Aug. 27, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
08:01
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| So a guy called into my Sunday show, which is 4 p.m. | |
| Eastern Standard Time. Just go by the website and drop into the chat room if you want to be included or to listen in. | |
| A guy dropped by my chat show a couple of weeks ago, and he brought up... | |
| How would the fire trucks work in a free society? | |
| How would fire control, how would fire prevention, how would putting out fires work in a free society? | |
| It can only work with the government because no individual wants to pay for it, but they all want the collective benefit. | |
| Anyway, of course, there's a number of answers to this. | |
| I'll just go over them briefly because sometimes it can be a little bit like... | |
| Putting your head into a cheese grater repeatedly and nodding violently to answer these questions over and over, but I'll put them out here. | |
| So first of all, look, the system as a whole is collapsing. | |
| This is like saying, well, how could we possibly have a bridge when you're standing on a bridge that is collapsing? | |
| Well, how could we possibly have a bridge in a free society? | |
| But the bridge that you're on is collapsing. | |
| You get this, right? The bridges... | |
| No bridge. I mean, they're already closing fire stations all over America because they're out of money. | |
| A tragic story about a two-year-old boy got a piece of gum somehow, got a little ball candy, got stuck in his throat. | |
| They ran to the fire station. | |
| There was nobody there. It was locked up because of cutbacks, right? | |
| So you can stay on the Titanic and you can say, well, I don't know. | |
| That... That freedom boat, that looks like it might develop a leak in a couple of years, so I don't know. | |
| I don't know. | |
| Hey, dude, if you want to stay on the Titanic that's going down because you're worried about the freedom boat possibly developing leaks in a few years... | |
| Be my guest, but recognize that you don't get to stay on top of the water by staying on the Titanic. | |
| The ship of state around the world is going down. | |
| This is exactly what Ayn Rand predicted 50 odd years ago. | |
| It's all going down. | |
| It is going down, down, down. | |
| It seems to be tied to Paris Hilton's reputation. | |
| The answer called the state is not an answer because fire protection is all collapsing That's number one. And the guy said, well, in the 19th century, there were all of these problems with fire prevention and there were all of these problems with private fire agencies showing up and fighting, I guess, because, I don't know, you saw Scorsese's The Gangs in New York and thought it was a history lesson. | |
| You understand, right? | |
| Every movie that's made is made with government-controlled and protected labor unions. | |
| Of course, you constantly see the private sector as bad guys and unions in the public sector as the good guys, because it's a quasi-public sector that makes just propaganda. | |
| You have to think about these things a little bit rationally when you're looking at it. | |
| You have to look at the biases of the people who are presenting the information. | |
| So public sector unions and quasi-public sector unions, like the movie industry, are very sympathetic towards unions and very hostile towards free enterprise. | |
| So, whenever you see a movie made, like Gangs of New York, you will see Free Enterprise doing a bad job, or being corrupt, or being evil, or being malicious, or building parking lots on Bambi's mother's grave and stuff like that, while you will see public sector unions and public sector dudes and policemen fighting for liberty and fighting for justice. | |
| And it's all propagandistic nonsense, right? | |
| They're just, well, they know which side of the bread is buttered. | |
| So, it's just something to remember when you see this sort of nonsense. | |
| But I'd say there were all these problems. | |
| There weren't. But let's say there were all these problems with 19th century firefighting. | |
| What on earth does that have to do with 22nd century firefighting? | |
| I mean, it's just amazing. | |
| Nobody looks into the future and says, well, but the internet is not going to work next year because the internet didn't work in the 19th century. | |
| I understand that that would be mental. | |
| It would be a mental thing to say. | |
| If there were problems in the 19th century with private firefighting, what does that have to do with 22nd century firefighting? | |
| Assuming we don't get freedom this century. | |
| Because they'll have access to staggeringly amazing technology, fire prevention, fire dampening, communications about fire, all of that. | |
| We'll be going on in the 22nd century. | |
| It's like saying, well, we can't possibly have electronic currency. | |
| You're writing in 1900. We can't have electronic currency because there's no such thing as electronics, which is to say that you know what the economy is going to be like in over 100 years. | |
| Nobody has a freaking clue what the economy or what the human potential or what kind of technology is going to be available to people in 100 years, in 50 years, in a free society, with all of the additional incentives for entrepreneurship and resource conservation and communication. | |
| Nobody has a freaking clue how fires are going to be put out in 100 years. | |
| It's really funny. | |
| In the 19th century, people would not have imagined necessarily built-in sprinkler systems. | |
| They wouldn't have imagined fire dampeners in various pieces of machinery. | |
| They wouldn't have imagined having those chemical sprays. | |
| They wouldn't have imagined having smoke detectors or carbon monoxide detectors. | |
| I mean, they just wouldn't... I wouldn't have imagined these things. | |
| So the idea that people can, say, from here, looking even back at the 19th century, or even just looking at the here and now, and say, well, it can't work 100 years from now, I mean... | |
| I don't even know what to say. | |
| That is a level of vanity and megalomania that blows my mind. | |
| People who say, well, fire prevention or roads or the police or national defense or whatever, that that can't work in a free society. | |
| I say, wow, you really know exactly how things are going to work in 100 years? | |
| Can you tell me who's going to win at the races tomorrow down at the pony track? | |
| Can you tell me which stocks I should invest in? | |
| Can you tell me what the price of gold is going to be three hours from now? | |
| And of course, they won't be able to say that. | |
| Anybody who could see that far in the future, or even one-tenth of one percent that far in the future, would be a multi-bazillionaire because of their ability to pick technology trends and stocks and social trends and demographic trends and so on. | |
| But of course, nobody can do any of those things. | |
| So when someone comes to you and says, well, roads can't be provided in a free society, they say, wow, you really know. | |
| How things and people are going to be moved a hundred years from now? | |
| Can you find any precedent for that in history? | |
| Can you find anybody in the 1900s, or actually I guess it would be the 1870s, who was writing about the internet, or who was writing about helicopters, or who was writing about exactly what was going to be going on in the space program? | |
| None of them got any of it right. | |
| And this is really what philosophy teaches you, is that philosophy teaches you to be humble. | |
| I mean, the free market teaches you to be humble because the idea that central planning, you know, the bunch of propeller heads in a room with some computers and simulators are going to be able to figure out how the economy should work for a population of hundreds of millions or billions. | |
| That is just a ridiculously vain concept. | |
| Philosophy teaches you to be humble. | |
| I don't know. And the fact that I don't know is no problem at all. | |
| So I just sort of wanted to mention that as an issue to think about when people start telling you, well, national defense can't work in a free society. | |
| Okay, so a free society ain't going to be around probably in my lifetime. | |
| Probably not. 50 to 100 years from now. | |
| So is somebody... You said to someone, are you actually going to seriously look me in the eyes and tell me... | |
| That you know, you know beyond a shadow of a doubt how society is going to deal with its problems 50 or 100 years from now, or even what those problems are going to be. | |
| Are you really going to do that with a straight face? | |
| Anybody who says yes with a straight face, you know, back slowly away. | |
| Don't make any sudden movements. | |
| Don't frighten their inner devils of vanity. | |
| But of course people have to say, well, I don't know. | |
| I don't know. I don't know how things are going to work in 50 to 100 years, but I do know this. | |
| I do know this, that we've got to stop using guns to try and make things better. | |
| We've got to stop using the government and laws and jails and threats and coercion to try and make things better. |
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