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Jan. 8, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
08:21
1552 The Peaceful Lower Classes

Some thoughts on those bringing me my coffee.

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Hi everybody. Hope you're doing well.
It is January the 10th, 2010.
Look at that. A nice binary date.
01-10-10.
So I hope you're doing very well. And I hope you had a very happy and wonderful start to your decade.
And I am sitting on a balcony in Manzanillo, Mexico, where we have come for an intimately exhausting vacation with the Baby Cakes, who has been sleeping Somewhat lately.
Although she's having a great time on the beach.
And Daddy has enjoyed his two and a half hours of volleyball every day.
So it's been very, very nice.
And very relaxing. And soon, I guess we leave tomorrow back to work.
And actually I'm glad to be leaving because it's great fun with a baby.
But it's a lot of work.
And so it would be nice to get back to something more regular.
So anyway, this is some of the thoughts that I've had on vacation.
It's interesting. You know, I did this sort of review of the movie Avatar, and in that review, I talked about this noble, simple, happy, savage idea that has been around from Rousseau, and in fact, even before.
I mean, the whole root of the story of Genesis is these happy simpletons, Adam and Eve, before they had the knowledge of good and evil, where they, I guess, flounced around the forest, not caring what wobbly bits dangled and thrashed about.
And I just...
I think, or I've seen it in so many contexts, this idea of the noble savage, the primitive savage, the happy savage.
And we've been getting up, I guess that was the first day Isabella woke up at 4.30 and I took her down and fortunately they were setting up for breakfast at around 5 and they let us lurk around and had a coffee and chatted a little bit with the white staff who were setting up for the breakfast.
And I mean they seemed quite peppy and happy and positive and of course Isabella brings out the best in most people.
Although it's a bit of a startly culture towards children, most of the locals who've wanted to interact with Isabella have been sort of clap hands in her face or, you know, pinched her, not hard, right, but sort of blah, blah in her face kind of thing, which is quite different from North America.
So we're chatting with the waitstop in the morning and I thought it was interesting because, you know, everybody's life is complicated and everybody else's life looks relatively simple.
And that, I think, is a very interesting phenomenon.
And I think it's particularly true when it comes to the ruling classes and the working classes.
You know, my life is complicated and challenging and all kinds of exciting.
And yet, I look at these guys who are, you know, setting up the buffet at 5 in the morning and you think, well, you know, they wake up, they obviously early, they come to work, they do their work, they go home, they spend time with their family, they maybe watch some TV and they go to bed, they get up and they do it again.
And there's this belief that it's a simpler life, it's a better life.
And part of it, I think, is born of a little bit of guilt.
And I find it hard not to feel guilty when enjoying the spoils of a first world existence and then coming to Mexico.
It's not exactly the third world, but it's not exactly North America either.
And thinking about the lives that these people have.
And when you stay at resorts, if you talk to people honestly, as I generally do, they're not always, it's hard to just avoid getting that glimpse of their life.
They're getting up at 3 or 4 in the morning and working 12-hour days or longer, coming home exhausted, you know, taking the bus in and You know, that if you had to live even like two or three days of that life, you'd just be like, oh man, this is not simple and uncomplicated.
This is brutal and exhausting.
And I mean, you can get used to just about anything in life, but it's not something that people should have to get used to.
And that, I think, is something that's interesting.
It's hard not to feel that sense of guilt.
And I think rather than process that sense of guilt about having people wait on you because their circumstances happen to be much rougher...
In terms of having a more brutal and overbearing and dictatorial and predatory state.
As a guy who toured me through Chichen Itza 20 years ago said...
20? 20 years ago?
20 years ago, he said the government is just a group of banditos.
And he was quite clear about that.
And, I mean, if you've seen Weeds, the guy who the woman has the kid with...
A criminal. And this is quite common.
I think in Mexican politics, though, I would say in politics, everywhere it's more obvious in Mexican politics.
And so why is there some 43-year-old guy getting up at 4 in the morning to bring me a coffee?
And why am I the guy getting the coffee?
Well, I mean, some of it has to do with hard work, but a lot of it has to do with the circumstances that you're born into.
And I was born into a circumstance where I could make the life that I have from my beginnings that's possible.
I think that's much harder here.
And so the barrier to entry for the middle class is much higher.
And that's a very sad thing.
It's hard not to feel a little bit of guilt, if not more than a little bit.
And so I think what people do is they say, well, I'm going to ignore my guilt and instead I'm going to picture that these people have these simple happy lives.
Like the guy who was driving us in from the airport.
There was a bus and there was a guy, you know, the typical Mexican, too loud, party, energetic, false self, intrusive stuff, you know, Corona, you know, that kind of stuff.
And he was saying, you know, you'll be perfectly safe in town.
Basically, the locals are very happy and friendly.
Very happy and friendly. And that's something that's talked about a lot here, that the locals are very happy and friendly.
And of course, everyone on the beach and everyone who's serving you and everybody who's trying to sell you your outings and all that, they're all very happy and friendly.
at face value and say, well, their lives are simple, and if I had that simple, quote, simple life, I would be happy and friendly as well.
But of course, you'll notice that not a lot of people are actually quitting their high-stress North American lives to come down and be waiters at a resort in Mexico, right?
So it's just something you tell yourself, that they have these happy, simple, better lives in many ways.
You just tell yourself that to avoid the guilt.
And this projection of, well, this transubstantiation in a sense of guilt into envy, into admiration, of the simple happy life of the local bronze worker.
That, I think, is quite sad.
I mean, the reality is that we paid hundreds of dollars in taxes just to come down here.
And if we hadn't had to pay all of that money, The resort would have been able to raise its prices because we are willing to pay this.
The resort would have been able to raise its prices and give these people more money.
The money goes to the government for its predations rather than to the workers for their hard work.
And I think that's really sad. It's quite tragic.
And I've really tried to sort of stay with the guilt rather than imagine that these people have this happy life, but then If I had to live their life for a day or two, just being like, I'd blow my own brains out.
I mean, I did live that life when I was younger.
I mean, I had three jobs at times and put myself through school to a large degree and all of that.
But that was in order to achieve something.
It wasn't. That's grind repetition.
When I was a... I guess when I was about...
From about the age of 14 to 17, I had usually two to three jobs as a waiter.
I cleaned offices at night and did other things too.
I worked in a daycare to keep ends together, make ends meet.
But that's when I was a teenager and that was, you know, knowing that I was going to go to university and knowing that I was going to go on with my life.
This is not the same for people here.
And I've known professional waiters.
When I was a waiter in Toronto, I knew people who were in their 40s or 50s.
That's what they did. They were waiters.
And that, to me, is a little bit different.
I mean, that's just more choice in North America.
And if you choose to be a waiter, that's fine.
But here, I don't think there's the same kind of choice.
And it really is quite tragic. And it is the dark side, of course, of the sunny skies.
Not much they can do about it.
It's not like their lives would be better if nobody came to a resort, right?
They'd just be out of work. So at least some of our money does trickle down to them, which I guess is good.
And I'm content that I'm doing the best that I can to make people's lives better.
In the present and in the future.
But it is something that I think is important to remember and to recognize that the simple life of the downtrodden is not something to be envied.
And everybody knows that.
Everybody knows that. So I'm sure the people who are Mexican, the wealthy Mexicans come here and say, oh, the simple life of the cabana boy, I envy it and all that kind of stuff.
The simple life of family and religion and work.
And so they believe in a sense that people are choosing this simple and happier life.
And of course, they know deep down that it's not true because if they were to open up the opportunities, remove the barriers, trade, remove the taxes, remove the tariffs and the immense amount of red tape that it takes to start a business and compete in Mexico and in South America.
I think it was in Peru.
It takes like two years to start a business and hundreds of forms and bribes and all that sort of stuff.
And so they say, oh, well, these people have these simple happy lives.
That's what the ruling classes say.
So, you know, content, and it's the way they deal with their guilt, or rather avoid their guilt.
But the reality is that they know that these people do not have simple happy lives because they knew that if they lifted the restrictions upon these people that they would probably do something different, something more adventurous, something greater, something deeper, something richer, and compete with the ruling classes.
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