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Oct. 31, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:18:32

1194 Truth, Virtue, Goodness, Guns - A Philosophical Debate - Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKHP5gtnBAE

An Objectivist and Anarchist video throwdown...

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	Well, thanks so much for taking the time to have a chat.
	This is great fun, and I generally do prefer this to that sometimes snippy back and forth that happens on YouTube, so I do appreciate that.
	Would you like to take a moment, introduce yourself, talk about your channel, drive some hits in a good marketing way?
	I'm not marketing. I'm Q-Tron Man.
	I'm sure most of you, I don't know, probably a small percentage or maybe a large percentage of your viewers already know me.
	I consider myself an objectivist, so I'm not an anarchist.
	And so I made a video, what was it, a couple weeks ago?
	I mentioned you. Along with somebody else.
	And you posted a comment in which you said you like to do a debate.
	So we're going to debate or discuss, hopefully, rather than debate, since it's not really a formal debate.
	But, yeah, discuss the issues of anarchism and, in particular, the epistemology of anarchism.
	And I hope to look at your epistemology in particular, because I know that it can vary between anarchists, as I found out with various anarchists.
	They might, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure I have lots of haters among your viewers.
	In fact, I know I do.
	So that's why I'm here.
	All right. They're not haters.
	They're just people who haven't trolled you yet.
	It's different. Right.
	Okay, so did you want to ask questions about the...
	Obviously, I don't represent anarchism.
	I just have a particular philosophy which leads to anarchism, but obviously I can't speak about the philosophy of anarchism because I'm sure that changes, but...
	Oh, I think you represent a big contingent of the YouTube anarchists, though.
	Okay, let's...
	Yeah, I thought I saw something.
	Okay, so let's say that I speak for some contingent of anarchists.
	Why don't you... I mean, there's a number of ways we can do it.
	You have criticisms or questions, which is great.
	I would certainly be happy to answer anything that you'd like, or I could start with a speech, which I am prone to do, so it's completely up to you.
	Well, why don't we...
	I heard you say...
	Maybe we can start with your view of government.
	And maybe we can go down from there instead of going up.
	We'll go from kind of a top down from the concept, government, the idea of government, and kind of tie in maybe similar concepts.
	So just give me an overview of...
	I mean, I've heard you say this, but just to clarify, just to make sure we're on the same page, you know.
	What would you say...
	What is a government...
	And do you accept...
	That there is such a thing as a government.
	Oh, no. Well, let me qualify that.
	I am completely down with concept formation that the ideas within our mind that are valid and true about empirical reality are We derive them from the behavior of objective material reality.
	So when we say a forest, we are speaking about a conceptual net that we cast around a bunch of trees in a geographical location.
	The trees exist, But the forest exists as a concept within our minds.
	Now, it's true that...
	Let me just finish so that you can establish the idea and correct me.
	But now, an objection that I get...
	I mean, I think we all understand that you can't have a picture of a family without some people in the picture, right?
	You just have a picture of an empty photo studio or something and nobody would know what it is.
	So, the individual entities exist, but the collective aggregation exists within our mind and is valid as a reflection of what goes on in reality, but the forest, as the trees exist, the forest does not.
	Now, people will say to me, well, but how is a forest not the same as a tree, in that a tree is an aggregation of cells?
	But the difference is that the cells in a tree are bound together through cellular connection, atomic forces, whereas a forest, there's some roots and stuff, but generally a forest is not the same thing linked together physically.
	That to me would be the difference.
	Concepts exist because atoms have properties, right?
	So a rock is like another rock, so we can categorize them as rocks because they have the same or similar atomic structures.
	Same thing with trees.
	Trees and biological entities have similar atomic and cellular structures, so we can categorize them.
	So the problem is that the government is a label for a group of individuals who claim the moral right to initiate the use of force in society.
	The government is a concept, and it's actually an invalid concept, because we're separating and grouping things which aren't actually that different, right?
	You can say mammals versus reptiles, right?
	Warm-blooded versus cold-blooded, right?
	Suckles they're young doesn't.
	You know, births live, births through eggs.
	And so you're actually talking about objective differences.
	The difference between a politician and a private citizen or a cop and a private citizen is not fundamental.
	The difference is a costume and a concept, neither of which are valid at an atomic or biological level.
	So, no, for me, the government does not exist.
	That's it for my speech.
	Let me just say, I agree with your view of concepts to a point.
	I don't think it's necessary, though, you sort of alluded to the scientific, like the atomic structure or an acell.
	I don't think it's necessary to even understand the scientific Like the science, per se, the physical science.
	I mean, in ancient Greece, they didn't have any concepts.
	I mean, they might have had some notion of an atom, but they had no evidence that there was atoms, right?
	So you don't need science to form concepts.
	I think that's the first point that I would make.
	The second point is that... Sorry, you can't have...
	I mean, science... You have concepts, then you have science.
	So I completely agree with you.
	Exactly. It's inverse, right?
	And the second point is that, well, let me just give you an overview of, I'm not claiming I represent objectivism.
	This is my interpretation of objectivist epistemology, and I'm not even an expert in epistemology.
	But my view of objectivist epistemology is as follows, right?
	So I think the paradigm here is really like biology.
	You mentioned biology. Biology is a good paradigm for this, right?
	Because it's got the taxonomy.
	So you've got, I mean, let's take the concept of a bird, okay?
	So you've got the concept of a bird. You've got flamingos, you've got peacocks, you've got penguins.
	Those are three examples of the concept bird.
	If you look at a flamingo and you look at a penguin and you look at a peacock, they're totally different.
	They have different colors, there's different feathers, different size structures, different shapes.
	Their bodies, their anatomy is organized differently.
	One of them can't even fly.
	Yet we all categorize them in this thing called a bird.
	Right? And it's not an arbitrary identification.
	There is actually a reason why we have, you know, a big pink bird versus this feathery thing that's got all these different colors versus a penguin and the ants.
	And one of them, you know, they're in different continents, whatever.
	So how is it that we can say that they're all birds?
	But what are we saying when we say that they're all birds?
	In your view, is that just a label that we apply to...
	No, it's not. Sorry, it's not arbitrary.
	It's not arbitrary. I mean, I think that...
	Again, I'm no biologist, but it would be something like this.
	As far as I understand it, birds have hollow bones.
	They have wings or vestigial wings, and they...
	Birth with eggs and so on.
	So there would be specific biological categories that all of these creatures would share.
	I think that you might be going a little too far when you say they're totally different.
	To me, totally different is a flamingo and an asteroid or something.
	I guess both fly, so to speak.
	But they're not totally different, otherwise we wouldn't put them in the same categories of organisms.
	Well, that was my point, is that I kind of exaggerated that.
	They're not totally different, but within their domain, they're totally different.
	That's what I'm saying. So, I mean, maybe there's birds that are even different from...
	I mean, if you look at just their base physical qualities, right, their features, their...
	Like, perceptually, they're totally different.
	I mean, they have the same shape in some sense, right?
	So, as you said, there's some characteristic, or maybe there's more than one characteristic that's uniting...
	Not feathers, because I was just thinking of a pterodactyl which has those leathery bat wings, or bats which are warm-blooded, but sorry, go on.
	Right. No, but all I'm saying is that there's got to be an underlying...
	I mean, this is what Ayn Rand stresses in her epistemology book, is that there's a one in the many, right?
	So you have all these things, and it applies not only to the birds that are living today, the birds have lived in the past.
	I know you have evolution, so there's a certain cutoff there, right?
	But I don't know the birds that will live in the future.
	So it's like an open-ended...
	There's a folder, if you'd like, that refers to these specific units, right?
	So you can consider each one of these separate entities as units that fall into that folder, right?
	That's really what a concept is.
	Sure. And so that's like a first-level concept.
	You can say bird, and then once you have that folder, okay, It's like she compares it to algebra, right?
	So you have 2A equals A plus A. A is the abstraction, right?
	So you can plug any value.
	Or sorry, what did I say? 2A equals A plus A? You did, in fact.
	Yes. 2A equals A plus A, right?
	So you've got the abstraction A. It can refer to any, whatever, real number, any integer, right?
	Say any number, just ordinary number.
	That is equivalent, that is tantamount or analogous to what a concept is, right?
	If you say man or bird, it can refer to any man or any bird as long as it meets the certain criteria or the certain characteristic that, you know, defines or identifies what that entity is, right?
	Does that make sense, right? Totally, yeah, absolutely.
	And I think, sorry, let me just jump in for one.
	You don't need science, right? Okay, okay.
	I agree with you.
	Sorry, let me just say briefly.
	That's a later development, right?
	Yep. And I think that we would both agree, or you can tell me if you disagree, that individual penguins exist in the world, but the category of penguins does not exist objectively in the world.
	That doesn't mean it's subjective.
	The scientific method does not exist as an object or an entity in the world, but that doesn't make it subjective, because it is derived from the behavior of matter and energy, which is objective.
	But the concept birds does not exist in the world, it is something within our minds.
	Right. That's right.
	So Anne Ayn Rand made this point in the Epistemology book where she explained that, say we take physics, right?
	We take the science of physics, right?
	You know, physical particles have certain characteristics.
	They have certain attributes.
	They engage in certain behaviors or actions or whatnot, right?
	I'm not a physicist. I don't know what they do.
	But that is the case for physical particles.
	You know, the physical existence in reality, right?
	Whatever they do is what they do, right?
	So whatever they are, A is A, right?
	So that... As distinguished from, as you're saying, the science of physics, right?
	The science of physics is contingent on their being human beings in the world, right?
	Whereas the physics, like the actual stuff, is not, right?
	That's metaphysics versus epistemology, right?
	So you've got the science or the concepts or whatever, the theory, which, as you said, is contingent on their being human beings.
	And if there's no human beings, there's still stuff acting.
	It just means we don't know about it, right?
	Right. I mean, birds that are warm-blooded, that have feathers, that have hollow bones, and so on, they all existed and possessed objective qualities before we abstracted those objective qualities into universal concepts, right?
	We derive our universal concepts from the behavior of matter and energy, whether it's organic or inorganic, in the world as a whole.
	Right. You said the concept doesn't exist in reality, but you keep in mind that reality refers to everything.
	It doesn't just refer to this table or, you know, this wall, right?
	It refers to all that exists, you know, past, present, and future.
	And so everything, that encapsulates literally everything, the whole universe, right?
	That's what reality is.
	And that includes our thoughts, that includes our brains, that includes our consciousness.
	So when we objectively say the primacy of reality, we literally mean that reality comes first and then, you know, consciousness is really, in a sense, an aspect or an attribute of reality.
	So when you say concepts don't exist, they do exist.
	We're making real identifications.
	They just don't exist in the form of a mouse or in the form of a crouton or something, right?
	It's not that they don't exist.
	It's that we're making real identifications.
	And those, I mean, obviously it's contingent on a human brain being...
	I mean, without a doubt, concepts exist within our minds because our minds are part of reality.
	But there's two things, I think, that differentiate concepts from reality.
	The first is that concepts can be wrong.
	Whereas reality can't be wrong, right?
	I mean, if a rock falls down a hill, and I think it's going to fall at a certain speed, that's my concept or my theory, or I think it's going to fall up into the sky, and that's my theory, In any contradiction between the concept about reality and what happens in objective external reality, that which is outside the mind, in any contradiction between the concepts and reality, reality wins, right?
	I mean, I don't get to say, well, that rock is doing the wrong thing, right?
	I mean, it's my theory that's wrong.
	And moreover, and Rand's point in her book is that not only that concepts can be wrong, but that philosophers have been wrong for the past 2,500 years.
	Yeah, absolutely. Sorry, let me just finish.
	That's the first differentiator is that they can be in error.
	And the other thing is that we can have concepts within our mind that do not exist within reality, right?
	So we can think of a square circle, which does not exist in reality.
	We can think of a flying horse, which we assume does not exist, at least in the reality that we know of.
	We can have the concept that the world is flat, which is not an accurate reflection of reality.
	And so we can have concepts in our mind that do not exist.
	In reality, right?
	So they can be an error and they can also be extrapolations or, you know, imaginary flights of fancy or whatever that do not exist.
	And of course, we dream every night in things which could never happen in reality and so on.
	So, I mean, I agree with you that concepts exist within reality, but there is a differentiation between what goes on in the mind and what goes on in external empirical reality because of the possibility of error and the further concepts that we can have that aren't derived from reality directly.
	Sorry, go on.
	I just want to put that second point in.
	Yeah, I mean, I agree with you.
	I mean, I think omniscience is not a property of human beings, despite the claims from religionists to the contrary.
	So, you know, it's true that people have wrong ideas.
	The world is flat, and so on.
	I mean, that's really a false property of the world, right?
	But it's... So I don't think we disagree there, but I think our disagreement is more in the process of concept formation, probably.
	I don't know. Well, I guess we'll see.
	No, let's get back to government.
	That's where we start. Let's get back to government.
	That's a fairly broad abstraction, though.
	Well, my argument is that if you say that there's penguins, right?
	And then there's these five penguins who have the opposite properties of the rest of penguins, right?
	That would be invalid, right?
	So if you say there's a thousand penguins and they're all penguins and then these five penguins can time travel and fly.
	When they, in fact, can't, right?
	Then that would be an invalid hiving off and ascribing opposite properties that do not exist in reality to a small group of penguins, right?
	We agree on that. That would be an incorrect concept.
	Well, yes, but if penguins could time travel and fly, no, I mean, that's an absurd thing.
	No, they can't, right? I mean, that's just, like, stay in reality, right?
	That would be an incorrect abstraction.
	No, but I'm saying that you have to distinguish between characteristics that are incidental and characteristics that are what she calls essential, right?
	So, I mean, if I'm a human being but I'm green and I don't look like any other human beings, that's just an incidental characteristic.
	Maybe I was born with a defect, but I'm still a human being.
	Or if I look like a blob of yogurt, but I still have all...
	If you cut me open, you see a heart, you see a brain, and there's some mouth moving.
	I mean, even if I look like a blob of yogurt, I may still be a human being.
	being.
	There still may be a fundamental characteristic there, right?
	Sure.
	I don't know if you disagree or ...
	No, but you know what I'm saying.
	I mean, time travel and ...
	I mean, that's just ... you can't ... I mean, time travel and ... going back in time ...
	I mean, I'm saying, yeah, I see what you're saying, but I'm just saying that there is ... the whole basis of concepts Another thing I didn't mention was that concepts are really to save us time and to save us space, right?
	We can't think about a billion penguins.
	We can't think about all the birds that have ever existed, that will ever exist.
	So we have this thing.
	Bird. And that reduces all of this massive data, all of this information in our perceptual field to like one thing.
	I think we can retain that in our mind, right?
	She talks about this crow epistemology, right?
	In cognitive psychology, they call it chunking, or they call it the five plus and minus two rule or whatever.
	It's that where you can only retain a certain amount of data in your mind, and that's why we need concepts, because we can't go around and look at every penguin and count them and just talk at that base, concrete-bound level.
	We need to have this unifying system.
	That's how we deal with the world.
	That's how human beings really deal with the world.
	Yes, can we get back to government?
	Anyway, so back to government, yeah.
	No, that's where I'm going, though.
	That's where I'm going. Okay, so to finish it off, right, we can't logically or validly hive off a group of similar entities and ascribe them opposite characteristics if those characteristics don't exist in reality.
	I mean, we can do that, but it's wrong, right?
	In the same way, if we have religion, we say, well, there's a small subset of people in funny hats who can talk to God directly, but nobody else can.
	Well, then you have to show some objective difference.
	If you say, well, there's reptiles and there's mammals, you have to show an objective difference to differentiate these things.
	If there's no objective difference, then you can't just create opposite categories within a concept.
	So if we have a concept called human being, and we have a concept called can't initiate force, it's sort of an ethics, and we don't have to get into the source of that, but let's just say it's valid.
	You can't suddenly say, well, if this human being puts on a green costume, like a military costume, then suddenly he has the right to initiate force.
	But if he doesn't have that green costume, then he doesn't have the right to initiate force.
	Putting the green costume on does not give him the ability to fly, or time travel, or become a penguin at will.
	It doesn't alter any of his fundamental characteristics.
	Having a green costume versus a non-green costume changes nothing essential.
	As you say, it's just a green man, right?
	So he doesn't have opposite properties in the same way.
	So in the same way, you can't create a concept called the government, put a whole bunch of people in it, and then say they have opposite moral rules from everyone else.
	I mean, you can, but it's erroneous.
	It's completely false. Okay.
	I see what you're saying. Let's simplify this.
	Okay, suppose me and you and your viewers are on a deserted island.
	I mean, Lord forbid.
	Sorry, that was a cheap shot.
	But anyway, suppose we're on a deserted island.
	And that's our society.
	Maybe you have a couple thousand people, right?
	So there's a couple thousand people on a dessert island.
	That's our society. Now, if I put on a green costume and a few other people put on a green costume and said, we have rights that you don't have, that the remainder of the people in the society don't have, and started harming other people, started spoiling or initiating violence against them or whatnot, then I would agree with you that putting on a green costume is not...
	It doesn't give you any special status, per se, as such.
	I mean, devoid of context, is what I'm saying.
	I mean, if that's just the only thing you know, oh, this guy's got a green costume, okay, I obey him.
	No. No, that's not, but that's not really what a government is, though.
	I mean, if you look at, I mean, a government has existed.
	I mean, the government goes back, I mean, to prehistory, right?
	I mean, the government has really, in some form or another, always existed.
	So that's not an argument to say that it always should exist, of course, right?
	That would be the fallacy of whatever history or whatever.
	To say that that's the only thing that distinguishes a member of government from a non-member of government would be to wipe out the whole context which gives rise to government.
	I mean, that's why I started with something like a penguin, because you need to build up.
	It's a hierarchical thing, right?
	A government is a very broad, broad abstraction.
	It's an institution, right?
	What I'm saying is that I think you're jumping, you're skipping steps to try to To try to invalidate a concept that really there's a whole bunch of stuff that you're leaving out, that you're...
	I don't want to bypass that, obviously, but let's try and jump those steps, just because that can take forever.
	If we can't, then absolutely, let's take the time.
	I think that's what the problem is.
	I'll go to Ayn Rand, and we'll see if we can sort this out.
	Clearly, Ayn Rand is for the non-aggression principle.
	You don't initiate the use of force against other human beings, right?
	Yes. And the government, by its definition, is the initiation of the use of force against other human beings in the form of taxation, right?
	Well, Ayn Rand did not support taxation.
	So she's an anarchist?
	No, she's not an anarchist, but she did not support taxation.
	Okay, so how is the government funded and are you allowed to compete with it?
	We're going to go right there, right away.
	Let's do it. I mean, we can do the abstractions or we can do the actuals, which is, I think, where the real meat of the matter is.
	Well, I mean, you can't do one without the other, right?
	So how is the government formed and can you compete with it?
	Or how is the government funded? No, how is the government funded, right?
	So she was for police, law courts, and military, right?
	She was for police, military, and law courts and prisons, as far as I understood it, as far as what government functions were, right?
	Right, right. Funding, I think, is actually a very minor issue.
	I know that sounds like an absurd statement to say that, but the objectivist view is that the government really comes so much later.
	When you say, why do we need a government?
	Maybe we can do away with the government totally, like you said.
	Maybe we can just get rid of the government.
	No, no, no, sorry. You're drifting, my friend.
	Oh, my brother. You're drifting like crazy.
	How is it funded and can you compete with it?
	I have to get to that. How is it funded?
	Well, right now, obviously, it's funded by taxation, right?
	Which is evil, right? In an objectivist society, it would be funded the same way you fund anything, but it would have a special legal and political status.
	What does that mean? So that means that...
	Sorry, it's donations and it did charges for its services, is that right?
	Well, it's right.
	It's donations and it's...
	Right, it would be...
	I mean, there's different ways to do it.
	I mean, this is a whole area of economics.
	How do you fund the government? But it's not coercive.
	Right, that's a whole... It's a non-coercive mechanism.
	Okay, so I don't care what it is, if it's non-coercive, I'm happy.
	You can have lotteries, you can have charitable contributions, you can have, you know, a thousand different ways, you know, there's creative ways to come up with government funding.
	It's non-coercive. Okay, so you have a government police force in the Randian view, right?
	In my view, there is a government police force, yes.
	Okay.
	And it is not funded through coercion, but through voluntarism of some kind, right?
	Right.
	And obviously...
	It will be.
	I mean, that's later on.
	Yeah, I'm fine with that.
	And clearly, since the non-initiation of the use of force is a moral imperative, and if I decide to compete with a government police agency, I am not initiating the use of force against anyone, then clearly they cannot initiate the use of force against me.
	right? No.
	They can't. They can't?
	Okay, and how's that? They can't.
	And the reason is that when you say compete, this is why I want to get back to our view of concepts, because when you say compete, compete is an economic concept.
	Okay. Compete is an economic concept.
	Well, it's not, because you can compete for a woman, right?
	That's a biological or romantic concept.
	Well, it's still, I'm saying it's...
	I mean, that's still in the realm of voluntary exchange of values, right?
	That's what I mean. You're trading wants or you're trading things that you're going after, right?
	Things that you want to gain or keep, right?
	So it's competition, really.
	I mean, I would consider dating and going after women and stuff.
	That's really an economic activity.
	We're debating. It's a social activity, but it's not a political activity.
	Unless you're the King of England, that's not a political activity, right?
	It's an economic activity.
	Yeah, okay. Let's say it's an economic activity and I decide to offer alternative ways of resolving disputes to the police force.
	I'm not initiating force, right?
	We can accept that I'm not initiating force against anyone, right?
	If you compete with the police, I would say that you are.
	Your status becomes such that...
	I have to be very careful with the words here.
	Your status becomes such that you...
	If you want to compete in the realm of violence...
	I mean, that's what the police do. It's violence, right?
	You agree with that? So if you want to compete in the realm of violence, in that domain, in that field, you have to be regarded as a threat.
	A threat to who?
	To anybody and everybody, because it's...
	Wait, wait, wait. Why is it when I do it, I'm a threat, but when the policeman does it, he's not?
	How would the opposite moral rules create?
	Well, because... Now, are we talking about an objectivist society?
	Yes. Or are we talking about the society that we have today?
	Objectivist. In an ideal objectivist society, a police officer would be essentially a robot.
	I mean, he would not, in a strictly delimited sense, I mean, his functions as a police officer, co-op police officer, it would be very strictly ordained as to what he can do in terms of his capacity as a police officer.
	In other words, You know, he cannot arbitrarily use force against you.
	I mean, you can't do that now, today, but in an objective society, that would be very clear in the legal framework, in the system of laws.
	Sorry, there was a lot in there I would have questions about, but I'm not sure how the robot or non-robot quality of the cop helps me to understand why he can do something That is voluntary, as you say, not funded through coercion,
	a voluntary choice for this particular police office, Police Force A, that people voluntarily choose to go to that Police Force A, and if I decide to provide alternative ways of resolving disputes or solving problems, That police force can initiate the use of force against me.
	Clearly we understand that Coke and Pepsi don't have those rights.
	Coke is a voluntary service that people buy and Pepsi comes in to compete with it and we fully understand and accept that Coke can't initiate the use of force against Pepsi.
	Even if that means airing Britney Spears ads, which is pretty much close to genocide.
	So, we accept that as a universal principle, but help me understand why this is not the case in dispute resolution.
	Like, why did completely opposite moral rules apply?
	I mean, Ayn Rand asked the question, why do we need a government?
	Do we need a government? Why do we need police officers?
	Why? So you're saying, do we need police officers?
	Your claim is that we don't need them.
	Well, I'm not going to make...
	I mean, you're the one who's advancing the thesis, right?
	So let's not turn it back to me as yet.
	I'm asking what is the difference between competing with a voluntary police force and competing with any other voluntary service organization?
	Well, precisely because the whole basis of the police's existence is to protect your rights.
	Right. So, obviously, if they are violating my rights by attacking competitors, they're not protecting my rights, right?
	It's like saying, well, Coke is there to ensure that you have free choice in your beverages and that's why they attack any competition.
	I mean, it's a contradiction, right?
	But the whole idea of competition, the whole idea of a free market, Coke and Pepsi and, you know, in Canada we have like Rogers, it's not even a free market, right?
	But we have, you know, these competing...
	The whole idea of a free market doesn't make sense if violence isn't restrained.
	It's like you can't have a free market where there's no rules on violence, right?
	A police officer is a violent individual.
	He has to carry guns, he carries mace, he carries nightsticks.
	You call him when there's somebody threatening you.
	I mean, that's the whole basis of his existence is to protect your rights.
	Yes, sorry. You're proposing a false dichotomy, right?
	Because I'm saying, explain to me why the police officer has opposite moral rules from everyone else, and you're saying society needs rules.
	But I'm not saying society doesn't need rules, right?
	He doesn't have opposite moral.
	What was your term, opposite moral?
	Moral rights or properties.
	Moral rights. No, he doesn't.
	He is as accountable to the principle of individual rights as anybody else is.
	Oh, so then we are in agreement.
	So then I can compete with him just as I can compete with any other provision of goods or services.
	No, you can't compete with him. But then he does have opposite moral rights.
	Because he can initiate the use of force against me, though I am not initiating the use of force against him.
	He is not competing with the police.
	He is a member of the police, right?
	That's the distinction. A human being qua policeman is not competing with his own organization.
	He's a representative of that organization.
	I'm not talking about internal competition.
	I'm talking about me competing with the police force.
	Right. And that's not allowed.
	That's barred precisely because there can be no competition until we have a free market.
	And there can't be any free market when people are competing in violence.
	I mean, it defies the very essence of what a free market refers to, right?
	Whereas violence is outlawed.
	Individual rights are protected.
	That's what a free market is.
	And if you're attacking that very premise, actually not the premise, but actually the implementation of the premise, right?
	You're saying, there's a police officer, this police officer is a representation of the protection of individual rights.
	I want to compete with that. What are you saying, in effect?
	You're saying, in effect, that I want to wield violence like he does.
	To what end? Why does he get to...
	Let's say that you're right about that.
	You're not, but let's say that you are, about my position.
	Why does he get to wield violence, but nobody else does?
	That's a moral conviction, right? Because he's a police officer.
	He's protecting individual rights.
	He can only use violence in retaliation.
	But then anybody who puts on a blue costume and says, I'm protecting individual rights, should have the same rights, right?
	How is it that the police officer is carved off like this time-traveling penguin and given opposite moral rights?
	He can initiate the use of force against the peaceful.
	If you go to a police officer, In a civilized society, you have rules, right?
	You have a constitution, you have a whole hierarchy.
	No, you're begging the question, right?
	You're saying a civilized society has a government.
	Sorry, go ahead. I just – I just – I'm going to interrupt you when you mischaracterize what I'm saying.
	I don't mean to interrupt you to – I just – you say when – like if we have a civilized society, we have a constitution and a government and so on, but that's begging the question.
	That's what we're trying to figure out. So that's the only – I don't want to accept that as a premise, but I don't want to interrupt anything else that you're saying.
	So sorry. Go ahead. I mean, the whole idea of a police officer came about because of a certain reason.
	And the reason that a police officer came about is because that people used violence to try to settle their disputes.
	And when you have violence as a means to settle a dispute, you need to have some sort of independent system The reason you can't compete with it is because it is, in fact, the implementation of the very basis of freedom.
	That's my point. That's an argument from causality.
	That's an argument from effect.
	That's saying there will be a bad effect if there's not a monopoly.
	Right, but that's not a valid moral argument.
	That's a kind of...
	That's just to say, well, things will be better if we do it this way.
	That's not a moral argument, right?
	That's just a kind of utilitarianism, and it's not valid anyway.
	It's hard to say, I think, that we need to give a monopoly the ability to use violence to resolve disputes, because using violence to resolve disputes is bad, right?
	Do you understand the contradiction there?
	If using violence to resolve disputes is bad, then making it a monopolistic institution is not solving the problem, right?
	It's not bad in all contexts.
	If there's an initiation of force, I don't agree that it's always bad to dispense violence in retaliation to the initiation of violence.
	I'm not a pacifist.
	I don't accept the idea that one can...
	Say that you should never use violence, you should never employ violence in any dispute.
	I don't think that's...
	If some woman is about to drop her child out of the third floor balcony, you have to use violence, maybe, to prevent her from doing that.
	I mean, that is not a misuse or a misapplication of violence.
	Right, and everyone has the right to do that.
	That's a universal human right, right?
	No, because I'm saying you have to delegate that.
	You have to delegate your right to self-defense, unless it's in emergency situations.
	Sorry, the delegation of your right to self-defense is a voluntary action, right?
	People can't just come and say, I'm acting violently on your behalf, whether you like it or not, right?
	I don't understand. Say that again.
	Well, you say that you have to delegate your right to violence, which is the basis for state police, right?
	Right.
	And that really, obviously that has to be a voluntary action, because it's not delegation if it's just coerced and enforced, right?
	Well, yeah, it's a voluntary recognition.
	Thank you.
	Okay, so it's voluntary, which means I can choose.
	Now, let me just, let me just, because I mean, I think we're going round and round here, and I totally, look, I'm very much more than free.
	Yeah, yeah. And I, look, just to deal with your arguments from effect, which the utilitarian arguments of there's no free market to choose if there's no police.
	I don't think it's an argument from effect, but anyway. It's an argument of an identification of a certain fact.
	If you want to call it a practical or utilitarian argument, you can label it as such.
	But I'm saying that, in reality, human beings have traditionally resorted to violence to resolve disputes.
	Right. Which is why it's so fucking bad to have a police force.
	Because that's what they will do, and that's what they've always done throughout history.
	Not if the police force is...
	Entrusted and charged with certain justified behaviors and justified interactions.
	You can't take the context out of this.
	If the police officer is arbitrarily using force, then he's not acting as a proper police officer.
	Anyway, so I think we're stuck on this point, but I don't know if I'm going to...
	Well, look, clearly you and I understand, like you're obviously well aware of history, you and I understand that that's not how police actually work in the real world, right?
	What actually works in the real world is you get people of below average or average intelligence who like using violence, who end up breaking the bounds of whatever rules you put around them, growing like a cancer until they destroy society.
	I mean, that's what always happens With police throughout history.
	So if you want to deal with real effects and real-world facts, there is no Robocop.
	There is no cop that you can program, right?
	Cops will go to New Orleans and shoot people who don't hand over their guns.
	Cops will have no problem grabbing people off the street and shipping them off for extraordinary rendition.
	Cops will have no... I mean, that's just the reality of what happens, right?
	The government grows and grows and grows and grows.
	But that's true of all people, though.
	Right, which is why we need to look for an alternative to a monopoly on the use of force.
	Cops are probably the most responsible, at least in Canada, I don't know, in other societies, but in the third world, it's probably the opposite.
	But in my experience, police officers are very careful in their dispensation of force.
	I mean, that's just my experience.
	I don't have any statistical studies to back that up.
	But I'm saying I've never been whipped.
	I've never been beaten by a police.
	I've been in contact with the police many, many times.
	I've never been assaulted.
	I've never been beaten. I've never had mace sprayed in my face.
	Well, but come on. That's because you obeyed, right?
	That's because you obeyed. Look, you're against socialized medicine, right, as an objectivist?
	Yes. So what happens if you don't pay your taxes to support the socialized medicine?
	Are the cops going to be so friendly?
	Well, of course, I submit to that.
	I submit to taxation. I submit to socialized education.
	Yeah, but don't talk to me about the friendliness of cops, right?
	I mean, it's just because you obey and pay your taxes.
	I mean, the livestock that doesn't touch the electrical fence doesn't get electrocuted.
	That doesn't mean that he's free.
	The cops at your local division 11 are not determining the fate of history, right?
	But they are enacting the laws of the world, right?
	They will come and collect you and shoot you if you try to resist if you don't pay the taxes that they're told to collect, right?
	But their entire existence is predicated upon a whole legal and political framework.
	So? Which they themselves have no say.
	I mean, they're just, as I said, they're just robots to that political framework.
	Okay. And why would that be any different in an objectivist society, right?
	It's not. That's my point.
	But I'm saying we would have the right legal and political framework.
	Okay. So in your world, people can be given a monopoly of power, and it won't corrupt them the way that it corrupts everybody else.
	They will have a monopoly on the initiation of the use of force, Much like the original American revolutionaries, and it won't corrupt them the way that it has corrupted every single human being who has ever been given that power.
	In the future, in some world, it won't happen.
	And you will have a small and restrained group who have a monopoly on the use of force, and it won't go to their heads, and they won't become violent, and they won't become ambitious, and they won't grow.
	Well, that's why philosophy, that's why politics is really like the last branch of philosophy.
	We're dealing with the tip of the iceberg here, right?
	So I'm opposed.
	I agree with you. In many cases, I don't think we should take political action.
	As an objectivist, I mean, I ran for my...
	I know it seems like I'm digressing here, but I'm saying I don't think politics is really the solution.
	I think we have to go back, as we say, back to...
	A rational philosophy.
	I think that is required before we even talk about what the police should be doing or what they shouldn't be doing.
	Of course, there's exceptions to that, but I'm saying, this whole discussion, we're dangling at the edges here, right?
	There's a whole philosophic framework that justifies The state, including the existence of politicians and police and bureaucrats and so on, they are supported by a system of ideas.
	And why is that? Because human beings use concepts.
	That's how we deal with the world.
	That's how we deal with reality. So if these police officers are walking around with certain ideas in their head about what their roles and what their responsibilities are and what they're representing and what they're not representing and so on, That can change, right?
	So that's my point. Wait, wait, wait.
	Let me just stop you there.
	And that was a great speech. I mean, you and I are like 99% in agreement.
	And I just wanted to sort of stress that.
	You know, where we diverge at the end is obviously important.
	And I wanted to talk to you because you are a brilliant guy with an incredible grasp on concepts and you have amazing verbal skills.
	And that's why, because I just wanted to stress the agreement, right?
	Because the The narcissism of small differences can break up a lot of people who have a lot in common.
	So I just wanted to sort of point that out.
	And the other thing that I wanted to point out is that you feel that we need police because human beings prefer to use violence at times to get what they want.
	And I agree with that, that we need a mechanism for dealing with human beings' desire to use violence.
	But that which you apply to the citizens also applies to the government, right?
	So that saying that people like to use violence to get what they want Also, every judgment that you apply to citizens applies to cops, applies to politicians, applies to legislators, applies to judges, applies to prison guards.
	You can't make one judgment about citizens and then say, but there's this other group of galt's galt's residences who are going to be perfect, right?
	Because we're all people, and whatever you ascribe as motivations ascribes to everyone, which we accept in the free market.
	Of course, and I'm not saying people are ever going to be...
	Let me just make one tiny point, and maybe we can move on to something else.
	The only thing that I'm going to suggest is that, and I'm not going to make the case here because I've got this free book, Practical Anarchy, you can listen to it if you like, but I'm not a pacifist either.
	I believe in the right of self-defense and the retaliation of violence against violence and so on.
	I completely agree with that.
	I am entirely down with the non-aggression principle, so we're in complete agreement on that.
	But, let me dangle a little something in front of you and see if I can get you to snap at the bait.
	If it were possible to have a society where The use of violence, the solution to human disputes, while accepting that there are people who want to use violence to get what they want.
	If it were possible to have a society without this contradiction called the police force, and that does not mean a society without rules, that does not mean a society without a free market, that does not mean a society without property rights, that does not mean a society where people can rape and kill and steal at will.
	If it were possible to resolve a clear contradiction in the formulation of how society works, to take out This group who have the right to initiate force against those who compete and so on.
	And if you didn't have to rely on the virtue of those who join a group that likes to use violence called the police, and if you didn't have to rely on the sanctity of a piece of paper called the Constitution, and if you didn't have to rely on the goodwill of politicians, which has been scantily present throughout history,
	if it were possible to have a society that has free market, peace, a resolution to conflict that may occasionally be violent and may not, Protected property rights, protected the rights of the individual, and did not require this monopoly on the use of force and the creation of those who have opposite moral rules, but could be consistent with what Ayn Rand wanted, which was the non-initiation of the use of force.
	If it were possible, I'm not saying I'm making the case, but if it were possible, that would be a better solution.
	I'm not saying it is possible or I've proved it, but if it were possible to have that, all those goodies without this moral contradiction, that would be a step forward in the theory, right?
	I think it's a fantasy.
	I don't think...
	I'm not saying if it's true.
	Would it be better? Would it be more consistent?
	I mean, whether it's a fantasy, just if it could be done, that's all I'm saying.
	It's like saying, would Plato's forms be a better, you know, philosophy?
	I mean, you know, well, if it existed, you know, maybe.
	But I don't believe in heaven, you know.
	It would be more consistent.
	If it were possible, it would be more consistent.
	That's all I'm saying. I'm not trying to game you here.
	I'm not trying to force you to admit anything that I'm saying.
	What is impossible, right?
	I remain strictly in the realm of the possibility of what is possible.
	If it's possible, Okay, but I don't think it's possible.
	But you don't. No, sorry, frankly, you don't.
	Because if you're saying that we can give a monopoly on the use of force to individuals and they will not abuse it, you're not in the realm of reality.
	To be perfectly honest, with all due respect to your intelligence, and you're fiercely intelligent, I hugely enjoy the debate.
	But there's no historical example of it whatsoever.
	Let me turn this around on you.
	Let me turn this around on you. Please.
	In an anarchist society, are you going to have something like the police?
	Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay, so in such a society, are you going to have people dispensing violence?
	Absolutely. Now when they do that, right, when I dangle my four-year-old kid over the balcony, when some guy in an anarchist society, when some guy comes in and tries to restrain me, isn't my view of what I should be doing thwarted?
	Isn't my freedom thwarted?
	You mean your freedom to dangle the child over and drop him off a balcony?
	Right. Absolutely.
	You're not against monopolies then.
	Sorry, where did you get that?
	That agency is acting as a monopolist against me.
	I'm saying I don't want the police here.
	I want to dangle my four-year-old son over the balcony.
	I don't want to deal with these coercive agents that are coming through my door to arrest me.
	That's a monopoly, right? It's just a private monopoly.
	No, it's not a monopoly. And if we could just go off the baby dangling thing, that's a little bit of an extreme one, if you don't mind.
	Let's deal with something that's a little more common, like someone who steals a car.
	Yes, also not a common human being, right?
	And I think that the Jackson 5 was mostly a dictatorship, so he's a product of state.
	Jehovah's Witness ones, actually.
	Right, right. So irrationality and crazy-ass father beating and shit like that.
	But let's just deal with something like stealing a car, right?
	So I think that the basic premise, at least of the way that I work with the anarchist philosophy, is that The amount of benefit that human beings get from voluntarily interacting with others on a contractual basis in a society is huge, right?
	I mean, if you were denied access to any division of labor, any free market, any interaction with other people, your life would be, you know, a turd on a stick, fundamentally.
	You're living in the woods, eating berries and wiping your ass with leaves, right?
	That would be a pretty ugly, nasty and primitive existence, right?
	So, the basic idea is that, and this is not something that is unique to me.
	I mean, if you look at eBay, it resolves its disputes without violence.
	If you look at banks and private banks to the degree that they are, they have credit ratings and so on which will affect whether you get loans or not.
	So, prior honorable behavior In terms of you've done things in eBay that you've shipped stuff that you said you were going to ship or whatever.
	Prior virtuous behavior, if it can be generally available to people in society, then they can choose whether or not they're going to interact with you or not.
	So I have these things called dispute resolution organizations, which is like...
	If I buy a house, I'm going to join into a contract with a bank or whatever, and we're both going to agree in advance who's going to mediate that dispute if we run into problems.
	It's like when you get married, you can have a premarital contract that says how we're going to do it.
	And if it turns out that I end up breaking my contracts, I screw people over, I borrow money and don't pay it back, and so on, then companies will lower my contract rating, and then people will not want to do business with me, they won't want to get involved. So I will slowly be excluded, or very quickly be excluded, from interaction, which is this huge benefit in society, interaction with other people.
	If nobody will ever enforce your contracts, then you can't have any money in a free society.
	You can't get a place to live.
	You can't buy food. You actually get ejected from civilized society.
	And of course, because roads are private and parks are private, there's no place for you to go.
	So society has a non-participation option, which is not available.
	In a state of society, it has a non-participation option, which is that I'm just not going to deal with you if you're going to break the rules of society.
	Now, formally, this information was not very easily available because of a lack of technology, but technology, as we know from the Gutenberg press, changes society fundamentally.
	So now, It's actually very easy that if you want to do anything to do with money or currency or contracts or any involvement in the free market, it's totally easy for people to find out how well you have performed these contracts in the past.
	So if you go and steal someone's car, you fundamentally, people have the right to, and they will, not participate with you in things.
	Where are you going to drive that car?
	Where are you going to park it? How are you going to get money from your bank?
	Your bank will simply say, look, we keep your money if you steal, right?
	And again, I'm not going to go into all the violent crimes.
	I've got essays about this.
	But that's a very, very brief introduction of how it's possible to have very objective, rational, free market supporting rules within a society without having to create Some sort of government that is going to be immune from the corruptions of power for which there's no evidence in history.
	And again, I'm not saying this makes the case or proves anything.
	It's just a possibility of a way of having these kinds of competition elements in place and respecting the universal principle of the non-initiation of force.
	And of course, I agree that a large percentage of Of human interaction, economic interaction, can be resolved by mediations of one sort or another.
	I don't have any problem with that. I think Friedman made this argument too, David Friedman.
	But the problem with that is that at the very time where you need violence are in cases of irreconcilable disputes.
	Such as? So, for example, well, let me give you an example.
	You talked about eBay.
	When I was back at university, I bought a monitor on eBay from some woman in Ottawa, and I was stupid enough at that time not to have it insured, and there was no...
	There was no basic assurance that I was going to get this monitor.
	So I gave her the money and so on.
	I just assumed that she'd give it to me.
	She didn't give me the monitor. She never sent it.
	So I contacted eBay's mediation service and they mediated the case.
	They mediated the case. And they went through and they contacted her.
	She contacted her. She responded. It went back and forth for like two weeks.
	And I kept repeating the same thing.
	And they said, oh, we're working on it, blah, blah, blah.
	She never responded. Right.
	I think I gave her 800 bucks.
	It was a really, really big monitor at the time.
	I gave her 800 bucks.
	I didn't get my monitor. The mediation didn't work.
	She's in Ottawa. I'm in Toronto.
	What am I going to do? I filed a small claims court case.
	A week later, I had my money back.
	When there's an irreconcilable dispute, that's when you need to threaten people.
	That's when you need the violence.
	Well, but you took the risk, right?
	You chose not to get stuff insured, right?
	That's not the point. That's not the point, though.
	It's a little bit of the point.
	There's risk in every transaction, right?
	True. True, there is.
	And you save a couple of bucks by not getting something insured, right?
	And so you take the risk, right?
	It's like if you don't have life insurance, right?
	But that doesn't justify the theft, though. That doesn't justify the theft.
	No, no, it doesn't justify the theft.
	Absolutely. It doesn't justify the theft.
	It's fraud, right? You're absolutely right.
	It is fraud and I would actually support the use of force to get you your money, right?
	But there's no reason to suppose that that can't occur in a free market society, right?
	So in a free market society, she's going to have a relationship with a bank, right?
	And a bank is going to have a relationship with your bank, right?
	So if she does something and steals $800 from you and you can prove that to the satisfaction Of the parties involved, her bank will just take the money from her account and put it in yours.
	There's no need for the use of force in this way, right?
	So your assumption is though that this system is going to be so interconnected and so streamlined such that if one person, you know, Well, let's just deal with the tangible example, right?
	Clearly, if this woman has a bank account, then the bank could have, when she signs up, it could have a clause which says, look, if you're found objectively guilty of theft, the money will be taken from your account plus expenses and given to the person who...
	Who have you stolen from, right?
	That's a possibility, right?
	Yes, sure. So, and again, I'm not saying this solves every problem.
	I'm just talking about a specific one that you have.
	We don't need to create an agency with the ability to wage wars and initiate force and do all of these ugly things that governments do for the sake of 800 bucks when we could have a system which says, Well, instead of going to small claims court, I go to my DRO and I say, this woman ripped me off and here's the evidence and this DRO then handles it, talks to this bank, provides the evidence and the bank says, yeah, she ripped them off, takes her money and gives it to you.
	And maybe double for penalties in your time.
	I just don't accept the connotation.
	I want to keep respecting you.
	Wait, wait, wait. It's possible, right?
	Come on, give me that. This is a possible solution to your problem.
	But I see where you're going with this, and the connotation is that people will be all sort of, you know, everybody's going to reconcile.
	But that's just not how human beings operate psychologically.
	When somebody does something to you that's so vicious, you just don't want to reconcile with them.
	I'm sorry, wait, wait, wait, wait.
	Before you go up, do you accept that it is a possible solution to this $800 issue?
	It is. It is.
	Yeah. In that case, I mean, it's possible.
	Okay. So, I mean, that's all I'm saying, right?
	I'm not saying I'm proving anarchism to you.
	I'm just saying that there's ways of creatively thinking about these problems that do not involve the issue of the state, right?
	Do not involve the creation of this savage monopoly that has always preyed upon society like a cancer.
	I'm just saying it's possible that you can look for alternative solutions, and these all perfectly operate within the free market.
	And they will be optimized.
	You say, well, will society be so integrated?
	Will society be so integrated that this happens?
	Well, of course it will, if that's what customers want, right?
	Right, but there are a lot of assumptions built into that, though.
	Go ahead. Well, namely that...
	Suppose she just doesn't want to deal with that thing.
	I mean, I don't know. Like...
	I don't accept the idea that the social institutions are going to automatically make people good.
	It seems to be like...
	Wait, wait, wait. You're going off the book, right?
	I mean, when did I say social institutions are going to automatically make people good?
	You're using concepts, right?
	And I'm saying that these concepts are seated on these other assumptions, right?
	I just don't...
	Ah, but my friend, my friend...
	Wait, wait, wait. This is the problem, right?
	If you don't believe...
	That social institutions will automatically make people good, how do you get Robocop?
	How do you get virtuous government?
	How do you get Robocop?
	How do you get your virtuous government if social institutions can't make people good, which I agree with you.
	Because social institutions can't make people good, you can't have a government.
	But we're talking about totally different things here.
	In the case of a police officer, Hold on, you're confusing.
	You said social institutions cannot make people good, and government is a social institution, right?
	That's true. That's true.
	So governments cannot get people good, right?
	I'm not saying that everybody's going to be good. There's always going to be criminals in any society.
	There's always going to be murderers. And where are they going to want to go is to the government.
	That's where the criminals go, is to the government, to the most part.
	Come on, look at the war in Iraq.
	Look at the amount of money that can be stolen from the general population through the government.
	I think you're giving too much credit to the politicians. I think you're giving too much credit to the politicians.
	I think a burglar...
	Is more honest than most politicians.
	I don't think... The criminals of the type that you're thinking of are not the people that go into politics.
	The people that go into politics are criminals of a different sort.
	Oh, those are the criminals I'm thinking of.
	And it's those criminals who scare me.
	I don't care about a burglar.
	I can get an alarm system.
	I can, you know...
	But what I do care about is a government that takes half my income at the point of a gun.
	That is the theft.
	That is the criminality that I'm concerned with.
	Not some guy knocking me over and taking my watch.
	I could give a rat's ass about it.
	I can avoid that. I can't avoid taxes, right?
	But I just wanted to point out, if you say that social institutions, and there is no utopia, there is no philosophy that's going to make everyone perfect, there's no social organization that's ever going to make everyone perfect, there will always be bad guys, there will always be thugs, there will always be damaged, broken or crazy people who do evil, nasty or stupid things.
	That, to me, is a complete given in society.
	But because social institutions can't make people virtuous, you can't give them a monopoly on the use of force, because that will attract the worst people to do the worst things.
	And that is empirically true throughout history.
	That's what states do. So why don't police today just go around wantonly killing people?
	I mean, they have the power, right? Why don't they go around wantonly killing people?
	I didn't say that it makes everybody into a complete raving psychopath.
	I just say that it tends towards evil, the accumulation of power and violence.
	What they do, of course, is that they will kill whoever their leaders tell them they should if those people don't obey.
	So if the taxes go up 10% and people don't pay, then the police will, like evil robocops, come and shoot you if you resist them when they come to get that money.
	So they will shoot whoever the leaders tell them to.
	I'm not saying happily, I'm not saying that that's what they want to do, but they will do it, or they'll quit, which is very few.
	But if taxes go up, the cops will inevitably go and collect that money and use violence against those who don't pay, like any bunch of hitmen when you are a restaurateur in a neighborhood and the mafia ups your protection money, the hitmen go and collect it, and that's what the cops do.
	Not because they're evil, I mean, this is just what they know as virtue, because they're confused, right?
	And they're heavily propagandized, as are most people, of course.
	I don't mean you, I'm just...
	But, of course, but...
	I just wanted to point out that you and I agree on the non-aggression principle and your premise is that society can't function in a virtuous manner without a monopoly of force.
	And I'm saying that I agree with the non-aggression principle and I question or I'd like to provide ways in which we can consistently have a society where the non-aggression principle Is something that is consistently applied, right?
	Because consistency in philosophy is the key, otherwise it's just a bunch of opinions.
	I'm just saying that there's possibilities that we can look at of having a society without granting this highly dangerous monopoly of force to people.
	But you said that a philosophy can't make people perfect.
	Of course, I'm not saying there's not going to be exceptions, but how do you explain...
	The state of a relatively modern, civilized society that we have today in North America versus the Middle Ages in the year 1000 A.D.? I mean, our genetics haven't changed.
	We have the same brain's capacity as those people did.
	So what changed, if not the philosophy?
	Well, sorry, but this is another false dichotomy.
	I'm not saying that philosophy can't make people better.
	I mean, that's what I do, is I talk about philosophy with people.
	So of course I think philosophy can make people better, just as medicine can make people healthier.
	That doesn't mean nobody ever gets sick, right?
	In as good a medical world as we could imagine, people will still get colds and will still get sick with whatever, right?
	So it doesn't mean that people can't get better, but philosophy cannot perfect humanity.
	Right, so it's a false dichotomy.
	Like I'm saying, people can't improve, but they can't become perfect.
	I mean, you have to define perfect, you know, you can't have an impossible definition.
	If you're talking about, like, some platonic version of a perfect circle, okay.
	But in reality, if you define your standard of perfection properly, then I think philosophy can...
	It's your standard of perfection.
	You brought up the term, not me.
	I don't know what you're... I mean, you can define it if you like, but there's not a term I was using.
	But you're saying that perfection is not possible.
	What is your standard of perfection, though?
	Well, perfect virtue is not possible.
	For everybody to act with perfect virtue and integrity obviously is not possible and would be a crazy goal to have.
	Why is that not possible? Well, because people will make bad choices.
	People will be abusive to their children, which often leads children to make bad choices.
	There's mental illness.
	There's people who get sick.
	There's people who will even perform acts of violence while they're sleepwalking, right?
	And there are people who will just make bad choices, who will be tempted by power, who will be tempted by greed, who will be tempted by getting something for nothing.
	The capacity for corruption, immorality, a lack of integrity, and outright evil is always possible within the human soul, in my opinion.
	Right, it's possible, but I'm saying for any given individual, okay, the guy's deformed, that's not a blight on his moral integrity, right?
	That's just a fact of...
	You can't say he's not perfect.
	I'm not saying that. I didn't talk anything about deformed.
	No, but you mentioned...
	Mental illness or schizophrenia, obviously, is not a moral problem.
	Right, right. So I'm saying, that's all I'm saying, is you have to define your standards, you know, appropriate to...
	Right, and because people can be mentally ill, we don't want to give them the monopoly of the use of force, because those people could become politicians who become mentally ill.
	I mean, this is how dangerous the monopoly of the use of force is.
	You can't guarantee that virtuous people will be in there.
	See, it's like a sliding scale. Let's say evil...
	Let me just finish.
	The capacity for evil, let's say it's very low, then we really don't need a state.
	And if the capacity for evil is very high, then we can't have a state because Everybody's going to do bad things, and therefore the people who are in the government are going to do bad things with a monopoly of the use of force, which is very dangerous, right?
	So the more evil that people are capable of being, the less we can have a state.
	The less evil that people are, the less we need a state, because they'll deal with things in a voluntary and positive manner.
	Well, I mean, that's how the conservative politicians justify Capitalism, right?
	They say that human beings are just too evil, so we can't have a dictator.
	I mean, that's why they oppose communism and other fascistic and other dictatorial types of systems of government, is that they say human beings...
	So it comes down to their view of human nature.
	But I think we have a disagreement over human nature.
	I mean, it's not that I think that people don't have a capacity for evil or don't have a capacity for good.
	I say you have both, right?
	You can go either way. Sure, sure.
	And philosophy will have a huge influence on that, in my opinion.
	Right, and you can even go against your own philosophy.
	I mean, even if you accept the philosophy, you can betray it, right?
	By defending a monopoly on the use of force, say.
	Just kidding, sorry. No, but that's consistent with my philosophy, I maintain.
	So, I'm not saying that any given individual, I mean, everybody, there's free will, right?
	So you can't say what's going to happen in the future, right?
	So for any given particular, any person, he may go that way, he may go this way.
	We don't know. There's no way to say it.
	And because of that, we can't have a group with a monopoly on the use of force, because people can go either way.
	You can't predict it ahead of time.
	Oh, but if the whole society is virtuous, then we don't need a government, right?
	Because no one will steal your monitor, right?
	No, we do need a government.
	No, we do need a government. Because, as I said, there's never going to be exceptions.
	If people are perfect, we don't need a government, right?
	Like, if nobody gets sick, we don't need doctors, right?
	But there's no way to guarantee that.
	There's no way to say that people are going to act rationally.
	That's why we can't have a government, because there's no way to guarantee that people will be virtuous.
	But that's not a justification for not having a government. It absolutely is.
	Let's take an example.
	Let's take a concrete example.
	Somalia, right? Is there a government in Somalia?
	Yes, absolutely. Government influence in Somalia is all over the place.
	You have governments selling arms to warlords.
	You have a highly irrational, hierarchical...
	Sorry? Is there a domestic government in Somalia?
	Is there international relations between whoever claims to be leading the country?
	Is there a government with a constitutional system of laws?
	If somebody's putting poison in my water supply, that's like saying, is there poison in my bottles of Evian?
	It doesn't matter if I'm drinking from the tap.
	The fact that governments are in there selling arms, stirring up trouble, causing problems is a huge effect.
	Of statism. Plus, of course, Somalia is not a philosophical form of anarchy.
	It is simply a government that collapsed.
	It is founded on an irrational, mystic, primitive society.
	Oh, so we need philosophy, right? They absolutely need philosophy.
	Yeah, for sure. So that's a precondition to the existence of any social system, whether there's no government or not.
	Is that what you're saying? Well, no, they have a social system.
	You need philosophy to have a virtuous social system, and virtue is impossible without philosophy, for sure.
	Right. So I don't think we're in a disagreement.
	I can't come to the conclusion that because people have the capacity for evil, therefore we need anarchy.
	That just doesn't follow. It's a non sequitur in my view.
	Well, look, if everyone has the capacity for evil, clearly those in the government have the capacity for evil, right?
	Yeah, but in an anarchist society, you're going to have people who are essentially equivalent to those people, right?
	If they put on a private suit or a public suit, it doesn't change anything fundamentally.
	In an anarchist society, you're saying that the social institutions are going to eliminate power lusting, they're going to eliminate the sort of stuff that goes on in Washington?
	Anarchy is a recognition of the human capacity for evil.
	It's saying that power corrupts and therefore we can't have a monopoly on the use of violence because human beings are corrupted by power.
	This is just empirical, factual, any cursory examination of history reveals this basic fact that human beings are corrupted by power.
	So anarchy is not a utopian approach.
	It is not a cynical approach.
	It's simply a realistic approach and says human beings cannot be trusted with power and we recognize that.
	You do like a free market because you recognize that people cannot run a free market.
	They get corrupted, they get bought out, they get very nasty.
	So we have to have a free market because nobody can run an economy, because nobody can understand it and so on.
	The free market is a recognition of the fact that human beings are neither virtuous nor knowledgeable enough to run a free market on behalf of others.
	So the dilution of power, so to speak, in a free market is all based on voluntary interactions.
	Well, all that anarchism does is take that exact same principle and apply it to the state.
	Nobody is smart enough, nobody is wise enough, nobody is virtuous enough to benevolently and perpetually use force, the initiation of the use of force, against others.
	So we simply recognize that fact that it's never worked throughout history, there's no evidence of it ever working in the future, and so we have to find an alternative to giving flawed human beings a monopoly on the use of power, and that is looking at creative ways to have a society without this evil contradiction to the non-aggression principle right at the core, ever growing and ever creating more corruption and violence.
	I don't... Okay, so if we get back to the objectivist government, in an objectivist government, the position of politician will not be prestigious.
	I mean, the president in, what, the year 18...
	I don't remember.
	It was 1812 or something.
	He did little more than, you know, raise and lower the flag in America.
	I mean, he didn't have the sort of catastrophic devastation.
	he couldn't impose that sort of effect on an entire society.
	He just didn't have that power.
	The government had a strictly delimited and defined nature.
	It had a certain purpose that we've totally lost track of now.
	You've made statistical charts or presentations describing how the government has grown.
	I'm saying that whether you have an anarchist society or not, You know, it doesn't change anything fundamentally about what people are doing, right?
	That's why I'm saying you have to change the people's view of what a government, what an institution that dispenses violence, that's essentially what a government is, what it does.
	It protects people from violence using violence, right?
	So if we get back to the idea of what a government should do and what it ought to do, not to what it's currently doing, I don't think we'll have a problem.
	I don't think we'll have politicians who are seeking the kind of power that we have today.
	Okay, so if we have, first of all, I mean, if nothing changes in anarchism, but it's more consistent with the non-aggression principle, you should be an anarchist.
	But let's forget that for the moment.
	Of course, Thomas Jefferson started wars, tried to bypass Congress to start wars, did not get rid of slavery, which is foundational to the founding of the American Republic, as was the genocide against the American Indians, and he raped his own slaves.
	So, I'm just saying, there's no magical land back then where there was great watching.
	Sorry? No, but I'm not a historian.
	I'm not going to spend time trying to find clay feet of the Founding Fathers.
	I mean, frankly, there's so much historical, what passes for history today going on that I don't know who to trust.
	We can certainly recognize that the 2% tax on tea that was supposedly the cause of the revolution was outstripped by the American government during the Whiskey Rebellum within a few years of its founding where they imposed savage taxes on other people and basically shot them in the head for disagreeing with them and then maintained slavery and then started a civil war to expand the federal government powers which killed 600,000 Americans.
	This is not an example of a productive and positive society, right?
	So if there's a way...
	And we can sort of end here.
	I don't want to take up all your day.
	If there's a way to...
	So what you're saying is that there was new...
	I mean, you're providing...
	Data, supposedly, to discredit the idea that the founding of America was anything special.
	I mean, you're just saying it wasn't really a revolution.
	It wasn't an ideological revolution.
	You're just basically saying that it was just like any other government in history.
	Is that essentially what your argument is?
	No, I wouldn't put it quite that simply.
	I mean, certainly I think that the Enlightenment ideals, that all people are equal, is a wonderful concept.
	I think that the rights of man, I think the Declaration of Independence is very interesting.
	I think it was a huge step forward, in my opinion, because it was at least founded on philosophical ideals.
	Live up to those even remotely, but rather than being founded on a murderous...
	But it did for a while, though. It did for a while. Well, no, it didn't for a while.
	If you were a woman or a slave or a child, you had no legal protections whatsoever, and if you were an Indian, you were basically killed, and if you were a soldier, you were We're drafted, given a gun and mowed down like barley in the Civil War.
	And if you were in the Philippines or if you were in Hawaii, you were annexed and tortured.
	So there's a lot of dark spots in American history in practicality.
	Now the ideals, because it was founded on philosophical ideals of the Enlightenment, which to me were a huge step forward.
	From the mafia dynasties of aristocracy, I think it was a wonderful example of how, despite having, philosophically and in an abstract way, the best possible motives, oh well.
	Much better motive than ever existed before in history, it's still completely screwed up, went totally nuts and now is a complete empire of domination throughout the world.
	So I think that what it shows is that even with the best intentions, even with a bunch of geniuses, even with a great constitution, even with all of this wonderful stuff, it still doesn't work.
	And that's one of the reasons why America to me is a great instruction which paves the way to looking for alternatives to limited constitutional government.
	Could somebody like Thomas Jefferson be elected to the U.S. presidency today?
	Somebody with his character and his values and his motives and so on?
	I doubt it.
	I don't know. I mean, in some ways he would be rejected for the right reasons, i.e.
	raping slaves. In some ways he would be rejected for the wrong reasons, i.e.
	not being a Christian, at least particularly.
	So, I mean, it's hard to compare, if that makes sense.
	Oh, okay. That makes sense.
	Now, look, I mean, first of all, I want to say I've really, really enjoyed this debate.
	I hope you have, too. I mean, you are an engaging and very, very enjoyable debating partner.
	So I just wanted to mention that.
	And I certainly think that you have done the objectivist position proud, if you don't mind me saying so.
	And I'm very glad that you took the time to debate.
	Is there anything that you wanted to add at this point?
	No, it was good.
	It was fun. Thanks. Thank you very much.
	Now, I've read every objectivist thing under the sun, and I was an objectivist for many, many years, which means nothing.
	Maybe I'm completely wrong, and I'll come back to the fold, right?
	But I hope that you will at least give the book Practical Anarchy a shot.
	A couple of hours. It's entertainingly read.
	It's totally free. Just pop it in your iPod or audiobook player and give it a shot.
	I think that you will find at least that it's maybe possible to have the non-aggression principle applied consistently in society, and And for me, what I'm trying to do is take objectivist philosophy to the next step.
	And I know that that's a ridiculous thing to say, because Ayn Rand was a stone genius, but I'd rather fail at a huge task than succeed at a small one.
	So I'm trying to take the objectivist philosophy, which I love to death and think is one of the most amazing advances in philosophy ever.
	And just trying to take it that little bit further and do to the state what Ayn Rand so productively did to God, which is not stop at 99%, but go to 100%, which is, I think, where the real power.
	That last percent is a doozy.
	At least it took me like 20 years.
	So I just wanted to, again, respect the Rand, right, who is a complete goddess of philosophy.
	He puts Athena to totally smack down Athena, is what I'm saying.
	And I just wanted to sort of point that out.
	The level of agreement that we have in concept formation in metaphysics, in the basis of ethics and so on, I think is really, really important.
	And I just wanted to sort of point that out, that we are not on opposite sides of the fence, but we're just looking at this particular aspect of implementation of the non-aggression principle, which obviously is very important.
	But I just wanted to, you know, huge props to you and to the Rand for doing such amazing work in philosophy.
	Okay. That's good.
	Thanks. All right, man.
	I'll talk to you soon. Thanks. I'll check out your book, and I'll check out your book.
	Thanks, man. I'll talk to you soon.

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