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March 15, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
31:11
1617 State Tax Farming - A Preview
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Alright, so this is a sort of warm-up cast for...
I'm gonna do one of my special compressed video image presentations, because they seem to go down quite well on the internet community.
So this is some more details around the question or the issue of livestock.
Management. It is Thursday, March the 18th, 12.40pm.
A bit of a gym cast. It's not too crowded today and we should be able to slither through and do a little philosophy while lifting my Gold Guard weights.
So, when it comes to looking at the economics of tax livestock farming and the incentives, I think if we look at it through this lens, and I don't think it's really a lens, I think it's a pretty accurate way of looking at it.
It's not very accurate. Then I think we can really understand a lot more of what is going on in the world if we look at it through this.
Now, just up front, I want to be clear that I do not consider all of the stuff that I'm describing to be...
Conscious, smoky backroom PowerPoint charts, let's own the humans.
I don't believe it to be the case that it is a massive conspiratorial Illuminati conspiracy.
But what I do believe, and I think this is true, that human beings are very good at maximizing resource consumption and one of the most profitable resources, if not the most profitable resource to To own in the human ecosystem is other human beings, right? I mean, human beings from an amoral biological standpoint are just designed to maximize resources and one of the most maximizable resources.
In biology, in the sort of competition for resources for human beings is other human beings.
And so, is it a conspiracy that human beings like the taste of sugar and fat more than the taste of vegetables in general?
Well, no, it's not a conspiracy.
It is simply a matter of biological adaptation.
Now, the biological adaptation that would lead human beings to be very good at owning other human beings would seem to me it would be crazy if that wasn't the case.
And so the instinct for enslaving other human beings is hardwired into our biological makeup.
That's why we can't have a government, right?
That's why we need philosophy the way that our bodies need nutrition, so that we don't just follow that which is biologically pleasurable for us.
And all organisms want to minimize acquisition costs and maximize acquisition results.
And for human beings, of course, that is most efficiently done through the ownership of other human beings.
But the one thing that is different in human beings than any other species, and it is a direct result of that bicameral mind explosion of neocortex rational consciousness, is that human beings are most efficiently owned through morality,
through loyalty, through allegiance, through tribalism, through patriotism, through A collectivization of group identity and the self-perception of virtue through obedience to a ruling class.
And so, it is both UPB and a violation of UPB that makes human beings so eminently practical and efficient and productive to own from a Reza standpoint.
So, if you want to look at...
Let's just take a simple question of contemporary economics.
Why is the government so interested in healthcare?
And the roads and the water supply and education and things like that.
Why is it that the government has taken such an interest in all of these things?
Well, I submit that it's impossible to understand the why of all of this without looking at productive management of livestock.
Human beings are provided healthcare by the government in the same way and for the same reason that a farmer inoculates his cows, because it makes them more productive.
So why is there a healthcare debate right now?
Because the cost of keeping the livestock healthy has risen to the point where a the livestock is getting restless and b it's cutting into the profits of the farmers.
Well, it's the only reason why there is such a proliferation around the world of universal healthcare or the healthcare debate that's going on in the United States at the moment.
You simply can't understand the healthcare debate without understanding its relationship to good and efficient livestock management techniques.
If you look at something like roads, well, in the same way you say, well, why doesn't a farmer pile his cattle ten high?
Well, because it's bad for their productivity.
Why is it that the government wants to subsidize and take over control of the roads?
Well, for movements of troops, of course, which is what it was originally designed for, but because roads are pretty essential for the productivity of tax livestock.
I have to drive to work.
So that's another key ingredient.
If you look at the water supply, well, why is it the government controls the water supply?
Why is it the government is so interested in providing clean water?
Well, because farmers, quite sensibly and wisely, irrigate their crops.
That's why you have government control of the water supply.
And these all have a dual or triple purpose, but we're just looking at the basic motivations as to why these things would be occurring.
Now, you could say, you know, an argument against this would be, well, tax livestock could be a lot more productive if children weren't stuck in school for so long.
But there's a great dual purpose in the provision, a triple purpose really, in the provision of state education.
First and foremost, of course, is since human beings are most effectively owned through morality, schools provide the essential function of propagandizing children, of course, right?
And as I talked about in RTR, this propagandizing serves sort of two important functions.
I mean, if you can get, I mean, the best thing that you want is for, is to not rely, not to require any cages at all, right?
Not to require any electric fences around your sheep, right?
That's the best of all.
But if that can't be allowed, or if that's not efficient, then what you really want to do is to have the sheep build their own fences.
And even more ideally, you don't want any fences, but you want the sheep to enforce the boundaries.
So if any sheep starts wandering off, actually let's go singular plural with cow and cows.
It's one of the quirks in English that sheep and sheep are singular and plural, let's stick with cows.
If any cow starts to wander off the paddock, Ideally, you want that cow to be rather effortlessly reined in by being attacked by the other cows.
That way you really don't have to build any fences at all.
The fences are the other cows attacking.
That's what causes that.
So, that's a very, very productive...
Now, the other thing that's true is that, of course, the government doesn't pay for any public education at all.
The government takes money from more productive citizens and uses it to inculcate less productive citizens.
I mean, a man or woman who's 40 is much more profitable to the government than a child of 13.
Life skills, job skills, education, experience, and so on.
And so it's more profitable for the government to tax the more productive livestock than it is to tax the less productive livestock.
And, of course, a key way to tax the more expensive or more profitable livestock is to appeal to the universal, quote, value of educating the young, right?
So, the government will say whatever it needs to in order to get the cows to give up the milk.
And if the government says, well, The adult cows who produce a lot more milk will take some of that milk to educate the young cows into why they have to give up milk when they get older.
I mean, that's a beautiful cycle of profit and propagandizing, right?
So, I think that's another important thing to understand about tax livestock farming.
Now, we could sort of go into each details of various aspects of what the government does.
But I think that it's also really, really important if you want to maintain the ruling class, farming class, what you want to do is you don't want to have a simple top-down hierarchy, right? You don't want to have a bunch of people in the government who are just taxing the hell out of the livestock and you're sort of either-or.
What you want to do Is you want to create a mirror society within the cow community, within the herd.
You want to create a mirror society.
So the farmer ideally wants deputy farmers within the cow herd, right?
So, in other words, you want...
I mean, the farmer obviously is dependent upon the cow's milk.
But you want the cows to become dependent on each other's milk as much as possible, because that means that they're going to enforce farming themselves.
So the more cows you can turn into mini-farmers, the more you can maintain the farming paradigm.
I'm sorry if this is a little confusing.
So, if you're the farmer, what you want to do is you want to collect the milk.
And then, you want to hand out the milk to a fairly large number of other cows.
And, of course, the reason you want to do that is that then, if any cow says, I don't want to be farmed, What that does is it creates a panic and hostility among the cows who are dependent upon the farming paradigm.
All right, so you collect 100 liters, let's say, a day from, I don't know what the hell the number is, I'm a philosopher, not a farmer, but let's say you collect 100 liters of milk from the cows, and you can either pay 20 or 30 liters To have a fence which makes the cows restive, right? Because the challenge with human livestock farming is that it doesn't work very well unless humans believe that they're free.
And that's the great challenge. You put humans in a cage, they stop producing milk.
Humans do not breed or produce well in captivity.
They are the great white sharks of livestock.
And this is sort of the revolution of modern democratic farming.
Quasi-capitalist mixed-economy state farming techniques is that if people believe that they're free, then they're much more productive.
And to be fair, if they actually do possess some leisure of freedom, the ability to choose their own occupation makes them much more productive than otherwise.
So, as I talked about in the Matrix video, free-range farming is the modern paradigm.
Of course, it's unsustainable for reasons we'll get into later, but you take a hundred If you build a big bloody fence, then their productivity will go down hugely, right?
Think of the productivity of people in North Korea versus people in America or Germany, right?
So you would get a catastrophe.
You'd go down from 100 liters of milk to maybe 10.
So you'd be paying more for fencing than you would be getting.
So you maybe would get 10 and you'd have to spend 5 on fencing, so you've got 5 liters left.
On the other hand, if you take 100 liters and you give out 30 liters to other cows, then what will happen is the other cows will attack any cow who tries to wander off Wanderer out of the paddock, right? Who stands up and says, I don't want to be farmed.
Well, the cows who are dependent upon the 30 liters of milk from the main cow herd will rise up in fear, rage, and hostility and attack the cow who suggests that they should not be farmed because the second round of cows is dependent upon the first round for their sustenance, and they have lost the ability, in many cases, to fend for themselves.
So, what happens is you get your 100, you hand out 30 to make cows dependent upon you and on the other cows, and then you only have to spend five or so on enforcement, on fence maintenance and so on.
And since the cows who are dependent upon the main herd, like the cows who are receiving the 30 liters, They know that their game is up, their parasitism is up, if the cows actually recognize that they're in an electric fence paddock, right? Because everybody knows that if human beings understand that they're not free, they will become much less productive.
And so you have to, as the farmer, as the main farmer, you have to keep the cows away from the electric fence.
In fact, you have to keep them away from even thinking about the electric fence.
And your greatest danger is the person who uses the argument for morality, or the against me argument, and says, no, no, it's coercion.
There's an electric fence. Because the moment that people see the electric fence, their productivity will decline enormously.
And so the cows who are dependent, like the 30-liter parasite cows, who are dependent upon the main herd for their survival and sustenance, well, those cows...
We are enormously invested in making sure that none of the cows see the electric fence.
Because if the cows see the electric fence, they will become much less productive.
If they become much less productive, the cows who are living on the 30 liters A day, suddenly we'll have only a few liters.
And most of them will do very badly.
Basically, it will be adapt or die.
And they don't really want to do that.
Right? So, once you've got the cows dependent upon the other cows, and once those cows know that their 30 liters of, quote, profit will only continue if the main herd does not see the electric fence that surrounds them, Then you have set up an enormous class of people violently opposed to the argument for morality, violently opposed to UPB. And that's a very, very important thing to understand.
If you want to understand why people are so hostile to philosophy, it's because philosophy would rob them of their livelihood, their income, and put them in a situation or state.
Where it actually would be, you know, adapt or die.
And that's not what they're designed for.
I mean, organisms resist evolution in many ways.
And certainly organisms that are already invested into an existing paradigm, they violently resist evolution in others.
That will rob them of that, right? I mean, if you are...
Let's just take a biological metaphor.
There are those hummingbirds with the really long beaks to go in and drink, or that go in and drink the nectar of those orchids.
Well, those hummingbirds who already have a beak that's like two inches long, how are they going to feel about another hummingbird that comes along with a beak that's two and a half inches long?
Well, they're going to kind of hate it, because it's going to drink All the nectar and leave them with nothing.
So, organisms that have already adapted to one environment will violently resist, I mean, really violently resist any organism that comes along which is going to cause them to adapt, which they may or may not be able to do, or they're going to die.
So, if you want to understand why...
The cows dependent upon the state, or the farmer, are so hostile to those who come along and point out the fence.
Well, that's why.
And not just because they're afraid that some of their own, like the government, is going to cut welfare or whatever, but they fundamentally understand that The 30 liters they all live on, they get this in their gut.
It's an instinct, right? Just as human control of other human beings is an instinct, parasitism is an instinct as well.
For humans, as it is for every other organism that has the choice.
It's just that most other organisms are fixed in their behaviors, right?
Intestinal parasites can't become architects, right?
I'm kind of stuck in that parasite role.
But it's because they fundamentally understand that the excess productivity that provides them their 30 liters a day to live on only exists because the cows think they're free.
So a cow comes along and says, you see that?
That's a fence. Well, if people understand that, they're going to be in an adapt-or-die situation and I genuinely believe that it's more of an emotional problem.
Most people on welfare could actually adapt to a free market situation, but the problem is that UPP is used to justify everything.
So, when people take the 30 leaders, they have to justify that some way.
And they justify that in a variety of ways, but they all tend to be universal morality, because people have a tough time justifying these things otherwise.
Blacks will sometimes do it by saying, well, society's too racist to let me survive, right?
So then if they have to adapt, they have to confront their own perceptions of racism, which, according to many polls, is vastly overblown.
And so, UPB is used to justify parasitism so that it's not parasitism, but just recompense, right?
Well, my ancestors were slaves, and so I'm owed this.
Oh, you know, whatever, right? The government's killed all the manufacturing jobs, so I'm owed this, right?
So people at UPB justify their own choices.
And for a person to overthrow their own self-imposed UPB, if it's false, genuinely and truly, UPB is so powerful that most people, I shouldn't say most, many people, We'd rather die than overthrow UPB. Just as most people will go, if drafted to war, rather than flee and survive.
Well, they would rather die than self-overthrow UPB. I just want to sort of point that out as a recognition of just how powerful UPB actually is.
People choose death over a moral revolution.
So, that's another reason why, when you are the farmer, it pays.
To be generous.
It's not really generosity, it's investment.
In the same way that a factory owner will find it enormously profitable to invest in capital machinery that triples his workers' productivity, a livestock farmer will find it enormously profitable to invest in a parallel The parasitical system within the cow herd,
because then the cows will attack each other, will attack those who talk of freedom, and will also resist anybody who questions the ethics of farming and parasitism and will Attack anybody who opposes the existing system, right? So the creation of a mirror system of farming and parasitism within the cow herd is enormously productive because that's how you get the cows to attack each other, right?
But one of the most powerful ways that the state farmers manage to maintain such powerful control over the livestock Is this basic paradox that keeps the chains, albeit somewhat invisible, but all too real, around our sweaty necks.
In order for a man to be truly virtuous, he must have empathy.
Empathy for his fellow slaves, and even empathy for the hysterical, awful parasitism of the masters.
I mean, it is a pretty grim thing.
I mean, you couldn't pay me enough to be a congressman, given how messed up their lives are, and how deviant and bizarre and weird and fetishistic and messed up they are.
Half of them are drunk drivers, alcoholics, drug addicts, sexual deviants, adulterers, philanderers.
I mean, it's a miserable, miserable life for the masters as well.
I'd rather be a slave than a master in any situation you can imagine.
So it takes some empathy.
It takes empathy for the future.
It takes empathy for the missed opportunities.
It takes imagination to see how the world could be.
Looking at all the opportunity costs that exist in the realm of livestock human ownership.
So it takes sensitivity, it takes empathy, it takes courage, it takes intelligence, it takes a little bit of craziness when you look at the odds, but it takes a lot of qualities to really oppose livestock ownership.
Now the problem, so this is what is required, and this is the paradox that I have really, really had to fight hard within myself, is that it takes a lot of empathy.
To stand up for what is right takes a lot of imagination.
For me, at least. Maybe it's easier for other people, but it takes a lot of courage.
Now, the problem is that with that empathy comes a price.
And the price is that you feel empathy for the suffering of your fellow slaves, and even, to some degree, for the suffering of the masters.
And so, the most dangerous thing Person to the masters is the cow with empathy and courage.
But they have a very effective way of short-circuiting this.
And what they do is, let's say, that you oppose, from a moral level, or from a moral standpoint, you oppose the 30 liters of milk being transferred to the dependent cows.
It's wrong. It's immoral.
It's bad for them. It's bad for you.
It's evil. It was all done through force.
Well... What happens?
Well, they cut. They cut the funding.
They cut. And you can see this going on in Greece at the moment.
It'll happen all too soon here.
They cut the cow-facing resource distribution.
They don't cut what goes to the farmer.
Of course not.
Or his friends. Well, what they'll do is they'll cut the 30 liters of milk that's going to the dependent cows down to 20 liters of milk.
And then they'll say, oh, the evil geniuses that they are.
And then they will say, do you see what you are doing to these poor, helpless cows?
Do you see how hungry they are?
Do you see how miserable they are?
And the undercows, the welfare cows, and this includes, of course, the corporate welfare cows, And the real farmers will weep and gnash their teeth and wail and hold up their hungry children, play the whole pantomime theater.
And that is a really tough thing.
That is a really, really, really tough thing.
Because the same empathy that leads you to want to improve the world lends you or renders you enormously susceptible to being manipulated by the state-inflicted suffering of the cows who are losing their resources.
Right? So you say, well, I don't want to give up all my milk.
I don't want to give up half my milk at the point of a gun to these asshole farmers.
And the farmers say, fine, have it your way.
And they cut the distribution to the dependent cows.
And then the dependent cows play, and not just play, but are, you know, genuinely suffer and go through agonies of mental and sometimes physical torment.
And the farmer points, At the cows that the farmer has cut the resources to and says, is this what you wanted?
Look at what you have done.
Look at how selfish you are that you are inflicting for the sake of your own greed and desire for material gain that you are inflicting this suffering upon your poor fellow cows whose only crime was to be born helpless or sickly or dumber.
And that is the great test.
Of empathy, and it is a brutal test of empathy.
It is a brutal test because the suffering is real.
I mean, no sane human being imagines that we can achieve a free world without intense and enormous suffering and backlash because of the number of cows who are dependent upon pillaged milk.
I don't even think cows drink milk, but you understand the metaphor, right?
There is going to be suffering.
Anybody who wants to improve the world who does not have any enemies is not doing any damn good.
It's not doing any damn good.
Feminists who say don't put up with abusive relationships end up hated by the husbands whose wives leave them claiming abuse.
If you want to get people out of abusive relationships and you aren't hated by abusers, you're not being effective at all.
Ron Paul isn't hated because he's not achieving anything.
But if he were to actually achieve something, Privatize something or, you know, cut spending somewhere, then he would be attacked and vilified and slandered and, you know, all of the petty bullshit grade two tactics that people use.
But the same empathy and moral courage that leads you to stand up for that which is true and right and good is used against you by the suffering the farmer inflicts upon The suddenly somewhat destitute dependent cows, the parasite cows, and then points at you and said, you have done this!
And then all the other cows who can't stand to look upon suffering say, oh God, let's restore their milk.
This is horrible. I don't like to see hungry cows.
I don't like to see cows that have to go and get a job.
I don't want to see it.
And to be truly real and fair...
Some of these cows aren't going to be able to make the transition.
That doesn't mean they're going to die and charities and all that, but they're going to be worse off.
I mean, the corporate executives will usually have enough money squirreled away unless the fiat currency completely collapses, in which case they still have their fixed assets and real estate and so on.
But, you know, some welfare mom who's had six kids on the expectation of welfare, what's she going to do?
Well, she'll find a way, of course, right?
A human being don't just generally fall over and die.
But it's going to be a horrible, wrenching, difficult transition.
And just as the farmer who is actually inflicting the suffering on the cows, who has set them up for dependence and then withdrawn, right?
You get someone addicted to a drug and then you withdraw the drug.
Well, it's easy to say that those who are demanding the withdrawal of the drug are responsible for the resulting death.
Detox agonies, right?
So, the government gets people addicted to heroin and then someone says, well, the government shouldn't be selling people heroin.
The government yanks away all the heroin and never, of course, provides any methadone or treatment or counseling or anything like that and then says, look at all these people suffering.
You did this! It's like, no, no, no, no.
No, no, no, I didn't do this.
I didn't do this. I'm pointing out what is moral and what is immoral.
I'm making recent impassioned arguments for what is moral and what is immoral.
But if the farmer chooses to cut subsidies to the dependent cows, that's the farmer's decision.
It's not mine. It's the farmer's responsibility that the cows are dependent.
It's not mine.
I mean, there is a way to gracefully transition people off dependence, but it is a multigenerational, self-knowledge, psychological, philosophical awareness campaign.
It is not the brutal reduction of subsidies in the moment.
It's just going to provoke revolution and civil war.
But progress will always result in suffering, right?
I mean, if you were raised in an abusive household and you have made that commitment to not have abuse in your life and people won't change around you, they're going to suffer when you don't want them.
Of course, I mean, but what is the option?
What is the option? Do we simply keep photocopying all the immoralities and errors of every generation that came before us because we're afraid of offending people who are pretty bad?
Well, that's not going to work.
Of course not. So I hope this helps.
Please let me know if you think this would be an interesting topic.
There's obviously more to say, but I wanted to keep this relatively, oh, shockingly concise.
I look forward to your donations. Thank you so much.
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