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Oct. 18, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
26:22
1178 How (not) to Achieve Freedom - E-mail Feedback

Some excellent questions and criticisms about my new book.

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Good afternoon, everybody.
Hope you're doing well. It is the 18th of August, Saturday, 12.57pm, and I got a very nice and brilliant email from a listener about the new book, which I thought I would talk about a little bit, some excellent points, the new book being How Not to Achieve Freedom, and she says, Steph, thank you.
For sending me a link to the new book.
I would not have known about it had you not sent it because I have been to your site for a while.
Shocking! Why?
Mostly because I had to do some thinking on my own of the ideas and such you filled into my head.
You caught me at a good time.
I was able to listen to the whole thing this week.
Really good stuff. One, first of all, I've been around your site long enough to know that all of the historical information about...
Your stuff you provide is excellent about how you've been treated as time went on.
You continue telling the truth even to libertarians.
It helped me a lot to hear how well you understand it all.
Thank you. This really helped me understand your points about joining other groups to show You can change them before taking on the biggest group of all government.
That was such an excellent point, it really rams home the idea that we just need to leave and create something totally new.
A minor tweak, I would say, on that.
It's not that we need to leave, it's just that we need to not join futile and pompous groups with absurd claims that have failed perpetually, historically.
It's not that we need to leave, just not join that which does not work.
Three, I am embarrassed that it never really occurred to me to check for real evidence that a libertarian political party was really doing anything measurable to achieve its goals.
I think I had plenty of anecdotal evidence that people were listening to me explain the new ideas.
But was the number worth the effort?
I don't know. Isn't just one enough?
The reasons I left had to do with them not matching up with their ideas, that I realized that a political party about libertarianism is...
An oxymoron. Well, it is and it isn't.
I mean, to me, if you're looking for...
It's not a technical oxymoron if you're looking to reduce the size of government.
It just can't conceivably work.
A political party about anarchism, I think, would be a technical oxymoron, if that makes sense.
Four, I like that you stand up to the academics who preach these ideas but don't live them.
That's such obvious hypocrisy bothers me.
As a matter of fact, if I had to sum up my feelings on what bothers me most in life, it's hypocrisy.
I, of course, have a two in loads, I'm sure.
Well... It's something we all struggle with.
Five. On the note of hypocrisy, when I got to point four above, it made me pause and think about how you advise kids to just go ahead and take advantage of government benefits when they can since we're trapped in the system.
Yet I wonder if economic academics are not trapped too.
I guess you think it's different because they're speaking out so much about how they clearly, they say it would work and they're not even putting their money where their mouth is.
But I'm still not clear on the taking of government benefits of those We've heard and agreed with the libertarian message to be called the same thing.
And that's an excellent, excellent point.
A number of people have asked me about that, and I'll do, hopefully, something useful to help with that, and we'll see if we can't make some sense out of this issue.
So, to me, there's a big difference between Taking a government benefit, and this came up in the past when people would write to me and say, dude, or something similar to that, dude, I'm a libertarian or I'm an anarchist and I'm being offered this government grant to go to school, should I take it or not?
Well, I think that's fine.
I mean, I really do think that's fine.
I don't believe in going off the grid.
I don't believe in...
I mean, if you had a chance to take something back from the Mafia that the Mafia had stolen from you, you would do it, I think, right?
Benefits that are going to be stripped from you later anyway, right?
This is simply stealing something that you know is going to be stolen from in spades back.
I took some loans and some grants when I was in university, and then I proceeded to pay an obscene amount of taxes, right?
In fact, it was a pretty good investment on the part of the government, I thought.
But I proceeded to pay A truly obscene amount of taxes for the rest of my life and will continue to pay for the rest of my life.
So, you know, taking a couple of grand when I was 19 or 20 after having been trapped in these god-awful government schools for, you know, decades or a decade and a half and all this kind of junk, to me it was like, yeah, okay, I'll take a couple of grand.
I'm going to pay way more in taxes for the rest of my life.
I'm going to take that money, I'm going to study history, and then I'm going to use that in a free market environment to teach other people about the evils of the state.
I mean, the question, of course, which is a very important question, very relevant question, is, well, how is that different from...
People becoming academics.
And I think it is.
Let me see what I can do to make the case, and then you can tell me if I'm, you know, pulling mealy-mouthed self-justifications or actually making some sense.
The reason that I think it's different is that it is a free market scenario to a large degree to take money and go.
Like, you're choosing from A bunch of different courses.
You're getting some education. And for me, a lot of it had to do with trying to repair the educational damage that the state had hit me with when I was a kid.
So, it's kind of like restorative in a way.
I didn't get much, if anything, from...
The professors who were around, I can't remember, to be honest, I can't remember anything that any of them taught me that was of any use whatsoever.
In fact, most of it was quite the opposite of that which was useful.
However, the great thing that education does, if you can get into it, is it gives you a structure and a discipline that helps improve your writing, but for me, oh my heavens, the best time in education was Doing a master's where I got to self-directed study.
And so, yeah, I didn't take any money for my master's, but I did take some for my undergraduate.
For my master's, I worked for a year beforehand to be able to afford going to my master's.
I didn't take any government money for that, but I did for my undergraduate and so on.
But, of course, I did also work throughout my undergraduate as well and graduated with not a huge amount of debt.
And there were some grants involved, but a lot of it was loans.
So I worked two or three jobs all the way through school to get my way through it.
So, to me, it's the difference between, you can't escape the government, you can't have no involvement with the government, but, on the other hand, that doesn't mean that you should pursue a career with the government.
That, to me, is different. So, as I mention in the book, when I was in my business career, I would occasionally Take contracts from the government.
And I did that without a smidgen of a bad conscience because we were being taxed at, God, 35% of our profits went to the government in this fischistic model of this modern economy.
And so, for me, it's like, okay, so the government giveth, the government taketh away, and I'm perfectly happy to To take back money where possible.
And it did turn out, of course, that the government is a very difficult entity to do business with.
They're entitled and weird and no discipline and lots of politics.
So it didn't turn out to be hugely profitable to work with the government.
But I don't think it's a problem.
I don't think it's a problem.
I mean, to sort of...
If I get mail, it comes through Canada Post, which is a government agency, right?
So if I want to send mail, I have to use the government monopoly.
If I want to go to get a university education, There's no way to get that university education without taking subsidies.
Even if you don't take a penny, your education is still subsidized to the tune of about 90% because, at least up here in Canada, or if you go to a state school or whatever, it's still subsidized because education is simply subsidized.
The entire cost of the university.
Students pay, at least when I was going to school, maybe 10% of the costs.
So, for me, whether I paid 10% of the costs or 5% of the costs was not a massive...
You simply can't get an education without taking subsidies, and if you're going to say, well, the difference between a 90% subsidy and a 95% subsidy is the difference between good and evil, I think is not a valid thing to say.
Now, if you are against Canada Post as an evil monopoly, but you will...
You will send and receive mail because it is a monopoly, right?
And so that's what you'll do.
Then I think that's fine.
I mean, you can be against a state monopoly and still use the services of that state monopoly.
So to me that's fine because this is the situation you've grown into.
However, to me there's a difference between being against a government monopoly And using it, because there really aren't any alternatives, or using it to get back money that's been taken from you, and actively going for a job in Canada Post, or in the sort of Postal Service, which you say is a corrupt and evil institution.
There's a difference. Is it a black and white line?
I think, to some degree, it is, right?
I mean, if you go for a job in a government institution, and the people who...
I mean, this is the thing that I tried to get across in the book.
People who say... That they're going for a job in a government institution in order to talk about the evils of that government institution are completely fooling themselves.
They're just completely fooling themselves.
You could not do more damage to the cause of freedom than to take government money while calling, or take a government position, right?
To take a government position and that the, you know, overpay that comes with it, the tenure, the protection, the status, all this stuff, and then say that all of that is evil.
So, to me, it's not, you know, people who go for, who try to get tax rebates, right?
To me, that's fine. If you buy a furnace and the government offers you money, then, you know, for upgrading your furnace or whatever, fantastic!
You know, send the check in and get the money.
And if the government offers you free money, take the free money.
I mean, they're taking enough from you anyway.
So, to me, that's fine.
Because that free money doesn't come with specific contractual obligations, right?
Like, when I took my student loans, it did not come with a contractual obligation which says, you must now praise the government.
It did not come with specific, it was open.
Like, here's the money, you can do whatever you want as long as it's in university.
So to me, that's quite a different situation from now you're a professor and you're tenured and you have to do this and you have to do that and here are your benefits and here are your obligations and here's your contractual thing and so on, right?
If you are going to be offered a rebate for, you buy a furnace and the government says, hey, if you buy this furnace, we'll give you 500 bucks, fill out the form, get your 500 bucks.
I mean, why not? If the government's giving you free money without obligation, right?
Without obligation. Without contract, without restrictions, without all of this kind of oogie stuff, then, yeah, to me, I say go for it.
I'm going to take enough of it on the other side.
And the other thing that is sort of annoying to me about these academic free marketers is the lack of respect they give to the government, right?
I mean, the lack of respect that they give to the government, I think, is important.
The government is not stupid, right?
Because if the government is stupid and they kick our asses perpetually, then we're just fucking retarded, frankly.
Like, I mean, if we lose to a retarded institution, that, to say the least, does not speak very well to us, right?
So, the government knows a lot about Power, right?
The government knows a lot about how to maintain and expand its power.
And frankly, in terms of success, the government is far more successful than libertarians, right?
So, if you are regularly getting your ass kicked, saying that you're outsmarting your opponent, to me, is kind of an embarrassing thing to say, right?
Have respect for your enemies, especially those enemies who kick your ass up and down the quad.
Have respect For government and its intelligence and those who run it.
I have a huge amount of respect for the abilities, evil though they are, of political power mongers.
They know their shit. I mean, Obama knows exactly what to say and what not to say.
John McCain knows exactly what to say.
It doesn't mean both of them win, but it means both of them are in the race.
They're smart, corrupt, brilliant geniuses.
I mean, they know. They know what to avoid.
They know what to say. All of that kind of stuff.
So, don't assume that if the government lets you get away with something, that it doesn't know what it's doing, right?
Now, I don't mean that if the government gives you a couple of K to go to school.
I'm not talking about that, right?
What I'm talking about is that if the government moves in to shelter and protect your profession, don't assume that the government doesn't know what the hell it's doing.
These government people are so idiotic, they actually will fund and protect libertarian professors.
Despite the fact that we are nobly standing against the power of the state, I mean, gosh, how stupid can governments be that they will fund free market professors?
Don't assume that.
Don't underestimate the most successful power entity in the history of the planet, particularly the modern Western government.
Don't assume that they don't know what they're doing, because if they don't know what they're doing and they kick your ass, you're a Cro-Manian idiot, right?
So the very fact that the government is willing to fund free market economists and protect their jobs and give them subsidies and so on, should, if you've got any brains at all, give you pause and say, well shit, if the government is the most successful power agency in the world and they're happy to fund free market economists, why is that? Right?
Why is that?
Why don't they find some way to get rid of us?
They sure as hell can. Governments break contracts, invade countries, print money, rip off the poor, throw people in jail, make things illegal on a whim.
Why do they let us continue?
Now, all these free market economists, these free market academics, oh, they just think that they're so smart and they've outwitted this government and they're so smart and the government is so dumb.
I submit that that is not the case.
I submit that the government is brilliant, and it funds free market economics, and it protects the jobs of free market economists, though it could do anything it wanted with them, because they completely discredit free market economics.
You could not invent a group that would more hypocritically destroy free market economics than free market professors, so don't assume that the government doesn't know exactly what it's doing when it protects them.
Six, I like you promoting the idea that libertarianism politics is just a way to go around the root problems, but boy, you certainly go into a hellhole there as you try to have people understand they may be avoiding something in their own life.
Well, amen, sister. I have years of bloody experience to prove that, and I couldn't agree with that more.
I'm not sure exactly what you mean when you say libertarianism sold out to Christians.
Aren't there many libertarian atheists as well?
Are you just referring to the Ron Paul movement?
Well, no, you might want to get from the PDF I'm referring to More than the Ron Paul movement, most of the major, at least all of the major libertarian organizations that I've looked into have received funding from Christian groups and foundations.
Of course there are atheist libertarians, but I'm talking about the movement as a whole and the support constituents, right?
Almost all Christians. I am one of the people who always said, even from the time I joined with libertarians, that the best and only thing the LP had going for them is that they could use the system to their benefit by educating people on libertarian Ideas.
I think this, because that's how I got this far.
I mean, I continued to read and learn more after that, and some just quit learning more once they find the party, took these into the party, get me there.
And yes, I cannot know what would have happened if they were not there.
Yeah, for sure. Lots of people found out about libertarianism through the Libertarian Party, through Ron Paul, through Ayn Rand, and so on, you know.
I'm not going to again say that, but that doesn't mean that we can't criticize and find better ways and abandon that which has not worked.
Because the purpose is not to educate people.
The purpose is to actually reduce the size and power of the state.
The purpose is not to educate people.
You say, well, can we do that without educating people?
Well, so far we have educated lots of people and we haven't done it.
It's important to look at the form of education as well as the content, which is sort of what I'm saying about free market academics.
Yeah, the content is free market, but the form is statist.
And so they're disconnecting the ideas from execution, which discredits them in people's unconscious.
And if the government could easily ban the Libertarian, how will you know when the Libertarian Party is actually getting somewhere?
Well, it will be banned. They will say to a Libertarian, so you're for the non-aggression principle, right?
And the Libertarian will say, yeah, this is how simple it will be to ban the Libertarian Party, right?
The only reason you know it's not effective is because it still exists, right?
So you drop by, Mr.
FBI drops by and says, oh, so you're a libertarian.
So you're against the initiation of force, right?
And you consider taxation the initiation of force, right?
Libertarian says, yes, I consider taxation the initiation of force.
And you believe in self-defense against the initiation of force.
And the guy says, yes, right?
So then you will advocate that people shoot cops who come to pick up taxes, right?
Libertarian's going to have to say yes.
Boom! He goes to jail for inciting hatred, right?
It's so simple to fuck up the Libertarian Party politically that the only reason you know it still exists is because it's completely ineffective, right?
Then you say, well, do you think that the president is a criminal for his war?
And Libertarian says, yes, didn't go through Congress, didn't follow the Constitution.
So you would support The use of violence against the president because he is an aggressor who has caused the death of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people.
Libertarian's either going to abandon his principles and say, well, no, in which case he's going to get screwed up through logic and they're going to get him anyway.
Or he's going to say, yes, I do support the initiation of the use of force against the president because he is a war criminal.
Boom! Right?
Threatening the life of the president.
Off you go to jail for the rest of your life.
So they're going to fuck up the Libertarian Party at the moment.
It becomes even remotely effective.
That's why we find an alternative.
Nine. So to me, idea number eight, the education piece, was my thought of the idea of just using the system we have to our own benefit.
You telling college kids to go ahead and take grants, loans, benefits, or whatever, and use that government money to educate themselves.
Taking advantage of the system we're already in, does that make sense?
Absolutely it makes sense.
I think that taking government money, which is not government money, but your money, right?
Taking government money to educate yourself is perfectly fine.
Attempting to gain control over the government, attempting to get a job with the government to talk about how evil the government is, where you're bound by legal contracts and conflicts of interest, to say the least, to me, it's not right.
Christian stuff, donations, et cetera, being voluntary, shit you're right.
If they can get the kids and fill them with fear, use that psychology, how can they really say it's been voluntary?
Yeah, I mean childhood indoctrination does not make voluntarism.
Eleven, you make another fantastic point, one I've already thought about, in quite the terms you say, about how the people who knew and saw through the lies and understood the truth were the ones who usually got themselves killed throughout history.
But when I think about that, I think of how the Christians took advantage of that by talking about all the Christian martyrs.
So I have to think about this some more.
I like that you talk about your site, how it's all voluntary, so how could I be running a cult?
I wonder if people could say you get people to do You get the people you do for the same reason the Christians do, that is dependent on what they heard when they were growing up.
That if they were not abused or whatever, then they would not be attracted to your message.
But does that matter? The cult association does bother me and that in itself is interesting as it makes me think that there must be another psychological thing that religions do when someone thinks they have found something worthwhile and truthful, but now That you made the great point about Christians and voluntary stuff.
It can certainly apply to you as well, couldn't it?
I don't think so, because I don't have access to kids, right?
I mean, I don't teach kids from the age of two or three onwards about reality and life and evil and gods and devils and watching.
I mean, I can only talk to adults.
And also, most of what I say goes really against the grain of what people think, and they really resist what it is they have to say and can spend months or years resisting it before recognizing that there's value.
In this kind of stuff. So I don't think that, you know, cults find broken people and offer them illusory solutions, right?
In a sense, I find people who aren't broken, convince them they are, and then offer them a really painful tonic.
So I don't think it follows quite the same thing.
Also, religion breaks people and then offers them painkillers for the rest of their life.
I don't, right?
And also religion says, give your money to me, I am the only way.
And I say, hey, donations are great, but, you know, spend money on therapists and books and knowledge, self-knowledge and so on.
Was Harry Brown a fraud too?
He paid a big part of getting me here as well.
I don't know. I don't know because I never really heard Harry Brown talk about religion.
I think he was, you know, he just didn't talk about it very much.
So I don't know about whether Harry Brown was a fraud too.
I don't know enough about that.
I'm truly bothered too by all the libertarians who again don't continue to think past things once they think they have found a home.
I was never really bothered by the people who do not believe in government.
But believed in God as a higher power because, at least that was voluntary, and by being with them we could work to get people to understand that we don't need a government.
So, she backs off from that one.
Justifying and rationalizing your past actions in your life.
I like that you take that head on.
But it does open you up to hypocrisy.
But that's okay. I guess the biggest problem I can see with this is that someone could challenge you and say, since you did take advantage of these things, then it helped you live a more comfortable life, and so it would be a sort of hypocritical attack.
Hypocritical to attack anyone else who was only trying to do the same.
Heck, after listening to you, they would realize even more that life is short and that's all there is, so living a comfortable life is certainly a rational decision for actions.
Well, I'm going to just refer back to the distinction between taking back government money without a contract and getting involved in status protection with a contract and talking about how evil government contracts are and so on, right?
So I don't see...
Hypocrisy is something that we're all capable of, and I'm sure I do it from time to time, and I'm happy when people point it out, but I don't see this.
I do say, yes, I took government contracts in the past, for sure, but Hypocrisy is relative to not some perfect standard, but relative to your beliefs at the time, which is something I've always maintained.
And I did not believe that the government was innately evil at the time.
And I ended up getting out of that business before I even changed my beliefs fundamentally and so on.
So I don't know how it opens me up to hypocrisy.
I'm certainly willing to hear more about it now.
I am one of the libertarians who reads a lot, but has not delved into psychology as it relates to that.
I wanted to major in psychology when my dad talked me out of it because he said I would never be able to find a job, so I went into business.
What psychology books do you recommend?
I want some that are not ones you or Christina may have written.
Blah, blah, blah. Well, that's totally fine.
John Bradshaw's stuff is very good, Nathaniel Brandon.
The only book of his I found really good was The Psychology of Self-Esteem.
I didn't find it particularly useful other than that.
For mycosystem individuation stuff, both Freud and Jung, a great Jung is better on individuation, Freud is better on the unconscious and dream analysis.
So, you know, just grab what you can.
Alice Miller is great.
Of course, the stuff that Lloyd DeMoss puts out at thepsychohistory.com, which I've read one of his books.
It's an audiobook. Feel free to pick that up.
freedomainradio.com forward slash psychohistory, one word.
I would pick up that stuff and go through that.
It's harrowing but essential.
Thank you so much for a very interesting set of thoughts about the book.
I really do appreciate that, and I hope that I've done something useful to help answer some of the questions or objections that you have.
But, of course, let me know if I haven't.
Thank you so much. Look forward to your donations.
If you have downloaded some books, oh, come on, please, I think it's time that you threw a couple of bucks my way.
I can't do this on air.
Thank you so much. I will talk to you soon.
I don't mean you, the person who wrote the letter, but others.
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