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March 12, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
22:41
1609 Notes on the Intergenerational War to Come

Should we expect our elders to live by the values that they inflicted upon us?

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Oh, hey, it's Steph. So, I had some thoughts.
These are, I guess, semi-decent recent arguments.
There is, of course, going to be a generational warfare that is coming up as the baby boomers slide into the high-cost, high-need eras of their lives.
And I had some thoughts about...
Ways in which this can be resolved.
And some of these are rational arguments.
Some of these are just my personal perspectives.
I'm sure you can figure out which is which.
Now, when the boomers start to retire, they are going to need a lot of money.
And they are going to need a lot of money, or they're going to at least want or feel entitled to a lot of money from the young, from the young and from the productive.
And the problem is there is no money.
In fact, not only is there no money, there's already massive debt before all of this stuff starts to go down.
And I'll tell you my perspective on it, what I would sort of be willing to do and why.
Now, I'm willing to, I guess as has been evidenced by the last couple of years, bear a fairly heavy series of burdens in order to...
I think that's kind of necessary, and certainly, as far as philosophers go, I have been asked to sacrifice much, much less than most, so I am scarcely hard done by, to say the least.
But I will sacrifice a lot to move the debate forward in terms of reason and evidence and better parenting and so on.
And the first thing that That always needs to be done when attempting to deal with any problem is to first admit that there is a problem.
First admit that there is a problem.
Now, when I was a kid, morality was harsh.
I think that is still the case.
Morality is harsh. And this was before even zero tolerance, right?
So... If I showed up for a test, or if I showed up for class, and I'd forgotten that there was a test, and I said, I forgot that there was a test, the teachers didn't say, well, no biggie, you know, you can take it tomorrow or the next day.
It happens. And this, of course, would be the case even if there was only one test that I'd ever, you know, ever failed to remember.
There's one test, right?
It was like it wasn't a constant thing, like it was something that I did when I hadn't studied.
Like, I remember one test that I forgot, and it's like, too bad.
You know, ignorance is no excuse.
A lack of knowledge or a forgetfulness or a lack of studying, a lack of preparation is no excuse.
Too bad, right?
There was no give, no leeway.
And that is the way that I was raised.
Similarly, if I didn't have the money for something in school, then I could not get it, right?
So I remember when I was a kid, donuts were like a quarter.
Oh my God, this Boston cream donuts with this absolutely evil cream that was really, really sugary and would put you into a semi-diabetic coma during math class afterwards.
But if I didn't have money for a donut or whatever I wanted to buy, well, don't you know, I didn't get it.
It didn't matter if I was poor. It didn't matter if I didn't have the money.
I just didn't get it.
Nobody gave it to me. In the same way, if I didn't have the money for a school trip, I couldn't go.
I couldn't go.
And this is the morality that I was raised in.
And you could go on and on, right?
You understand? You could go on and on.
But this was the reality.
I mean, of course, in my family, things were very chaotic, and that was no excuse, right?
So the fact that... Some kids were studying in calm and peaceful and rational households, at least relatively.
That was sort of one issue.
But the fact that I was studying or attempting to study in a sort of mad, violent, chaotic household, no difference.
Didn't matter. Didn't matter. We were marked the same way.
There was no Marxism, right, where I got some marks because of my need and the other person gave up some marks because of his or her ability, right?
So it didn't matter.
Didn't matter. We're all judged by the same standard no matter where you're coming from.
And this was all very harsh.
If I did anything to deface school property, if I did anything to damage school property, I had to pay for it.
I had to pay for it. So if I doodled on a book, I had to pay for it.
If I lost a library book, I had to pay for it.
There was no, well, you know, it happens.
Don't worry about it. You know, your parents pay a lot in taxes, I'm sure.
So there was none of that, right?
None of that. And so this was the morality of That I was raised with.
That you don't damage other people's property.
That if you make a mistake, you have to bear the full consequences of that mistake.
That you are responsible for your actions.
That if you forget or don't know something, then that's just too bad.
You still have to act as if you did and make the best of it and so on.
And everything was very strict and everything was very harsh.
Ideally, I must say that I absorbed that.
It's impossible not to absorb that, right?
That society is really, really into responsibility and consequences and paying for your mistakes and ignorance is no excuse and blah, blah, blah.
This is all the reality of what I grew up with.
And I assumed, naively, of course, in hindsight, I assumed that this was society's standards rather than Just a bunch of verbal punitive abuses heaped upon the vulnerable and innocent young.
So I sort of accepted this.
And when it comes to this intergenerational war that is coming up, my approach to it is this.
Maybe you'll agree with it, maybe you won't.
I'm happy to hear either way, of course.
Now, if somebody inflicts moral rules upon me, And then that person runs afoul of those moral rules, then I expect one of two things.
Either that person says, well, you live by the sword, you die by the sword, right?
So, if you're a congressman and you voted against drugs, like for the DEA or increase the drug budget, and your kid is caught selling marijuana, then it's like, well, I'm not going to intervene.
The kid's going to go to jail or is going to get, you know, a warning and a fine, and I'm not going to intervene because you live by the sword, you die by the sword, right?
If I am out to harass and harangue homosexuals and then it turns out that I'm caught in a gay tryst or something, then it's like, okay, well, I'm immoral by my own definition and blah, blah, blah, right?
So, if you live by the sword, you die by the sword.
And, of course, that never happens, right?
That never happens. Never happens, right?
So, goddamn banks, right?
I mean, you bounce one check by mistake, you owe them money, right?
Right? They virtually bring down the vestiges of the free market economy with statist, mercantilist, fascistic gambling for immediate profit, and they need a bailout, right?
And banks don't bail you out if you kite a $35 check, but if they...
If they blow hundreds of millions of dollars or more, then they're all for bailouts, right?
They don't give bailouts, right?
So, if you sort of dispute a charge from a bank and say, well, you know, I almost never kite checks.
It was just an accident. It was just, you know, my check was delayed and blah, blah, blah.
And, you know, can you cut me some slack?
They'd say, no, no, no. You are responsible for the consequences of your actions.
You owe us this money. These are the facts.
This is the virtue that we live by.
Then it's like, hey, if you're all going to go bankrupt, then it's like, well, We live by the sword.
We die by the sword, right? But, of course, that never happens, right?
That never happens.
And what is the inevitable consequence of these kinds of things is that the rules are reversed, but the reversal is not acknowledged, right?
And then the original rule is put back into place, right?
So, you know, we've always told, you know, pay your debts, you're responsible.
If you gamble... Right?
It's your responsibility to deal with those debts, right?
People should not come and bail you out because they're called enablers, right?
And that is the reality, right?
And then when the banks have a problem and we'll get to this intergenerational warfare in a sec, then those rules are reversed, right?
Then we need to protect the banks.
We need to protect the financial institutions and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
So the rules are reversed.
But the original rule is never brought into question, right?
Where we say, well, hang on a sec.
I mean, we've been hammering for hundreds of years.
We've been hammering our customers to be responsible for their debts.
And we've been threatening them with jail.
We've been taking their homes.
We've been doing all of this stuff if they fail to pay their debts.
And yet now we can't pay our debts.
And the opposite rule is...
We're bringing up the opposite rule, so maybe we should re-examine that first rule, because we sure as hell don't like it when it is applied to us.
And the rule that we've inflicted on other people for hundreds of years now applies to us.
We know likey. And so, you know, clearly this is the moment of empathy, right?
This is the moment of possible empathy, right?
Where the rules that you've inflicted are turned upon you...
And the question is, well, what are you going to do, right?
Are you going to say, holy crap, you know, these rules suck, right?
Like there was some, I think it's in the Gulag Apikalago, one of the torturers, He is tortured in turn, right?
He runs afoul of the NKVD and he's tortured in turn and he writes in his memoirs like, I had no idea it hurt that much.
Oh my god, I had no idea that the beatings and fingernail extractions hurt that much.
So there's the moment of empathy.
It doesn't turn an evil person good, but there is at least a moment of empathy where you say, holy shit.
These rules that I've inflicted on others are now being inflicted upon me and I will do anything to evade them.
And so I really can't justly continue to inflict them on others because I hate it and I want to get away from it when it's inflicted on me.
So that's the moment of potential empathy.
Of course, that very rarely happens.
It very rarely happens, right?
What happens is people say...
They make up new moral rules that are completely the opposite of the prime moral rules, and guess what?
Do they make any reference to this contradiction?
No, of course not. They simply pretend like it's not existing, like there's some parallel universe where the opposite is the truth, and then the truth is the opposite of the truth, but there's still the truth, even though it's opposite, it's not opposite, it's exactly the same.
All this upside, black, white universe is created...
And there's no reference made to the switcheroo.
I mean, that's inevitable, right?
Like, yeah, my mom hits me, and then when I hit her back, she's shocked and appalled.
I mean, come on, right?
Come on. It's ridiculous, right?
She doesn't sit there and say, wow, it's really not pleasant.
I didn't even hit her.
When he threatens to hit me back, if I hit him, that's really unpleasant to be threatened to be hit, so I really shouldn't have done it all these years.
No, she's like, that's evil.
That's shocking. That's appalling.
I shouldn't laugh. It's not that funny, but it's the switcheroo of the moral rules that is so repulsive.
See, for me, admitting bad ethics is the only act of restitution that people who are moral hypocrites can achieve.
Right, so if the morals which are inflicted upon children are considered heinous and abhorrent when they are turned back upon They're advocates in old age.
Then the very least that these people can do is say, hey, sorry, we were wrong.
It was morally hypocritical for us to inflict all of these moral standards on children and then reject them as immoral for ourselves, right?
So there's no money in the social security part, right?
And people say, "Well, I'm owed my social security." It's like, "But there's no money." And they say, "Well, I didn't know that." Nope!
Ignorance of the test date is no excuse.
That was taught to me. And, of course, no one can claim to be ignorant of these facts.
They have been discussed, as I mentioned earlier, for many, many decades.
They have been discussed that there is no money in the Social Security Fund.
And so people know that.
I mean, they know that. There's no question.
You have to have really lived under a rock to not know that there is no money in the Social Security Fund.
And so they're responsible for that.
And if they've let it go that long and have not acted, then it's too bad, right?
Like, you don't get to call up an insurance company and say, hey, my house just burned down.
I didn't know I need insurance.
Now I want to apply for it.
There is a certain amount of common knowledge that is understood that is necessary.
And if people have rejected that, like let's say they don't know anything about the fact that there's no money in the social security kitty, well, then are they status?
Are they into democracy?
Well, if they're into democracy, then they're into the citizens are responsible for what the government does.
That's what I was always taught, right?
That the citizens are responsible for what the government does.
And it's the citizens' responsibility if the government does right or wrong.
Sorry, I'm repeating myself. And that, of course, whenever you bring up Anti-state philosophies.
You're always told, but you can't play the state because the citizens are responsible for the government.
The citizens vote in the people and the citizens are responsible for the government.
And even those who vote against the winning candidate are responsible to obey the laws and blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
Okay, so... So if the citizens are responsible for the government and you are a Democrat, I mean, you're into democracy, not a sort of Republican Democrat...
If the government is responsible, if the citizens are responsible for the government, and you're into democracy, and you're a patriot, and you like voting, then you're responsible for the fact that there's no money in the Social Security Fund.
There's no money. You're responsible.
It's not my responsibility because I'm an anti-statist.
And if you have argued for the efficacy and morality of government or supported those arguments, then you're responsible.
You can't blame somebody else. You're responsible.
So the money was taken from you.
It was spent.
It was lent.
It was burned.
It doesn't matter. It's gone.
As Harry Brown used to say, it was used to prop up the Russian ruble for a couple of hours a couple of decades ago.
So the money's gone. And who's responsible for that?
Well, you're responsible for that.
The old are responsible for that.
Other statists are responsible for that.
And this is, of course, everything that I was taught.
If I lost my money in a scam...
Nobody, I mean, none of the adults around said, oh, that's too bad.
Well, that's okay. I will make up the difference.
They didn't say, hey, a fool and his money are soon parted.
A fool and his money are soon parted.
That's what I was taught.
That you have to just live with it.
It's a learning lesson. And so, that's all I'm asking for, is consistency or apology, right?
That's all I'm asking for, and it's not an unreasonable thing to ask.
It's a completely reasonable thing to ask.
All I'm asking for, from the elder generation, is consistency or apology.
Consistency means, oh well...
I guess as a citizen of a pro-democratic government, and since I am pro-statist myself, and since this was common knowledge that there was no money in the Social Security Fund, I'm not going to cash my check.
Because a fool and his money are soon parted, I'm responsible for my actions, citizens are responsible for their government, so there's nobody to blame but myself, and I can't expect other people to pay for my mistakes, just as I have instructed the young who came after me.
I shall now live by the sword that I have used.
On the youth. No, it's consistency.
Problem solved, right? But what if they don't do that?
What if they want their money?
What if they want their money?
Well, my perspective is I'm absolutely happy to pay them their money.
I'm absolutely thrilled and overjoyed to pay them their money.
I won't even have to have a tax.
I will write them checks if they do but one thing.
Apologize and retract.
And the reason that I'm keen to do this is there are only two ways that bad philosophies die.
Bad philosophies die, or at least retrenched temporarily, after tens of millions of people get slaughtered, right?
So, Nazism, you know, 40 million people killed, the Western civilization wiped out.
Well, you know, that's what it costs, right?
That's one way that a philosophy dies.
Now, another way, you can also look at, well, you know, Marxism, 70 million people killed, just in Russia alone.
Probably 150, 175 million throughout the world.
That's the price of putting down the vampire called Marxism, which of course now has just arisen in socialistic democracy back again, right?
So, you can only beat back a bad ideology with a literally planet-sized firehose of the blood of innocents.
Well, somewhat innocents.
Children, for sure, are innocents.
And that's the only way that you can drive a stake through a bad ideology for a while.
It's the blood of tens of millions.
Now, the other way that a bad ideology can die is if people find that being on the receiving end of it is a lot less pleasant than being on the delivery end of it.
In other words, if the values that our elders inflicted upon us in our youth When it comes back to bite them in the ass and they can get no Social Security or Medicare or Medicaid, then they're going to say, well, shit.
This is a really bad philosophy.
Because I was responsible for the government.
The government blew all my money.
I didn't do anything about it.
And so I got scammed.
And I can't expect somebody on the next street, next town, next county, next state to pay for the fact that I let myself get scammed.
And I can't blame the government because I am the government.
I am a Democrat. So, shit.
Then what you do is you go hat in hand to the younger generation, right?
You go hat in hand to the younger generation and you say, I am so sorry.
Oh my god, I'm so sorry.
I told you I inflicted all this moral bullshit on you.
About responsibility and democracy and accepting the consequences of your actions and being responsible for your life and not expecting other people to pay for your mistakes.
And I inflicted all of this stuff and that ignorance of the facts is no excuse.
I inflicted all of this on you.
And now I find that I cannot survive, and for many of the elderly, I literally cannot survive if this philosophy which I inflicted upon you is applied consistently to me.
I am so, so sorry.
What a terrible, terrible thing that I did.
Morally self-righteous, morally bullying, morally pompous.
And now when that morality Affects me negatively.
I can't stand it.
Oh, I suddenly feel some empathy for the young that I have cudgelled with this moral hypocrisy.
Oh, I'm so sorry.
I'm so sorry.
Let us put our heads together and reason generation to generation about what went wrong and why and uproot this abusive and bizarre set of contradictory ethics.
That can only be inflicted and never abided.
Let us pull out this root and branch and consign it to the fires of history and figure out what went wrong, put our heads together and reason.
And I come to you, my children, I come to you, hat in hand, with apologies and shame for bullying you with a morality that I I will not live by myself and almost cannot live by myself.
And now, not only must I come to you with apologies for what I did to you when you were children, but, oh my heavens, I not only need your forgiveness for what I inflicted upon you, I need your money.
Having given my money to the government that I am responsible for, which has pissed it away and I did nothing for it, now I need it.
I need to come to you instead of the government.
I need to violate every moral principle that I inflicted upon you, my children.
So, I need not only your understanding and your forgiveness, which I scarcely deserve, because it is only an extremity which has brought me to empathy and reason.
Not empathy and reason itself, but only an extremity.
Only when I'm up against the wall have I decided that what I did before was wrong.
So, I scarcely deserve your forgiveness, but I need not only your forgiveness, but also cash in hand for the next twenty years.
I'm so sorry.
Please forgive me and please help me.
Well, if the elder generation had the moral courage and integrity to do that, I would shell out money for them because I would rather my daughter grow up in a world where immoral philosophies died in shame,
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