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Aug. 26, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:29:08

1737 Doctor/Soldier - A Debate About Joining the Army

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	11 o'clock late. Oh, listen, that's no problem.
	No problem at all. So do you want to tell me a little bit about your thoughts about this big, big, big decision and how you're viewing it and how you came to it?
	Yes, of course. Well, let's...
	I'm a recent graduate from college and my goal in life is to go to medical school and become a doctor.
	I've wanted that ever since I was little and I've volunteered at clinics.
	I've shadowed doctors.
	My own sister's a doctor.
	I've done everything that you could possibly do in order to make sure you really want that sort of career.
	And I absolutely love it and I'm fascinated with medicine and especially the field of pediatrics.
	And my goal in life is to eventually become a pediatrician.
	So you're seriously trying to blow my mind here.
	That's the intention tonight.
	You understand that you're blowing my mind in a good way.
	Good, good. So the fork in the road for you is between putting bodies back together or taking them apart, so to speak, right?
	Well, not exactly.
	Explain, if you can.
	Of course, of course. So my goal is to become a doctor.
	And one thing that every, or almost every doctor has told me, is that one thing that they regret is that they hadn't taken any time off between their undergrad and their medical school.
	They went straight through. Except for the women doctors, and they normally say that they are glad that they did it this way so that they could have a family after they finished residency and after they became a partner and they could actually Spend more time with their kids and be at the right age.
	Whereas if you're a man and you took time off, then it would be very hard for a woman to have a biological clock.
	Anyway, back to the story.
	So they told me that most medical doctors have asked or have told me that they would have wished to take some time off to see the world and to see things that they wouldn't be able to see in their profession.
	And also medical school is very expensive.
	So I have to figure out a career that would not only allow me to see the world but also allow me to save up money to pay for medical school.
	you know And it seems that the military is the best way to do both those things.
	But from seeing your clips on YouTube, I clearly see that you are one that does not believe that is the case.
	It's certainly my approach.
	As a philosopher, I'm always open to new evidence and new arguments, but that's certainly been my approach so far.
	And I'm sorry, let me just make sure you said that there were two things.
	So the first is to take some time off between undergraduate and medical school and, you know, do stuff.
	And I actually think that's a great idea.
	I took time off between high school and college.
	I took time off between my undergraduate and graduate degree, and the second was a little bit more inadvertent just because the economy was sucking like a wet vacuum, and I'd also run out of money.
	So yeah, I understand some of the struggles of paying for college.
	I really do. And I think that it's a good idea to take time off.
	The second one, and if I understand it rightly, it's more important for you.
	The second one is the cost, right?
	Yes. Yes. So how does that work out with the military?
	I mean, if you don't, just run me through the bargain or the deal.
	No, no, no, of course. Well, there are many ways of doing it.
	One is you could go in the military and have them pay for medical school and they'll pay for every year that you put in.
	They'll pay for that, but you have to serve a year afterwards for every year that they pay for your medical school.
	Sorry, I just wanted to make sure I understand that.
	So is it two for one, like two years in the military for a year of medical school?
	My understanding, it's one for one.
	One for one, okay. No, no.
	If I'm wrong, then excuse me and please do your research, which I'm sure you will.
	But my wanting is to go there as a regular officer before medical school and serve my four years and save enough money that way because your base pay there is around $36,000.
	And as you As you serve more years and you get promoted, you're more likely to leave the military after four years as an O3 if you do all your things properly and if you serve in a war.
	Or else you'll be as a O2. And you'll be able to save up to, if you're frugal enough, something like $70,000 to $80,000 if you spend only on your necessary expenses.
	Plus, you get a GI bill afterwards.
	So you could roughly save up to $90,000, which would allow me to pay for most of my medical school.
	So it's $90,000 is what stands between you and medical school, or at least that would make it a lot easier, right?
	Yes, that would make it a lot easier.
	Right, right, right.
	And have you done, you're obviously a very intelligent fellow, so I'll try to keep up, of course, right?
	But have you done the mathematics to figure out what $90,000 will cost you In terms of a loan.
	Let's say you get the loan, and I assume that you get it at a pretty low interest rate because it's a student loan and so on.
	Have you done the math to find out how much you will have to pay to pay off $90,000 over, I don't know, 10 years or whatever after school?
	To be honest, I haven't.
	I haven't done that. Alright, let's do that.
	Let's do it.
	Let's make sure that we can get a proper loan that more likely one would receive and not get something that is awfully low or awfully high.
	Sure, sure. Okay, so just tell me the amount.
	We said $90,000.
	Yeah, let's agree on $90,000.
	It could be more or less.
	Right, right. And let's say that you've got a 5% interest rate.
	Okay, 5% is fair.
	Is that fair enough? Yes.
	And let's say that you are paying weekly.
	Let's just go with monthly.
	Okay, so let's just say a 15-year amortization just for funsies.
	It doesn't really matter what, right?
	Right, right. So, $90,000 at 5% over 15 years is just over $700 a month that you will be paying in interest.
	And that's not an insignificant amount.
	I fully understand that. But that's a lot less than a house, right?
	Depends on how much of an upfront pay you have on the house.
	Yes, that's true, but if you've just dropped $90,000 on it, well, I guess the army would be paid.
	But for most people, let's say that you buy, I don't know, I mean, simply, a $400,000 house, even if you have $25,000 down, you're looking at a $300,000 mortgage, which people just accept.
	Or even if it's $200,000, they accept that as just sort of the cost of...
	Of being alive, right?
	I mean, you've got to have a place to live.
	But the ownership of a rental, it doesn't really matter.
	So you look at, let's just say $700 a month for that $90,000.
	Now this is assuming that you don't have any part-time jobs.
	This is assuming you don't get help from family.
	This is assuming that you don't get jobs in the summer to help with that education.
	Is that... Well, you don't get very much time off during the summer if you are in medical school.
	The summers are very, very short.
	Like what, a month or two?
	Maybe. From what I understand, it's not even a month sometimes, so you can't really get a job that way.
	And more like you're trying to do some sort of internship, unpaid internship.
	And can you, sorry, can you get any help from your family?
	I'm trying to do it by myself, so no.
	I can't.
	I'm sorry to hear that, of course.
	And also, let's not forget that $90,000 may not even cover the whole thing.
	If you go to, for example, a private top-notch school, say, if we go to a Duke medical school, Or Harvard or whatever private goods, well-known medical school.
	It's going to run you around $160,000, $170,000 to just go there.
	Maybe more. I understand that, but that's only one half of the equation, right?
	Right, right. That's only one half of the equation.
	What's the other half? A big part.
	One half. I'm sorry.
	But the other half of the equation is that the reason that they can charge so much is that you make a hell of a lot more when you graduate, right?
	Except if you go into a field of primary care where you may make $120,000 at most.
	But I'm planning on doing some urban or rural education.
	Actually, I have a girlfriend who I intend to marry that wants to do aid work in Africa and I want to join her.
	I can't exactly pay my loans if I'm going to do aid work in Africa, can I? Well, yes, but you also may be able to get deferrals if you're going out and doing Doctors Without Borders or something like that.
	I mean, this is stuff to talk about with the university, right?
	Of course. But it may be the case, right?
	I certainly know that charitable work that doctors do gives them a lot of advantages in this kind of stuff.
	So let's just say, I mean, the number may be higher or lower, but we need to have something to talk about, right?
	So let's just talk $700 a month, right?
	Right, let's talk about that.
	Alright, so $700 a month is embarrassing.
	I'm such an arts grad.
	Let me just get my handy-dandy calculator up.
	Embarrassing. Alright, calculator-calculator.
	What are you trying to find out?
	How much would it cost a year?
	Yeah, I just did it in my head, but I'm so bad at doing math in my head, I'm not even going to pretend that it might be correct.
	Oh, I did have it right. So it's $8,400 a year, right?
	Yes. So $8,400 a year is what you will be paying to go to medical school for 15 years after medical school, right?
	Right. You know, give or take.
	Yeah, that's if it's $90,000.
	I'm sorry? Yeah, that's if it's $90,000.
	And that assumes that you get no scholarships, that you get no grants, that you get no bursaries, that you get no subsidies of any kind, right?
	Right. Which you may do, right?
	May. You may.
	So we're not taking the best case scenario, but we're also not taking the worst case scenario, which is somewhere in the middle, right?
	Just because we need numbers to work with, right?
	More or less, yes. Right.
	Okay, so you have $8,400 a year of after-tax income that you will be...
	I think it's tax-deductible if it's student loans, but, you know, check with your accountant, of course, or someone who might know.
	So, of course, this is not something...
	This is something I'm sure you're totally aware of.
	I'm just trying to make a case here, right?
	So $8,400 a year is not negative.
	You're not out $8,400 a year if you go to medical school, right?
	I mean, it seems that way before you go in, but $8,400 is approximately one tenth the extra money that you make by going to medical school, right?
	Okay, yeah, you can see it that way, yes.
	No, no, this is not seeing it this way.
	I mean, I'm not saying I like orange or ice cream, right?
	I mean, I think this is an economic fact.
	Do you know what the average doctor's salary is in the field that you're looking into going?
	You said pediatrics, right? Right, pediatrics.
	Primary care is around $100,000.
	$100,000 a year?
	Yes. Are you sure?
	Yes. I'm not positive.
	That's why I said $100,000. What do you see there?
	Well, let's go right now.
	Let's have a look. Yeah, this is important stuff.
	Okay, so let's have a look.
	We'll both look. We'll see who's...
	Your younger hands will be faster.
	Okay, so average pediatric salary.
	The average 2009 U.S. hospitalist salary offers stood at $226,000 a year in the lower Midwest, while the lowest salary offers in the Northeast were $195,000 a year.
	I don't know what a hospitalist is.
	A popular physician job.
	Let's see. There was an outlier.
	One of my colleagues was offered $160,000 a year at a city hospital in Colorado, while another one signed up for more than $300,000 a year in a nearby Midwest hospital.
	But let's, you know, it's not our first Google hit to determine the occupants.
	No, no, no, of course not. For your future, let's look at a few more.
	Ah, here we go. Physician salary surveys.
	Okay, so...
	Okay, I'll just put...
	I'm going to put this link here into Skype.
	Right. Okay, so pediatrics.
	You're going to start off...
	At $135,000 a year, and then after year three, you're going to go to $175,000 a year, and you max out at $270,000 a year.
	And that's assuming no specialization.
	If you do pediatrics critical care, then you start out at $196,000.
	Within three years, you're going to $259,000, and you max out at almost $400,000 a year.
	Yeah, I see that right here, yes.
	So let's, again, we're trying to make a case that's reasonable and some of these are just nutty, right?
	Look at this cardiology.
	So you start at $145,000, you go to $282,000 and you max out at over $600,000 a year.
	Now, what you really want to do is you want to go into ORS spine surgery, where you maxed out $1.4 million a year.
	You know, which is actually even more than internet philosophers make, so that's a pretty impressive chunk of change.
	Okay, so let's just say you go to pediatrics.
	Yes. And let's take, you know, again, we're not going to try and tweak the numbers.
	Let's just take the lowest numbers, which says that after a couple of years, you're at a quarter million dollars a year.
	271,000 or whatever, right?
	Well, that's not necessarily the lowest numbers.
	I just sent you a link to something that says something totally different than that.
	Right there, do you see the link that I have for you?
	I do, yeah. So we've got an average of 150,000 a year.
	Lowest, 111. Highest.
	201. 201,000.
	To be fair, what we can do is we can average the lowest in the pediatrics from the website I sent you to the average or the lowest.
	How about we can average the lowest in the website I sent you after three years from the website that you sent me?
	Well, if we do pediatrics, then you've got your average.
	If I'm reading this rightly, I think that it's a little off the centering here.
	Am I right? Because on the website that you sent me, pediatrics, the bottom number is 149, but it doesn't seem to be attached to anything on the left.
	The number is just down one row.
	It says, well, it says pediatrics.
	Under primary care, it says pediatrics.
	And then first it says average.
	Then the next column, it says lowest.
	And then the next column, it says highest.
	Do you see what I'm saying?
	Oh, yeah, I see that. But if you just look at primary care, underneath it says family practice.
	When I read over to the right, it's kind of blank.
	But there are three numbers.
	They're just one too low, if that makes any sense.
	I can try it in another browser.
	Oh, yeah. What I see is that the rows and the columns are matching.
	Oh, yeah. Okay. It was just the browser.
	Okay. So, let's take...
	This is, in practice, three plus years, right?
	So, this average is 150.
	Right. For pediatrics.
	Is that right? Yes.
	And I think the one that I had, the average was 175.
	Okay. All right. So we make that to 162.5.
	162.5.
	But here, of course, we do have 271,000 is the maximum.
	Right. Which is, I guess, either the maximum that was reported or it is the maximum you can expect after three years because, I guess, money keeps going up and up after three years.
	But anyway, let's take...
	So you said 160,000.
	Is that right? Yes. So let's make that the...
	The so-called salary.
	Yeah, and personally, I think that, I mean, it depends where you go, and of course it depends on your schooling, but you have obviously an engaging and positive personality and so on.
	So in my opinion, what do I know, right?
	I'm just some idiot on the internet, but in my opinion, you can probably do better, but let's just take the 160,000.
	So, the way that I look at it would be something like this.
	Maybe it's the right way to look at it.
	Maybe it's not.
	But if you look at $160,000, that gives you a per month salary of $13,000 and change.
	Right, yes. Which you are deducting $700.
	Right. So let's see.
	It's $13,333.
	So let's take...
	I think it was $711.
	So your salary goes from $13,333 down to $12,622.
	Okay. And then...
	Now, another way of putting that is that...
	The paying off your loan represents just over 5% of your annual income.
	Yeah, but this is not including taxes.
	No, no, I understand.
	I understand. I understand.
	But it's not 50%, right?
	That's what I'm saying. And I believe that you get lots of tax breaks and deductions for paying off student loans.
	Again, you need to check with an accountant.
	But I don't think it's just straight off your after-tax income.
	No, I understand. You've got now practice insurance.
	You've got all this kind of stuff.
	Of course. But we're just looking at the big numbers, right?
	Right. We're looking at the big numbers.
	But we're not incorporating all the small things in it.
	Absolutely, and that may double it.
	Yes. So it may be 10% of your income that is going to pay off your student loans.
	Right. But that is not your income minus 10%.
	I just really want to focus on this thing.
	This is not your income minus 10% because that income is only possible because of the medical school, right?
	Yes, you're very correct, yes.
	So let's say that without medical school you make half the income that you would with medical school, which puts you at $80,000, right?
	Right. But as you said...
	We'd all rather have $160,000 minus $8,400 than $80,000, right?
	Yes, that's a good way to put it.
	I mean, no, this is not...
	Again, without going into the numbers in great detail, you are at $80,000 plus $80,000 minus $8,400, right?
	I mean, it's actually an increase of $76,000.
	Right. Yes, but it depends what you end up doing if you don't go to medical school, right?
	That certainly is true, but medical school is the one thing that society always needs, right?
	Like, so I went into IT because...
	Yes, yes.
	Right, so I did IT, and IT has these booms and these busts, right?
	Right. So I did, oh, the 90s were fantastic, and I built a company, and I sold a company, and it was all, yay, you know?
	And then I left the IT field in 2000 just as...
	You know, like the nosedive, everybody was out of work and then it boomed again and now it's down again, right?
	Whereas doctors is a little bit more constant.
	I'm always going to have work.
	Okay. Yes. You're always going to have work no matter what happens.
	There's always a need for doctors.
	It's not variable like other things.
	So it has its pluses and minuses, right?
	Doctors, you can become very rich being a doctor if you specialize in, I don't know, cardiothoracic, blah, blah, blah, right?
	Right. Financially, the question is, would you pay $8,000 a year with all of this great income to not have to go to the army, right? Because let's look at the downside of it.
	So medical school, including your specialty, is how long?
	I mean, it's four years from medical school.
	I guess, I don't know if you have to do a year or two of undergraduate beforehand, but what's your school commitment that the army is going to have to cover?
	So you said it's a one-for-one, right?
	Yes, so it would just be four years.
	So how many years are we talking?
	Four years. Four years.
	Okay. So this is good.
	Okay. So four years, you get to save $90,000.
	Is that right? Yes, but you also have plenty of other benefits.
	But yes, you get to save $90,000.
	Okay. So that is saving you $22,000 a year.
	Well, $22,500.
	Sorry, you're right. $22,500.
	You're absolutely right. That is $22,500 per year.
	That's a pretty bad wage, right?
	Depends on who you are.
	For you, if you're going to be a doctor, that's a pretty bad wage.
	Okay, let's say yes.
	That's $11 an hour.
	Yes, but if you're happy doing $11 an hour, then you're happy.
	Well, no, no, no. We're not talking about happiness here.
	We're talking about money.
	Okay. Yeah, we're just talking about the numbers because you didn't bring up happiness.
	You brought up the numbers, right?
	So we'll deal with happiness if you want in a few minutes.
	All right, great. But first, let's talk about the thing that you brought up first, which was...
	Sorry, I'm not sounding like I'm trying to catch you.
	You brought it up, right? But we are just talking the numbers and them, right?
	Yeah. Now, the army also, of course, is not a nine-to-five job, right?
	It is... It's your whole life, right?
	It can be, yes.
	Well, no, no. I mean, if they ship you overseas, it is.
	I mean, you don't get to half-hour commute back home at the end of the day.
	No, no, you're very right. So, it's long hours.
	It's grueling. It's tiring.
	It's, you know, I mean, even if you love it, for whatever reason, it's hard work.
	And it's, so, you know, if you're working, let's say you're working 16 hours a day, you're getting paid Right?
	$5.50 an hour.
	And there's, of course, risk.
	And the risk is not just combat, right?
	The risk is, I think, more people have been injured in Iraq in accidents than they have in combat.
	You know, just shit goes over and things blow up and there's an accidental discharge, right?
	No, you're absolutely right. Yes, that's true.
	Bad stuff goes down all over the place.
	I mean, if the army had to adhere to the safety standards of the private sector, they'd never get off the mainland, right?
	There is a private sector in Iraq.
	Oh, sorry, are you there? They have private contractors in Iraq and in Afghanistan, yes.
	Yeah, they do. They do.
	But it's dangerous, right?
	So it's low pay.
	It's all-consuming because you're over there and it's your life.
	And it's dangerous, right?
	Right. It is.
	But your argument before about would the safety regulations not be held if it was a private corporation?
	Well, there are private contractors that are in the...
	Can you imagine the private sector that had the records of fatalities and injuries for accidents that the army does?
	That's just never happened, right?
	The army is not covered by OSHA, right?
	I mean, there are private elements to it.
	I'm just sort of pointing that out. Yes, of course.
	All right. It's the most risky thing that you can do, I think.
	So it's because the $90,000 that you're getting is not free money, right?
	Right. So the question is, because you're also spending four years of your life in the army.
	You are, yes. Right?
	So the question is, would you spend $700 a month out of your $160,000 a year salary to save four years of I'm just talking about the practical aspect.
	Is it worth $700 a month for a decade and a half so that you don't have to spend four years in the military?
	It's a good question.
	You're right. But I don't view my potential military service as being a waste of my life.
	I view it as an opportunity and a challenge and an adventure.
	Okay. So that's not something that you would pay to avoid.
	It's something that you would not exactly pay to do, but it's something that is a positive fee, right?
	Right. So not only do I get a positive fee out of it, I also get money for medical school.
	So tell me the positives for you about the Army.
	Well, as I mentioned before, it's a way for a young man to see the world and to travel.
	If during your time off, which you have 30 days paid vacation every year guaranteed, You can board any military aircraft and travel anywhere you want and stay on a base for free while you travel around the country where you are.
	And as you said, there are 2,156 military sites around the world.
	So that's a lot of sites for me to visit.
	Of course, I can't visit all of them.
	Also, It's a great way to save up for money, as we said earlier.
	And I know you very much disagree with this, but I sort of have the feeling that it's the right thing to do because it's things that my ancestors have done, that my family has done, and it's sort of a rite of passage for me to do right now.
	Right, and if you can tell me a bit about, I appreciate you bringing all that up.
	Of course. Can you just tell me a little bit about your family history with the military?
	Of course. Well, my mom's family comes from Europe.
	They come from Poland.
	And during the time when the Jesuits were sort of ousted from Europe, The Catholic faith, and they're sort of thought to be the bad guys.
	They were sort of hunted down.
	My family protected them.
	They protected the black pope, which was the Jesuit pope.
	Later on, my Members of my mom's family in Poland became great generals and there is a famous general called General Roszadowski who was a general that defended Europe from the Russians back in the early 1900s.
	Later on, my grandfather Went on to, after he was sent to a concentration camp and then got out with his mother, went to the Royal Air Force and flew bombers for the British Air Force.
	On my dad's side, my grandfather was a I'm an army captain and my dad served time in the army because he was drafted there.
	My brother was an army ranger because he did not get good enough grades to go to college and he needed a way to pay for college.
	He couldn't get a scholarship because he didn't have good enough grades so he decided to go to the army and pay for college that way.
	My family background is It is a good push for me to do some sort of military service.
	Right, right, right. Sorry, go ahead.
	No, no, I hope you heard me correctly there.
	I certainly did, yeah. But sorry, if there's more that you wanted to add, I don't want to interrupt.
	Nothing that I can remember right now.
	Now, and what is your family's perspective or opinions on their time in the military?
	Uh, they have mixed opinions.
	Uh, well, my grandfather and my both two grandfathers already passed away, long, long passed away.
	And they were drafted.
	Is that right? Um, yes, they were.
	And so was my father.
	Um, right. So that's not right.
	I mean, I mean, that's, that's a very different situation, right?
	Right, right. Right. But, but my recollection is that they, they enjoyed it and they were, I'm sorry, did you say that your father had passed away as well?
	No, no, my father didn't.
	Okay, sorry. And he was drafted as well.
	But from the stories that I've heard from my father and from other family members is that they enjoy their time in their selective branches and they...
	They were glad they did it.
	And my brother, who recently is out of the Army, was very, very glad he did it and sort of wants me to do it.
	And what is he glad about?
	Hey, I'm sorry.
	I must have lost your connection there.
	Are you still there? Yeah, I'm still here.
	Sorry, Mr. Martin. So what did your brother say about the military service that he liked?
	He liked the camaraderie and he felt that he was making a difference in what he did.
	He has a lot of buddies that were in Iraq and were in Afghanistan and they honestly do feel that when they went there and In their words, liberated. I know that you dislike that word and you don't agree that that's what they did.
	They feel they made a difference for the better.
	Right, right, right.
	So there's a sense of positive sacrifice but positive achievement, is that right?
	Yes, absolutely.
	Right, right. And what are your thoughts about that?
	About which part? Well, the sacrifice I think we understand.
	I think the life in the military is tough, but we do tough things if they're worthwhile, right?
	So, I mean, I think you and I can both agree with that, that there's sacrifice in life that is a good thing and a necessary thing at times.
	So I don't think that the sacrifice is the issue.
	There are, I mean, there are two sides to the coin of how the military works, but I at least want to get your impressions of...
	The work that has been done or what has been done in Iraq and Afghanistan and what your thoughts about it are?
	What my thoughts about that are?
	That's a very good question.
	Well, it's very mixed, unfortunately.
	I have a good friend who's from Afghanistan and she tells me how it's Much worse in Afghanistan than what it was before we were there.
	Let me go back and think of what I want to say.
	I have mixed feelings.
	From what I hear from the news and what I've read about both wars, I'm not too pleased with.
	However, there are always, as you said, two sides to every coin.
	I sort of have faith that whoever chose to go in there did it with a lot of knowledge and with a lot of people bringing up information and filling out different scenarios and eventually figuring out that this was the best move to do.
	So I have...
	I know you may disagree with this, but faith that...
	The government is doing a job that they believe is the best thing to do.
	Doing a job that they feel is the best thing to do?
	I'm not sure what that means.
	Sorry, I don't mean to laugh, but that really got vague towards the end.
	You're right.
	You're absolutely right.
	Okay, let's...
	Sorry, let's...
	Sorry, it's a tough thing.
	I used to be a big fan of the war, so I'm not far into this position.
	I hope you understand that.
	And that doesn't mean that, oh, I knew wrong and now I'm right.
	I'm not trying to make that case, right?
	No, no. I understand the argument, right?
	Which is that this was a brutal dictator and he was killing people and there was no hope in sight.
	And there is a tough transition between this tyranny and dictatorship – sorry, this tyranny and democracy and it's a tough transition.
	But people went in with – even if the politicians didn't have the best intentions, the generals and particularly the people on the ground – I have the very best intentions in a very difficult situation.
	They're doing the best with what they can, and they are achieving some tangible gains for the country.
	Is that roughly?
	Again, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but is that what you mean?
	That's a very good way to articulate my understanding.
	An understandable argument.
	Yes. Yes. Yeah, and look, I understand the argument.
	I really do. And I don't, I certainly don't disrespect you in any way for holding that position.
	I hope you understand that.
	It's not a position that I hold at the moment.
	Maybe I'll be revealed as completely wrong, right?
	So, I mean, that's always a possibility, but it's not a position that I hold at the moment.
	But I certainly don't disrespect your integrity and your intentions in having that argument, if that makes any sense.
	Of course it is. Thank you.
	Okay. Now, let's talk about the $90,000.
	I don't think that you and I are going to make much progress in debating, like, because this is your sort of future and your more immediate decision.
	I don't think that it really comes down to how much good is being done in Iraq, because there's good being done in Iraq, I have no doubt.
	There's bad being done in Iraq, and some of it is from the U.S. military.
	A lot of it, obviously, is from the insurgency.
	Okay. But the basic fact is that you and I don't really know.
	Because the amount of information that's coming out of there and the filters that it's going through, it would be, in a sense, we're arguing...
	I'm not going to say we're arguing propaganda, but you and I particularly don't have, I think, enough facts to conclusively make a case either way to each other.
	Yes, exactly. That's sort of what I wanted to say earlier.
	Unfortunately, I wasn't articulate enough to say that.
	But yes, neither of us know all the facts, and so therefore we don't know exactly.
	Yeah. Right.
	Every fact I come up with, you have a counterfact and vice versa.
	And I wouldn't reject your facts.
	You wouldn't reject mine. And I just think that we will go a little bit in circles.
	And so I'd like to take another approach if that's all right.
	And this is a case you can try it on.
	Obviously, your life is your own.
	Nobody has to tell you that. But I would like at least to drop a few of these arguments into your head so that you can mull them over as you see fit.
	Of course, please. All right.
	So where's the $90,000 coming from?
	It's coming from borrowed money from China or wherever we borrow it from and from our taxpayers.
	Yeah, the majority of it is coming from borrowed money, right?
	The government did not cut spending in other areas to pay for the war.
	The war is almost entirely financed through national debt, right?
	Yes, I saw your YouTube video on that, yes.
	Okay, so the money is not...
	Sorry.
	So where is the money coming from?
	The money is not coming from the Chinese, because the Chinese aren't making a charity.
	No, they're not. They want our money back, and they want it in interest, of course.
	Right, so... Because you talked about, I'll get this money, and you talked about free travel, and you know.
	I mean, I know that that's a word that makes sense in the context, but you know that that's not free, right?
	Yes, yes, absolutely. Okay, so the money to pay for the war and the money to pay for the military as a whole is coming from taxpayers, right?
	Yes, it is. Now, taxation, and this is a non-mainstream argument, which I'm sure you're not unfamiliar with, but you just mentioned that we're going off the reservation right at the moment.
	We are currently passing the boundaries of the mainstream media, and we'll go into the hinterlands of pretty pure but intense philosophical thought, right?
	Yes. So taxation is the initiation of force against citizens, right?
	Yes. Yes.
	I mean, you may say that it's necessary, you may say it achieves good things, and I think that in some ways, I think that certain things that the government does are necessary.
	I don't think the government's necessary to do them, but they are necessary, like, you know, courts and justice and all that.
	But the way that the system works at the moment is that $90,000 that you're getting is being taken from people through force, the threat of force, right?
	Yes. Yes. And it's not exactly blood money because it's not like they're robbing old ladies with a gun to their face or whatever, but it's also not exactly the same as a charity and it's not exactly the same as just a voluntary free market transaction, right? Yes.
	So you, as a taxpayer and a higher income taxpayer, but not in a high enough income that you can set up Cayman Island accounts and do all these funky-dunky tax dodges and all that, you will be paying a lot of money in taxes in the future, part of which will be going to fund the $90,000 that you got in the past.
	Yes. Now, if you don't pay it, then your children are going to pay it.
	But someone's going to pay it.
	Or the country's going to default in bankruptcy and suddenly we're in the Weimar Republic where it takes a wheelbarrow of money to buy a loaf of bread, right?
	If hyperinflation happens, yes.
	Right. So, if we put aside the question of what good may or may not be done in Iraq, whether there's a few bad apples or whether it's just a bad situation overall, And I don't fault the people.
	Look, your brother, I don't fault the people on the ground in Iraq, in my opinion, right?
	I mean, the soldiers, they signed up.
	I mean, it's the politicians and the media.
	This is where I would put my particular fires of fury if I could wield such things.
	So I think that the people on the ground are in a hellishly difficult situation in many ways, although I agree that there is camaraderie and so on.
	But they're trying to make the best of a very difficult situation and they have crazy rules of engagement that make it virtually impossible for them to fight with honor in a way.
	And that doesn't mean that they don't have honor.
	What it means is that the rules of engagement are find some guy in a crowd who may or may not have a bomb under his jacket.
	I mean, this is not trench warfare.
	No, you're very right.
	This is not aerial dogfights in World War II. This is not a line of German tanks and a line of Russian tanks on the Eastern Front in 1943.
	This is like crazy video game from hell, right?
	Right. Right. So it's, and this is why these kinds of occupations tend to be so horrendous.
	And I, you know, come from England, so we've got a long and bitter history, particularly with Afghanistan, but also with Iraq.
	The stuff that we know that, you know, it's amazing to me that we went back, but how quickly people forget and blah, blah, blah.
	So this is no disrespect to the people on the ground.
	This is certainly no disrespect to your position.
	But the reality is that the money that you're getting is being taken from people.
	Yes, it is. And it's being taken from people against their will.
	And what I mean by that is not that in a free society people won't want an army.
	Of course they will, right? I mean, I think.
	I can't imagine that they wouldn't.
	Maybe in 100,000 years when human beings have finally bred out aggression from their system, they won't.
	But they will. But it will be voluntary and it will be a peaceful way of, you know, something that you would collectively all purchase.
	But right now, the military is paid for I mean, debating what's going on in Iraq is six of one, half a dozen of the other. But the moral reality of where the money that you're getting is coming from...
	I think is pretty incontrovertible.
	And again, I'm happy to hear arguments to the contrary, but that's where I... I mean, I'll wave my wand around a lot, but I'll plant it on this moral ground pretty firmly.
	I'm not going to argue.
	It's very true. Sorry, that's not the same as saying you'll agree.
	I'm not going to argue with you because you're just so crazy.
	No, no, no, not at all.
	I'll agree with you. Okay.
	So, it is my belief that we know the moral realities that we embark upon.
	We know them deep down.
	I think that all soldiers know deep down that everything that they touch, everything that they eat, everything they ride, everything that they wear is paid for through force.
	And I think that has a, and this is not, you understand, this is not a clincher of an argument, it's just a perspective that I have.
	I think that it has a negative effect on your soul, if I could use that word as an atheist.
	It has a negative effect on your conscience.
	Because it's something that you kind of have to avoid thinking about.
	And anything that is in our heads that we have to avoid thinking about, I think is bad for us.
	Because it creates this little pool in our mind that we can't go near.
	And we have to kind of not think about a whole bunch of stuff.
	Like, where is this $90,000 coming from?
	You know, I went to this great base in Thailand, you know, saw all these great tanks.
	Well, how is this all paid for?
	Well, it's paid for because they're kind of driving over people, metaphorically, in the homeland to get all of this money.
	It's a warrior class that is paid for largely through...
	Predatory taxation, financing, and debt that, you know, is on the backs of the poor and it's on the backs of the middle class and the upper classes mostly escape having to pay for it in many ways.
	And I think that that's going to Have a shadow or an effect on your personality.
	I'm not saying it's a clincher of an argument.
	It's just something to mull over.
	This is not free money.
	This is money that is coming from the poor and the middle class.
	It is coming from the future.
	It's coming from your children.
	And it's not free.
	It's not free. And it's not perfect if you borrow it, because it's still government money and blah blah blah, but it's still you are paying for something yourself then.
	You aren't taking this money that is being forcibly extracted from people and given to the warrior class.
	You actually are getting your degree under your own steam.
	You pay for it yourself.
	You take the responsibility for yourself.
	I think that is a healthier and more positive thing.
	I think that your desire to do good is beautiful.
	It's fantastic. I think it's a wonderful thing.
	And there is a hell of a lot of good that you can do.
	Without taking tax money, without getting involved in that kind of predation, the predation being the taxes, not the army.
	I mean, if you want, you can take money from charities to go over to Iraq and help people in Iraq.
	You can do it for $5.50 an hour or $11 an hour or whatever you're paying to be in the army for.
	You can go and do all of that good, but you're not involving yourself In the money that is coming from theft and aggression against the unborn, the people who are going to end up paying the bill for your $90,000 probably aren't even born yet.
	That is scarcely a fair transaction.
	I think we can both agree on that, right?
	All the good that you want to do, you can still do.
	And you won't have to spend four years in a situation.
	This is the last thing that I'll say, because I don't want to bore you with all of these arguments.
	No, you're not. You're not at all. The last thing that I'll say, my friend, and I really appreciate you taking the time to have this conversation, is that once you are in the army, I think you might have a good experience.
	You might. It's possible.
	But you might not.
	You really, really, really might not.
	You might, again, I don't know where you're going to go.
	Maybe you'll be a potato peeler for four years.
	I don't know. But let's say that you're not, right?
	You might, in the heat of a moment, in the chaos of combat, in the madness of a street filled with flying body parts and explosions and helicopters gunning low overhead, you might shoot at someone you think has a gun, but it's not.
	Or you might shoot at someone And miss and hit someone else.
	God forbid, you might hit a pregnant woman.
	You know, they shot...
	This came out of the WikiLeaks stuff, right?
	And this is not to characterize all the military this way, but this is the kind of stuff that can happen.
	That a guy was running away from a checkpoint and refused to stop when he was commanded to stop, and they shot him, and it turned out that he was a deaf mute.
	Couldn't even hear them. This is the kind of shit that can go down when you go into these crazy situations.
	And the situation in Iraq...
	It's pretty nuts. The Iraqis, I think it's over 90% of them virulently do not want the US to be there.
	They virulently do not want the United States military to be there.
	It is not a welcome population.
	It's not a welcoming population.
	They have experienced these kinds of invasions for hundreds of years, even more so in Afghanistan.
	They are far better trained at insurgency than the U.S. is in counterinsurgency because it's part of their culture.
	It's part of their history. They've been doing it for hundreds of years.
	In Afghanistan, they've been doing it for thousands of years.
	They have a culture, more so in Afghanistan than Iraq, though it's still there in Iraq.
	They have a culture that...
	Has this religiosity that makes them far less fearful of death and suicide.
	So that gives them an advantage in this kind of human shield, close combat insurgency situation.
	The U.S. is bound by, I think, some very honorable rules, which the insurgency is not.
	It's sort of like the reverse of the American Revolution, when the British all had to march in lines with X's on their chest.
	The Americans could just take to the woods and shoot whatever they had at the close by.
	Yeah, but we don't want to own them.
	We don't want taxation without representation.
	Right. Yeah, because the unborn get a chance to vote on the budgets of today.
	But when you go over there, Your life is out of your control.
	To harm an innocent person through no ill intent of your own.
	Of course. I mean, living with that kind of shit is...
	Well, you can't live with it.
	I mean, there's the reason that there are so many suicides in the people who come back.
	Alternatively, somebody...
	You obviously get very close to people that you're in close proximity to for that amount of time, right?
	This is the camaraderie, this is the buddy ship, but that has a downside, right?
	The downside is that you can hold someone's body, shattered body, in your arms as life dribbles out over the cobblestones.
	That is something that you have to live with, that you have to live with.
	That image, that memory of watching someone that you know die in your arms.
	I think, I mean, it's become more realistic in movies when I was a kid.
	I mean, you're obviously much younger than I am.
	When I was a kid, it was all this John Wayne stuff, you know, like people would just go, you know, slowly fall over and you'd never see any blood.
	Now it's more realistic now.
	But the human body is an incredibly dense and messy and complicated thing.
	And when it gets shredded by shrapnel or an IED or something, and it basically opens out over the pavement, it is just a staggeringly, impossibly ugly and traumatic and brain-searing experience.
	And that happens to a lot of people.
	Over there. And I think that that is a very, very hard corpse to carry around mentally for the rest of your life.
	Personally, I think that stuff flashes up.
	When you're making love to your girlfriend in the years to come, I think it flashes up when your kids are playing.
	I think it just haunts you.
	It haunts you. It haunts you.
	That kind of stuff. And that's happening to thousands and thousands of soldiers over there, right?
	That they're either getting injured or they're injuring someone or someone close to them is getting injured or killed.
	That stuff is really, really, really traumatic.
	And I believe that it casts a shadow on...
	On your future. It casts a significant shadow on your future.
	Now, you said you were enjoying the argument, so I'll give you one more.
	What if? It could be that you're right.
	I mean, it's not completely outside the realm of possibility that good stuff is being done there.
	It's going to turn around. They're going to find all the WMDs.
	Whatever. I mean, who knows, right?
	But history is not...
	It's not on the side of that perspective.
	So, in some ways, I think the most terrible thing that occurs for people who get involved in this kind of stuff is, you know, think of the Vietnam vets.
	I mean, in my opinion, what drove the Vietnam vets the most crazy, and I think it was like 30% of homeless people are Vietnam vets until more recently when they've just begun to die off, but...
	It's that they went over there, and what, 58,000 of them died, and I don't know how many hundreds of thousands were wounded and so on.
	And I think they come back, and there's this whole thing of like, well, what the fuck was all that for?
	You know, all this blood, all of this drug addiction, all of this maiming, all of this terror, all of this exhaustion, for what?
	Now, if, as seems most likely, and it's historically almost incontrovertible, The mission in Iraq is not going to succeed.
	If... Certainly they're talking about troop withdrawals now.
	The mission in Iraq has certainly not succeeded at the moment.
	If... You go over there and you suffer these traumas, and you're going to suffer some traumas.
	You simply can't be in a war zone or not.
	Somebody you know is going to get killed.
	Somebody you care about is going to get injured.
	It's just statistically almost impossible to avoid it over four years.
	It's just, oh, you're going to get injured or killed, or you're going to injure or kill somebody who you shouldn't have or is innocent.
	So something's going to happen.
	I mean, it's almost unavoidable.
	And if then you come back and the mission fails, and the mission, according to its original plan, has completely failed.
	The original plan was, we'll be welcomed as liberators, we'll be done in 30 days, and we'll pay for it all with oil revenues.
	That was the plan that sold the population, right?
	I mean, sold is the wrong word, because they didn't really have a choice.
	The choice would be, hey, send a check if you like the war, and nobody would have, right?
	But that's how it was sold. The mission, what are we, eight or nine years into it now?
	The mission has completely failed.
	When you say, oh, 30 days, and it's free, well, it's trillions of dollars in debt, and it's close to a decade in, and the end is nowhere in sight.
	So the mission has completely failed relative to its original goals.
	I think you and I can both agree on that.
	And if we say, oh, it's going to be 30 days in pay for itself, it's trillions of dollars, nearly a decade later, the next year, I think we can all understand, is very unlikely to make much of a difference.
	Because America is now poorer than it was before.
	I mean, 2001, 2002, when they were planning this thing, 2003, when they went in, America was far wealthier than it is now because it didn't go through this whole meltdown, this whole financial meltdown.
	The national debt was far lower.
	The deficits were much... I think the deficits were like 25% what they are now.
	Right. No, there's no doubt. Everything that you've been saying is true.
	Yes. So the likelihood of success in Iraq is...
	It's impossible for there to be success in Iraq because it's already a huge failure relative to the original plan, right?
	And the opportunity of even turning it around in any way becomes less and less every day.
	And my prediction was, and it's sadly coming true, that as...
	America withdraws its troops.
	The insurgency will simply stage more and more attacks until America halts its withdrawal because the purpose of the insurgency is to draw good people like you over with good intentions, for which I respect and admire you, to draw good people like you over for good intentions.
	Why? So that they can bankrupt the U.S. government.
	That is the entire plan of the Muslim extremists.
	They did it to the Russian government in the 1980s, and they're doing it to the American government now.
	You get a highly technological army involved in an impossible insurgency with civilians as human shields.
	You drain the treasury until the country is bankrupt.
	It was the bankruptcy of England after the Second World War, when it spent all of its blood and treasure in the Second World War, that's when the British Empire crumbled.
	Bankruptcy crumbles empires.
	The Russian Empire crumbled because Russia became bankrupt.
	And the American Empire is going to crumble when America goes bankrupt.
	So by going over there, you're really doing exactly what the terrorists want you to do, which is to go over there so that more money can be taken from the taxpayers, so that more debts and deficits can go up, so that they can get bankrupted, so they can bankrupt the U.S. sooner.
	And then the U.S. will, just like...
	The French did, and the Germans did, and the Dutch did, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire did, and the British did.
	The American Empire will collapse, and America will retrench back to the homeland.
	And you will have spent years over there in violent situations with trauma, perhaps maiming or killing people, and you will come back, and it will be for what?
	People who went over to...
	I mean, people who went over to India...
	In the 1920s, do you think that in 1950 they were like, that was great, because they turned everything back over to the Indians, and I think 200,000 people died in the partition of Pakistan.
	The people who were in Vietnam, did they come back thinking they'd save the world from communism?
	No. Vietnam went on its way.
	The people in Korea, did they come back saying, I have saved the world?
	I mean, we can talk about Second World War another time, because that's got a lot more issues around it.
	But this is not the Second World War.
	I mean, Saddam Hussein was not Hitler.
	I mean, his military budget was 0.3% what America's military budget was.
	And, of course, a lot of the stuff he had, he bought from the US, who put him into power initially.
	So my concern, and I'll stop here because I don't want to speechify you into the stratosphere, but those are my major concerns.
	I think that it will be, you understand, this is just an argument.
	Nobody knows the future.
	But I think it will be a very bad mistake.
	I think that you're intelligent enough a person, and I think that you've been exposed to ideas that the rest of your family had not been exposed to, which I think are pretty incontrovertible.
	Not to say they're all right, but I think they're pretty well argued and there's pretty good evidence for them about taxation as the initiation of force, about the perils and moral decay of empire building, about the effects that trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder have on your future relationships with your girlfriend, about the effects that trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder have on your future relationships with your girlfriend, with your children-to-be, with your society as a whole.
	I think it's going to have disastrous effects.
	I think that the effects will be so disastrous that if you do do the army, And this is assuming you even get out in four years because they could just keep you there forever if they want.
	This is not a contract that they can't change.
	They change it all the time. I've heard of stop loss, yes.
	Well, it's not just stop loss.
	They can call you up years after you've come back.
	They can. You're right.
	They can. So this is a slippery slope and a one-way bargain that you have no control over after you sign that paper.
	You have no control over where you're sent or what you'll be told to do.
	Yes. Or how long you'll be reactivated for.
	I think when you look at that moral, emotional, physical risk, you'll look back and say, God damn it, but $700 a month would be a pretty good deal to avoid all this.
	May I say what I want to say?
	You can spend the rest of time talking because that's all I wanted to say.
	No, no. Thank you. So, the macro...
	Let's divide this into macro and micro, shall we?
	Please. Okay, so macro is, as you said, we're borrowing money or we're getting money from the taxpayers by use of force.
	We may not be doing any good in Iraq.
	And I may end up leaving the place thinking that I did more harm than good.
	And every other soldier may think that way.
	The micro of it.
	As an officer I would be in charge of 18 to 30 men the first couple of years and after that maybe 60.
	My job in those four years is to take care of those men as much as I can, as well as I can, to not only try to keep them from harm's way, but also be their psychiatrist, be their friend, be their family member that they can talk to about anything that they may have.
	So, this job, this officer job, if I don't take it, someone else will.
	Someone else may not really care about these people.
	Someone that goes in there may want to just take the high end and do what he wants but not really care about his troops.
	$90,000 that I'll be putting put to education so that I can benefit other people later on in life.
	He may put to his venture capitalist idea which he therefore makes a huge boatload of money then puts in the Cayman Islands so he doesn't even help out the taxpayers in the future.
	My intention is...
	Oh, no. Look, come on.
	I mean, I hate to...
	I understand the argument, but by that logic, you should join the mafia, right?
	Because there will be people in the mafia who will be doing really bad things, but if you join the mafia...
	You can make those things better, right?
	You can put out fewer hits.
	You can try and talk the hitmen.
	And I'm not equating the military with the mafia, but the idea that if I don't do it, somebody worse might come along.
	It could be true of every conceivable thing in the world, right?
	I should join a motorcycle gang because that way I can get them to stop running drugs and stop raping women and whatever.
	I don't know. Just sort of cliched stuff, right?
	It's a cliche argument, but it's a noble argument nonetheless.
	No, it's not a noble argument.
	I absolutely do not agree with you that it's a noble argument because you can't say no to anything.
	Because there's always a scenario in which if you don't do it, somebody worse might come along.
	Right, so let's say your son comes up to you in 20 years and says, Dad, I want to join a drug gang.
	And you say, well, that's a terrible thing to do.
	Don't join the drug gang. And he's like, no, no, no, they offered me a position running a bunch of people who, and if I don't take it, a bad guy might come along who will sell to kids, so I'm going to do it.
	What are you going to say? I'm going to say that there's a little difference between the United States Army and the drug gang.
	I agree with you, but we're talking about a principle.
	The principle is that the idea that if I don't do it, somebody worse might come along is not a noble argument because we make our decisions, I believe.
	If we're wise, we should make our decisions with reference to principles, not with disastrous possibilities.
	I agree with you on that.
	But we have to take into account that this mobster, this Yakuza motorcycle gang member, is in charge of 18 other motorcycle gang members and can severely or positively alter their life.
	So I'm not being the gun-for-hire And making sure that someone else isn't.
	But I'm also helping the other people, the other guns for hire and whatever endeavors they may encounter.
	Sorry, and I agree with you, but here's the other counter-argument, which is that what if somebody much better than you doesn't get in because you're there?
	If they're much better than me, then why wouldn't they get in?
	Well, for whatever reason, let's just say, right?
	Let's just say. Because if you're there, somebody else isn't there, right?
	Right. So maybe it's somebody without your history, your family history.
	Maybe it's somebody without your connections.
	Maybe it's somebody without your verbal skills.
	I don't know. But if you're there, somebody else isn't there in that position, right?
	It's true. And so maybe, maybe that person would be far better than you are for whatever reason, right?
	Right. Right. Right.
	Right. Right.
	Right. No, not necessarily because you could be pretty darn sure that you could do a much better job than the majority of people.
	For example, don't you believe that you could – this conversation that you're having with me, you're probably doing a much better job at it than – actually, no, that's a bad example.
	But there are always going to be those jobs in life where you believe that you can do a much better job than the average population.
	Is that correct? Well, I think that the difference is that I've been doing this job for 25 years.
	Yes, you have. So you're going in, you're trying to make decisions about a job you've never even had in a situation you've never been in, in a country you've never been to, in a culture that you don't know, in an organization that you have no experience with.
	That's very, very, very true.
	However... And sorry, oh, I know, I know how you, right?
	Some guy could get promoted up through the ranks if you don't come in, right?
	No, no, no. Not only that, but they'll just sign up the next college graduate that may not have as good of requirements that I do and it may not I mean, he may have better. Maybe he's been in the ROTC since he was 12.
	Maybe he was in the Boy Scouts since he was four.
	Yeah, but if he has better, then he would obviously jump ahead of me and...
	I think they're pretty short of people right now.
	I'm just saying, right? I'm just saying that I think everyone goes...
	But what I'm saying is that I think the argument cuts both ways.
	You can't guarantee that you'll be better.
	You can't guarantee that somebody else might not be better.
	And... I also think that what it does is it places your moral decision into the hands of people who are less competent than you are.
	And I don't think that's a good thing for a moral man to do.
	I don't think that we want to cede our moral authority to, well, there are incompetent people out there and I better take their place or bad things will happen because that means that your decisions, your moral decisions are made by the incompetence of other people.
	And you haven't even proved that incompetence.
	It's a possible incompetence.
	So you're being driven by the incompetence of bad people.
	They're making your moral decisions for you, not you.
	And I think that you have to take that ownership for yourself, for your moral decisions, and not say, well, it's because there are these bad people out there or people who might do bad things or not be as good as I am, and so I have to do it.
	That's not taking a moral decision.
	That's letting other people and incompetent people at that, in a sense, force those decisions on you.
	That's the way of looking at it, yes.
	Alright, so let's move on to another one.
	I'm not saying I've won, but I think we've hacked that one to death from both sides.
	Right, right, but you understand my view of it.
	I absolutely do, and furthermore, I actually admire that you do care about the troops that you may be commanding, and I also respect that you probably would be better than a lot of people out there.
	I just think that we make decisions according to...
	According to principles and without ceding our authority to less competent people, but I've already made that case, so let's move on.
	And I understand this case, and although I do not agree with it, I do admire that rationale, and I do admire your input, so thank you.
	Yeah, so what's the next topic?
	You were going through the majors and the minors.
	Oh, the macros and the micros.
	Right, right, sorry. I got my baseball terminology confused with my military terminology.
	No, no, I'm sorry. That was, oh, so I would, the money that I'd be taking from taxpayers, I think I already mentioned this already, but the $90,000 that I'd be taking, obviously it's more than that because this is not including whatever salary I'd get.
	Well, it's not including your total cost of ownership, right?
	It's just the money you're getting, right?
	It's just the money I'm using for medical school.
	I'd be receiving a lot more than that.
	No, but the army would be spending many times more than your salary on you, right?
	Yes, obviously. Right, so a couple hundred thousand dollars at least, right?
	Probably closer to half a million or more, but I don't know, right?
	But let's just say. Right. So whatever money I save up when I put to medical school, Eventually, I know I'm very idealistic here, but eventually what I will do in return is to provide AIDS and medical service to people that need it.
	Yeah, but not to the people who it was taken from.
	It's very unlikely, right?
	I know, it's a big collective goo, but it's not specific, right?
	Right, well, because I'd be taking care of kids, so kids normally aren't taxpayers.
	So, yes, I wouldn't be...
	Well, it's not just that. I mean, but, you know, it could be some guy who's taxed for the last five years of his life.
	You go to Iraq for four years, then you become a doctor, and then you start practicing.
	He died in the meantime, so he was taxed.
	He never gets his money back.
	I mean, people move, they leave the country, but they never get their money back.
	Again, I know it's a big collective soup, and it's not a clincher, but...
	If you borrow money from a bank, the money goes back to the bank that you borrowed it from.
	It's sort of one-to-one thing plus interest.
	But this collective goo, you will be paying back into the system, absolutely.
	But the money won't be going specifically back to the people, or at least it's very unlikely, to the people who paid.
	And they won't even know that they paid, and you won't even know where your money is going.
	This is one of the problems with the system.
	But it's not like... You're borrowing money from someone and then you give it back because it's not individual that way?
	Yes, yes, you're right.
	But the way I'm giving it back is a little bit better than, say, someone else that would be giving it back.
	You mean because you'd be paying more in taxes?
	Well, not only would I be paying more in taxes, but I'm providing a service that is essential for...
	For human survival these days and I'm providing a service and what my intentions are is as long as I'm having a good living or as long as I'm able to survive and I'll be doing most of my work with free clinics as I worked with in high school and college and I'll be doing as much charity work as I can.
	I agree. And I think that's fantastic.
	I really do. And I think that the honor of that is independent of money that you do or don't get from taxpayers.
	Right. But the thing is that – what my argument is is that although taxpayers are paying me – I'm trying to make up for it with CharityWorks in the future.
	Yes, and I think that if everybody thought like you, the system would have a greater chance of working if it were possible for it to work.
	I think that's one thing I'd say.
	And the second thing is that I think of all the people who would take money in this kind of scenario, you would be in the top 0.01% of people who give back.
	So all kudos to you there.
	I'm not going to try and argue you out of that position because it's just too fundamentally good a position to I think I've made my case.
	I personally think that the greater challenge is not these abstract moral arguments, though I think that they're important.
	I think that the greater challenge for you, my friend, is that if you say no when so many people in your family have said yes, it's a challenge.
	Because you've got to say why.
	And that opens up a kettle of worms, right?
	It does. But my father, who's still alive, does not want me to.
	He doesn't want you to go into the military.
	No, because he's afraid I'm going to get hurt or he's afraid I'm going to come back and wonder why.
	Right. Right.
	So, I'm not facing a huge pressure from my family to do it.
	Although, you're very correct that I'm always going to wonder why I'm not doing it whereas every other male in my family had.
	Right. Right.
	Right. I mean, I sympathize with your father enormously.
	I mean, my daughter is 20 months old, and the idea that she would go off to a war zone in the future, I mean, I would just eat my fingernails to the bone.
	I wouldn't sleep. I would just be wretched.
	I really sympathize with your father on this one.
	And that's an annoying card to pull.
	I completely realize that because you're a young man and you don't have children, right?
	So I'm not going to pretend that's any kind of argument.
	I just wanted to express that I really empathize.
	It's a hard thing to communicate about if you're not a parent, but it is a chilling thing to think that you spend so much time as a parent trying to keep your kids safe.
	I mean, it's crazy.
	I mean, all day, every day, it's like when she's particularly this age, she's just learning how to run.
	She wants to climb everything.
	And so I'm, you know, always holding her and keeping her and making sure she doesn't fall and washing her bottles twice to make sure there's no bacteria in them.
	And you spend so much of your time trying to keep your kids safe that the idea of encouraging them to go to a place where they can get blown up, it's just, it's, as a parent, it just boggles my mind.
	And I think that's probably where your dad's coming from.
	I don't want to speak for him, of course.
	Sorry, I guess what do I know?
	But it is a weird thing to imagine.
	And I think I understand where your dad's coming from.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Yes, yes, Mr. Molyneux.
	Yes, yes, Mr. Molyneux.
	No, no, no, no, no.
	I didn't mean it at all like that.
	I agree and thank you.
	I'm not a father yet, as you know, but it's amazing what a father's love is.
	Yes, what were you going to say?
	Well, I just finished up by saying, look, if it's about the money, then I think you have a very good and specific case that the money is not that big a deal.
	And I say this with...
	I spent a lot of time in business.
	I got heavily into debt to start a company.
	It's scary as all hell.
	I completely understand that.
	You look at $90,000 like it's a mountain of money you could never climb.
	I completely understand that.
	But you need to make the decision based on a spreadsheet, right?
	You need to get all the facts.
	And, you know, is the money you pay back on student loans tax deductible?
	That is going to have an effect.
	And not insignificant.
	And not insignificant effect.
	You need to get the facts about this.
	Are there any scholarships or bursaries or subsidies or anything available?
	Can you live at home while going to college?
	I don't know. But you need to, I think, really hack apart the finances of it.
	And if you have a spreadsheet and you want me to have a look at it, again, I've had some business experience.
	I'm happy to do that. But if you want to...
	I'm sure your dad would help you sit down with an accountant for an hour or so once you've worked.
	But break down the numbers.
	You look at $90,000, it's like, oh my god...
	But if you break it down to what it's buying you, that $90,000 is, gosh, I'm thinking it's like eight or nine months of after-tax salary for when you're a doctor.
	Right. It's not a big deal after you get, I mean, if you go to three and a half years and flunk out, that's a big deal, right?
	But you're not going to do that.
	You're going to become a doctor.
	You're talking eight or nine months salary after you graduate.
	It's not a big deal after the fact, once you get a job and once you're making that money, right?
	So you can pay off that money.
	If you really want to, you live at home or just live really, really bare bones, you can work off that money while you're a doctor, if you want, in a year or two.
	Yes. Not four years in the military in a combat zone with God knows what happening and stop loss and pulling you back in five years right after the birth of your first kid.
	You don't want to get that.
	The army is not the same as it used to be.
	The army is not the same as it used to be.
	They're taking felons.
	They're taking people with low IQs.
	The army is desperate. It is not the same institution that it was 10 years ago.
	It is not the same institution that it was 20 years ago.
	The people you will be commanding may be pretty scary sociopaths who were in there because it was that or prison.
	And you can avoid all of that danger, risk, Loss of possible limbs, trauma, PTSD, haunted dreams for the rest of your life, and a sense of wasted futility and disaster because the Iraq mission is not going to succeed.
	You can avoid all of that by just paying the debt off in less than a year after you graduate, if that's what you want.
	Or you can take 10 years to pay it off and you won't even notice it.
	All of that risk can be avoided financially.
	If there are other motivations, like, you know, I don't know, it's macho or you can't look yourself in the mirror because you feel diminished as a man if you don't go to war or something like that, that's a shitty reason to go to war.
	I mean, that's a self-esteem issue that you need to deal with in some other context.
	I absolutely agree with that.
	So, okay, I don't get that that's an issue for you, but I just sort of wanted to...
	No, of course. No, but by no means that's an issue for me now.
	Right, right. The idea that other people are going to go out there and do stupid things in a war if you're not there, you know, my argument is just don't cede your moral authority over your own decisions to the possible incompetence of other people.
	That's... That's never a way.
	And that's going to haunt you and you need to deal with that as a premise now because what's that going to do?
	You're going to be surrounded by doctors who are worse than you.
	Are you going to take all their patients?
	I mean, that's just incompetence in the world is something you have to live with.
	You can't rush around putting fires around the planet because there are people who do a worse job than you do.
	And I get that you're a competent guy.
	I get that you're a really intelligent guy.
	That's just something you have to deal with, that there are going to be doctors.
	You're going to be really tired.
	You're going to want to go home and there's going to be some doctor who you think might be misdiagnosing someone.
	At some point, you have to sleep.
	At some point, you have to see your family.
	Shit is going to go down in the world that is bad because you're not there.
	And it's going to happen and it's going to happen and it's going to happen.
	It happens, you know.
	I mean, I almost burnt myself out in business because of that same issue.
	So I really understand where you're coming from.
	But that is something you have to deal with.
	All competent people have to deal with being surrounded by idiots in one form or another.
	You know what I mean? Yes.
	But you don't rush off to war and maybe get yourself blown up because there are incompetent people over there.
	That's not how to solve the problem because then the world is just short one more competent person, right?
	Because you get yourself blown up and it's like, damn, we could have used that competent person as a doctor.
	Or you get yourself traumatized or you whatever, right?
	That's a very good point, yes.
	Anyway, listen, I don't want to take up your entire evening, but those are the major arguments that I wanted to put forward.
	You don't have to tell me what you think, because it's too big a decision to make an internet call, right?
	But was there anything sort of major that we missed in terms of issues for you to stew over?
	No, no, not at all.
	Thank you. Although I do want to ask you something.
	I know you mentioned over at least one YouTube video that I've seen of you.
	I've tried to study you in the past hour because Mr.
	Kellogg mentioned you to me not too long ago.
	And you mentioned this over our conversations, the Afghanis were trained by us and the Mujahideen were trained by the CIA. Have you read Charlie Wilson's War?
	I have. Actually, I listened to it in audiobooks.
	Oh, yeah. Yeah, I did.
	And I saw the movie, too, which I actually thought was pretty good.
	It was, but it wasn't very accurate according to the book.
	No, the book was much more detailed and in some ways much more chilling.
	And Confessions of an Economic Hitman and all that, I mean, I've read a fair amount of that stuff and it was quite eye-opening.
	Okay, good. Good.
	And I know you say that the Russians got bankrupt after World War I, but they got bankrupt because they had a civil war before the end of World War I. Oh,
	sorry, no, I meant the Afghanistan war, that the Mujahideen were fighting the Russians with CIA training and with CIA equipment, and that's one of the things that bankrupted the Russians was the war in Afghanistan, and so the, I mean, this was, bin Laden was involved in this, right? Yes, yes, yeah, no, no.
	Yeah, so they know how to bring down an empire by bankrupting the government and that's really – that was the whole point of the 9-11 strike was to get the U.S. – they thought they were just going to go into Afghanistan.
	I don't think they really anticipated Iraq because nobody really did because it had nothing to do with 9-11.
	Yeah, I totally understand that.
	Of course, I thought you mentioned – Oh, yeah, no, sorry.
	Yeah, the Russians, they had a civil war, of course.
	Yeah, I mean, the West went in, I think, on the side of the white Russians after the First World War.
	And yeah, that had a lot to do with the bankruptcy as well.
	But yeah, no, that's a good point.
	I'm glad that you didn't think that I was missing that whole point about the First World War.
	But I was really referring to what happened in Afghanistan in the 80s.
	All right, my misunderstanding, excuse me.
	No problem. Oh, great.
	Well, first of all, I must say that thank you very much.
	I'm very impressed that you're willing to talk to a simple recent college graduate like me out of the blue.
	Simple you or not, I will definitely tell you that.
	Simple you or not, which is good.
	And my good friend Daniel has huge respect for you.
	He actually calls you smart, which is something that he doesn't call He hasn't caught anyone, from what I remember.
	Well, I tell you, if you don't join the army, I think you might get that label from him.
	You know, you might. You'll certainly get it from me, and I hope that you won't, obviously, join.
	I'm really just on the side of your future marriage and kids.
	I think that combat and war does terrible things to men, particularly men.
	But, yeah, I think he may call you smart if you do that, but that, of course, is not a good reason to do it, but it just may be a nice side effect.
	Thank you. And if you get a chance, just let me know what you decide in the long run, if you get a chance.
	And I apologize for my math skills, as always.
	No, no, don't at all.
	Is freedomradio.com the best way to check up on your publications and your newsfeed?
	Yeah, it's a pretty good place.
	I've had two other conversations, actually more than two, but the two that pop into my mind, I've had two other conversations with people about joining the military, which you may be interested in.
	Yes, please. I will send you those links.
	Okay. Thank you.
	All right. Thanks, man. Take care.

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