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Oct. 5, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:30:04

1761 The Challenges of Leading Change in Society' - A Speech by Stefan Molyneux (audio to a video)

Stefan Molyneux of Freedomain Radio talks to Libertarians on how to bring about deep and lasting change in society, starting with ourselves...

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	This is the first time in a long time that we've had a guest speaker.
	Years ago we would have someone come out and talk to us once in a while.
	And it's been a great success.
	I really appreciate Stefan coming out and all of you Stefan fans coming along with him.
	Lots of folks we haven't seen before, and we hope you're coming in.
	So, without further ado, Stefan.
	Bye.
	I'm used to like podiums and flashlights and dancers, so we'll keep it okay.
	Bye.
	And I think actually my fans are just called step-mans.
	It's not for the joke, it's not a very good one.
	So I run a philosophy show on the web.
	In the taller than Mickey Ruby contest, it's the largest and most popular I've been working on YouTube views since 2005, which I believe is about 4% of Lenny Yaga videos, so I'm very proud of that.
	I'm also an objectivist.
	You may have heard of Ayn Rand.
	A lot of us together start there, right?
	So, yeah, when I was about 16, a friend of mine was into the band Rush, whose drummer is a big fan of Ayn Rand, so he introduced me to that way of thinking, and I was an objectivist for about 20 years.
	Then I was involved with a serious head injury, no, I was an objectivist for about 20 years, and I never felt hugely comfortable with two areas of objectivism around ethics and around politics, so I tried to sort of With all due respect to the great smoky Russian goddess of reason, I tried to just push a little further forward.
	I'm just trying to find out who had the garlic bread with cheese.
	I'll vote for you. So I went a little bit further than some of the objectivist theory with, you know, I'm 90% objectivist, so I'm very much, I think, along the lines of libertarianism and objectivism.
	And so rather than having me glare at you increasingly drunken people for the next hour or so, I thought I'd like to just ask a couple of questions to get a sense of where people are in the room so that I could sort of guide what it is that I'd like to say a little bit closer.
	So the big divide that I see in communicating to people about freedom and really what we're into is voluntary, cooperative, nonviolent solutions to social problems, right?
	I mean, I think we've all recognized that There are sick people who need care who can't afford it.
	There are poor people who need aid who can't afford it.
	I think that the major objection that we have is to the inefficiency of government programs.
	Inefficiency isn't... Does anybody know a word like this?
	I've tried to think of it in a couple of years and I've never quite figured one out.
	When you have a plan and you fail, Like, you know, you want to go north and you fail, then you might just end up where you are again.
	Oh, I didn't go north. I failed.
	But when you end up, like, four light years south, that's a failure of, what is the word for that?
	Like, biblical art force.
	Okay, government force.
	No, because, I mean, welfare state programs haven't just failed in that they haven't really helped the poor, but, you know, Canada, by some measures, is over a trillion 1.5 trillion dollars in debt which means that the poverty programs are going to collapse and of course the education hasn't just failed to educate people, it's actually indoctrinated them in a huge mess of false beliefs.
	There's a need there. A word for government programs, I still haven't figured it out.
	If you ever figure it out, let me know.
	But it's not just a failure, it's just a massive...
	Boondoggle isn't quite enough of a, you know, you need an angrier word than boondoggle.
	I think you should make one up.
	Just make one up. We have a few suggestions.
	A combination of fucking shit.
	Cluster fracklebiggins or something like that.
	We'll come up with something. But anyway, so...
	So, of course, we object to government programs because they achieve the opposite of their intended effect, right?
	So you want to save people, as you may know from the statistics, from the post-war period until the early 1960s, just before the Great Society programs of LBJ. In North America, poverty was falling by about a percentage point a year, and we were on our way to eliminating all but truly involuntary poverty, you know, like where somebody has just had six million days of bad luck in a row and everything is just really awful.
	So poverty was on its way to being eliminated, and my particular argument is that the government didn't like that poverty was on the way to being eliminated, because if you eliminate poverty in the same way as if you eliminate crime, You eliminate a functional reason for government.
	So it's almost like, oh my heavens, the problem being solved, let's intervene with a solution so that it doesn't go away.
	Because after the Great Society programs and the welfare, modern welfare state as we know it came into effect, the underclass became hardened, right?
	So there used to be this flexibility, right?
	In the U.S. this is sort of where I've done most of my studying because that's where the audience is.
	There used to be this flexibility So people would be poor, and then they'd be richer again, and then they'd be poor again, but since the 1960s, this really hardened into these permanent underclasses.
	You think of those inner cities with those schools with the metal detectors, and those people have so little hope of even getting into the middle class.
	You think of the fall of the manufacturing I think what we would all recognize is the benevolent aspect of unionism, like voluntarily together to fight for better conditions is great.
	Broking in the power of the state to enforce things on employers is not so great.
	So there has been a real hardening in society.
	The whole point of these programs was to get rid of the last bits of poverty that were getting already.
	But what's happened is they've created a permanent underclass overshadowed by this monstrous debt.
	And that, of course, is going to result in a huge expansion of poverty, as we've seen.
	And as we're going to see a lot more in the future.
	So the approach that I took for many years when talking to people about freedom was to say, these things don't work.
	These programs don't work. And that required that I become the galactic international expert Right?
	So you say, well, but unemployment insurance doesn't really work.
	And here are some statistics. And people say, well, I've heard these other statistics.
	You're like, let me Google.
	I'll be right back to you, right?
	You have to have Google out things that you know, give me five minutes on Google, right?
	Statistics. And then somebody has counter statistics and so on.
	I mean, I got to type a lot.
	And I got to look a lot of things up.
	But there's always some partisan approach to facts that people could find that counters yours.
	So I just felt a lot of times we were basically just throwing graphs at each other and they were just hitting in the middle and detonating.
	It wasn't really getting into that.
	So in about 2004, I began to switch to what I call the argument from And the argument, this is not to say that you don't use that argument, but I sort of want to highlight the difference between them.
	Because I found that has made a huge difference in the degree of traction that I'm able to get with people.
	It has reduced the ridiculous process that I was going through of trying to become the expert of everything The show's reached about, my show's reached about a quarter million people, give or take.
	It's hard to tell with the internet and YouTube, but about a quarter million people, probably about 20% of them at least, according to rough calculations, have made some really significant inroads to, I'm trying to do that in my head.
	Oh, I thought that's right. Okay, so about 15,000 people, and probably about 5 or 10% have really gone whole hog, you know, like have really, really gotten into this.
	You said, whole hog means hand all the way up at the end.
	And a lot of it had to do with this argument for morality.
	So I'll give you the brief outline of it, and then you can tell me whether you've used it or whether you think it would be helpful.
	The argument for morality is, I don't care one little bit what the effects of government programs are.
	I don't care. They could work.
	They could not work. I don't care to look into the statistics.
	I don't care to look into the history.
	I don't care to look into the origins of it.
	I don't care whether they work or not because it fundamentally doesn't matter whether it works or not.
	For me, trying to figure out whether government programs work or not and how badly they work It's like saying, well, so what happens to your money after some guy steals it?
	I don't care. The fact is that the money is stolen.
	That's the problem. What they do with it afterwards is a distraction from the true ethics of the situation.
	So let me just, I just want to get a general sense.
	When you take an approach to debating with people or arguing with people or enlightening them with your rubber hose of reason, Some people use a truncheon.
	Do you take this pragmatic argue the stats approach or do you take the those rat bastards with guns take my money approach?
	Hands up those who take the statistics and facts and government programs don't work.
	It doesn't get you anyway, but it gets you to Google.
	And you're a much more educated man because of that.
	And how many people take the Red Bastards Take My Money approach?
	All right, all right.
	So my speech is over.
	I think we're...
	And so the people who've taken the...
	Can you just give me a brief sort of explanation, somebody put their hand up, of how you would approach somebody who says, we need more of a stimulus package.
	Stimulus package totally sounds like something that ends up in my junk folder.
	Anyway. Anybody?
	It's my money. I'll spend it the way I want.
	It's your money. You'll spend it the way that you want.
	So how would you describe that as ethics?
	Because for most people, that's selfish.
	But let me first pause with my heritage.
	My heritage? Yeah, because it resonates with me in ways I can't even explain.
	I want to raise the throne.
	And so, when you talk to people about, it's my money, I spend it away, do you get this selfish thing back?
	No, I like to tell a story.
	The story I tell is of an uncle of mine who's liberal.
	And I was telling him once that I didn't like about how much taxes the government was taking.
	He said, well, you can't reduce taxes because then they won't spend the money.
	And it's bad. So you have to take the money from the people so that you can spend it, so you can stimulate the economy.
	I think that's a perfect example of how to get it wrong.
	And what you do is you let the people spend the money and then you don't need the government to do all of these things.
	It's their money. They can go to a movie.
	They can go to a restaurant. They can...
	And you know what else he said?
	He said, you can't let the people have the money because they'll save it.
	Which is absolutely critical.
	Does he think they'll save it by putting it out of a mattress so nobody can use it?
	It's the open thing.
	The government does not want you to have your money because you might do the worst thing you could possibly do, which is not spend it.
	Or provide your own security?
	Or invest towards your own retirement?
	Okay, now I may have missed that, but tell me where the real ethical core of that argument is.
	Because there's a certain amount of, well, people will do this if you don't do that.
	But where is the, just have me sort of really zero in on the ethical side of that moral argument.
	People should be allowed to save their own money.
	People should be allowed to control their own future.
	People should be allowed to make their own decisions.
	So then the argument is, if people aren't allowed to do that, that it's immoral?
	Like if the government then takes, I mean, this is where I'm trying to get to the...
	Inefficiency. Right.
	Okay, and I agree with you, those inefficient arguments or the arguments from inefficiency are compelling to us.
	Right. That's where I started, right?
	They don't seem to go over the fence too well, right?
	If you've ever read Under the Dome by Stephen King, I sort of feel like we're trying to throw them outside the dome because it's like nine miles or something, right?
	So it's hard to get them out. So may somebody else have an argument where they really focus on the ethics?
	I've done that. It's more the result that happens when I do that and when I bring it to the morality of the situation, it gets people angry.
	I was really listening to your podcast and I tried it for about a year and within that time I had two or three Like, I was very calm, but the person I was speaking to was shouting at me and very angry.
	Did you do this at the Houses of Parliament?
	It was Christmas.
	Oh, was it a family gathering?
	Yes. Santa drink his big bag of evil.
	Kids crying.
	No. Why is daddy yelling?
	Wow. That's not you, right?
	No, no. Okay, so are you now the official Grinch of libertarian Christmas past or something?
	I'm the... I'm the...
	Don't set him off. Whatever you do, don't use the T word.
	It is a very explosive argument, for sure.
	I genuinely believe that no one can get through the day without feeling like they're doing some good.
	And no human being can look in the mirror and say, I'm a bad dude.
	I mean, everybody has some stories of why they're good.
	So when you begin to put libertarian ethics, property rights or non-initiation of force, into people's conversations, it is very explosive.
	What happened afterwards?
	He apologized a couple days later that he lost his cool.
	I mean, we've never talked about that sort of thing since.
	And because of that, I've realized that I personally feel that I do better when I approach things at saying, well, I'm not saying that this is That you're advocating people you can force against me.
	It's just that's how I feel.
	I try to use softer language, I guess, while still bringing it into the argument of morality.
	Right, right. And how's that been going?
	Better. Better.
	Better. But I still feel like I'm being kind of weak.
	It's fine. Sure. About it.
	Well, you know, I completely understand.
	I mean, getting people yelling at you in your face, particularly at a family gathering, that's pretty intense, man.
	There's no amount of, like, pound cake that's going to shove those roots back down.
	Yeah, no, I sympathize.
	I mean, I've had the same experience on a continual basis.
	I mean, so it is a very challenging situation.
	I think it's important, but, you know, I have the social skills that are selfish, so, I mean, it may be different for other people.
	What about anybody else taking that?
	I generally start with, what is a fair tax percentage of your income?
	Is it 100% fair? Richard, can you just make sure you get the audience members of your film?
	Is it 100% fair?
	Because that would really imply I work only for a group of people who then take the money by force, which is directly slavery.
	That's the basic definition.
	If somebody owns 100% of your labor output, it's sleeping.
	Is 90% fair?
	Is 80% fair?
	Where is that magic line that says it's just and moral for them to take that percentage of my money?
	And I try to get the response of them giving a number that they say is fair, but I say, but really, you're just grasping at straws, and that number will always go up.
	When the people in charge of that number have the right to force and the right to take away your money that you labor for.
	So there's morality, right?
	Just the initiation of force to take your property, right?
	Exactly. Right. So no matter what number you come up with, I'm happy with 10% slavery or 5% slavery, you're still allowing for the initiation of force.
	So you're breaking the moral principle, right?
	I mean, the moral principle of not initiating force and respecting property rights is It's kind of binary, you know?
	I mean, there are some grey areas, who knows, right?
	Like, if you're starving to death, you'll probably steal a banana, and who's going to throw you in jail?
	But, you know, 99.999, it's pretty binary, right?
	Yeah. And what has that been...
	You know, it generally makes the conversation not get anywhere, because they don't have a good response.
	They try to move to other topics of discussion.
	Well, what about police?
	And how would you stop people from dumping...
	We've never really tried ownership of the ocean, so it's hard to tell.
	It worked out really well for the car industry out east, right?
	Private property ownership has always prevented rampant pollution because people don't want to be polluted.
	When you have the comments, they will get polluted.
	You can find a means to enforce protection of their property because it's called commons.
	You don't really get that clear definition, but generally the binary argument that I make is lost.
	As they try to say, well, you need to pay for some things, you need to pay for some things.
	I say, well, what do you need to pay for? What about the roads, the roads, the roads?
	The roads is the best one.
	I always say, well, I think that an automobile company would have an incentive to make sure there's roads.
	Well, you build a housing development somewhere out there.
	What do you know, build any roads to it?
	And you say, well, then, you know, but some people will not want to put in to maintain the roads.
	I say, well, a lot of people don't put in to maintain the roads today.
	So how is it going to be different?
	I think most people who are statists have never worked as a waiter.
	I mean, if you set up, you said, oh, I've got a business model, right, which is that I'm only going to pay a small portion of my server's fees, and the rest of it's going to be voluntarily paid for by customers.
	People would say, why on earth would they pay for that?
	It's completely voluntary then, right?
	But people do, right?
	So you realize that the power of, even if you're in some town just for one night and then you leave, you're never going to see that waiver again.
	You're still going to feel like crap by giving them a small tip.
	So you just do it because that's the thing you do.
	People understand it. Anybody else?
	One I've tried using lately is to ask a friend or neighbor Would you take a gun to your neighbor and insist that he paid for your child's operation?
	And they say, well, of course not.
	Why not? Your elected representative, you've authorized him to do that for you.
	How does that make it right?
	So far, it's made people sort of stop it.
	You had something you wanted to do? Yeah, I try to go from a perspective of like, what's the relationship we really have with the government?
	Because if you look at it, you've got the communications pretty much coming down from the top.
	I don't really get to communicate up to the government.
	They take from me and they don't really care about me.
	Stephen Harper doesn't care about me.
	They don't know me.
	They don't know anything about me.
	So if you look at it in terms of a relationship, it's pretty messed up.
	It's just not like, it doesn't make you feel real good about yourself.
	If you were to use like, well, this is good, and if they're treating me this way, then that must be the right way to treat me.
	Well, I would say that, well, I don't really feel I can get treated very well in this relationship.
	Right. And I mean, the history of moral advancement within the species is a continual history.
	Of institutions that have existed since the dawn of time, which everybody just accepts like we accept gravity and, I guess, tipping.
	All these moral institutions like slavery or the subjugation of women or the subjugation of children, I mean, they all existed since the dawn of time.
	These violent hierarchies called states, they've all existed since the dawn of time.
	And there's a few crazy childs like us who look at those things from the perspective of objective ethics, not from what have we inherited and what are we just kind of used to.
	And of course, every false moral ideal in society has all of its, quote, virtues pounded into the heads of children through various kinds of indoctrination, whether that comes through certain kinds of religion or it comes through the state, you get this pounding.
	Of the lies about these institutions into people's heads as children, which is very hard to undo.
	I still, when I'm arguing forcefully for a voluntary solution to a sadist problem, I still, within my head, have to kind of push back some of those propagandist things, because they just, all those answers, you all have those debates in your head about the social contract and all that kind of stuff.
	It's a voluntary relationship because it's a social contract.
	Oh, if it's voluntary, then we shouldn't have to use force.
	We shouldn't have to have taxation.
	Oh, we can't have that. It has to have taxation.
	Well, then it's not a contract, and then we'll go back and forth like that.
	It is very hard for most people to look at the world without this sort of monster flood of history coming down through their brains.
	And it is very hard for people to question the ethical roots of their society.
	Now, I think we can all accept.
	After the fact, it's all perfectly obvious.
	Nobody says, let's go back to slavery.
	Nobody says, let's go back to women not being able to own property or enter into contracts.
	There may be a few people in Afghanistan, but nobody in the West really does that.
	And so after the fact, when the band-aid, so to speak, has come up, it all seems perfectly clear and obvious, and how could people have ever thought otherwise?
	But if you look at slavery, you know, a cozy 50,000-year history back to the dawn of time, and it was completely accepted in every conceivable society as the norm, as natural.
	And the way that these things ended, as far as I've been after research, and if anybody knows any better, let me know, but these things ended because people relentlessly pounded At the ethical root, the moral contradictory root of these institutions.
	Nobody won the argument against slavery by saying slavery is economically inefficient.
	Of course it is. But nobody goes to the ramparts.
	Nobody raises their muskets high in the night sky because of something that's economically inefficient.
	People are motivated.
	It's in virtue because they believe in the ethics at the root of what is being proposed.
	I spent a long time avoiding that, and I spent a lot of time taking bullets for focusing on that, right?
	So the ethical argument, which is very simple, obviously, is the initiation of force is immoral, and the government is an institution that rests upon the initiation of force.
	That is its sole defining characteristic.
	It is a group of individuals who claim the right to initiate force in a given geographical area.
	The initiation of force is immoral, and it comes from You know, very sort of simple universalization, which is to take the rules of kindergarten and just blow them up in society.
	No, seriously. I mean, my daughter is 20 months old, so I spent the whole time going, don't grab, don't steal, don't push, don't get them, right?
	Because she's, you know, hey, something shiny, grab.
	So am I in the iTunes store.
	But it really is just taking those basic ethics that we've all done as children around respect for property, respect for individuals, not using force to get what you want, and extrapolating that.
	It's so much simpler in society if you just have one set of ethical rules rather than one set of rules for children and then a complete other set of rules for the rulers of society.
	But it does require focusing not on the effects of what the government does, but at the moral root and cause of where the government is.
	Let me go back to your family.
	Did this guy, who was it?
	Doesn't matter, doesn't matter. Make up a name.
	Call him Sacha. Sacha the Statist.
	Okay, so did he get the moral side of things?
	I mean, I know he rejected it, but did he?
	I think yes. Yes.
	But his issue was, and I think a good critique of my argument was, he would say something like, well, if you don't like the government doing this or that, why don't you leave?
	And I'd say, okay, so if someone who is uncomfortable with force being used against them, if the only option for them is to leave their area, would you say the same thing about women In Afghanistan, who are having their genitals mutilated.
	Oh, dude! I know, man!
	That's not small, aren't we?
	Okay, here's a little pin. Exactly.
	So now I say something like, well, if everyone was to come out and say, everyone is forced to paint their house blue, would you say, well, that person should paint his house blue or leave?
	So that's a better, I think part of it was, You know, my argument style.
	Well, you can say extreme. I mean, those are very real.
	Yeah, but wouldn't it be right to say, well, if you don't want to have your genitals mutilated, you should just leave the country.
	Right. Well, and of course, it is fundamentally accepting the premise that the government owns everything.
	And if you don't like what these people with guns do, you have to leave the country.
	I mean, that's completely insane because you can't universalize that rule.
	So if you have a rule called Stephen Harper owns Canada, Stephen Harper owns Canada and so he sets the rules and if you don't like the rules then you can leave.
	Well, then I'll just set my own rules.
	That I don't like Stephen Harper's rules and he has to leave.
	You can't universalize that moral premise.
	I always try to go with universalization.
	So if it's a rule that one small group of individuals owns the whole country can set all the rules, then why is it only they?
	Have that right? Why couldn't it have that?
	Why can't everybody have that right?
	And Noam Chomsky, though he is a status lefty to some degree, has some fantastic arguments around universalization.
	He's got one that just blew my mind.
	He was saying that the US claims the right to go into South America and napalm farmers' fields where they suspect they're growing copies for other kinds of drugs.
	So he said, well, so these things are dangerous to people's health, and so we have the right to go and firebomb their farms.
	Well, then, why doesn't the world have the right to firebomb tobacco farms in South Carolina?
	Because they're growing crops that are harmful to the rest of the world.
	And once you get those kinds of universalizations, like, why are the moral rules not universalized?
	I mean, to me, that's a way to oppose it without bringing up such inflammatory, so to speak.
	Yes, yes. In retrospect.
	More morally sensitive, he would say, well, I'm not going to defend female genital mutilation, so...
	I'm going to have to concede this point, but obviously he escalated for whatever reason.
	But the universalization, I think, is the key.
	Because people claim virtue has to be universal.
	It has to be. It can't be like, I like ice cream.
	It has to be. Because if it's not universal, then no one's bound by it.
	You can't have any laws. You can't have anything that's binding on anybody else.
	Like, I like ice cream, it's not binding on you.
	You don't have to like ice cream. I had a dream about an elephant last night.
	That doesn't mean you all have to have had a dream about an elephant last night.
	But if we're talking about ethics, we're talking about virtue, But if you're talking about ethics and virtue, then it has to be universal.
	Otherwise, it's not binding on anyone or anything.
	It's just a personal opinion or a personal preference.
	The moment that somebody says something is binding on you to accept, they're talking about universal preferences.
	And then it just has to be universal.
	Social contract. Why can't we all come up with a social contract since it is a function of the human mind to create a social contract?
	Why is it only a few people in Ottawa get to create a social contract?
	Because it's not universal.
	It's only universally binding.
	But if it's universally binding, it must be universal for everyone to create.
	Otherwise, it's just a con, as we all know.
	So, you think he may have gotten the ethics, right?
	Now, here's the challenge.
	I'll toss out a moral quandary, and it's one that I spent years hammering at, and I've had some success and some not-success, but I'll throw it out and see what you think.
	What is that relationship with people who support the state?
	It's a very, very tough question, right?
	Now, I will sort of argue that the people who support the state, and Without going into the differences between a purely state-less society and a libertarian society, I think we would all agree that 90% would actually probably be a kind of right, and 79.9% would probably be better, and at some point there'd be a vanishing point where there'd be one guy calling himself the state living in his parents' basement or something, right? So we're putting all of that aside.
	People who support the state as it is, right?
	The state that throws people in jail for drug crimes, the state that starts wars, the state that runs up national debts, the state that Drugs children, the state that miseducates the young, that state we all recognize as a pretty vile institution.
	Before, people know about the ethical arguments.
	To me, they're in a state of nature.
	You can't morally condemn somebody who's never been exposed to a particular moral argument because that's asking them to invent the entire history of ethics on their own, which is impossible, right?
	So it's sort of like saying to a doctor in the 14th century, oh, that guy was terrible.
	He never prescribed antibiotics.
	Well, they weren't around, right?
	So he said, I don't know, you've got a demon and put a hole in his head or something.
	I don't know what they did. Something stupid, right?
	But it wasn't stupid for the time because that's all the knowledge that they had.
	So a guy in ancient Mesopotamia saying the world is flat isn't an idiot.
	Right? Guy in Toronto.
	Perhaps a little bit more on the idiot side, because that one's pretty much a given that it's a banana shake.
	Sorry, I have two darts. So, before people understand or they get the moral argument for the state, state of nature, get out of jail, freak hard, no harm, no foul to me, right?
	I think why it got so explosive for you and why it gets so explosive for other people when you bring up the ethical argument is you're putting the light on, you're turning the light on, as that which is seeing can never be unseen, right?
	And so once people have heard taxation is the initiation of force, once people have heard that the drug war is criminal by any reasonable moral standard, once people have understood that the national debt is selling the unborn foreigners completely a vile trade, once they get the basic ethics of the society that they live in, and then they reject it, That is a challenging thing.
	And that's why I think people resist this aspect of the conversation around the ethics.
	And it's why we're all drawn to arguments from effect.
	What's going to happen? How's this going to be fixed?
	Well, let's argue about how the roads will be built.
	Well, let's argue about how healthcare will be provided.
	Let's argue about how schooling will be provided.
	Because that doesn't get to that core moral thing where the relationship either breaks through or, as you found with Sasha the Statist, it becomes avoided.
	Right? Because if you try and put them Of an ethical illumination, a moral illumination, and it's a saying we're not the first, right?
	And we won't be the last. Hopefully we'll be close to the last, but we're not the first.
	What do you do in the South in 1840 if you're an abolitionist and your brother is a passionate and proactive slave owner?
	It's tough. It's really, really tough.
	And I think it's those relationships that keep getting us towards the less volatile arguments that we have with people.
	And I would also say, and this is, I don't have statistics obviously other than my own experience and the experience of some people I've talked to about this, I was vastly less successful, though vastly more at peace with people, when I was doing the arguments from effect rather than the arguments from morality.
	Because the arguments from morality Change relationships.
	I mean, if you can imagine that, right?
	I mean, and if you don't think so, then just try whipping it out.
	Because it does change things.
	People who are trying out this, you know, whatever we're calling it, right?
	This laser sword that sometimes takes off the other person's argument, sometimes your own hand, whatever, right?
	But this is the challenge, right?
	So the way I sort of analogize it, that I'll ask you what you guys think, there are certain crimes that will only be committed if there's a getaway car, right?
	So if they're robbing a bank somewhere downtown, Lord knows I drive in and it's pretty tough, they're not going to rob the bank unless there's a getaway car because they just can't get away.
	Now, the state to me is the thieves.
	They're the robbers. They're the ones going in with the, you know, the balaclavas and the whatever, right?
	But the people who support the state, to me, are driving the getaway car.
	And the way that I view libertarians is that we go up to people who are sitting there saying, I'm just waiting for Brother Jimmy there.
	He's picking up a six-pack and we're going to go drive off somewhere, right?
	And apparently it's really cold in the store, so he needed all these clubbers and all that, right?
	And it's Halloween, so he's going dressed as a criminal, but he doesn't know, right?
	He doesn't know the ethics of what's going on in the bank.
	And we're coming along, we're sitting there, we're leaning down in the car, we're saying, Jimmy's a criminal.
	Jimmy's a criminal? Right?
	And then we even, we show them the closed feed.
	I don't know if it's a magic iPod app.
	I've got an app for that. Criminal crime in progress, right?
	So we show them that Jimmy is holding up the bank and he's the getaway car, right?
	Well, that's a tough situation for the person in the car, right?
	Because beforehand, they didn't know.
	They didn't know. Now, they at least have been exposed to the argument that That this is the reality of what's happening.
	And so when we come up and we point out that the government is around the initiation of force, that it's immoral, that it's predatory, that it's destructive, that it's violent, and so on, then we're basically saying, you know, Jimmy's robbing the bank.
	It's not a costume. And that is a very, very tough moment for people.
	Because where do you go from there?
	Where do you go from there in your relationship with people?
	Well, in my experience, you go one of two ways, right?
	Well, I guess three. One is that they're like, why thank you for that ethical elimination, I feel wonderful.
	No, they basically will struggle and kick and all that, but they will eventually, and hopefully not too long, it usually doesn't take too long, they'll go like, wow, you know, my mind has been blown, I took the red pill, the matrix, and blah, blah, blah, right?
	And they just sort of wake up from this It causes so much stress for them, and it really is stress, right?
	Because we're inviting people into a life of pretty perpetual stress and combat when we say come over to the libertarian side, right?
	I mean, am I wrong?
	I mean, how many people have ever said, damn, I wish I hadn't read that rant, or damn, I wish I hadn't, you know, gone to that newsletter, or talked to that guy who was really convincing?
	because it is a life of combat and stress.
	And it's not without its satisfactions, because the truth has its satisfactions.
	But it's a tough life sometimes, right?
	Is that a fair thing to say?
	You're going to reach the wall?
	Except eventually there, you lose consciousness.
	This is like the Benny Hedder smelling salts.
	Get up, do it again, right?
	It's hard work.
	I think there would be not an honest soul among us who wouldn't occasionally just say, it's too late to go back and take that other pill.
	This is really tough.
	Oh, yeah. I mean, especially people going through college.
	I mean, I remember going through college.
	I took a course called The Rise of Socialism and the Capitalist Response taught by A Marxist professor who looked almost identical to a Ewok.
	That was so hairy.
	What is that? What is that?
	Anyway. He had like a little band here.
	A huge beard and this little band looks like a raccoon.
	Anyway. And so that was a tough course because I was very much in the free market and this and that.
	And so other people were just learning stuff, right?
	And I was. In hindsight, it might have been a bit nicer if I'd learned about this stuff after school, and it's tough.
	So we're inviting people in, and I think they get there.
	Like, if I accept this moral argument, I am now at odds with my society in very fundamental ways.
	Human beings are not so much assigned to be at odds with their society.
	You know, we're kind of tribal. We like to get along.
	We like to not rock the boat too much, you know, except people like us again who got the wrong pill at birth or something, right?
	So I think when you're saying to people not, here's an argument that's intellectual about the effects of an alternate way of organizing society.
	Like, here's, let's play Simulacrum 3000 about how healthcare can be provided in the future.
	But when you're saying there's a fundamental moral The moral and immorality is the core of our society in how we organize things, and it's been around for tens of thousands of years, and it continues because of propaganda, and it continues because people won't take their personal ethics and apply them at a social level, because we believe there's some other weird level up there where ethics is the complete reverse of wherever it is in our personal lives.
	That's what you were saying about, we wouldn't go next door and say, my kid needs a bad education, right?
	Let's go, right? You hand over your money every month, or that's it.
	Nobody would do that, or at least very few people would.
	But we believe that there's this weird opposite realm up there in society where that is not only allowed, it's good.
	And if you didn't do that, it would be really bad.
	So that we live in this weird, upside-down, topsy-turvy world of opposites, you know?
	I'd never do this in my private life.
	People say to me, how will the voluntary society work?
	It works like your day.
	I mean, because I don't meet people who are like, I really want a job.
	I'm going to find out where that guy lives.
	They don't do that, right? I mean, if I ever do meet someone like that who's like, oh yeah, the guy's going to give me a job to the trunk of the car, I'm like, okay.
	Let's just find somebody else to debate with, right?
	So when we bring out the moral argument, you know, when we say to the guy in the getaway car, you are now participating in a crime, and this crime is only occurring because of your participation.
	That is a terrible, terrible moment, I believe, for the guy in the car, right?
	I mean, it was a terrible moment for me when I first went, whoa, whoa!
	You know, it's like Keanu Reeves goes on for like four decades going, whoa, that's what libertarianism is.
	But it is a very, very difficult thing.
	And I think that libertarianism has had a habit of focusing on the argument from effect.
	I think that it is challenging but important to focus on the argument from morality.
	Because it's my belief, and I put the case forward, you can tell me if I'm completely wrong about anything, of course, right?
	But it's my belief that we have, I think we don't recognize we have a vertically, vertical hierarchical society, right?
	I mean, we have politicians and people at the top, There's no enemy of the government like a big businessman sometimes.
	There's no friend of the government, sorry, like a big businessman sometimes.
	Having worked in the software field and sold to a lot of big companies, I think I know a little bit about this, but, oh yeah, they're just, oh, we love the state, right?
	I mean, people think about the welfare somewhere down there with people like Jane and Finch.
	That's nothing compared to what's going on in Quebec, Windsor Corridor.
	So, I think we all recognize that there's this hierarchy in society, and we look up, and we look up this hierarchy, but I don't think that that's where we need to look.
	I don't think that that's where the hierarchy really is.
	We have, I think that we could call it sort of quaintly the ruling class.
	is maybe 1% of the population, maybe 2%, right?
	The richest, whatever, right?
	You own half of everything or whatever, control the government and all that.
	We focus on those people a lot, and I spend a lot of time focusing on those people, but I don't really think that's where the state actually lives.
	I think that what results is a hierarchy, but that's not the cause.
	The cause is not the pyramid.
	The cause, I believe, is what happened at your family dinner.
	The cause is that we turn on each other when these moral truths are illuminated.
	That, I believe, is the real cause of the hierarchy.
	Because the question is, how on earth does 1% of the population It could never have happened 5,000 years ago, because 5,000 years ago, the top were old, the young were, the young, the strong of heart, and so on, right? And a sword was a sword was a sword.
	There were no weapons of mass destruction 5,000 years ago or 2,000 years ago.
	So the only way that you could get a tribal hierarchy is Anybody here not seen the Life of Brian movie?
	You haven't?
	Okay, it's a Monty Python film. You should rent it.
	Because there's a fantastic scene in there where the revolutionaries all come in to take over the Roman gods, to take down the Roman gods, and they begin arguing.
	Does anyone remember about what? It's been a while since I watched that scene.
	Do you remember? The Palestinian Liberation.
	They argue about their name.
	Yeah, they argue about their name, the Splitters.
	That's right. So they start arguing.
	Two of them show up.
	So these two liberation armies show up to overthrow the Romans, and they start fighting with each other, and they start packing each other down.
	The Romans are just leaning up on their swords like, we'll wait until they're done, But this is the issue, right?
	The state is the Romans leaning on their swords and the general population of the people fighting with each other.
	The state, my formulation, right or wrong, the state is horizontal.
	The state is slave on slave aggression.
	That is the state.
	What is profited is the result of that, because we all keep each other in line, right?
	We all work to keep each other in line.
	And the simple test for this, don't take anything I'm saying face value, the simple test of this, how many people have been arrested here for being libertarians?
	Nobody. Okay. How many people have had conflicts in their personal relationships because they're a libertarian?
	Yay! See, the government is not oppressing you fundamentally.
	I mean, they don't need to, right?
	Because they all turn on each other.
	It's like a petri dish.
	They all turn on each other.
	And I think it all hinges around this question of morality.
	And I think the reason, as I said, why we focus on these arguments from effects is because It turns us against each other.
	I mean, I know it's a dream.
	I think it will happen someday, but just imagine.
	If we could have a civilized, curious, and respectful conversation with our fellow inmates of the state of the system about, you know, truth and virtue and peace and possibility and volunteerism and non-aggression, just, you know, at a dinner table, right?
	So people could just talk about it without yelling, without, you know, name calling, without volatility, without this, you know, stepping around the landmine every time you see the guy for the next 30 years or whatever, right?
	I mean, just imagine what would happen if we could have that conversation.
	There'd be no state in, like, four days It is a violation of the non-aggression principle that this is not how I live my life.
	I would morally condemn anyone in my life who did even a tenth of one, tenth of one percent of what the state does every five minutes.
	So that's immoral, right?
	Like if people could have a civilized discussion about the equality of man, then slavery would have been done in four decades.
	You wouldn't have needed 600,000 people killed in a civil war in America.
	Of course, they got rid of slavery in Brazil just by Turning the government off, right?
	Sorry, that's just a side note.
	The people always say, when you have to fight to get rid of slavery, it's nonsense.
	In Brazil, all that happened was the government stopped catching the slaves.
	You got 500 slaves running off in all these different directions.
	If the government's not picking them up, you're done.
	Wait, wait, wait, you're done.
	So it's just getting rid of that power that creates the equality.
	I don't really have a huge point here.
	Other than to sort of illuminate this thing and to suggest that it's worth meditating on what bringing these ethics to your fellow inmates is for and how volatile it is, I'm telling you, it's an amazingly powerful thing to do.
	I think that it can really bring people closer, but it really can drive them apart.
	I'm a really philosopher guy, right?
	So I just really want to focus on that aspect of the conversation.
	Because we have this difficult life.
	We got attacked by this brain virus called consistency and reason, right?
	So, you know, we're coughing up truth into It's a difficult life.
	To me, having a difficult life is okay if you really achieve stuff.
	To me, that's okay. To me, the worst thing is to have this difficult life and to constantly have to bite my tongue and not talk about this and not talk about that.
	Then someone brings up, like, Harper was really great on the piano the other day.
	We all have these things. Obama, he just gave a great speech.
	That's going to do another stimulus package.
	You know, I get the paper bag.
	Do you all have that? You're going to tell me more.
	I don't mind having that difficulty.
	I don't mind having that conflict.
	I don't mind having that all the time.
	But I sure as hell don't want to kick off this mortal coil without having done as much Traction work is possible to really change things.
	I don't think the argument in effect changes much.
	I think it's a good discussion to have.
	I think it's interesting. I think it's worth researching.
	I don't think it changes anything fundamentally.
	I think it's, you know, a good way to prove that you're not insane before having the ethical conversation.
	But I would really suggest focusing on the true morality.
	And that way, if we fail, we at least won't have failed without pulling out the biggest weapon, which is ethics.
	And weapon is the wrong word, but, you know, to use that metaphor for a sec.
	I think that I want to talk about tonight.
	I mean, if anybody has any questions, comments, or criticisms, I'm certainly happy to hear them, but that's it for me.
	I had a comment. Oh no, not you.
	Anybody else? No, I had a comment.
	I found that people are much more receptive to what we have to say if the question comes from them.
	Like, I just say, I don't really agree with that.
	And I leave it at that.
	And then later on, something bugs them.
	Well, what is it?
	And then you just say something and just sort of dismiss them.
	And by being them, the ones that are dragging or taking these things from you, they're much less explosive than if you say, well, I don't agree with this because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	Right. And I think if you bring up fewer mutilated genitalia.
	That's right. No, I think that's a good point.
	But I would also, I mean, the thing that I've, again, learned, which I'm sure everyone here has learned, but it's worth reinforcing is Politicians are really great at stuff that libertarians aren't so great at, right?
	So politicians divide people into three categories.
	People I'm never going to convince, people who are already convinced, and the people in the middle, right?
	And they only spend time on that third category, right?
	I mean, the Republicans don't call up Chelsea Clinton saying, listen, you know, Republican is the way to go because they know that she's going to vote Democrat, right?
	I think that's really key.
	If you just, yeah, put a few trial balloons out there, then the people who are curious and come back to you are the people who are open to some sort of argument and evidence.
	But, I mean, how many of us have, right, for months, for years sometimes, you get into these pound, pound, pound conversations where you're just taking years off your life for no particular purpose because people won't change.
	It gets nowhere, and very often, and very often people think that you're just not compassionate with the poor.
	Right, right, right. If you are an empiricist, and the idea from libertarianism is all about, forget what they say about social programs, what are the actual facts of these social programs?
	What are the measurable, tangible results?
	If we're supposed to be an empiricist but we keep having the same arguments to no effect, we can't really claim to be that empirical because we're doing something that isn't working and we're continuing to do it, just like the government does, right?
	So we have to do the opposite of what we criticize.
	Yeah, well speaking of the slavery argument, the anti-slavery abolitionists were very effective when they used the moral argument.
	That's how they won the day because they were considered a radical fringe and people actually hated them but then they started agreeing with them and I guess that's what kind of led to that Well, the U.S. conflagration was, I think, more about federal power. But the moral argument drove it in the rest of the world, for sure.
	And it drove it in the British Empire, for sure.
	It's not to say it's the only consideration, but it's a very powerful one.
	I quite agree with you.
	And when people say, well, how would roads be built in the absence of the government?
	It's exactly the same as saying, well, if you free 500 slaves, I need you to list me all the jobs they're going to have in two years.
	I don't know. I don't know how the slaves are going to get jobs.
	I don't know what they're going to do. And slavery may be beneficial to some people who are slower or, you know, don't have any skills.
	Well, there are a lot of people benefiting from their slavery.
	No, even the slaves, I mean. Yeah, I mean us.
	Yeah, for sure. So, I don't care what jobs the slaves have in two years.
	What I care about is that slavery is a fundamentally immoral institution and we need to get rid of it.
	I mean, because it's just immoral.
	I don't care what happens afterwards.
	I mean, to focus on what happens afterwards is a ridiculous distraction from the actual issue, right?
	Which is, is it moral or is it not?
	Well, I can see a lot of people getting very angry with that, in this country anyway, with that argument.
	Yeah, because you're cutting through, frankly, the bullshit, right?
	Yeah. The bullshit of, well, okay, so someone needs an MRI in a small community and there isn't enough voluntary churches to put...
	I mean, come on.
	I mean, this is ridiculous, right?
	It's like saying, you know, a slave breaks his leg three years from now and his slave owner isn't providing healthcare so he just dies.
	Right. Come on.
	Is it right or is it wrong? Is it moral or is it immoral?
	Forget the rest of that nonsense.
	It doesn't matter. Last thing though, I do hear when I argue it is from the effects, not the cause, and I completely agree with why you're saying that.
	Because the effects, everybody sees the effects, but to get with the cause, it's like touching the thing that they're just about exploding your face on.
	Oh, it's huge. It's just the middle you're saying.
	I mean, I'm an active politician right now.
	I can only just imagine. Oh, my God, yeah.
	You're like Michael Bolton hitting a high note.
	Oh, yeah, no. It's shaking my head.
	I'm like, no, you're right. I wouldn't necessarily pull it out in your political career right now.
	Just, you know, take it for a test run with acquaintances, you don't mind.
	Yeah, yeah. That would be my solution.
	I guess so. A few innocent bystanders.
	Yeah. But there is a way to get at it, though.
	There is a way to get it.
	But it's got to be done with finesse.
	That's the only thing. It's got to be done with a lot of finesse in a bigger pie of people.
	You finesse, but I think also you just have to have that kind of lazy.
	People will always try to distract you from that core moral argument.
	Because the core moral argument is completely irresistible.
	It is completely irresistible.
	That's why this guy blew up.
	Because he got it. And it's irresistible, and he couldn't take it.
	Emotionally, fundamentally, I mean, nobody believes People believe the government because it's rational.
	People believe the government because it's stressful not to.
	Right. Because everybody else believes the government, right?
	So this, you have to, I mean, finesse and delicacy and good humor and so on, but, you know, they all try and pull you off these sidetracks of facts and what ifs and this and that, but just keep going.
	Yeah, because I've been resisting the moral argument.
	I've got a friend who doesn't resist it, but I've been resisting it, so I'm kind of like, oh my God.
	Yeah, but we all resist it because it's, you know, it's in our name.
	There's no question. Yeah. I have sort of a predicament I wanted to comment on.
	So since that situation, every time, because of the effect that had on me, there's so many times where people say things or comment on the news It's an opportunity for me to express how I feel.
	You've touched on this before, but now I basically had a choice of, well, do I want people to like me or do I want to feel good about myself?
	Of course, you can't convince people who don't like you.
	I hate to be Mr.
	Salesman, but I spend a lot of time at sales.
	People have to like you first before they'll accept things that you say.
	But it's true, right? I mean, you go into a mall, right?
	You see the cosmetics counter.
	And they don't have statistics on how well this is going to improve your skin sheen or reduce your wrinkles.
	They don't just have a bunch of statistics.
	What they have is, you know, 12-year-old gymnasts looking great, right?
	Or movie stars, right?
	They have these movie stars up there.
	So what they're doing is you go, damn, that person looks good.
	I'd like to look like that.
	And then maybe you'll get it.
	To the details. And to me, we don't all have to be beautiful, but what we do have to be is really consistent, really consistent, which means if we're in this for the argument from effect, I just don't think there's much to it.
	I think fundamentally deep down we're in this because we want a better world.
	We want a more moral world. We want a more peaceful world.
	We want a world where people aren't doomed, where children are well educated and brought up peacefully, where conflicts as a whole are resolved in a peaceful manner, where charity is actually charity.
	And not just an enforced coercive enslavement of the lower classes.
	I mean, I think we really want that glowing city on a hill.
	We want that beautiful world of peace and plenty.
	And that is fundamentally a moral argument.
	And so, you say, well, I want people to like me.
	Or I want to feel good about myself, but I don't think those two are mutually exclusive because if they don't like you, you're not going to be able to get across to them anyway, if that makes any sense.
	Sorry, that was a tangent.
	I'm famous for them, but please get back to your...
	No, no, all I was going to say is now, since that situation, every time there's been my mother-in-law saying, you know, isn't it great how we support the arts and things like that, I just, inside, I'm like, ah, but I'm like, mmm, I don't want yelling, right? Right.
	Do they know your beliefs, right?
	They do, yes. They were there that Christmas.
	What I actually wanted to ask is, you've done this argument for morality for many years now.
	How have you found building relationships and have you chosen to just sacrifice relationships because you That's a big question.
	That's a big question. And I think there's a lot embedded in what you're saying that I would pull apart.
	I don't want to put everyone to sleep.
	It's just a topic that people...
	I have to appeal for that. But I absolutely have sacrificed some relationships because I've accepted that they're not relationships.
	This has nothing to do with your relationships.
	I'm just talking about my own personal experience.
	I absolutely have sacrificed some relationships.
	And I'll tell you why. I won't be in a relationship with someone who my moral knowledge condemns as immoral.
	I can't do it. And not because I'm some noble guy, but just because to me that's abusive.
	I can't be, I'll give up. If you were my friend and I genuinely believe that you were supporting a criminal or very criminal actions.
	And I don't mean like this, just you were in the Mafia, right?
	Like I said, I was into the non-aggression principle and you were in the Mafia.
	I couldn't be your friend.
	Because, or if I was your friend, I'd say, okay, well, my morals aren't really that important.
	I'm going to let go of the moral so I can be friends with you.
	But I won't be in a relationship where my ethics condemn somebody as immoral because I think that's abusive on my part.
	I think that that is to be around somebody and to condemn them as immoral is kind of cruel.
	I either have to let go of the condemnation or I have to let go of that relationship which isn't really a relationship.
	Have a great warm friendship with someone you define as immoral.
	I think that we start a short circuit around there.
	So that's my, again, this is just my experience.
	But it's not like I've ended relationships because of my ideals.
	But I have recognized I can't have a relationship with somebody who I condemn as immoral.
	And yeah, it's been constantly, but on the other hand, I've had amazing new friendships that have come out of that, that, you know, after you pull that band in, so to speak, you look back and you say, well, that seemed like a big step at the time, but in hindsight, it's, you know, it's much better.
	I hope that answers Yeah, I mean, my suggestion, you know, sorry, my suggestion, and it's only a suggestion. Nobody can tell you what to do with your relationship.
	My suggestion is try six million different approaches, right?
	Just try, you know, from this is really important to me emotionally to here's the argument from morality to here's the argument from effect.
	You know, be the You know, libertarian tinkerbell flitting around the room, throwing dust everywhere, you know?
	I can already see you in that tutu, actually, in my mind's eye.
	What do I do behind those doors?
	I just need less restrictive clothing rules.
	But keep trying, keep trying.
	I wouldn't give it up. I mean, because that avoidance to me is really not, it's not a great relationship to keep tiptoeing around people.
	I mean, don't make it every topic of conversation, but just keep talking and keep talking and I think the resolution either way will come.
	So yeah, before, people know they're in a state of nature and, you know, it's like my daughter's knowledge of relativity, theory of relativity.
	She just doesn't get it.
	I'm not saying I do, but at least I know what it is, right?
	So she's just prior to.
	But then once that light comes on, You know, people will try, oh, lights on, quick, turn it off, right?
	And then you just keep lighting it up as gently and as positively as you can, and then they'll eventually either see it or they won't, and then nobody got from there.
	Just building on that point, we've been talking tonight about, you know, addressing issues like the sanction of the victim and all that sort of thing, but also, you know, in therapy, what works, right?
	As a guy who's read his range.
	Yes. How do you take it from working with personal relationships to the next level?
	I mean, like, I suspect perhaps that maybe Stefan Molyneux's past is not for everyone where you build a media empire and you have like...
	But like, what are your stories on what else works?
	Does news aggregation work?
	Does posting work?
	What are some of the other paths to getting these ideas out there?
	Using the internet, Twitter?
	Yeah, I think those are all good things.
	I mean, I use the internet a lot.
	But the first thing that I have to focus on, and it's a cheesy metaphor, I just wish I could come up with that one, but I can't.
	You need to be a lighthouse.
	You need to be incandescent to people in your life.
	When they look at what freedom is, they need to think of you.
	I know that's a high bar.
	Lord knows I don't hit it half the time.
	I'd like to. But to take a metaphor, if you live in a world of fat people and you want them to be thin, They live in Carolina.
	Nothing against South Carolina for those people who watch the video.
	So everybody's fat, and they think that they're thin, and you're trying to get them to lose weight.
	What's the best thing to do? Be thin.
	Be thin. Be thin and say, look, curve wheels.
	Look, I can climb stairs without running.
	Look, I can run a marathon.
	Look, I can fit up a chimney for whatever reason, right?
	Whatever. Look, I can fit into these pants that I had to make because I'm probably us with pants.
	Right? But you're thin, right?
	And you're like, you walk around and you're thin, right?
	And then some people will go, hey, that looks good.
	Or that guy can do stuff that I can't do, right?
	He can But to be thin, right?
	So to me, again, cheesy metaphor time, but forgive me I was in art school, but you need to present yourself like a gateway through which people can see the future.
	Through which people can see what freedom looks like.
	And freedom is what you generate in your personal life.
	For me, it came out of just getting rid of abusive and destructive relationships or things that didn't work in my life.
	That made me very free.
	And letting go of my career to do crazy internet yelling guy in a red room, that worked for me as well.
	But whatever it is that works for you that makes you free, that makes you self-expressed, that makes you liberated, that makes you Someone that people are excited to see a possibility through.
	That's a terrible sentence. But you know what I mean, right?
	So Twitter, that's all great.
	But if you, I believe that 95% of communication is non-verbal, right?
	I mean, this is fairly well established in psychological circles.
	So when you walk down the street, if you're a free human being, And we can be free, even in this situation.
	You just pay them off, right? You just pay them off.
	Just pay them off. Give them their money and you're free, right?
	I've made this argument before.
	I would rather have a happy marriage and 50% taxation than a miserable marriage and 0% taxation.
	I'm much more free with 50% taxation and a happy marriage than a miserable marriage and no taxation.
	I mean, my parents didn't have a happy marriage and they paid far less taxes than I did and they were miserable.
	Right? So freedom is possible for us.
	Just pay the bastards off, right?
	Just give them their pound of flesh and move on.
	But I genuinely believe if you're a free human being, you walk down the street, you walk down the street in a way that excites people, it motivates people, it makes them curious, and that I think comes out of personal relationships that you'll have with people in whatever sphere you're working in.
	If you can do stuff on the internet, stuff through Twitter, I think that's great.
	But I think that we really need to show people what freedom looks like.
	From an individual, personal standpoint, rather than lecture them about how health care can be provided in the 23rd century.
	I just think that is less. That's my crusade thingy, so I'm sorry if I was too long to stay.
	So yeah, do the internet stuff, but focus In the early days of marketing, you did have somebody standing in front of the Frigidaire saying how great it was.
	Yeah, here are the stats, right? Yeah.
	And then they moved on to lifestyle marketing, and if you drink this particular beer, you're going to get this great party on the docks.
	Yeah. People, I mean, the fundamental reality is that people these days, they can't really think.
	They can't. I mean, how could they?
	I mean, it's like expecting them to know Mandarin.
	Right? That they've never been taught logic.
	They've never been taught reasoning.
	They barely know how to write, most of them.
	I mean, I'm talking about the general population.
	Obviously, we've got a cluster of alphas here, right, as far as intelligence goes.
	But the general population That's why, partly why they had to switch to, let's put the pretty girl in front of the cosmetics counter, because people can't really think.
	They don't know how to analyze statistics, they don't know how to reason from first principles, they don't know how to identify fallacious arguments, because they've never been taught that.
	It's not like it's intuitive yet.
	They have to learn that stuff. So we have to kind of show more than tell, if that makes any sense.
	I always go back to, and it's completely counter-intuitive, and it's hippy-dippy, it's all get out.
	And I fully, fully understand that, and it could be completely wrong.
	It's just the way that it's worked for me.
	You keep focusing on personal freedom, and through some mysterious alchemy that is unconscious and that is around this 95% of communication that works non-verbally, I don't know more detail, I don't want to bore everyone with that, but that's, you know, and you have control over that.
	You have control over how much freedom you're going to have in your personal life.
	You don't have control of who's going to read your blog or, you know, I always try and focus on what we have the most control of and that's our relationships and all the things.
	So I'm not answering that.
	So oftentimes you gave the analogy of the road argument, who would build roads, who paid for roads if they came up and this is always the question that comes up and for me it's a really simple one is that roads were forced on us and we structured society around them.
	And if you just get out of the idea that we need the roads because this is the structure of society, and think about the fact that the structure of society builds itself around the force of roads being put out there, and because now it's zero cost to utilize them, because you've already paid for it with blood, You know, you can get off of the idea that we need roads.
	Who's to say we wouldn't have a flying car already to address the need to get from point A to point B without a road?
	And how much effect did this have on the railroad system that roads were subsidized by the taxpayer and railroads had to charge per mile to ship goods?
	There's so many things that fundamentally if something is forced on you, you're going to use it.
	You're going to consume that which you've already paid for through Fletch.
	But think outside of that and think why was the road forced on us in the And I don't think it would be us as individuals because we lament them now.
	Everything is so far away.
	We can't walk to anything.
	And environmentalists are of arms and we've got to reduce emissions.
	We have to have more investment in railroads.
	And I say, well, maybe just no investment in roads.
	Well, people don't even know the history of roads, right?
	I mean, roads were built like the Roman Empire.
	Roads have always been built for military reasons, right?
	So, I mean, in America, they built the roads because they were afraid of nuclear war.
	The only reason you have an interstate highway system is because they wanted to be able to get troops around the country in case of nuclear war, so that's not a good reason.
	There's an old cartoon I remember, I can't remember where it's from, probably the New Yorker, where there are these two Russian housewives in this Soviet-era lineup to infinity to get brave.
	One of them says to the other, it's like, oh, this white, this cold, I've been here for hours just for a single loaf of bread, how terrible.
	And the other one turns back and says, yes, but you know, in the capitalist countries, the government doesn't even distribute the bread.
	And I think that's very telling, which is, in a state of freedom, we have to look at this and say, well, if the government didn't distribute the bread, we'd starve.
	No, no, no, no, no, you'd go to lawful us and you'd pick it up for a buck, right?
	When Gorbachev met Margaret Thatcher the first time and he went to Britain, he looked at things and he asked her, how do you make sure that they all get food?
	My argument over health care is surely food, clothing and The problem is that they may agree with that.
	They say, oh yeah, socialized housing, that would be great for everybody.
	Yeah, food, yeah, that would be great.
	I've got a whole series called Statism is Dead on YouTube, Secretariatism has done a fantastic and underappreciated job in that I can't even remember the last time a major government program that was new was put forward.
	I mean, there's some extensions, like they want to get junior conduct and all that, right?
	And there's these stimulus packages, but that's just one of the Keynesianism, right?
	So, but it's been a long time since a major new government initiative has been proposed.
	I mean... The NDP will have everything they ask for.
	Yeah, they have, and so does Karl Marx, in fact.
	Ten out of the twelve clanks in It's been instituted in the West.
	So, I mean, I think we've done a great job in the sense of putting balloons, sorry, puncturing the balloons of further statism.
	There's been no takeover of the computer industry or whatever, right?
	So, from that standpoint, I think a lot of good has been done.
	And statism as a philosophy, I just, nobody really buys into it.
	There's just a lot of inertia. Nobody really is like, the government should take over everything.
	Nobody really says that except maybe that Marxist professor I had 20 years ago or whatever.
	It's not a very common argument to hear, so hopefully people won't go and let's take over.
	I was taking it to a greater extent, but one time I was having a discussion with somebody and I was trying to tell them, look, people should have the freedom to buy any food they want.
	You can't just come with the stroke of a pen and say that all foods have to be organic, and then this person said, yes, that would be fabulous!
	I'm sorry, can I just interrupt you for a second?
	Go for it. I'm going to just focus in on a few words that you used that I think I would suggest that you might change, right?
	Go for it, yes. So the first thing he says, stroke of a pen.
	Government is not a stroke of a pen, as we know, right?
	Government is an unholstering of the gun.
	That's true. I can write all the things that I want.
	So it's not so much people should be allowed to.
	I think that's a very neutral way of putting it.
	My question is, should people who want to buy non-organic be shot?
	Would you shoot someone for buying non-organic?
	And if the person says yes, then run and roll and duck and weave as well.
	It comes down to, it's stark and it's volatile, but it is the reality, right?
	We need to look at the moral morality.
	They pass a law saying you have to buy organic.
	What happens is if people don't buy organic or they smuggle, they think there's some truffle that you can't buy that people have to smuggle and if they're caught, What happens is then people get arrested, and if they resist, they're going to get shot.
	So we are talking about the application of violence, the initiation of the use of force.
	It's not a stroke of a pen, and it's not should people be allowed to, because be allowed to, I don't allow my daughter to walk on the road.
	So it's a very neutral way, but I'm not going to shoot her on the road.
	Would you support people being aggressed against violently for not doing what you want?
	And nobody's going to say yes to that.
	And I think that you have to really put it in that starker terms, because that is the beginning of wisdom, as they say, is to call things by their proper names.
	And it is the initiation of force that we're opposing.
	We are the superheroes of pacifism.
	That's true. I know, I need the cape.
	Thank you.
	Thank you very much.
	I hope I'm not monopolizing the conversation, by the way.
	My question for you is, I assume that you weren't always this good at being able to communicate your ideas and this good at reasoning.
	So would you mind giving us a little bit of your journey through developing your ability to communicate?
	Well, we're assuming that I'm good.
	But I was not particularly good when I was younger.
	I mean, it's a lot of practice, you know, if you've ever read Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours.
	Yeah, 10,000 hours, that's right.
	I did actually add it up and it's not that far off.
	So there's a couple of things that I would suggest.
	First of all, the great challenge, I mean, I was nervous getting up in here and it's a different kind of venue for me or whatever, right?
	But the important thing is, I've got to put my own ego aside, put myself aside.
	You know, if you have a friend that you're going to introduce to some woman that you like and you think they're going to make a great couple, right?
	So you arrange a sort of three-way You arrange a three-way dinner.
	See? You get the candles.
	You put on the Barry White. No, I'm kidding.
	You get your dinner together, right?
	You're not going to be thinking about yourself, right?
	So you've got, you know, Bob and Sally that you want to introduce and you think you're going to make a great couple.
	What you're going to be interested in is Bob's reaction and Sally's reaction to each other.
	You're not going to be thinking about yourself particularly, right?
	So I think what I'm trying to do is I'm introducing some Arguments that I think are important and true to you guys.
	The important thing is, for me to introduce the arguments, it's not about me.
	It's about, you know, looking and trying to sort of see, does this mean anything?
	Is this valuable? Is this important?
	Is this helpful? I'm trying to sort of read that from, you know, people's body language, so they're sort of this and not, you know, that, right?
	So, it really is, for me, it's a lot around putting the ego aside and just being a channel for better arguments to impact upon someone.
	Because if it's an ego-based thing, then it becomes win-lose.
	So if you're introducing this thing called the truth to someone and hoping they're going to have a long and meaningful relationship, then you're focusing on those two people's, in a sense, reactions.
	And if they end up not liking each other, it's not bad for you, right?
	It's not negative towards you, it's just, I think that's a real shame, but, you know, life goes on.
	It's not, they've rejected me and my arguments and my history and my values, right?
	It's just, it's about the truth, which is sort of a third-party thing, and people introducing them and seeing if they like each other.
	Does that make any sense?
	It takes the ego out and makes it much more around, just trying to make those connections Oh, yes. You assume that Johnny didn't know what Joel was doing in the bank there.
	But if he did know, you'd be no point talking to him, right?
	Right. Well, my problem is that aren't we all driving the getaway car?
	Aren't we cooperating and participating and taking advantage of education, healthcare, whatever?
	Yeah, I mean, that's a very, very I reject it completely because I'm not responsible for the system that's put in place generations, if not millennia, before I was born.
	People say, you know, to live in the woods argument.
	To be a consistent libertarian, you must live in the woods, you must not use public roads, you must never go and see a doctor, you must never have taken a university class or whatever, right?
	But I didn't make the system.
	I'm just trying to survive within it.
	And to me, since I'm really interested in maximum freedom, going to live in the woods doesn't Because, you know, there are bears.
	There's freedom. Don't you remember the cold?
	You know, you try and do your best to maximize freedom within it, but by the same argument, the abolition Some places would have been produced by slave labor and therefore they would have to go live in the woods and we'd still have slavery.
	I think you need to stay in the world and keep engaging with the world to make it better.
	But I'm not going to take the smearing, not that you're smearing me, but to take the smearing of a system that I have to survive in and hopefully do some good in, I'm just not going to let the negatives of that system stick to me because I didn't design it and I reject it.
	It's very ethical. Since I've had any high school.
	A long time.
	Anyway, I even ran into politics 20 years ago.
	Anyway, I keep wrestling with one thing, and that's individual rights to democracy in a community.
	I'd just love to hear what you have to say.
	Individual rights to democracy?
	Like, let's say you have a community where we all want to not have this apartment building being built.
	But my rights are...
	I don't want it there because I own my own property.
	Right. But the community hasn't got...
	Does it have the power to stop the building?
	No. And should we have that power?
	Yeah, I mean, I think that's...
	I think we don't recognize...
	I've done a...
	I've done a video on this on YouTube called The Government of Tentable Limited Tool, which you might have heard of that one.
	Right, so the basic argument is if I have a house overlooking a ravine, I need to buy that land.
	I need to buy that right in the house, and if I didn't, you know, well, that's just too bad.
	I do think that there are standards that communities can very powerfully enforce.
	I mean, ostracism is an incredibly powerful tool.
	I think we all know that, right?
	Because that's your Christmas story, right?
	This system is very powerful. We are and will forever remain, I believe, very tribal and very gathering.
	We all want approval.
	We all want acceptance from our peers.
	That's very natural. And I think that's just built in.
	And so I think that if somebody's just a complete asshole in society, for want of a better phrase, people would just not want to do business with them.
	But the government comes along and says, "Well, that building over there is going to generate taxes for the parasitical side." Yeah, yeah.
	And we can't stop it.
	Because our community doesn't matter.
	And so, somebody else is now controlling that.
	Right, and this is the thing with a free society.
	people will always come up with problems about a free society and they'll be tricky to solve.
	And I, of course, the funny thing is that if I could answer every question about a free society, we wouldn't have one because I should run everything, right?
	So, of course, nobody knows everything about how free society should work.
	The moment anybody says, I know exactly how a free society should work, they're just a statist in disguise because they think they know everything, they should be the set for planners.
	But what I think is true is that what I bounce back to people who say, well, what about zoning laws in a free society?
	It's like, what about zoning laws in a statist society?
	Terrible. It's like saying, well, here's a pill that will magically cure your cancer, but It's like, what about the cancer?
	What about the system that we have right now?
	And wars and deaths and people being thrown in jail and so on.
	America has got the highest incarceration rate of the world, far higher than the Chinese per capita.
	It's insane. How do 30 people in the US is involved in the justice system to one degree or another on the victim's side?
	I mean, it's a prison planet down there.
	So I sort of say, so will you live with some risky zoning to let 2 million people out of jail?
	And if somebody says no, then it's like, okay, you take your step back and you know this is somebody who's crazy.
	Are you all ready? Yeah, that kind of leads into, in many ways, Because in many ways, You know,
	we can't answer all those questions, but one thing that comes to mind that was suggested by Ron Paul was, like, for example, in terms of fiat currency, it's like, well, why don't we allow free competition between gold and fiat currency and see which one wins, you know? But, of course, there's all these legal tender laws.
	Yeah, that's not going to happen. But what about all these other things, like, you know, the welfare state and the roads and et cetera, et cetera, and all these things that people are going What's going to throw at you when you're having these moral debates?
	Well, again, I would say it doesn't matter how they're solved.
	Maybe what matters is that it's moral.
	We have to have agreement on the immorality of it before we can go any further.
	If I can't get agreement on the morality of the thing, then...
	It's something I was just listening to a book by Christopher Hitchens called Letters to a Young Contrarian.
	It's very interesting. So, in 1989, he got involved in a bunch of debates.
	I remember Salman Rushdie and the satanic verses Basically, right?
	And so he'd get involved with these debates and he was saying to people, he said, let me just get one thing clear up front.
	May I assume that you are, without reservation, morally completely opposed to the hiring of a hitman to kill a literary figure?
	And he said, if I didn't get agreement on that, there was no debate.
	Because you can't debate ethics in society and how things should run with people who can't even accept that using violence to get your way is wrong.
	If they're not willing to see that and accept that and understand that.
	So the first thing I would say is, Forget about how the roads...
	Can we at least agree that the initiation of force is immoral?
	Can we at least agree that taxation is the initiation of force?
	Can we at least agree that the government is an agency that uses violence?
	Now, they may say, "Well, that violence is necessary and it's good and this," but can we at least get that far, that we get the basic mechanics of what the state is?
	Otherwise, you're arguing apples and oranges.
	They think the state is some benevolent charity that with a stroke of a pen liberates artists from penury and heals the sick and then you're just saying let's get rid of Jesus.
	People don't want that.
	So if they think that the state is a benevolent agency that helps people and you're arguing against it, well you can't ever talk people out of what they think I don't think I'll live to see it.
	There are young people here who might.
	I don't think I'll live to see it. I think it's a multi-generational solution.
	I think that in the sciences it's well known that old theories, people who believe in old theories, don't get converted.
	They just retire. And then new people come along, who then get calcified in their thinking.
	I think that you can't change the mind of most people who are older about the state.
	But I think that younger people will have more opportunities to think more clearly.
	Plus, older people got their experience of the state accumulating too, Well, people like you, right? So, for those people, you can't undo that.
	Because there's a lot of guilt there, right?
	I mean, there's a lot of guilt in the old generation about this magic money machine that is now, the bill is coming due.
	That whole messed up situation, right?
	So I don't think that you can help people like that because their experience was, it was, hey, it was free, you know, my taxes didn't really go up and I got all this free stuff, right?
	But younger people will see things, I think, a little bit more clearly because their opportunities are diminished, their education was crap, We'll get a tour of that.
	But anyway, I think it's a multi-generational solution.
	I focus on the ethics and focus on the younger people who see things a lot more clearly.
	I did like your suggestion about getting the old folks on the side.
	Oh yeah, the one I did in the video?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Basically saying if you were, like for all day up, you're not paying your old age pensions, as long as you admit to me that you have no control over the system.
	Because if you had control over the system, and it basically is pillaging the younger generation, then you should be responsible for that.
	Just as I was responsible for things when I was a kid, and you shouldn't get your pension.
	Because you knowingly stole from the younger generation for a scheme that couldn't possibly sustain itself, so too bad to be you.
	But if you admit that it wasn't your fault, you had no control, then I'm happy to pay your pension.
	But then you have to change the system, because it was out of control.
	Sorry. The good thing is that when, prior to slavery being abolished, before everyone realized how bad it was, everyone said, well, what are we going to do without the slaves?
	How are we going to run it?
	How are we going to cook for ourselves?
	Well, you know, just get rid of the slaves.
	We'll figure it out.
	There's a good example in history that at the end of the Second World War, there were millions We're going to try and funnel all of these troops into the jobs because all of these people are just going to step off the boats and there aren't going to be any jobs for them and the society is going to collapse and they're all well armed We're getting this agency or something like that up and running and by the time that the agency was up and running unemployment was about 2.5% and everybody just had a job.
	So everybody's like, oh how is this conceivably going to work?
	It'll just work. It'll just work because non-violence works.
	We understand that non-violence works in relationships which is why we don't have forcibly arranged marriages anymore.
	We understand that non-violence works in music which is why you don't get forced to buy a particular CD. I mean we understand that non-violence works.
	We just have to You have to shift the responsibility from you to let them figure it out.
	As to how things should work in society, you're actually a closet statist.
	Because nobody noticed.
	That's the whole point.
	Exactly.
	Did you...
	Oh, sorry.
	What's your thoughts on political process?
	Does it make sense to put it straight forward and try to be elected and all that?
	I put him on the spot in a libertarian meeting.
	I was, yeah, please do.
	Look, I'm a huge fan of libertarian communication.
	I think that a lot of my early, I shouldn't say early, because it was like 20 years of executiveism in the United Random, was very politically active.
	Murray Rothbard, who was a staunch anarchist, Very politically active.
	Ron Paul, obviously, it's hard to know exactly what he thinks of government, but I think less to the point of nothing is where he's coming from, but he obviously has a lot of effect on getting people's interest up in libertarian topics.
	I think from an educational From a traditional standpoint, there is some value.
	I think there is some drawbacks.
	So, for instance, I mean, a lot of younger people are less fundamentalist religious than Ron Paul is.
	I mean, Ron Paul rejects evolution.
	So for a lot of younger people coming out there, they're like, they associate libertarianism with a rejection of evolution, which I don't think is exactly the message that you want to be bringing to younger people.
	I think is kind of old-folky.
	Now, of course, he is a bit of an old-folky, which I soon want to talk about that.
	So I think that there are advantages.
	I think that I think that freedom is going to come from political change.
	I do not think that you can go into a behemoth like the government and use it to reduce the size and power of the government.
	I think it's going to come through other ways, but I also don't think that there are many people in this room who think that we're about to win the federal election, right?
	So, I think that the education aspect is important, but I think that It's a fantastic way and a very heavily subsidized way in some ways to get out there and get the message across to people who will then pursue that line of thinking to other areas.
	But I don't think that it's going to be that the Libertarian Party or Ron Paul or Rand Paul or any of those people are going to get into sufficient power To plunder and grow and destroy.
	And so I don't think you can get in and turn that around.
	Otherwise, you know, let's just infiltrate the mafia and turn them into the United Way.
	Nobody would think of doing that, right?
	So I wouldn't think of doing that in terms of the government.
	But I do think that it's a good way to get the message out about non-violent solutions to social problems.
	Is that defense city at all?
	But I will. So that Theresa can go home because she's a waitress so she can get all your bills and collect the money and that sort of thing.
	Anyway. I agree with you in terms of political action.
	The Libertarian Party philosophy objective, shall we say, is to spread the word.
	I believe there's lots of people out there who think Libertarian but never don't know that we exist.
	So part of our effort is to let them know that we do exist, that they aren't alone.

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