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March 5, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
40:59
1604 Successfully Talking About Freedom - Part One

A listener and I discuss how she might be able to approach her friends about liberty...

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Hello, can you hear me?
I sure can. Can you hear me? Wow, this is like amazing.
I'm like shocked that I get to talk to you.
Well, I had a few minutes and always happy to talk to anybody interested in philosophy.
So what's on your mind?
Well, wow, this is really amazing.
Well, I always did want to ask you a question.
Sure. So in your videos, you're really articulate and you put your thoughts into a very understandable format.
So I guess that's part of being a philosopher.
You question yourself and you come to some sort of reasonable understanding through a process.
So that's why you're so easy to understand.
Yeah, I mean, I hope so.
It's a lot of practice too, but yeah, I hope that if my thoughts are clear to me, then they're going to be clear to other people.
And if they're not clear to me, then other people are just going to be confused and probably annoyed.
Yeah, so sometimes I'm just like, I don't know, whenever someone finds out that I'm pretty much anti-government, they're just like bewildered and completely shocked and put off even somewhat.
I'm anti-gravity, right.
Yeah, I know.
Yeah, pretty much like that.
It's like the same thing as telling them that the world is flat.
They're just like, how can you think such an illogical thing?
Right. Or it's like, you know, I think we should bring slavery back or something like that, right?
Yeah, that's pretty much like the same thing.
They'll be like, well, you know the world will be in chaos if there's no government.
Right. Right. It's like you're trying to bring back something that settled long ago.
You know, like, I think women should not have property rights.
It's like, wait, we did this like 150 years ago.
This isn't done. And the people are the same way with government.
It's like, this is a done deal, right?
Exactly. It's just like...
And then I try to tell them, they'll be like, well, I kind of agree with this, but the period of chaos that will be in between humanity settling itself is just not worth it or something like that, if there is to be no government.
Because I do tell them that I believe that the free market can create some sort of solution that would be better than a government.
And I always refer to you, I'm like, well, in this video, I watched that...
It's much better for many people to come up with many different solutions than to be forced to follow the government's one solution.
I believe that the greater solution will win out and if it's voluntary, then people can't be unhappy about it.
Or if they are unhappy, then they always have the freedom to create their own solution or to work with other people to create one.
Right, right. Good answer.
And then they're just like, well, and then like the whole, I don't know, when they think about anarchy, they pretty much think about like Hurricane Katrina, where people are looting and no one's accountable for anything.
Yeah, right. Like that wasn't the product of government.
That wasn't the product of the government.
Somehow anarchy gets blamed for that, right?
Exactly. It's just like, I don't know.
So I do talk to a lot of my friends.
All of my friends, I live in New York City.
So it's, yeah, the government has a...
Socialist paradise, right?
Yeah. The government has a really strong tight hold here.
So I don't know.
Well, I did show one of my friends your video on legal downloading.
Right. And he did agree with you.
And I was like, see, this is very anti-government approach.
The government can't possibly arrest everyone who illegally downloads.
And even if it was illegal, that doesn't stop anyone.
It only causes the downloads to go underground.
Sure, sure, sure.
But you sound like you're frustrated with, I guess, the progress that you're making or people's responses to what you're saying.
Well, that's another thing I mentioned on Facebook just now.
The way you explain things is very systematic.
It's very easy to understand.
Maybe you'll disagree, but it's just so logical that it's hard to disagree.
You'd have to have your own really, really detailed and, I don't know, methodological, if that's the word, argument to counter it, right?
So then I was just wondering how you got to that point where you're able to explain things like that.
Because I think that if I could do that, then these conversations with my friends would be much easier.
Of course they would probably jump to Hurricane Katrina if I told them that I was against the government.
But then I would be able to explain without making them automatically try to reject what I'm saying.
Right, right, right. No, listen, I mean, your question is fantastic.
Your dedication, of course, is incredibly admirable, and there's no easy answer, right?
I mean, there's nothing obvious that you've missed.
Like, if you eat this candy bar, everything will be just fine.
So your question is great.
I can give you a couple of things that have been helpful to me.
Sure. The thing that was the hardest thing for me to overcome was not doubt in other people, but doubt in myself.
Doubt in what I believed in.
Doubt in the arguments.
Like, if I don't doubt the arguments, then it's very hard for other people to doubt the arguments.
But if when somebody throws up an opposition to you, if you choke in a sense, that's because you yourself...
Have some doubts. And look, doubts are really good.
Doubts are really healthy. Without doubts, we just become bigoted, right?
Like we just believe stuff that makes no sense and it's completely wrong.
So I think your question is great.
That's the beauty of it.
Like the beauty of questioning yourself or constantly questioning yourself is you always have the potential to improve your view.
You know what I mean? Yeah, oh no, you're right.
And you also, with new information comes new perspectives, and you always want to be certain about a methodology and not certain about conclusions, right?
Because as soon as you become certain about conclusions, it's just kind of biased.
But if you're certain about a methodology...
So, you know, there's a few tips that I can give you just in terms, like, you have to dig into yourself and say, well, there are parts of me that really doubts what I'm saying, and then you need to work on those doubts in yourself.
And then once you've confronted and overcome those doubts within yourself, then you'll be much more convincing to other people that's, you know, like, you first have to really believe it yourself, and then I think other people will be more likely to believe it.
So there's a couple of things that I would say.
So people say, well, maybe having no government would be a better thing, but the problem is that getting there will be just horrible and so on because they believe that governments sort of protect humanity and so on, right?
You might want to point out the basic fact that governments killed over a quarter billion people in the 20th century alone.
I absolutely have.
I absolutely have pointed that out, actually.
You know, I was at a club fest and I said, I want to join both Democrat and Republican clubs so I can try to talk with them about their views.
And then my friend was like, that's stupid.
And I was like, why?
He's like, you're an anarchist.
Well, but what you could say is you could say, look, let's look at it this way.
Let's just say, for the sake of argument, that government is a disease.
Now, government, you can say, well, it protects some people, but government clearly gets a lot of people killed.
And if we could find a way of protecting people without a quarter billion of them ending up in mass graves or bombed into oblivion, clearly that would be better, right?
So if...
Government is kind of like a virus that gets a quarter billion people killed in just a 100-year period.
Then if we came up with a cure for that virus, you wouldn't say, well, but that would be a transition.
There would be a transition that would be difficult if we found a cure for this virus.
Like you wouldn't say, if we found a cure for cancer, you wouldn't say, well, but there'd be a lot of transition because there'd be a lot of people who are oncologists and a lot of clinics and a lot of radiologists and they would all be out of work and there'd be all this transition.
No, you just say, look, if we can find a way to not have a quarter billion people killed every hundred years, that would be a step forward, right?
So if we can find a way to organize society without all these people getting killed, then clearly that would be better.
And they have to say yes to that, because otherwise they just want people to die for no reason, right?
I actually did try to approach the conversation somewhat like that.
Well, he kind of brought it up.
He said, oh, because of anarchy, Hitler gained control and killed millions of people or something.
It was anarchy.
I don't really understand his reasoning, but then I kind of countered with, well, look at what we're doing in the Middle East right now.
Look at how many innocent people are dying because of our government.
I myself can't understand the reasoning behind this.
And I told him that, and he's like, well, that's different.
And then he just kind of faltered off.
Well, you could say, what about me?
for something which isn't even a crime, like having a bag of weed or something, right?
I mean, that's kidnapping and imprisonment, right?
Unjust imprisonment.
The U.S. is the highest prison, one of the highest prison populations per capita in the world, right?
I mean, you can go to Iraq for sure, but there's lots of lives being destroyed right here in the United States, right?
That's absolutely true.
And pretty much to every person I've said that to, they say, well, the government makes some mistakes, but overall, they do great, good things as well.
And like, I just can't really look past like the murder that they do, because that's probably the, you know, the ultimate, like, that's the ultimate sin, in my opinion, to like murder someone.
It is, of course. And, you know, the number of lives that get destroyed by the government is incalculable.
But what's happening, I think, is that you're getting stuck in something called the argument from effect, which is to say the effect of a stateless society would be better.
And then other people say, well, the effect of a government society is better.
And in some ways, there's really no way to argue that because it's an argument from effect.
In other words, what would happen if we transitioned to...
Well, maybe it would be really peaceful, maybe it would not be peaceful, but there's no way to really know afterwards, right?
So it's sort of like saying, if you were living in the 18th century or whatever, saying, well, should we get rid of slavery or not?
And trying to figure out whether you should get rid of slavery or not based on whether the economy would be better or worse afterwards.
Well, for some people, it would be better.
So for slaves who were young, entrepreneurial, or super intelligent, they would do much better in a free society.
But some 75-year-old slave who can't read and has no job skills, for him, the end of slavery would probably be kind of a disaster because his master is no longer responsible for feeding and taking care of him.
So arguing whether we should get rid of slavery based on whether it's good for this slave or good for that slave, you can't win that argument either way because you can just make up whatever examples you want, right?
Or you can say, well, what about some really dumb guy who prefers being a slave?
The end of slavery would be bad for him, and therefore we shouldn't get rid of slavery, if that makes sense.
Yeah. So, I sort of try and focus away from the argument from effect, right?
Like, would it be better or would it be worse?
What would improve?
Who would build the rose? I mean, this is all arguments from effect.
What I would say is...
There's things in life that are just right or wrong.
I mean, they're just right or wrong. Because if there's no such thing as right and wrong, we can't have a government.
Because if there's no such thing as right and wrong, then we shouldn't have police, laws, prisons, jails, or anything like that.
Because everything would just be...
It would be like having a government to enforce that vanilla is the best flavor of ice cream.
And clearly that would be ridiculous, right?
So we have to accept, if we're going to even talk about government, we have to accept that there's such a thing...
Right and wrong. And it has to be kind of objective, otherwise it's all just people with guns enforcing opinions, which is clearly immoral and leads you straight to anarchy.
And so if there's such a thing as right and wrong, clearly violence is one of those things that's just not good.
I mean, we have to agree with that, because if violence is good, then we should throw people in jail for not shooting each other, and clearly that would make no sense, right?
Right. So violence is bad.
And specifically, to be technical, of course, the initiation of violence.
So don't people, oh, self-defense and blah, blah, blah.
The initiation of violence is wrong.
Now, if we accept that the initiation of violence is wrong...
Then we have to accept that the state, which is nothing more or less than a group of people who have the legal, quote, right to initiate violence, are violating a fundamental moral rule.
Now, if you take that and you sort of – you can roll down that argument and I've got some examples of that if you just do a Google on my site for argument from a fact versus argument from principle.
If you just focus on the ethics and the morals of the situation.
Like slavery is just immoral because human beings can't own other human beings and you can go into sort of all the reasons why.
So it doesn't matter whether this slave is looking forward to freedom and the slave is not looking forward to freedom and whether this county would do better with freedom and this county would do worse.
Because that's all – forget it, right?
We can really only make these decisions based on moral principles.
Otherwise, you can just make up any scenario you want where people could say, well, if we try to transition to a free society, the schools and the hospitals and the roads would all be shut down and everybody would go on strike and so it just wouldn't be worth it.
That's like saying we shouldn't switch to a slave-free society because all the people who profit from selling slaves will be out of a job.
It's not a good argument.
I think you have to stick with the basic morality.
If violence is wrong, the initiation of violence is wrong, then the state by definition is immoral and we have to find other solutions.
And if people don't want to argue at the level of morality...
I mean, I personally try not to get involved in those arguments if it's not around ethics.
Because then it's just about, you know, making up some science fiction scenario where one argument or the other sounds better.
And that's not philosophy.
That's just story swapping.
But I absolutely agree with you.
But I do know certain people who would say that, well, this is merely preemptive self-defense or something like that.
What is? Like going overseas to hurt people or any sort of police control by the government, they would say that this is merely either preemptive self-defense or this is justifiable violence to protect people.
Right. And I would respond to that by saying something along the lines of the following.
So if you want to roleplay this person, right?
I would say something like... Now, do you think it's important in a free society that people are allowed to disagree with each other without going to jail?
Wait, do you want me to reply?
Yeah, yeah, reply like you're this person.
Can you repeat the question? Do you think in a free or just society it's okay for people to disagree with each other without going to jail?
I would say, now I'm thinking back on, like, I'm thinking about what I would say if I was myself.
Wait, I'm trying to, like, ah, okay.
No, no, it's okay. You'll get it.
He's going to have to say yes, right?
Okay, yes. He's going to have to say yes, right?
And then I would say, so, let's say that you have one view of the Iraq war and I have another view.
You think it's just and I think it's not just, let's say.
Clearly, I should be allowed to disagree with you and not go to jail, right?
Yeah. Right.
Because if he says, yes, you should go to jail for disagreeing with me, then I wouldn't have a debate with that guy because he's just an asshole, right?
I mean, he's insane, right?
I mean, there has to be some basic civilized content to the discourse, right?
So if he says, yes, you're allowed to disagree with me and not go to jail, right?
Then it says, well, it makes no sense if you say that I'm allowed to disagree with you, but I have to be forced to pay for the war anyway.
Because then that doesn't make any sense, right?
That's like saying, well, the woman has the right not to get raped, but she's going to get raped anyway.
It's like, she has the right to not want sex, but she's going to get raped anyway.
The right doesn't mean anything if you're going to get forced to act as if you agree anyway, right?
Mm-hmm.
And I'm pretty sure a status would counter, well, if people only paid for what they want to pay for, then there wouldn't be enough money for things that we have to do, like water or roads.
Well, so what you're saying is then, so you're backing off from the principle, I would say.
You're backing off from the principle that I can disagree with you and not go to jail.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so you think that if people disagree with you about your particular political perspective, they should go to jail?
Not necessarily go to jail.
Well, let me try to see what this person would say.
He would probably say they should go to jail at that point.
Well, he'd probably bring up, you know, you're allowed to disagree and then you have to run for office or get a politician you like to run for office and vote and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
Hmm. He would probably take that approach, like social contract, we agree to obey the majority, that's democracy and blah blah blah, right?
Yeah, he probably would say that.
Right, in which case I would say that I'm still not allowed to disagree with you unless I put a massive amount of time and energy and money into trying to win over some general populace to my viewpoint.
So, I'm still not allowed to disagree with you without going to jail.
And I'm not saying this is a perfect argument.
It wins every time. But what it does do is it puts the other person on the defensive, right?
Which is important. You kind of want to not be the person who's continually trying to be on the defensive, right?
And say, if the person says, you...
I don't want you to go to jail if you disagree with me.
Then you've got the basis for anarchism right there.
So if you support the war, then send them a check.
I clearly don't support the war, so I shouldn't be forced to pay for it.
And then if you say, well, people should be forced to pay for things that I think that they should do, then he's just going back to, you should be thrown in jail for disagreeing with me.
And if somebody holds that position, then I say, I'm not going to pretend to debate to you.
I'm not going to pretend to debate with you.
If you are holding a gun to my head, like if you're saying you staff should go to jail for disagreeing with me, I'm not going to give that naked display of force the veneer of a civilized discourse by pretending that you're doing anything other than trying to get people to throw me in jail for disagreeing with you.
I'm not going to debate and I'm not going to lend that air of civility to what is essentially your desire for a violent interaction.
Actually, a couple of days ago I was having a conversation with some business students about affirmative action.
And we all pretty much across the board agreed that affirmative action was a terrible, terrible thing.
But we did disagree on what would happen if a company didn't hire X amount of minority.
And I was pretty much saying that...
If the company didn't hire X amount of minority, if the government tried to enforce it, that someone would probably go to jail.
But their reply was, no, they won't go to jail.
They'll just get fined. And then I said, well...
What do you think happens if you don't pay your fines?
Exactly. That's what I said. I said, what if they don't pay the fine?
Like, what if they don't pay the fine?
And then they were just like, they'll just get the fine more.
And I was like, what if they don't pay the fine?
And then the only thing that they could say was, well, they will pay the fine.
They'll just lose money. Yeah, but why would they pay?
Well, I mean, if I send a bill to General Electric saying you owe me $10,000...
They're not going to pay me. They're just going to laugh at it, right?
Exactly. So the difference is that you go to jail.
So there's somewhat of a disparity in the understanding of how the government will punish you.
So in your videos, if I show them your videos and then they hear you say, well, come in the room and go to jail, they'll just be like, that's not going to happen.
That can't happen. So they see it as a metaphor that's kind of like a very extreme metaphor rather than the truth because they can't really connect that the only reason why the government has power is because of violence and guns and physical threats.
Well, I mean, you can take an extreme example, right?
And you can say that in the Holocaust, very few Jews fought back.
Does that mean there was no violence occurring?
Everybody just obeyed, right?
They just all lined up and trudged along.
Does that mean that there was, I mean, nobody, barely anybody pulled the trigger.
That's true. It's the threat of violence.
Well, yeah. I mean, everybody knew what was going to happen if they tried to resist, but nobody actually did because the threat of force was so overwhelming, right?
Mm-hmm. So, you know, just because the cows...
You can use the electric fence metaphor, right?
So, you've got a bunch of cows in a field with an electric fence, and cows have all learned that if they rub up against the electric fence, they get...
to the point where they almost die, right?
And so after a couple of years, the cows don't go anywhere near the fence at all, right? - Right. - But that's not the same as the cows being free You say, well, the cows, they don't want to go to the fence.
They don't try the fence. So clearly they don't want to leave.
It's like, well, no, they've just learned that, right?
So it looks like they don't even notice the fence because they don't go anywhere near it.
But the whole reason they're there is because of the fence.
So, you know, that just takes a little bit of understanding.
And of course, if people have fundamentally such an ignorance of what the law really is, it's really tough to debate them.
I mean, it is, because that's like debating somebody who says every word you say means the opposite of what you say.
It's like, well, that's just a weird kind of game, right?
So if they don't understand that if you break the law, you go to jail, that's almost like too basic a level to even debate with someone, if that makes sense.
Yeah, exactly. Well, I think that the things you've been telling me are very, very helpful because this is an excellent way to try to understand my point rather than just kind of blowing it off because it makes so little sense.
These are the kind of steps that I think it's really amazing that you're telling me to go with people who I'm trying to talk to about statism.
Yeah, the other thing too, and you might want to pick up, it's a free book on my website called Everyday Anarchy, which is just to point out to people and say, well, we like not having a government when it comes to picking a job, right?
We like not having a government when it comes to picking a boyfriend or a girlfriend.
Like if somebody came along from the government and said, you have to date so-and-so, people would just be outraged and incredibly offended, right?
And if they said, well, you have to take this job and no other, people would be like, you can't tell me what job I'm going to take, right?
Right.
So in some areas, we completely love the fact that there's no government or at least virtually no government.
Right.
And so nobody can say anarchy is bad because anarchy works in when you choose your friends.
Like the government doesn't come and assign you friends.
It doesn't come and tell you what school to go to.
It doesn't come and tell you what job to take.
It doesn't tell you who to date or whether to have children.
Right.
So so we love not having a government in huge areas.
In fact, most of our life.
So people can't just say that anarchy is bad because anarchy is actually what they mostly live in and what they mostly make their decisions on, right?
Most people, when they want a promotion, they work hard and they try and do a good job and then they hope they try and get the promotion.
They don't write to the congressman and say, you need to pass a law to get me a promotion.
They try and learn it for themselves, right?
Right. So... People already work in a stateless environment for the most part of their lives.
They work, they love, they play.
Nobody would be happy if the government ordered you to go and see a movie, right?
Right. So the fact that you get to choose your movies, your friends, your boyfriends, your job, your, you know, people live almost completely in a state of anarchy.
And if the government were to intrude in that state of anarchy, they'd be incredibly offended.
And so all we're saying is, well, maybe that sphere is just a little bit bigger than you think it should be.
Like as if you love it in 90% of your life or 80% of your life, if you love anarchy in 80 or 90% of your life, Why not push it another 10 or 20%?
I mean, we're not doing something radical, we're just extending what you already love.
That's very true. I really like the way that you put that.
It's in the book, and it's a real short book, and you can give it, of course, to people if you want for free, because it is free.
It's an audiobook or a PDF. And I try to explain to people that anarchy is what we already love in our life.
And so it's not a foreign thing.
It's not a futuristic thing.
It's not like the Matrix.
It's not some weird futuristic thing that people don't know anything about.
It's exactly what they already live and love in their life.
So... Hopefully it doesn't seem quite as foreign after people have listened to or read that book.
That's a really good point.
I believe that some statists would argue, well, in some aspects of real life, the government has to be there.
Like, there's no possible way to do this without the government.
I don't know why they say that.
What they're saying, what they're really saying is, I can't imagine how it could work without the government.
Right, but that's very different.
That's very different from saying it's impossible.
Like, I don't know how the hell to put a man on the moon.
But that doesn't mean it's impossible.
It just means I don't know how to do it, right?
Right. And so it's really important to get people to say, just because you can't understand how it can work doesn't mean...
That it can't work.
So for instance, if you're a creationist, right?
And this will work in New York probably, this argument, right?
So you're some fundamentalist creationist, right?
And you've never read anything about evolution.
And you don't understand it.
And, you know, the word Richard Dawkins, all you think of is Dickie D's, the ice cream bar, right?
So you don't know anything about evolution.
And you say, well, evolution is impossible.
But that's not true. What is true is that that fundamentalist Christian simply doesn't or functionally can't understand how evolution can occur.
But that doesn't mean evolution is wrong.
It just means that they don't understand it.
And so if people say, well, the roads couldn't function without the government, or there's no way you could have a justice system without the government, or blah, blah, blah, and there's no way disputes could be resolved without the government, all they're saying is they don't know how it could happen.
But that's not at all the same as saying it can't happen, right?
That's true. I mean, I don't know all the technicalities of how a bill becomes a law, but that doesn't mean that laws never get passed.
It just means I don't know, right?
That's true. Like, I try to tell them that, you know, that the...
That the human mind can achieve so much if it's only, like, that its potential is boundless to come up with a solution, right?
Like, that's why I believe that there is a solution to, like, everything.
Right, and you just have to ask them, is everything that you don't understand impossible?
I mean, that's a fundamental question to ask someone.
If you don't understand it, does that mean it's impossible?
In other words, I don't know how the hell Skype works.
Does that mean that we're not in conversation?
I don't know how the hell my computer works fundamentally.
I know a few things. I don't know how it works.
Does that mean that there's no such thing as a computer on my desk?
Of course. Just because I don't know how something is going to work or will work...
Doesn't mean that it's not going to work.
It just means I don't know. And the truly honest statement for somebody to say is, I don't know how dispute resolution would work in the absence of a government.
But that doesn't mean it can't work.
It just means I don't know.
That's good that you don't say that.
Because you don't know it is impossible.
It's just bigotry. It's just narrow-mindedness.
It's kind of idiotic, right?
And it's not humble, right?
I mean, there's tons of things I don't understand.
I don't then assume that they can't work or don't work.
Yeah, that's very true.
And I think that if you think about a possible solution, if you're not sure about it and you're still thinking about it, that's a good thing rather than saying, well, I definitely know the solution to this.
I think that if you can question yourself and question other people and work with other people to find a solution, that's a great way to find one rather than just trying to answer someone off the top of your head.
But of course, that's kind of unsatisfying to someone who you're arguing with.
If I answer, well, I believe that we can work with a solution together, work to come up with a solution to this problem together without violence, then They'll be like, I'm not satisfied by that.
I don't believe that people would follow the solution.
Well, yeah, but just because you don't believe it doesn't mean that it's not true, right?
Just because someone says, well, I don't think people would believe it, it's like, that doesn't mean it's not true, right?
Right. I mean, it's sort of like looking at, you know, if you're in business, right, and somebody says, I want to launch a new soft drink, right?
They're saying, well, I don't know who would buy it, so it's going to fail.
It's like, but that's not, you know, what the hell, how are you supposed to know that?
Just because you don't know who will buy it doesn't mean just because you don't think people will buy it doesn't mean it's going to fail.
I have to agree. You've got to be more helpful that way, right?
I can give you one other tip.
I've got to run in a bit, but I can give you one other tip which might be helpful.
Are these helpful, the things that I'm saying?
Absolutely helpful. I wish that I recorded this conversation so I could listen to it.
Oh, don't worry. I'll put it out as a podcast because you didn't use your name, if that's all right with you.
Oh, that's cool. Sweet.
Okay, so here's another one.
I'm just working on this at the moment, so I don't have a down pat, but it goes sort of something like this, right?
So we'll use the stupid roads.
Roads always come up, right? So someone says, but without the government, there would be no roads, right?
You've probably heard that a million times or two, right?
Absolutely. No libraries, no free libraries.
None of these things, right? And so I'm practicing this one on people, right?
So then I say, how do you know?
Right? And it's a good question, right?
How do you know, right? And they would say, well, before the government, there were no roads, right?
Right. They would have to say that.
Because otherwise, right? Because what you're trying to do is get someone to understand that they've jumped to a conclusion, frankly, based on propaganda, not curiosity, historical knowledge or anything, right?
So then I asked the person, are you sure that there were no roads before there was a government?
Right? Like, have you researched that?
Do you know? Yeah.
And that usually brings them up short, right?
Because it's like, then they're like, wait a minute, you know what, I just kind of assumed that there are no roads.
Because people make this mistake.
The government built the roads, and therefore, before the government, there were no roads.
Right. But of course, that doesn't logically follow at all.
It's sort of like saying the mafia takes money from shop owners, so before the mafia, there were no shops.
Logically, it doesn't follow at all, right?
And so, if you ask the person who says, without the government, there'd be no libraries, right?
So you'd say, okay, so you know for a fact that before the government, there were no libraries.
And they have to pause, because...
Of course there were libraries and roads before the government, so they're wrong, right?
But you have to get them. Instead of telling them, well, there were roads, there were libraries, the important thing is to get the other person to understand that they're just making bigoted assertions with no evidence.
Because if they don't get that, then they won't be open to anything else, right?
Yeah, I think that this is kind of connected to the argument that without the government, there would be no altruism.
Like, people would have no desire to help others.
Right, so then you say... It's the government's responsibility to help others.
Right, so you say, well, without the government, the poor would die in the streets.
And you say, so what you're saying is, before the government, there was no charity.
I mean, that's what you have empirically studied, and that's what you've empirically understood from your study of this.
And then they have to pause because clearly they haven't studied this and they don't know.
But you have to get them to understand that they're making up an answer based on whatever, propaganda, things they've been told, nonsense and lies they've been told based on whatever, status, history.
Right.
So if they say, I know for a fact that there were no roads before there were governments, then they're wrong because there were roads before there were governments.
And so we know that they're wrong.
And secondly, of course, we know that there was roads before there were governments because otherwise you wouldn't need to build any roads to anywhere.
Right.
Because there have to be people out there that the government's going to build a road to.
And they had to have gotten there somehow.
Right.
Just look to look anything up.
Just logically, that has to be the case.
Right.
Otherwise, there'd be 300 million people piled on a pier in Plymouth.
Right.
I mean they have to have gone somewhere ahead of the government in order for the government to build roads there, right?
Right.
Like when they built the government roads – sorry, the government railroads in the 19th century, they had to build them to towns that were already there.
They didn't build roads and then the towns followed, right?
Railroads, right?
Yeah.
And so they're just wrong.
Now, they can either then say, because an honest person will say, you know what, I've never studied this, but I think it's true.
And that's not a good mental practice to just believe something is true without any evidence at all.
That's called bigotry, right?
That's called bias. It's called prejudice.
And so you don't have to look anything up.
You don't have to become an expert in God help us roads in the 18th and 19th century, right?
Well, you have to say, oh, somebody says, well, you need public education because otherwise the poor would be uneducated, right?
So you just say, so you're 100% sure that before government schools, the poor were uneducated.
And they have to stop and say, oh, you know what?
I have no clue. I have never studied this, right?
It's like, okay, so you're certain of something that you've never studied.
And you can say that without being, aha!
But just saying, it's interesting that you're certain of something that you've never studied.
Because that may not be the best approach to acquiring knowledge and wisdom.
You can say that to the person.
And then maybe they'll say, you know, that is interesting.
I don't know why I have that conclusion without, right?
And then you can start to offer some solutions.
But the important thing is to shine the light on the fact that the source of their information is not there.
Right. I know it's not a great way to explain it, but does that sort of make any sense?
That actually makes perfect sense to me because whenever people say that, I always just kind of, like my mind just overflows with reasons for why they're wrong.
Yeah, but the important thing is not that you know that they're wrong, but that they, you've got to get some doubt into their head.
Because the beginning of wisdom is doubt, right?
People who don't doubt anything are just the biggest mind jerks in the planet, right?
So you have to get some doubt into their heads.
If you can't get doubt into their heads, they'll never be curious about anything.
And they'll never want to learn anything and they'll just sail through life with the blinders on, right?
So you've got to expose that thing where they say, well, wait a sec.
I'm not sure that I will say with 100% certainty that the poor were not educated before public schools.
Or that there were no roads before the government.
And you don't have to look all of these things up because if they say I'm 100 percent sure, right, then you can say, well, if I can find evidence of roads before the government, will you then change your opinion?
If I can show you evidence of roads before the government.
That is possible.
Right.
And if they say, no, I'm never going to change my mind.
It's like, well, then you have no mind to change.
So I'm not going to bother.
I might as well be yelling at a day old dead fish.
Right.
Right.
But if they and if they write so because we're entitled to our own opinions, but we're not entitled to our own facts.
I mean, that's not something we can just will.
Yeah. So these are all things where it's more about asking, because we have a tendency, God knows I do, have a tendency to just rattle on about all the stuff that I've accumulated in terms of historical knowledge, which doesn't help.
I don't think it helps because people get bored, they tune out, they turn off.
The important thing I've sort of learned over the years is try to get somebody to catch themselves, to catch their own bias in action.
And if they can do that and have some intellectual maturity and some...
Integrity. Then they'll wonder why they have these conclusions with no evidence whatsoever.
In the same way, like if you're trying to talk someone out of being a racist and he says, well, all blacks are thieves.
It's like, well, what evidence do you have for that, right?
Well, the news. Well, come on.
That's not real evidence, right?
But you have to catch someone in the act of understanding that their opinions have no empirical evidence behind them.
They'll be libertarian anyway, so it doesn't really matter, right?
But I think that just getting them to sort of say, wait a minute, I do have these opinions with no facts behind them.
I wonder why.
Then they can start down the road of – because you want to – don't want to give them answers.
You want to get them interested in looking up the answers themselves, right?
And I have one more question before you have to go.
I kind of asked it in the beginning.
So I noticed that you're really, really good at coming up with comprehensive replies to the questions that people have, or perhaps if someone disagrees with you, you have a very comprehensive reply.
I don't know if you thought about it all before or you think about it while you're talking, but how did you come to the point where you're so articulate to the point where you can come up with a reasonable reply to what someone says?
Because I kind of also want to go to that.
Right, right. Well, I mean, that's the old thing.
You've heard that old joke about New York, right?
Someone says to New Yorker, how do you get to Carnegie Hall, right?
And the New Yorker says, practice, practice, practice.
I mean, I think I may have some innate talent, but it's just year after year after year of writing and reading and debating and writing and reading and debating.
It's just... It's just practice.
I mean, I think if you've just started out on this stuff, then it's like starting out playing the piano.
You hear a lot of bum notes.
You're like, I hear it in my head, but I can't get my hands to do it right.
And you know it in your head, but you can't get the eye.
It is just a matter of annoying, dull, dumb, sometimes frustrating, and sometimes wonderful practice.
I mean, I've been doing this stuff for 25 years, so...
Wow. Hopefully, you know, if I haven't become somewhat decent at it by now, I should be doing something different entirely.
So, like if you've practiced the piano for 25 years and you're still having trouble with chopsticks, then you should maybe switch to a different instrument or a jackhammer or something, right?
Yeah, yeah. So, it is really, you know, read great writers, write articles, have people critique you.
You can take courses in public speaking or debating.
If you're in college, I joined the debating society and that helped a lot.
It really is just a matter of practice.
After a while, you begin to really see the flaws in somebody's arguments really clearly.
But in order to do that, it's like jazz, right?
Like you have to do a lot of piano in order to just let it flow and do improv jazz.
And so it's a lot of doing scales.
It's a lot of practice. It's a lot of falling on your face.
It's a lot of making silly mistakes in debates, which I still sometimes do.
But fundamentally, it's just the practice.
And then you will see very clearly the mistakes that people make and how best to approach or address them.
But, you know, there's no magic pill or shortcut.
I think, at least for me, it's just been a matter of grinding practice.
Okay. Thank you very much.
On the plus side, it's, I think, the best thing you can do for the planet.
And even if you never end up making the world a freer place, having those kinds of negotiating skills will be great in business, in romance, in friendship, in all of the things that are important in life outside of, you know, changing the world for the better.
So I think it's a can't-lose proposition, but I would just say practice is the key.
Thank you very much. I really enjoyed this talk.
Very glad. And I will post it and I will send you a message through Skype when I have so that you can listen to it again if you like.
Great. Thank you very much.
I'm really happy to have had this conversation.
Maybe someday we can have another one.
Absolutely. Well, I do a Sunday show every 4 p.m.
So if you have other questions or comments, just drop by the Free Domain Radio chat room.
4 p.m. I guess your time is in standard and we can chat further.
Okay. Amazing. Thank you.
Thanks and best of luck. Thanks.
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