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June 11, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
13:08
1390 True News 43: Roads, Education, Hypocrisy
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Hi everybody, it's Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Main Radio.
I hope that you're doing very well.
This is a little tasty scattershot smidgen of anarchic principles and observations.
Let us start in the lovely town of Drachten.
Lovely language. So, in Drachten, they had a problem.
They had 20,000 cars going through the center of the town, the sort of major intersection, and there were lots of traffic accidents, and there were pedestrian deaths, and so on.
And a fellow decided, the town planner decided, to try something interesting, because, of course, the natural response of a state of society is more rules, more regulations, more signs, more lines, more fines, and they tried something a little unusual.
The removal of traffic lights at one major junction has resulted in accidents falling from 36 in the four years before the scheme was introduced to two in the next two years.
The average time for each vehicle to cross the junction fell from 50 seconds to 30 seconds, despite a rise in the volume of traffic.
And in another area, this is in London, following the removal of pedestrian crossings and guardrails, those sheep pen railings so favored were traffic engineers to keep pedestrians corralled, accidents have been cut by 44% compared to 17% for London as a whole.
So let's have a little bit more about Dachten.
His name is Hans Mondermann.
A traffic planner involved in a Brussels-backed project known as Shared Space said that taking lights away helped motorists, cyclists and pedestrians to coexist more happily.
And safely. They took away lights, they took away signs, they took away lanes, they took away everything.
And only three of the fifteen sets in the town of 50,000 remain of traffic lights and they will be gone within A couple of years.
There have been a few small... Sorry, there used to be a road death every three years, but there have been none since the traffic light removal started seven years ago.
There have been a few small collisions, but those are almost to be encouraged.
Mr. Monderman explained, quote, We want small accidents in order to prevent serious ones in which people get hurt.
Quote, it works well because it is dangerous, right?
You've got pedestrians and cyclists and motorists with no traffic signs and no lanes, all just sharing the space and navigating and negotiating in a voluntaristic manner.
So he says it works well because it is dangerous, which is exactly what we want.
But it shifts the emphasis away from the government taking the risks to the driver and the pedestrian and the bicyclist being responsible for his or her own risk.
We only want traffic lights where they're useful, and I haven't found anywhere where they are useful yet.
Mr. Monderman, 61, compares his philosophy of motoring to an ice rink.
Skaters work things out for themselves, and it works wonderfully well.
I am not an anarchist, he says, but I don't like rules which are ineffective.
And street furniture tells people how to behave.
The main junction handles about 22,000 cars a day, but once there were traffic lights, there is a roundabout, an extended cycle path, and pedestrian area.
In the days of traffic lights, progress across the junction was slow as cars stopped and started.
Now tailbacks are almost unheard of, and almost nobody toots a horn.
However, it's not the cars which seem to be involved in the greatest conflict.
It is the cyclists and pedestrians who seem to jostle for space.
Driving around Rachnan, vehicles approach roundabouts with considerable caution.
Traffic approaches from the left, but cyclists come from the right.
Cyclists, almost none of whom bother with helmets, signal clearly at junctions, making sure motorists are aware of them.
So that, I think, is very, very interesting.
You have a reduction, right?
So from 2000 to 2002, there were 23 road accidents.
This was all changed in 2003.
From 2004 to 2005, there were two.
Bus service crosses the section of road 50% faster now that the road signs, traffic signs and lanes and so on have all been removed.
Now I'll put the link off to the right as usual.
So that I think is very interesting, a very interesting principle.
Lao Tse, sorry, let me get the quote here.
Lao Tse wrote in the Tao Te Ching Ke Ching, he said, stop trying to control, let go of fixed plans and concepts and the world will govern itself.
The more prohibitions you have, the less virtuous.
People will be. If you don't trust the people, you make them untrustworthy.
And this is an interesting fact and observation, particularly around traffic safety.
You sometimes will hear the argument, well, but governments introduced seat belts which were a good thing.
And in fact, seat belts are not a good thing.
What happens when you make driving safer, drivers simply drive more dangerously.
There's an argument to be made that the best thing you could do for road safety would be to have a massive iron spike Coming out from the steering wheel pointed directly at your sternum and that would make everyone drive very carefully because even a fast stop might be a problem.
What happens when you have seat belts is drivers drive more dangerously.
They don't tend to injure other drivers as much because the seat belts reduce the danger by X percent, but people just drive X percent more dangerously.
What has happened since the introduction of seat belts, of course, is that pedestrians have been killed in higher numbers because they don't have the protection of seat belts.
Things aren't obviously as simple as they seem, otherwise we would not need things like philosophy.
Now the second thing I wanted to point out, this is a more personal anecdote, it doesn't prove anything, but I think it's an interesting example.
People say, well, see, without the government, people wouldn't be educated.
And a lot of people will respond on the libertarian side and will say, well, yes, perhaps, but people aren't being well educated now and so on.
But I actually go stronger.
I go much further than that because what I argue is that the government actually removes education from people's lives.
And I mean, I've made this argument before with public schools.
You can go, just in case you don't know, you can search all my podcast transcripts Descriptions and titles just go to freedomainradio.com forward slash search.
Do a search for that which most interests you and so on.
You can also use the wizard to create your own custom feed just about the podcast you're interested in.
I've made the argument about Rhodes, but a sort of personal anecdote that I thought was interesting was my wife got pregnant last year, obviously, and we were looking for classes on, you know, prenatal care or, you know, all of that kind of stuff. And we found that the government offered these classes.
And no private companies offer these classes because, of course, why would you offer a class when the government is giving it away for free, right?
You can't charge people for stuff which has been given away for free.
So within the first, I think it was like six or eight weeks into the pregnancy, we wanted to sign up for these classes.
Unfortunately, they weren't going to be available for another seven to eight months because the government classes were full, right?
So it was pretty ridiculous.
And we couldn't find any other classes.
And so we ended up going to the class.
It was a couple of nights and a weekend.
And we ended up going to the class when my wife was about eight months pregnant.
And about 80% of the class was about how to take care of your baby in the first and second trimester, which was already passed!
And the instructor was kind of embarrassed because everybody in the class was, you know, literally the babies were hanging on like, hanging on to the umbilical like Bruce Willis on a greased rope in a Die Hard movie.
So it's just like, hang on, you know, don't get, don't be birthed yet.
We're still learning about your first trimester.
So here was an example of how the government has actually removed education from people's lives by offering a free class so nobody offers it privately and then of course they never funded enough, there are never enough teachers and so you end up not being able to get the education that you want and almost all of the class was completely useless because it was all about folic acid and first trimester nutrition and second trimester healthcare concerns and so on.
And the instructor kept saying, yeah, I guess this is not too relevant to you guys, and basically this was her job, 80% of her job was saying, this is not relevant to you guys.
And the last class was, you know, good about the hospital and so on, but this is a really, really good example of how we simply were denied access to a class by the state.
This is really important to remember.
The government doesn't just not provide services, it denies services.
So welfare crowds out charity, free classes, and welfare crowds out charity, and welfare just sends a check and then cuts you off randomly, at least as I've sort of seen with people that I've heard of.
So it's really, really important to understand that the government is an active block.
In many, many instances, it's an active block to the provision of services.
So I think that's just something really important.
The last thing I'd sort of like to mention, this is sort of an argument approach that I think is very helpful.
I'm sneaking it into a true news because I just think it's so important.
I might do this, and I might do this topic in more detail in my speech in Philadelphia on July the 4th, 2009.
But, you know, when you're, you take anything, education, right?
So let's say that, oh, a state of society, and then people say, well, how will the poor be educated?
How will the poor be educated? Now, of course, I have a perfect answer to this, right?
And that's the main reason I did all of this, was to have the perfect answer for these things.
But when someone comes up to me, I say, well, the stateless society, and they say, well, how will the poor be educated?
And I say, well, through the actions and endeavors of people like me, because I quit my career in order to focus on educating people, and I've had 10 million podcast downloads, and I've got 1.5 million YouTube views, and so on, right? So I have really worked to get education, and I hand out all my books for free, and so I've worked really hard to get education.
Education about philosophy, politics, history, art, psychology, relationships, you name it, into the hands of people who otherwise would not be able to pay for it.
I mean, I think that the course lengths of Free Domain Radio is now approaching a college course, although it has actually more breadth than most college courses because I went to a number of colleges in a number of different fields.
So it's really, really important, I think, to sort of focus on doing things that support your case, right?
So I say, how will the poor be educated?
They'll listen to podcasts for free.
How do I know that? Because I give away podcasts for free, and lots of people, and I get lots of letters from people who are like, oh man, you know, I didn't go to college, but this stuff is great, you know, waking up the brains of the proletariat is a beautiful thing to do.
So you can turn this around, right?
So someone comes up to you and says, how are the poor going to be educated in a free society?
And my question would then be, well, what are you doing about it now?
Because obviously the poor are not being perfectly educated in the current society, right?
We obviously know that state schools, particularly in poor neighborhoods, are pretty crappy.
So I would ask someone and say, oh, well, that's interesting.
So you really care about the education of the poor, and obviously it can always be improved, stateless society or not.
So what is it that you're doing to improve the quality of the poor's education?
Or someone says, how are the sick going to be taken care of?
It's like, well, what are you doing to take care of the sick?
Are you donating your time to a hospital?
Are you donating money to a charity?
What is it that you're doing? Now, if someone comes back and says, I tutor a kid once a week from a poor neighborhood, then it'd be like, well, fantastic.
That's how the poor will be taken care of in a free society, because I do my part, you do your part.
Lots of people will. Some people won't, for sure, but some people will.
So that's how the poor will be taken care of.
Ka-ching! Asked, answered, and done.
Dunked, baby. Now, if someone comes up to you and says, well, how will the poor be taken care of in a stateless society?
And you say, well, what are you doing to educate and help and aid the poor?
And they say, well, nothing.
Well, it's like, but then why are you even asking the question?
You obviously really don't give a shit.
So why are you even asking the question?
That's really, really important.
If someone really, genuinely cares, right?
Because people will ask, how will the poor be taken care of?
Because they feel anxious and threatened by the question.
So they're just throwing this up like a smoke screen, like a, stop!
You know, I don't like this line of questioning.
It's making me feel all kind of funny, right?
So what you want to do is figure out if they actually do care about the poor.
And if they don't care about the poor, then saying, well, we can't have a free society because I don't care about the poor.
Doesn't make any sense.
We can't have a state of society because the poor that I don't care about might not be educated in a way that I just don't care about.
If you don't care about it, then it's not an obstacle.
If you don't care about the education of the poor or the sick health care for the poor, then it's not a barrier to a free society.
You don't care, right? Now if you do care, there should be some evidence for that in your life.
And if you do care and you are doing something in your life, BAM baby, then we're set because other people are going to do it, I do it, you do it, they'll be taken care of.
And how do we know? We look in the goddamn mirror and that's how we know.
So I just want to sort of point that out, really ask that question, you know, oh you care about the poor, you care about education, what are you doing about it?
If you're doing something, fantastic, that's how they'll be taken care of.
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