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May 21, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
14:09
1361 True News 40: Privatising the Senate, Nationalizing Industry...

A roundup of the latest statist madness.

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*Music* Hi everybody, it's Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
I hope that you, my delectable tasty listeners, are doing most excellently.
This is a miscellaneous roundup of tidbits from the media which I think you'll find interesting.
Last summer, the Washington Post published an article, Senate votes to privatize its failing restaurants.
Why, oh why, Steph, would you bring up an article from last summer?
Well, I think it speaks quite a lot about the madness that we live in.
So, from the article, year after year, decade upon decade, the U.S. Senate's network of restaurants has lost staggering amounts of money, more than $18 million since 1993, according to one report, and an estimated $2 million this year, according to another.
The financial condition of the world's most exclusive dining hall and its affiliated Capitol Hill restaurants, cafeterias and coffee shops has become so dire.
That without a quarter million dollar subsidy from taxpayers, the Senate won't make payroll next month.
In a letter to colleagues, this woman in charge, Feinstein, said that the GAO had found that, quote,"...financially, breaking even has not been the objective of the current management, due to an expectation that the restaurants will operate at a deficit..." Can you imagine?
Management within the government aiming or planning to operate at a deficit?
It's unthinkable. All told, the restaurants bring in more than $10 million a year in food sales, but have turned to profit in just 7 of their 44 years in business, according to the GAO. In the past 10 years, only 20 new items have been added to the Senate menus.
Even revenue in the once profitable catering division has been decimated as senators have increasingly sought waivers to bring in outside food for special events with constituents and private groups.
So, you see, even in the government, they want to get away from the government.
So organizing my outrage.
Getting my angry ducks in a row.
So this is a government that has a near monopoly on restaurants on Capitol Hill, and according to the pictures of certain senators, this is not a constituency that doesn't like to eat.
And even with a near monopoly and a hungry and needing to be well-fed population, the government can't turn a profit, so it's going to privatize, right?
Well, the average wage of its food service workers is $37,000 a year.
I spend some time as a waiter in my teens.
Let me tell you, that's not too shabby, and they get full benefits and so on.
So, the reason that I think this is important is that This organization, the state, the senate, the congress, it doesn't really matter, it's all full of complete incompetence.
This is the group that we consider the last resort, the port of last call for solving huge, messy, complex financial problems.
Other problems too, but in these end of days for the economy, it is the economic problems that we think that they're able to solve.
So imagine, right, you are the Chairman of the board of Chrysler, let's say, and you get a letter, right?
Scrawled in crayon, I don't know, right?
You get a letter and you open it up and you read, Dear Dude, listen, I want to take your job.
You haven't been doing that well lately.
I want to take your job.
I want to be in your seat.
And the reason that I am competent to do this is that I have run...
Half a dozen restaurants into the ground.
I'm currently $18 million in debt.
Lost $2 million last year on these restaurants.
I got a monopoly, but I just can't seem to make any money.
In fact, I lose a hell of a lot of money in my restaurants.
So I'm submitting my application to be chairman of Chrysler.
When can I start?
I mean, this would be considered to be the ravings of a lunatic, right?
This guy who can't run restaurants, even with a monopoly and subsidies, can't run restaurants, can't make payroll, should run one of the largest manufacturing concerns in North America.
It would be considered a lunatic statement, but in the roller coaster of statist insanity that we are all strapped on the hood of, this passes for sane decision-making in the modern world, that the Senate is going to be heavily involved in Taking over, nationalizing Wall Street companies, car companies, you name it, right?
These are the people who can't run restaurants, but they are entirely competent to oversee the education of the young.
Now, of course, everyone's going to tell me, well, no, but that's local, blah, blah, blah.
But you understand, this is the state as a whole, right?
They're all just a bunch of amoral incompetents.
We have a complete inverted pyramid of ethics and competence.
The most competent and the most honorable are the furthest from power, and the most corrupt, vicious, stupid, and flashy have their hands on the triggers of the nation.
So it's madness.
They can't run restaurants, but we think they can run car companies and Wall Street firms.
I mean, if it wasn't so dire, if jobs weren't at stake, if livelihoods and pensions and healthcare wasn't at stake, it would be just a completely ridiculous black comedy.
A completely ridiculous black comedy.
And the idea that the government is the port of last call for problems is the worst answer that could conceivably come out of anybody's fevered and diseased brain.
It's completely insane.
It's the equivalent of creationism in the realm of science.
So, science has a problem and can't figure something out.
And then they say, well, God did it.
Well, that's the opposite of a non-answer.
A non-answer is, I don't know, I have no clue.
So, I don't know, 19th century, prior to the Markiplier to Darwin.
Where do we come from?
The honest answer is, I don't know.
Where did the Big Bang come from? We don't know.
But the answer called God made us is the opposite of an answer because a non-answer still means you can still look for answers, right?
I don't know means let's find out.
But God did it or the government will take it over is the opposite of an answer.
It's an anti-answer because then you stop looking for further solutions.
The question which has always been posed about social organization and power within a society, who will watch the watchers?
So, if the private sector turns out to be, quote, incompetent, I've done videos about that, but let's just say the standard argument is true, which is not, but let's say it is.
The private sector is incompetent, and the current management of GM or Chrysler is incompetent, and therefore, what?
The government should take it over? Well, the government is even more incompetent.
So, it doesn't answer anything.
It's a fantasy of an answer.
But we believe it because we feel despair at giving up the illusion of an answer because we've been lied to and we've believed corrupt and immoral nonsense for most of our lives.
So it's hard. The only answer is statelessness.
The only answer is a balance of competing interests in a voluntary society.
That's the only answer. Who will watch the watchers?
No one can watch the watchers, which is why you don't have watchers.
Which is why you don't have a state.
You cannot have a state because you can't solve the problem of who will watch the watchers.
Only voluntarism, voluntarism, only a stateless society solves the problem by having competing interests in a voluntary and peaceful society.
You may have your quibbles with anarchism.
Lord knows I did, and do, sometimes even still.
But it solves the essential problem of who will watch the watchers, which is there is no watchers, so we don't have to worry about solving the equation.
Who will deal with those who want to gain power over you?
If they can't take your money by force because they're not a state and you're armed and other people want to compete for your business to protect you, then you have solved the problem.
But everybody wants to cling to this titanic of illusion called statism because they don't want to apply their intellectual energies to creatively solving the problems of social organization.
They just cling to this illusion called statism slash creationism because thinking Well, it's tough, right?
So let's cling to illusion and go down with the show.
Guantanamo Bay, of course, is not going to be closed.
I mean, the point is not to close Guantanamo Bay.
The point is to do something just and fair with these poor bastards who are locked up in there.
Of course, all of the cluster turds in the media and American politics are all saying, well, we don't want these terrorists in our state.
But, of course, that's entirely retarded.
Nobody knows whether they're terrorists or not.
Nobody knows whether they're good guys or bad guys.
Why? Because there's been no goddamn due process for these people.
Government has just scooped people from God knows where, shipped them and said, oh, they're bad guys.
If there are confessions, it's from torture.
So this is entirely Soviet.
This is a gulag. This is ridiculous.
Saying these guys are terrorists is like saying the Jews in the concentration camps were criminals, and that's why they were there.
It's nonsense. It's all made up.
Until we have the right to confront the accuser, habeas corpus, until we have evidence, until we have cross-examinations, until we have legal defense, until we have witnesses, until we have cross-examinations of the most ferocious kind, we have no idea.
Even then, there can be mistakes, but we have no idea whether they're good guys or bad guys.
It's all just made up.
The government just likes to say, well, we caught some guys, so give us your money and shut up.
That's all nonsense. I also wanted to mention, too, you hear a lot in the media these days from state representatives, particularly every time some new asshole shows up in charge of Iraq or running things over there, you get the same speech, right?
Which is, this is going to be a long and protracted and drawn-out affair.
It's going to be at least two years or five years or eight years.
The average insurgency is 12 years.
It's going to be tough. It's going to be long.
It's going to be difficult. It's going to be this.
It's going to be that. And to me, this is just entirely ridiculous.
I mean, let's go back to restaurants, right?
Because let's look at what actually happens in a free and voluntary relationship.
So you want to go for dinner, right?
There are five Italian restaurants in your neighborhood and you call the first one up, right?
And you say, I'd like reservations for 8 p.m.
on Friday. And they say, well, you know, you're going to have to wait.
It's going to be weeks and weeks and weeks until we can get you your reservation.
And then you're going to have to sit at the bar when you get here for at least an hour.
We've only got stale bread.
Our waiters have leprosy, so you might get eyeball soup.
You know, we don't have any tablecloths.
We just put down old newspapers and cat litter.
We don't have plates, so you've got to have a cup of soup in your hands.
And so, you know, we'll take your name down, but I'm telling you, it's going to be a long, hard, ugly haul for you to get your meal.
What are you going to say? Hey, thanks.
I think I'll call someone else, right?
Go to your supermarket, you know?
Well, it's going to be a long, hard haul for us to get you your bread, blah, blah, blah.
It's like, okay, I'll just go to another supermarket.
You can give me your speech about how tough it's all going to be.
I don't give a shit. I'll go somewhere else.
But with the state, that's not an option, which is why you can get these long, ugly, grueling, bad military dad lectures on how tough and hard it's all going to be, right?
They can only say that because they've got a gun to your neck, right?
If they didn't, you would be like, forget it, I'll go somewhere else, right?
If you all want to go in and if you're my dispute resolution organization or my private defense contractor and you say it's going to be a long, hard, ugly road to make peace in Iraq, I'd be like, well, I'm going to cancel my subscription.
You go with someone else because I don't want a long, hard fucking road.
I just want to have my property protected.
So, bye, cancel contract, stop payment, done!
But that's, of course, never how it works in statism because they have a gun to your neck.
So they can lecture you all you want.
And you're trapped, right?
So I just wanted to sort of put that in context.
Last but not least, I talked a week or two ago about what was said in 60 minutes about government contracts not being binding of private citizens.
Fantastic, right? That is a basic statement of a voluntary society.
And now here we have Barack Obama talking about His opposition to large privatization elements within private contracting in the military.
And he says this beautiful and delicious exposition of statism.
Roll! You are privatizing something that is what essentially sets a nation-state apart, which is the monopoly on violence.
Isn't that just lovely?
Isn't that just strikingly, sweetly, truthfully beautiful?
This is the reality.
The state is a monopoly on violence.
You don't see this very often.
You don't see this put out very often, but at least the word violence and monopoly is being used in the context of the state.
And slowly, slowly, slowly, The truth comes out, right?
At what point does the icy water have to creep up to your body in order for you to understand that you're on the Titanic and the captain is not very good?
Well, I think that time is coming, and with your support and with shows like this and other shows out there, I hope that you will...
Help spread the word and get the truth out to as many people as possible about the society and the world that we could have, rather than the one we have inherited from entirely retarded and primitive ancestors.
Thank you so much for listening and watching.
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