Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

March 7, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:04:30

1606 Freedomain Radio Sunday Call In Show, 7 March 2010

Ron Paul and voting, a mathematical proof for god, finding philosophical girlfriends, and objections to anarchy!

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	Alright, brothers and sisters, hope you're doing well.
	It's Steph. It is the 7th of March, 2010, and oh my god, we have an explosion of sunshine up here in Canada.
	Everybody's coming out of their homes like bears after a long hibernation, and we were out chatting with our neighbors, so it's like we, you know, in Canada you have neighbors half the year, and the other time you have people in cars waving at you from behind frosted glass, and that's about the best that you can do.
	But, yeah, we were out.
	The street was very busy because there's an open house just down the road.
	But there were lots of kids out and so on.
	And it was really a great time.
	And it's not been a bad winter up here.
	I've only had to shovel the driveway, I think, once or twice, which is kind of unusual.
	But hopefully it will go into a nice summer because the last two summers have been pretty darn crappy.
	So I hope that you're all having a wonderful week.
	I'll just start off with a brief.
	Let's drop back in to have a little chat about our good friend Ron Paul that we haven't talked about in quite some time.
	So this is an article from March the 5th, I guess two days ago, entitled Most House Republicans Vote to Let Schoolchildren Be Held Down, Tied Up, and Put in Solitary Confinement.
	And it's, I won't read the whole article, but it says on Wednesday afternoon, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 4247, the Preventing Harmful Restraint and Seclusion in Schools Act, now called the Keeping All Students Safe Act by a vote of 262 to 153.
	In the final vote count, 238 Democrats and just 24 Republicans voted for the bill, while 8 Democrats and 145 Republicans voted against it.
	H.R. 4247 was introduced in December by blah blah blah, who cares?
	The bill's stated purpose included to prevent and reduce the use of physical restraint and seclusion in schools.
	Protect students from physical or mental abuse, aversive behavioral interventions that compromise health and safety and any physical restraint or seclusion imposed solely for the purposes of discipline or convenience.
	Ensure that physical restraint and seclusion are imposed in school only when a student's behavior poses an imminent danger of physical injury to the student's school personnel or others.
	And it's all nonsense, right?
	I mean, I think we all understand that this bill won't do anything to help that because the very people who will be enforcing it are the very people who are doing, not always, but sometimes if not often, some pretty egregious things to children.
	So it's not going to work and it's not going to be enforced, but what it does do is it gives you a sort of psychological snapshot of these sort of two ruling classes, right?
	right, the Republicans and the Democrats.
	And of course, while it's not often talked about, one of the salient differences between the Republicans and the Democrats is religiosity, in other words, fundamentalism.
	And it is not surprising to me that Christian fundamentalists are keen on the punishment of children, because children are not born religious, and they're And so, in a sense, to a religious person, children are born kind of bad, kind of evil, right?
	That's what I think the metaphor of original sin is all designed to help people to understand.
	And why it's believable is that children don't believe in God.
	And Christians don't believe in God either.
	I don't need to propagandize my child to believe in gravity or that ice cream tastes good or that daddy is the supreme authority in all things.
	Okay, well, so one of those.
	It was either the gravity or the ice cream is important.
	But you see the bad faith of religious people when it comes to children.
	And it is one of the great vulnerabilities of religiosity is children.
	In fact, it's the greatest vulnerability.
	I'm certainly not going to teach Isabella my conclusions.
	I'm going to teach her methodology, but I'm not going to teach her my conclusions.
	If she asks me what my conclusions are, I will tell her, but I'm not going to teach her these particular conclusions.
	I'm going to teach her how to think.
	Because I trust in reason and evidence and empiricism and so on, so I don't need to inflict it upon her.
	But Christians...
	Why would they need to teach their children about God?
	I mean, God would speak to the children, just as God spoke to Jesus and many of the apostles, and as God has spoken to people throughout history, and as we assume, God has spoken to the parents.
	And it's because Christians don't believe in any kind of God that they have to propagandize their children.
	Because if you just let God introduce himself to your children, then you know that nobody's going to show up.
	The propagandizing of children is, to me, completely immoral.
	You do not own your children's minds any more than you own their bodies, and you cannot put poison into their minds any more than you can put poison morally, any more than you can put poison into their bodies.
	And so the fact that children are viewed as bad and recalcitrant and difficult and problematic and wrong and so on is entirely on, largely on the more fundamentalist Christian side.
	And it's sad to say, but not too unpredictable, that Ron Paul voted against this measure.
	Now, again, I'm not saying this is going to protect a single child, but it is a good bellwether of people's values.
	And Ron Paul is supposed to be about...
	Reducing the initiation of force, of being opposed to the initiation of force.
	And clearly, the initiation of force is being violated when children are being aggressed against, when they're not posing an imminent danger to themselves and to others, which is certainly the case in many, many schools throughout the US and other countries, of course, as well, at the present.
	So why, oh why, would Ron Paul toss aside his values in order to vote against this bill?
	Well, because he's got an audience.
	And it is something that I did not appreciate.
	And this is why I look forward so much to these Sunday chats and to the listener conversations that I have.
	I did not realize for many years, I think, just how incredibly fortunate I was to have the listenership that I have.
	Or that we have, since this show is at least half other people as well.
	The reason that I'm so lucky is that most times in business, and I can say this with some authority, having been an entrepreneur for many years, but most times in business, What you do is you go to your investors and you say, hey, I want to create a radio show or a podcast.
	And the first thing that's going to be asked is, A, who's your audience?
	And B, who are your advertisers?
	A, who is your audience?
	And B, who is your advertisers?
	And if I were to say, well, I don't know who my audience is because I'm just going to reason the truth from first principles and see who's interested, right?
	The investors would say, thank you, but no, right?
	Or they're going to say, well, so you're interested in talking about small government or libertarian topics.
	What's the demographics of the libertarian crowd?
	Say, well, you know, there's a lot of religious people in there, right?
	And they're going to say, well, what's your stance going to be on religion?
	They say, well, I'm going to talk about religion as both false and abusive.
	And they're going to say, thank you for playing.
	Let's not get a deal.
	And they would award me the prize, which is a big hollow bowl of nothing.
	Welcome to my show!
	And so I'm incredibly fortunate to have not built this show up as a business and not had to cater to the prejudices of any particular group.
	What I've had to do is continue as I have started with speaking the truth.
	as passionately and as emphatically and with some reasonable backup of expertise and evidence and syllogisms as vociferously, energetically, and hopefully entertainingly as possible.
	And that has freed me from this problem that people have, which other people in the libertarian movement have, and I've talked about it with them to some degree.
	But they have this problem that they are bound by the audience that they already have.
	And once you're bound by the audience that you already have, your choices go down enormously, whereas my choices remain wide open because in the essence of what I talk about, nothing has changed since my very first article back in the end of 2005 now, four-plus years ago.
	Nothing has fundamentally changed.
	And I thank you, thank you all so much for your interest and excitement about philosophy and empiricism.
	And I just applaud everybody for who's involved in this conversation to whatever level and I even applaud those who are vociferously opposed to this conversation for also being guiding lights in their own way and I just thank you all so much for your interest and your support.
	It is a wonderful, wonderful thing to be doing.
	I think we are doing the very best thing that can be done for the world and I think that this example of voting against a bill whose ostensible purpose is to protect children is It's really revealing that Ron Paul would vote against such a thing.
	And I'm happy to hear arguments as to why I'm incorrect in my analysis, but I think voting against a bill that is supposed to be reducing child abuse, particularly with the approach that we take here around the importance of early childhood compassion and empathy and care in bringing about a better world, I hope that we understand what an egregious thing that is for somebody who claims to be for freedom.
	Our last thing I'll say before we take listener calls is we are riding hard to the top 100k, my friends.
	And that is, I think, quite an exciting thing.
	So what I mean by that is we...
	The freedomainradio.com is getting close to...
	The top 100,000 websites within Canada.
	Sorry, within the internet, not within Canada.
	And I'll just give you some numbers here.
	The three-month average, we were 125,121.
	The one-month average, 115,670.
	One-week average over the last week, we are 110 to 29.
	And we're going to go, at this rate, we'll be number one in two years.
	Not quite. But we're going to be in the top 100,000 of websites.
	And for a philosophical conversation that is entirely challenging and entirely radical for many people, it is quite the buckshot.
	Red pills that is going around the world.
	And thank you again, everybody, so much for making this possible.
	But enough, enough, I say, of the BCF Yammer heading.
	So I think we have a caller.
	Is that right, Jimmy James? Yes, that's right.
	And he's online. He just needs to unmute himself and start chatting.
	Yeah, sorry about that.
	Thank you for your patience. I'm all elephant ears.
	Mr. Mullen, it's a great honor to talk to you.
	I want to thank you for what you do and how you do it.
	It's really remarkable.
	I appreciate your words.
	Thank you. Thank you so much. And what can I do for you, my friend?
	Well, actually, I have two issues I'd like to talk to you about.
	But the first, I saw a video or a documentary a couple of weeks ago called Flow.
	It's about water and people trying to corner the market on it.
	It vilified the notion of privatizing water companies, essentially.
	And in the standard liberal conservative mindset, they saw that the privatizing was corporatizing.
	And I am curious to hear your thoughts on the difference and how that can be practically, how privatization can happen Right.
	No, that's an excellent, excellent question.
	I'm no expert on water.
	I drink it, I pass it, and I swim in it.
	But I'm certainly no expert on it.
	But I think there are some general principles that we can use to examine the situation.
	The general fear that people have is, I think, really a real challenge for people to understand how dangerous these concepts are.
	You know, privatization is bad, but when the government gets a hold of it, then it is good.
	And fundamentally, I think what it comes down to is this, is that You can manipulate and bully and try to control a government as a citizen in a way that you just can't do We're the private corporation.
	Because the government can print money, the government can pass laws, and the government does respond to special interest groups.
	And so if you want something done in the world, whether it's the preservation of water, or cleaning the air, or protecting the small, dotted, spotted owl in some tree in Albany, then you have a challenge, because a corporation Let's say you want to protect the forest.
	Well, a corporation that owns that forest is fundamentally responsible to the shareholders and to the employees and even more fundamentally is responsible to its customers.
	And so you really can't bully and pressure a corporation in quite the same way.
	I mean, there is, of course, public relations and you can threaten to smear them and all this and that.
	And a corporation will listen to these things because public image is important.
	But a corporation fundamentally cannot pull money out of its ass and spread it around like candy.
	And so it is limited by what its customers will accept and it is limited by what its employees, how hard its employees or how well its employees will work.
	And it's limited by competition and it's limited by competition not just for customers and resources but for investment dollars and so on.
	And so fundamentally you can't manipulate and bully a corporation in the same way that you can manipulate and bully the government.
	So people who want to do stuff And have such low self-esteem that either what they want to do is unjust and unfair or irrational, or they really want something done and done right and for good reasons and so on, but they lack the self-esteem to sit down with corporate owners or to sit down with...
	And they lack the self-esteem to get what they want through appeals to self-interest and reason and benevolence and so on.
	And so what happens is those kinds of people who either want to do bad things or who want to do good things but lack self-esteem in negotiations, what they want to do is start waving signs and they want to start gathering people together and yelling slogans and so on in an attempt to bully the government to do things.
	And so... When people want to do stuff, they're afraid of corporations because corporations aren't that responsive to bullying.
	But if you want your lunch money, if you're a bully and you want your lunch money, you're going to pick on the kid with spindly legs and glasses and all that, right?
	Who's ungroomed and probably quite shorn of parental protection.
	And it's the same thing. You want to pick on the most responsive entity to your bullying if the only thing that you know how to do is bully.
	So people like governments who want to get things done from that standpoint and they're afraid of corporations because corporations have a limit on how much bullying they will accept and that limit is called profitability.
	And so there's this fantasy that if we move things out of the private sector and into the public sector, they will be more responsive to people's wishes.
	But that's not true at all. They will be responsive to the wishes of special interest groups, and they will be responsive to those interests at the expense of other people, and particularly at the expense of children in the future, which is, of course, selling off unborn children is entirely part of the national debt thing, right? It's always been ironic to me.
	That Republicans are so concerned with the rights of the unborn in terms of fetuses, but they have no problem screwing the unborn with a drill bit when it comes to selling them off to the Chinese because the Republicans ran up some of the largest national debts in history.
	But that's just the normal hypocrisy that you would expect.
	So if there is a problem with water in terms of shortage, then what you want to do is you want to get that water into private hands as quickly as humanly possible.
	And what that will do is it will take it out of the realm of political pull and it will put it back into the realm of profit.
	And what that means is that those who are the most intelligent in managing and using and conserving the resources will be the ones who end up with the most control over them.
	So I think it's really, really important, wherever there's any kind of shortage, you want to get things into private hands as quickly as possible, so that they won't be open to manipulation, so they won't be open to being subsidized and spread around by governments.
	I mean, look at the oil crisis. The oil crisis is driven by a number of very specific state policies.
	The first state policy was the building of free roads.
	I mean, I've never seen an environmentalist talk about privatizing the roads in order to reduce gas consumption.
	But when you have the roads paid for by the collective and profited from by those who use them the most, then it's a heavy subsidy for the use of gasoline.
	And that's a huge problem.
	I mean, this was all built in the post-war period.
	The interstate highway system was built in the post-war period in the US in particular for fears of a nuclear bomb and a nuclear attack or some other form of weapons of mass destruction attack.
	And they wanted the, you know, like the Romans, they wanted the roads to move the troops around and preserve the government's power.
	But as soon as you put these things into the public sphere, you know, roads and the other thing that's, I think, very much involved in the overconsumption of gasoline is the fact that the extraction and protection of all of this gasoline is to a large degree paid for by the taxpayer, right? So... In Saudi Arabia, there are, you know, tens or I think it's almost close to, it was at some point, close to 100,000 troops.
	It's probably been drained down now because of Iraq and Afghanistan.
	But the US taxpayers were paying for the protection of all of this oil through the propping up of this absurd and evil Saudi regime.
	And so even the protection of the oil resources is paid for by the taxpayer and the roads are all paid for by the taxpayer.
	So you have this terrible problem where this subsidization occurs.
	If you privatize all this stuff, you would get very real, very real costs accruing to the consumer, which would be much better.
	The last thing I'll mention is that I don't know what the situation is in the U.S., but up here in Canada, electricity is heavily subsidized by the government.
	And that's another huge problem.
	And I've never seen an environmentalist who says, in order to preserve our energy, we need to take away the subsidies that the government is paying for the taxpayers.
	Of course, the reason that the government pays these subsidies is so that it locks people in.
	It locks itself into power and it locks people in to supporting the government because they're subsidized.
	But of course, it means that people are going to use more power than they otherwise would because of the subsidies.
	So it's cheaper and therefore people are less interested in conserving it.
	I think it is a big problem, and I really hope that people will begin to understand this and overcome their fear of private citizens having control of resources and just recognize that it's true that you may be able to bully the government into doing X, Y, and Z, but it's not to anybody's long-term interest, although it may be certainly towards some people's short-term interest.
	I'm sorry, that's not a very detailed answer, but does that give some use?
	Well, can you hear me?
	Yeah. My question, I guess, was more specific than your answer.
	Your answer is excellent, but how, if you're getting it into private hands, we have another gun in the room, if you will.
	That's the gun of corporate power.
	And so privatizing is, I'm all for privatizing.
	I've read a lot of your stuff, and I understand, you know, Private goods.
	But the problem is that there's a difference between private and only national conglomerate.
	Oh, you mean sort of between a corporation that is free from the state and a corporation that has its hands deep in the pockets of the state?
	Well, yes. And every corporation, by definition, a corporation exists by permission of the state.
	So how do you get it to a responsible citizen past this giant creature of corporatism?
	Well, I would agree with them.
	I mean, because most people say capitalism or the free market, and what they mean is mercantilism or corporism or fundamentally fascism, which is the union of large commercial interests with state power, right?
	The union of those two is called fascism, of course.
	And so if people are anti-fascist, hey, I'm down for that.
	You know, give me a banner.
	I'll march alongside them.
	If people are like, I don't like the idea of transferring resources to corporate power, I'm like, hey, I don't like it either.
	I don't like corporations. I mean, to me, what has happened is the government has set up, because the government is largely run by lawyers, right?
	So the government has set up an incredibly aggressive and destructive and punitive legal system where you can sue the living shit out of people.
	And then what it's done is it is said, but we'll give exceptions to corporations so that a corporation can be sued or can go bankrupt and the risk does not accrue to the individuals who own it.
	So they create this legal fiction called a corporation, which is a way of evading the very dangerous scare tactics that the state has set up to bully people.
	It then grants an exemption to certain parts of the commercial class in return for, of course, donations and support and particularly in the media for never pointing out the gun in the room and so on.
	So it's a really unholy bargain wherein the government sets up all these dangerous, this dangerous tort system of people getting sued and, and all of that.
	And it also sets up a very punitive, at least for the little guy, a very punitive bankruptcy situation.
	And so that inevitably is going to choke business, right?
	So the people who lend money want the people who default on their debts to be really screwed up and the government is happy to agree.
	But then what that does is it begins to kill business growth.
	And so what the government does then is it creates a special shield for businesses from bankruptcy proceedings or for business people from bankruptcy proceedings and from being sued.
	And that's called a corporation.
	And I agree that they're a completely unholy and artificial state-founded I agree with people that, you know, corporatism is vile.
	Corporatism is what the ghost of Mussolini rises to salute and cheer every single morning until this system is changed.
	So I completely agree with people, but what I wouldn't say to them is that the solution is to give things to the government.
	Because if people have a problem with corporations, I say, well, Who created corporations?
	Well, governments. Who enforces the charter called corporatism?
	Well, governments. Who accepts donations from corporations all the time?
	Governments. Who controls corporations?
	Governments. So thinking that you can get a better public good by taking things out of the lackeys and putting it into the hands of their masters is crazy.
	It's like saying, I don't like the guy's Who come round to my restaurant to shake me down for $1,000 a month for, quote, protection.
	So I want to switch that job to the army.
	It's like, no, no, no. Right?
	I mean, putting things in the hands of the state doesn't solve the problem because the state created and sustains the corporations.
	So is there currently any practical...
	Way around this?
	Or we're just stuck with two gunmen instead of one?
	And there's really We're just fucked.
	We're just fucked.
	No, we're not fucked at all.
	We are not. I personally think that this conversation has, obviously, I believe that it has by far the greatest chance to free the world.
	And maybe that sounds crazy, maybe that sounds grandiose, but I think that I've gathered enough evidence through the recent interviews and through the stuff that I've written throughout the years to really prove that this is the case.
	If you want people to be free, you have to raise children better.
	It's nothing to do with intellectual arguments.
	The reality is that human beings have a particular worldview.
	You know what the objectivists used to call a worldview.
	Human beings have a worldview.
	That worldview is not derived from reason and evidence.
	What happens is people grow up with a particular worldview based upon the The surroundings that they grow up in.
	How they're parented.
	How they're preached at by their preachers.
	How they're taught by their teachers.
	All of the authority figures around a child's life create that worldview that the child has.
	And for the rest of that child's life, when he or she is an adult, the child simply creates reasons to justify that worldview.
	And there's very strong scientific evidence that this is not just a theory.
	This is facts.
	And I've just finished an interview With Dr.
	Siegel about this, and I'll publish it this week.
	That there is very strong, in fact, you could say overwhelming scientific evidence that people have a physiological response deep in the brain to particular stimuli, and then they create reasons for that afterwards.
	So, for instance, if a scientist places a probe in your brain and then makes you laugh, you will laugh involuntarily.
	And then afterwards, the scientist will say to you, why did you laugh?
	And everybody makes up a reason as to why they laughed.
	They don't say, I don't know why I laughed.
	They say, well, you did something funny or I saw this and that was funny and so on.
	They make up a reason afterwards to explain their involuntary emotional state.
	And so deep down in the brain, we have this worldview.
	And what happens is we make up reasons after the fact to justify this worldview.
	And that's why arguing people about reason and evidence doesn't work because their beliefs are not derived from reason and evidence.
	The only way that we can change the world is not with arguments and not with blogs but with raising children to be more peaceful raising children to not be afraid of authority raising children as glorious equals raising children peacefully and lovingly then we will raise a society that will have no patience and no interest and no fundamental belief in any kind of political or religious hierarchy But there's no other way to do it,
	at least that I've seen. So we're not fucked.
	But you and I, given that you don't sound like you're 12, you and I are very unlikely to live to see any kind of free world.
	But what we can do is we can take the absolutely necessary steps and the only steps that are going to bring about that kind of freedom.
	Very good.
	So, okay.
	It's interesting. You kind of come around to my other question, if I may.
	Please. I am not an atheist, but I am.
	I have been described by people I respect as the most rational person they've ever met.
	And I posted to your forum about the mathematical untenability of atheism, specifically the necessity Statistically, the necessity of a universal engineer.
	And I've differentiated for myself and for my children, for people I've spoken to, about how that there is an engineer is science, is math, is unavoidable.
	And sorry, could you just run, I think you mentioned this in the chat room yesterday, but perhaps you could run through the argument again so that I can understand it more clearly?
	Well, it's simply that if you take a finite universe and a finite period of time, and there is statistically only so many possibilities of things that can occur.
	And if you consider that the How many variables there are in the spontaneous initiation of life, and how many of those have to happen in a row, in a certain order, under certain conditions, the likelihood of that occurring is vastly, is enormously outside of the realm of statistical possibility.
	I'm sorry to interrupt, but let me just make sure I understand what you're saying.
	So what you're saying is that the steps that would be necessary to create life or to create sentient life like human beings, that the steps are so improbable that statistically it could not have happened on its own.
	Is that your argument? That's a thesis synopsis.
	And what aspects of it do you consider to be so improbable?
	I mean, as far as I understand it, biologists have created the basic building blocks of life in laboratory conditions that resemble that of the early Earth.
	I think it's a bunch of amino acids and lightning and, you know, God knows I don't know the details, but my understanding is that they've let this sort of just run the natural course of the early conditions that...
	The world was in, I guess, a couple of billion years ago when life first arised.
	And they have seen the spontaneous building blocks of life form.
	So I'm just trying to understand what it is, where you see the improbability of life coming into being.
	What part of that process to you is so hard to justify mathematically?
	Well, actually it doesn't take very many problems.
	Very many variables to arrive at impossibility.
	The temperature, the level of moisture, the composition of the chemicals that are there, and even in what you just said, they were able to form amino acids allegedly, which is a far cry from, say, a mold or an amoeba.
	Sure, sure. No, I understand.
	I understand, but there's also billions of years, right?
	So, I mean, there's no way that they can fast-forward that time slice.
	So, what do you mean? Like, the Earth is 93 million miles away from the Sun, and if it were a couple of million miles closer, we'd be too hot, and if it were a couple of million miles further away, we'd be too cold.
	So, there's something that displacement seems more than coincidental, is that right?
	And, when you consider, and what I did on the Excuse me, where I posted, I took the math of the universe.
	I gave it all a number.
	I took the math of the universe that I got from some source I took to be reputable.
	I squared it just to be safe, just to err on the side of generosity.
	The odds, if you simply take a 50-50 chance The odds of 665, 50-50 chances, all coming up heads, for example,
	is more is one in a number greater than every subatomic particle in the universe times every nanosecond in four trillion years.
	Sorry to interrupt.
	I think we can both accept that that would be completely impossible.
	But that's not how evolution works.
	Evolution is not a random process, right?
	Evolution is a process of natural selection.
	And so it's not randomized.
	And so I don't think 50-50 is an appropriate sum to give to that.
	The second thing that I would say is...
	The fact that it's improbable, of course, doesn't mean that it's impossible.
	So let's just take a silly example, right?
	So there's a drop of water that has come from a comet somewhere out in the deep, in the depths of space and has then become part of the Earth.
	And it becomes a drop of water and it sits and floats around the ocean and it circulates around the oceans and then it goes up to the surface and lo and behold, it gets evaporated up into a cloud where it floats around.
	And let's say you've got a dime, right?
	You've got a little dime right there on your front walkway.
	And that water droplet, which came from a comet in the deep reaches of space, deep reaches of space, that comet hits enough dust particles during a rainstorm to fall.
	And it falls and it falls and it falls.
	And it splats down on your dime.
	That one drop.
	Well, if you were to calculate and say, well, what are the odds that that comet drop of water is going to land on that dime, you know, two billion years later?
	You'd say, well, the odds are just so ridiculously tiny and astronomical and so on.
	And you'd be right.
	But of course, there's billions of raindrops falling throughout billions of years, hundreds of billions, if not trillions of raindrops falling throughout billions of years.
	So sooner or later, right, one of them is going to hit that dime that you've got out in your front porch.
	It's not God who's driving it.
	And from what we see in the universe, I mean, the other planets appear to be completely uninhabitable.
	And don't add anything in particular to the Earth's survivability.
	I guess the moon helps a little bit with the tides, it helps with fishing and so on.
	But it's not like survival on Earth is not aided by Jupiter.
	So if there's some engineer who was out there building the perfect home for human beings...
	Then it didn't do a very good job because it put all these planets out there that don't help at all and so on.
	And of course, a lot of the planet is inhospitable and asteroids hit and there's tsunamis, so there's diseases.
	So it's not a very friendly place to human life, or at least it wasn't until sort of 19th or 20th centuries.
	So, I would sort of, there's a lot of coincidences for sure, but in a very large universe with the creation of life, which at least the building blocks for life, which seems to be something that is possible, followed by natural selection, I agree with you that it seems entirely improbable, but improbable is what fits into what we know about the universe, which is that The Earth is the only place that we know of that life can even remotely exist.
	And of course, it will take us going to other solar systems to find out more.
	But it may be that this is the only place in the universe that life exists.
	I think that's unlikely, but let's say it is, in which case there's just that one drop of rain that hit the dime.
	But that doesn't mean...
	That the universe is designed for life, because then you would expect everywhere in the universe for there to be life.
	But it does seem pretty random, and I think there's just a lot of coincidences that have accrued, which make it seem designed, but I don't think that the design is a very strong argument.
	Okay. To take your metaphor another step further, what we're talking about statistically is not merely a drop of water hitting a dime, a drop of water from space hitting a dime.
	We're talking about the physical unlikelihood that is tantamount to a raindrop hitting that dime, hitting a dime on my walkway every morning at 8.13am from the time I'm 6 to the time I'm 96.
	I'm sorry, I'm still trying to understand where the statistical improbabilities occur.
	And if you could just explain a little bit about that, I'd appreciate that.
	Obviously, I agree with you that it's not a lot of planets that support life, for sure, but this happens to be one that does, and that's not a violation of any kind of natural laws.
	But where do you see the very small likelihood?
	Once there's a planet that can support life, which is obviously not impossible, it seems almost inevitable that life will occur, and after that, evolution kind of takes over, so I'm still not sure where the impossibility comes from.
	Well, I'm going to say that I don't know where you get the possibility.
	I don't know where you come up with the possibility.
	Not to be No, that's fine.
	But I'll explain it again briefly, right?
	So we have a planet that's the right amount of distance from the sun, which has the right combination of, I guess, nitrogen and oxygen and other things in the air that's breathable.
	And we have, I guess, enough water and so on.
	So there's a certain amount of coincidence there.
	I completely agree with you.
	But after that, it seems that life is going to happen.
	I mean, because again, they've built at least the basic building blocks of it in the laboratory setting that replicates the early Earth environment.
	And after life begins to develop, after you get DNA reproduction, evolution takes over and you have this competition, survival of the fittest and the weeding out of bad mutations and the survival enhancement of good mutations for reproduction.
	It's certainly not a design element that the Earth happens to be this far from the Sun.
	That's just coincidence. It seems that life is going to arise in that kind of environment sooner or later.
	And after life does arise, evolution takes over.
	So I'm just not sure where the vast improbability exists.
	And I'm certainly happy to hear.
	I'm not a huge expert on this.
	I've just finished listening to Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth.
	So I think I know a little bit, but I'm not any genius in this area.
	But I'm happy to hear where the improbabilities occur.
	Well, I think you put your finger right on it.
	You said after DNA comes to exist.
	Then you have survival of the fittest and so on.
	Right there, just prior to after DNA exists, is where you have your enormous improbability.
	Sorry, after DNA comes into existence is the enormous improbability?
	No, just prior to that.
	Just prior to that, okay. DNA coming into existence.
	You've got whatever sequence you have, however many of those you have, each one has a certain likelihood of existence.
	I use a 50-50 chance because 50-50 is good odds, but if each one is only a 50-50 chance, Sorry, each one of what?
	If each gene coming together in a strand of DNA is a 50-50 chance, the likelihood of, if you have 665 genes, and I use that number intentionally, I'm sorry.
	I'm sorry. I just need to interrupt you and I really do apologize for that.
	I'm just trying to follow what it is you're saying.
	Again, I'm no expert. My understanding is that the genes do not assemble themselves randomly though, right?
	I mean, this is all a process of evolution, right?
	I mean, they don't just all come together sort of randomly.
	I mean, they evolve from RNA and so on, right?
	Well, they do now.
	I mean, the DNA my wife and I put together are sitting at the table right now and Oh, but that's not random, right?
	I mean, that DNA didn't all assemble itself randomly.
	But initially, if that had to start without an engineer, it had to have been random.
	Well, no, see, this is an argument, and I'm going to paraphrase an argument that Dawkins uses, so, you know, with apologies to Dickie D, but...
	There's an argument which says that for a human being to assemble itself or for life to assemble itself, it's like a wind blowing through a junkyard and then assembling a 747 out of those parts, right?
	And that that's so wildly improbable that somebody has to make the 7...
	If you have a 747, somebody has to have made it because there's no way that randomness is going to assemble the composite parts.
	Is that what you mean? Yes, or even something as simple as an iron skillet.
	All right. Sure, but that's not how life develops, and I'm not going to try and reproduce Dawkins' work or the work of other thinkers in this area.
	I would suggest, you know, you can have a look at The Blind Watchmaker, you can have a look at The Selfish Gene, or I would really, really recommend plowing through The Greatest Show on Earth.
	Because he, I think, brings some amazing scientific, empirical, and reasoning evidence to bear on that this is not a valid argument in terms of how life develops, that it is not a random assemblage, that it's not a 747 that got blown together out of pieces in a junkyard, but it is something that develops very selectively and very...
	It's not a conscious will, but it's like a conscious will in terms of survival and reproduction and so on.
	So I'm, you know, not to bore everybody who may have already settled this a bit in their own mind, but if you would like to take a look through The Greatest Show on Earth or something like that, there are other books out if that's not to your taste.
	Then I think if you have a look at those books, I think you'll have a better way of understanding the slow and gradual and selective approach that ends up assembling what seems to be an incredible miracle, which I agree it is. I think you'll have a better way of understanding the I mean, I have a daughter too, and she's just astounding when it comes to the things that she can do and the idea that this is all random.
	I agree with you.
	If it were random, it would be completely impossible.
	So evolution is quite the opposite of a random process.
	It is a very directed and focused process that assembles more and more complex entities which have a greater and greater chance of survival based upon external threats and internal diseases.
	So it is a very, very focused process.
	It is a very self-selecting process, and it is the opposite of randomness.
	Now, some of the mutations will seem kind of random, but the way in which beings evolve is not at all random.
	Well, I thank you very much for your time, sir.
	Thank you so much. And if you do have a look at those books and read them, I would be happy to chat further.
	And I think it would be interesting for the book club to talk about it too.
	I was really quite impressed.
	Could I ask you one small favor?
	Sure. On the message board, when I posed what we've just discussed, that thread was locked.
	And it seems to me...
	Without cause. I mean, I wasn't rude.
	No one was rude to me.
	I didn't see any overt problems going on.
	And I'm just wondering if you would, and I'm not asking you to answer this right now.
	Yeah, sorry. I didn't know it was locked, and I certainly didn't lock it, but I will ask around to the other admins and find out what the reasoning was.
	I appreciate that enormously.
	And I know this doesn't quite mean to you what it does to me, but God bless you, sir.
	Congratulations on your beautiful daughter.
	Thank you so much, and I appreciate the conversation.
	I really did enjoy it, and I also realized that if I'm going to answer this more intelligently, I need to do a bit more research, so I appreciate your patience as I flogged my way through some semi-answers.
	Great. You did great.
	Thanks very much. Bye-bye.
	All right. Thanks. All right.
	Do we have another caller, or are we still waiting for them?
	Hi, Steph. Oh, hi.
	Hello. I have a question about...
	Well, actually, I wanted to probe you for some advice on the meetup group I started in Philadelphia.
	If you have any tips for philosophy, since you yourself have started a very popular philosophy show.
	Thanks. Could you just back off from your mic a bit?
	I'm getting a bit of overthrow on the audio.
	Wait, let me... How's that?
	That's better. Thanks. All right.
	Okay. Just to throw in some tidbits on that guy that was just on, I wanted to add that when people think of that blind watchmaker thing, the building the 747, that's a very top-down architecture type of thought process.
	That's how you build things as humans, but everything as far as biology is bottom-up.
	Yeah, you start with very simple bits, and it's almost like there's an increasingly powerful magnet drawing all of these things together, and people think that's a god, but it's just evolution.
	Right. Okay, so I started this Philly meetup group, and we've had...
	Sorry, just before you start, what was the purpose of the meetup group?
	Okay. So...
	I had three goals in mind.
	One is that I'm hoping that I can create something that attracts the kind of love I'm looking for to start a family and all of that.
	That's like a very end goal.
	A secondary goal would be to meet friends, more friends, grow the The Philly group here with some people that are more my age and more and more interesting people.
	And a tertiary goal would be to spread the ideas around and enjoy talking about philosophy over beer.
	And I guess I have a sort of a methodology for kind of getting to those three end goals.
	And sorry, just so people who don't know Nate understand what he means when he says that he wants to meet people closer to his own age, the Philly meetup group that Nate has founded is called Eh?
	What? You pee what?
	Huh? What?
	Sorry, go on. Get off my lawn!
	Sorry. And you have to have suspenders cranking your pants right up to your nipples.
	That's absolutely a given right there.
	Right. Sorry.
	All right. Distracted.
	How's your train of thought now, baby?
	Yeah, I thought that I sort of had a methodology for getting to that point, but it's not all really pieced together as a sort of a project plan as much as it might, could be.
	Like, I want to attract people that...
	That are very interested in truth, very curious, very honest, very...
	All the people that are at FDR, and I want to repel the sort of creepy, abstract people that want to come in and sort of be anti-philosophical, anti-truth.
	Right, so all philosophy, no trolls, right?
	Right. And I know a large part of that is being sort of assertive when necessary, and And I think in the abstract, just intellectually, I know this, that having fun with it is certainly helpful.
	But I don't know how that works in practice.
	Having fun with it? What do you mean?
	Because that's how I grew my dodgeball and volleyball career.
	Meetup in Houston so big.
	It got to like 530 members before I left.
	That is one crowded ass volleyball court just for those who don't know.
	That's like stacking people up like court would spike out my head.
	Luckily there was more than one court.
	Oh good. That's even better.
	Yeah. But I just had a lot of fun like playing and that's all I was there for.
	I was there to just play the game and have fun and I was certainly not the best player there.
	By any means, but I think that's part of what attracted people to the whole thing.
	But sometimes I have, and I know you've said before that it's not about me, but I can't seem to shift my mind into that mode.
	When I go to these meetups, I feel sort of disconnected.
	I have no idea what I'm doing.
	All three years seem to empty out of my mind.
	Everything I've learned from your philosophy podcast, everything I've learned from reading Ayn Rand, everything I've learned from reading Plato, from reading Socrates, or Aristotle, everything I've read from reading Nietzsche.
	It all seems to just sort of empty out of my head.
	I can't help but...
	I guess I've got this lack of confidence.
	Right, right. And I'm not sure how to handle the whole thing.
	Right. Okay, and how would you know...
	I mean, the reason I asked what the point is, is how are you going to know when it's successful?
	Like, what would that mean to you?
	What would success mean to you?
	I think it would...
	I think it would look like a very...
	Not a huge group, but like a group of 20 people or so.
	And all really enjoying each other's company.
	All interacting.
	I want it to end up a lot like our meetups are on Thursdays with just the FDR folks.
	Right. But bigger.
	And attracting new people all the time.
	I want it to look not just so much having philosophical conversations, but intimate conversations about how philosophy is applied in our personal lives and things like that.
	I'm not being very concrete, I don't think.
	No, it's fine.
	I think I understand what you're talking about.
	But sorry, come on. I think I can really describe it more in a feeling.
	I think when I go meet with everyone on Thursdays, I feel a sense of warmth and I feel relaxed.
	I feel visible and happy.
	And I sort of want to expand that, I guess.
	Right, right.
	Okay, okay. And in what way do you feel that it is not succeeding in the way that you'd like it to?
	It's not growing. And a lot of people have noticed, like Greg, the last meetup, pointed out, rightly so, because I agreed that's how I was feeling, but I was disconnected.
	And I wasn't sort of taking a leadership role.
	Right. And I felt sort of out of touch and Not sure where to take it, and I sort of felt that way.
	And there also weren't very many people that were new.
	It was just like one or two people have shown up so far that aren't familiar with FDR. Right.
	So it's like, okay, do we talk about advanced ideas with one person who's sort of new, or do we talk about Old stuff that we all accept and all understand, like first principles, like existence exists, A is A, all that stuff.
	Or do we take it a different direction?
	Because I set up the meetups with the topic or a theme.
	Like, this Tuesday is ethics.
	And the time before that was concepts.
	The time before that was first principles.
	But it never really...
	It's very hard to make it classroom-like because it's very amorphous.
	It's like people are coming and going.
	It grows in size.
	It's not like a class.
	Right, right.
	It's kind of complicated in that sense.
	And so I decided to add a book club aspect to it as well so that at least there's a central focus like, okay, everybody that's read this book can come and we can talk about the book.
	Okay, let me start asking you some questions, because I think I understand what the issues are.
	So, how long do you think it will take for somebody who's just got some interest in philosophy, or who, God forbid, has read bad philosophy, how long do you think it would take for them, roughly, to switch over to the reason and evidence stuff that we talk about here?
	Well, either they're going to seize onto it or they're going to reject it.
	Let's say they seize onto it.
	How long do you think it will take until they are valuable and useful companions who can return value to you?
	A few months, I guess.
	A few months?! Years?
	A few years? It's taken me three years.
	What an insult to yourself that, well, you know, random people can do it in three months.
	I mean, okay, it took me years, but random people, anybody off the street should be able to do it, oh, in just a couple of months, right?
	Right. I'm just statistically, right?
	I mean, have you known anybody who's done it in a couple of months?
	No. Right.
	So, again, we're all about the empiricism, right?
	I mean, y'all are smarter than me.
	It took me 20 years, right?
	Y'all got it down to two years or three years, right?
	That's a damn improvement, right?
	Okay. But when you met Christina...
	Just the reality of the situation, right?
	Right. But now, when I met my wife, though...
	She had studied as a scientist.
	She was fascinated by self-knowledge.
	She was, you know, obviously very well educated and experienced and so on.
	And so we, you know, we had those values in common anyway, right?
	Because it's the values that really matter.
	I mean, it's not the details. It's not the conclusions, right?
	Right. I mean, God forbid, right?
	It's not like I have all the answers and so I need somebody who's either going to A, listen to those answers and repeat them back to me, or B, has exactly the same answers already.
	I mean, that would not be a relationship.
	That would be either a photocopy or a sort of mentor-learner relationship, which is not appropriate, I think, for romance.
	But so, you know, she taught, I taught, and blah, blah, blah, right?
	Right. I mean, I always think of when I have a sort of particular plan or a project, I like to think of a skeptical group of investors.
	Like I'm asking people for a million dollars for this, right?
	Or something like that.
	And they're going to pepper me with all of these difficult questions.
	And Lord knows I've had those difficult questions in my business career, as I'm sure you have as well.
	Quite a lot, right? But the questions that people are going to ask is, well, what are you hoping to get out of it?
	Well, a girlfriend. Okay, so how are you planning on achieving that?
	Well, I'm going to take somebody with very little knowledge of philosophy and then turn them into a great philosopher in about three months, right?
	And they'd say, well, that seems kind of fast.
	What's your evidence that that has ever occurred, right?
	Uh... It hasn't.
	How long did it take you?
	A couple of years. So if she does it in a couple of months, she's way smarter than you and she's going to get bored, right?
	She's way smarter than anybody alive, I think, right?
	I mean, it took Ayn Rand 20 years, right?
	Wow, yeah. I feel kind of some despair when you say that.
	I know. I understand that, and I think that's good.
	Because remember, philosophy is all about, particularly free-domain radio, is all about taking the rising irrational hopes and expectations and slapping them with the wet, cold, dead fish of empiricism, right?
	Yeah. And you've been avoiding this despair, and it is, right?
	Let me give you an example.
	So let's say that you have been studying piano and jazz composition theory for years and years, right?
	And you've been working at it really hard.
	You've been practicing hours a day, right?
	Right. And you say...
	I want to get together a group of people to jam, and the only requirement is that people have to like music.
	Well, it's going to sound like a god-awful mess, right?
	Right. Because it's like, I like music.
	Can you play? I like music, right?
	I mean, it's not, you know, they're just going to sit there and start hitting the piano keys with, I don't know, a ball-bearing hammer, a jackhammer, or their forehead, right?
	Right. Right, right.
	I mean, if you've ever been to karaoke bar, you know that a simple like of music does not music meek, right?
	Right. And so I think it's important to recognize that you've graduated to professional jazz musician, right?
	Or at least skilled, very skilled amateur, right?
	Right. And so it's not likely.
	In fact, I would say the likelihood is virtually nil that you're going to put an ad out saying, I want to jam with people and just have random people show up and you have no idea of their training or their experience or whatever, right?
	And you're just going to sit down and start playing and it's going to sound like, you know, a bunch of cats in a bag rolling down a steep flight of stairs, right?
	So apparently that's a bad plan.
	Well, I'm just saying, empirically, I don't think there's a lot of evidence that success is imminent.
	Right. So, I can't think of any alternatives to this plan off the top of my head, but I certainly feel less motivated about my original plan.
	Well, there's two things that you can do when you're not meeting the right person.
	You can up your game or you can lower your standards, right?
	Right. And by lowering your standards, I'm not talking, you know, find some half-drunk female bum drug addict and, you know, drag her home and put her on the couch.
	What I'm saying is that to expect, like if you look at philosophy as like jazz, you don't have to be married to a jazz musician if you're a jazz musician, right?
	It's probably nice if you can, but it's not essential, right?
	Right. I would also suggest that I'm not saying...
	Virtue is not a standard that I would compromise on when it comes to a romantic relationship or even a friendship.
	Virtue, I think, is essential.
	But I think that there are some people who, for a variety of reasons, are, you know...
	Kind of more naturally virtuous.
	Obviously, I think it has to do with their upbringing, perhaps a little bit to their physiology, mostly to do with their upbringing.
	But they've been raised pretty well, right?
	I mean, nobody's raised perfectly, but they've been raised pretty well, you know, with good enough parents and a good self-esteem and so on, right?
	And they were not beaten.
	They were not verbally abused.
	They were not kicked. They were not yelled at.
	They were raised pretty well.
	And they're going to have, I think, more of the virtue than somebody, let's say, who's really messed up, who starts getting into philosophy and self-knowledge.
	It's going to take them a long time to get to That basic, right?
	Somebody who's a born runner and somebody who's trying to get out of a wheelchair, right?
	Not the same place after the same amount of work, right?
	Right, right.
	So you don't have to take the raw clay of human dysfunction, mold them through philosophy and wait for the machine to spit out the cube of perfection on the other side, right?
	That would be an enormous amount of work and I don't think that would even work.
	No, I don't think it would. I think it would be an interesting thing to do, but I don't think that kind of disparity is a good basis for a romantic relationship.
	Or even a friendship, right?
	I mean, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, I agree. And so, you can...
	You can, if you want, you can continue with the groups.
	But I think, my guess is that if you're going in there with an agenda, then you're also going in there with a desire to control, in a sense, or a desire to find someone or to find the right person, either as a friend or as a lover or whatever.
	And that takes something out of the receptivity?
	Right, but I thought of it this way.
	I also want to start a family and I also want to have, you know, Enough money to stay with the child for the first two years, like you were saying in the philosophy podcast.
	But in order to even get there, I have to have a goal of making it to management position, something that I can slide back into after two years or three years, something that makes a little more money so that I can save, like all these other first goals that don't seem to have anything to do with my end goal.
	And why do you want to chant?
	Because I want to share...
	I want to give something that I never got.
	I want to share...
	I want to create a world that I never had.
	Right.
	Now you understand that's a little bit about you, right?
	I don't know how it couldn't be somewhat about me.
	Okay.
	Well, but that's a lot about you, right?
	To give the child something you never had is defining the child's, like, what you have to give by an absence or a deficiency or the presence of something negative, right?
	All right.
	Well, I guess I've never really thought about this question that much.
	And I think it's important.
	I'm not saying have a kid or don't have a kid.
	I mean, I think they're fantastic, of course, right?
	But I think that it's something to think about, right?
	Right. Yeah, I'll have to think about that more.
	Now, I would suggest, I mean, the goal that I've had, it doesn't have to be your goal, of course, right?
	I mean, but you said since this is successful, you know, what was my goal?
	My goal is simply to get people excited about philosophy.
	That's all I'm doing.
	That's all I'm about. And to get people excited about philosophy means that it has to be real.
	It has to be something that has an impact on their daily lives.
	It has to be something that's achievable.
	And it has to be something that's powerful.
	And I'm not there to teach anybody any...
	Fundamentally, any conclusions.
	I'm not there to teach anybody fundamentally even any principles.
	What I am there is to get people engaged in the act of thinking about thinking.
	Because that's what philosophy is. It's thinking about thinking, right?
	Because you can think about stuff that's not philosophy, like how do I get downtown, right?
	You need to think about that, but that's not philosophy.
	Philosophy is thinking about thinking, and I think that's where the greatest power is to change the world, right?
	Because if we don't know what we're thinking, we just end up acting out, as we've listened to in a variety of these interviews lately.
	So I just want to get people to get excited about thinking about thinking.
	And if that's your goal, it's just to get people excited about thinking about thinking.
	If that's a worthwhile goal, then you can try that on.
	Because it allows you to focus on the other person, right?
	I don't know that I can forget the final goal.
	I'm not saying that you forget the final goal, but what I'm saying is that if you're going into a four-year college degree, you don't sit there every day and think about graduation, right?
	You say, I've got this assignment, I've got this assignment, I've got to go to this class, I've got to do this homework, I've got to read this book, I've got to write that essay, I've got to take this exam, and so on, right?
	It's a series of steps. Now, of course, it's all towards the end goal, but you're thinking about each step, not focusing only on the end goal, because otherwise you won't get there, right?
	I mean, if you sit around at a college degree daydreaming about graduation, you're not going to graduate, right?
	Right. So, I'm not saying that you have to go out and make people, because you can't, interested in philosophy, but I think if you're enthusiastic about philosophy as a discipline, as the discipline, it's not just a discipline, it's the discipline, because everything that is good in life comes out of thinking about thinking, because otherwise we're just doing random shit that we've inherited from culture and prejudice and history.
	But if you're looking for people I mean, they can work in a donut factory, right?
	but are they excited or curious or interested in thinking about thinking?
	I think I'm ambivalent about that.
	Right. Look, it may not be anything that will be of value to you.
	I'm just sharing what my goal is.
	There's this thing I always hear that it's the most frustrating thing in the world.
	I was expressing just how annoying this advice has been for me to my therapist.
	There are people that will tell you this paradoxical way of thinking, like, you will meet someone when you're not looking.
	Oh, yeah. But that's the most annoying thing in the entire world because I can't not look if my goal...
	Oh, I agree with you. They say this to couples who are having trouble conceiving as well.
	You'll get pregnant when you're not thinking about it.
	It's like, um, what?
	How could that happen, right?
	If you want to have a kid, you want to have a kid.
	Can't turn that off, right? But so I agree with you.
	I agree with you for sure.
	I agree with you for sure. That's like saying you'll get a job when you're not looking.
	No, you won't, right?
	Because nobody's going to come past your house and say, hey, I hear you have a resume that might be of use to me, so come on board, right?
	Right. Yeah, you have to be looking for a job to get a job.
	Yeah, you have to be looking for someone to get someone.
	I agree with that. All right.
	So... That's like me saying, I'll have a successful show about philosophy the moment I stop trying to have a successful show about philosophy.
	What the hell does that mean?
	You know, take your zen lower intestine pretzel and shove it...
	Anyway, go on. Well, like, this whole idea sort of stemmed from a conversation with Greg G, and also before that, Long before that, from a conversation with you about a philosophy group that I was going to in Houston, a guy that was kind of a relativist.
	I like that.
	Kind of a relativist. Kind of a relativist.
	He's not absolutely a relativist, because then he would explode.
	Right. And so you were like, well, why don't you create your own?
	But if you're doing it to meet someone, right?
	But you can RTR that mother, right?
	So you can say at the meetup group, I'm single and I'm looking, right?
	And if you're interested, fantastic.
	If not, no problem. We'll talk about philosophy, but I've just, you know, let's get that up front, right?
	That's an interesting thought experiment there.
	Look, if you want somebody who's interested in directness and honesty...
	That's the way to find them, right?
	And if somebody's offended by that, then it's like, okay, well, we just talk about philosophy and that's it, right?
	But if they're offended by somebody saying, I'm interested in a romantic relationship, and if you are too, let me know, and, you know, whatever, right?
	But that's just being direct, right?
	That's pretty blunt. That's pretty blunt, right?
	I mean, but, you know, frankly, in your 30s, you know, time is time-pressing, right?
	If you're looking for a job, you phone them up and you say, I want a job, not, would you like to meet to network?
	Right. That's a good point.
	And if they're a fan, well, what do you mean you want a job?
	That's very presumptuous of you.
	It's like, okay, well, I want a job, but not with you, right?
	Right. You know, the good thing about being in your 30s is you don't have to beat around the bush anymore, right?
	You don't have to be coy.
	You don't have to, you know, because time's pressing.
	It's like... It's an old joke.
	Some comedian used to make this joke, you know, where she's something like, New York Subways, you know, it's great.
	You basically... It's so tight, you know, you basically stand there with your...
	You end up saying to some guy, hey, now that we've had our groins mashed together for the last half hour, want to start a family?
	Right. But there's something that's kind of true about that, right?
	Right.
	I mean, why not just be direct?
	I have been contemplating that for years.
	You've been contemplating directness.
	Look, it will...
	It will...
	It will...
	It will... And I recognize the rational...
	I'm getting that. I understand the rationality behind that, and it makes all the sense in the world, but I'm scared to death of it.
	Oh, I totally understand that.
	I totally understand that, and I am too.
	I mean, you think it's fun for me to say, please send me money to every 10th podcast or whatever?
	I don't like it, but... But it's what I have to do, right?
	I mean, it's the responsible thing to do for success of what I think is the most important conversation in the world, right?
	So I have to do it, right? It's not fun to make cold calls.
	It's not fun to ask someone out with the possibility of rejection.
	It's not fun for any of these things.
	And directness and bluntness certainly isn't fun because lots of people get upset by directness and bluntness.
	And the reason for that, I believe, is just I think we're born very direct and blunt.
	Certainly, I'm learning a lot about directness and bluntness from my daughter, who is very direct and blunt.
	So I think we're born that way.
	I just think that directness and bluntness gets kind of pounded out of us because we're just not allowed to have clear opinions and to be, quote, demanding, right?
	Sorry, just to give you an example of that.
	I was at the library the other day with Izzy, and she's in a reading group.
	She can't read, obviously, but she's in a sort of point and say things and bang on tambourines and blow bubbles kind of group.
	And she was in there for a while, and then she got kind of bored.
	And I try to make a big point of smiling and waving at all the children because, you know, frankly, they all seem kind of inert.
	I think that they seem kind of spaced out, you know, like when you go to the mall.
	I mean, Izzy's running around leaving footprints on the ceiling, and most of the other kids are wedged in their strollers just staring off into space with bits of dribble coming out of their lips.
	So I try to make this sort of big point to smile at the kids, and I do feel very friendly towards kids, and I like them.
	So I smile.
	Yeah, and so the kids will gravitate towards me if their own particular caregivers, and sometimes it's nannies there, sometimes it's moms, it's almost never dads, right?
	And they're sort of warm to me, and they'll come over and they'll want to say, and of course Isabella is very friendly, and she's high, and she's all that, and And so we were in this class, and there was this girl who was, I think, about two, maybe two and a half.
	And she was hanging around with Izzy and I. And her mom seemed kind of cold and angry.
	It was wearing army pants.
	I don't know what that means, but I just remember that as a sort of vivid detail.
	And Isabelle, at one point, wanted to go out of the room.
	She just got kind of bored with the sing songs, and she wanted to go out of the room and do things in the main library area.
	And this was sort of a separate room.
	And so we went out, and the girl who was a little older, whose mom seemed kind of cold and angry, followed us out.
	And the mom sort of just grabbed her, really grabbed her and held her, and she burst into tears.
	I mean, I think that was kind of humiliating.
	That's tragic. And anyway, she did make it out, and I didn't intervene at this point.
	And we don't have to sort of go into why, but I didn't intervene at this point.
	And... I did sort of give some real sympathetic looks towards and went, aww, towards the girl who was, you know, busy trying to get away from her mom and make a break for it.
	And when the mom scooped up the girl and she was just sort of white-lipped and really angry and strode back into the reading room, she just turned to me and she hissed.
	And she was like, ah, she is so high maintenance.
	Oh, my God.
	Yeah, it's like, you know, I made it.
	It's like, I made it.
	You grabbed her. What do you mean?
	You're I'm anyway, we don't have to sort of get into what happened to the aftermath or anything like that.
	But but the purpose, what I'm trying to say is that in this, in this situation, the girl was expressing a clear preference, right?
	The little girl that she wanted to to come out and play with us.
	I mean, I end up with... When I'm at the library, I end up with kids rolling all over me and they just like to play because I'm sort of very...
	I sort of get down on the ground and play with them.
	And I mean, of course, I work in a daycare.
	I say lots of experience with this. So she wanted to come out and to play with us.
	So she expressed a clear desire and she got kind of...
	I'm not going to say attack, but she got kind of roughly handled for that.
	And her mom got really, really angry.
	So how long is it going to take for that kid to be bluntness averse, to be direct averse, to be open and honest expression of preferences averse when it gets her into that kind of trouble?
	And we know, right?
	You and I know what that history is, right?
	So directness of expression, if we fear that it causes parental attack or directness of expression in a church, how well does that go down with the priest?
	Or directness of expression, you know, you're in a school classroom and you're bored, what happens if you put your hand up and say, I'm bored?
	Right? I mean, you know, if you're the Wiggles or something, you're some children's group, and you go around, and all the children are bored, you're out of a job, right?
	If the children stick up their hand and say, I'm bored, you're like, I'm so sorry, let's try a different song, let's try something else, because, you know, we're supposed to be here to entertain and enlighten you, so if Sesame Street was completely boring, it would be off the air, right?
	But in schools, you can't stick your hand up and say, I'm bored, because what happens?
	You get labeled a troublemaker, you might go to the principal's office, or you might end up getting drunk.
	Or tied down and thrown in a person.
	Yeah, or thrown into these god-awful solitary confinement cells, right?
	So I'm just trying to say that I totally understand that fear, and I feel it too.
	It's not natural to us.
	It's just the result of early trauma, which doesn't mean that just because it's explainable that you can just snap your fingers and overcome it.
	But I'm a big fan of the opposite, you know, as you know, right?
	I mean... The Costanza approach.
	Yeah, if everything I do is wrong, if every instinct I have is wrong, then the opposite of that must be the right thing to do, right?
	So I'm drawn to that which I'm anxious about.
	And I am, you know, constantly anxious about...
	What I'm doing on the shows, right?
	I mean, are people going to like the interviews in this direction?
	Are people going to like my new novel?
	Are people going to try to keep HD hyperbots entertained?
	It's a challenge, let me tell you.
	1,500 podcasts. How do you tell the difference, though?
	How do you tell the difference between a gut feeling of anxiety around someone being a danger sign versus the feeling of anxiety being around fear of being direct?
	Well, no, I think you're right.
	I mean, it's a good question, but the two standards that I have is, one, voluntarism.
	Is the relationship voluntary?
	So if the relationship is voluntary, then I can be direct, and if the person gets upset, I can just not be with that person, right?
	Right. Right?
	So a relationship that's not totally voluntary would be my neighbor, for instance, right?
	Right. Like, he's my neighbor, I'm his neighbor, so whatever.
	We may have differences of values, but, you know, I'm not going to sit there and pick fights with him because it's not a voluntary relationship.
	Or my boss, right? It's not a particularly voluntary relationship insofar as it's a lot of hassle to change jobs, just as it is a lot of hassle to move.
	But if it's a coffee shop or if it's, you know, someplace where I can be honest and it doesn't really interfere with any semi-voluntary relationships, then...
	I'm fine with it.
	And the other thing, too, is around virtue, right?
	I mean, it's around that little thing we call honesty, right?
	Am I being honest? Right.
	Right. With myself, at least.
	I don't think even in some of these situations I'm being honest with myself.
	Well, certainly, you know, as Polonius says to Hamlet, above all to thine own self be true, for then it shall follow as night follows day.
	That canst not be false to any man, right?
	So, for sure, you have to know the truth in yourself before you can express it to others.
	I mean, there's...
	I think I have a fairly wide range of what I find attractive.
	Like, there's at least 10 people I think are attractive on every city block, so it's not...
	Maybe I just like...
	The guy who sidles up to a freshly glistening fire hydrant and, hey, how you doing?
	Especially the... I like him, nobly!
	Sorry, go on. Right.
	Right. But, like, I'll see someone on a bus I think is attractive, but I just...
	I'm so afraid, like, what do I say?
	I have no idea. How am I supposed to be direct?
	But I guess, you know, just being bluntly direct like that...
	Yeah, I wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't necessarily do that on a bus, to be honest with you.
	I mean, I wouldn't, unless your mace tolerance is a lot higher than mine.
	I just, I think that could be a little alarming.
	I think it's okay if you sort of got together people for a group or whatever and so on.
	And it doesn't necessarily have to be like you announce it, but it's okay to let that information come out.
	I just wouldn't, you know, go up to somebody on a bus and say, you know, I really want kids.
	Let me check your teeth.
	Right. Right. Right, so okay, then that's the...
	I think that's the frustration with this, because...
	But the other thing, sorry, the other thing, too, is that it's okay.
	To me, it's okay to approach people and it's okay to be honest.
	And look for the obvious things. Is she wearing a ring or does she have a large tattooed biker head next to her or whatever, right?
	Right. But, yeah, I think it's okay.
	I mean, as long as, you know, you're honest and say, I'm completely anxious about this and I really don't do this.
	But, you know, you seem...
	I mean, I've done it sort of in restaurants and so on.
	If I've met a woman who was eating alone who I thought was interesting, I would go up and talk to her.
	It's not easy. I mean, your heart is in your mouth the whole time.
	Right. I mean, if it was easy, then everybody would do it, right?
	And there would be nobody available for anyone, right?
	Right. I wouldn't be still tackling this problem.
	All right. Well, I think you've given me some good ideas about how to go about this.
	I don't think I'll stop.
	I think the meetups are still a good thing, no matter what.
	And I'm excited about...
	Yeah, I would just say...
	Go ahead. I do enjoy talking about philosophy with just anybody, you know, especially if they're new to it or anything like that.
	I like introducing the ideas if they're interested.
	But you gotta ask questions, right?
	I mean, why not just say, what is philosophy to you?
	What does it mean? Why are you here?
	You know, what's your interest?
	What's your experience? Just ask a whole bunch of questions, right?
	Yeah, that's what we did the first meetup.
	We went around the table, asked that exact question.
	Right, and then you can ask it every week, right?
	I mean, has your definition of philosophy changed?
	What does philosophy mean to you this week that's different from when you first came here?
	Huh. I didn't think of that angle.
	Because, I mean, if it hasn't changed at all, then nobody's making any progress, right?
	Right. Right.
	Anyway, if you don't mind, I think we have another caller or two, and I do want to move on.
	And I certainly do appreciate that. It is a challenge, what you're working on, but I think that if you stick with it and really try and figure out what your goals are, and are as honest as you can sort of stand in the moment, I think that will really help.
	Oh, yeah. Thanks so much.
	You're welcome, man. Keep us posted.
	All right. All right.
	Bye. Call, will we another listener have?
	Oh, yeah. Thanks so much.
	You're welcome, man. Keep us posted.
	All right. Hello?
	Hey, I'm on. Please turn off the streamer on your end.
	Yes, maybe. Yeah, turn to us.
	Alright. Do you have a question?
	Hey, Stefan. Hi.
	Okay, it's Mandy's calling.
	I just got a couple of questions about the whole anarchy about the police and how that would work.
	I was just wondering, you had this whole idea, which was really interesting, about checks and balances.
	You're saying that in the flea market, policemen would have to have...
	If you were the person selling this security firm, then what checks and balances would you put into your security branch and stuff like that, right?
	Right. So basically I was just wondering why that can't happen right now.
	As in our current system, we can kind of...
	There's going to be corruption in any system because it's a place of power.
	So basically, I think that we kind of have that power to instill the checks and balances right now.
	Of course, you know, it's not going to be put in there because they're trying to make more money or trying not to lose customers.
	It's going to be put in there because you can kind of, you know, where we own the government and the police and stuff like that.
	Right, right. Okay.
	Basically, I think the bias stuff, like we have nowadays, there was a bunch of stuff recently about, you know, how like, you know, white, black, stuff like that, about how policemen were acting biased, so they've stuck in more checks and balances.
	You explained that there are more things that are necessary and you need more checks and balances.
	of corruption.
	So just like we can think creatively and kind of professors and people like that can kind of come up with beautiful ideas to get these checks and balances, since we own the police and we own the government, we should be able to come up with that stuff now and still that there shouldn't really be an issue.
	What's exactly the issue with doing it now?
	Right.
	And just What I thought was kind of funny, though nothing to do with what you said.
	I thought you said that they had a problem with diversity, so they had more chicks and balances, which I thought was kind of funny.
	I know, I heard it, and then I understood.
	I just pointed out. And if you could just turn off your speakers while I talk, that'd be great, because it's getting a bit of an echo.
	Okay, so chicks and balances.
	There is an argument, and I think this is the argument that you're making, which is that The government is just another kind of free market.
	And just in the same way that consumers have a say in what manufacturers produce by what we buy and what we don't buy and so on, we have a say in what the government does as voters.
	Is that sort of what you're saying?
	That it's kind of like a free market that we can make that decision, right?
	Correct. Exactly. All right.
	Now, let me put to you a question, because if it's true that there's fundamentally no difference between a free market and a government market, then do you think that it would be reasonable for the government to assign you a wife?
	And if you didn't like your wife, you could petition to become the head of the government, wife-assigning...
	and you could then, after years of effort and tens of millions of dollars of money spent and years of consistent effort, you might have the chance to get a divorce from your wife, but you would have to give up just about everything else in your life to pursue but you would have to give up just about everything else in your life to pursue that and Other people couldn't.
	Would you think that would be a good system and would that be fundamentally different from what we have right now where you can date whoever you want?
	Okay, so you're saying that there are many different powers.
	...that become fundamentally different than what we have right now.
	I'm sorry, I'm still getting an echo.
	You need to turn off the speakers?
	Yes, I turned it off. I turned it off.
	So, I understand you.
	Basically, you're saying that there are certain powers that the police have right now that they shouldn't even have to begin with, that we shouldn't have to change them.
	Look, here's the fundamental difference between the state and the free market.
	In the free market, it is a positive action that I need to take in order to support a product or a service, right?
	So if I like iPods, I have to get off my couch, I have to jump in my car, or I have to take the bus, I have to go to a store, and I have to go and buy an iPod, right?
	So I have to take positive action.
	In order to support a particular product or a service, right?
	Correct. If I don't get off my couch, Apple doesn't get a dime of my money, right?
	Right. Now, the difference is, so in order to not support something that I don't like, I don't have to do anything.
	In other words, the barrier to entry to not supporting something in a free market is zero.
	Zero energy. Zero effort, right?
	Right. Does that make sense?
	Yeah, definitely. Now, if I want to support something in the government, like if I want to change the curriculum in the schools or I want to have more checks and balances in the police, the barrier to entry to doing that is almost unimaginably high, right? Not necessarily.
	It depends how many people want that change.
	If I'm just real quick, let's say...
	No, no, sorry. Let's just stay...
	I'm sorry to interrupt, but let's stay on one example.
	I just want to stay on one example, and then we can move on if we want.
	But let's say there are lots of people in the U.S. who want lower taxes, right?
	There are these tea parties and so on.
	And my apologies to the tea partiers.
	I refer to them as tea baggers, accidentally.
	I was thinking of tea baggers, and I made that mistake, so I'm sorry for those who heard that.
	That was my error. Anyway, so...
	So they're all meeting and they're lobbying and they're writing to Congress and people gave, what, $20 or $25 million to the Ron Paul campaign and they were out there at dawn handing out flyers and they put millions and millions of hours and tens of millions of dollars and so on into supporting all of this.
	And that's going to be the case no matter how popular something is.
	Because when you want to do something that is a change within the government, you have to put in a huge amount of effort, partly because of the inertia of the system and also partly because you're fighting against entrenched interests who are profiting from the status quo.
	So if you want to improve the police force, you're going to run straight into the government union and you're going to run straight into every cop who's on the take from drug dealers and from pimps and prostitutes and you're going to run into every cop who's stealing some of the drugs that he's stealing from people and selling them again on the market and you're going to run into every cop who you're going to run straight into the government union and you're going to run straight into every cop who's I'm not saying these are every cop but there's obviously quite a few of them, right?
	So not only are you going to have to put out a huge amount of effort in order to try and make a change, which is not at all the case in the free market, but you're also going to be fighting against incredibly entrenched and well-funded interests, right?
	So like in New York at the moment, I think it is, in Albany I think, they're trying to fire the entire teaching staff of a school where less than 7% of the grade 11 students have passed basic math and literacy tests Which to me is ridiculous.
	I mean, if you get 7% on any test, you fail.
	And so if you're teaching kids and they only get 7% on the test, clearly you failed.
	And they're trying to fight.
	That's why they're doing it. But they're trying to fire these people.
	And now the union is going to kick in and it's going to bring a lawsuit against people and it's going to tie them up for years in court.
	And you won't be able to fire these people because they have contracts.
	And there are these rubber rooms in New York where they spend Tens of millions of dollars a year paying teachers to just show up and do nothing because they can't fire them.
	The procedures to fire a teacher go on for years and literally hundreds of pages So, in the government system, not only do you have to put in thousands and thousands or millions of hours and tens of millions of dollars to get anything changed,
	if you even can, no matter how many people are behind it, because even if 51% or 60% or 80% of people are behind it, The difference is that you are fighting to get, say, let's say that you could change something in the government that was going to reduce your taxes 5%.
	Well, you do that by firing, let's say, 5% of the government workers.
	So what happens is you have an incentive that is about 5% of your income But the people on the side of the government, they have an incentive called 100% of their income.
	So they're going to fight a hell of a lot harder than you will ever have a motivation to fight to keep 100% of their income, whereas you only have an incentive to fight for 5% of your income.
	Is this proven?
	Well, this is a mathematical fact.
	But this is a mathematical fact, right?
	Like, if you want to privatize the post office, you might save yourself 1% of your tax income.
	But there will be tens of thousands of people who will be losing their jobs and their pensions, and they're going to fight like crazy, right?
	I mean, that's just a fact of incentives, right?
	Is there enough people to fight it?
	Because I think the way democracy is set up, it shouldn't be as hard as you're explaining to me.
	But the problem is that everything that you fight in the government is only a small portion of that which oppresses you, no matter what you take on.
	It's only a small portion of that which oppresses you, but it is 100% of the income of tens of thousands of people, and they're going to fight...
	To the death, almost, to hang on to that income and all of the benefits that they have.
	I'm sorry? That's impossible, though, because the way that democracy is set up, you go back to that post office example, let's say they write a whole news article all over the New York Times and all over the world, all over America, let's say, that you save 5% of your tax income if you privatize the post office, for example. Right. So, let's say 80% of America decides we're privatizing the Post Office.
	It'll change overnight, in a couple days.
	No, it won't change overnight.
	I guarantee you it won't change overnight.
	If they fight, I'm saying you just go, everyone votes their representatives or whatever the way it looks, they go up to the Senate and they make this bill.
	That's my understanding of it, wasn't it?
	No, no, no. No matter how many work in this post office, that's not enough to provide 80% of America.
	Well, okay, but what is the post office union going to do?
	They can't do anything.
	They're too little. Of course they can.
	Are you not reading what's happening in Greece right now?
	They're shutting down the hospitals.
	They're shutting down the schools.
	They're shutting down the postal service.
	I mean, if I'm the postal service union, sorry, it sounds like I'm yelling at you.
	I'm not. But if I'm the postal service union, and I want to protect my members' jobs, I know exactly what I'm going to do.
	I'm going to stop delivering welfare checks.
	The moment I stop delivering welfare checks, the government is going to face a revolution and the government is going to back down.
	Do you understand? Yeah, definitely, definitely.
	Sorry, it's the same thing with the public school teachers.
	If I'm going to talk about privatizing schools, the public school teachers are all going to go on strike.
	And that means that the economy collapses because there's no place to park the children during the day, which means that The parents have to stay home, which means that the economy is going to collapse.
	So the government is going to immediately reverse that.
	There's just no way that they're going to listen because they have to get their taxes in every week, right?
	Otherwise, they go bankrupt. So there's just no way because you have to think about what the public sector unions are going to do when faced with privatization.
	They're going to disrupt and destroy the services that is completely essential.
	It's completely essential to the functioning of the society, and that way the government is, and everyone is going to back down, because they're going to say, look, I mean, we can't have, and the media is going to run all these pictures of welfare children starving because the welfare checks aren't being delivered, and people are just, the government won't allow it to happen.
	So if they privatized the police, for example, you're saying they'd be causing mass riots and they just have these stories of these people, you know, robbing banks and things like that because the police would just be so upset about losing their jobs.
	If they talked about privatizing the police, then if I were the head of the police union, the first thing that I would do is I would say, I am no longer going to arrest anyone for non-payment of taxes.
	The government will back down immediately.
	Well, the government will immediately back down, right?
	Because they have no money left to collect.
	They have no money, right? And that's the reality of political power.
	Democracy is meaningless, right?
	because what really happens is that the government workers control so much of the essential things.
	I mean, here in Canada, they try to cut a few tiny little subsidies to the farmers and the farmers all took their goddamn tractors and drove it five miles an hour in rush hour along the major highways.
	The government backs right down.
	It's like, fuck that, right?
	We can't have people not being able to get to work because then we don't get any money.
	Right.
	Okay, I understand that.
	Right, okay, I understand that.
	But what about, if you're saying that even, back to like small changes, you're seeing that huge change of getting prime president opinion, let's say just about installing more checks and balances as in to get rid of more corruption, because as you were explaining so often, basically checks and balances are the kind of basically checks and balances are the kind of instances of stopping corruption.
	Yes, but voluntary checks and balances.
	What that means is competition, right?
	And consumer choice. And that you don't get anybody's penny unless they get off their couch.
	This is so essential, right?
	If people get my money, if I just sit on my couch, nobody gets a dime.
	They have to actively work to sell something to me.
	Otherwise, they don't get a penny.
	That's the complete opposite of they get my money whether I sit on the couch or not.
	Then they don't have to sell anything to me.
	They don't have to satisfy me.
	They don't have to get me to do something.
	They don't have to win me over.
	They don't have to compete against anybody else.
	Right?
	That barrier to entry is really, really, really important.
	Right? I mean, Apple has to write commercials.
	They have to get rock stars to wear the iPods.
	They have to, you know, get funky songs.
	They have to do all this really, really cool stuff to get you to buy stuff.
	They have to make you do something through incentives.
	The government doesn't have anything like that.
	The government just takes your money no matter what you do.
	What about policemen?
	The policemen, they're really trying to install more checks and balances, aren't they?
	But what do you mean checks and balances?
	What do you mean checks and balances?
	Give me an example. I don't mean in the way that you meant it.
	I said that's one type of checks and balances.
	Okay, who is going to police the police?
	Are you going to prevent a second police?
	Who will watch the watchman?
	Right. There is no answer to that question.
	There is no answer to the question, who will watch the watchman, which is why you can't have a government.
	There's no way that the police are going to police themselves.
	Because if people can police themselves, we don't need the police.
	And if people can't police themselves, we can't have the police, at least the state police, the statist police.
	There is no answer to the question, who will watch the watchers?
	Which means that we have to have a state and society.
	There is no answer to that question.
	Any answer that anybody comes up with immediately gets corrupted by special interest groups, money, and the fundamental evil of statism, which is violence, the initiation of violence.
	There is no way that the state will ever police itself.
	There is no way that the police force will ever police itself.
	I mean, the stuff that goes on here in Canada is crazy.
	Policemen who've been brutally videotaped or videotaped brutally beating people up are still on the force or they're suspended with full pay.
	And the investigations in some of these cases have literally been going on for years and years and years.
	Can I say it's our fault?
	I'm sorry? Is that our fault, as you were saying before, that we have some sort of a say in the government, meaning that the fact that we are from the forces because we're not making enough of a ruckus?
	A ruckus? But the government doesn't care about us.
	The government cares about the police because the police get the money, right?
	Do you understand? The government is not going to cross the police because if the government doesn't have the enforcers who are willing to shoot us for non-payment of taxes, the government has no money.
	The government will always care about the enforcers.
	It's like asking a farmer to care more about the cows than the electric fence that keeps them in.
	Well, no. The only reason he cares about the cows is because he can keep them fenced in.
	So the ruckus doesn't matter.
	The government doesn't care about us.
	They don't care if we march.
	They don't care if we write block.
	As long as we're afraid of going to jail and we will pay the money in order to be, quote, free, that's all they care about.
	They don't care about our opinions.
	Okay, and how about the DLOs?
	Can we stick that into the system now and then kind of slowly get rid of these old types of things?
	Court system. I personally have taken someone to court, a small claims court, and I used a mediator, and I had listened to your show so much, and you were just saying about how it's impossible to take someone to court.
	So I was inspired by that.
	I did the mediator thing. It was so much better than any court, even an idea of a court.
	So I'm thinking, why don't we stick the DROs in now?
	Is that even a possibility? Because it's basically using credit card type of idea and passports, you know, that type of thing.
	It's like using an eBay feedback system in the current world so we can know trust better and have better insurances and stuff.
	Well, look, there are already myriads of DROs in the world, as it stands, right?
	I mean, eBay is the world's largest employer, so to speak, and they have a completely nonviolent and international system of resolving disputes.
	So there are already DRO systems in the world already.
	As you say, there are mediators.
	There are mediators that are used in everything from commercial disputes to contract disputes to marital disputes to custody disputes.
	Mediators are very common.
	You could even think of a marriage counselor as a kind of DRO, right?
	Because they have a non-coercive way of attempting to get people to avoid divorce or at least divorce less expensively.
	And I would certainly...
	I thoroughly recommend to anybody who's in that kind of situation go to see a marriage counselor.
	Either you can save your marriage, which is going to save you a huge amount of time and money and pain, or if you are going to get divorced, you can do it in a much less adversarial manner, which again is going to save you huge amounts of time and money and pain.
	So DRO systems are very powerful in the world and they are non-violent ways of arbitrating disputes.
	Psychotherapy is a kind of DRO because it is a way of helping you to resolve disputes in a non-coercive manner, disputes that you have with your family or with your lovers or with your children and so on.
	So I would say that DROs are everywhere.
	I mean, if people want to start another DRO, I think that's great.
	I mean, the Free Domain Radio Message Board is a kind of DRO, right?
	I mean, it's a non-coercive way.
	Right. Definitely.
	I mean, I'm a religious man.
	I come on that thing and we're kind of going on.
	They're attacking me with like, you know, pink cows and stuff, but they explain things rationally and also that type of idea.
	I don't think anyone likes violence, except for people that make money off it.
	But do you think it's possible, if we would make big DROs, etc., would that slowly kick out Biden and all these necessary violences and stuff like that?
	Well, no. No, of course not.
	Because, I mean, governments have the guns, right?
	So if the DRO gets too successful, the government would just shut them down, right?
	Why would they do that? It's cheaper to run a DRO than to run a police force, as we discussed.
	Well, because the government needs the police force to collect the taxes, right?
	So if the police force gets pissed off, right, then the police force will threaten to go on strike, just as the garbage men go on strike, just as the doctors go on strike, and everybody conforms, right?
	So if DROs get too successful...
	In other words, if...
	Well, first of all, if DROs get too successful, the government doesn't care as long as it isn't interfering with people paying their taxes, right?
	Why would we need to pay our taxes if we can use a DRO to make growth?
	Well, because the government's just going to keep collecting the taxes anyway, right?
	Let's say that 99% of the population goes to a DRO rather than to the court system.
	The government is still just going to keep collecting taxes to pay the court, right?
	Because if the moment that it tries to stop doing that, what's going to happen is the judges are all going to say, well, we're just going to turn all the criminals loose.
	We're going to grant pardons. We're going to turn all the hard criminals out on the streets, and everyone's going to panic, and then they'll get their money, right?
	Okay, and one more thing on this topic...
	I was trying to explain to my friend this whole idea of privatizing police officers.
	He said, what are you going to do with all the criminals?
	You know, if you're just going to let them all out, then what's going to be stopping them from moving into our neighborhoods, etc.?
	Well, first of all, he's defining the police as non-criminals, which I find untrue, right?
	The first thing we're going to do with the criminals is take away their badges and their guns, right?
	That's the first thing we're going to do with the criminals, and that, I think, is a damn good thing.
	The second thing is, who's to say they're even criminals?
	I mean, half the people in jail in the United States are there for completely non-violent, made-up, imaginary offenses.
	Right? Like, what?
	They had some drugs on them. So what?
	Who cares, right? Oh my god, they gambled.
	So what? Who cares? Oh my god, they went to a prostitute.
	Well, that's unsavory, but it's not immoral.
	It's not evil, right? Or they didn't pay their taxes.
	Well, that's not a crime. That's, you know, it's not a real crime.
	It's just legislated as a crime, right?
	And how many of the other people are in jail because of bad laws, right?
	So how many drug addicts end up stealing because drugs are so expensive because they're illegal, right?
	If you rationalize the legal system, I bet you'd end up with about 10% of the existing prison population, if that, if that.
	And of course, the only way, as I talked in earlier in the show, the only way, in my opinion, a free society is ever going to come around is if we treat our children better, Well, then you're going to have a whole generation growing up with very little propensity for violence, for drug addiction, for gambling, for other kinds of substance abuses, for drinking, for dangerous behaviors, for promiscuity, for early pregnancy, for STDs, for all of these things.
	And so you're going to grow up with a generation that is not going to be, it's going to be like one-tenth of one percent of people maybe will be criminals and they may just have chemical imbalances or schizophrenia or something like that or psychosis.
	So it's a whole different world that is going to be there, right?
	You don't want to mistake the future for the past, right?
	So that would be my answer to the fellow.
	Okay, and he said also there's going to be like gangs going...
	I tried to tell him that whole thing about how, well right now, the gangs go running around wild, so why would you think they're going to start going crazy?
	I said, what about in Texas?
	How often do gangs just start running around Texas shooting people?
	They would go for people that are weak, or they would go to the nursing homes and stuff like that where they don't have guns.
	Well, you know, to put it bluntly, I mean, screw the Bloods and the Crips.
	What about the gang in Afghanistan?
	What about the gang in Iraq that have murdered over 100,000 civilians and caused the deaths of a million more?
	Would that all be here, though?
	I mean, they're violent people.
	Wouldn't they want to go and run wild over here?
	I mean, you're explaining that in history there has never been a statist government that worked.
	And that was a great example.
	But at the same time, there hasn't really been an anarchist state that worked either.
	I mean, look at Haiti. When the government was kind of thrown down for a bit, you know, everyone was just kind of looting and stuff.
	You know, it's not just raising the New Orleans or stuff like that.
	Whenever there's kind of no government, people seem to go wild.
	Well, yeah, but that's not anarchy, right?
	Anarchy is a philosophy, a rational philosophy that's derived from the non-aggression principle and the respect for property rights, right?
	I mean, it's like saying that if you tie someone up and you torture him, For five years straight.
	And then you loosen him out of his restraints and you set him free.
	He's going to attack the guy, probably, who tortured him.
	And then you say, well, you see, we can't let this guy free because he's so violent.
	It's like, no, no, no, no, no.
	He's violent because you tied him up and you tortured him for five years, right?
	Right, right.
	So if you get looting in Haiti, it's because Haiti is a sick, disgusting, brutal dictatorship and has been for decades.
	And people know that the government is going to come back and they know they have five minutes to go and steal something.
	Otherwise, they're going to starve to death.
	Well, of course they're going to do that, but it's not a failure of freedom.
	That's what happens when you treat people like animals, give them five minutes of freedom with which they can secure a possible survival for themselves and their children over the next few months.
	Of course they're going to go and grab everything that they can.
	But that's not because there's a problem with freedom.
	It's because there's a problem with violence, with statist violence.
	Well, why would that not happen if it was anarchy?
	Well because anarchy doesn't come about if the government collapses any more than atheism comes about if someone blows up all the churches.
	Not, of course, that I'm recommending either.
	But if the church is all collapsed tomorrow, that wouldn't mean that everybody understood the arguments for atheism.
	I mean, I guess it would be a good case for the fact that God existed and didn't like churches, but it wouldn't be.
	Nobody understands something because something else collapses.
	Like, if I watch a bridge collapse, I don't learn anything about engineering, right?
	Right. And so if the government collapses, this is the argument about Somalia too, right?
	It's not just Haiti, but if the government collapses, that's not suddenly like everybody suddenly understands philosophy and reasons from first principles.
	All that happens is something has collapsed.
	And so if chaos results from that, that is not an indictment against freedom, because that is not freedom.
	Right. One other thing on this topic.
	Sorry, just before you go on, I just wanted to see if there was anybody else who had another question that they wanted to slip in just because we've been talking for quite a while.
	James, do we have somebody else?
	We have one question from Sebastian.
	I think he pasted it into the Skype chat.
	Do you want to take a look at that? About an hour ago.
	Okay, that's a long question.
	I might do that in a podcast, but thank you for posting it.
	Somebody has said, you've learned that the bridge doesn't work if you watch a bridge collapse.
	Well, not necessarily, because the bridge could have been dynamited, right?
	It could have had really subtle charges in the seams or whatever, right?
	So, you don't know.
	All you know is the bridge fell down.
	You don't know why, or you haven't learned anything about anything like that.
	So, sorry, we can spend another minute or two.
	You had one more question? Oh, caller?
	Yeah. I wanted to know that if he's speeding on the highways, so he said, what's stopping you from speeding the police?
	What's stopping him from speeding is the police, is that right?
	Yeah, yeah. Well, I think that speeding, I think speeding is a problem.
	Obviously, you don't want people, I don't think you want people necessarily going 200 miles an hour down a city street, right?
	I'm okay with that, right?
	I have a motorcycle.
	Right, right. So you're definitely part of the problem, right?
	But speeding is very easy to solve, right?
	So, for instance, if there are private roads, there will be GPS transmitters, most likely, right?
	Until something better is worked out, right?
	So there's a private road that I used to take when I was commuting to work doing the early podcasts, and it beeped when I went on, and it beeped when I went off, right?
	Right. Now, if the speed limit is...
	100 kilometers an hour, right?
	And I enter and then I exit 10 kilometers later.
	Then the company is going to immediately know if I sped, right?
	Right. Because if I went there faster than 100 kilometers an hour would get me there, then clearly I've been speeding, right?
	Right. So that to me is how you control speeding.
	As you privatize the roads, there's GPSs.
	And then if...
	You speed, you can't hide it because speeding is ridiculous because you get pulled over to speeding maybe once a year or once every two years.
	It doesn't stop a lot of people from speeding, right?
	Definitely. Whereas if you had private roads, speeding, you just get billed for it.
	It's like, oh, you went over, so you're going to have to pay $40 for going this fast.
	Or you went really fast, that's $200.
	Or you went really, really fast, in which case you're not allowed on our roads anymore, right?
	Mm-hmm. And who guarantees that?
	You're screwed up. I'm sorry?
	Who guarantees that he's not going to go on that road or that he's going to pay the money because there's no government or police to enforce that?
	Oh, I don't know, but one of the things that could happen, I mean, if I was...
	If I was...
	Uh, the, um, the road company, what I would do is I would try and get an arrangements with the gasoline companies and say, this guy has speeding, uh, he's dangerous.
	Your children also drive on these roads.
	So let's not give gasoline to this guy or make it tougher for him to get gasoline or something like that.
	Uh, that's one possibility.
	Um, the other thing, I mean, that's just one possibility of probably about a billion that you could, uh, you could come up with.
	with.
	Or what you could do is you could say, look, if you drive on my road, I am going to inform your credit rating agency that you are not respecting your contract with me because you'd have to sign a contract that says, if I speed double the speed limit, I'm banned from the road for a month.
	If I transgress that, then they have the right to send this off to your DRO.
	They have the right to send this off to your credit rating agency, which is going to lower your credit rating, which is your contract rating, which is going to make it more expensive for you to buy and sustain yourself economically.
	And it's very quickly going to become not worth it.
	Right.
	So there's so many different ways that you can do it.
	Okay, awesome. That's really good.
	Thank you so much for all your time.
	I really appreciate it. Well, thank you.
	What was the thing about the tea people?
	They spend lots of money to do what?
	Oh, the tea party.
	People, they're all meeting and they're all having these protests and so on.
	But I guarantee you that if they get a tax reduction, it is not going to be because of a reduction in the size and power of the government.
	Because that's the Republican bullshit, right?
	The Republican bullshit is we're going to cut government.
	But what they end up doing is they end up cutting taxes, but not cutting government, right?
	The size of the federal government grew by two-thirds under Ronald Reagan.
	And it also grew enormously under Bush.
	So they cut taxes, but all they're doing is screwing the future generations because they cut taxes and just borrow the difference.
	But they do not confront any of the existing and entrenched public sector unions at all.
	I guess with the exception that I think Reagan fired some air traffic controllers, right?
	So yeah, they may get a couple of points shaved off the taxes, but what they really should be focusing on is cut spending, not cut taxes.
	Because if you cut spending without cutting taxes, all you're doing is selling the children of the future, right?
	Right. Wow, that's pretty crazy.
	How is the government even able to do that?
	I mean, if they don't have money, how are they able to spend?
	Like if they cut taxes, then they have to cut down the government, don't they?
	But they borrow. They either print the money, in which case they drive up inflation in a couple of years, or they borrow the money.
	And the reason the American government is able to borrow the money is that China is very dependent upon the American consumer.
	In order to have its export industry, right?
	So what's happening is China lends money to the United States so that the United States can buy goods from China so that the government can tax the expansion of business and that their citizens are kept relatively happy and so on.
	But of course, it's all a Ponzi scheme and it's all going to come crashing down.
	So basically, your idea of this whole Tea Party is that The teapot is one big sham, and it's just to cut taxes, but it doesn't actually help anything because they're not cutting government, which is kind of just stupidity and just hurting the future generations.
	Okay, it's an interesting thing. I didn't say that it was all a sham.
	I did say that it was all nonsense.
	I don't mean that everybody in it has bad intentions, but what I am saying is that I guarantee you that the government is not going to All right.
	Okay, great. Thank you so much.
	If you can just please send me some information on that, because I'm writing a paper for my English on the computer now.
	Wait, so you want an hour-free lecture, and you also want me to dig up some information and send it to you?
	I'll tell you what, I'll give you the hour-free lecture, but I'm not going to give you links as well.
	If you want, you can look on my website.
	There's some stuff there, but I'm not going to dig up some links and send them to you as well.
	Oh, no, no. I meant from your website, of course.
	Okay, and thank you so, so much for your time.
	I appreciate it. You're welcome.
	Thank you so much for the call. That was fantastic.
	And I think we're done for the week.
	That really flew by and I would like to thank, thank, thank.
	You guys are...
	Oh, you are so tasty smart.
	I feel like I'm supping from a buffet of giant, giant big wetware brains every week, which is just...
	Thank you so much for your callers, for these amazing and wonderful questions.
	Thank you for your support. Thank you for those who have signed up recently for subscriptions.
	I can't tell you how much that is helpful to me in terms of being able to plan how the giant money pit that is FDR gets to hoover up more of my cash.
	I really, really do appreciate that.
	And I think this week... I'm going to release to more of the general population my novel Just Poor, which I think you will find quite interesting and exciting.
	And please, if you have heard it, I have heard some feedback, but not very much.
	The feedback that I've had has been very positive.
	But remember, I am extremely, extremely needy and insecure.
	So please do send me your feedback if you've had a chance to listen to the novel Just Four.
	I would really, really appreciate your feedback, both positive and negative, of course.
	So I hope that you will let me know what you think so that I'm encouraged to continue reading it because I'm certainly enjoying it.
	But of course, I want to make sure that you are enjoying it even more.
	So have yourselves a fantastic, wonderful, delicious, tasty, and excellent week.

▲