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April 5, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:43:46

1322 Sunday Show April 5 2009

Dissecting an academic anarchist, friends and virtue, and how to solve dissociation.

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	Good afternoon, everybody.
	Hope you're doing well. It's Stefan von Molyneux, Esquire, Sunday, April the 5th, 2009.
	And I hope you had a wonderful, wonderful week.
	There are some good new podcasts out there and another one that will be Silver Plus called Home or Homeless, which is a conversation with a listener.
	It should be out in the next day or so.
	I'm just waiting for her to review it.
	Isabella says hello. And if you are a beluga, you can probably reply.
	So she's doing very well.
	Sleep is still light and I know that we have at least one mom on the show and perhaps we can take a little time later if the questions dry up to bore all the non-breeders with stories of how to get babies to sleep without using copious amounts of podcasts, which I can't think are very good for her brain.
	So, I hope you're doing well.
	Everything is just fine up here in the northern compound.
	Everything is going well.
	I'm trying to think if there's anything new or exciting that has happened this week.
	Shockingly, no. The life is so dull, it's like a bell just being pulled up from the Titanic.
	So, let's move on to those who are having more exciting lives than I am, which would be you, The precious listeners, if you have questions, comments, issues, problems, this is your show.
	Oh, I guess the one thing is that there is 10 minutes of my speech from New Hampshire.
	It's up on the web. I posted it on the board.
	The sound is not great. I did email the guy and ask him if he wanted to ship me the video.
	I could marry it to the good audio.
	I'd like to get this speech up, but it seems to be taking them quite a while.
	Mark Stevens' speech is up, and I posted a link to that on the board as well.
	That's M-A-R-C. I used to do a show with him, the No State Project.
	His show is now back on the air.
	You might want to check that out. He is one of the few true anarchists out there, and he did a good speech at the New Hampshire Liberty Forum.
	And they're cranking those up slowly, and I'm sure mine will be up shortly.
	I thought it was a very good and enjoyable speech, and I'd like to get more than just the...
	The audio out. Because, shockingly, you just can't see all the visual gags.
	And if you haven't seen me, yeah, you can't see Isabella.
	And really, if you haven't seen a speech on anarchism done in an absolutely florid Carmen Miranda flamenco dress, consider yourself lucky.
	So, let's turn this over to you, the listeners.
	If you have questions or comments, remember to unmute yourself.
	And now you are!
	Yeah, hello. Hello.
	Yeah, hello. Hi. Can you hear me?
	I sure can. Hi.
	Yeah, hi first, and it's an honor to speak to you.
	Well, that's very kind.
	It's a pleasure to speak to you too.
	What can I baffle you with?
	Yeah, so I read your book on anarchism, both of them.
	And I wanted to read up a bit more about anarchism and the history.
	So I picked up this book called...
	Order minus power by a guy called Norman Bayardjohn.
	It's a French book. It's a guy from Quebec.
	And basically he's really critical of anarcho-capitalism.
	So it basically takes you for the history and the current events of anarchism.
	And he's quite critical about it.
	I just wanted to Go over the points and see if you were interested and if you had, you know, what your opinion was on these.
	I think that's a fantastic topic.
	I really do appreciate you bringing that up and although it's often considered rude, point away.
	Alright, so basically the whole book is about 140 pages and he doesn't touch anarcho-capitalism until the, well, for the last 10 pages.
	And he seems to really think it's a bit of a...
	He sees it as an oxymoron, like living dead or like a free slave.
	That's how he sees anarcho-capitalism.
	And now the reason is...
	He calls it an intellectual imposture.
	So the reason why he says that...
	If I can break that down, it's because he says that anarcho-capitalists say that egalitarianism, this is all translated, of course, so it might sound a bit weird, but egalitarianism is not attainable, and basically the only thing that's important is the equality of rights.
	Sorry to interrupt you.
	I love the phrase intellectual imposture.
	That's wonderful because really, could you not just apply it to everything under the sun?
	I disagree with string theory because I consider it an intellectual imposture.
	I just think it's kind of funny because it's clearly somebody who doesn't have a good argument and is ricocheting, whether rightly or wrongly, off an emotional dislike.
	I just wanted to ask, when he says egalitarianism is impossible, does he mean in general or under anarcho-capitalism?
	Okay, let me look at the actual...
	Because I basically went through and translated bits of it that might be of interest.
	So... Okay...
	Okay, so anarcho-capitalists sustain that their position is authentic anarchism because it is anti-statist.
	They add that what distinguishes them from anarcho-capitalists or, sorry, from classic anarchists or left-wing anarchists is mostly what They think of egalitarianism as a lure.
	They don't conceive that there is an equality possible other than the equality of rights.
	I see, right, right. Okay, so this guy says the left libertarianism is more for egalitarianism of outcome.
	Rather than the anarcho-capitalists are for, you know, everybody has property rights rather than everyone's going to end up making the same amount or living in one big bio-vet on a farm or something.
	Yeah, I think, yeah, basically saying that, well, let me go through other points that he makes.
	So he says that anarcho-capitalists, they consent to the private tyranny of corporations.
	And that they even give it more importance than human beings.
	These are points he makes, right?
	So anarcho-capitalists refuse to take into account human rights and reject solidarity.
	And that basically it's a logical fallacy.
	So they take part as the whole.
	So they see that because they're anti-stateless… I'm sorry.
	You're not skipping bits, right?
	He identifies particular characteristics of, and incorrectly, but let's just say he's even correct in how he identifies anarcho-capitalism, and then he says it's a logical fallacy?
	Absolutely, because his point is that the anarcho-capitalists have identified the fact that they're anti-state and therefore they're anarchists, but They take this point as their only central point to the concept of anarchism,
	whereas classic anarchists apparently refuse all illegitimate authority, not just state anti-authoritarianism.
	So basically they also reject capitalism, wage slave, that kind of stuff.
	Right, but sorry, he says that it's a logical fallacy, but I haven't heard him actually make any arguments as to why it's a logical fallacy.
	It's like me saying Einstein was a kindly Jew with big hair, and therefore the theory of relativity is disproven.
	If I describe something's characteristics and then say it's a logical fallacy, that's...
	I mean, that's not even wrong.
	That's just not even in the realm of right or wrong, right?
	Well, yeah, but the only...
	Well, it gets kind of...
	He doesn't really go into much detail.
	He only, in the end, does he actually give examples of why it wouldn't work.
	So he's going through all this stuff...
	I do want to get to these points.
	I just wanted, you know, for people who are looking at this kind of stuff...
	If someone says it's a logical fallacy...
	Then moving on to prove why it wouldn't work does not address whether it's a logical fallacy or not, right?
	Totally, yeah. Because then it's just an argument from effect, right?
	Well, that's what his whole language is – I mean, throughout the paragraphs, it's littered with these kinds of – you feel there's definitely some kind of emotional involvement there.
	Oh, yeah. When you hear the word wage slave, for me at least, my intellectual respectometer goes so low, right?
	It's like – The heart of a mountain on Pluto taking its temperature, right?
	So I'm close to Kelvin because wage slave is just such a volatile, emotional, childish term.
	It's the kind of term that's yelled at by cross-eyed idiots protesting G20 summits.
	But anyway, go on with your thing.
	Let's see where he goes. Yeah, so he actually calls it like newspeak.
	So he says that some of the terms that...
	Come out of here is like in George Orwell.
	Why does he say that?
	Well, he compares it to the term Soviet and, you know, Defense Department, and he says that basically the Yanoke capitalists are the same because they defend, wage-slave, all that stuff.
	But let me go to other points.
	He says it's an oxymoron, and then he says here are some other oxymoronic terms, and that proves why it's an oxymoron.
	Right, right. Okay, that's some fine, fine, fine.
	Intellectual self-shipping, but go on.
	So he says that basically anarcho-capitalists are not fazed by inequality because they reckon that charity will take care of it.
	But they're okay with slavery because basically to him it's the only example of an intellectual movement that defends slavery.
	And by slavery, he means voluntary employment for the exchange of mutual value?
	Well, he actually qualifies it with temporary, which by adding that kind of temporiness, that temporal, you know, when it's limited in time, then how could it be slavery?
	Can you just repeat that bit again?
	I got out-belugged.
	Oh, you got out-belugged, if you could just repeat it.
	Okay. He just says that it's temporal kind of slavery.
	That anarcho-capitalists support.
	But then how can slavery be, you know, if you don't want to be a slave anymore, then how can you be a slave?
	You know what I mean? What he means is that he's comparing it and contrasting it with slavery that is outside of time, space, and dimension, which would be called agnostic slavery.
	Just kidding. Sorry, go on.
	Yeah, it's kind of weird.
	But he does bring in Chomsky.
	Chomsky apparently thinks anarcho-capitalism is a silly idea.
	And that if it was actually put in practice, it would be the most horrible thing known to man.
	Right, because if you want to shore up your baseless claims, the best thing to do is to quote somebody else's baseless claims.
	And then they cancel each other out, and you get rigorous logical and empirical truth.
	It's really cool. Absolutely.
	So basically he says, Chomsky's argument is that a free contract between, say, a starving person and a factory owner That there's no real such thing.
	So that's his concrete example.
	And then let me go down.
	Oh yeah, so basically another example name-calling anarcho-capitalism is like a free fox in a free hen house.
	That's what it is. And basically his idea is that liberty increases with other slavery.
	Sorry, I didn't quite swear.
	Liberty increases with other slavery?
	I'm not sure what that means. Yeah, yeah.
	He means that...
	So what he says, the exact sentences...
	Just in case you mistranslate, there is a phrase in Quebec which says, sort of basically loosely translated, it means my brain is full of socialist chewing gum and I can't think straight.
	Maybe that was a mistranslation, but please go on.
	The exact sentence is c'est la liberté qui s'accroît avec l'esclavage d'autrui.
	So he's saying it is the liberty that increases with the slaving of others.
	And basically there is example is that, you know, in America there's these guarded kind of communities of the rich and that escape from the chaos that they've created outside of these gated communities.
	And that's the sense.
	But, you know, there's no real concrete arguments there throughout his whole thing.
	It's mostly name-calling.
	And then what does he...
	Oh, yeah. Basically, he says that anarcho-capitalists, they have a capitalist conception of property rights.
	And he says there are many other conceptions that are more egalitarian and that could be considered.
	But he doesn't go into detail, and he said it'd be too long and too technical, but, you know, it's for another book.
	Right, because a 120-page book shouldn't be stretched out to 125 pages.
	That would be catastrophic for the world's forests, so he's quite right about that, I'm sure.
	Yeah, well, it's a small-format book, you know, but still.
	And he finishes up with basically that the state is necessary for anarcho-capitalism because...
	The state is necessary for corporations to exist.
	And he says that anarcho-capitalists kind of dismiss that and that it's kind of like they want capitalism but they don't want the state.
	But he says that they need the state for it.
	And finally he says that anarchists in South America, that was an interesting example actually, kind of defend the state.
	In a way, because they see...
	he makes this analogy that they see themselves in a cage, right?
	Attends, nous sommes en cage, assurons-tends dans une cage d'état?
	Like the go-go dances Anyway, it's a silly example, but that's the basic gist of what he was saying.
	I went on the Wikipedia page for anarcho-capitalism.
	I saw blurbs that were quite similar to that.
	I just want to know what I just went through, like Chomsky's argument and that kind of thing.
	I just didn't know why there was such a rift between You know, different factions of anarchism and why that was.
	Throughout the whole book, it wasn't clear what his vision of anarchism was.
	And what I like about yours is that it's very, you know, in your books, it's very clear as to how it would work out in daily life.
	Whereas, you know, all these anarcho-communitarism or whatever, I just don't know in practice how that works.
	Right, right. Well, I think these are the excellent questions and objections.
	And if I can summarize this guy's argument, and I think I can pick a few threads out of the rubble of his crash syllogisms, but what he basically seems to be saying is that corporations cannot exist without the state.
	Anarcho-capitalists support statist corporations.
	Therefore, anarcho-capitalism requires the state and therefore it is a logical contradiction because to be against the state for the purpose of creating a system that requires the state is to trip over your own shoelaces, right?
	Okay. So his argument hangs on the fact that anarcho-capitalists support a status view of corporations.
	And that they also support inequality.
	So that inequality is not attainable and that basically the fact that we don't – that actually it would be a good thing under anarcho-capitalism that there's no equality.
	Right. But of course this is like a doctor.
	It's like saying that a doctor supports inequality because a doctor notices that people are of different height, that the doctors support inequality.
	I mean because the question is, well, what does the word inequality mean?
	In this context. Well, to him it's the right to live, you know, to have enough food and that kind of thing.
	Right, so for him, I mean, this is the abominable cheek of these kinds of extremely flaccid, manipulative, and childish thinkers.
	And I say this just having heard some translations, so I'm not going to say anything about this guy as a whole, just based on what you've told me.
	Yeah. I mean, of course the fundamental problem with all kinds of left-wing anarchism is the problem is that if you have a right to the labor of others, how is that not slavery?
	I mean, if you have a right to a roof over your head, and you have a right to food, and you have a right to health care, and you have a right to education, and you have a...
	Well, these things don't fall out of the sky, right?
	I mean, they have to be created and produced by other people.
	And if you have a right to...
	The products of other people's labor, then clearly that is a core definition of slavery.
	So for me, for these guys to say, well, you know, I have a right to...
	I mean, and this right has to be enforced by some mechanism, right?
	Exactly, yeah. And how does that work out?
	He doesn't actually... Sorry, go ahead.
	Yeah, well, exactly.
	So he's saying you have a right to that, but to have that right, you have to use force to some extent.
	You must have to. And then how does that fit in with his model of anarchism?
	I just don't get it.
	Well, I think you do, right?
	It's just not a pretty thing to get, right?
	The two fundamental projections are that he says that anarcho-capitalists support inequality, but of course in any kind of leftist society, from communism to anarchism to socialism, there are those who have the needs and those who have the goods.
	And You don't have a similarity.
	You don't have equality when one group has the right to use force to strip the other of time and products, right?
	Right. I mean, there's complete inequality because then one group is subservient.
	The group that is productive is then subservient to the group that is needy, right?
	And so that's the first thing.
	So when he says, well, anarchists, anarcho-capitalists don't support equality, it's impossible to imagine how his system would be anything other than complete inequality.
	Anarcho-capitalists do support equality of rights.
	You can't conceivably support equality of outcome.
	Because supporting equality of outcome, to take a sports metaphor, is like saying, yeah, anyone can be a basketball player, but we can't guarantee that everyone's going to shoot 20 hoops in a game.
	Because the only way to do that is to rig the game.
	And that's not a sport anymore, right?
	That's just nonsense. So that's the first projection.
	The second projection, of course, is that if people have a right to the labor of others, you need some social mechanism for them to get that right enforced.
	And that social mechanism can't be the ostracism mechanism of DROs, because if you need a doctor and your punishment is to ostracize the doctor, then you don't get the doctor, right?
	So that doesn't solve the problem of the provision of services.
	Ostracism drives people out, which is why you only use it against bad people that you don't want in society, and good people like doctors and farmers that you want in society, right?
	Yeah. What's interesting is throughout the book, you know, I read the whole book and it was just not clear.
	Okay, so he went through the history and stuff, but he didn't really...
	I just didn't really know what anarchism was.
	Classical anarchism was.
	How it works.
	Right. Let me just give you a two-bit history of this.
	And I don't claim to be an expert, right?
	But this is just what I've read in a couple of books.
	The problem is that there are two types of anarchists to really broadly swipe our way through the classifications.
	There are those type of anarchists who resent any accumulation of influence or power or authority or anything like that.
	And they do not distinguish between the voluntary accumulation of quality or the voluntary accumulation of value and the involuntary accumulation of value.
	In other words, they don't recognize the difference between a company that provides value to people in a voluntary basis and a government which attacks people for the sake of its own self-aggrandizement, right? Okay.
	So, any accumulation of power or influence or authority is anathema To these kinds of anarchists.
	In other words, being jailed for speaking out against the government for them is fundamentally the same as having to go and apply for a job when what you really want to do is write bad books about anarchy, right?
	So they would look at Microsoft.
	Now, I mean, this is to take an example that is not great because Microsoft rests on government-supported intellectual property rights but but let's just say it's a voluntary relative to say the Department of Education they would look at Microsoft and they would say well Microsoft has gathered to itself an enormous accumulation of power it has you know it holds its tens of thousands of employees in its iron grip right and and it can fire them at will and they're entirely dependent and for these kinds kinds of thinkers and I use that term rather loosely The employer-employee relationship exists in a vacuum,
	and that's what the brilliant linguist and crap-poor philosopher Noam Chansky is talking about when he says there's no equality of negotiation between a factory owner and a starving man, right?
	Because for these people, the economy or these kinds of voluntary transactions, they all occur in a vacuum.
	There's only two people in the universe, right?
	They basically see them as a state, these companies, where you have no choice.
	Because for them, any accumulation of power is bad.
	And they say economic power and political power and religious power and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
	That's all bad, right?
	And there's no distinguishing between voluntary and involuntary.
	And Noam Chomsky's quote gets it to a T, right?
	Because if you're starving, you don't have a choice but to take a job, right?
	They don't say something like, isn't it wonderful that there will always be somebody willing to offer work to a starving man in a free society so that he doesn't have to starve?
	Right. That's not considered a good thing, right?
	What is considered a bad thing is that the guy who's in charge, the factory owner, will basically screw the guy Who's starving, right?
	But of course, you can't screw him so much that he can't eat, right?
	Because then he won't be able to work, right?
	So where does that come from?
	What is that reasoning?
	I mean, what is their proposition?
	What's their alternative, basically?
	Well, let me ask you about the guy that you're quoting from, because I know a little bit about Chomsky, but what is his occupation?
	Okay, so I just put up his Wikipedia link on the chat thing.
	And he's basically from the University of Quebec in Montréal.
	I told you, he's an academic, right?
	Guaranteed. Oh, yeah.
	Which, like Chomsky, is a bit contradictory to what he preaches.
	Well, but here's the thing, right?
	And this... The reason that I knew, he was either an academic or some other tenured, state-protected union guy, right?
	That was guaranteed, right?
	Because they live in a world without fundamental competition.
	They have ten, right?
	So for them, there is only two people in the equation.
	Because it's not an open free market, right?
	They're right in the socialist bosom of the state, being protected from competition, being protected from undercutting, being protected from the smarter, younger, harder-working people, right?
	And clinging to their unjust privileges, protected by the guns of the state.
	Hmm. So it's a bit like these libertarian professors, and it's pretty much the same thing.
	Well, it's a little different from the libertarian professors.
	The libertarian professors are even more contradictory, right?
	But the important thing to understand is that they don't understand competition.
	I mean, they've lived not – they have not lived in the free market.
	So they don't understand the creativity, the opportunity, the growth, the – Curiosity, the excitement, the creative destruction of the free market.
	I mean, I'm no business tycoon by any stretch of the imagination, but I did start a company in the Wild West of the free market where I could be a software entrepreneur, business owner, and manager without a single shred of state licensing, right?
	In the real Wild West, in the 90s, in the IT world.
	And once you've been in that...
	environment, particularly in a boom, and of course in a free market it would always be a boom, then you understand that there's never just two people in any economic equation.
	We weren't dependent on one customer buying our product in order to eat.
	There were hundreds of customers, thousands of customers who could buy a product.
	Anybody who applied for a job in my company had Resumes into dozens or more of other companies, right?
	So to look at it as, you know, there's one guy who's a factory owner and one guy who's starving in some sort of monomaniacal universe where there's only two people and there's no other options or choices, then, well...
	Yeah, it is kind of limiting indeed.
	So they just take one...
	They forget the free market and that's kind of...
	Well, yeah, as you say, that's probably because they don't live in a free market environment.
	Well, sorry, it's a little worse than that.
	What they're doing is they're projecting their own corruption, which is based upon forced relations.
	They're defending their own corruption or avoiding their own corruption by projecting that corruption onto a truly free situation.
	Hmm. And is this the majority of the anarchist movement, or is anarcho-capitalism like a really...
	I mean, they seem to say it's a sort of English-speaking kind of movement, you know, Ayn Rand, that kind of thing.
	And there doesn't seem to be many proponents outside of the English-speaking community.
	Is that so?
	Right. It certainly is true that it is largely an English-speaking phenomenon In other words, outside of the largest and most popular language in the world, there are a few proponents.
	However, in Quebec and France, right?
	If you want markets, you go with English, right?
	Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, obviously, France has a completely screwed up relationship to liberty, right?
	I mean, from...
	From the Middle Ages, where the conditions for serfs in France were in many ways worse than anywhere in Europe outside of Prussia, to the French Revolution, right, which the only thing that revolved were heads spinning down the steps off the guillotine, right? And then to the, you know, completely insane race for the colonies in the 18th and 19th centuries, to the First World War, to the Second World War.
	I mean they've had a pretty I think it all goes back to parenting, but that's neither here nor there, right?
	But these abstractions that are frozen in time, where there's a vacuum of only two people, I just find them completely sterile and useless.
	Like, okay, so let's say there's a starving guy.
	Well, why is he starving?
	Right? Why is he starving?
	Was he, you know, thrown out of his home by his parents?
	Well, then it's hard to blame...
	The guy who wants to give him a job for the problems that he's living under, right?
	Was he beaten up by his family?
	I mean, why is he starving?
	That's the question, right?
	Because if you just take these things out of context, you're setting up an equation with your own variables that's easy to solve but is completely meaningless.
	And the fact is, you know, once he's not starving anymore, he's working for that authoritarian company, he can move on and go to another company, you know?
	It's not... Right.
	You can change location and go somewhere else and then he's okay.
	The other thing that's true, sorry to interrupt, but the other thing I think that's true, and I don't, again, claim to be a great expert on this, but this is based on my experiences and people I've known, there's no...
	Grinding, grueling, pathetic, humiliating, knuckle-under conformity that is required outside of academia.
	Academia is just brutal on originality.
	And that doesn't mean that everyone in academia thinks the same.
	But it does mean that you really have to appeal to...
	Those who can offer you a job, right?
	Because it's all political, right?
	Because the customers don't pay.
	And whenever the customers don't pay, it's all political, right?
	You sound overly unconvinced, which may mean that it's...
	No, no. I was in academia, actually.
	I had to choose which routes to take.
	Some of my friends went into professorship and I decided to go for the entrepreneurial track.
	But when I look at what they're doing now, what I'm doing now, they have to keep their heads down for like six years to get tenureship.
	And I'm trying to create a business, that kind of thing.
	But it's a lot tougher though.
	A lot tougher? Sorry, which is?
	The free market route for the moment anyway.
	Long term, hopefully, I think it'll be the right route, but yeah.
	Oh, listen, I mean, I know it's tougher, but I mean, in terms of your spirit, if I can say that term as an atheist, it is much, much easier.
	And Noam Chomsky actually talks about this in a wonderful lecture about conformity and academia, which of course is kind of funny, right?
	Yeah. He does talk about this, about how even supposedly glowing letters of recommendation for students that are troublesome and don't think along the same lines are full of keywords that are picked up by other professors who know to avoid this.
	And he says it's not as bad in the hard sciences because there are actually objective answers.
	But he said in particularly the softer sciences and in the arts, people who don't I mean, can you imagine if this guy was a hiring professor and I was applying for a job, or you were applying for a job, and we questioned his reasoning?
	You and I know exactly what would happen.
	Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, my friend who's now tenured, he was keeping his head down.
	That's what he told me. Don't make any waves.
	Just follow.
	Don't piss anybody off in their department.
	That's it. He's all set now.
	Right. And then, of course, they take this emotional experience.
	If they internalize this emotional experience and they said, Well, I am knuckling down to an unjust authority in order to escape competition and get guaranteed work by basically doing shoddy intellectual prejudicial and bigoted writing like the one that you read.
	That would be pretty humiliating, right?
	And that would be a hard thing for someone's self-esteem to live with.
	Is they say, well, you see, the real authority that we have to fight is out there.
	It's not the one that I count out to because it has a monopoly, the state educational system.
	It's somewhere out there.
	And I've yet to find a left-leaning anarchist who's ever had a real job as an entrepreneur.
	I don't just mean like he was a temp or something, right?
	But to me, it's...
	I don't know. It's...
	It's really hard to take people seriously who have not lived in the world that they talk about.
	That to me is such an exhausting and eventually just completely boring phenomenon.
	It's really hard for me to take anyone seriously who talks about the free market who's never set foot in it.
	I mean, I talk a little bit about academia and, you know, I got a graduate degree and I, you know, saw that system pretty far up close because everybody who was doing a master's pretty much was going for a PhD because it's not like a master's in history is going to get you and mint you a mine, right?
	So I can talk a little bit about academia.
	I can talk probably with some confidence about certain aspects of the entrepreneurial world and so on, but I try not to talk about professional wrestling.
	Because I don't watch it, and I've never been a professional wrestler, or even an amateur one, right?
	So, to me, it's just a bunch of yapping.
	To me, it's exactly the same as listening to people talk about the secret lives of comic book characters.
	You know, if Clark Kent and Lois Lane had a baby, would the baby be so strong that it would punch its way out of her womb?
	You know, this all just, it's self-referential nonsense.
	And when academics talk about the free market, while having never lived within it and having done everything they can to stay away from it, I just kind of instinctively want to call bullshit.
	And this is not a compelling argument.
	It doesn't disprove anything. In terms of the time that I'm willing to spend investing in trying to understand someone's thinking is kind of proportional to their experiences.
	If someone writes about China, we would sort of hope that they'd at least once gone to fucking China and maybe spoke some Mandarin.
	And for guys to write about the free market who've never dipped their dainty little lily-white academic toes into the hurly-burly of voluntary interactions, it just – it's kind of embarrassing to me.
	Well, there's a great podcast that I listen to that's called EconTalk.
	Have you heard of it? Oh, yeah, I've listened to some of those.
	They're pretty good, actually, but they're free market proponents.
	And the guy is obviously, you know, he's a Stanford or some big school.
	And, yeah, so they pontificate about how free market is.
	But, you know, as you say in your book, you know, how not to achieve freedom.
	You know, they're not in the free market themselves.
	So, you know, I try to email them and put some comments and stuff to point them to your work.
	Especially, I pasted passages of your book, but never got a response, unfortunately.
	Well, no, I mean, and I haven't...
	I mean, I gave up sending my work out to people a while back just because of this very issue that it's...
	You know, the people who do and the people who theorize to the opposition of doing, it's all...
	It's all to me just kind of silly.
	I mean, I can't write a book about Arabic without speaking Arabic.
	I mean, I could, but it would be kind of like, what are you talking about, right?
	This is all just secondhand nonsense.
	But you haven't ever gone to an Arabic country, you don't speak Arabic, you don't have any Arabic friends.
	I mean, I bet you this guy doesn't have any entrepreneurial friends who can set him straight about the reality of what's left of the free market, right?
	I mean, so it's all just insular self-referential crap.
	And it's the same thing, just to give you a very slight segue, I think one of my earlier ones, first ones, it's the same thing for me when people talk about ethics.
	When people talk to me about ethics, there's a real difference between having arguments about virtue and being virtuous, right?
	And I prefer, because I'm an empiricist, I prefer for theories to grow out of experience rather than for Theories to be this sort of platonic abstraction that is unrelated to direct experience.
	So for me, if somebody is a virtuous person, in other words, I've seen them display courage and integrity in their life, then I will be very interested in their theories of ethics because they've actually… Like, if I want to learn about Kung Fu, I don't want to talk to a guy who's only read books about Kung Fu.
	I want to talk to a guy who's actually been in the ring, got his nose bloody, and learned, in a sense, the hard way, right?
	Because he can tell me the difficulties of actually doing it, and what to avoid, and how to move my arm, rather than, yeah, I watched a couple of Kung Fu films, and now I'm an expert on Kung Fu.
	I read a few books about Kung Fu, and now it's like, if you're not in the ring, I don't care what you say.
	And when it comes to ethics, that's the kind of stuff that I look for.
	You learn a lot more about ethics from confronting an abusive parent than you do by reading a hundred books on ethical theories.
	And so for this guy, you know, he can waffle on about the free market, but it has exactly the same relevance to me as somebody waffling on about out of Mongolia when they've never left New York City or even looked up out of Mongolia really on the web, right? It's exactly the same as Middle Earth, you know, because it's a completely imaginary place.
	They've never been there. They don't know.
	And if you haven't actually done it, what people talk about in terms of the free market or in terms of volunteerism or in terms of ethics or a lot of the stuff that we talk about here, if you haven't actually done it, I don't really...
	I don't really care what you say.
	Not you, right? I don't really care what people say.
	Like when people say to me, oh, Christians are very nice, and I say, well, have you, you know, really hung in there with an argument about atheism with a Christian?
	Well, no. I just live and let live.
	It's like, well, of course they're nice then, right?
	I mean, it's like saying, you know, Mike Tyson is nice because I serve him coffee and he never punches me.
	It's like because you're not in the ring with him, right?
	So don't talk to me about this theory.
	And... I mean, if there's, I think, one key reason as to why FDR has become so successful, it's because I try to strongly differentiate between that which I have derived from significant and often hard-won experience, some of which I write about in The God of Atheists, and that which I'm really theorizing about.
	And I think that...
	I know that my...
	You know, you could call it pugnaciousness or, you know, some people might call it courage or integrity.
	My intransigence on certain issues, people find that either, I guess, inspiring or wildly annoying or maddening.
	But the thing is that once you've lived it, it's kind of tough for people.
	And once you've lived it and derived accurate theories from what you've lived, it's kind of tough for people to talk you out of that.
	It's like if someone comes up and tries to talk me out of, Steph, you weren't really born in Ireland.
	It's like, no, I was.
	No, no, no, you really weren't, right?
	Of course I'm going to be, quote, intransigent because I have the actual experience of having lived in Ireland.
	So with certain kinds of ethical theories and things that we talk about here, when people try and talk me out of them, if they've had significantly greater experience and they can, you know, quote their experience and if they have the gentleness that comes.
	Like, there's no bitch like a theoretical bitch, right?
	Gentleness and compassion comes from knowing the difficulty of implementing things in real life.
	Because it's all easy to push words around on a page, right?
	That's dead simple, and therefore those people tend to be all kinds of bitchy and nasty, right?
	But the people who've actually done stuff know how difficult it is.
	Like, Kung Fu looks easy when you just watch it on the screen.
	It's real hard to do when you actually get in the ring.
	And so people are more patient.
	Coaches are more patient when they've actually done stuff than when they've just theorized about it.
	So with this kind of... This is not proof, right?
	This is just my way of looking at things.
	I think it has some real validity, and I think it does fit into the empirical nature Of philosophy, but as far as your, you know, valuable time and energy goes, and this is true for people as a whole, my advice, and certainly no prover, but my advice is, you know, read the back flap.
	Look at, and I've not followed this advice, right, in certain areas, and it's been to my detriment, right?
	So this is a hard one, right?
	If you all remember my media stuff, right?
	I didn't research the reporters enough.
	But look at the back flap.
	If the guy wants to write about the free market and he was an entrepreneur for a decade, successful or not, it doesn't really matter, although I would probably go with successful, but lack of success can also be very instructive.
	But if it's just, you know, I went from home to university to the amniotic dead womb of academia, then it's like, why would you read a book about China by a guy who doesn't speak Mandarin and has never been to China?
	That to me is just a kind of efficiency focus, if that makes any sense.
	Totally. And I think that's why he's, you know, at the end of his passage about anarcho-capitalism, that's why he finishes up with this kind of giveaway thing where he says the South American anarchists, they actually defend the state.
	Yeah, but that's to reinforce what he considers a logical contradiction of an anarchist system that requires state-protected corporations.
	I've never heard that they protect corporations.
	I don't know what he means by that, but he basically sees this as a good thing, that South Americans defend the state, because he is in the state, being an academic and stuff.
	So he is kind of supportive of the state, and that's what he finishes with, saying that South Americans are supportive of the state by You know, trying to fight, you know, well, I could translate it, but it'll sound horrible.
	Sorry, he's saying that these South American anarchists, they're not anarcho-capitalists, they're some other kind of anarchist?
	No, he's saying that, so, but today there is anarchist that, not without reason, that you should temporarily support the state.
	And this is a tolerable, you know, bad for a position anarchist.
	The South American anarchists have a good formula to explain this.
	We are in a cage, in the state cage, but outside this cage there are lines of private tyranny.
	Therefore we content ourselves for the moment to You know, build the flooring of our cage while we stay well protected by the prison, you know, the prison itself, the cage, yeah.
	So, you know, the lions are the private corporations, basically.
	They'll eat them alive and the state is protecting them and currently what they're doing is they're building Yeah.
	Right.
	And I would be much more interested and I would actually respect this guy a little if he were to, instead of talking about third party South American anarchists, if he were to talk about how he justifies his position deep in the bosom of the state while being an anarchist and then complaining about those if he were to talk about how he justifies his position deep in the bosom of the state while Who don't take the protection of the state, i.e.
	who work in the free market and who are anarchists.
	I would really love to hear him step through the logic of how those who take state protection are morally superior from those who reject state protection.
	But of course he would rather talk about South American anarchists because he could find no way to justify that in any reasonable way.
	So he's kind of protecting his own back there.
	That's what he's doing by writing this.
	What do you mean? Which kind of makes sense.
	Well, he's defending these South Americans saying what they're doing is okay, being in the bosom of the state, because that's what he's doing.
	Well, sure, but there's a reason he's talking about them, not him, right?
	Yeah, yeah. Deflecting away, but yeah.
	Obviously, yeah. Yeah, it'd be interesting.
	It'd be great to have a debate between you two.
	With this guy? Oh, he would never debate with me, I guarantee you.
	I mean, you can certainly invite him, and if he ever picked up the phone, I'd be happy to talk with him.
	But I can guarantee you he will never, ever debate with me.
	I'll give it a shot. I'll email him.
	I'm sure he speaks English because he's from Quebec, so he must probably be bilingual or something.
	Yeah, no, give it a shot.
	But from a cost-benefit standpoint, it will do no good for him whatsoever.
	He doesn't need to. Any more than the Department of Motor Vehicles needs to care about you as a customer, he doesn't need to care about a free market podcast debate.
	How could he conceivably benefit from it?
	Well, if he could crush you.
	To what end? He gets paid whether he crushes me or not, right?
	Maybe he likes a challenge.
	If he likes a challenge, why would he be an academic fan?
	Why would he want a state protected tenure job if he's really interested in intellectual challenges?
	Why, if he found out that you could make a not rich but reasonable living as a voluntarist podcaster on the anarchic realm of the internet, why wouldn't this erstwhile dedicated anarchist give up his state protected pension and go podcast on the internet and do it that way and take his chances in the anarchic world of voluntarists?
	Maybe he doesn't know it's possible and he'll be blown away when he hears what you've done.
	All right. Maybe.
	You mean maybe he doesn't know that there are podcasts?
	Well, has he contacted you?
	No, but I'm not the only podcaster who is trying to make a living at this, right?
	I mean, he would know that there are podcasts for sure, right?
	I mean, he's not 90, right? No, no, but your podcast.
	No, but it doesn't matter whether it's my podcast or someone else's, right?
	I mean, there are people who do podcasts and they either put commercials in or I guess ask for money like I do and You know, if he really wants to be an anarchist, then ditch the tit of the state and go bareback, right?
	Yeah. But he's not an anarchist.
	He's a windbag. So, yeah, I'll email him.
	Or if he wants to be an anarchist, why isn't he, if he doesn't know about podcasting or whatever, which is fine, right?
	If he wants to be an anarchist, why doesn't he set up, like, ditch the state and Right?
	Which he says is an evil institution.
	And why doesn't he go to, you know, rent a hall and give his fiery and sendery or fun or whatever speeches and charge people a couple of bucks to come in and, you know, make a living that way, put his money where his mouth is?
	Yeah. Well, because, what is it?
	Because it's a logical fallacy.
	Well, I'm sure that if he didn't feel that money was required, then why wouldn't people just bring him chickens and wood, fried for food and shelter, instead of paying him with the evil currency of the state or whatever, right?
	Yeah. It's really hard to live your values, right?
	And I just...
	Don't really find myself particularly interested in people who have all these values and do the opposite in their life.
	Because I just know for a fact that that corruption and hypocrisy is going to find its way into their theories at some point.
	And I can't even be bothered to try and unravel all that mess.
	You know, like if some guy says, my physics theory, he gives me a hundred pages, and he says my physics theory is true because...
	God told me it's true.
	Am I going to really spend a lot of time examining his proof?
	Good point, yeah. So that's just, you know, in terms of the value of your time and the alertness of your discrimination, I could say, I would look for those who live their values.
	And God knows we don't have to live them perfectly, and I don't, and maybe somebody out there does.
	But the important thing is to look for people who are actually doing stuff in the world, Or who have done stuff in the world and who have developed their theories out of significant action in the realm of what they're interested in.
	But those who just windbag from their studies without ever having gone out and done stuff, they're scholastics or they're theologians.
	They're exactly the same as priests to me.
	Because there's no God, I know they're just making stuff up.
	And because they haven't actually done stuff, I know that they're just making stuff up.
	So... Again, if this guy, maybe I'm wrong, I would put a large amount of money on the fact that I'm not.
	Maybe I am wrong. Maybe this guy is going to hear about the possibility of ditching his academic career, reaching a much wider...
	I mean, because he said, well, I'm in academics so that I can reach people.
	You know, I succumb to the States so that I can teach students.
	And it's like, well, dude, I can reach half a million people a month.
	You know, how many people are in your classes?
	20? 40? We're talking half a million.
	Yeah. So if you're interested in reaching people and actually doing stuff, then the worst place to be is in academia these days.
	The best place to be is out here on the Wild West of the Internet, where significant crowds gather if you do things right.
	But what's he going to say?
	Is he going to say, yes, I will start up a podcast, and I will hand in my resignation, and I will take my chances living my values?
	Of course he's not. Okay.
	Yeah, maybe he's got a following and I'm thinking these people are already halfway there, you know, people who read these books.
	Sorry, could you say that again?
	I just missed the first part of that sentence.
	Oh, sorry. Yeah, I'm saying he must have a following of people and these people are, you know, halfway there.
	So if, you know, they listen to maybe a podcast like that where they see that, you know, this guy that they, you know, they obviously like the ideas of they...
	Then you debate them and then, you know, they might go to your website.
	No, you know, I know that that is a very tempting idea, but I mean, if you look at the history of me and libertarianism, it really hasn't gone that way, right?
	It's been quite the opposite, right?
	I've had no stauncher enemies than those from within the libertarian movement, right?
	Have you noticed, like, people, you know, since your speech, have you noticed more libertarians coming on the site or...?
	I can't tell. I would have to do more of an analysis, maybe see if people from New Hampshire – I'm sure more people have, and I'm sure that they're going to pick out some of the stuff that they like and then are going to hit some of the stuff they don't like, like the atheism and some of the stuff to do with the family or other things.
	But no, the people who attack me are mostly libertarians.
	Yeah. See, here's the thing.
	I mean, I'm sorry to keep going off in tangents, but you're bringing up some just excellent, excellent questions and points.
	You know, if I believe in Baal and you believe in Set, two, I guess, what, Egyptian gods or whatever, and I look at you and you say, I look at you and I say, you don't believe in my god, therefore you're halfway to atheist, right? That would be not true, right?
	Yeah. So, the question isn't whether – if you say, well, these people don't believe in the state, therefore they're similar to me, right?
	But it's just a question of which new mythological fantasy beings have they created that they're now worshipping?
	In other words, are they reasoning from first principles, or do they just dislike the state, I'm sorry, you got cut off there.
	They're using just that same kind of emotional, weird, manipulative language that bespeaks a radar or a sonar going out to find like-minded people with the same prejudices.
	In other words, is it just another religion that they've created?
	And therefore, they're not close to atheism.
	They just believe in a different god than the statists.
	Interesting. I don't know anarchism enough to...
	I don't really know many anarchists, so I don't know...
	But we're talking about this guy, right?
	This guy, yeah.
	Right, because you're thinking about, well, this guy is halfway there and so on, right?
	But what is there and what is halfway there?
	To me, halfway there is...
	I've got the metaphysics down.
	I've got the epistemology down.
	I'm working my way through the ethics, but I'm having a tough time of it.
	I still believe the state is necessary for some things, but I can certainly appreciate that it's logically inconsistent.
	That, to me, is halfway there.
	Not making up silly and embarrassing ad hominems and talking about a free market you've never participated in.
	And getting fundamental things wrong about anarcho-capitalism, which means you've never actually talked to a competent anarcho-capitalist, but you feel qualified to criticize their viewpoints.
	You know, I take the devil's advocate position.
	I did it in Christina and the Priest.
	I did it with the boot camp on the social contract.
	I did it on last Sunday show, I think.
	About relativism.
	The reason that I do that is so that people...
	And I did it with determinism, right?
	But the reason that I do that is so that people understand that I get the opposing viewpoint.
	I'm not caricaturing it.
	I'm not making up a straw man argument.
	I get the opposing viewpoint.
	I get statism.
	I get religion. I get determinism.
	I get relativism.
	I get the social contract.
	I understand And the reason that I step into those shoes and argue it so forcefully is so people get that I get the perspective.
	But this guy has obviously never talked to a single competent anarcho-capitalist and said, listen, in anarcho-capitalism, is there support for state-protected corporations as we have them now?
	Yeah, exactly. Jerk!
	Dares to write a book criticizing a viewpoint that he has never explored to the tiniest bit.
	And that is intellectual craptitude of the first order.
	That is lazy, crappy, stupid, embarrassing intellectual crap.
	I wouldn't send him that podcast, I guess, before emailing him.
	I wouldn't send him this podcast.
	I mean, I'll have a debate with the guy, and I'll tell him this to his face, too.
	It's like, hey, what Chinaco capitalist did you actually talk to in an interview who said that blah, blah, blah, right?
	Because that's kind of important, right?
	Yeah, absolutely. If you're going to trash a few points, at least get it right.
	Yeah. Because you're an intellectual.
	You're paid, right?
	He's paid. I don't know if he got this.
	I don't know if he did this gig on company time, so to speak.
	But what he's paid for is intellectual rigor and analysis and competence in the realm of ideas and argument, right?
	That's his job, right?
	Am I wrong? No, I totally agree.
	Right, so if he then does not speak to a single competent anarcho-capitalist to find out the anarcho-capitalist view on corporations and then dismisses an entire intellectual movement by getting something so fundamentally wrong as to think that anarcho-capitalists are both pro and anti-state, that is lazy, lazy, lazy, stupid, bigoted, prejudicial bullshit.
	You know, I've read the Bible.
	Cover to cover. I was stuck up north, and we were snowed in.
	And so that doesn't make me a theologian, but I wouldn't criticize the Bible if I knew nothing about Christianity.
	Like, I would be embarrassed to.
	Well, maybe it's not as clearly laid out as it is in your work, you know, because in your work it's pretty...
	To me, anyway, it's pretty clear how it would work.
	Whereas, you know, after reading his book, I couldn't really understand his concept of anarchism.
	And maybe in other work, you know, about other anarcho-capitalists, you know, it's not clearly laid out, you know, what a DRO is, that kind of thing.
	So maybe that's why he's got a misconception of… Well, no, but sorry to interrupt, and we'll get to why you're really defending this guy in a sec, right?
	But he doesn't have to know the DRO theory at all.
	He just has to talk to an anarcho-capitalist and ask them if anarcho-capitalism supports corporations as they exist under a status system.
	I guarantee you, there's no...
	I mean, if he picks up Murray Rothbard, if he picks up Nozick, if he even goes through Rand, I mean, Rand...
	He mentions both of them, yeah.
	Right. Well, they're constantly talking about the need to separate state and economics and the corporations as being an arm of the state and so on.
	I mean, if he's got any familiarity with people, you know, you just...
	You can't write about people if you haven't read their stuff.
	I mean, you can, but it's ridiculous.
	So he's obviously read it, so he's intentionally distorting it then?
	Well, intentionality is something you can't judge from the evidence, right?
	But there is a distortion for sure.
	He's either not read it or he's distorting it, whether it's conscious or not or who knows, right?
	So my question is, why are you defending this guy?
	And look, maybe I'm wrong.
	I'm just curious what your emotional reason is.
	My reason... Well, I was...
	Basically, I bought this book to find out more about anarchism.
	But then I read this...
	But what I found is that my system of belief is all...
	So I used to think democracy was this great thing.
	And then that was broken down.
	And then I used to think...
	Well, sorry, I used to think the political system, you know, left-right, you know, the left was good or maybe the right was bad.
	And then I went a step beyond and, you know, democracy doesn't work.
	And then I went a step beyond.
	You know, there's always a layer under, you know, anarchism.
	And what's after that?
	I just want to be, you know, how do I say?
	I'm just wondering if there is a layer beyond anarcho-capitalism that I haven't seen yet that puts everything back into question.
	Right. I like to challenge different concepts.
	I think I understand that, but I don't think that it's what… You're experiencing.
	And I'm sorry to be annoying and tell you what you're experiencing.
	I could be completely wrong. This just, right, because I think intellectual caution is very good, right?
	But this guy is not displaying intellectual caution.
	Intellectual caution would be to say, well, I've never actually spoken to an anarcho-capitalist, so I can't really speak competently about the subject.
	Yeah. Which is not what he's doing, right?
	He's coming to very damning conclusions.
	I mean, how intelligent or how unintelligent would you have to be to not notice that supporting state corporations meant supporting the state?
	I mean, he's basically calling every anarcho-capitalist a completely retarded, mouth-breeding vegetable, right?
	Yeah, yeah. I mean, any argument you can wipe out in one sentence could only be held by complete idiots, right?
	I mean, you can't trash God in a sentence, right?
	Unless it's a really long sentence, right?
	Well, I don't know. Sometimes the simplest things are the hardest to see, but yeah.
	But not logical contradictions of that magnitude, right?
	Especially when it's your profession.
	Yeah, it's your profession and so on, right?
	And I also think that respect for your enemies is important.
	Even if he considers anarcho-capitalists his enemies, I think it's really important to not just dismiss them as if, you know, well, they're saying 2 plus 2 is 5 and that's all that needs to be said, right?
	So... You said that you have friends who've gone into academia, right?
	Yeah. Yeah, I would guess, and we don't have to get into this, right?
	Because this wasn't the object of your call.
	But I think that one of the reasons it's possible why you might find it hard to get, I think, legitimately annoyed with this guy for slandering illegitimately and irrationally and with a great deal of manipulation and prejudice, slamming something that you find to be quite valuable.
	I think that it may have something to do with...
	With your friendships, right? Yeah.
	Elaborate. I'm sorry?
	Oh, elaborate? Yeah, I'm interested.
	Yeah. Well, you are into, I guess, where you are in your intellectual journey is, you know, somewhat resolute, anti-statist, a voluntarist.
	I keep having to put the Y in there.
	I forget. Voluntarist and a voluntarist.
	And so on, right?
	That you are moving in that direction and you feel, if I understand where you are correctly, you feel that there are pretty legitimate reasons to hold those positions?
	Yes, absolutely, yeah.
	Right, so you face the challenge of, as we all do, right?
	You face the challenge of friendships with statists, right?
	Yeah. I don't have any easy answers, and I wish there were, and I don't think there are.
	I don't think, oh, ditch your state as friends.
	I don't think, oh, well, pretend that there's no difference of opinion about such basic things as ethics.
	It's not easy to come up with a resolution to this kind of stuff, but it is a challenge nonetheless.
	I mean, if you're an abolitionist and you have friends who own slaves, you have a problem, right?
	Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
	Well, the thing is, I think it's a journey, and it's not something that you can just break down with a conversation.
	I think these people have to be willing to read a lot of books and stuff like that to reach these conclusions.
	Right. And the theory that you had with this professor from Quebec was that what he lacks is knowledge, right?
	Well, I'd hope so.
	Right. And that's a possibility for sure.
	It's a possibility for sure that what he lacks is knowledge.
	But it's not the only answer.
	It's not the only possible answer to the problem or to the question, right?
	Well, he doesn't want to risk his friendships and his social kind of network and his job.
	Yeah, and there are other, again, I can't analyze this guy from a distance, and I'm not putting this out as any kind of conclusion, but there are even darker possibilities, and this is not to do with your friendships, but there are even darker possibilities about this kind of stuff, right?
	Which is that this guy hates the truth, and therefore he does everything he can to discredit it, right?
	He could be a cancer or a virus in the face of philosophy, right?
	Again, I don't know, because I don't know the guy, and I'd have to talk to him to try and suss that out, but...
	But there's lots of pretty dark possibilities as to why this guy...
	I mean, the society that this guy wants to create is communism, right?
	Yeah, it seems like it.
	Yeah, and to me, I mean, communism has a higher body count than Nazism.
	I'd feel less scared if this guy was a Nazi.
	Well, maybe that's why it doesn't go into any detail as to how...
	You know, how these other systems work.
	Right, or even how his own system would work, right?
	Which is also Marx, right?
	Oh, it's just going to fade away and the state will wither away and we'll get utopia, right?
	But the society that this guy wants to create would result in the deaths of tens of millions of people, right?
	But that's what he says about anarcho-capitalism.
	Well, I understand that. I understand that.
	He hasn't actually talked to an anarcho-capitalist, and he surely is not ignorant of the history of communism, right?
	Because, I mean, communism was fundamentally...
	It was a state...
	It was an anarchist philosophy.
	Right? Because they said, we go from feudalism to capitalism to communism to anarchy.
	The goal was an anarchic society.
	Okay. Okay. They just got stuck in the death camps and the wars, right?
	Right. So, this guy...
	I mean, I'm always suspicious of people who are into socialism or communism who don't go into significant detail about why communism was such a toxic and cancerous and murderous disaster in every society it's ever been tried in.
	I mean, we have to answer these questions all the time, right?
	As people say, oh, I'm a capitalist.
	It's like, oh, so you want little children to work in mines like the Industrial Revolution, blah, blah, blah, right?
	And we have to, you know, and I've spent a lot of, I'm sure you do too, but I've spent a lot of time addressing the criticisms of what is generally perceived to be the free market, which is this Dickensian nightmare, the soot and the coughing children of the 19th century, right? And when I wrote Everyday Anarchy, I spent a lot of time going into the etymology of the word and why it's been associated with it.
	So I'm saying, look, here's a big prejudice, here's a big problem, and here's how I think we can overcome it.
	But when people who are socialist or communist don't address why it's been such a catastrophic and genocidal disaster in every society it's ever been tried in, I think that's criminally almost irresponsible.
	And I get enormously suspicious of people like that, because if you're going to tell humanity to go back to the feudal system without ever addressing why the feudal system was bad and how your system will be better, I gotta tell you, I think that's really irresponsible, because this guy is playing with the lives of lots of people who won't have the sophistication to understand why he's full of such nonsense.
	You don't advocate social systems without...
	A huge amount of caution and process.
	You don't go out on the internet and make up apricot seeds cure cancer.
	The reason being that if they don't, you're going to get lots of people killed.
	More people get killed by social systems than by all the other diseases in the world.
	And you don't go around advocating social systems unless you've worked it out.
	Not perfectly, because you can't ever work out a social system perfectly, because any more than you can work out a free market perfectly, because it's a dynamic system.
	But you better be damn sure of the principles, and you better have started from first principles, and you better be as logical as you can possibly be with historical examples.
	Because if you get that shit wrong, rivers of people flow off the world in...
	Cavalcades of blood, right?
	Yeah. Because if you create a system with unjust power or an aggregation of a hierarchy, the most evil people in the world will get a hold of it and lay waste to the planet.
	Yeah. So, you know, this guy, and I'm not saying this is true of this guy, I don't know, but there can be many darker reasons as to why people create this kind of crap.
	Doc, are you talking like what he's on an agenda that...
	What do you mean by that?
	Well, what I mean is, and again, this is all theory, and it's not even a theory specific to this guy, right?
	But when people...
	Sorry, Norman, if you're listening.
	When people...
	And this is not about this guy, right?
	And there's someone, I think, on Lee Rockwell's side who calls for a Christian theocracy in the United States.
	And I've not read the article that...
	This is just hearsay, right?
	So I'm not saying if this is true, right?
	But just what I've heard, right? A theocracy would be a complete nightmare.
	Theocracies are unbelievably disastrous for human beings, particularly for women and children, but particularly for women.
	People who say we should, you know, the Islamic scholars or the Muslim scholars who say, you know, every society needs to be run according to Sharia law and we need to have a theocratic dictatorship in place under the mullahs and so on, right?
	Well, if those people get their way, millions of lives fall into the pit of enslavement, right?
	Yeah. And...
	Those people know that, because they grew up in that society, right?
	So it's a kind of hatred of the world that drives this, right?
	Again, I don't know the truth about this guy, because I don't know him from Adam, right?
	But I'm just saying that it may be that all he lacks is information.
	But... The reason that I would be suspicious about the theory that all he lacks is information is that the information is so damn easy to find and he claims to already have it because he's read Rand and Rothbard.
	Yeah. So I don't think the answer is that he lacks information.
	Obviously, yeah, yeah.
	So there has to be...
	Or he's retarded.
	Well, he's not retarded, right?
	Again, you don't want to underestimate you.
	But he's not because he's...
	He wouldn't be where he is otherwise.
	Oh, Gary North. He's a Christian reconstructionist.
	He's the guy who published on Lou Rockwell.
	Okay. So, what would you recommend I do with friends of mine who are in academia then?
	Well, that's a big question, and maybe we can return to that another time.
	But I think the important thing is to explore your feelings around this guy's writings.
	Because it's a little bit of a laboratory, if it makes any sense.
	I can't conceivably give answers to what you should do with your friends.
	And I appreciate you asking, because I know that shows a lot of trust in me.
	I can't. Because as you say, it's complicated.
	Some people take a long time to get to the truth.
	Some people will resist it and then will change.
	Some people you may have enjoyable conversations about art and about food and about movies and so on without touching on philosophical topics and it's not like every conversation we have has to be a road to Damascus, right?
	So there aren't easy answers to any of these questions But it's important to recognize that the questions exist around the compatibility of people who oppose violence with those who either consciously or unconsciously support it in the pursuit of the social good.
	It is an explosive topic to bring up with people.
	It is a very grueling and difficult thing to do.
	I don't recommend doing it, just blurting it out, but think about it and weigh it and balance it and so on.
	And the only reason that I mention this is that it's in your head anyway, but the more things are conscious, the better we are able to handle or deal with them.
	So there is this difference of ethics between you and your friends, and it's nothing you have to do about it other than be aware of the existence of it, because otherwise you can act out or they can act out unconsciously, which is a real shame, because that usually means the end of a friendship, whereas friendships can be saved and probably even enhanced.
	If you're conscious of the difference and can navigate or negotiate that difference in a conscious manner rather than in an unconscious manner.
	Okay. Yeah.
	So, not necessarily address the topic, but maybe indirectly touch on it?
	No. So, you're looking for actions, right?
	And I can't give you any actions.
	I mean, if I could, there'd be no point in having a free society, right?
	Just listen to me, right?
	But what I will say is just be conscious of the difference in values.
	You know, the funny thing is that all we need to do is, you know, it's sort of like this, to take a metaphor.
	So you're walking down, you're walking in a dark wood, right?
	And you're saying, well, I want to go through this wood.
	Where should I put my feet?
	Where should I put my foot next, right?
	And no one can tell you, but what we can say is, here's a flashlight, turn it on.
	And you can navigate from there.
	You can navigate, but you have to first see, right?
	Yeah. And so, if you turn the flashlight on, you will see, and then you will know what to do.
	But no one can tell you where to put your foot next.
	All we can do is say, turn the flashlight on.
	There is a difference of values.
	There's no better service that you could do to your friends in the long run than to help them to see the truth because reason, virtue, happiness and all that stuff that we talk about here.
	But you can't make them and it's a delicate and difficult thing to do.
	But you first of all need to switch the flashlight on and that just means being aware of the difference in values, being conscious of it, not feeling that you have to do anything about it.
	Let your eyes adjust, see the woods ahead and then you will know where to go.
	But the first thing you need to do is just switch the light on And let your eyes adjust.
	Well, you've helped me with that light, definitely.
	I can see it. Great, great.
	And I'm sorry to give you such a non-answer, but there really is the best I can do.
	Maybe there'll be something better down the road, but that's the best I can do.
	That's great. Well, thank you.
	I appreciate that. Sorry, I just wanted to say thanks.
	You had some great, great questions, and it was a great conversation.
	I really enjoyed it, but sorry you were adding something there.
	Me too, yeah. I'll give the guy an email anyway, just to see what happens.
	Yes, yes, of course. Look, I mean, everything I say is nonsense too, right?
	I haven't been to the China call to your relationship with your friends or with this guy, right?
	So everything I say is pure nonsense.
	What you want to do is test it empirically, right?
	And send the email to the guy and see if he's interested in debating.
	Look, I mean, he won't mind if I'm punchy because he's pretty damn punchy too, right?
	So he can't really reject that, right?
	But I wouldn't send him this. Just because this was more of a conversation between us crazy and Caps.
	But yeah, I would certainly be more than happy to debate with him if he would be willing.
	Excellent. Alright, well thank you very much.
	I do appreciate that. And that was a great, great set of topics.
	Thank you, Steph. Thank you.
	And keep us posted about what happens.
	Yeah, will do. Alright, thank you very much.
	I won't provide any additional commentary, but just to say that we have time for about 0.792 of a question.
	I would have a question.
	You would or you do? I do.
	Okay, there we go. From the potential to the actual, let's roll.
	It's a lot less political, more of a personal kind, but Yes.
	The thing is, some weeks ago, we did a little Skype call from the chatroom, and in this call, it became pretty apparent that I've got a problem with emotional dissociation.
	And I wasn't aware of that.
	So it took some other guys from FDR a lot of convincing and a lot of, well, digging a bit, but...
	I didn't really recognize it.
	And after this talk, I did some reading and talked with some other people and got a good picture of what it means and what happened to me and so on.
	But what I really would like to know is how someone can check for himself is if he...
	Whether he is dissociated or not because I think it's a pretty important topic and the strange thing is really I wasn't aware of it myself and I think other people who have that are not aware either.
	Good. Nothing but easy questions today.
	Are you now or are you thinking of seeing a therapist?
	I will get to that next week.
	Okay, so it's on the list, right?
	It's like saying, how do I become healthy?
	Well, you have to go to a nutritionist, a gym trainer or whatever, right?
	So if you're on the list to see a therapist, that's the most important thing and everything else that I say will just be minor tweaks relative to that because there's no switch, right?
	As you know, if there was a switch, you would have figured it out and you wouldn't be asking the question, right?
	It's more like, how can I check if I'm overweight?
	Well, get a measuring device.
	I mean, I didn't have a measuring device, and so maybe...
	I think it's more of general interest.
	And the other crazy thing that happened is I talked to some other friends, and I found out I'm dissociated and so on.
	And some people told me, yeah, we knew, of course.
	We thought you did that intentional or so, but...
	Yeah, I would just like some comments on how someone can see if he's overweight, see if he needs to check on that.
	Right, okay. There are two things that I would suggest.
	The first is to ask your friends to tell you when they notice it.
	Okay. Because the problem is, when you're dissociated, you can't see that you're dissociated.
	That is the point of dissociation, right?
	So it's like you've got a mirror, but you can't see yourself in it.
	And if you've got a mirror and you can't see yourself in it, you have to turn to the person next to you and say, do I have spinach between my teeth or something, right?
	Yeah. So I would suggest, you know, sit down with your friends and say, look, I've realized I have this problem with dissociation.
	And I want to work in it, but the problem is that when I'm dissociated, I can't tell, right?
	So I would ask my friends to tell me when they noticed I was in that way.
	They must know, right? Because they say, well, we've noticed it, so they must know.
	Now, when you get that kind of feedback, the important thing is when someone says you're dissociated, to notice how you feel when they say you're dissociated.
	Or how you don't feel, or what your state of mood is, or your state of mind, so to speak.
	So then, you will have a benchmark, which is, when I'm dissociated, I experience X, Y, and Z. And then, You have to notice, so you first notice how you feel when you're dissociated, then you have to notice how you feel when you are connected with yourself.
	And you have to train yourself and it's difficult and it's challenging and I have to leave notes around the house for myself at times to remind me to do certain things, right?
	But you have to check in with yourself.
	Once you know the difference between these two emotional states, because people have given you that feedback, then you can begin to train yourself to notice when you're moving from one to the other, right?
	Okay.
	When you notice that you're transitioning from one to the other, then what you need to do is you need to figure out the stimuli that provoke the dissociation.
	Right?
	So, it's sort of like, you know, if you're lactose intolerant, right?
	I mean, you just get stomach pains or whatever.
	You have to look for the associate. Well, every time I eat a piece of cheesecake or have some fettuccine Alfredo, I get these, right?
	So, you have to look at the triggering stimuli.
	Like, once you figure out the difference between these two states, then you can start to check in with yourself.
	You'll start to notice when you transition from one state to another, and you will, when you go from Connected to yourself, to dissociated from yourself, you need to look around at the stimuli that you are experiencing, external to yourself.
	I think my problem to begin with was that I'm basically always dissociated, so I had no point of comparison for that.
	And that was also why I asked for maybe how someone like me can check for that first, because If I'm sometimes dissociated, sometimes not, then okay, I can make these comparisons.
	But in the beginning, it was more like not being emotional is a normal state for me.
	So everything else is kind of weird.
	And that's a bad point to start, to do these things.
	I understand. I understand.
	Well, the things that I would suggest then, if you're not able to switch between these two states as yet, which is fine, you'll definitely get there.
	What I would do if I were you, and this is your money-saving tip from Free Domain Radio, number 1262.
	The money-saving tip that I'm going to give you is that you need to write down your personal emotional history from day one, from the very first thing that you can remember.
	And you need to write all of that down.
	You need to, you know, without art, without...
	Self-consciousness, just write down the emotional or non-emotional things that you remember from your childhood.
	Everything that we remember from our childhood is a clue.
	It's a sign. Because so many things happen to us when we're children, and we obviously don't remember them all.
	But the things we do remember, we always remember for a reason.
	And if you ever want a rainy day activity, write down three vivid memories and then figure out why they're vivid.
	I bet you that they will be incredible memories.
	Self-knowledge and those things.
	And also then, you will interestingly enough find that you will no longer find them as vivid.
	So, I would write down, you know, the things that you remember from your history.
	And writing, you can dictate it too, but writing is a good way of doing it because it's more shareable in many ways and you can review it in some ways.
	That's easier than... I'm dictating, but you can dictate as well, right?
	But write down, or remember, remember all of this stuff.
	And the way to remember childhood stuff is, there's a couple of things that I do when I need to work through this kind of stuff.
	You need a place of calm, you need a place of calm, you need a place of quiet, you need a place of security, you need a place of time, and generally I find I need a place of darkness, you know, physical darkness.
	And You remember things, and the things that I have to work to remember, and for some reason I've just had a bunch of these to process over the last week or two, probably because Isabella is now at the age where I went back from my nanny to my mom, so there's probably just things that I need to process about all of this that's pretty deep.
	But you need to...
	Think about these things.
	Let the thoughts inhabit you. It's sort of like a meditation.
	You try and stay focused on them because your mind will wander.
	And at the same time, you work to physically relax your body as much as possible, right?
	So on the left hand, you're remembering things from the past in a dark, quiet, safe environment.
	Turn the phones off. Don't be startled.
	No email, no, right?
	Just in a place where you're secure and calm.
	And on the right hand, you're physically perpetually relaxing your body.
	Right? So, if you're like me, when you remember stuff about your childhood that is difficult, you'll tense up, you need to work to physically relax your body, keep your breathing slow and deep, all of that kind of stuff.
	And, you know, you can be surprised, you might be surprised how quickly you will start to really feel about these kinds of things.
	This will save you months of therapy bills if you can do this ahead of time.
	And I really strongly suggest, because Therapists can spend a long time trying to get people even remotely connected to their own histories, and the work can't really start until you're connected.
	But you can do this every day for...
	God, I've been doing it for the last couple of days.
	For two to three hours a day, I've needed to do this.
	And it's so important to work through stuff, because there's always new stuff in life to work through.
	This kind of meditation, this kind of remembering in a secure environment while continuing to work on physically relaxing your neck, relaxing your jaw, relaxing your eyeballs, relaxing your chest, breathing deep, right?
	Staying in an undefended physical state against the challenges of your own history, that is the strongest advice that I can give you in terms of how to begin to reconnect with your history, which is of course where The disconnection originally arose from.
	I'm trying to give you like real practical stuff because you're starting therapy soon, I hope.
	So I just wanted to give you some practical stuff that might help.
	Does that make any sense?
	Oh, perfectly.
	I mean, I had some tools I already learned and I have some Very dear people around here who helped me to go through stuff.
	But if I may reiterate on my entry-level question, I'm thinking about someone who listens to this podcast and does not have a whole chatroom, Skype call, follow-up support of people to make him find out that he's emotionally disconnected.
	For someone who just totally isn't aware of, like I was a few weeks ago, How can one find that out?
	That would really, I think, be maybe an important question to answer.
	I'm sorry, I just missed the question.
	If you could repeat it. Okay, you have some guy who is like me and who listens to a podcast and he questions himself, am I emotionally disconnected or not?
	How can I find out?
	Because I'm not aware of it.
	Right, right. No, that's an excellent question.
	The thought that I have, and none of this is proof, right?
	But the thought that I have is when in life you find yourself, to a large degree, thinking in terms of abstractions and experiencing,
	for the most part, What might be considered shallow or distracting emotions and by that I mean you feel irritation or you feel boredom or you feel exasperation or a kind of mild dysthymia or despair or you find yourself kind of floating like a cork On the ocean,
	above the depths of emotions and passions that we're capable of, and in fact I think is really the essence of life as human beings.
	When you find yourself going through the day without any particular passions, but with a Sort of trotting by of little ponies, of little thoughts and irritations and abstractions and wouldn't it be nice if and so on.
	When you find yourself like you're going through life like the bubbles on the foam at the top of the sea rather than the depths, that usually is a good sign that dissociation is occurring.
	When you do not find yourself moved in surprising ways.
	I mean the world can be very surprising, can be very moving.
	And moved in good and bad ways, right?
	I find myself, and some of the podcast ideas come from a passionate response to a topic.
	I don't even understand why I'm responding, but then it turns out that there's something useful in it.
	When you find yourself in life unable to be moved by the spontaneous glory of the moment, that usually is a good sign that you're disconnected.
	I mean, for instance, I'll just give you a little example.
	On the sunny side of the street, Isabella has learned how to grab things.
	So I can't find my allowance.
	Isabella has learned how to grab things, but she can't figure out that her hand is moving them yet.
	So earlier today, I handed her...
	We have this little round, clear plastic thing with little rattle beads in them.
	And I handed them to her, and she looked at them, and then her arm lowered, and then her arm came up again, And the plastic rattle was looming towards her head.
	She herself was moving it, but she didn't realize that.
	And so she widened her eyes and looked scared as if the rattle was attacking her.
	Although she was actually moving it towards her own head, she didn't make that connection as yet.
	And I found that to be funny.
	I mean, obviously, I made sure she wasn't scared, right?
	I kept it from looming over her head.
	But it's like I'm lifting this thing up and it's like it's attacking me.
	I just thought that was very funny.
	And I was not expecting that and I was surprised at that.
	So I think when you have those kinds of shallow abstract thoughts and feelings and you do not find yourself moved in almost surprise by the serendipity of the moment, those are usually good signs that...
	You're not processing something more deep and meaningful, if that makes sense.
	Or if you look back, say, at your last six months or your last year, and you don't perceive or you don't have memories of strong emotions during that time frame or last week maybe, that can be another sign that you are...
	Not experiencing the deep emotions that I think we're all capable of and that really make life as rich as it can be.
	So I think those things are...
	Thought journals are very good.
	At the end of the day, write down, sit down and say, well, what did I feel today, right?
	Because your feelings will only come to you if you consider them important, right?
	And so if you say, well, what did I feel today and what didn't I feel?
	What did I see? What did I experience?
	What did I feel? 10-minute exercise, right?
	And if you notice that it's kind of the same thing every day, then that's probably a...
	A good sign that you're not connected with yourself emotionally.
	Does that help at all?
	Does that make any sense? Oh, yeah.
	I might apologize that I kept on drilling on this question but I started listening to FDR podcasts around December and I'm through maybe half of them by now and I just wasn't aware of this myself and I thought I was really surprised when it came up and it all made sense and I just didn't know so thank you very much for explaining it and I hope that it was helpful for some other people as well.
	Right. And if you do get a chance to listen to or read Real-Time Relationships, the book is really about your relationship with yourself and only secondarily with others.
	That might be very helpful for you.
	Oh, I read that about two and a half times by now.
	Oh, great. So I might do it again in a few weeks or months.
	Thanks. And I have been meaning to, and it's on the list at some point.
	Lord knows I'm still working on this new book off and on.
	Yeah. A workbook for RTR, which I think is more around your relationships with yourself, which I think would be helpful.
	And I'm really glad you brought this up.
	I have on the list a dissociation topic for a podcast, but I haven't gotten around to it.
	So I appreciate you bringing this up.
	I think it's an excellent topic.
	It's something that very many of us, myself included, do have a challenge with from time to time or more permanently.
	So I think it's a great, great topic.
	And thank you so much for bringing it up.
	And thank you so much to the people in the chatroom who helped this fellow notice this.
	It's a great gift.
	You know, this is a community that if you open your heart, you get just some completely wonderful things.
	And so thank you to everyone, of course, who helped.
	All right, time for a shorter or shorty one, if y'all have a yearning burning.
	All right. Well, if no one has any questions, I'm going to read the post of the week.
	Post of the week. P-O-D-W. A fellow wrote, he said, thanks to Steph.
	Thanks, my wife, three children, and myself now share a whole brand new, exciting, open, honest relationship.
	Thanks to you. And he signed and gave a thumbs up.
	And I said, wow, what a wonderful thing to hear.
	Thanks for posting. Tell us more.
	And he said, well, I've been an anarchist for a long time, but there was always something interesting.
	Missing. Things were getting a bit stressed at home.
	Lots of arguing with the children, etc.
	My wife had to go away for a week on a course with her work.
	The night she left, I found your website and straight away I listened to the Untruth, the Tyranny of Illusion audiobook.
	It changed my life. I realized what was going on.
	I was not being honest with myself or my wife or my children.
	The very next day I started asking my children How they feel about situations.
	What they think about decisions that needed to be made.
	It was like a breath of fresh air.
	The children began to flourish.
	I'm not exaggerating. The children's characters grew, blossomed in a day.
	We shared a week of discovery together and a real understanding took hold.
	Even thinking of that week now brings a tear to my eye.
	My wife phoned during the week.
	She was Understandably skeptical, but not skeptical enough to stop us talking about it on the phone for 90 minutes.
	When my wife arrived home, one of the first things you mentioned was how calm everyone was and how the atmosphere had changed.
	That night we listened to On Truth.
	We stopped it many times to discuss various situations that we have been in together and what was really happening.
	I think it was the early hours of the morning before we went to bed, but even the exhaustion could not stop us from wanting to discuss everything.
	It's funny, it was my wife who pointed out to me 10 or 11 years ago how damaging my parents were, but it's only now that I really understand what she meant.
	I digress. Anyway, now we all share an amazing, open understanding.
	Yes, we all still have disagreements, but now we're honest about it.
	No emotional manipulation, no aggression, just discussion and real love.
	Now, my wife and I watch each other's backs.
	You're slipping up here, that was unfair, etc.
	No, not just my wife and I, we all do.
	My oldest son is now so aware of everything, manipulation, etc., and values his own feelings that he is no longer afraid to speak out and fears no comeback because he is completely honest.
	My wife is amazing.
	I have a lot to learn from these wonderful children.
	And that is just wonderful.
	Thank you so much for posting that.
	What can I say? That makes all the challenges and difficulties...
	Worthwhile. And the most important thing there, of course, is to thank you for the trust that you're putting in yourself and in philosophy and in openness.
	And it is true that our children are a fount of wisdom that all we have to do is to ask them.
	And so thank you so much for posting that.
	Thank you so much for your courage, for your generosity with your children.
	That is the beauty of the family.
	that is possible and that is the shining city on the hill that the family is and that is what I am trying to cajole and wheedle and get people towards and that is a fantastic and wonderful thing so thank you so much for doing what you did for being honest about it and do keep us posted I wish you all the best so thank you everybody so much for us particularly to callers without whom of course there would not be much of a show
	I really do appreciate it thank you to the subscribers who keep the philosopher in vittles I'm sorry that the podcast production has been a little bit lower.
	I am working on a new site feature that is somewhat significant, and the new book is percolating.
	The final organization is a challenge, so it will be coming along.
	So thank you so much to the subscribers and to the donators, of course, the wonderful donators.
	It gives me a real lift.
	When money comes in, it's...
	It's very encouraging and thank you to all the people who've joined and who have sent such kind wishes in.
	It is a wonderful and exciting journey that we're on and I absolutely thank you to the bottom of the earth for joining in this conversation.
	So thank you everybody and have yourselves an absolutely wonderful week.

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