to help them a bit, but I'm not sure if that could be ignorance.
	Well, but why is it if you're feeling unmotivated, why would you be focused on helping other people?
	Yeah, for my own lack of motivation, maybe.
	Well, have you asked people to help you?
	Other than today, say.
	Probably not. I've always been kind of quiet.
	And do you have a circle of friends?
	Have you talked to them about your feels of the world and your lack of motivation?
	I haven't talked to them about anything personal, but we do talk about philosophical stuff and stuff like that.
	Yeah, stop doing that. Really?
	Yeah, stop doing that. What you need to do, because you're going to have the rest of your life to talk about philosophy, but the important thing right now is not where the economy is going, but where your life is going, right?
	I mean, you don't want to say, well, there's, you know, 2% increase in joblessness, so I'm not going to get out of bed today, right?
	That's surrendering your power as an individual to events, circumstances, and environments completely different.
	Outside of your control, right?
	Be like saying, well, I'm not going to get out of bed today because it's raining or it's cloudy.
	Well, that's just having no internal, what's called an internal locus of control.
	Who is it who runs your life?
	Is it the corruption of the world that crushes you like a tsunami takes down a Thai village?
	Or is it you who say, look, I'm going to rise and do battle with the demon and I in fact want the corruption of the world to be better because the bigger the enemy, the greater the glory in vanquishing or standing against it, right?
	But Talking about philosophy with your friends isn't going to help because what you have, fundamentally, in my opinion, it's just an opinion, is you have an emotional despair or an emotional depression Of course, that could be complex and I imagine it has something to do with not being heard by or visible to your own mother.
	But you want to talk about your thoughts and feelings in particular with your friends.
	Now, if you find that your friends don't want to hear squat about what's going on for you emotionally...
	Then that's one answer as to why you're feeling down and unmotivated.
	Because you're surrounded by people who don't really actually care for you much at all.
	Yeah. And you avoid that knowledge.
	And I understand that.
	It's unpleasant and painful knowledge to have.
	But you want to avoid that knowledge by avoiding your emotions and your actual experience of life and talk about abstract topics instead, right?
	Yeah. But I would say, do that.
	Talk about your feelings and what's going on for you in your heart and in your soul and find out who cares about you and not who's willing to pass the time with you talking about abstract topics that don't cut to the core of what's going on for you as a human being.
	Yeah, sure. I don't know, I've never really tried to bring up a conversation with my friends about myself.
	It's just that when I've generally talked to people about something, I find there's way too much prejudice in a personal type of stereotype that everybody has, and people seem to have some kind of, like, well I guess you could say ego.
	If we had no ego, that'd be nice.
	Sorry, I'm just trying to get a basis on what I was going to say.
	Wait, wait, so sorry, you're saying to me that people avoid deep topics?
	Yeah, basically. But that's what you're doing!
	Yeah, I know. Tell me how this gun doesn't go off in your hand, right?
	Well, when I actually try to get into a deep topic, it's like they're too used to a sort of...
	Physical outside perspective and their personal type of stereotype, like, a thing I usually tell people is, like, I compare the word love to, like, between two different types of young girls or boys or whatever who've been raised by their parents.
	And I say, like, well, the perspectives of each, or I use it as an example, I'll tell you.
	But the first girl is risen with a more accurate...
	Wait, wait, wait. See, you're trying to do it to me now, right?
	Probably. Like, we're talking about your feelings, right?
	And you're launching onto some abstract topic, right?
	Well, I was going to try and describe it.
	It may be a long description, but it's...
	Oh, no. You see, when you have feelings, you don't need to have big abstract allegories to describe them.
	You say, I feel sad, I feel angry, I feel frustrated, I feel down, I feel whatever, I feel I have no energy, right?
	Right. And you don't have to do this with me, and I can't spend all the show on this, but what I would say is that if you start launching into long allegorical descriptions of how you're feeling, that's a long way of not saying anything, right?
	Because people are going to find it hard to follow, and if they do respond, they're going to respond to the abstract allegory rather than how you're actually feeling, which is where you need to get to.
	We can't complain about the state of the world if we're contributing to that which we complain about.
	I mean, we can, but it's just not very logical, right?
	And I can guess that you're a very logical fellow and very intelligent and want to live with consistency.
	So we can sit back and we can complain that the conversations in the world are shallow and inconsequential, but we can change that.
	By simply being relentlessly deep and meaningful, right?
	And then most people will run away but a few people will be drawn to us and those are the people that we can fix in our hearts sometimes for our entire lives.
	But I think you want to, because this is a young man's mistake, and I'm going to be an annoying older guy here, but the young man's mistake is to complain about the world which he is contributing to.
	Complain about the problems in the world that he is contributing to.
	And that's just something that comes from youth.
	And again, apologies for being an annoying elderly guy, but...
	I think what you want to do is just open up your heart to the people around you.
	That's going to be scary, that's going to be unpleasant, and that's going to, more times than not, result in rejection.
	But, so what? I mean, you're not made of glass, you can survive, and you will find your way through to the people who you can really connect with, who you can really have intimate and deep conversations.
	I will suggest, and this will cost you nothing, nothing, my friend, which is go to freedomainradio.com forward slash free, There is a free audiobook there called On Truth, The Tyrion of Illusion, which is really about this, and in particular about the family.
	I can guarantee you that this will be worth your two hours investment to listen to it, for sure.
	Oh, okay. So go on.
	I'm sorry. I'm going to move on to the next call.
	And I really do appreciate your call, Ian.
	I know it's tough stuff to talk about.
	But just talk as simply as you can about what's going on in your heart and try and stay open and vulnerable with people.
	And that will, I can guarantee you, it'll be hard to stay unmotivated when you're doing that because it's so damn terrifying and so exciting.
	So thank you so much.
	I'm sorry? Yeah, thanks so much.
	Do let me know what you think of the book.
	All right. Mr.
	D? Hello.
	Can you hear me? Don't.
	Don't. Don't. Go.
	Sorry. Go on. Can you hear me?
	Don't stop now. Don't you know?
	I'm going to talk to him.
	Go. Sorry. Go on. Yes, I can.
	Oh. Can you just mark that down as a time to edit there, sweetie?
	We want to take that out and put Alison Moyet in action.
	Absolutely. But sorry. Go on. Singing as a response.
	So yeah, so my question is, I'm sort of dealing with this issue of objective law under the DRO system.
	It might be too large of a question, so feel free to just pass me on to a podcast if that's the best way to answer it.
	But... I was sure if sort of the Ayn Rand view of needing the government for an objective law versus the sort of anarchist view of DRO's sort of How do you get rid of that?
	Just for those who haven't read the Rand stuff on this, her basic response to the anarchistic argument, which is private security forces or private police or private armies, is a guy from neighborhood A who has his own defense group goes into neighborhood B, which have their own defense group, and how are you going to mediate that?
	It won't work, therefore you need a government.
	That's her approach, if I remember rightly.
	Right, exactly. And it doesn't seem entirely right to me, but I also have a hard time imagining how the whole DRO system would create a, I guess, rational or objective sort of set of laws.
	For instance, if DROs were set up, I guess, in Islamic fundamentalist Would all the DROs basically just have the laws that currently exist of oppressing women, etc.?
	Maybe you can explain that to me.
	Sure. Well, first of all, let's figure out what we're comparing the DRO system to, right?
	Because if we have this belief, and I would call it a fantasy, but if we have this belief that state law is objective and moral and good and just and so on, then of course anything that is not equal to that will feel like it misses the mark, right? Yeah, I don't have that view, but yeah.
	Well, no, but see, you used the phrase objective law, right?
	So, I'm not sure, and perhaps you can help me understand how the phrase objective law would be used to describe the opinions of people with a lot of guns called the government.
	Right, right. I don't think I was saying...
	Well, maybe I am using that term that I'm sort of equating objective law with government.
	Well, I guess...
	Sorry, if you're not using that term, then it's a misleading term to use, right?
	Because if I say, I have this medicine which can give you perfect health, but DRO medicine will only make you 80% well, then already DRO medicine has lost, right?
	Right. Because who's not going to want perfect health, right?
	So if you have something which the state provides called objective law, and law is another term that is used that is evocative in terms of its emotional content, right?
	Because you could say what DROs provide is a free market of optimized rules based on nonviolence, right?
	And then you could also say that, on the other hand, the government has a bunch of self-serving opinions held by a monopoly of criminals and enforced through violence, right?
	In which case, the DRO thing sounds a whole lot better.
	And again, I know this isn't just marketing, but when we associate the words law and objectivity with government, it seems to me that based on the reality of what government is, which are a bunch of guys with guns forcing everyone else to basically hand over goods, money, children and blood, it's hard for me to see how that system of enforced and violent and self-interested opinion can be called objective law.
	But I'm perfectly willing to accept the case if I've missed something.
	That's fine. Maybe I should be using a different term.
	Well, I guess a lot of times in your podcast, you're talking about being a slave to the truth, to finding out what the right way to do things is, what the truth is.
	So if we assume that there is that, And we're all sort of, you know, using scientific principles and et cetera, logic, reason to it, to figure out what that truth is.
	How do we, how does DROs allow us to get to the right way to do things, to get to that truth?
	Well, sure. I mean, I think that's a perfectly reasonable question.
	And there's going to be some annoying Weasley limitations in my answers because you don't go to an economist and say, well, in order for you to prove that a free market is better than a centrally planned coercive system, you need to tell me what the stock price of IBM is going to be in 20 years, right?
	Right. So I can't tell you how DROs are going to work in reality.
	I can tell you some principles that I think would make sense.
	But we can start, if you like, with this question of Sharia.
	And we'll talk about this.
	There's a podcast, 325, which goes into this as well.
	But we'll just touch on it briefly here.
	Sharia law... Which is incredibly economically inefficient.
	And it's very expensive.
	Compared to laws which are simply against theft, rape, murder and assault and so on.
	Because any law that is proactive rather than reactive is incredibly expensive.
	So a law which says don't steal lies dormant until somebody steals.
	But a law which says you can't wear green every other Thursday...
	Has to have all of these guys swarming around checking people, oh, are you wearing green underpants?
	And so on, right? Well, isn't that reactive too?
	Like when someone wears the green pants, then you react and say you're not supposed to wear the green pants?
	No, the difference is that in the case of murder and rape and theft and so on, there is a complainant, right, who brings the matter forward to the DRO. Or to the government.
	Oh, I see. So there's someone else involved that complains about that happening.
	Well, no, it's not that there's someone else involved.
	The reason that it's reactive is the government, or let's just say the law agency, it just sits around until someone phones up and says, I was robbed, right?
	Uh-huh. Right?
	So, whereas the government or a law agency that is out there saying, you can't import Cuban cigars, right?
	They have to go and check all of these boxes.
	There's no one who's complaining, right?
	It's like drugs, right?
	One of the reasons the drug war is so hellaciously expensive...
	It's because there's no one complaining, except the government who has to act on the part of everyone who's supposed to be complaining but who isn't, right?
	So proactive law, which to me is the definition of injustice, but it doesn't matter, right?
	Just looking at it from an economic standpoint, any law which has to be vigorously pursued in the absence of a complainant is going to be Many times more expensive than a reactive law, right? You sound woefully unconvinced.
	No, I understand where you're going with this.
	But that doesn't mean the same as saying that you accept the argument, which is fine.
	No, I accept that.
	I absolutely accept it.
	Steph, I do understand that you're speaking English.
	Let's continue. Okay, so when we move things to a free market, the one thing we know for sure is that The more effective and the less expensive is going to win out over the less effective and the more expensive, right? You can't sell a Lada for twice the price of a Lamborghini in a free market system, right?
	I mean, you just can't, right?
	So, where things are less efficient and more expensive, the free market will eliminate them with a sort of fascistic, eugenic style of efficiency, right?
	Right. So where we have something like Sharia law, the DROs who are going to enforce Sharia law are going to charge like $5,000 a month, right?
	And the DROs that aren't going to enforce Sharia law are going to charge like $50 a month, right?
	Right. So how long do you think Sharia law is going to last in a free society?
	Not very long. Well, it'll be minutes, right?
	Suddenly everyone will say, you know what, I think I just found a slightly deistic streak in my pocketbook, right?
	Right. Sorry, go ahead.
	Okay, so I'm sure you have more to this argument, but the efficiency and cheapness of the things, is there...
	What about the...
	Like, what if it was more efficient and cheap to, I don't know, to...
	To enact some sort of Islamic law.
	How are those things prevented, those immoral things?
	Is it all covered under the efficient and cheap value?
	Well, okay, so let's say that you are in a free market environment with DROs and they're charging 50 bucks a month to guarantee your life and property.
	And you say, I'm going to set up Sharia law.
	I'm going to set up a Sharia law DRO, right?
	Well, no TRO is going to be able to operate in isolation, right?
	That's like saying, I want to start a credit card company that only deals with one store, right?
	Sure, sure. And can't ever be used anywhere else and so on, right?
	And is much more expensive than anyone else's, right?
	And you can't ever take money out of the bank.
	I know that there are credit card stores and so on, but that's sort of optional and doesn't cost people money and in fact saves the money if they use it wisely.
	So if you're going to start up a DRO, enforcement agency, you're going to have to lay out millions of dollars ahead of time, right?
	Because the first guy to walk through your door is going to expect you to enforce Sharia law, right?
	So you've already got to have all of the enforcers, so to speak, already on the payroll, they've got to be trained, and you will have had, you hopefully, well, in order to get anything to work, you'll have to at least have some reciprocal agreements with other DROs, right?
	So how much are you going to, so let's say it's going to cost you $5 million to set up your DRO, how much are you going to charge the first guy who comes in?
	A lot. Well, you're going to have to charge him quite a bit, right?
	Yeah. Now, the problem is, if you say, okay, yeah, I can protect you for a month for $5 million, he's going to say, thanks, but, right?
	Right. Now, if you're going to get all, like, so you'd have to get, like, I don't know, 10,000 people to sign up to your DRO, right?
	Mm-hmm. And they would then be signing up for a DRO where the entire costs of this enforcement would be borne by themselves, right?
	Because Sharia law only works in Muslim countries because the Muslim government shoots competing governments and shoots anyone who doesn't pay for Sharia law, right?
	But if you bring in competition and you take out the equation of pay me or I'll kill you, then the total costs of enforcing crazy laws will fall upon those Who wants those crazy laws, right? Right.
	So they want to pay for it because it simply can't work economically because if you say, let's say you go to another DRO, you're like Sharia law DRO guy, right?
	You go to another DRO and you say, wham, you know, here's my enormously thick book of laws that I want you to enforce and I'll enforce yours and you'll enforce mine and so on, right?
	Right. What's the other DRO going to say?
	No way. Customer.
	I think the technical phrase is, fuck no.
	Are you crazy? Because how offensive is it going to be for all of his customers if he's now going to think about enforcing Sharia law?
	He's going to have to pass those costs along to his customers, right?
	And, of course, every single female customer he has who's not Muslim will quit immediately, right?
	And go and find some other more reasonable DRO, right?
	Right. And everyone who's not a Muslim will quit his DRO immediately because they don't want to pay for the enforcement of Muslim laws, right?
	Right. So if you say to your customers, hey, I'm going to enforce a whole bunch of highly offensive laws that you find, you know, completely impractical and don't want, and I'm going to raise your rates from $50 to $500 a month.
	What are his customers going to do?
	They're gonna leave. Of course they're gonna leave, right?
	So it's just not possible.
	As long as you have free association, it's not possible.
	These crazy ass laws are only possible because you can coerce people to pay for them, right?
	So, I mean, there's lots of people who don't like drugs, right?
	And of course in a DRO society, be like, okay, if you don't like drugs, you can either have the policy where we don't enforce a ban on drugs for 50 bucks a month, or we can work to enforce drugs and it's going to be a thousand bucks a month, right?
	How are the DROs, maybe this is a simple question, but how are the DROs...
	Sorry, let me just go back once, just before we finish that point.
	I'm sorry, I did sound like I finished, but that's always an incorrect assumption.
	But also, the DRO is going to say it's going to be $1,000 a month to enforce anti-drug rules only if I can get 20,000 people to sign up.
	And if I can't get 20,000 people to sign up, then it's not going to work, right?
	Right. And this is, I mean, when you create a new toy, you do a prototype, and then what you do is you say, okay, well, if we can get Walmart, and if we can get Kmart, and if we can get, you know, Target, and we can get all these customers, like, if we can get a minimum number of orders, we'll go to production, right?
	Right. So the DROs are going to say, okay, you've got three people coming in here wanting crazy-ass rules.
	You know, we'll sell a massive premium set of rules to people, but only if we get a minimum number of people, because otherwise the costs of enforcement are vastly greater than the income that we're getting from enforcing these rules, right?
	Right. And, of course, their shareholders, their board of directors, they would never let that happen.
	Never in a million years.
	Or if a DRO was stupid enough to do it, they'd just go out of business in about three days, right?
	Mm-hmm. I can understand how that works with Sir Sharia law, with laws that are sort of crazy and wacky, as you say.
	Are there any laws that could be efficient and cheap, but would be deemed irrational or immoral?
	I guess I'm looking for...
	I don't know. You can think of one if you want, but it doesn't matter if there's an exception.
	Like seriously, me being annoying again, it doesn't matter if there's going to be an exception.
	Because you see, if there is an exception, let's say that we can come up with 50 laws that are irrational and cheap, then for sure we should never have a government, because that's the first thing the government is going to do, right?
	Right. Right.
	So if laws, if the irrationality and cheapness of laws is a problem, then the government is the worst conceivable problem, is the worst conceivable solution to that because for the government, everything is free.
	Right?
	Right.
	So either it's not a big problem, in which case the DRO system should work or will work, or it is a huge problem, in which case we desperately need a DRO system because if cheap and crazy laws are a bad thing, then the government is the worst conceivable solution because for the government, everything is not just cheap but then the government is the worst conceivable solution because for the I mean, how much does George Bush pay for the enforcement of the drug war out of his own pocket?
	Right. Well, the government doesn't shy away from things that are incredibly expensive.
	Yeah, no, I understand that, but we're just talking about crazy stuff that's cheap, right?
	And that's why I say it doesn't matter.
	Either it's not a big issue, in which case DROs will work fine, or it is a big issue, in which case we need DROs instead of a government.
	All roads lead to freedom, right?
	No matter what the problem is, the solution is nonviolence, right?
	Unless it's like direct self-defense or something.
	I guess I didn't get that last point with the government.
	Okay, we'll take another swing at it.
	And it's kind of an elusive and subtle one, right?
	So, if the criteria is enforcing crazy laws and they're cheap and that's bad, right?
	Right. That was the category, right?
	Uh-huh. Okay, so if laws are cheap for those who enact them and crazy, that's bad, right?
	Right. Now, is it more expensive for a DRO to enforce a cheap law or, like, for an individual DRO in terms of its balance sheet, its profits and losses?
	Let's say that we have a law that's crazy that costs a million dollars only a month to enforce.
	Is it, like, that's going to be rough, right?
	So, because you have, it's going to cost a million dollars, but the DRO might do it because the DRO is crazy, right?
	Okay. Okay. So if we say that a cheap but crazy law is bad, at least it's limited by the fact that it costs the DRO something to enforce it, right?
	Right. Whereas it costs the government nothing to enforce crazy laws.
	Oh, got it.
	Okay. Sorry, there's three possibilities.
	Either there's no such thing as a cheap, crazy law, in which case DROs are fine, right?
	Right. Or there's only a few, in which case DROs are fine, right?
	Mm-hmm. Or there's a whole lot of them, in which case we desperately need a DRO system because the only thing that's going to limit the enactment of these cheap, crazy laws is vicious competition between DROs to keep costs low, right?
	Right. Right.
	I see what you're saying. Because the government, it's all free for the government.
	Free crazy laws is worse than cheap crazy laws, right?
	Right. Got it. Okay.
	So they don't even have the motivation of even that small amount of cost because it's coming out of not their pockets.
	Actually, it's quite the opposite.
	It's not just that they have no motivation to not enact crazy laws.
	They have every motivation to enact crazy laws.
	Because if there's some guy who says, I want a national don't put leprechaun in your pants day, and there's like 20 guys who want this, Of course, the DRO is just going to laugh at them, right?
	Unless they're Irish, in which case it's going to take cover.
	But the government is going to say, well, shit, it doesn't cost me anything and I get 20 more votes.
	If they have a really good lobbying party or whatever, then sure.
	Yeah, for sure. Now, of course, I mean, in reality, the government would balance that with how many people think they're nuts or whatever.
	But with the government, because they get benefit for enacting crazy laws, which explains the whole drug war and all the other nonsense, right?
	They get a huge benefit from enacting crazy laws and it costs them nothing.
	So, if cheap crazy laws are bad and free crazy laws are bad, how bad are crazy laws that you get paid to enact?
	Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
	Through votes and through donations and so on, right?
	Right, right.
	So no matter what happens, the solution is never the government, right?
	Right. So maybe you can, to move on from that question, thank you for answering that.
	It really clears things up.
	Let's say you have a DRO that, you know, says, my dog's, I don't know, not allowed to poop in your yard or something.
	But under my DRO laws, that's fine.
	Like I can, my dog can poop wherever he wants to.
	Is it that since we're under different DROs that ours, like there's, how does that conflict resolved?
	Well, I mean, my suggestion would be that neighborhoods would probably, somebody would build a neighborhood and say, these are the DROs that we work with, right?
	You can have some choices or whatever, but there could be some limitations that way.
	The other thing, too, is that you would simply, if you wanted a DRO to enforce the dog pooping thing, you'd just pay extra for it, right?
	Yeah, but wouldn't you only comply with that if you were under the same DROs as I was?
	Oh, no, no, because we would have agreements, right?
	Like, you can go to France and put your card into an ATM machine and pull out money, right?
	Even though you have no bank in France, right?
	Because they all have reciprocal agreements, right?
	Okay, so the DROs themselves would have agreements about what to do in those situations.
	Okay. Sure, yeah.
	And if I had a DRO, what I would do is, I mean, part of my whole advertising thing would be, I will work out your conflict with any DRO, you know, that is registered in the DRO Association and has a decent contract rating or whatever, right? But that would be my sale.
	Like, don't worry about a thing.
	I'm going to deal with every DRO that you're ever going to need to worry about.
	That's going to be my deal to you, right?
	Right, right. Because you don't have to sit there and go, geez, I wonder if this store takes Visa, right?
	What you want is the credit card where you just go, unless it's like a guy selling, I don't know, the heads of heretics in a store in Azkaban, then it's going to take Visa, right?
	Everywhere I go in the world, I don't need to worry about it.
	There's traveler's checks too, right?
	The wider the application, the more customers you're going to have, right?
	Right, right.
	Now, the other thing too is that if you and I are neighbors and we can work out the dog pooping thing, then we can save ourselves maybe a couple of bucks a month, right?
	So there's a positive incentive for us to work out our, like the more that we can work out with each other peacefully, the less we have to pay for zeros, right?
	That's true, yeah.
	Because right now, every asshole on the planet can go lobby city hall and get stupid ordinances passed, right?
	Like we've got one in Toronto now, which is like you can't use any pesticides on your lawn, right?
	Yeah. And yet, I'm also not allowed to pee on my lawn.
	I mean, I don't know. It just doesn't make any sense.
	Okay, it makes a little sense, that last one.
	But see, there's a negative...
	Oh, sorry. There's a positive incentive for resolving things peacefully, right?
	Right. That's right.
	Right. Now, listen, we've got some people who are chomping at the bit a little bit.
	If you would like to, we can pick this up another time if you like.
	And these are great questions. And, you know, it's been a while since we've talked DRO stuff, so I'm more than happy to do it.
	But I just want to, you know, for the people who don't understand what the hell we're talking about, we might want to move them up.
	Yeah, no, that's sufficient for my question.
	Thanks a lot, Steph. Okay, and don't forget, you can do a search through the Philosophysician at freedomainradio.com forward slash P-H-I-P-H-Y. And you can just do a search for DROs and there's lots of podcasts on them.
	Great. Thanks a lot. Thanks, man.
	Oh, somebody has just come in who wishes to talk.
	No livro. Tá.
	Tá aqui, né? Ah, eu tenho que ver esses grupos que é isso, né?
	Wait, wait. I'm just putting the babblefish in my ear.
	Se eu entrar aqui, né?
	É isso. No, no, sorry, there's two sexy nipples.
	No, wait, sorry, that's three sexy nipples.
	Okay, this is getting a little odd.
	Oh, he's gone. Okay, sorry, we can bring in the next person.
	Hello, Adenauer.
	I'm not even going to try and pronounce all of that, but your name ends with 23.
	Are you one? Are you live?
	You wish to talk. He has gone too.
	I have forgotten this deck of cards shuffle of the Skype cast.
	Alright, we have Mr.
	Nilton. Who is listening.
	Hola! Hola!
	Stefan! Hello!
	Stefan! Hi!
	Hi! Sorry, I don't know how to speak English.
	Okay. My knowledge of anything but English is silly.
	But if you have a question or comment that you can manage out, I'm happy to hear it if I can.
	Okay.
	Excellent.
	But...
	Thank you.
	Rilsson? Hello, are you?
	Good night. Hi.
	Good night. Good night.
	How are you?
	I'm good, how are you? Hi.
	Okay, we're going to move him to listening and we'll try with...
	Has he been on before?
	No? First of all, okay.
	PK Sage, I think that you are up.
	If you have a mic, feel free to gesture.
	You've got your webcam. Put your pants back on.
	Sorry, go on. I'm sorry, I just have one thing to say.
	A question I found myself answering is like, I just thought about it.
	And sorry, I'm not sure if you have like a certain amount of things or chances or whatever.
	After that English essay, I found myself having to choose between the question of living in the Western culture and just doing and just sort of living just to get by, or doing the project the way I want to and live in a better life, but like a less, I guess, valuable type life.
	And I find myself I have to answer that question before I do anything, and I think that's why I'm no longer motivated.
	Okay, and that certainly could be the case.
	And I'm sorry, but we've just got a bunch of other people who were waiting, so we can talk about that another time if that's alright.
	But have a listen to that book that I recommended.
	I think you'll really enjoy it. Thank you.
	Alright, should we even try with somebody named Jean-Pierre, who is looking up my last name?
	Let's give it a shot. Monsieur le Jean-Pierre, hein?
	Trois, sept, trois? Oh dear, I think I just went from Molyneux to Moulin-X. No?
	Okay, let's try, Mr. Paul.
	Scroll up. Alright.
	Paul, I think you are up.
	Hey, Steph, can you hear me?
	I'm sorry, could you repeat that in Urdu, please?
	But, uh, can you hear me alright?
	I sure can. Alright, what I had a question for was you told me to go ahead and address you with it on Sunday, and it was when I went over my introductory post on FDR, it was about your value theory.
	Remember that? The coconuts.
	I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts.
	Yes, go ahead. Actually, they were oranges on your podcast.
	But yeah, you could say that.
	Coconuts, oranges, don't matter.
	Oh, the coconut thing. I guess you don't have a webcam running.
	I just did a dance with that. And you don't even want to know what's going on with the coconuts.
	But anyway, sorry, go on.
	Yeah, you said, I just wanted to maybe get a little clarification on your position on the value theory.
	You said the oranges, in the abstract hypothetical scenario, you said if the oranges are up on the tree, they are not valuable until somebody goes and picks them.
	Once somebody picks them and appropriates them, then they are valuable.
	I'm sorry, just to be really annoying, nitpicky, if I remember rightly, I used the phrase, have value.
	They do not have value as long as they're inaccessible, and my metaphor was if there's some guy.
	I mean, you can want the oranges, but they don't actually have any value in terms of being able to be consumed or planted or traded or whatever.
	They don't have value until you can actually get a hold of them.
	So a guy in a wheelchair who can't climb the orange tree...
	He's not going to be able to convert the oranges into that which has value, despite the fact that he may really want some vitamin C. Well, I probably disagree with that.
	Actually, I do disagree with that because wouldn't it make sense that the oranges are valued ahead of time before they're appropriated?
	I mean, it makes sense if somebody would exchange their labor with climbing up to the tree for the expected satisfaction of the oranges.
	I don't think it necessarily follows that the guy in the wheelchair would not value the oranges simply because they're not accessible.
	Yes, sorry to interrupt, but this is the linguistic difference between valuing something and something having value.
	So, for instance, I value a million dollars, but I don't have a million dollars of value in my bank account.
	I want it, but I don't actually possess the value, right?
	So a guy in a wheelchair at the bottom of the orange tree, he may value the oranges, but they will never be a value to him because he cannot get to them.
	He cannot own them. He cannot convert them into something that actually has value to him.
	It remains a desire, a yearning.
	Okay, but that's kind of implying that the oranges already have an intrinsic value, right?
	I'm not sure what you mean by intrinsic value.
	That the oranges are only valuable when they're appropriated.
	I know what you're saying about the million dollars, but I don't follow that very well because it's like when people go diving for pearls, it's not that the pearls become valuable as soon as they're appropriated.
	They're diving because the pearls already have value.
	Oh yeah, sure, but the pearls that are not appropriated have no value.
	I mean, people value them for sure, but I mean, I value, I don't know, stuff in the hold of the Titanic, but it has no value because it's not being converted into something that's usable, right?
	I mean, a fisherman will cast his net into the ocean because he values fish, but those fish do not have value if he does not catch them, right?
	You can't sell the fish you missed, right?
	Well, right.
	But you're saying in exchange, you're talking about value in exchange.
	I'm talking about value in general.
	I don't distinguish exchange value and actual value that people place on things.
	I think people go and appropriate those things because they already have value.
	Well, I mean, sorry, of course it would be crazy for me to argue that people do stuff that they do not value, that somebody will go to the work of diving for pearls that they do not want.
	Of course, I mean, that to me is a tautology that when people act to gain a value, they value whatever it is they're trying to gain.
	I completely accept that, for sure.
	Well, okay, that's fine.
	I think I defined your position as talking specifically about exchange availability in the market, which is fine because I agree with that position.
	I just wanted to kind of hear that clarified from you.
	It almost sounded or it was a possibility on my part that I thought that you maybe meant that these things had no value whatsoever until they're available for exchange in the market.
	Yeah, and they have value to people in the pursuit of them, but they cannot be traded until they are achieved, right?
	They cannot be traded until they are owned.
	And sell a fish until you can. Right, that's what I thought you said.
	I just wanted to have you clarify that position a little bit.
	That's fine. Yeah, I think what you're doing, and there's nothing wrong with it, it's just a language thing, I think that where you use the word value, I would use the word desire.
	Hmm... Yeah, I see what you're saying there, but I mean, I think everything is subjectively valued.
	If you don't have something at your disposal, like a million dollars at the time, then you just place it lower on your value scale because you're not going to act with a million dollars if you don't have the means.
	But it doesn't mean you don't value it.
	I mean, you could be saving or you could be doing stuff to achieve a million dollars.
	You see what I'm saying? Oh, sure.
	Yeah, absolutely. There's very few people who wouldn't value a million dollars, for sure.
	Right. Yeah, it's just...
	I just want to...
	That's what I thought you thought anyways, and I do agree with that position.
	I just wanted to...
	Here you clarify it a little bit.
	That's all. I'm done. No, and I'm really glad that you called in because this kind of stuff can be like 15 pages of board posts, right?
	Which is like, I'm going to use the word desire in the ancient Aramaic sense of nipple ring.
	So, no, I'm really glad that you called in because that can be really hard for people to sort out.
	So, thank you very much. Yeah, I'm just a nitpicker, you know, economist.
	I know, nitpicker is great.
	We love the nitpicking.
	I mean, nitpicking is key, and value is something that is so intrinsic that, you know, if I've got it wrong, I certainly would want to correct it, and I think that we agree, but using slightly different language.
	Yeah, absolutely. All right, well, I'm going back to just listen and talk to your other guest.
	All right, thanks, Ben. I appreciate it.
	That was great to bring that up.
	Alright, no problem. Alright, next up, we have the lovely Christina at the controls, and we're talking to Leo.
	Leo. Oh my god, it's a lion!
	No, I'm just kidding. Sorry, go on.
	Ooh, marinade, that's nice.
	Is he on? No? Leo, Leon, it's not there?
	Okay. Project 3, I think that you are up like oranges in a tree.
	Oh, hello, sir. Hi.
	Hi. Hi, how are you doing?
	I'm great.
	How are you?
	I'm pretty good.
	Pretty good.
	Our little economist friend.
	He's from the United States, San Pedro.
	Is that correct?
	Thank you.
	I couldn't tell you where he's from.
	Well, I can. Is there anyone else's cover you'd like to blow?
	What am I wearing? Sorry, go.
	It's okay. No, it's just, you know, I have a PhD and stuff, and it doesn't really seem to actually help me too much for what I do.
	And what's your PhD in?
	Management of International Nongovernmental Organizations.
	Ah. Isn't that boring?
	Is that the most completely boring thing you've ever heard in your life?
	No, listen, I spent a couple of weeks going through South, no, Central America, with a woman who was the wife of a friend of mine who worked for a non-governmental agency, so I have nothing but fond memories of my association with that, so go ahead.
	You went with the wife of your friend Is it because you creep people out that the PhD is not doing you any good?
	I was actually talking to a buddy of mine today.
	He's teaching at Brunei now.
	And you know what he said?
	He said a PhD means that you're permanently head-damaged.
	Yeah, I've heard it also piled higher and deeper in terms of what you shovel to get it.
	Piled higher and deeper?
	Oh, that's good, too.
	I didn't think of that.
	Hold on. I'm going to write that one down.
	And not to sound too pressing, I know that you were, of course, a long-term academic, so this might come as a shock to you, but do you have a pertinent or relevant question for philosophy or economics or psychology?
	Yeah, well, okay. World economics is basically whoever can get the most that they can actually put in their pocket.
	That's what world economics is.
	And politicians will always use the people around them to gain as much as they can possibly get before they have to get out of office.
	Is there a third one?
	Oh, yeah. These would be comments, right?
	They're not particularly good. It's fine.
	I just want to make sure that there's not a question mark at the end of it.
	The third one is that you should always be as good as you can be personally because nobody can beat yourself except yourself.
	You always have to be the best. I said that from when I was 14.
	Yes, for sure. Okay.
	Okay. Well, I appreciate that.
	Thank you. Thank you.
	I appreciate that. And be sure to come back with more comments if you have them.
	We do have room for a caller.
	We're just waiting for one person to sort himself out.
	If you had a question or a comment, just click on Request Mike, and I will try and dress like him.
	All right. DKSL 04736, you are cleared for landing.
	Hello. Hello.
	I'm calling to you from Liverpool in the United Kingdom.
	Well, hello. Hello there.
	I'd like to ask this particular question, which I think is relevant to the philosophy of the sort of conference as you were.
	Qualifications today, although they're important in many respects and do a lot to go towards the long-term ambitions of the various ones that are sitting in exams to take the qualifications, but do you think at the moment, certainly in the UK, they're being handed out like confetti?
	I'm sorry, I just missed a little bit.
	Apparently Liverpool is some sort of submarine.
	What is it that's being handed out?
	No, what I'm saying is, I'm talking about general qualifications that we have, like Doctor of Philosophy and all that sort of thing.
	All the various qualifications that we have, which are studying for universities.
	Do you think at the moment they're being handed out like confetti?
	In other words, you know, people are just getting these things and really there's no great substance to them at all.
	Well, I mean, that's an interesting question.
	To me, there are three kinds of degrees that I sort of work with in terms of my own categorization of them.
	The first kind, which is, to me, the kind which indicates a certain kind of rigor and certain kind of skill set, which is not necessarily to say that it's always good.
	But that would be a legitimate degree from an Ivy League school of some kind.
	You know, your McGill's, your York's, your University of Toronto's, your Princeton's, your Yale's, your Harvard's, your University of Liverpool, your Queen's, and so on.
	So I would say that where you have a long-standing kind of degree-granting institution, that somebody who's gotten a PhD from that, I mean, they may be mad as hatters, and they may confuse comments with questions, but they may, in fact, You know, they will have certain kinds of writing skills and certain kinds of debating skills and so on, certain kinds of language skills, because those things are hard to get.
	You know, it's an average of five to seven years to get a PhD in most of the arts programs.
	I don't know what it is in the sciences.
	I don't imagine it's much shorter, followed by postgraduate work and so on.
	So, there's quite a lot of rigor in those.
	Now, in philosophy, that just means that you're more rigorously insane, but certainly in the sciences, it's a little better.
	So that's sort of one kind of, and those are not handed out like confetti.
	Those take a lot of work and a lot of time investment and a lot of opportunity.
	Now, there's another kind, though, which is an honorary degree.
	Those are kind of handed out like candy, but I don't think those are taken very seriously.
	But then there are these kinds of back-of-the-matchbook kind of degree-granting institutions where somebody can say, well, I have a doctorate, and it's from some place in Costa Rica, you know, where you showed up and handed in a charcoal sketch.
	Of, I don't know, Eleanor Roosevelt or something.
	And so those I would consider to be somewhat dubious, if not wholly dubious.
	And we, in fact, know somebody who went and got one of those degrees.
	So, but she calls herself doctor and so on, but it's doctor with three R's and a silent K and a trademark.
	So, it's more of a brand than it is an education.
	So... So, if you can differentiate between these three kinds of degrees, then I think it's useful, but I don't think that there's any accredited university that hands out that stuff like confetti.
	It usually takes a lot of work.
	Well, we've got all the universities here in the UK, and we've got the government involved in a lot of what could only be called city colleges, which apparently are being made into universities in name only.
	You know, a lot of people are being handed out these university degrees and what have you.
	What I'm trying to get at at the end of the day is...
	Some people say that, okay, it's nice to have a qualification and all the rest of it, but at the end of the day, it's common sense, and having the experience of doing something which is going to go a long way, because it's half a dozen of one and six of the other,
	I think, in the sense that some people You know, are good at some jobs and not others, and other people are good at other jobs and not everything.
	It's very, very difficult to sort of differentiate between that who is qualified and those who can actually do the actual work.
	Sorry to interrupt, but I think that's very true, and I think that's more true in the realm of philosophy and perhaps certain forms of literary appreciation than in any other field.
	then I can certainly tell you based on my, I guess it's not now inconsiderable empirical experience having run this show for a couple of years now, the smartest people around tend to be those who don't have degrees.
	And the people who are the most rationally insane, if that makes any sense, tend to be those either with advanced degrees or those in pursuit of those degrees.
	And there's a free book.
	I just sort of finished it.
	You may want to check it out because I do talk about this to quite a considerable degree.
	And I think in a way that's hopefully entertaining and enjoyable at freedomainradio.com forward slash free, you can download the audio book or the PDF of a book called Everyday Anarchy, where I do talk about the corruptions that occur in the realm of higher education, because there are a lot of people who are intimidated by advanced degrees. because there are a lot of people who are intimidated And I think that you really quite often only advance in sophistry and falsehood when you move up the chain in academia.
	Yeah.
	Can I just make just one further point before I pass on to somebody else?
	And that is, in the realms of university degrees, two people can have exactly the same degree, but different points scored.
	In other words, one might have a first class 1.1 or whatever it might be, and the other one might have a second class.
	But they can both get the same job.
	But one is not as talented as the other.
	But a lot of people don't look at the actual degree itself.
	They're quite happy knowing that someone's got a degree.
	But the strength of that degree is another matter.
	Yeah, that's entirely right.
	And certainly, a year or two or maybe three after you graduate, nobody cares about what marks you got.
	I mean, it has a short-term and transitory value as you move forward, for sure.
	It's easier to judge people.
	It's easier to have a first cut in terms of degrees for some people.
	It's the same reason as maybe some...
	You wear a suit to a job interview even if the job doesn't require you to wear a suit.
	It's just something that people prefer, but I sometimes think that it limits almost more than it expands.
	A software entrepreneur, the people that I hired, by far the worst programmers I ever hired were those with advanced degrees in computer science.
	And those who were either self-taught or who had a sort of one or two year technical course were by far the most target and creative people.
	So I actually began to avoid people with advanced degrees in computer science because they just...
	They just didn't understand. Maybe they just spent too long in academia, but they just didn't understand the concept of value and business.
	And they would just go off on their own little quests without wondering or without being too particularly troubled about whether it made the company money or not.
	So they were expensive and unproductive.
	So that was sort of my experience.
	I just look for proof in the pudding rather than in the recipe, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, I understand what you're saying.
	In fact, just as a matter of interest, we've got a program over here, which I don't know if you've seen yet anywhere else or where you are, We've got a program here called The Apprentice, which is on BBC television.
	And it involves a businessman by the name of Sir Alan Sugar, which you may have heard about.
	You may have heard of him. And he goes through basically a rigorous interview process in which several participants...work for him have to do a series of little jobs, in other words, make a lot of money for him.
	And each week, if the two teams who participate, if one of them doesn't make the money or the grade, as it were, they lose out on whatever, then one of them gets fired.
	And it's a very, very rigorous sort of process.
	But what is interesting about this is that every single one of them that go for this particular competition, as it were, you know, are supposed to be, you know, building entrepreneurs and successful people in their own way.
	Yet when you actually see them doing the work, this work that they're given, some of them haven't a bloody clue.
	They just haven't a clue at all.
	Well, business requires a generosity of spirit towards the bottom line and towards customers, which the sort of self-obsessed nature of advanced degrees doesn't facilitate at all.
	Well, thank you very much. Those were very interesting points.
	I'm going to, just before we move to the next listener, I'm going to put forward a theory.
	I don't know if there's any way to ever prove this.
	But given the gentleman's voice, the fact that he was from a coastal town, the fact that I think I could hear piping and creaking in the background, I'm pretty sure we were speaking to a pirate.
	So I think that's really cool.
	And, you know, with the internet connection, it could have in fact been pirate radio.
	So we will figure that out at some point.
	But haversed!
	Let's move on to the next listener.
	So anyway, if you would...
	Oh, now's a good time to mention FDR. FDR, 42nd President of the United States, had a wife who looked like two miles a bad road and dropped chickens regularly.
	Anyway, FreeDomainRadio, FreeDomainRadio.com, number one philosophy conversation on the internet, full of brilliant people that I always try to keep up with.
	We have Dr.
	Watson, I presume. Yes, yes, encore.
	Do you speak French?
	No. You know what?
	I have a pretty good pronunciation.
	I can fool a waiter in Quebec for about 30 seconds.
	But other than that, no.
	It's restaurant French with a good accent.
	So basically you understand the basic principles.
	All you have to do is find the bathroom and be polite.
	Absolutely. And apparently it's very important to be a masochist in French restaurants because they seem to want to bring you pain.
	I don't know what that means. And sometimes the pain will be in a masochist.
	No, no. Pain.
	Pain. It's bread.
	Oh, yes, I know. But thank you.
	There's nothing better than a joke that is explained.
	I appreciate that. Would you like to back over it once or twice more in the explanation truck?
	That's funny. That's really funny.
	So you've been doing this for a couple years, have you?
	I sure have. I used to be a real job, but I quit about a year ago to work on this full-time.
	You know, actually, the first degree I got was actually in audio, video, television production up in Oregon.
	Oh, well, sorry, just to interrupt you, I'd just like to apologize in advance if you ever listen to my show.
	Just ahead of time, it's good to know that the early ones were recorded in a car with a microphone that was actually composed of about two yogurt cups and some string.
	So, just so you know, ahead of time, just some apologies in advance, but sorry, go on.
	Okay. If it works for you, it works for me, I guess.
	No, I was thinking about it because you were saying something about higher degrees and stuff.
	And it took me 17 long.
	Well, I got my degree in 93.
	And it was very difficult.
	And I was working all the time.
	I'm sorry to interrupt you for a second.
	Because most of the listeners in the audience are very young and have a really tough conception of going back that far.
	But he does mean 1993.
	For a lot of our internet audiences, they would get confused.
	Just so you know, just for the younger people among us, this is around the age of grunge, which is the equivalent of classical music to you, but sorry, go on.
	That's funny. Oh, yeah.
	Yeah, and that's how it feels sometimes, you know?
	You're sitting there, you're dealing with somebody.
	Practical knowledge is really important.
	That was the one thing I did pick up on.
	Practical knowledge is very, very important, but most people don't use practical knowledge.
	They just don't.
	They'd rather sit there and play Nintendo or Xbox or whatever they call these things, PS2 or whatever.
	But they don't actually go out there in the world and they don't actually do stuff.
	And that's really, really important.
	It's really important to actually put yourself in the world and actually try to make something happen.
	And I like what you said about the young guys as far as the guys you're hiring for your company and stuff.
	It's true. Most of the guys and gals that I used in my company We're really really cool but they were like two three year students you know they were they hadn't been out you know really exposed but they were very creative and they could come up with solutions and that's really that's what you're looking for you're looking for solutions and you know how do we fix that how do we do this yeah so I agree with you on that one.
	Yeah, I always wanted employees, and I would sometimes use this metaphor just to freak them out, because a lot of them are computer guys, and I had to introduce them to metaphor slowly through PHP. But one of the things that I was always wanting was this, you know, when you problem solve, you want to be like a stream going down a mountainside, right? The stream doesn't hit a rock and say, oh, well, I guess I'll just sit here and pull myself into oblivion.
	No, it goes around it.
	It goes around it. It just keeps going and it keeps going and it's unstoppable and that's really what you need because IT in particular is a lot about managing frustration because it's so annoying a lot of times.
	Life's like that. Life's like that.
	Yeah, that's very true.
	That's very true. My wife is nodding.
	Sorry. Yeah, you actually have a good handle on it.
	I'm surprised because there's very, very few people in this world that actually do.
	Yeah, and those people who were unstoppable were the people who were just gold, right?
	Whereas the other people, you'd give them a management directive and it'd be like pushing a brick along concrete.
	Go here, and then as soon as you start pushing, they'd stop, right?
	Whereas you just want to say, here's your destination, find your own way, and you just want those people who are not going to let up on the clutch until they get there.
	You sound so much like I sounded when I was younger, you know?
	Like 20 years ago.
	How old are you? 45 now.
	Sweet mother of God. Yeah, I know.
	And I'm really surprised because you're talking almost as fast as I would always talk.
	You know, just like, bam, bam, bam, bam.
	You know, okay. Now, let's go, let's go, let's go.
	This is the way you do it. This is like, you know, this and this and this and this.
	And everybody is like always pushed.
	You know what? You know the...
	The thing that most North American people have today is they have too much credit card debt, too much debt, and they're working just to pay off their debt because they're living beyond their means.
	Well, I mean, first of all, we can't make this too long a discussion because you're 45 and I know it's almost time for your cookies and nap.
	All right, thanks.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Okay, thanks. Don't tire yourself out.
	Don't tire yourself out for being upset because that's just going to make it that much sooner.
	We'll get you your oval and a foot rub.
	But, no, I'm 41, just in case you were wondering, so this is not a big deal for me.
	Okay. But no, see, I think as far as Americans go, and this is mostly what I know about in terms of the U.S. economy, it's to some degree in the case in Canada as well.
	I'm not exactly sure, and I don't know what the statistics are on this, so this is all just a bunch of nonsense opinion.
	Well, you don't have to worry about it.
	Well, my perception or my belief is it's not that people just suddenly got greedy and wanted to live beyond their means.
	The problem is that the economy and the taxes and so on is going so badly that people are going into debt because they took on obligations when the dollar was stronger and their take-home pay was higher and they have a lot of fixed expenses such as children and food and housing and mortgages and so on.
	And unfortunately, the economy is sort of collapsing underneath them, and it's not that they just suddenly want to spend more, it's that they're going into debt just to stay at the same place, because they have obligations they can't get out of.
	May I say something?
	Sure, yeah. I have no debt.
	That's good. Zero.
	I don't pay anybody any interest for nothing.
	And did you buy a house?
	Or did you save to buy the house and then buy it all at once?
	Or did you not own a house?
	I paid cash.
	Okay, so you saved before you bought the house, or you got a big chunk of change and bought the house all at once?
	Yeah, yeah. When I was in Southern California, I was paying like $1,500 a month just for rent.
	Not including water, electricity and stuff.
	And I squirreled my money away.
	And I paid cash.
	Well, so in a sense, though, you just had future debt, right?
	Because you squirreled money away exactly as you would have handed it to a bank.
	Well, you know, every country always wants to have tax, so you still have to pay property tax and stuff, okay?
	You never can get away from that for some stupid reason.
	I've never figured that one out exactly.
	But no, I have no loan, no mortgage.
	I don't have to pay anything except for basic.
	It's cool. I like it.
	Okay, well, that's certainly the degree to which debt can be avoided.
	Now, I particularly, my wife and I went into debt to buy a house, which is, you know, I don't consider that six of one, half a dozen of the other.
	That to me is more of an investment.
	But certainly, in terms of things like electronics and stuff, you buy clothing and so on that decays in value immediately, going into debt for that kind of stuff is a form of fiscal suicide for sure.
	Yeah, good point. Good point on that.
	Because the moment that you buy a car, you buy electronics, anything, all of that always depreciates immediately.
	Real estate... Oh yeah, I've had the same car for 10 years and I couldn't be happier with it and I hope to have it for another 10 years and I'll be happy, you know, like if I'm the only car left and everyone else has got jetpacks, I'll still be driving this car because that's the kind of stuff...
	Now that is the mark of a smart person.
	A smart person doesn't need to keep up with the Joneses.
	Oh yeah, especially when the Joneses are driving off a cliff, right?
	Hey, let's keep up so we can pull the Thelma and Louise together, right?
	That just doesn't make any sense. I don't want to be around people who are going to judge me by my car.
	I want to be around people who are going to judge me by the hotness of my wife.
	Actually, I don't want to be around anyone that judges me.
	My friends would never judge me.
	They would just be happy that they have the glory of actually being with me.
	When somebody judges you, they're not worth being around.
	Period. Alright.
	Well, I think we do have somebody else waiting.
	Was there anything else that you wanted to chime in?
	If you'd like to drop by the website, you may enjoy.
	Yeah, yeah. I'll drop by the website.
	And if I could say one last one thing.
	Sure. Dance in your own living room.
	That sounds like a commandment.
	I think we should. Yeah, dance in your own living room.
	Everybody dance now!
	Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum.
	Alright. Oh, let's put out my hip.
	Oh god, I'm over 40. Hang on, let me sit down.
	Alright, well thank you very much.
	I appreciate that. That's good words of advice.
	And we are just...
	Oh, they came and they went.
	So we'll just wait for...
	If you have a question or comment or wish to chime in, this is Free Domain Radio, the biggest, meanest, toughest...
	Most exciting, most thrilling, most personal, most active philosophy conversation the world has, I think, ever seen.
	And it's at freedomainradio.com.
	The books are out for free.
	They were not for free for some time, but given that donations seem to be working out beautifully, I just wanted to tell people to go past freedomainradio.com forward slash free.
	You can pick up some great, great books, I think, audiobooks, PDFs.
	There are print books. They're not free because we love the trees.
	But you can pick up all of that stuff and I hope that you will enjoy it.
	There's a book, I guess the first one I wrote last year, at least in this vein, was on truth, The Tyranny of Illusion, which is about some of the challenges of bringing Integrity and curiosity to your personal relationships, particularly with your family.
	And the second is called universally preferable behavior, a rational proof of secular ethics.
	And that really was my stab at trying to slay the biggest beast in the history of philosophy, which is a way to prove ethics without reference to government, society, or God.
	I think I took a fairly good swing at it.
	The thesis is held now for, since it was initially introduced, I guess about two and a half years ago, it's held strong.
	So I think I would definitely recommend checking that out.
	The third is Real-Time Relationships, which is a book about how to get along in your relationships that my wife ordered me to write.
	As a form of, like, you know, how bad people have to write lines, bad kids.
	So I wrote all of that stuff dutifully.
	Our other should say she dictated it to me, and it really is about how to get along in relationships, which is to, I think the technical phrase is to de-spine, but it works out beautifully.
	And the third one is the most recent.
	It's called Everyday Anarchy.
	Which is a way of looking at anarchy, which is stateless society, which is certainly what I advocate as the moral and just world that we should aim at.
	It's a way of helping people to understand that anarchy is not a foreign concept that exists in some deranged, over-mustachioed Russian brain, but it's actually a state that they operate within in their personal lives in terms of their jobs, in terms of looking for their marriage partners, and so on, that we live anarchy far in terms of looking for their marriage partners, and so on, that we live anarchy far more than we live political society, and the proof So...
	Those are the books that are available for free.
	I hope that you will grab a hold of them, and if you like them, I hope that you will come and donate just a few shackles.
	I also take Daenerys, and interestingly enough, I found that you can actually get Goats delivered to my house.
	So that's another option.
	Christine is a vegetarian, but I do like the milk.
	So if you can do that, that would be fantastic.
	And we have...
	Oh, I think we are actually, in fact, out of listeners, so it's a good time to wind up the call for this Sunday.
	This is a show that happens every Sunday.
	We've not been able to do it on Skypecast for a while, for about a year now, actually, because the Skypecasts have been not so much with the working, but if we are not around on Skypecasts, you can come to freedomainradio.com.
	Click on forums or click on the chat and you can give your Skype name.
	We'll dial you into a regular old conference call, but we hope to have this running as a Skype cast from here on in until I bequeath it to next of kin, I guess.
	So, no one else coming in.
	Thank you so much, everybody, for dropping by this Sunday afternoon.
	I hope that you have a wonderful, wonderful week.
	Feel free to drop by freedomainradio.com.
	Pick up all the goodies. All the podcasts are commercial-free and completely free.
	And just as a reminder, we've had to postpone the London Symposium, and we're actually going to hold it in Anchorage, Alaska, in February.
	So those of us who are lobbying for a thong-based symposium may want to consider the shrinkage.
	So that probably will be off.
	But everyone, thank you so much for dropping by.

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