Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

Sept. 6, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:58:37

1451 Sunday Show 6 Sep 2009

Obama's school speech, anarcho-communism, and enlightened parenting!

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	Hi everybody, it's Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
	I hope that you're doing very well.
	This is Sunday.
	James, what is the day today?
	Is it the 6th? It is the 6th.
	It is the 6th. Look at that.
	Yes, it is. Good to have backup date elf in my head.
	And welcome to the Free Domain Radio Sunday philosophy call-in show chat fest brain spittle twister with your head show.
	And just to start off with a reminder That if you would like to call in to talk about philosophy or whatever is on your mind, the call-in number is 347-633-9636.
	Or you can go to...
	What's the URL again, James? Go to blogtalkradio.com forward slash P as in Peter, F as in Frank, P as in Peter, Movement Radio, and sign up for a free...
	BlogTalk account and then once you hit the play button and the chat the chat will open and if you scroll up to the top of the page there is a click to talk feature and if you click that click to talk feature if you have a microphone that will show up on our caller panel and we can bring you on the air to talk to Stefan.
	Yes, excellent. So I have a brief introductory topic And James, if you want to just type into Skype anytime we have someone, I will keep an eye on it.
	And if I completely ignore you, then you're going to make, I think, a sound we had figured out, like a fairly aged and arthritic pterodactyl.
	That was a sound that you were going to make if I was not noticing that somebody was willing to talk.
	So we won't practice that now because it might be hard on people's ears.
	But just know that that is what's happening if you do hear.
	Actually, I thought about putting a tank outside your house.
	LAUGHTER Funny you should mention that.
	There is, in fact, a tank outside my house, but it's a septic tank, so I think that's okay.
	Okay. All right.
	So, Barack Obama, I think his name is.
	Now, is he still going to do this speech to the schools?
	I think it was on the...
	He was going to talk on the 12th originally.
	Is that right? Is he still doing that talk?
	I can't remember if he is or isn't.
	He is, right? And...
	There was, if you've ever seen the questions, the sort of study guide that's out there includes questions that are really quite startling in a titularly free society.
	The lesson plans available online originally recommended having students, quote, write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president.
	And I think in many school districts there is a 50% dropout rate For high school.
	In other words, only half the students who've gone through more than a decade of state education end up actually graduating.
	And to me, this is one of the saddest things about statism is the degree to which it harms the mental development of children.
	Those who grew up on welfare have statistically significantly lower IQs.
	And I think the cause is fairly clear.
	I've got a video on this on YouTube if you're interested.
	But I think one of the sadder things about that...
	Is the degree to which the customer in statism is always blamed.
	That to me is really, really, really one of the most tragic elements of statism.
	And what I mean by that is, can you imagine if I run a courier company and only 50% of the parcels that were entrusted to my delivery system actually made it to their intended recipient, wouldn't that just be a ridiculously bad success rate when it came to delivering packages?
	And, of course, the school system is supposed to deliver well-educated students out of the other end.
	And billions and billions and billions of dollars are spent upon this.
	And less than half of them even graduate.
	And it's not like all of those who graduate end up with a very good grasp of reason and math and science and logic and civics and all that.
	Certainly not of economics. I mean, there's a whole bunch of courses which are not required.
	In schools, you are not required to take economics.
	Why? Because if you were required to take economics, you might ask some awkward questions of your leaders.
	You are not required to take any courses on law.
	In fact, very few of those courses are ever offered, certainly in high schools.
	And that is really tragic as well.
	In a society where ignorance of the law is no excuse, you're not actually taught anything about the law.
	So there's lots of things that are really tragic about the state education, but what's really sad is, if you imagine that I'm running a courier company, only 50% of my packages get delivered, that I would sit down and lecture my customers about how they need to write letters to me!
	To me! About how they're going to help me deliver their packages.
	Can you imagine the brain-bending audacity of such a failure of a company Lecturing its customers and saying, you know, my career company is only delivering 50% of your packages.
	And really, that's your fault.
	I want you to sit down and I want you to write letters.
	I want you to write letters. I want you to have homework assignments.
	I want you to create project plans about how you're going to help me deliver your packages.
	Such a thing would be incomprehensible.
	In a voluntary society, in a voluntary interaction.
	And of course, any school in a free society that had as its statistical results that only 50% of people made it even through the mediocre education of a state system would be out of business in about 35 seconds.
	But you wouldn't get people lecturing these poor students who are being dismally failed by their society and their government.
	And it can succeed.
	In the current system because violence does not solve problems.
	The children are not there voluntarily.
	The children are there through compulsory education laws.
	I mean there are some who are homeschooled but the parents still have to pay through their property taxes usually for state education.
	The children are not there voluntarily.
	The parents haven't put them into those schools voluntarily.
	The parents are forced to pay for these schools regardless of the value differences between the parents and the teachers.
	And the schools, as funded through a monopoly of violence, have no fundamental incentive for success.
	Now, this doesn't mean that all public school teachers are bad people who just want to take two and a half months off during the summer.
	And I know a lot of high school teachers work really hard.
	I know a lot of high school teachers are really frustrated with the current system.
	But, as is always the case, if they can get you to ask the wrong questions, they don't really care about the answers.
	The question is, of course, Why do we need violence to educate people?
	Why do we need the violence of taxation, the violence of state monopolies, the violence of public sector unions?
	Why do we need violence to educate children?
	If we use violence to educate children, what are we fundamentally teaching our children?
	If children are in school through coercive legislation, if parents are forced to pay for state schools through Taxation.
	Through the initiation of force, that is taxation.
	What are we fundamentally teaching our children?
	Well, we're teaching our children two things.
	One, violence works.
	Violence is good.
	If you really need to get something done, you really have something important that you need to get done, like helping the poor or the aged or providing health care or educating children.
	If you have something really important that you need to get done, pull out the guns.
	And everything will be hunky-dory.
	Well, that's the first thing that we're teaching them.
	And then we wonder why violence does not significantly decline over the long run in society.
	Why violence, if it declines domestically, tends to increase overseas.
	Because we have a system that's fundamentally based on the initiation of force.
	And where something is really important to use violence.
	Well, you know, it's okay to have iPods delivered.
	It's okay to have cars delivered that way, or at least it was until recently.
	But, you know, gosh, when it comes to really important things, that's where we need the government.
	And it's something that is funny and tragic.
	I mean, the greatest tragedy is what state violent monopoly over education does to the minds of children.
	It's absolutely brutal.
	And then to have the audacity to blame children...
	For the negative effects of violent decisions made generations before they were born is staggering.
	You know, there used to be something that was quite common as a literary device.
	It was very common in sort of 18th century France.
	Voltaire used it a number of times.
	And what it was was to imagine that a man who lived on Mars or a man who lived on the moon came to Earth and tried to describe How society worked.
	And it is all, of course, completely absurd because when you don't come from a particular cultural background or you can write from a perspective that's outside of it, you will always end up coming up with some very startling conclusions about your society.
	When I think about our society, I try to think like 200 years into the future.
	And I find that a fascinating exercise.
	I really invite you to do it. Because certainly when we look 200 years back into the past, right, if we look at the early 1800s, you know, we see no rights for women, no protection for children.
	We see slavery. We see a lifespan that was 30 or 35 years.
	We see people regularly dropping dead of tooth decay.
	We see just what we would consider to be a living hell.
	Now, I don't think anyone's going to look particularly and say exactly the same way, you know, in that Monty Python, he must be a king because he hasn't got shit all over in view of the Middle Ages.
	Nobody's going to come look back exactly at our society and say, what a living hell.
	But what is society and its ethics going to look like in 200 years?
	Well, society does, you know, with the efforts of people like us, society does tend towards a greater tenderness towards the vulnerable.
	And it does tend towards a greater equality among the able.
	And it also does tend to favor over the long run reductions in violence.
	And if you put those three things together, and you say, well, how is society going to look in the future?
	Well, tenderness towards the helpless will be the protection of children will be completely taken for granted.
	And those who abuse and harm children will be viewed with the kind of horror as those who we would view who beat slaves in the 1800s.
	There is a growing sense of equality, which means giving a small group of people called the state the right to initiate violence against the vast majority will diminish over time, without a doubt.
	The tend towards peace will be that in any comparison between a solution involving violence and a solution involving voluntary free market interactions, for sure in 200 years the vast majority, if not all, of fundamental social problems will be solved with tenderness towards children With equality among the able.
	The tenderness towards the helpless.
	Equality among the able. And with violence being...
	Non-violence being the default position to solve all complex social problems.
	That's where society is going to head.
	That's where society is going to go.
	Because that is the irresistible trend of human ethics.
	To view the helpless and the dependent and the tender.
	Be they aged or sick or children...
	To view them as worthy of the most staunch protection.
	And that protection fundamentally is around social approval and disapproval rather than violence.
	So there will be in the future, they will look back and see that we herded our children into these state lack of concentration camps, these brain deadening mental gulags, and they will be completely horrified.
	They will be stunned and horrified That we forced children into these ridiculously terrible educational, quote, systems.
	That we forced parents to pay for them whether they approved or disapproved.
	That we let generation after generation's brains die on the vine in these schools.
	And then we lectured the poor children caught up in the machinery of this brain-eviscerating monstrosity of a system.
	And that we had the gall to lecture those children On what they should do to improve the system.
	That really is absolutely astounding.
	And it is amazing the degree of gall that we have to make those kinds of statements and comments.
	That's really, of course, not really what's being talked about, I mean, with regards to Obama's speech to the children.
	In that people are saying, well, it's like a cult of personality and having children write that they should support the president or what can they do to support the president and so on.
	I mean, of course it's propaganda, but I mean, all of state education is propaganda.
	I mean, how could you as a teacher look your children in the eye and say violence is wrong.
	You shouldn't hit each other. You shouldn't use force against each other.
	Oh, and by the way, if your parents don't pay for my salary, whether they like me or not, thugs will go to their house.
	And take their money at gunpoint.
	How could we conceivably say to children that violence is the wrong way to solve problems when the very format of the education system that we use to instruct them is based on violence?
	This is the fundamental contradictions within our society that people in the future will look back and their mouths will just hang open that we had the audacity to make these kinds of statements to children.
	That's my brief introduction.
	I certainly have more, as always.
	James, do we have anyone hanging off the vine just yet, or are we still waiting?
	Let me get the number out once more.
	We do. We do have a call, but first of all, I want to mention the number and the click-to-talk feature again, if you don't mind.
	Please do. The number to call into the show to talk to Stefan, to debate him, or questions, or just a quick talk, is 347-633-9636.
	That number again is 347-633-9636.
	633-9636.
	Alternatively, if you do sign up for a BlogTalk account at blogtalkradio.com and then you can go to blogtalkradio.com forward slash PFPMovementRadio.
	That's PFPMovementRadio.
	You can hit the click to talk feature and it will bring you on the air and you can talk to Stefan that way.
	It's a It's a way of making a free call if you live outside the United States.
	So it's not going to cost you a penny.
	You're going to come in via the internet onto our switchboard.
	So we do have a caller from area code 703 and you are on the air.
	Okay. Back to you, Steph.
	Thank you. I appreciate that.
	So it's going to be interesting to see what comes out.
	out.
	I'm sure that there will be some modification of Obama's speech itself.
	But there still will be, of course, this kind of stuff.
	But it is to me always amazing that people will talk about particular elements of propaganda within the statist system without talking about the status system with regards to propaganda as a whole.
	Somebody posted something on the Free Domain Radio board, which I thought was very interesting and a very adroit and intelligent way of looking at it.
	Because it is such a fundamentally irrational position that it is really hard to understand why so many people remain statist.
	It really is like believing in Santa Claus until your dying day and your dying day not being as a young person.
	But it's really not that hard to really sort of understand if you remember that most people go through state education.
	The vast majority of people go through state education or at least even in private schools there's a lot of control over what the children are taught and what they're allowed to learn.
	And it's easy to understand why most people are statists when they go through, you know, 12, 13, 14 years of state propaganda, as it is to say, well, gosh, I wonder why so many children in Syria end up as Muslims.
	Well, because, of course, they go through religious indoctrination for many, many years, or why it is that children who would be sent to a religious school, why so many of them would end up believing in some sort of God or a particular kind of God, you know, Yahweh or whoever.
	And it's because that's what you're told over and over and over again, and in very many ways you're kind of punished for not accepting what you're told, right?
	And most human beings, you know, perhaps us, we few, we happy few accepted, most human beings are not fundamentally designed to stand firm on principle, like Thelma and Louise driving off a cliff, regardless of the negative consequences to basic biological drives like, you know, reproductive success and the acquisition of resources through, you know, say, getting a job or getting into university or getting decent marks or whatever.
	Most human beings will do whatever they can to survive within a particular social environment and they will almost inevitably make up moral justifications after the fact for what it is that they've had to do in order to survive and flourish in a particular environment.
	So In this situation, we have children, the entire, the violence of the system, the violence inherited in the system is completely obscured from the children.
	And of course, they hear all of the astounding propaganda that is identical in form and function to the kind of propaganda that children in Soviet Russia were to get.
	And we all know this, right?
	Lincoln freed the slaves.
	I'll just go from some U.S. examples.
	The Wild West was really violent until the sheriff came to town and made all the bad guys put down their guns.
	And oh my God, those terrible robber barons in the 19th century, oh my heavens, they were just making everybody's life a living hell until Teddy Roosevelt and the progressive movement and the government rode in to save America.
	The consumer from the rapacious capitalists, you know, with their handlebar mustaches, their top hats, their monocles, and their shaved cats on their laps, or something like that, all plotting to kill James Bond with sharks powered by lasers.
	And then we have, of course, the First World War.
	Now, the First World War is something that is not subject to a huge amount of propaganda, because there's a lot of confusion.
	And I've been meaning to do a video series on this for a while.
	A lot of confusion about the First World War.
	But the First World War has kind of slithered over.
	But... We go straight into what happened in the 20s, you know, when it was all, you see, free market...
	It's so hard to say this stuff with a straight face.
	It's all free market capitalism in the 1920s, you see.
	And, gosh, don't you know how terrible it was?
	There was a boom, there was a crash, and then the free market spiraled into the Great Depression, and then FDR and the Great Society...
	Sorry, and the New Deal saved capitalism and put it on a stable path, and then we had to fight...
	The Nazis, and I'm sure it was something to do with the free market, to do with Hitler.
	And then we had to fight those nasty Russians, and the government had to save us from them.
	And then the government helped the blacks with the civil rights movement and helped the poor with Lyndon Johnson's Great Society.
	And then there was all of this energy shortage during the 70s, and those nasty capitalists wouldn't let the government do anything to solve that problem, which was a real shame.
	And then there was this real estate boom in the 80s.
	You see, it was just terrible. The free market just completely went nuts.
	In the 80s. And then there was a recession in the early 90s.
	And then, gosh, don't you know it, there was just another boom, this time in high tech in the 90s.
	And then the government wrote in to try and save that.
	And then, you know, out of nowhere, innocent America was attacked on 9-11.
	And then there was another boom, again, in the real estate market and in the commodities markets.
	And the government had to ride in.
	And then also all of these crazy banks with their free market imperatives and their greed.
	And then there was this crash.
	And now the government is riding in with these stimulus packages.
	Right? So it's all about freedom is this wild, unstable, bucking bronco, completely insane rollercoaster on steroids during an earthquake, and the government is the only reason that we cling to the rails at all.
	And it is really astounding.
	This amount of propaganda is really astounding and almost inevitable.
	So I think I've just given you most of what you got in high school.
	So let's go to a caller who may have something.
	I'm sure we'll have something more valuable to add.
	Please go ahead. Now, this caller goes by the screen name of Laywinder.
	You're on the air. Laywinder, wider than a mile.
	Yo, we're chatting now in style someday.
	You're on the air. It's using the click-to-talk feature, so if you are, you need to turn your microphone on or turn your microphone volume up.
	Laywinder? If we're waiting for this person, if somebody else has a...
	If they've typed something in the chat window, I would be, if you want to read it off, I'd be happy to answer any questions that people might have put in there as well.
	Well, we have another caller as well, so I'll just put Lewindr on hold, and this caller is from Skype.
	That's a Skype caller. Skype caller, you're on the air.
	Go ahead. Hello, can you hear me?
	Yes, you're a little muffled, but let's see if we can't decipher.
	Hello, Stefan.
	I'm calling from Germany.
	It's been brought to my attention over to the Reddit anarchism that you were seeking to speak to a competent, quote-unquote, competent anarcho-community syndicalist, etc., etc.
	So it was put forth As sort of a challenge, here I am.
	I heard you want to clarify some stuff.
	I don't know how competent I am.
	I'm pretty much... Right.
	Now, sorry, just so you understand, there's no other microphone that you can use or a phone, because you sound really, really muffled to me.
	I can sort of vaguely hear you, but I think that other people are having trouble.
	The problem is that I am not in the United States and I do not have a telephone that I can use.
	Okay, maybe just move the mic back a little bit.
	It might be a little clearer then.
	Just move the mic a little further away from your mouth.
	How about now? I think that's a little better, yeah.
	Now, it wasn't a challenge, like I wasn't necessarily wanting to throw down with a communist, you know, depends whether you've shaved your legs or not.
	But I did want to sort of ask some questions, yeah.
	It doesn't mean it was a challenge from you.
	I'm just saying that it was put forth in the rhetoric and people like it.
	But anyway, go on, please.
	Okay, so under anarcho-communism, if I understand it correctly, there is no state, obviously, because it's the anarcho-side.
	So there's no organized monopoly on violence, the initiation of violence.
	But at the same time, there's no property rights.
	Is that right? Not exactly.
	There are no private property rights.
	There are possessive rights.
	So there is property in use, as was defined by holding some land or holding some means of production and making use of it.
	So, for example, a farmer working his own land will be able to consider to be the owner.
	It would simply mean that a factory owner We will not be able to claim ownership of this factory while there are 500 other people working on it.
	And he can sit on the back and just scheme the profit.
	Okay, sorry. Let me just, sorry.
	And I'm going to have to interrupt a lot because I always want to make sure that I understand.
	So, a farmer who works the land owns the land because he works it, but a factory owner can't own the factory because other people work there.
	Exactly. You can only own what you personally use.
	So in the case of a factory, for example, it will be a case of communal ownership.
	It won't be a specific owner.
	Okay, so what that means is that if I need a hundred million dollars to build a factory, I get together with 500 friends and we all put in, what, $50,000 and then we all become owners of the factory because we've all come up with the capital to build the factory.
	Is that right? It is a bit of weird the way you put it.
	The concept of anarcho-communism is not that you buy The beans of production from the capitalist and then work it.
	That is already possible within the capitalist system via the cooperative movement.
	The idea of anarcho-communism is that there is no property, nobody is using private property anymore.
	We have discarded this concept.
	Usually this can, as a revolutionary myself, I cannot consider that this is possible to reform it.
	So it won't happen by the workers slowly buying the means of production from the capital.
	It will happen through a revolution.
	Okay, can you explain to me, sorry to interrupt, but can you explain to me, and this is something I really, I'm not trying to corner you, I just don't understand.
	How is it, how do the means of production come into being We don't.
	We don't.
	Sorry, if nobody can profit, let's say, from building a factory, how is it that factories will come into being?
	First of all, you do not move from a private society to anarcho-communism.
	Anarcho-communism is obviously a point of contention, but from my point of view, you cannot move to this system without passing through capitalism at some point.
	In the sense that you cannot move towards capitalism without passing through feudalism.
	In that sense, we already have the means of production available.
	We already have the production capability, the factory, the farm, the industry.
	So what we do is we take it over.
	The people who work in the factory expropriate it.
	Now, if we are already in the system, if we are already in the anarcho-communist society, and we find the need that we say we need a new public transportation or we need to create extra food or something then obviously the community They see that they do not have enough food,
	that they need public transportation, they hold a meeting, they hold a meeting of the commune, decide, yes, we need this and that productive capability.
	And they allocate resources through discussing and etc.
	They figure out what they need and they allocate resources to build it.
	Look, can I just ask you another question?
	Have you ever been an entrepreneur or a business owner yourself?
	No. Okay.
	And the reason that I'm asking that is not, again, I'm not trying to say that that makes your argument right or wrong, but if you had a business plan, like if you, even in the current system, right, if you took some A business plan to your investors and you said, well, I want to build a factory and the way that I'm going to do it is I'm going to figure out what I need and then allocate resources, right? No one would invest in you because that's not a plan.
	That's wishful thinking, if that makes sense, right?
	Because the question is, where are those resources coming from?
	How are they to be allocated without prices?
	Because, of course, if you don't have a free market, you don't have prices.
	And you need, you know, if you don't mind me saying so, you need more detail in how things are going to actually work in society.
	I mean, I've bored people from here to eternity, perhaps, with my thoughts about how things might work in a stateless society with property rights and so on.
	But I think you're going to need to work a little harder than to say, well, there'll be all of this stuff that was created through capitalism, and we're just going to take that over.
	And then if we want new stuff, we'll just allocate resources.
	That, to me, is not very rigorous.
	Why is that not possible?
	I mean, you already said that if Juan wants to get venture capital, they need to convince some people to give it to him.
	Is that not the same thing as figuring out what is needed and allocating the resources to get it?
	The difference is that instead of convincing the people who have the money and convincing them that you're going to make money by doing this, so the difference between what I'm suggesting and what you are suggesting is that in your case you allocate according to profit, according to what will make the most money, but in my case, in Anaco Community's case, we allocate according to what is needed.
	Let me explain why I asked this question.
	I apologize if I sound a little bit heated.
	It's got nothing to do with you.
	I really do appreciate your call, but let me tell you why I'm putting this question or this objection up, and then you can tell me if what I'm saying makes any sense.
	Like if I want to open a pizza restaurant, a little pizza, if I want to open a convenience store, right, then what I need to do is I need to really understand convenience stores.
	I need to understand my market.
	I need to do research into figuring out how many people are going to walk by on the sidewalk.
	I need to figure out what kind of products the people in the neighborhood want.
	I need to figure out how often they're going to be sold.
	I need to figure out how many times I'm going to need to reorder.
	I'm going to have to figure out how much money I'm going to need to invest in opening the store and advertising it and where the products are going to have to be placed in the store.
	I'm going to have to develop relationships with all these different vendors.
	And, I mean, it's hugely complicated just to open a little convenience store in this world, right?
	And so if you're talking about rewriting something as fundamental as property rights, if you're talking about how society as a whole should work… I think that you should put at least as much effort into delineating how that actually is going to work as, say, somebody who wants to open a little convenience store.
	That's what I mean when I say you need to put a little bit more time and effort rather than just saying people will figure out what they want and then allocate resources.
	Because you couldn't even start a newspaper route with that kind of thinking.
	And I think you just need to work a little harder to flesh out how this is actually going to work.
	Because I think it's easy to say stuff like, Let's be successful, but it's really hard to actually figure out how this stuff is going to work in practice.
	The mistake you're doing is that you assume that I do not have a general idea of how this is going to work.
	No, I'm not talking about a general idea of how it's going to work.
	I'm not talking about a general idea.
	I'm talking about specific examples that would...
	Sorry, go ahead. That's the mistake you're doing.
	You are wasting too much time figuring out all the little details on how everything would work in a possible future society.
	But this is utopianism.
	What you're doing is trying to visualize by yourself a specific community, a specific society, a specific system, and how this will work when it's perfectly set up.
	But the world is not perfect.
	The world will never go according to your plans.
	And you're also meeting the most important thing, which is the way to progress to the society.
	You may visualize, you may think about the society that you may imagine that will work perfectly, but all this effort that you're waiting on, waiting not to work at all, all this effort that you are putting into thinking of this system is not put into figuring out how you're going to move there.
	The anarchists, on the other hand, do the opposite.
	We get a general idea, and if we need, we can go into much more detail.
	I mean, the theory, the movement behind anarcho-syndicalism and anarcho-collectivism, they have gone to great lengths to describe the possible society.
	But what we always say is that The way the society will work, the way it will be organized, will not be thought by some people in some ivory towers.
	It will be thought by the people living in that society.
	We give the generic guidelines, we give the idea that we do not need property rights, we do not need money, or we do need money.
	There are forms of anarchism that do require money, like mutualism.
	And the people that we live in that society, they will figure out according to the needs that they have.
	And this is something that tactically has worked, for example, in anarchist experiments that have happened throughout history.
	People have figured out at the moment what to do.
	So anarchists are much more interested in figuring out What we need to do to progress towards that.
	How are we going to get rid of the state?
	How are we going to get rid of capital?
	What are we going to do to stop the army and the counter-revolution from destroying what we have achieved?
	And the minor details, the very specific stuff, these are easy to imagine that the people who will do this revolution, who will reach the situation, will find the solution that they need.
	Okay, so I appreciate that.
	What you're saying is that we shouldn't figure out how factories would practically get built in the absence of private property.
	What we should do is we should figure out...
	Let me finish. And I'd like to...
	I would like to... We'll move off of that because you're saying that your expertise Is in how we get to a stateless society, which I think is obviously a very, very important question.
	I've been putting a lot of work into that over the last year.
	And I've sort of got it down to about a minute, and you've had a lot of experience in researching and explaining these kinds of things.
	So let me do this to you.
	I'm sorry to put you into this kind of spot, but I think it would be really helpful.
	Take a minute, and if you could explain to me how it is that we're going to move from the existing system to anarcho-communism.
	There's various obvious proposals from the various schools of humanities, which is basically the difference of the schools.
	In an anarcho-communist system, from my point, which is also anarcho-syndicalist, it is going to be done through unionized work, so workers fighting back against the capital through unions, through strikes, through takeovers, through all this stuff that makes people control the means of production.
	On the other hand, outside of the syndicalist aspect, you can have people who unionize or communize according to neighborhoods, according to cities, according to villages, so you can have Neighborhood unions performing rent strikes or performing other direct action like...
	Alright, so that's your minute. Thank you.
	I appreciate that. I really do appreciate you calling in.
	Perhaps we can try this again.
	We'll try maybe just a one-on-one call because you're very muffled and people are having a hard time understanding.
	I'll stop this now, but I really do appreciate you calling in.
	I do want to learn more about the specifics of libertarian socialism.
	Chomsky is a libertarian socialist, if memory serves me right.
	I really do want to learn more about it.
	I certainly don't want to just take my particular arguments for no state and private property for granted.
	I don't want to take them as axioms.
	I always want to hear as strongly as I can the opposing viewpoint.
	But I'm just going to I'm gonna make a suggestion to you and this is again this is you know pumping my own historical resume so maybe you'll accept this or maybe you won't and this is not just for you of course but for everyone who's listening to this you know when I ask you how is this gonna come about and you basically say unions will do it or you know workers will do it through strikes and so on to me that's like going to an investor and saying I've got a great idea for a business and he says well how are you gonna make money and you say customers and it's like okay but what does that actually mean?
	So I think it's really important, important, important.
	You don't actually have to do this, but it's such a useful exercise to imagine.
	And I would really suggest just doing it.
	Try and figure out, you know, if you had a business or you had a proposition, because a philosophy is a proposition.
	It is, of course, it's like a business in a way, but it really is a proposition.
	And if you're going to say how things are going to work in a future society, you're absolutely right.
	Not everyone has to get everything right about everything, because that's obviously impossible, right?
	But I think you do have to have some pretty sophisticated basics down, or at least some possibilities about how things can be worked out, right?
	So I had a debate last week with Jan Hellfeld where we talked, or at least I talked about, how things can work in the absence of government.
	Is that exactly how it's going to work?
	I guarantee you that it's not.
	But there are a number of principles involved that are very helpful.
	To figure that out.
	And I would strongly, strongly, strongly suggest to people, if you're going to really criticize a system, that you spend some time in it to make sure that you're not susceptible to propaganda, right? So if you think that business owners, let's say, if you're on the left-leaning spectrum or the communist or socialist spectrum, if you think that factory owners or business owners have all of this power...
	Then my suggestion is, you know, talk to some actual business owners.
	Or better yet, become a business owner, you know, for a year.
	For a year, let's say.
	Just take over a store or take over a franchise or take over a paper route or something.
	Spend some time in the free market if you really want to criticize the free market.
	I would also say, just so it doesn't sound like I'm picking on communists...
	I would also say that it's very important for people who praise the free market to spend some time in the free market so that they really understand what's going on.
	I mean, as I've written about before, it has always struck me as sad and somewhat pitiful that free market economists stay as far away from the free market as humanly possible in their academic ivory towers in high orbit.
	They stay as far away from the free market as humanly possible.
	I think I've proven To whatever degree you consider reasonable that it's possible to make not too bad a living educating people about some important ideas without needing the protection of a state union like academia or whatever.
	And I would really, you know, I've strongly urged without any response for people who Free market economists always say to other people, you should give up all these perks because the free market is better.
	And then you say, well, why don't you leave academia and talk to people about the free market?
	In the free market, actually use the free market that you praise.
	And they're like, well, I don't want to give up my goodies.
	It's like, well, then what the frack are you telling other people to give up their goodies if you're not willing to give up yours, right?
	So I think it's really, really important to spend time in the free market if you're going to criticize the free market.
	Like, if you think that factory owners have all of this power...
	I think it's really important to just sit down.
	Go out into the world. Get out of the library.
	Put down Pravda.
	Go out into the world and actually talk to people and live in the system that you're either praising or criticizing.
	Because you will learn so much more from actually being in the free market, actually being a business owner, actually running a business, actually trying to win over customers and please customers.
	And you will understand that in the free market.
	And I'm not talking about You know, state protected, quote, markets, right?
	But in the actual free market, and the software industry is really good, you know, just set up a business to design some websites.
	You can teach yourself that skill in a month or two, and you can try and get customers in another month or two.
	You can actually be in the free market.
	You can actually try and work in the system that you're criticizing or praising.
	You will learn a huge amount more about the free market.
	Just being in the free market for a year Then you will, I submit, then you will studying all the economics books in the world.
	And that doesn't mean that economics books are unimportant.
	They are hugely important. But it is really, really important that we do not get our learning about the world from books alone.
	Scientists have their experiments.
	Even psychologists have their experiments.
	They have their statistical averages.
	They do try to get out into the world to test their theories.
	And I would really, really strongly suggest that people who want to theorize about social organizations spend as much time in the meat and drink of the society that they are criticizing.
	Now, you could say to me, well, Steph, you criticize statism, but you've never been a politician, and that is entirely true.
	But I spent 13 years in state education in a variety of different countries, and then I spent another...
	Seven years or eight in higher education and academia.
	Studying the state and also interacting with the state in the form of state-protected professors and so on.
	And I also did work for the government off and on.
	And also when I was in the free market, I did work with government agencies on a variety of contracts.
	So I have had a lot of experience dealing with the state and with its representatives in various forms.
	So I think it's okay for me to talk about that, and I've really worked from first principles, but when it comes to talking about property rights and the free market and the power of business owners and so on, you know, I can always tell, I can always tell people who haven't actually done it but have only read about it because they have very predictable opinions that are not tampered by actual experience in the system that they're criticizing.
	So that's just... Again, I've said this before and I'll probably say it again.
	It is a strength that I bring to bear.
	Because I've had the right prospectus to get investment.
	Because I put entirely too much of my own money in the co-founding of a company and had some really, really sweaty times where I did not feel like the master of the universe and all-powerful business owner, capitalist, pig dog trying to get business when we were running out of money.
	It is a very...
	Exciting and stressful and challenging thing to do, and it requires a lot of very detailed specifics.
	And I would just say that people who haven't gone through that process have not gone through a real kind of rigor where, you know, your own money is on the line, your own reputation is on the line, your own career is on the line.
	There's nothing that humbles you more than the free market.
	And I can always tell people who have not spent a lot of time in the free market because they have a kind of So prejudicial arrogance, and again, I'm not talking about you in particular here, the last caller, but they seem to have very easy answers to stuff.
	You know, well, the unions will do it.
	And it's like, in business, in the free market, that would never cut it as a plan.
	And I think that if we want to rewrite the basic rules of society, which is an incredibly risky thing to do all around...
	I think that we want to put at least as much effort into it as if we were opening a little grocery store or a corner pizzeria.
	That's all I'm asking. You don't have to spend 25 years working on it like I have, but at least put the amount of effort into planning the future utopia as you would into planning the snack shelf in a grocery store.
	That's all I'm saying. Just that amount of effort will please me because there's nothing more humbling than that.
	I hope that makes some sense to people.
	How's our call queue, Mr.
	J? Did I scare everybody off with my rambling?
	We do have some callers.
	Looks like they're using the click-to-talk feature, which is excellent.
	We do have a gentleman by the name of WAN716. I just want to give the caller number out again.
	The number to call the show is 347-633-9636.
	That number again is 347-633-9636.
	633-9636.
	It's also on the screen and on Channel 2 of Peacetreatofprosperity.com.
	And if you are an international caller and would just like to call in, you don't want to, you know, bear the expense, you can create a BlogTalk account at blogtalkradio.com and then tune in to us at blogtalkradio.com forward slash PFPMovementRadio.
	So I'm going to bring Juan 716 onto the air.
	Actually, Juan, it's great that you've called in because I've really been looking forward to doing a rousing rendition of Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go with you, so let me just pull out my pants real tight here.
	Sorry, go ahead. Okay.
	Can you hear me? It's a little spotty, but give it a shot.
	Go ahead. It's a little spotty, but give it a shot.
	Okay, hold on. Okay.
	Well, I was thinking about the debate that you had last weekend, right?
	With Han or whatever.
	I just kind of saw that his point of view...
	There's a problem between the communication between you guys and I thought his point of view was more of how we can get there from here, right?
	How can we get or achieve freedom and, you know, from here?
	And your point of view, you know, of course you explained pretty well is that, you know, this is how it works when we get there.
	This is how it's going to work and this is how we're going to sustain the society, right?
	But I think the question, like, the ultimate question that I'm asking you is, you know, how do we suggest that we start working towards that goal, right?
	Because we can't just simply snap our fingers and have them, you know, have the state be gone, right?
	Alright, so, I mean, that's a great, great question.
	I used to be able to write, like, seven books in 18 months, but that's unfortunately ground to a much slower pace since my daughter was born.
	And so I'm not going to be able to give you a very long answer, but let me give you a very short answer that is some of the stuff that I'm working on.
	Fundamental social change takes...
	You could very much, very strongly argue that it takes about 200 years to achieve fundamental social change.
	So I'm talking about the very beginning of the abolitionistic movement to the actual abolition of slavery.
	That's about 200 years.
	From Mary Wilson Craft Shelley writing Vindication of the Rights of Women in the 18th century, if I remember rightly, to the actual emancipation of women.
	150, 200 years.
	There is...
	There is a lot of examples of the end of slavery to the end of Jim Crow, 100 years, you could say 125 years.
	And so there's lots and lots of examples of social movements taking 100 to 200 years.
	There has not been a bigger social movement, in my mind, than the consistent application of the non-aggression principle.
	The elimination of the state has a methodology of, quote, solving problems.
	It's the biggest leap forward that can be conceived.
	It is even bigger than the free market.
	And the free market, of course, took, you know, what, from the dawn of the earth, four billion years, right?
	But the free market took thousands of years to develop.
	And this is even bigger than the free market because the free market is not sustainable in the face of statism, but where there is no government, the society and the free market and all of the progress that can be imagined is sustainable.
	So the biggest leap forward is the consistent application of moral principles in society.
	There is nothing bigger that can occur in society.
	So, if it takes 100 to 200 years for a social change, for really unprecedented social change, right?
	So, from the beginning, when, you know, how long did it take for not beating your wife to become a moral ideal?
	Well, the rule of thumb, you know, we say, oh, it's a good rule of thumb.
	Well, the rule of thumb was that you could not hit your wife with a stick larger or wider than your thumb.
	And that was considered to be good.
	In fact, you know, she would deserve it if she crossed you or whatever.
	And how long did it take for then spousal abuse or wife abuse to become wrong?
	Well, about 200 years, right?
	So you could say, well, the internet has accelerated all of that, but the internet accelerates everything for everyone, right?
	It's like saying, well, I've got these really great new sneakers that let me run faster, so I'm going to win this race.
	It's like, well, how much do they cost?
	Five bucks. Can anyone buy them?
	Yes. Well, it's no longer an advantage because everyone can buy them.
	So it's true that That we can have conversations that would have been very difficult, if not impossible, before, but so can everyone else.
	I don't consider it a particular advantage.
	So we're not going to live to see a stateless society.
	We're not going to live to see a world without war.
	We're not going to live to see a country without a state, in my mind.
	And that's seasteading and all this.
	I mean sort of established countries.
	More than 50% of people...
	In most modern societies, most Western societies, gain direct or indirect, significant amounts of direct or indirect revenue from the state.
	They're not going to give that up.
	They're going to fight like tooth and nail to keep it.
	So how do we achieve a free society?
	Well, we continue to make the point as consistently and as passionately and as powerfully and with as much respect as is possible so that the consistency and virtue of our position becomes more and more clear and But it is a multi-generational project,
	freeing the world from violence, freeing the world from coercion, freeing the world from statism, freeing the world from religion, from superstition, from bigotry, from pettiness, from narrow-mindedness, from abuse, from violence, is a multi-generational project.
	I think we have to accept that or we're going to be crazy and addicted to politics, right?
	Because it's not going to work.
	There is a strong school of thought, which I subscribe to to a large degree, which says that the history of society is the history of childhood.
	And what that means is that as children are treated better in society, society itself will improve.
	That you don't work to overturn institutions.
	You work to outgrow those institutions.
	And so the less that aggression and violence are used to bully and frighten children, the less people will be susceptible to being bullied and frightened as adults.
	The less that aggression is used to attack and control children, the fewer criminals we will end up, because crime has its roots strongly, if not almost exclusively, in the abuse of children.
	When we have fewer criminals, when we have people much less susceptible to being bullied and controlled by some sort of hierarchy, And this is why I'm anti-theist against religion, because religion puts this infection of all-powerful and vindictive authority in people's heads,
	which translates so easily But we have to raise children to be happy and to be free and to be confident and to be secure so that they don't feel that either they need to be bullied or if there isn't an agency out there threatening and bullying everybody else with guns, that society is going to fall apart.
	And the only way that we can achieve that in the long run, in my opinion, is to raise children without aggression.
	Without parenting them through aggression, through punishment, through control, through violence, through intimidation, through the threat of the withdrawal of affection.
	Most people first experience authority through, there are three fundamental, right?
	Through teachers, through parents, and through priests, if there's a religion in the household.
	And frankly, there's not much we can do about teachers because the state already controls education.
	There's not much we can do about priests because, for obvious reasons, it has always been my strong position that treating children better, and it's certainly not my opinion alone, right?
	I mean, I'm just one of many, many, many voices making this same claim that children should be raised without aggression.
	Children should be raised without coercion.
	Children should be raised without threats, without punishment, without bullying.
	And through that, What happens is children who grow up tall and confident and free and healthy and happy, they will look at the state as ridiculous.
	They will look at the idea that we need a central, violent, coercive authority within society as ridiculous because they will grow up in a benevolent and positive and happy and non-punitive world.
	And you can't graft bigotry onto somebody.
	You can't You can't graft some all-mindedness and fear later on in their life.
	Like nobody who's 60 says, hey, I'm going to finally succumb to peer pressure and start smoking.
	Nobody who's not a racist just wakes up when they're 50 and says, damn it, I'm going to hate this group or that group or whatever.
	You have to, if you're going to inflict irrationalities, you have to inflict them on the young, right?
	Nobody who was never raised with religion is going to sit there when they're 70 and say, I'm gonna find you.
	I mean, it's just not gonna happen. It has to be in the environment to begin with for it to be possible later on in life.
	And so in the same way, we raise children to not be afraid of authority, but to view authority as a voluntary resource, which is how I'm trying to be as a parent.
	And I must tell you, it's working completely magnificently.
	Every single theory that I ever had about parenting so far is just working completely magnificently.
	I have a huge amount of authority over my daughter.
	When I tell her not to do something, she will absolutely stop doing it.
	I have never raised my voice at her.
	I have never yelled at her.
	I have never punished her.
	It is a simple, light tone of voice.
	And because I have such an enormous amount of fun and affection and enjoyment of her company, when I say to her, Isabella, no.
	She simply stops what she's doing.
	There's no fight, there's no conflict.
	Now, I'm still only eight and a half months in, but still, I'm gaining more confidence about this as an approach.
	And it really is, as a multi-generational project, we simply have to raise people with such strength and confidence and good humor and The ability to negotiate without anger or without rage, without abuses and so on, that they simply won't be afraid of authority.
	They will look upon authority as a practical and voluntary and healthy resource to help them through life.
	In the same way that I view a masseuse as somebody to help me with muscle relaxant, not as a tyranny.
	And it is in raising children in non-violent environments, in non-punitive environments, that we end up with a society without...
	That kind of hierarchy.
	That's the approach that I think is significant.
	And I'm a big fan of Lloyd DeMoss.
	You can go to psychohistory.com for more on the history of social institutions as really the history of childhood writ large.
	And I hope that you will take availability of that resource.
	I've also read a book of his, The Origins of War and Child Abuse, which is also very, very interesting.
	So... I would really strongly urge you to focus on that.
	How is it that you can help children be better protected?
	How is it that you can be a better parent if you are or if you're going to be yourself?
	How can you educate yourself into non-violent methods of communication and authority within your own life and within your own family?
	that to me is stuff you can really do and I think that that is the only thing that gives us fundamental traction when it comes to building a freer world he's probably still muted James, do we have someone else?
	Oh yeah, Alice Miller.
	If you hadn't heard of her, she's really, really good too.
	Yes, we do.
	Why did you want to bring 1716 back on?
	No, no, I think I gave probably an over-exhaustive answer to his question as usual, so let's keep another caller coming in.
	Alright, next caller is Leywinder.
	You're on the air. We tried talking to Leywinder earlier on, and he went out and came back in.
	Laywinder. Going once.
	Going twice.
	Three times.
	Nope. Okay, we do have another caller.
	The number to call in is 347-633-9636.
	That number is 347-633-9636.
	Or you can use the click to talk on blogtalkradio.com.
	Just create a free account on there.
	And then go to blogtalkradio.com forward slash PFPMovementRadio.
	This caller is from area code 813.
	You are on the air. Hi, Stefan.
	It's Chris. How you doing?
	Oh, hi, Chris. Hi.
	I was listening to what you were saying about child rearing and just kind of the non-aggression applied to children.
	And I submit...
	I don't know who said this, but it was an archaeologist.
	And he said... You know, one of his guiding principles when he was studying ancient civilizations was, if he wanted to understand what was important to a society, he looked at how the children played.
	And so, that's kind of a big concept.
	I mean, non-aggression is a big idea, and it broaches piety at a certain level, but how do we teach our children to play, even if it's not aggressive?
	And the thought is, what are we teaching our kids right now?
	We're teaching them to require Constant stimulation.
	We're teaching them to be materialistic and play with Barbie dolls in the big mansion.
	We're teaching them to go G.I. Joe with the guns and run around and shoot people.
	And even though we may not be saying hitting and punching and hurting people is good, we're teaching them that these are the things we find important.
	So, in contrast to what you were saying, sometimes that non-aggression goes even deeper.
	It goes to that sense of Well, what is fair and what is good?
	We need competition.
	We need games like checkers and all that kind of stuff because it lets kids know that it's a good thing to try and get better at something.
	But where is that fine line between play and aggression?
	I don't know the answer to it.
	I just throw it out there as a different thought.
	No, that's a very, very, I mean, I think that's a brilliant, brilliant question, and thank you for bringing that up.
	You know, I've been conscious of this for a long time, and I'm very, very conscious with regards to my daughter, that it's not, you know, children will absorb empirically What is going on in their world?
	And I can see this with my daughter.
	She is so fundamentally empirical.
	It's actually a beautiful thing to see.
	And I'm sort of developing a bit of a theory, seeing her go through the development stages about where people may get stuck in terms of...
	Because each one of these phases is very particular to...
	I've done a whole 17-part free series of Introduction to Philosophy, which goes through, you know, all the way from metaphysics to epistemology to...
	Ethics to politics and all that.
	And seeing my daughter's development really helps me to understand where it is that people may get stuck in their thinking.
	And I think it has a lot to do with how they're parented in particular phases in their life.
	But one of the things that I really, really want my daughter to understand is that the non-aggression principle that I live with her, that I will never intimidate her, that I will never frighten her, That I will never threaten withdrawal of affection.
	That I will never be angry with her.
	I mean, it's crazy to be angry at a baby, of course, right?
	But it's not just her, right?
	At my wife, of course, right?
	If she's in the backseat of the car and I'm going through a drive-thru and something's going wrong, I'm not going to yell at someone there.
	Like, I think it has to be something where she sees it as a consistent thing.
	You know, like, it would be if I go and yell at someone at a drive-thru and then, oh, honey, it's okay, right?
	I mean, that would not make much sense.
	So I think... Like everything in the world, when we want to make the world a better place, right?
	It's the old MJ song, right?
	You start with the man in the mirror.
	If I want my daughter to respect the non-aggression principle, then I have to live the non-aggression principle.
	And that doesn't mean never getting angry.
	That doesn't mean never raising my voice, obviously, if somebody was, you know...
	Bearing down on her on a bicycle, I would raise my voice extraordinarily high to make sure that she was safe.
	So it's not about, you know, being zen and having no emotions.
	And I certainly have no shortage of passion for better or for worse in my heart.
	But it really is around consistently living the non-aggression principle in all of my relationships.
	To be respectful and polite where appropriate.
	And it doesn't mean never get angry, right?
	Because I don't want to, you know, I don't want her to get the idea that anger is unhealthy, right?
	Because then that's Particularly for women, that's something that's all too reinforced in society.
	But if I want to teach my daughter how to be good, lecturing her is going to do worse than nothing.
	Because if she sees me lecture her about, you know, don't use aggression, and then I use aggression in my life, I'm not only wrong, but I'm also hypocritical.
	And hypocrisy is a terrible thing for a child to see in a parent.
	So I think that it really, really is important to just live that value of non-aggression.
	I'm not saying I'm perfect.
	Please don't get that impression, right?
	I certainly do my very best and try to...
	And I think she also has to know that...
	Uh, is since I'm completely devoted to her and love spending time with her, uh, that if I don't want her to do something, it's not because I'm just being arbitrary and mean, right?
	I think I build trust, uh, through, through giving her as many opportunities and helping her to explore as much as possible, right?
	Like I'm the dad in the family, which means I do stuff that my wife is not always that comfortable with, right?
	So I will take her and, and let her play in the grass and, you know, my, there are bugs, you know, it's like, yeah, well, you know, there were bugs in, in, uh, in the stone ages as well and we're still here, right?
	So, So it's giving her opportunities to explore, giving her the chance to exercise her courage, giving her the chance to really exercise her, you know, growing the strong body.
	And I think really being there to help her to enjoy the world and to live the values because she's going to get my values long before she gets language.
	She's going to get who I am as a human being long before I can tell her.
	It's a difference, right? We can manipulate adults, right?
	So I can go into some bar with a...
	I don't know, a wig and some sort of cool clothes that obviously somebody else will have bought me or whatever.
	And I can go in and I can create a different impression.
	If I'm going for a job, I can fake my way through some interview.
	I can claim to have credentials that I don't have.
	I can wear a suit and shave when I normally never would.
	I can do all of those things as adults.
	But children, they don't work that way.
	They don't work that way. Who you are is completely clear to a child who Your child long before you can ever tell them who you are.
	And they will ask you who you are, right?
	But if You say to your child, this is who I am, and these are my values, and their experience of you has been quite the opposite, then you've done a real fundamental blow to the relationship and to your credibility and so on.
	So I just sort of wanted to point that out, that children are very empirical.
	If you live your values around children as much as humanly possible, again, recognizing that imperfection is the nature of biology.
	But that to me is how we teach children to not...
	Either feel the need for or a terror of hierarchical authority of the violent kind.
	Indeed. Well, on your subject before this, you spoke of this 200-year cycle before large social change takes effect.
	And it seems like, you know, I agree with you, the death of statism is afoot.
	And we are reaching that We're a little bit past that 200 years, the rise of the United States statism, but we're quickly approaching it, just given all the economic turmoil that's going on right now.
	And so I kind of feel like if there was ever a time to push theory down to the people, it would be now.
	Get people talking about the right ideas.
	And so you are doing an excellent job of pushing the theory down to the people so that it's more accessible.
	Now, just as a tangent to this, just to throw it out there, There's always going to be a certain amount of people that just don't care.
	They're going along with whatever they think the smart people decided for them.
	So I have to acknowledge that and say you're not going to get 100% buy-in, ever.
	Now, what are we trying to get people to buy into?
	Well, we're trying to get them to buy into a system where their morality is not imposed on the rest of us.
	You want your morality.
	You go join your group.
	We like our morality.
	We stay to our group.
	But it doesn't mean we can't be neighbors.
	It just means that We're going to let you live your life the way you feel it's appropriate.
	And so that concept, as far as all organized forms of government have ever been, it's never been existent.
	It's never been part of the structure.
	And so I did a little research after last time I called in and I started to look through all the different political science...
	Sorry, sorry, just before you... I do apologize for interrupting.
	I just wanted to clarify one point and I promise not to interrupt you again.
	But just to be annoyingly precise, To me, it's not a question of morality being imposed upon others.
	It is a question of violence not being imposed upon others.
	So, if I have a quote of morality which says, I should be able to strangle your cat, then clearly I would be imposing my morality upon you through that initiation of violence.
	So it's not a matter of imposing morality.
	I think that's a bit of a red herring and that might be confusing to people because I have a morality called self-defense, right?
	So if you come running at me with a machete and I can't get away and the only thing I can do is, you know, shoot you in the knee, then I'm going to shoot you in the knee.
	And is that imposing my morality?
	No, I'm preventing you from imposing your violence upon me.
	So I just wanted to point that out, that it's really around the initiation of violence that should not be imposed, and that to not impose one's morality on someone else could be very confusing for people, and I would just make that request that you just be a bit more precise with that term.
	Well, what you're refining is the word impose more than morality, because when I say impose morality, that's just what's right and what's wrong.
	You can choose to subscribe to this morality, or I'm going to impose this morality.
	That's the line you're defining.
	And so I think that...
	You know, there is no form of government in existence that did not always try to capture impose versus choose.
	I mean, they'll give you the illusion of choosing.
	So after going and doing a little bit of research, there is a philosophy that really tried to capture that idea.
	It's called civil societarianism.
	And essentially what it means is we believe the government is the night watchman.
	And that's it. We believe the legislative authority belongs to the people that choose to subscribe to it.
	You know, originally I said you've got a state and you've got a church for lack of another institution that's large enough to fit the gap.
	But there's tons of them.
	Like I said, you know, I really like, you know, fast cars.
	And so I'm going to subscribe to a group that says we like fast cars and we're going to, we're going to say that it's all right for you to have this district of town and these roads for, you know, racing or whatever.
	Well, that's going to get in the way of other people's decisions or in other groups that say, well, we want to drive safely on those roads.
	So you have a bit of a localized conflict between the two groups.
	No, I don't think you do.
	Sorry, I don't think that you do.
	I mean, I can't imagine how that would be a conflict.
	And the reason, I don't want to interrupt again, but just since you sort of made that point, if people want to go and race cars fast, they would go to a racetrack, right?
	They would not go to a residential street.
	The reason being that To build a residential street, you're going to have the greatest amount of profit from the widest amount of traffic.
	And that means that you're not going to allow people to race on your streets because that would make your customers, the majority who don't want to have racers or to race themselves, the majority of your customers would get angry and upset.
	And so that would not be a conflict in a residential area.
	People who wanted to race would have their own specialized roads or racetracks somewhere else.
	Well, I presented it because it's a bit of a straw man because...
	It shows that there's an obvious conflict there and that the majority of the people, the people that do not subscribe to the racing cars in residential areas, would raise up and say, you're not doing it in our neighborhood.
	Go to the racetrack.
	No, no, they wouldn't. Sorry, they wouldn't do that.
	Sorry, they wouldn't do that. If people were concerned about racing or drunk driving or whatever, they would only sign up with a road company that would not allow racing on the roads, right?
	And what that means is that when the road...
	Company wants to build the road, they would have to go to investors and the investors would say, well, how are you going to keep your customers satisfied?
	They said, well, we polled the majority of people and they don't want to drive people.
	They want people racing on the streets.
	So we're going to have a contract that says no racing on our streets.
	And if you do race on our streets, you won't be allowed unless you paid a fine to come back on those streets or whatever.
	So that would not be an after the fact.
	That would be something negotiated long before the first shovel went into the ground to build the road.
	Well, let's say that there is some situation that you could not have foreseen what was going to happen.
	I mean, who saw this whole derivatives mess coming before it actually came to fruition?
	Well, a few people, I think. Well, they did, but could we have guessed it back in the 30s?
	I doubt it. The 30s?
	So there are things that evolve as people's understanding of things evolve, and there are things that you just can't plan for.
	You know, so there's always going to be that certain segment of society that's going to try and get ahead or get it over on somebody else, and there's always going to be that larger segment of society that's going to, you know, say, we're not going to deal with this anymore.
	We don't want to have it anymore.
	And it's not...
	I think that the way that we've been handling that up until now is that majority comes along and says, there needs to be a law.
	And the more people get into that sort of cycle where the majority can come in and say, there needs to be a law.
	Well, derivatives may be wrong today, but they may not be wrong 20 years from now when they serve a very different and viable purpose when the nature of money changes.
	You never know. I guess that's what I'm trying to capture.
	You never know. And you can't have one group, the majority now, deciding what's going to be right forever.
	And whenever you have this monopoly on morality...
	Monopoly on the imposition of morality.
	That's where we get into problems.
	So, I'm not sure that there's a conclusion to the whole thought other than it just kind of feels right.
	The internet is a wonderful example of the democratic nature of interest.
	You know, people kind of float around and they choose what they like from any given point.
	What's hot today may not be hot tomorrow.
	I'm sorry to interrupt you again, just to be precise.
	The internet is not an example of democracy, but of the free market.
	Because in democracy, we vote for a violently imposed solution, which is imposed by...
	Generally, it's considered by the majority or the minority.
	But that's not anything to do with the internet.
	The internet has nothing to do with democracy, again, unless I've missed my understanding completely, but it is an example of voluntarism or the free market.
	Well, could we say that there is a...
	There's a democracy in the PTA, where it's not really that they're deciding how we're going to impose force or aggression.
	They're more just deciding, are we going to sell cakes or cookies?
	Democracy is just what is the majority will of the people.
	You could say democracy in government is that.
	It's this majority aggression.
	So you're sort of saying like if most people prefer iPods, that's like democracy because they're voting with their dollars.
	But I just don't think you want to use the same word for the imposition, the violent imposition of force versus, you know, me buying an iPod and you can go and buy a Zune or whatever you want.
	I just, I think you, again, I'm just annoyingly, I think it's really important to be precise in your terms and not to mix up Terms which represent the initiation of violence, like democracy, with those which specifically reject the initiation of violence, such as the free market.
	I just don't think you want to use a word in its opposite in the same kind of way, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, yeah, and I agree with you.
	Words have meanings. I agree.
	Well, okay, so if we were just going to take the whole concept of, is there...
	Is there a way?
	I mean, okay, we're going to play through what could happen, you know, the more statism dies, the more the economy dies, the more that people are not trusting the dollar as the reserve currency.
	And let's say that if you played that forward, and there's kind of this inevitable collapse of the dollar at some point in the near future, you're going to have the federal government with all their massive debt and all the individual states that aren't.
	And they're going to be stable.
	And whenever the Fed comes down and says, you have to bow to our will, you're either going to have, you know, it's like a star collapsing.
	You've either got, it's going to condense down into a black hole and it's just going to suck up everything from all the surrounding states or it's going to explode supernova style.
	And you're going to have all these little stars forming out of that mass.
	And so these little stars are going to be the individual states disregarding Whatever the Fed says.
	They say, you're totally irrelevant at this point.
	We're going to come up with our own systems.
	And that's kind of the end that I'm hoping for, if that's the way this is all going.
	And that's why these conversations are necessary.
	Because if that happens, you've got 50 different groups that are going to be deciding what's right for the people locally.
	And if those people say, well, we kind of want to form our system.
	We want to have this kind of separation between government and business.
	But the state over there, they really like socialism or communism, so they can do what they want.
	But that variety, and it's all linked together, and they're all next to each other, those almost spontaneous structures can arise from it if people realize we have the power to decide this stuff for ourselves now.
	We can kind of, if we want to be, you know, the Methodist group of Florida and rise up and we're going to be some We're going to have authority in Florida, but we're also going to have the government of Florida, and we're also going to have the financial brethren of Florida, and they're going to have their own little rules and regulations for finance, and you're going to have the industrial workers of Florida, and they're going to rise up and have their own little negotiating bodies for manufacturing and production.
	I think that people got that into their mind, that they actually do have the authority to do things like that in the vacuum that would be there.
	I think that's where you would actually arrive at some form of less aggression.
	I don't think you're ever going to get rid of total competition between people.
	I don't think it's possible.
	Alright, let me just stop you there, and I just want to make sure I get to the other caller, so I really do appreciate that.
	So, if I understand it rightly, you're saying that if there's a collapse of economic strength, or even perhaps of martial strength, Federal level that will have greater competition among states or cantons for, you know, possibilities of more freedom.
	Now, historically, I would say, I'm not going to claim to be an expert, this is an exhaustive answer, but I'll try and keep it short.
	Historically, I think you're right and you're wrong.
	Historically, you're right in that when a central authority collapses, whether you're talking about the Roman Empire or the Habsburgs or the Russian Empire at the end of the 1980s, More freedom does accrue to the local level, right?
	So your average farmer was more free after the collapse of the Roman Empire than he was before.
	It's true that he generally rolled into a kind of serf-like existence, but serfdom was much better than 20 years forced service in the military with very little chance of survival or coming back and having anything left of your farm.
	So there is a diminishment of tyranny when a central state goes through a significant shrinkage, but there generally does not seem to be Thank you so much,
	Chris, for calling in. Just a reminder, if you want to check them out, fredomainradio.com forward slash free is a whole bunch of free PDFs and MP3 files that you can listen to or read that I think you will find interesting or instructive in this realm.
	So, James, is Leigh Winder back in our orbit?
	Leigh Winder, are you there?
	Do you hear me? Yes, we can hear you.
	Can you hear me now? Yeah, sorry, we should have mentioned that Sunday is not Mime Day, but sorry, go ahead.
	Yeah, it's Slaywinder, by the way, but that's fine.
	I just wanted to go back towards the beginning of the show when you guys were talking about education.
	You know, just in my lifetime, I've seen the education system go so far downhill.
	And my sister teaches high school down in Allentown.
	She's been doing that for about 20 years now.
	She's even discussed it with what the government tells them, the things they have to teach.
	They're really not getting anywhere with these kids.
	They're not preparing them for life or for college.
	Years ago, it was harder to get into college than it is now.
	And now, as long as you have the money, you can go to college.
	And you're really not learning anything about American history or world history in general.
	They tend to focus on America itself and not the whole world as a whole.
	The people I see that are graduating are just, you know, you ask them basic things and they just have no idea, you know?
	Yeah, I mean, if you ask a high school graduate or even a university graduate, what is the difference between truth and falsehood, they wouldn't be able to answer to you.
	And to me, that is something you would do in kindergarten in any, because what the hell is the point of being taught anything if you don't know the difference between true and false?
	But of course, people who are teaching you propaganda Never want you to know the philosophical distinction between truth and falsehood because then you'll see through the ghosts of their petty illusions, right?
	Exactly. I mean, you talk to them about the Constitution and they just have this glazed over look in their eyes and it's like, well, don't you know anything about this?
	Yeah, it's either a ship or something to do with health, I think.
	Yeah, right?
	It's just, I mean, it's ridiculous, you know, and like I try to enlighten people as much as I can.
	Even my own daughter, you know, she still, she graduates this year from high school, and I mean, I'm constantly quizzing her on stuff that is her age that I knew, and she just doesn't know.
	No, I think you're absolutely right.
	And there's another thing that is going on, I think, as well.
	And I'm going to do a true news on this.
	So this is a very... I will keep this under a minute, minute and a half, which may be of interest to you.
	I mean, there's a kind of sequence that occurs, right?
	Which has resulted in a couple of things occurring for children in the classroom.
	One, of course, is ADHD and all of those associated...
	I'm no doctor, no psychologist, but this is just sort of amateur opinion hour.
	But... There's problems with children's attention spans and there's problems with obesity and cruelty and all this kinds of stuff that has been going on.
	And the causality seems to be pretty clear, although it's not often discussed.
	I mean, why is there so much obesity within children?
	Well, it's almost exclusively to do with a lack of sleep, right?
	When you lack sleep, you can't process sugar efficiently, you can't process...
	Your growth hormones are diminished and so children are facing a huge problem with with lack of sleep and why are they facing a lack of sleep because both parents in general are working and if both parents are working you don't want to come home after 10 hours away from your kid and then be the heavy bundling him into bed within half an hour of getting home so also because the more and more people are able to get into colleges and want to avoid the economy in particular areas there's greater competition for college and Which means that more extracurricular activities are required for the resume of anyone who wants to get into a good college,
	which again means less sleep.
	Because there's less teaching being done in the classroom, there's more studying that needs to be done outside the classroom, which again means less sleep.
	And there have been some significant studies done that you can boost by up to two grades.
	You can get two grades better performance out of a child who gets one hour extra of sleep a night.
	And children on average are getting...
	An hour less of sleep a night than they did 30 years ago.
	And these all go back to, you know, all the way back to statism.
	Why are both people in the workforce?
	Well, because taxes are so high.
	Why are taxes so high? Well, because, you know, shortly after women got the votes, you got all these social programs, right?
	And it goes all the way back, this domino back.
	But, you know, the people who suffer always under statism are the most vulnerable.
	The children, the poor, the old, the sick, they're the ones who suffer the most in the long run, in the short run.
	They get some benefits, but in the long run, it is just brutal to those.
	And that makes teaching children who come from single-parent homes or come from homes where both people are working who aren't getting enough sleep and have resultant...
	ADHD, or attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, is very similar in many ways to sleep deprivation, as is what is generally considered to be the hallmarks of adolescence, irritability and depression, lack of concentration, And tiredness, right?
	These are all just symptoms of sleep deprivation.
	So there's a strong case to be made that what we call adolescence and its growing problems is simply the result of sleep deprivation, which goes right back to family status and both parents working, which makes teachers jobs that much harder.
	I agree. And plus, you brought up a good point about what, you know, the ADHD and all this.
	I mean, 20, 25 years ago, you've never heard of this.
	You know, they would have called you hyperactive, you know, or whatever.
	And, you know, the way they're drugging the kids today, I mean, in my daughter's class, I bet you 40% of the kids are on Ritalin or some other, you know, drug, which is nothing but speed.
	Right, and this is what we talked about at the beginning, how when the government fails the children, the government lexes the children.
	Well, when schools and families and society as a whole is failing the children, the children are drugged.
	And that is, again, in 200 years in the future, they're just going to look back at that and wonder, what the frack were we thinking as a culture that this was our solution?
	I agree, 100%.
	Well, look, when we agree, it's usually a good time to start talking because, you know, that way we won't come across a disagree.
	So that sounds good. Thank you so much for calling in.
	And if you're...
	Was it your sister who teaches? She teaches English Lit.
	Yeah. If she ever did want to, I certainly would be interested in talking to a teacher.
	Maybe if she ever wanted to chat, I would certainly like to get more of a view inside the schools.
	But, you know, we could always mask her voice and turn her into some sort of reptilian alien overlord or something if she didn't want to be identified.
	But I am always happy to talk to people who are in the system to find out what's going in there because, as you may or may not know, I mean, there have been a number of documentaries that have been tried to be done about the U.S. educational system, but the school boards never let the cameras inside the classroom.
	And that, to me, is absolutely criminal.
	Absolutely criminal. I agree.
	That the society that pays for these goddamn schools can't even have a camera inside.
	That, to me, is, you know, that people don't look at that and just say, we have to change our society.
	Again, it's just, in the future they'll be amazed, but, you know, it just, it seems natural to us in a way.
	Oh, well, they'll say, well, we have to protect the identity of the children, which is bullshit, but, you know...
	Yeah, you can pixelate that stuff out if you want, or whatever.
	That's no biggie. That's no biggie.
	What they're doing is they're protecting people from seeing what actually goes on in the classrooms.
	Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'll have to let her know.
	I'm sure she'd probably be pretty interested in doing that.
	Yeah, or if she wants to write something anonymously, I would be happy to read it.
	I just... I'm really quite fascinated, and, I mean, I just remember most of the teachers that I had, both in...
	High school, junior high school and college, and I went to four different institutions of higher learning.
	Well, that doesn't sound too good, does it?
	I went to four different institutions of higher learning, and I went to schools, a variety of public and private schools on two different continents, and man, they all sucked.
	I had like maybe one good teacher that I can remember, but even he was pretty volatile, but at least he was passionate, if not necessarily always coherent, but it is really, really sad.
	Yeah. Well, I went to Catholic school, and I had the nuns, and they had the rollers, so you kind of either learned or you got beat.
	But that doesn't happen anymore, supposedly.
	No, that is true.
	And again, I know that when I went to school, I mean, we were getting caned.
	I was six when I first went to boarding school.
	You'd get caned.
	Man, that was just savage.
	And you couldn't sit down for like a week.
	And I knew kids who grew up here who got the ruler right on the back of the hand, which again stings and is terrifying and humiliating.
	And this is part of the progress that is occurring within society that...
	You know, children are just not viewed as recalcitrant and difficult beasts to be tamed through violence.
	At least it's not an institutional view anymore, and I think for that we can be grateful to people who've really fought for protection of the rights of children over time.
	We just have to go, you know, we have to keep pushing that envelope to make the world a better and better place and recognize that it's not just about not hitting children, but proactively teaching them about the value of peace and voluntarism.
	I agree. And Dave, thanks for having me on, guys.
	Well, thank you so much. I really do appreciate it.
	It was great. You didn't have to correct me on anything.
	I didn't have to correct you on anything.
	Which means we're both perfect, baby.
	So, thank you so much.
	I appreciate that. And do shoot me, you can shoot me an email from the website if your sister ever wanted to get anything off her chest.
	And I would, of course, promise to keep it completely anonymous.
	And I would hope that, you know, as an interviewer, I would get a good grade.
	I would bring an apple. That's really what I'm saying.
	Okay. I'll tell her that.
	Thanks. Thanks. Take care.
	Well, I think we're dry on callers.
	So if you want to call in now, we have room.
	347-633-9636.
	Or you can look up James on Skype.
	He goes by Spandex Candy Apples with olive oil.
	And it's O-Y-L, like olive oil from Popeye's.
	So just make sure... That you look that up correctly.
	So is that right?
	Did I get that right, James? Yeah.
	Yes. And if he answers saying, hello, you're on Free Domain Radio, but instead says, hi, what are you wearing?
	Then get your visa ready because that's, well, let me just say you're in for quite a ride.
	Talking about visas, what about the immigration policy?
	Well, that's an open-ended question.
	What about it? There shouldn't be one, right?
	You should be free to live wherever you want in the world, provided that you produce.
	Yeah, of course. I mean, I've said this before.
	Immigration is just a $20 word for moving, right?
	I mean, I can't move from here to Buffalo, but if you're in Buffalo, you can move from Buffalo to San Diego or Buffalo down to someplace in Texas, right?
	Houston or something, which is a much greater distance, right?
	But there's this arbitrary line in the sand.
	Between the two different tax farms which means I can't.
	And this is funny, you know, people always say, oh, love it and leave it or whatever, right?
	You know, if you don't like the country, you can leave.
	It's like, you know, I really can't leave.
	I really, really can't leave easily, right?
	Because it costs a lot of money to leave.
	There's a huge amount of paperwork.
	Sometimes you can't leave a country and take all of your money with you.
	If you go to the new country, there are all of these restrictions.
	Like, you really can't leave.
	I mean, I would be more open and accepting of the argument of love it or leave it if there were no legal or financial requirements.
	Or status barriers between moving countries, but it's not the case at all, right?
	There is no such thing as if you don't like it, leave it, because everywhere you go, you're going to be controlled and bullied in some form, and you're not going to be able to leave with everything you have now here anyway, so...
	And immigration, as I've experienced, is just another way of stealing money from you.
	Go on. Well, I emigrated here from the UK... To the United States, Florida, because my wife didn't want to live in a socialist country.
	Well, not a socialist.
	More socialist than what it is here in the United States.
	It's becoming more and more socialist here as the days go on.
	And when I came here, you have to pay for this, you have to pay for that, you have to give money to the government for this, and you have to appear at their Places to be fingerprinted, photographed.
	And now, if I want to become a citizen here in the United States, I have to go through all these biometric...
	I have to submit to biometric tests where I have to go and walk up and down in front of a camera, put my face in front of a camera, move my eyeballs around and things like that.
	It's just a way of Big Brother tracking you further should they want to call you in one day For whatever reason, they can look for you in inner cities with these cameras and it picks you up by the way that you're walking, the way that you're swinging your arms or the way you're moving your head or your eyes.
	And that now is $600 to go and submit to that.
	Is that right? Wow. I didn't realize they were doing all this biometric stuff for sure.
	Yeah, go to the – it's not INS anymore.
	It's – I forget what it is, but if you Google government – Immigration.
	It'll bring up the website and then if you look up the information for what you have to do now to be an immigrant or to become a citizen, that's one of the conditions now.
	More control.
	Wow. Yeah, more control.
	And it is, of course, a reminder, right?
	There's this chilling context.
	It's a reminder, we own you, right?
	I mean, we've got you recorded, you know, we had you walk with a cucumber up your ass, if you didn't already come with one, and we know how that walk looks.
	And so it's just, you know, they might as well put a brand on your forehead, right?
	So I think that is, I had a question from the chat room.
	Do we have any questions from the other chat rooms?
	Let me check. I don't see anything.
	If there's any questions in the blog talk radio chat room, please type them now.
	I'm going to go over and look at the Peace, Freedom, and Prosperity.
	I'll start then, and you can interrupt me if there's a note.
	Somebody has asked... My daughter, her capacity to identify and pursue needs, her capacity to negotiate with herself and you.
	Compare her with what you've seen in other children.
	Describe what you think is the difference, all in three minutes or less.
	So I'll just touch on that while we're seeing if they're waiting for other callers or anything else that's coming up.
	Well, I mean, the first thing to say is that she's fantastic, amazing, wonderful, and delightful.
	And she is also...
	It's a real privilege to know her, right?
	I mean, she has a small frame and a hugely big personality.
	She has a kind of integrated and very strong will that is actually very gentle.
	And that, to me, is something very, very interesting that I've seen as a father.
	I've done everything that I can to help facilitate her will, to help her...
	When she was six weeks old, I was teaching her how to scooch around the floor so that she would get more control over her environment and not feel like such a sack of potatoes and so on.
	So I've really tried to give her as much possible control over her environment.
	You know, it's a fine line as a parent, of course, where you want your child to be safe, but you don't want your child to be restricted.
	So my solution is I just crawl everywhere with her.
	At least I did for a while. She doesn't need that anymore.
	And, you know, so she doesn't fall and she's pretty good.
	She's very good now. She doesn't doesn't fall.
	That will change once she starts walking without furniture, but for now we have a week or two of respite.
	So she has a very, very strong will.
	And it's interesting to me, I was initially a little startled by that, the strength of her will.
	Like when she wants something, she really wants something.
	But what's interesting is that it's not fierce.
	It's not aggressive.
	It's very assertive. Like she wants something, she will go for it.
	And like if she's on one side of me and she wants something that's on the other side, she'll just leap up and do a body slam on my belly and start crawling over and allowing me to enjoy my lunch, you know, a second or sometimes even a third time.
	But a very strong will, but the will is not aggressive, right?
	So if she wants something that she can't have, then I'll take it away.
	And I will try to give her something else that she can have and enjoy.
	And she's generally fine with that.
	When she's, you know, the typical thing for a new parent is when your baby is on the change table and you want to change her or you want to put on pants.
	And, you know, it's literally trying to sew a button onto a blender because she's just going full boogie, twisting, turning.
	And so on. And I mean, I don't fight with her.
	So like we were at the pool the other day and I took her into the bathroom to change and I had to put her on the sink because there was no change table.
	And she just began to cry when I put her on the sink, right?
	Not on the ledge between the sink.
	And so for me, it's like, OK, well, I won't change you here.
	And we ended up changing her outside where she was more comfortable.
	I'm just not going to I'm just not going to fight with her.
	So if she's on the change table and she's kicking and twisting and turning, it's like, okay, I'll get your diaper on because I think that's important, but I'm not going to fight with you if you don't want to wear clothes right now.
	What's the point? I don't need to impose my will on her about something that's important.
	I mean, if she's going to get her inoculations, yes, she will have to get her inoculations, but I don't fight with her about that.
	And I think that helps a lot, right?
	It helps a lot in terms of negotiation, because I'm always trying to give her something that's enjoyable.
	When I take something away, and there are phases, you know?
	She's just going through this phase where she wants to pick up fluff from the carpet and put it in her mouth, right?
	So, I mean, we're vacuuming every day, this kind of stuff.
	And so I have to, I mean, want to take the fluff out of her hand.
	Occasionally, if she's got a big piece, I'll go into her mouth and get the fluff out, and she doesn't like that in particular.
	But she's fine afterwards, because...
	It's really the exception rather than the rule.
	And she's very, very sensitive as well.
	She bit my wife, and my wife was really startled.
	And I won't say what was going on, but you can imagine.
	And my daughter burst into tears because she was just...
	I mean, my wife obviously didn't yell at her or anything, which is like, ow!
	Because she was surprised.
	And she was very upset.
	Isabella was very upset by that.
	And so I think that was very important as well, her sensitivity.
	I don't think it's because she got that she caused mom pain, but it was something very different and startling.
	So I do think that the negotiation is important.
	I'm very, very sensitive.
	The degree to which I can impose my will upon her.
	Like, I can pick her up and put her in a crib.
	I can pick her up and put her in a playpen, and she's completely helpless.
	She can't get out. She has these teeth marks along the top of her crib, like Freddie Mercury biting down on a ham sandwich.
	She goes down into that crib, not out of anger or anything.
	She just enjoys chewing things because she's teething.
	And so I have found it really, really important to not impose my will upon her and to negotiate, not to grab things from her, to say no in a firm voice.
	And now that actually works.
	When she's going someplace she shouldn't, if I say, Isabella, no.
	Then she stops.
	She's not frightened. She just stops and turns around and then will go somewhere else.
	And that has worked out beautifully.
	And so far, so far, so good.
	The greater the power disparity, the more gentle your touch needs to be, in my opinion.
	And there's As I've always said, there's no greater power disparity between my daughter and myself at this time.
	So the very, very light touch is all that's needed because I am, what, 15 times her size and I have all the power and I can go for a walk and she can't even get out of her crib, right?
	So I have found that to be as absolutely gentle and respectful as possible.
	In what I need from her and what I can provide to her has been really, really helpful.
	And I think that I would just strongly suggest that.
	You need such a light touch.
	I mean, I can't imagine.
	I mean, given how small she is and how dependent she is, if I were to yell at her, I mean, I'm 15 times her size.
	It would be like, I don't know, God poking me in the forehead.
	I mean, it would just be crazy.
	So a very, very light touch, I think, is really, really important.
	And so far, that's worked perfectly.
	A couple of questions and comments.
	One from Richard D. How about talking a bit about how our jobs and careers may become less boring and more exciting and satisfying if statism goes away?
	And one says, Juan should I say says, here's a question.
	How wrong is marijuana use?
	How wrong is marijuana use?
	Well... I mean, let me take the second question first.
	And, you know, full disclosure, I've never smoked marijuana, so I have no idea what the effects are.
	Maybe you should try it one day. No, I'm never going to try it.
	I'm never going to try illicit drugs in any way, shape or form.
	But to me, it's not morally wrong unless someone's dependent on you, right?
	Like if you're a parent, you know, smoking marijuana is like getting drunk, right?
	You just can't do it because you've got kids in the house or whatever, right?
	So to me, there's something around that that's not particularly great.
	I'm just not a fan of drug use.
	I just think that drug use is a bad way to solve problems.
	I think that if you're a happy person, you don't need drugs.
	I think if you're an unhappy person, you need to deal with that unhappiness.
	And I'm a big, big, big proponent of personal therapy with a competent professional.
	You need to...
	You don't take heroin for a toothache.
	Yes, it will make you feel better, but the rot goes deeper.
	And if you're unhappy or depressed or something's missing and you feel like you need the boost of drugs...
	I just think it's a cheap way to go about it.
	I can understand it, right? Because it is a self-medication that's easy and effective in the short run.
	But I think that it is not a productive and responsible way to deal with personal issues.
	As a philosopher, I'm Socrates 101, right?
	Know thyself. Self-knowledge is the foundation of all wisdom and you can't claim to know the world if you don't know yourself.
	So I strongly urge people to not take mind-altering substances, And to get professional help, to get therapy, to get whatever they need to deal with the personal issues that they have, that's going to be much more productive and satisfying in the long run.
	So it's not morally wrong unless someone's dependent on you.
	I just think it's not productive.
	Talking about marijuana though, it can be used for multiple purposes.
	I mean, there's over 4,000 uses that you can use marijuana for.
	You can build a house, you know, from the ground upwards.
	The only thing that you can't make from it is the actual electrical cable.
	I don't think that that's what, I don't think the guy's a construction worker.
	I know, but I'm just saying, I'm just, you know, addressing this argument that we have government with the, you know, the drug law, you know, the war on drugs.
	Oh yeah, it should be completely legal.
	There's no question that the illegality of the drugs drives addiction because when the profit is so high, it pays for you To get people addicted to the drug.
	So I completely agree with you that it should be perfectly legal and that would be the best way to keep it out of out of people's hands, right?
	I mean when and this is a statistic from a while back, so I got it from an old Harry Brown show.
	Forgive me if it's not perfect, but it's close.
	That before heroin was made illegal in the United Kingdom, there were like 500 addicts and you could get three hits for 10 pennies, right?
	And then you could get one hit for five pounds after it was made illegal.
	And there were like 100,000 addicts, right?
	And so as you raise the profits of something, then people will start to give you free samples.
	Nobody gives you free samples, three for a dime.
	But when it's, you know, it's worth getting you addicted otherwise.
	So it is catastrophic.
	I mean, the banning of drugs has caused more addicts and more destruction in society than any other single measure.
	The same thing, of course, occurred with alcohol under...
	So it absolutely should be completely legal.
	Of course, there are, as far as I understand it, for the treatment of glaucoma and nausea during chemotherapy and other things, there are legitimate medicinal uses for marijuana.
	But as a recreational problem solver, you know, it sucks like a vacuum.
	That would be my perspective.
	All right, let's go to Richard D.'s question.
	And then also we have a question from David Allen as well, who's in the blog talk radio chat room.
	Richard Day says, how about talking a bit about how our jobs and careers may become less boring and more exciting and satisfying if statism goes away?
	Well, I will give you an example called me, which would be where I would start, right?
	I am, of course, in a completely unregulated medium, an unstate-controlled medium.
	There's no union here.
	There's no CRTC or, I don't know, what is the equivalent of Until that tank arrives outside your house?
	Until the tank, yeah. But there is, so I'm, you know, and I am, this is the happiest and best career that I've had, and I've had some very happy and exciting careers in my life.
	So, you know, fewer regulations means more competition.
	Those who are excellent will rise to the top.
	You know, fewer amounts of harassment, fewer stupid laws, fewer restrictions, which means that the public is actually better protected.
	And, you know, with greater competition comes a very challenging and exciting need to commit to excellence, right?
	So most podcasters give away their material for free.
	I do, of course, but most podcasters don't ask people to fund their Twinkie habit.
	And by Twinkie, I mean the dessert habit.
	So I have that challenge.
	I have to come up with cool and new and fun and exciting ways to communicate about a very dull topic called philosophy and a way to make it appealing to people and to bring people in.
	And that is because I'm in a wild competition with an almost infinite offering completely free.
	And that's just in the world of podcasting, let alone everything else out there that you could consume, a lot of which, you know, if you download stuff against the law, a lot of that stuff is free.
	As well, right?
	So asking people to sort of fund what it is that I do while giving everything away for free is about as non-statist as you can get.
	And I can tell you that it has produced a very, very exciting and stimulating and frightening career.
	So I think that fewer controls means greater competition, which means greater innovation, which means more excitement and more challenge and more reinvention, which I think is really the fundamental stuff of staying at least young at heart.
	Okay. In the Blog Talk Radio chatroom again, David Allen, in parentheses, iPolitik says, in your perfect society, will the volunteer policeman not stop a thief entering your house if you opt out of paying his compensation?
	And then he goes on to say something about your society will end up as an oligarchy.
	People will fill the power vacuum that will occur and they will rule with absolute power.
	Yeah, no, I mean, look, I'm not going to touch the content of these questions because my will to live will drain completely out of my feet if I have to go through another one of these.
	And no disrespect to the listener, they're great questions, but, you know, this is why I wrote all these free books explaining how this sort of stuff works.
	What I would say, though, is that, you know, I experience a little bit of annoyance, even at the tone of the question.
	And that doesn't mean that the person's being annoying, I'm just sort of saying what I experience.
	You know, when someone says, in your perfect society, and that to me is really, really strange, right?
	You know, so for instance, in the 16th century, when Francis Bacon, and he wasn't the first, but he codified it really well, when Francis Bacon laid down the basics of the scientific method, we don't refer to Francis Bacon's science, right?
	Because that means that it's some sort of prejudice or bigotry on his part or something.
	No, we just refer to it as science, right?
	So, it's not my perfect society.
	It's in a moral society that recognizes the value of not initiating the use of force and respects property.
	That either is a rational basis for a society or it's not.
	If it is a rational basis for society, then it's not my society and neither is it perfect.
	It's just valid. It's just true.
	It's just moral. And if it's not rational, then yes, it would be a kind of bigotry, but then it's not a perfect society because it's irrational.
	So, When people say, you're a perfect society, Steph's perfect society, that to me is automatically diminishing to the argument that's being put forward.
	Another example I would give is that a number of people, Ricardo and John Stuart Mill and Adam Smith, of course, these people all put forward.
	The basic tenets of the free market.
	And this goes back to, there was a book I read years and years ago, called England's Treasure by Foreign Traffic, which was written, I think, in the 17th century, where people put forward arguments about why opening England's trade would increase England's wealth, and thus give her the wealth to create an empire, as I talked about in the debate with Michael Bandarik.
	But we don't say Adam Smith's perfect society.
	We say a free market economy, right?
	Or an economy based on the non-initiation of force and respect for property rights, right?
	So the moment that you identify an idea with a thinker, like Steph's perfect society or whatever, you don't really understand what is meant by a rational argument, right?
	Two plus two is four, or, you know, it's not some guy's argument, right?
	It's either valid or it's not.
	And if it's valid, then associating it with him is sort of pointless.
	And if it's not, then it's not a rational argument, right?
	So I think that's really, really important to understand that if you want to get the respect of people who are working in the field of rational empiricism and philosophy, that you need to focus on the limitations of the argument that Rather than say, well, in your perfect society.
	Anyway, I just said it's a minor bugaboo of mine because I hear that quite a lot.
	And it always feels annoying to hear because it's a fundamental misunderstanding of what is meant by a rational argument.
	The power vacuum, I mean, I've answered this a million times before.
	Do we have any other questions? Otherwise, I'll just give a closing.
	Yeah, there is another question.
	How does currency work in a stateless society?
	I imagine, ultimately, it would converge...
	Well, that's a great question.
	And again, what I always suggest is put yourself in the shoes of someone who's trying to sell a currency system to a skeptical public.
	So if I were out there trying to sell a currency system to a skeptical public, I would say, I'm never going to inflate this currency, and here's how you know I'm never going to inflate this currency, and I would show them all the mathematics I have about the growth of value and productivity within society, how that translates to extra currency.
	Ideally, you don't want currency either to inflate or to deflate, because both of those throw off future economic calculations in the realm of interest and deferred payments and so on.
	So I would say, here's how I have solved the problem of inflation and deflation.
	And you'd go through all your Austrian analyses and you'd say, well, if the economy grows by 5%, the 5% that's represented by my economy, I'm only going to grow the currency 5%.
	You can always be guaranteed that my currency will be within 1% of its original value.
	And if it's not, if it goes outside of that, I'm going to pay you $20,000 or whatever, right?
	Just to make some incentive.
	So, you would have the challenge of selling to people, and of course, I don't know how all of this would work, but this is the challenge.
	You would have to make sure that it's stable.
	You'd have to make sure that it's really hard to counterfeit.
	And that's not too impossible to think of ways in which that could be done, right?
	I mean, you have currency simply tied with some sort of biometric, right?
	Eye scan or fingerprint or something like that.
	So, you have to kind of put both together.
	And so, all of that could sort of be done.
	But I think it's really, really important to remember, and I'll just sort of close off with this in the last few minutes, you don't want to look at the future of society and mistake it for what goes on in the present, right?
	In other words, you don't want to say, well, blacks are lazy, and therefore if we free them from being slaves, they're never going to get any jobs.
	It's like, well, blacks are lazy because they're slaves, right?
	I mean, so they're not lazy, they're depressed, right?
	They're like suicidal because they're slaves, right?
	So you don't want to mistake the traits of the present for the future, right?
	So something like counterfeiting comes about because counterfeiting is easier than getting a real job, right?
	And, of course, if you're worried about counterfeiting, the last thing you ever want is a government, because governments are based on counterfeiting, right?
	So in a future society, let's just 200 years forward, we're in a society with no government, the economy is growing 10 to 15% a year, right?
	Which is what would occur in an actual free market.
	The economy is growing 10-15% a year.
	You could work for an hour a day and make enough to support a family of four easily.
	And this is not utopianism.
	These are all statistics that have been achieved in the free market before.
	Like in a genuine free market, 10-15% a year can occur on a sustainable basis.
	So you barely have to lift a finger to get a job.
	And the tools and the robots and all of this stuff that will be available to you will be something which we can't even comprehend any more than somebody from the 17th century could comprehend an iPod or even this conversation or instantaneous free communications around the world or whatever, right? And so...
	The amount of wealth that you can get a hold of through relatively little effort.
	You'll be really well educated.
	You'll be really efficient.
	Your education will be pointed towards economic efficiency so that you will...
	And there'll be so much wealth in society that it will be fun to have a job because the menial jobs will be done by other stuff.
	And so what would be the point of counterfeiting when you can easily work for an hour a day at a fun job and make all the money that you need?
	Or half a day or whatever.
	So the risk of counterfeits will be that much lower because the rewards of working will be that much greater and easier.
	All right, we've got two minutes.
	I will absolutely take a caller, but you must keep it not with the boxers, but with the briefs.
	Okay, caller, you're on the air.
	Caller from Skype. Hello.
	Make it quick. We've only got like a minute and a half left.
	90 seconds.
	There you go. What's your question?
	Hello? Yes, you're on the air.
	Go ahead. Okay, I had a question about the Constitution class that Michael Bandarik posted on the internet some time ago.
	Has anyone ever undertook his suggestion that if you get a new car, 60 seconds.
	You pay cash for it and do not register it with the state.
	Because I was thinking of doing something like that.
	Right. I mean, if someone was to do something like that and...
	You're talking about the right to travel, right?
	What's that? The right to travel.
	That's what you're talking about. Essentially, yes.
	I don't think we're going to have enough time to discuss it here today.
	Yeah, I don't have any knowledge about that stuff, but you might want to do some Googling on it, or I'm sure Mr.
	Batnarek would take a question.
	I think the understanding is that if you don't register the car, they can't arrest you or you can go wherever you want or something.
	I really don't know nothing about the legalities of that, so I don't think I could do anything useful to help you with that.
	Yeah, I mean, but if you came into contact with the police, if they decide to pull you over for something...
	I'm sorry, we're absolutely out of time, so I'm going to have to shut you off.
	But feel free to call back in next week.
	Although, actually, I still won't be able to answer your question next week.
	But thank you so much for calling in.
	Thank you so much to all the listeners.
	For the chance to speak in this amazing way about your thoughts and your ideas.
	It is a true privilege to hear you guys talk.
	It's the hardest working, smartest group that I have ever known, and I've known a few.
	So thank you so much, everybody.
	Really do appreciate your support of Freedom Aid Radio, your support and excitement around this philosophical conversation.
	Have yourselves an absolutely wonderful week.

▲