1707 Why You Are Unemployed -- Part One
The real reason you are unemployed -- do not take it personally!
July 24, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
07:17
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| Hi everybody, it's Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio. | |
| is a show particularly directed at you, my friends, who are unemployed or underemployed. | |
| I think it's so, so important to not take this personally and to understand that there is only one fundamental reason that you are unemployed and it doesn't have anything to do with failures on your part. | |
| So this is a sort of reach out, sympathy message and hopefully a sunburst of clarity onto why. | |
| You were unemployed. I've gone through it myself. | |
| When I graduated in the 90s, I had a good degree from a great college, and I couldn't find even work as a waiter. | |
| I couldn't find work doing anything. | |
| I had to weed people's gardens. | |
| I had to paint their garages. | |
| I had to wash their cars. | |
| I mean, it was ridiculous, given the amount of education and knowledge that I had. | |
| But that was the reality of where things were. | |
| And so many people are out there in the same situation at the moment. | |
| And I just really, really want to express my sympathy and tell you why you're in this situation. | |
| If you've ever read Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell, which is a great, great read, as is Homage to Catalonia, he says something very, very interesting, which is directly relevant to your situation, my friends. | |
| He spent some time traveling around with tramps and hobos and homeless people In Paris and London. | |
| And he said that he was constantly running across highfalutin theories as to why these people wandered around from town to town. | |
| Why wouldn't they stay in one place? | |
| Why wouldn't they settle down? | |
| Why wouldn't they put down roots? | |
| And he said everybody had these theories like they had a gypsy culture which kept them moving, that they had wanderlust, that they had sort of agoraphobia, they had to keep moving, all of this nonsense, highfalutin, over-psychologizing explanations. | |
| And he said the ridiculous thing about these explanations is that the cause of their movements, of their continual movements, was nothing to do with restlessness or culture or psychological problems. | |
| It was simply because if they stayed in the same town for more than a night or two, they would get thrown in jail for vagrancy. | |
| So he said the reason that they kept moving was because they would be arrested and thrown in jail if they didn't. | |
| It was really that simple. This is exactly the same case. | |
| Why are you unemployed? | |
| Well, you're unemployed for one very basic, simple, and clear reason that is never talked about in our culture. | |
| Let me tell you what that reason is. | |
| The reason that you are unemployed or underemployed, my friend, is that if you get a job, if you get a job, You're going to be thrown in jail or your employer is going to be thrown in jail. | |
| It's that simple and that powerful. | |
| There's a big gun in the room that nobody's talking about called state coercion, police aggression, kidnapping and imprisonment, which is why people aren't getting jobs, which is why you are not able to get a job. | |
| Let me tell you what I mean. Let's say some guy wants to hire you and he can't afford to pay you above minimum wage at the moment. | |
| Well, and you're willing to work for less than that for whatever reason, get a toehold in the industry and so on. | |
| My first job was at $1.90 an hour. | |
| It was a while back, but it's okay to get your toehold into the job market and then just start working your way up. | |
| Let's say you want to get a job for a wage that's below minimum wage. | |
| You can't do it. Why? Because if you agree voluntarily with an employer to work for some amount that the government doesn't like, you will be thrown in jail, or your employer will be fined, and if he doesn't pay the fine, he'll be thrown in jail. | |
| And when they come to arrest him, if he resists arrest, he might get shot. | |
| There's a gun in the room that's keeping you on the couch, or keeping you watching YouTube. | |
| Let's say you want to get a job, but your employer can't pay, or doesn't want to pay, or can't afford The extra costs, and you can't afford the extra costs of having to pay in to some bullshit old-age non-pension Ponzi scheme that you're never going to see dime one of. | |
| Well, if you get a job and you don't pay into this government racket, then you will be thrown in jail. | |
| Your employer will be fined, and if he resists Finds he will be arrested and if he resists arrest he might get shot. | |
| There's a gun in the room that is keeping you from honest and productive employment. | |
| Let's say you want to get a job in a manufacturing plant and it happens to be unionized. | |
| And the union happens to be protected by 6,000 different government laws. | |
| Well, If you get a job and you don't join the union, if you don't pay off these union thugs, guess what? | |
| You get to go to jail, or your employer gets to go to jail. | |
| See? There's a gun that is keeping you from getting a job. | |
| Let's say you want to be an entrepreneur, but you can't fill out the paperwork, or you can't fill out the forms, or you don't have enough knowledge of the six million different tax codes that you're subjected to as a business owner. | |
| Let's say that somebody wants to rent you an office space but doesn't want to pay off the government with its property theft taxes. | |
| Well, you can't make that voluntary arrangement to get work. | |
| It's the same thing. You ever see those pictures of guys in the 1930s who are all lined up with those cloth caps, are all lined up for soup kitchens and crap like that? | |
| You see those guys... In the 1930s, why were they out of work? | |
| I remember looking at those pictures as a kid thinking, why on earth would these people be standing in line? | |
| Does nothing need to get done in the country? | |
| Do no gardens need to be weeded? | |
| Do no basements need to be cleaned out? | |
| Does no junk need to be hauled away? | |
| Of course it is. The reason that these people couldn't get work was because they would have been arrested if they had gotten a job under conditions voluntary, peaceful, which the government and its supporters didn't happen to like. | |
| Unionization, minimum wages, excessive regulations, all of these make it impossible, illegal for you to get a job in voluntary, peaceful transactions. | |
| That's not something you're hearing about. | |
| There's so many layers of over-complexity that go on. | |
| And if you don't see the gun in the room, everything just seems complicated and confusing and weird and exhausting. | |
| Forget all of that. | |
| Forget all of that. | |
| It's that simple. | |
| You're going to get arrested for getting a job. | |
| If you don't agree with the violent rules of your society, you're just simply going to get thrown in jail. | |
| The reason that you're unemployed, the reason that you're unemployed is exactly the same reason the gazelle run away from lions. | |
| It's exactly the same reason that zebra cross a river with crocodiles at a high clip. | |
| It's the same reason that sheep all run in the same direction when sheepdogs are biting at their heels. | |
| It's the same reason that elephants stampede when one of them is getting shot. | |
| The reason you don't have a job, the reason you're unemployed or underemployed is very, very simple. | |
| Because you're going to get shot if you get a job. | |
| That's what we need to oppose. | |
| We need to put down the gun in the room. | |
| Stop pointing it at the necks of people who are having voluntary, peaceful interactions in the economic sphere, in the social sphere, in the private sphere, in the artistic sphere, wherever. | |
| We need to put down the gun so that you can get a job. |
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