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Nov. 8, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
32:43
1784 Retirement Trolls

Trolls as the building bricks of statism?

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So a listener, let's call him Bob, was telling me this story about how he'd met a guy in a bar, and Bob said something about Free Domain Radio.
And the guy got livid. Free Domain Radio!
Ah! It's censorious.
It's ugly. It's nasty.
It's a terrible place. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And Bob said, well, what are you talking about?
And he's like, ah, I used to post there.
And I got banned. I got banned.
I got IP banned for no reason whatsoever.
I did nothing.
And I was IP banned right away.
All I did was I raised a few questions about the methodology, questioned this community and staff on one or two little things.
Immediately I'm banned, just for asking a few simple questions.
It's an interesting perspective.
I mean, it is, of course, complete nonsense.
I mean, how do you even take somebody like that seriously?
But it is complete nonsense, but it's, you know, a scary kind of complete nonsense that a lot of people will defer to.
But I think there's something very interesting about statism in here.
Statism in here. I mean, if I were there, I would have said, so why are you upset?
Right? And also, so you did absolutely nothing.
It's entirely this other person's fault.
You know, there are over 8,000 members of this message board And all of them completely agree with Steph and have never voiced dissenting opinions, but you're the only one and maybe a few other people who've been banned just for voicing dissenting opinions.
So you're saying everybody else on that message board completely agrees with Steph, and I'm not going to find anybody who doesn't hold Steph's beliefs or perspectives.
Because the fact that such a person is still angry and upset, it's not who cares about this guy.
There's a broader issue, I think, that's going on here that is really, really interesting to pursue.
Bear with me while I sort of analyze this thing, because, I mean, who cares about troll dissection is a boring business, but this leads us to something very, very interesting and important about statism.
So, you know, why are you angry, right?
I mean, I've been banned from boards just for posting a video, because it's an objectivist board, they find out I'm an anarchist, and they ban me.
So what? I've been pulled down from websites for whatever reason.
It's like, ah, life's short.
Who cares, right? Move on.
It's their website. They can do whatever the hell they want.
So why would it be angry?
And also, when somebody has a problem with somebody else, and clearly people who've been banned have a problem with me or whoever has banned them, You know, a sure sign that the truth is not being told is when somebody takes zero responsibility for whatever has been occurring.
Zero responsibility. I did nothing.
Everything that happened that was problematic happened from no provocation from me whatsoever and was 150% the other person's fault.
I have no responsibility in the matter of this conflict.
I behaved perfectly.
Every problem It has arisen completely from the other person, and I am completely innocent of causing any problems.
I mean, that's just not believable.
And, I mean, this stuff is so painfully easy to spot, right?
Plus, you know, if the guy is still angry, it means he's got a temper, right?
And you think that temper is going to show up in a bar, but it's not going to show up online?
I mean, come on.
Of course it is, right? The fact that he's taking no responsibility, 100% of the responsibility being shoveled off onto somebody else, means that he's not coachable, admits no fault, can't be changed, and therefore, this for sure had a hell of a lot more to do with his banning than any nonsense that he's swaddling about.
Plus, he's pretty nasty in that it's obviously not true what he's talking about, but he's still going to go around slander other people months after the facts with great vitriol.
I mean, this is just a bare-tempered troll.
And it's completely obvious.
But the reality is that very few people will point this out.
Right? Very few people will point out this is ridiculous, ridiculous behavior, this obviously false posturing, this bullshit fairytale storytelling, which is, you know, pretty slanderous and pretty acidic, I guess you could say,
abrasive, bitter. Because when you start to poke the holes, the obvious holes, or shine a light through the obvious holes in this kind of fairy tale, the troll will turn on you, right?
The troll will turn on you.
The moment you start to point out the obvious ridiculousness of what he's saying, you know, or pull out your Blackberry, you know, or your iPod, Or your iPhone and say, oh, that's interesting.
Let's just do a quick search here.
Let's look through the recent posts. Let's see if there's anyone here who disagrees with Steph about anything.
Hey, there's lots of people here.
This person disagrees with Steph and has 200 posts.
This person disagrees with Steph and has 500 posts.
How interesting. So, it can't be that the disagreement with Steph is the only thing.
But you're portraying it as the only thing, which means that you don't process reality very well.
Or rather, you process reality in a very self-serving way.
So why am I talking about some boring-ass troll who I don't even know about from some time back?
Well, because this tells us something very interesting.
B-b-b-b-b-b-very interesting.
About the state.
About the state.
Very interesting, I tell you.
What does it tell us about the state?
Well, I was thinking about when I get old.
When I get old, my wife will be there and my daughter will be around.
And they're going to want to help me with the various inevitable health and mobility problems associated with aging.
It's inevitable. There are probably 500 people who would help me out if I were in need, either financially or just needed resources of one kind or another.
I have a conservative estimate. It's probably more.
And that is because I've put out a lot of love in the world, put out a lot of positivity in the world, put out a lot of vulnerability, emotionality, help for free to people in the world.
And that is something that more people should do, I believe.
I mean, more people should give freely of themselves to the world.
People who are old should release their books for free.
I don't need the money that much anymore.
I just think people should be more philanthropic, more generous, more caring, more giving.
If and where they can.
But, and it's not been a sacrifice, but, you know, I'm part of a system called the Molyneux family, and my needs never come first.
It's a negotiated set of needs for everyone.
And that is the unity that makes us all stronger and happier than we would be individually.
So because I've put out a lot of good stuff into the world, I, through the natural reciprocity of our tribal natures, I would get back what I needed.
If I fell on hard times, I would receive help, aid, and comfort.
Hell, I'd receive help, aid, and comfort now, let alone falling on hard times.
I'm prevented from falling on hard times by the generosity of you.
You, yes, sitting you right there, the listener.
Thank you. Now, if you're old and you've had kids and you've been married, let's say you're divorced and your kids don't like you very much.
Let me say you were a bad parent.
Let's say you were a bad dad.
Bob has now become a bad dad.
So Bob is a bad dad.
Now, when Bob gets old, he's going to need resources, because everybody needs resources when they get old.
And Bob, though, if he's alienated people who once loved him, and I tell you, it's hard to alienate your kids, they're so attached by default.
But if Bob has alienated around, you know, he's been a jerk, he's been a drunk, he's been abusive, he's been bitter, he's been nasty, he's been whatever, he's taken no responsibility, blamed everybody else, progressively and slowly driven away every last decent human being, From his life.
Now he's old and he needs resources.
Well, his story has to be, it wasn't my fault.
It wasn't my fault.
I did nothing. You know, like this troll guy.
I did nothing.
Children are just so ungrateful.
They fell under the spell of the media.
They moved away. I was a great dad.
They loved me. I did nothing wrong.
But now I'm alone through no fault of my own.
And it's a tough call, right?
It's a tough, tough call.
It's a tough call. It's a volatile thing to confront an old person and say, well, is it really not your fault at all that you have nobody in your life who wants to care for you?
Is it really not? Does it really have nothing to do with you at all?
Are you really a completely innocent victim of other people's badness?
And does that badness have absolutely nothing to do with how you raised your children or who you married or who you chose to have as friends in your life?
Is it really true that you have had no cause in the end result of your relationships or lack thereof?
I mean, other people's kids were in the same culture, but they haven't necessarily turned out like your kids, alienated and not wanting to help and distant and moved away, perhaps to get away from you.
Now, I think a free market charity would ask those kinds of questions.
Is it true that you've had no cause of the matter?
I mean, just as an insurance company will cover you for lung cancer if you don't smoke, but not if you do.
Because if you do, well, you have something to say in the matter, and you've had some influence on the outcome.
Now, when it comes to getting resources when you get old, and we're just talking about old.
I mean, old can mean many things here.
It just means when you need resources.
It can be when you're parenting.
It can be when you're pregnant.
It can be when you're sick. It can be when you need to be re-educated.
It can be when you're unemployed.
It's, you know, whatever. Need resources.
Need resources. I mean, there are two basic strategies.
I guess you could say there are three basic strategies for getting resources when you need them.
The first strategy is to save.
Save money for a rainy day, right?
So when you get sick, when you get old, you have money.
You have resources. The second is to invest in your relationships so that when you need resources, people will care for you, right?
So when you get sick, people will bring you chicken soup and want to make you feel better because you've been kind and generous and good to them.
And they will reciprocate.
Now, the first two kind of go hand in hand because somebody who's able to save is able to defer gratification.
And investing in your relationships is fundamentally about deferring gratification, which is not the same as sacrifice.
It's not sacrifice to save, it's prudence.
And deferring gratification in relationships is foundational to maturing and growing And enriching those relationships.
Because if you're only ever doing what you want, then it's not really a relationship.
So, the first two strategies kind of go hand in hand.
Because people who save do tend, I believe, do tend to have better relationships than people who just blow all their money or don't save or whatever, right?
It means that also you have excess money to save, which means you have a higher level job, which means you have greater social skills, greater presentation skills, Greater emotional intelligence and so on.
So, saving for your retirement and investing in new relationships do have something to do with each other.
And they're not entirely unrelated.
Now, the third way of getting resources when you need them is to con people.
And again, we just talk about sort of a charity situation here.
Is to con people.
And what that means, of course, is that you pretend that you are a mere victim, that you did not drive away people with your coldness, brutality, abuse, callousness, meanness, selfishness, or whatever.
That you are the helpless victim of other people's bad behavior, that you did everything right, but everything went wrong anyway, through no fault of your own.
That's the third strategy, which is to con people into giving you resources as if you were a victim, completely glossing over the fact that you're not a victim, that you did drive away people from your life.
Now, I would submit that the more people give you money or resources because of this con, the less valuable it is Again, just from a purely pragmatic standpoint, the less valuable it is to invest in your relationships.
This is a fundamental way in which statism has truly and catastrophically weakened the family and other kinds of social safety nets.
If you can get resources, if you can be a bastard your whole life and then get resources at the end of your life without changing your ways, Then not only are you very unlikely to change your ways as an adult, but it also becomes much more likely that you're going to make the decision to stay a bastard your whole life.
Because you're never going to have to surrender to the authority of other people when you get old and needy.
So if you have old age pensions, Then you kind of don't need to have that great relationship with your adult children.
In the same way that if you didn't have it and you were reliant upon them for resources.
I'm not just talking money, but you know what I mean.
But if you have all these subsidies from the state, regardless of how good a parent you are or were, then you have much less incentive to reform your ways.
I'll sort of go even one step further than that.
I think, pretty much by definition, troll parents, you know, and I'm talking parents, it could be anyone.
I'm not just talking parents, and I'm certainly not talking about good parents.
But troll parents have no intrinsic desire to be better people or parents, particularly the point where they get old.
So they will have a great desire for gathering to themselves the fruits of virtue without having to go through the trials, tribulations, and growth anxieties of virtue.
The government pays my mom a certain amount of money every month.
Taxpayers do, but...
And she doesn't have to be a better person to get that money.
She doesn't have to change. She doesn't have to grow.
She just gets the money.
She gets subsidized rent.
She gets income.
She gets legal aid.
Lots of cool and fun toys occur for her.
Now, if she had been a great parent, then she wouldn't have...
Ended up in the financial straits she was in for a variety of reasons we talked about before, better social skills, better negotiation skills.
She would have grown. She would have learned.
But even if she hadn't saved, then she would have received money from her husband or his insurance policy or her children.
Because we would love her and we would want to take care of her no matter what.
Do you see what I mean?
Resource consumption in old age is the result of the virtuous investments in prior relationships.
And government programs give you the result of that virtue without, say, troubling you or bothering you to actually be virtuous.
Which creates... Well, it adds to the disincentive for being virtuous.
I mean, being virtuous has its own disincentives.
I mean, ostracism, anger, standing up for your principles will cause the unprincipled or the a-principled or the anti-principled to attack you.
Anyway, we all know the list that comes from having integrity.
Philosophy's a bitch. It's a sexy bitch in leather high heels, but a dominatrix nonetheless.
So the huge disincentive of growth challenges your relationships, challenges yourself, gives you lots of sleepless nights and anxiety.
There's a lot of growth anxiety around integrity, virtue, and consistency.
But if you're old and you can get all of the fruits of virtue without actually having to go through all the virtue, well, that's nice stuff.
That's like getting a lottery ticket that automatically wins you.
You automatically win. I think that's a very important thing.
It's a very, very important thing to recognize, that the state arises and serves trolls.
Trolls who say, I did everything right, I was very virtuous, and I was just screwed for no reason.
In other words, we have a basic inability As a species, as a society, and that inability is not innate.
It's knocked out of us. We have a basic inability to differentiate innocent robbery victims from compulsive gamblers.
It's a very, very important point.
So people who've mistreated their children, who then rely on old age, on all the cultural bullshit around honor thy mother and thy father, regardless of whether they're pricks or dicks or saints, if they just rely on cultural programming to get them resources regardless of how they act, then they're rolling the dice. There's no contract.
There's no law. Actually, there are a few laws that say you have to support your Parents, but not many.
Although that's going to change, I guarantee you that.
Government's not running out of money.
But they have gambled.
I can be a bastard and still guilt my parents...
Sorry, I can be a bastard and still guilt my children into paying for me.
Well, that's no guarantee.
I mean, if you're a great parent...
Then your children will want to help you out.
If you're a bastard, they may, but they may not.
Cultural values may change.
You know, if you're a bastard to your kids and then 30 years later you need their resources, maybe the values have changed in those 30 years.
I don't think the value of love and reciprocity will have changed in those 30 years, but maybe the value of helping out people who mistreated you will have changed.
I'm certainly doing my part.
So that's a gamble. We feel charity to those who've been unjustly and innocently robbed.
They're just sitting at home, people come in and steal all their stuff.
We feel charity for people who've been struck down by a nasty illness that they did not cause.
Not like cirrhosis from drinking or lung cancer from smoking or diabetes from obesity.
We feel sympathy for people struck down by bad fortune.
God, it's terrible. So somebody comes and says, oh, I was just robbed of my life savings.
My bank went bust without warning.
Somebody came in and stole all my gold, despite the fact I had carefully hidden in a safe.
We'd be like, oh, dude, you took every precaution.
And oh, I'm so tired.
Here, here's some money. I get it.
Could happen to me. Bad scene.
Do we feel the same charity from somebody who comes back bleary-eyed and haggard and unshaven from Vegas and just says, I just blew my life savings on the craps table?
Right? The former is a victim.
The second is a gambler. People who exploit and abuse others who end up with no resources as they get older are gamblers.
They are responsible for their own misfortune.
And they're gamblers because, hey, it might have paid off.
It might have paid off. Maybe, just maybe, maybe, maybe, you could have been a bastard and then just guilted people into giving you stuff when you got older.
Now, even people who rely on the state system, which is going to go bankrupt relatively soon, even those people who rely on the state system are gamblers because they're gambling.
That the government will be able to get them resources from the young and the poor to supply them in their old age.
Gamblers. Didn't invest in the quality of your relationships.
Didn't put aside as much money as you could.
Gamblers. People who behave badly are always gambling with the consequences.
I mean, it's not like they're always going to lose.
I mean, if they always lose, then nobody would behave badly at all, in the same way that no one would go to a casino where you never won.
So, of course, people are going to behave badly if they can get away with it.
And the state allows them, encourages them, and forces that they get away with it.
How wretched is that?
How sad is that? I am not anticipating That the government's going to take care of me in my old age.
I'm not anticipating, given my current ventures, that I'm going to have a huge amount of scratch or money set aside.
I mean, that's not why, but it's not irrelevant to my relationship with my wife and my lovely daughter.
I'm going to need them.
They're going to need me.
It's all investing in each other.
Now that is bonds of steel.
Not the slippery, red-soaked rags of statism and gambling.
And people do have to suffer for things to get better.
You don't want people to suffer.
But people have to lose at gambling for gambling to be controllable.
If everybody always wanted gambling, then everybody would just gamble all the time.
Or at least until they had enough money To live on for the rest of their lives.
Or until they gambled again.
But everybody's job would be gambling.
If gamblers always won.
Gamblers have to lose in order for gambling to be controlled.
And... People...
Need to suffer the consequences of voluntarism.
For voluntarism to work.
Now, I don't...
If some guy...
Who's 80, goes out and blows his life savings.
I'm still going to care for the guy.
I'll still contribute enough to keep a roof over his head and food in his belly.
The guy shouldn't starve to death.
I made a stupid mistake, but the guy should not starve to death.
Of course, it's not likely that an 80-year-old is just going to go out and gamble his life savings out of nowhere, but let's just say I still have sympathy, so he brought it on himself.
Well, we've all done dumb things.
I'm not going to put him up in a palace.
I'm not going to feed his further and future gambling habit, but I still don't want the guy to starve in the street.
So I would contribute and help out a charity that kept people like that, kept their body and soul together.
But I would give much more to a charity that helped out the truly unfortunate, those who were not the architects of their own disasters.
Because you can't Train mankind out of the accidental, because it is by its very nature accidental.
You can train mankind out of self-inflicted wounds, but you can't train man out of lightning strikes from a clear blue sky.
Inside, right?
Those real accidents.
And so, in a sense...
The angry old trolls who say, I am poor and have no resources through no fault of my own because my bastard children and my bastard ex-husband or ex-wife were just mean to me through no fault of my own.
I wasn't responsible for choosing my marital partner.
I wasn't responsible for how my children feel about me.
It's entirely 150% the other person's fault, like the guy bitching about getting banned from FDR. Well, if society had moral clarity and moral strength, Then it would be able to stand up to these people and say, Bull!
Sweet, deep and shiny shit.
Bullshit, my friend.
Bullshit. I'm not going to buy it.
I don't believe it. And then society would deal with the rage that this engendered.
In the same way that society deals with the terror and rage of people justly convicted of a crime.
Some counterfeiter gets caught, he's going to be really angry.
And he's going to claim that he was handed these bills unknowingly.
And then the police are going to go and search his house.
And by golly, if they find a money-making printing press in his basement, they're going to go, no, you're a counterfeiter.
Bye-bye jail. Of course people who were caught in a crime are going to protest their innocence.
Of course they are. If something bad happens to someone who has maturity and wisdom and integrity, not to praise myself too much, but I will say to myself, what did I do to bring this about?
What did I do to bring this about?
I've asked myself that hundreds of times since I started FDR. This negative thing has occurred.
What did I do to bring it about?
Forget about what other people are doing.
What did I do to bring it about?
But, you know, Charles will always blame the other person.
Always blame everybody else.
If we were able to differentiate, if the old people bitching about their kids and they did everything right, they loved everyone, they gave everything, well, a free market charity would do the simple thing of picking up the phone and talking to the kids and say, hey, your dad is pretty broke.
You know, we're not coming after you for the money because we're just a charity.
But his story is that he was a great dad, did everything right.
You know, we're just calling for verification if you don't mind.
And we'll pay you a hundred bucks for answering these questions.
And if they say, oh, God, he was a drunk.
He beat us. He screamed at us all the time.
He gambled away the family money.
He molested the dog. Like, ah, okay.
Go back to the guy and say, look, your kids don't like you.
This is what they say. None of that's true!
Well, that doesn't matter.
The fact is that they didn't say you're a great dad, but we just don't care, right?
The fact is that this is their experience.
And this is their perspective.
And you didn't tell us that this was their perspective.
See, that's pretty important, right?
It's kind of tough to say...
I did nothing wrong, but my children think I was a drunk.
For no reason! That's a much less believable story.
It's a lot easier to say Steph banned me for asking one simple question rather than Steph communicated that I was being abrasive and abusive and that I was receiving complaints about my behavior and I didn't change and I got banned for nothing!
I did everything right as a parent, but my kids don't want to come and visit me because they think that I was selfish and violent.
You understand that is not a sustainable argument.
The question is then, well, why do they think that?
Why do they think that?
And there's no answer to that that doesn't reveal problematic parenting.
Right? It's why you ask.
Abusive people or people who are charged with abuse by others, if you're in this conversation, you say, what are the complaints that the other person has about you?
Oh, they just make it all...
Yes, but what is it that they're making up?
What is their perspective? They will do anything just about rather than answer that question of what the problem is that the other person has.
Why do your kids not want to come and see you?
Because they're selfish. I understand that you feel that way.
If some third party were to ask them, if I were to ask them, what would they say about you as a parent that they don't like?
They won't answer that.
And it's our inability to differentiate between trolls and victims that is a foundation and driving factor in statism.
Because these trolls rear up their ugly hydra-headed Noggins.
And they say, I did everything right.
I was a great parent and my kids just abandoned me for no reason.
Because we won't call bullshit or question it further.
We just throw money at them because we're afraid that they're going to turn on us.
And in so doing, we increase the likelihood that this behavior is going to continue rolling down through the generations over and over and over again.
And simply by having the state to provide resources to people who have not earned it, to provide the fruits of virtue to those who have not earned them, all we do, all we do, forever and ever, is undermine the practical effects of virtue.
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