Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

Feb. 27, 2011 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:12:51

1860 Freedomain Radio Sunday Show, 27 February 2011

Two parents, inspired by Freedomain Radio to practice peaceful parenting, discuss the challenges; general questions about anarchism, and living philosophically in an irrational world...

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	Hi everybody, it's DeFan Molyneux on February the 27th, 2010 at 2 o'clock Eastern Standard Time for the Freedom in Radio Sunday call-in show.
	Supposed to be dedicated towards the listeners, but I had an email and I think this fellow wants to chat, which I thought was great and insightful and, you know, a massive thank you out there.
	Not that you need it from me, but a massive thank you out there to all of the parents who are writing to me with their dedication to nonviolent parenting, which, you know, it's hard to argue with, but it can be tough to implement.
	So he writes, his son is 16 months.
	He says, When he has a tantrum because he wants to play with the water faucet and splash forever.
	Oh, I know that one. It seems like some force is necessary.
	Love to know how you as a parent approach these things.
	I sure hope you do more videos on parenting and discipline or your replacement for discipline.
	Help, please. Love your mind.
	Thanks. Dad.
	And, you know, I'm so sorry I've been buried in other stuff.
	I've been meaning to do another philosophical parenting one, so we'll do a bit of a one here.
	And then if you, I think if this dad has any questions, we can talk further about it.
	So, yes, there are occasionally times when I have had to restrain my daughter.
	No question. I don't like it, of course, but I can think of an occasion when she really needed to have her diaper changed and she really didn't want to have her diaper changed and that was a time when restraint was used.
	Restraint like holding her down so she could change her diaper.
	That has happened But that's, I mean, that's exceedingly rare.
	That's happened maybe five times since she was born, and she's a little over two years now.
	So that is, that to me is, I mean, I just, I don't think that's a problem, to be honest with you.
	The way that I view it, I mean, to analogize it, if this makes any sense, the way that I view it is that she is experiencing a brainstorm of emotionality that, of course, is unusual for her.
	She normally is, you know, a bit resistant to getting changed, but as long as we make it enjoyable, she's okay.
	And so I think that restraint is appropriate when your child is acting in a way that is against their self-interest.
	Babies need to be changed and they occasionally will have to go into a car seat and so on.
	And so I view it as a kind of epilepsy, right?
	So if someone...
	You love is having an epileptic attack.
	You are justified in restraining them.
	You know, if they're sort of shaking their way towards or flopping their way towards a cliff edge, then you are justified in restraining them.
	You're not justified in spanking someone for having an epileptic attack.
	And a toddler's emotionality to me is similar to that kind of brainstorming.
	This is all just my amateur opinion, but this is sort of my experience as a dad and what I've done to approach this problem as a parent.
	So I think there are times where restraint for the safety and security of the child is fine.
	And this is not specific to children.
	This is a universal rule.
	So if you see a blind man confidently striding with his headphones on, you see a blind adult confidently striding towards traffic, then you will restrain him and he will doubtless thank you for that.
	And if you didn't restrain him and he got hit, he would doubtless be very upset with you about that.
	Now, the time frame for recognizing the value of restraining children can be a little bit longer than a blind man about to walk into traffic, but it's still going to be there.
	So, as I've mentioned before, the key to me is to act in such a way that my child will thank me for in the future.
	Oh, doesn't that sound like a...
	A parental thing where you say, you'll thank me for this someday.
	But I think that's a reasonable approach.
	So obviously we would reduce conflicts with Isabella if we didn't brush her teeth because she doesn't particularly like brushing her teeth.
	She's much better with it now than she used to be.
	She hated it, hated it, hated it to begin with.
	So, the reality though is that if in 10 years she has, or less, right, she has big dental problems which may follow her for the rest of her life, then she would say, geez, I really wish you had really worked with me to brush my teeth when I was a toddler.
	I didn't have the capacity to express that need then or the brain to process the long-term consequences of not brushing my teeth.
	I really wish you had taken the lead and done that.
	So that's an approach that I take.
	And we did the same thing with sleep training, which was, I think, probably one of the most difficult decisions that we made as parents.
	And so I think that's okay.
	Now, as far as brushing teeth goes, what I focus on is that, and what has worked beautifully, is I do not, I work as little as humanly possible with the infliction of a negative.
	I work as much as humanly possible with the withdrawal of a positive.
	She has a bedtime ritual which she really enjoys.
	We have her milk and we do a little game.
	We may watch a little video and then we'll cuddle and we'll talk about her day and all that kind of stuff.
	And then she drifts off and I'll take her into her crib.
	Now that is a very, very enjoyable bedtime ritual for her.
	It's something that soothes her and calms her down and she really likes it.
	And so when she, you know, it was, okay, you can have this bedtime ritual or at least some part of it.
	If you brush your teeth. If you don't brush your teeth, it's going to be a quick kiss and a cuddle and then straight into your crib.
	And this was about, you know, parenting memory always gets a little hazy, but you can reason with children a lot earlier than you think.
	This was, I think, about five or six months ago that she wasn't brushing her teeth, wasn't brushing her teeth.
	And we tried, obviously, a bunch of different things, you know, nice flavored toothpaste and, you know, a little gum massage or whatever.
	But she got that, right?
	So she understood that. So we would say, you know, you brush your teeth or we don't get no cuddles for bed.
	And we never actually had to go follow through on it.
	You know, yay! Don't you love that as a parent when you don't have to follow through on it?
	We didn't actually have to follow through on it.
	What we did was we said, if you don't brush your teeth, then no cuddle straight to bed, more or less.
	And I mean with food and all that.
	And she actually, we were heading to bed and she started crying and she started saying, brush teeth, brush teeth!
	So she got it.
	She understood that that was the consequence of not brushing her teeth.
	And I think that maybe one or two other times where that's been an issue with brushing teeth, but she's been just fine with it since then.
	So, you know, the key thing is, as I've approached it as a parent, is you need to build up such a store of positive things for your kid that the withdrawal of a positive Is a form of behavior modification rather than the infliction of a negative, right?
	So behavior of a positive, withdrawal of a positive is like no extra special treatment.
	And the infliction of a negative is, you know, some sort of fear response or some sort of aggressive response and so on.
	So that would be my approach to that.
	But that means that you have to build up a whole bunch of positive things with your kid.
	And that, of course, is good, I think, to do as a parent.
	You want to enjoy your kid's company and you want them to enjoy your company as much as possible.
	There are a couple of other things that I would mention around how to develop a sort of positive and loving and trusting relationship with your child.
	This is annoyingly obvious, but sometimes I would forget it, so I'm just going to share it with parents or parents-to-be to see if it's of any use.
	The first thing, of course, is to store up a lot of positives with your child.
	So that your child really likes your company.
	Authority, I think, comes from love.
	I mean, I trust what my wife says.
	There are friends that I have that I trust implicitly and take their advice without a lot of frou-frou, because I simply trust them so implicitly.
	And so their authority with me comes from love.
	So that, of course, is a lot easier than, you know, and yelling or whatever.
	That's a lot easier. The second thing is, no matter how teeth grittingly difficult it may be at times, you have to keep your word.
	Children, of course, have, particularly when they're toddlers, they have almost no control over their environment.
	My daughter can't even get out of the crib.
	She's just learned how to open doors, though she's still having a bit of problems with the Dudley lock, especially when it's heavily oiled.
	So they get frustrated and they guard their self-interest very fiercely because they can't control what they want.
	My daughter wants a balloon, she can't go to the store and get one.
	So they guard their self-interest and their self-interest relies upon you and your trustworthiness.
	So the temptation in the moment is to say to your kid, do this and you can have X. And then maybe later the kid forgets about X. And, like, my daughter has these little cookies that she likes.
	They're like baby cookies, so there's no sugar in them.
	And so, you know, occasionally, again, maybe like once a month, if she's really having trouble doing something, it would be like, okay, you know, if you let me finish changing you, then you can have a cookie.
	And then, you know, maybe we'll change and then we'll play for a bit and we'll do some letters and then we head downstairs.
	And maybe she's forgotten about the cookie and the temptation as the parent is to say, I don't really want her to have a cookie, so let's just, you know, let bygones be bygones.
	I think that's a mistake because at some point your child will remember that you were supposed to get a cookie for her.
	And she will then realize that you're not guarding her self-interest, that you're not following up on your commitments, which means that she has to be a bit more hypervigilant about following up on your commitments, which makes her a little bit more, again, it's not catastrophic, but it makes her a little bit more suspicious, a little bit more like, I've got to watch this in case something slips through the cracks, and makes her a little bit more combative.
	So, I mean, I remember when we were driving to, I think it was when I was speaking at the Porcupine Freedom Festival, which You can get 20% off by going to my Facebook page.
	I would strongly recommend coming again this year.
	And we stopped at a hotel and Isabella wanted to go in the pool, but the pool was closed, so it was just closing.
	So I said, you know, we'll go swimming in the morning.
	I promise you we'll go swimming in the morning.
	And she accepted that. And then the next morning dawned and it was cold.
	I mean, it was chilly up there.
	I think we were in the White Mountains.
	It was chilly. And so I was looking at it and thinking, oh, she hasn't remembered that I promised.
	So maybe I can get away.
	And I was like, no, no, no, no. Let's not go down that road.
	And so, yeah, I got into my Speedo banana hammocks.
	Actually, I don't have any of those. And...
	Then we went we went for a swim and so she remembered that I promised the night before and so you just you really have to just keep your word even if your child forgets the promises that you've made even if you don't want to fulfill those promises you just have to keep doing that and that allows a child to relax knowing that you know your word is bond and that they don't have to the child doesn't have to watch out for their own interests so much the second thing to remember at least that I try to remember is that Parenting is like being at the helm of a supertanker.
	And there's this feeling like, okay, well I've turned the wheel.
	I've changed my behavior as a parent.
	Therefore, the behavior of my child should change.
	But I have not found that to be the case.
	What I think is much more true is to say, well, if you're at the helm of a supertanker and you turn the wheel, it might take an hour for the ship to turn or start turning or anything like that.
	And so what happens is, you know, you turn the wheel and it's like, ah, nothing changes.
	You turn it back, you turn it back, you try and adjust it more.
	But I think it's important to remember that...
	The habits of interaction between parent and child, you know, they take a long time to build up and they take a long time to change.
	And I've certainly got this feedback from parents who have committed to non-aggression in their parenting that it takes time.
	And it can take a long time to change that.
	And that is, I think, very, very important to remember.
	So, yeah, I mean, we haven't had the terrible twos.
	She's, I mean, absolutely the jewel of my heart.
	She's just, I mean, we're immensely lucky.
	To have Isabella.
	And I think she's lucky to have us.
	So those are my thoughts just about discipline.
	We haven't found any need for raised voices.
	You know, the other thing, of course, is children at that age.
	I mean, they do get that brainstorm of impulse.
	And they will act out sometimes.
	We found it very, very helpful to teach Isabella feeling words very early on.
	And this was, again, we started this about six months ago, maybe a little more.
	Where we would identify with words how she was feeling.
	Isabella's feeling sad. Isabella's feeling happy.
	And we would put a little gesture together with it, right?
	So angry would be like...
	And sad would be...
	And happy would be dancing up and down and...
	So, teaching feeling words to children very early on is great.
	And the studies, I believe, have shown that children who can express their emotions tend to act out on them less, particularly boys, that the impulse control is there because you can verbalize what you're feeling rather than having to demonstrate it through some sort of action, particularly when the child is angry.
	So yeah, when Isabella went through a phase of being frustrated because she was unable to do certain things like put on her shoes, we say, Isabella's angry, Isabella's upset, Isabella, you know, and scared and sad and happy, all of these things so that she can tell us what she feels now.
	And that we have found has really cut back or reduced impulsivity on her part.
	And so I really strongly recommend, you almost can't start too soon.
	And so, you know, if you're watching a movie and the character is angry, the character is angry.
	And so they learn to identify the feeling and learn to identify in others.
	So I think that can be really helpful.
	And that has reduced conflict a lot in our household.
	So these are just some thoughts and tips that I wanted to put out there.
	And, of course, I'm just going to switch mics now, but if the parent has any questions from one amateur parent to another, I'm certainly happy to help.
	Thank you, as always, for watching and for listening.
	The question is, what about when the child is a teen or preteen and is not accustomed to expressing emotions?
	Well, that's part, I think, of the question that I sort of ask if Isabella has a, quote, deficiency is to say, is there something in my behavior that is not demonstrating this to Isabella?
	So if you have a child who's a teen...
	And the child does not express emotions, then I would imagine two things have occurred.
	One is that the parent has not focused on helping the child to express emotions and encouraging the child to express emotions.
	And the second is that child has not seen the parent express his or her own emotions.
	And I think that's really important.
	And to recognize that if you don't teach your child the capital of Bolivia, they're not going to magically know the capital of Bolivia.
	And that's the first thing to recognize.
	And then it's just a matter of – I mean I think by the time the child is a teen, you can say – I think it's important to talk openly about – The deficiency or any deficiency that may have occurred and say, look, I didn't really teach you how to express your emotions.
	I'm not very good at expressing my emotions, but I think it's something that we can really work on and here's why.
	And then you can demonstrate that.
	I think always show before ask, right?
	So always show that you are gaining value out of talking about your emotions before, you know, sort of in a sense insisting that the child do the same.
	Yeah. And I mean, what age is it appropriate to say, I'm changing my parenting because of X, Y, and Z? I think that there's no, I mean, hard and fast answer.
	Obviously, if the kid's 15, you can talk about that.
	And if the kid is two, that's not going to make much sense.
	So somewhere between two and 15.
	But I think it's very, very important to remember that a promise to change is On the part of a parent to a child is significant.
	And if you don't follow through, that is a big problem, particularly if you're going to try and change again.
	So don't talk about it with your child until you're really certain that you can follow through.
	And the best way to do that is, I think, to change your behavior and make sure that you can maintain that changed behavior before discussing it more openly with your child.
	Well, thank you. Can you hear me, Stefan?
	I sure can. How are you doing, man?
	Good. So we finally made it.
	I'm kind of two thumbs when it comes to this Skype chat room.
	This is my first time in this type of a forum.
	So I decided to be here.
	First off, like I ended my question, I certainly appreciate your mind.
	Wow. And the contribution that you're making is outstanding.
	So thank you. Oh, you're absolutely welcome.
	I don't know if you got a chance to hear the intro.
	Was that anywhere close to useful to you?
	Oh yes, most certainly.
	And my wife is here with me.
	Her name's Francesca. She's from Italy.
	So she comes from a very, I guess, passionate country.
	I want to say aggressive type of upbringing.
	I was born in America, so you have the standard discipline growing up.
	So I'm sort of getting an image of a fiery, finger-wagging Sophia Loren in a bathing suit with a ping pong paddle.
	That could just be me, and that may be entirely inappropriate to the discussion, but I just wanted to overshare with you.
	Sorry, go on. Well, thank you.
	So, you know, we've made some changes recently.
	He's 16 and a half months, just a joy bubble.
	So, you know, and since I've been listening to you about the non-aggression principle and starting to learn more about that, it really resonates.
	So, you know, for example, let's say, for example, we're trying to change his diaper.
	And he's just going into a tantrum.
	He wants a toy.
	He wants to do something else.
	But he's throwing a tantrum.
	There's just poop everywhere.
	So, you know, before we'd scream at him, no, no, do you want to go and, you know, avoid boxer, which means do you want to go in the, basically go in a play yard with a bunch of toys.
	But to him, in that moment, it's a punishment.
	So, you know, screaming at him, no, no, holding him down.
	And then finally, we'll just get them up and we'll put them in the boxer and leave them in there for two minutes and let them just scream it out.
	So that's what we've been doing up until listening to you.
	And so recently, we've changed our tone.
	And I know we still have some work.
	But we've taken the...
	I guess it's more passive-aggressive because we've...
	No, that sounds very, very honest and I appreciate that.
	We've at least taken the anger and the yelling out of it and now we're speaking to him.
	Dylan, for example, we have to change your diaper.
	It's going to get all over the place.
	You can play with the toy after we're done.
	Just relax and we're a team.
	And he struggles and he screams and will go, okay, so we're going to have to put you in the boxer for a timeout.
	I'm sorry, sorry. So you approach him in a calmer way and you found that the tempo tantrums have not abated.
	Is that right? Well, you know, he's actually responding to us better.
	We've definitely noticed a shift.
	Like when we speak to him more in a serious tone as opposed to a screaming tone, he does seem to react much better and he does listen much better.
	You know, but still we have those moments where He loves to be chased around the house with a vacuum cleaner.
	When we don't have time to do that, he'll go into a minor tantrum and throw himself on the floor and that type of stuff.
	Yeah, and then he'll hold his breath until he passes out.
	So I guess this is where we're mixing the way we were brought up to a new paradigm shift of the non-aggression principle and how it would work with a child that really can't communicate with you what's going on with them.
	So then we've just been basically giving them a time out and letting them cry it out for a few minutes when we go back in and try to rationalize it.
	So that's kind of where we're at.
	And your intro was very insightful so far.
	Right. And is it fair to say that you were both raised with the, I hate even to say the word raised, but you were both subjected to the raised voice and aggression form of parenting?
	Yes. Right.
	Well, first of all, I'm sorry to hear that.
	I mean, because that makes it tougher.
	For sure. Because, I mean, you're trying to change the plane's wings while you're flying, right?
	And that's tough. But, I mean...
	The whole spanking thing and, you know...
	Well, you got yelled at, but you didn't get spanked.
	I got spanked.
	This is Francesca.
	I may add something. Despite, there was a lot of yelling and passion in my family, and I think that's what comes through to me.
	What's always clear somehow, somewhere, is the amount of love that's there.
	Like, I never even one second question that my parents didn't love me.
	I know that they love me beyond their means, and I always feel like I communicate this to my son Somehow, even when I yell.
	But when I yell, and by the way, I'm not doing that anymore because it's a conscious choice and it's something I'm really actively working on.
	But even when, you know, not the best of me comes out, you know, I'm more upset with myself than I think is hurt.
	And maybe I'm not that effective as much as I could be.
	So, I think that's where Mo and I really are motivated because I think I'm more upset with myself because I feel like I'm not being the best that I can be, you know, but there's always an extreme amount of love there and I think it comes through.
	And I mean, I would be the last person to say to people who are committing to nonviolent parenting that there's any lack of love for the child, right?
	So I hugely respect your love for your child and your desire for a more peaceful and hopefully productive way of interacting.
	So I absolutely hear you.
	I completely accept that and, you know, get behind it and light a fuse under it, so to speak.
	Yeah. I get.
	I get that it's out of love and it's out of a desire for your child's happiness, but there are habits that we inherit and there are standards that we can choose to change if we want.
	When did he start having these kinds of tantrums?
	Well, he started having what we call breath-holding spells, and those were quite trying for Michael and I, because it was six months when he had his first one, and basically he literally faints.
	He literally faints before your eyes, he rolls his eyes, he turns blue, and then he comes back.
	Sometimes out of a lot of pain, but sometimes when he really wants something and we're not giving it to him.
	So we went through the phase where, Gosh, we didn't want to see a breath holding spells because they're scary for everybody.
	So we'll try to accommodate him a little more.
	But then we learned that that wasn't productive because he learned that that worked.
	So we now have to basically not be affected by him losing consciousness.
	Oh yeah, that's terrifying for sure.
	I know, I know. So we basically, our doctor has been guiding us, his pediatrician, to lay him down in a safe area and just let him, you know, pass out and he'll come back and we'll let him know we're there and, you know, but still we're not changing our mind, you know.
	You know, we have them, you know, and it's okay, but you know, it's not appropriate right now, it's not a good time or whatever.
	Like, for example, getting into the car seat or wanting to play with the computer when it's, you know, it's not a toy.
	So things like that.
	So he has started at six months.
	We find that when he's well rested and well fed, he's less likely to go there and.
	And so we always make sure that we are, you know, providing and proactive.
	But Eastern is a very strong person.
	We're so proud of that.
	Yeah, you know, we really need to learn to, you know, work with them.
	Yeah, and build towards those teenage years, right?
	Where the balance of power shifts and you really want to make sure you have the right stuff in place, right?
	Absolutely. Above all, with such a strong little human being.
	I mean, it really is just by the by.
	I mean, it's amazing and a wonderful thing to see just how early they become people.
	I mean, you know, when they're born, they're obviously kind of blobs and all that.
	But it's, to me, really, really amazing just how quickly they have characteristics and personalities.
	And, you know, they're very different from sometimes from other kids or maybe even from their siblings.
	Yeah. Just the personhood thing, it surprised me how quickly that came along.
	And you can certainly, I mean, from what you're saying, this showed up with your son.
	His passion, his intensity, his strong will showed up very early.
	But that's very interesting.
	So now, of course, we have to find the parent to blame for giving him these traits.
	Which one? I'm just kidding. That would be me.
	That would be me anyway.
	Do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions?
	Please. Do you raise your voices with each other at all, with him in the house?
	Never. Good, good.
	Okay. We're very, I think...
	Yeah, we're very in love, passionate.
	We've been married almost 10 years.
	We got a, yeah, we got a solid relationship.
	Fantastic. Has he been exposed to other influence behavior may have been visible?
	Actually, no. I'm a stay-at-home mom and I'm with him 24-7 and not wanting to share him with anybody else.
	Good for you. Good for you.
	I know that that can be very tough.
	So again, hats off and massive applause to you.
	Have you...
	I mean, he sounds like a very intelligent fellow.
	And of course, he's the offspring of Free Domain Radio listeners.
	He's going to be a genius, I guarantee you.
	We're working on it with your help.
	Where do you stand in terms of negotiation with him?
	There's a line, I would say.
	Negotiation. Well...
	I think there's a line.
	You know, he's really good at getting what he wants, but I think if both Daddy and I feel like, you know, it's really not appropriate, he's not getting it.
	Well, no, I understand that.
	But so let's take, for example, so he likes to play in the sink, right?
	And my daughter's the same way.
	I think she's, you know, half fish as far as that goes.
	She went through this phase, by the by, just where she wanted to play in the sink, but she didn't like her fingers getting wrinkled.
	So there was a real tug as far as that went.
	Yeah. Yeah, she's definitely half aquatic and she wants to play in the sink.
	And it doesn't seem like there's any time at which she is tired of playing in the sink.
	I mean, I think she'd just fall asleep in the water if she could.
	So I really understand that.
	The way that I've approached it is she's too young to read time or to really understand what time is.
	But I do try and give her a sense, you know, like five minutes.
	And then I find that it's sort of like a series of steps to get her to – it's like you have to wean her off the sink, so to speak.
	It's a series of steps.
	So I'll say, you know, Isabella, it's almost lunchtime.
	And usually I try to give her a reason why she has to come out of the sink.
	I'm hungry or, you know, it's lunchtime or, you know, if we do have to go somewhere, then we do have to go.
	And I'll say that to her, you know, I'm going to try and give you as much time as possible in the sink, but I will have to take you out because of X, Y, and Z. Now, when I first started doing that, I don't think she really got that.
	But it's a way of just starting it.
	You want to start it before they get it because by the time they get it, usually it would be better that they already had some history with it.
	So I sort of explained to her ahead of time.
	And then I'll sort of explain to her when we're getting close to the time where I have to take her out.
	And then, you know, I will start taking a few toys away, maybe a few more toys away.
	And then I'll start letting the water out and say, you know, we're almost done.
	We're almost done. To me, getting a child out of an enmeshed activity is like landing a plane.
	You know, there's a big checklist.
	There's lots of things that you have to do and you have to touch down very gently.
	And because my daughter is, and I would guess your son is the same way, what really sets her off is wrenching change.
	Right? So when something is unexpected, that changes in the environment, then like she clamps and she gets really upset.
	Right. Like I had to do something on the computer this morning and Isabella wanted to play with me and it's very rare that I'll have to do that but my wife had to take her away and she was really upset because we tried to sort of negotiate with her to not pull at me while I was on the computer but she wanted to do something but I had to do something so...
	That kind of stuff, like when there's wrenching change that she's not able to adjust to and reorient towards, then she tends to really dig in and really get upset.
	And so just – of course she has the attention span of – Well, her father, who's kidding who, right?
	So I find that it's gradual and quiet reminders and reorientation.
	And that doesn't mean that she won't get at all upset when I take her out of the sink.
	But it does mean that I feel like I've done everything in my power to help her adjust to not being in the sink.
	And that to me has been very helpful.
	Sorry, that's a pretty long-winded way of saying it.
	No, I completely understand.
	because even this morning, he was helping me out in the garage.
	He was really watching me.
	But he loves being out in the garage with me.
	And then all of a sudden, when I was done, I just picked him up and we went in and he was just very upset about that.
	So I see more communication.
	I take for granted he's 16 and a half months.
	So I'm just thinking that he doesn't get all this verbal mumbo-jumbo.
	But he really gets a lot more than I give him credit for.
	So maybe if I just started, hey, you know, daddy's almost done with this and mommy's waiting for us inside and, Just kind of give him...
	Giving him a heads up and, like you said, taking the toys out.
	And giving him the reasons as to why things have to change because otherwise things just feel arbitrary.
	You'd be pretty stressed if some skyhook came out and yanked you away from whatever you were doing randomly.
	You'd be pretty tense about that, right?
	So giving him the reason, even if he's not fully understanding of it, giving him the reason as to why things have to change can really help as well so it doesn't feel so random or so imposed, if that makes sense.
	That's a great suggestion.
	Thank you. Yeah, well, you've certainly given us a lot to think about, and thank you.
	Sorry, the other thing that I would suggest as well, I have found it to be very helpful to whisper.
	The child whisperer, that sounds right.
	To whisper, and what I mean by that is if I have something that Isabella may be upset about, and I can understand why perhaps sometimes, I'll put my forehead against her and I'll just say it very softly, you know, we have to do this because of X, Y, and Z. And there's a kind of cozy intimacy to that.
	And it allows her, you know, rather than getting upset and pulling her out and all that, which is an escalation, I find that to go soft and to go intimate can be really helpful.
	Then it's like, you know, we have a secret.
	You're almost down in the sink, if that makes any sense.
	And that kind of whispering has really helped.
	And it's also helped her to understand the distinction between loud and quiet, which we're really trying to get her to understand.
	So I find that that, you know, really going to a very quiet place can be very helpful in those kinds of transitions.
	It's tough to escalate if you're the only one doing it, I guess that's what I mean.
	Wow. Well, thank you so much.
	A little bit off topic, but still on topic, is about children.
	I'm really fascinated about your talks about public education.
	We're still a little ways away from that, but we want to start thinking about how we want to educate children.
	Dylan, here in America.
	We're in California.
	So I don't know if you're going to do any future shows or ideas about that, homeschooling versus this type of education.
	Maybe there's online type.
	We really don't appreciate the public education program for all of the reasons you've pointed out.
	Yeah, I don't have any great answers for that as yet.
	I had an interview with Professor David Friedman about his experience homeschooling and unschooling his kids, which seems to have been very successful.
	And I would like to talk to more homeschoolers and unschoolers.
	I've just been doing server transitions and all this boring technical stuff at the moment.
	But yeah, it's definitely a topic that's going to increase in importance as we as a community move forward with our kids and certainly for myself and my wife and Isabella.
	So yeah, I find it a tough topic because there's only so much radical thought that I can sort of handle in any given day and unschooling.
	It just feels outside my comfort zone, which just means I need to learn more about it and to continue to explore it.
	But yeah. So yeah, that's sort of where I stand, and I'll definitely – we'll be posting some stuff about that in the future, but I don't have anything – I don't have much just yet.
	You know, it'd be interesting. I'm sure there's some sort of homeschooling curriculum online somewhere that's just outstanding, I'm sure.
	I just feel it.
	Yeah, and the statistics seem to be pretty reliable that homeschooled children outperform state-schooled children significantly.
	And that, of course, is counter to the propaganda that you get.
	I think I remember seeing, I think it was on the very first...
	30 Rock, where they were making fun of homeschooled kids as buck-toothed hicks who thought that men wrestled with dinosaurs or whatever, right?
	And that's, of course, entirely the opposite of what the statistics seem to show, that homeschooled children.
	And, I mean, isn't unschooling just a continuation of what our kids are doing now?
	I mean, I don't have classes for Isabella.
	She is really excited about learning new things.
	She's really curious about new things.
	She wants to know the name for everything.
	She wants – I see her struggle to assemble sentences to get her meaning across and – like watching somebody learn a video game or Rubik's Cube or whatever.
	And so she is intensely driven to learn, to explore, to grow, to expand her horizons.
	And so, you know, the argument would be, well, why would that change?
	Why wouldn't that just be the case going forward?
	And that is something that I'm really, really interested in exploring.
	So... Anyway, yeah, I agree with you.
	It's a big question, and I don't have a good answer for it yet.
	And of course, the answers may be as individual as parents' or children's circumstances.
	I'm certainly not a fan of state education, but there are certainly people who have that as a necessity in their lives, and I'm sure there are things that can be done to help reinforce the positives and undo some of the negatives.
	But yeah, I don't have a big answer for you yet, but I'll certainly continue looking at the question.
	I'm sure. How old is Isabella now?
	She is 26 months.
	Almost 27 months. Well, I certainly feel fortunate to know that Your daughter is a little older than Dylan, so I can kind of follow your research.
	Oh, and she is very strong-willed and she is very passionate and she always has been since day two.
	Day one, she slept. Day two, she stopped.
	She's like, I'm done with that.
	And so, you know, I can tell you that...
	It works. At least there's empirical evidence that it works at least in one family.
	So I think it's pretty universal.
	And so congratulations on the choices that you're making.
	I think that your son is immensely lucky to have you both as parents.
	And I just really, really wanted to applaud you for what it is that you're doing.
	I mean it's a moving and beautiful thing.
	I have to sort of remind myself not to get too choked up during live shows because I'm British and that's just not allowed.
	But it is just so moving for me to hear these kinds of stories and to realize what a different childhood your son's going to have because of what philosophy brings to the world.
	So thank you so much for sharing that with us.
	Well, thank you. Thank you.
	It was a pleasure. All right.
	Keep us posted if you can, and I think we can move on to the next caller.
	Fantastic. Thank you.
	You're welcome. I think we had some other people waking up, James.
	Yeah, for sure. We have several newbies on the call today, you know, so if you haven't spoken before, feel free to speak up now.
	Hello, can you hear me? I can.
	You've got to try that again.
	Hi. Yeah, a little bit of a hiss, but nothing too bad.
	What's on your mind, my friend? Well, to continue with the education topic, I was listening to, I think last week, you were talking about, you mentioned Gatto, and I was going to ask if you knew much about classical education.
	Well, tell me what you mean by classical.
	I think it covers a variety of topics.
	Sorry. Classical education as far as the Trivium method, as far as grammar, logic, and rhetoric, and it's one that's been picked up by Christian private schools recently and adopted for the Christian purpose.
	But there is a new meme coming out, and I listened to another podcast that has actually interviewed Gatto.
	You were asking if he's ever been interviewed through a podcast or whatever, and I've heard him interviewed.
	But as far as classical education and as coming out of the mystery schools and antiquity, but grammar, logic, and rhetoric, as far as I see it happening in your philosophy day to day with your child, but it's kind of like it comes out innately.
	But there is a formal perspective on classical education as far as, like, you identify something through the grammar and then you...
	Disassemble it through the logic and then analyze it through the rhetoric and such, but I didn't know if you...
	Sorry, hello?
	Yeah, no, I'm sort of aware of it in that, I mean, I think it comes out of, there was a 19th century or even 18th century British tradition of grammar and logic.
	And I think that's what Shakespeare went through even earlier.
	And of course, this was focused on way back in Plato's, quote, university.
	But I'm not too familiar with the contents, but it's certainly interesting.
	And I appreciate you bringing it to people's attention so they can Google it and find if there's use in it.
	I mean, obviously, I think that...
	Teaching logic, critical thinking skills, writing, reading.
	I mean, I think those are all essential to a well-rounded, well-educated, well-lived life.
	So if these approaches are already out there, yeah, why not avoid reinventing the wheel and look it up for sure.
	Thank you. Also, I had a question.
	Which book were you mentioning as far as Gatos that you were reading?
	Because you mentioned that he had written about others who had success dropping out of school and such.
	I think it was Weapons of Mass Instruction.
	I'm not sure. Yes. Yeah, I think that's the one.
	It's downstairs, but I think that's the one.
	It wasn't the Underground History of American Education.
	I haven't read that one yet. Yeah, that one's a textbook style.
	Yeah. Was it at the end where he mentioned a solution through the state?
	No, it's pretty early on. I think it's in the first quarter or first third of the book.
	I think he's a good writer.
	I envy people's writing skills.
	I think that I'm just an okay writer, but I think he's a really good writer.
	He's well worth reading. There's stuff that I disagree with him, but so what?
	That's, I think, true. I disagree with myself sometimes.
	Yeah, he's definitely worth reading and he is a fierce guardian of human potential and what can be achieved outside of a rigid structure.
	There's some YouTube videos on how he changed his curriculum for his middle school students in New York, and he would have them go out into the city and practically assume on-the-job training or under someone else's watch on the job.
	I don't know, to get personal, sorry, real life experience other than the school experience and textbooks and tests and stuff like that.
	But he had to go outside of the realms of the school and what they would really allow and get approval by the parents to send their kids out into the city to get real life experience.
	My last question, sorry.
	It's funny that this Gato book is one of the few that I've actually read.
	I've always had an issue growing up with reading, and my mother barely read.
	She told me that she'd have to start reading to get me to read when I was at the age to start reading in elementary school.
	I heard you give words of advice as far as procrastination and limiting our enthusiasm as children.
	It's tough. I'm a slow reader, I feel like.
	I sit there and read every word for word.
	I'm not sure what to do about it, but as far as giving myself more time just to sit down and read, I've more recently just been doing podcasts and audiobooks.
	I'm not sure what to do for myself because I need to go back to school and I need to read more.
	Right. Well, I mean, I'm certainly no expert on how to improve reading skills, but I have switched more to audio.
	I certainly listen to more than I read now.
	And if you have an iPod Touch or an iPhone, there's a really great application called Speak It, which allows you to copy and paste web pages or PDF files or whatever, and then it will read it to you in a pretty realistic-sounding human voice.
	And so if I have stuff that I need to check on the web, I will usually just put it into that.
	Or there's a program called TextAloud, which is the best one that I've found for a PC. I don't know if they have it for a Mac, which converts text to audio for you.
	And that has also been helpful.
	I mean, that doesn't solve your reading problems, but as far as the absorption of information, it's not a great way to study because, of course, you can't highlight and things like that.
	Right, I find problems when I'm trying to speak about stuff that I've heard in a podcast recently, and you don't have the substantial information in your head because you didn't read it, you only heard it.
	And it's hard for me to talk about, you know what I mean?
	Like bring up specific details where I can mention specific things out of a book because I remember reading them, the images are in my head of the words and everything else like that, but I find it tougher to bring up the topics that I've heard about in podcasts with people and reiterate what I heard because I only heard it, I didn't read it for myself.
	FDR 500 was a pretty cheesy song that I wrote about the show.
	And one of the lines is, all podcasts of note are impossible to quote.
	Search in vain for what you think he might have said.
	You'll never catch the big chatty forehead.
	Yeah. So yeah, that is the problem, of course, with digital, particularly audio.
	It's like, oh yeah, there was this good idea, but I have to paraphrase and I can't find it.
	The other thing that just popped into my head is that I think that the new Kindle will read to you while highlighting the text on the screen.
	And so you might want to check that out in terms of just getting used to a particular pace or a particular way of processing it.
	But again, I mean, I'm certainly no expert on how to improve that, but that might be something that might be helpful.
	Well, thank you very much.
	You're very welcome, and I hope that you enjoy school.
	Yeah, this is also my first time calling in, being a part of the show and everything.
	I wish we had a cool noise for you, other than bad singing.
	I wish you had, bing, bing, bing.
	Actually, I just bought my daughter a little, she has a little sound effects machine that she just loves, like it does a whew.
	You know, that kind of stuff.
	Is it similar to those books where they have sound buttons on the side?
	Yeah, it's like that.
	It's just sort of self-contained.
	And so, yeah, we can while away at least half an hour with her pushing buttons and me acting out cartoon things.
	So, anyway. Perfect.
	Thank you. So, if I had it, I would play one for you, but it's...
	All right.
	Well, thank you very much, and...
	We can go to the next caller.
	Hey, Steph. Hello.
	Hey, can you hear me alright? I sure can.
	Alright, I'm the guy with the dream that I wanted to talk about.
	Sure. Do I just post it in the chat?
	Sure, why don't you post it in the chat and I'll give it a read just because your voice is a little hard to hear.
	All right.
	It's kind of long, so I just wanted to let you know.
	Alright. Okay.
	There we go.
	All right.
	That is long.
	Okay, let me just see here.
	Because, I mean, this could take at least an hour.
	Right, right. So, maybe you can email that to me.
	Maybe we'll do this offline. I'll do it as a separate show.
	Oh, okay. Yeah, just because to ask...
	I mean, some people really like the dream analysis, and some people, interestingly enough, it actually puts them to sleep where they get to dream.
	But... Yeah, send that to me in an email, and maybe we can talk about it offline for the people who are more interested in that, but that's, yeah, that's a very big...
	Yeah, it's really long.
	I read it wrong, I will, though. All right.
	No problem. Yeah, sorry about that, but yeah, we'll do that offline.
	All right. I appreciate it.
	It looks like the novel I'm reading on Facebook.
	Yeah. No, and it's good that you remember all those details.
	It's usually very helpful, but yeah, that definitely is a deep dive.
	Somebody's asked if we can talk about intellectual property today.
	I just got into a debate about piracy.
	And the person just kept saying over and over that I don't understand how it's immoral to steal intellectual property.
	Somebody's asked, what are the prospects for anarchy in China, considering the economic freedoms granted and the investment in precious metals?
	I do not believe that the prospects for anarchy in China are high.
	I believe that Anarchy, i.e.
	a universal commitment to the non-aggression principle, is going to come out of the kind of parenting choices that the delightful couple that we talked about at the beginning of the show are making.
	And I don't think that there's any other way or any other shortcut.
	And I'm certainly no expert on parenting in China, but what I have heard from friends who've been there is – and what I saw at least to some degree when I was in China for business, I guess a little over a decade ago – Is that parenting there has a ways to go.
	And until the parenting improves, society won't go towards more freedom.
	So as far as intellectual property goes, I'll just sort of mention briefly what my perspectives are on the topic.
	There are some state functions that seem to me will be likely replicated at least to some degree in a truly free society.
	And one of those functions would be, for instance – sorry, just one second.
	Let me finish this point and then we'll take the caller.
	So yeah, just hang on the line.
	I'll be done in a sec. So somebody steals your car, you want your car back.
	So I think those services will be provided in a free society.
	And the question of whether copying a song or getting a song for free over the internet, the question of whether that is the initiation of force or not or is it actually stealing, I can see there's usually at least 12 sides to these kinds of arguments and I can certainly see a couple of them.
	The first is that if I take somebody's music, I'm not stealing something from them because a car can't be replicated, at least until Patrick Stewart gives us all nice tea.
	And so a car can't be replicated.
	So if I take somebody's car, they are Ipso facto denied the opportunity to use that car because I have it and there's only one of them.
	And if I copy somebody's music, they still have the music.
	And so I haven't actually taken anything from them.
	That's sort of one way of looking at it.
	But that sort of begs the question.
	Because if it is a dollar for the song and I copy the song, Then I have taken something from them, which is the dollar that they would have had if I had paid for it.
	And I think that's something that is sort of important.
	So the question is, does somebody who creates something have the right to charge for other people reproducing it?
	Well, I believe that they do.
	I don't believe it should be enforced by a state.
	I think it should be enforced through voluntary contracts and personal contracts.
	And I think that there would be quite a range of those.
	There would be people like myself who give away just about everything for free and prefer donations.
	There may be other people who try to sell stuff and may then have recourse to people who are taking it without paying.
	There are ways of – like in a book saying that the contract, which I think is sort of currently in the book, that you buy the book but you don't buy the right to copy, photocopy it and redistribute it at will.
	And those kinds – if you buy something with a limitation on its use, that to me is fine.
	You rent a car, you don't have the right to sell it on eBay because you're just renting it.
	And so I think that those kinds of contracts will be there in a free society.
	I think in a free society, more and more people would go to free with donations because there would just be so much more wealth.
	And of course, these things are quite easy to set up now if you want subscriptions or donations or whatever.
	For instance, you can go to freedomainradio.com forward slash donate and see for yourselves.
	But... So as far as intellectual property goes, the problem with the state is the state is kind of binary.
	It's a kind of binary. That's not a very binary statement.
	But it's kind of binary.
	It's like, okay, well, intellectual property, it is stealing, and therefore we're going to use courts and police and jails and fines and all that kind of crap.
	Or other people say, well, it's not stealing, and therefore we shouldn't have these things.
	But a free society doesn't say, is it black or is it white?
	I mean, in very few things it will, like assault or murder or rape or whatever.
	But I think a free society works much more fundamentally on negotiation.
	And a free society, of course, it can really only work if the majority of people have some sort of rationality, some sort of benevolence, some sort of positivity, and therefore you can rely, if you're an artist, on that to support you for the work that you do.
	So if I get into intellectual arguments about intellectual property, the first thing I say is that I don't agree with the state as a solution as a whole.
	And so I think that I'm very much against the initiation of the use of force.
	I'm very much against theft.
	If somebody wants to release their material saying anybody who consumes this has to pay me for it and that's very clear and very evident, then you should not consume it unless you want to pay for it.
	And other people – I think that's personally – it's going to be pretty unenforceable and it's going to be – you're going to be chasing ghosts all over the planet if you want to do that.
	So I think it's going to be pretty voluntary and it's going to be pretty donation-based and I think that's going to be great for a lot of people.
	And so that's the approach that I take because if we don't have a state, then we can look at negotiated, optional, multi-layered, multi-dimensional solutions.
	If we have a state, it tends to be sort of black and white, either or.
	And if you get away with the status paradigm, then you can look at much more fluid, much more evolutionary or evolving solutions.
	Voluntary, overlapping, n-dimensional solutions to things which we can't really imagine other than to say that I don't think that property rights, even in intellectual property, should be enforced through violations of property, right?
	Because a state relies on taxation to fund itself and taxation is the initiation of force and a violation of property rights.
	And therefore, a statist solution is fundamentally anti-property rights.
	And so I don't think you can rationally use a state to protect property because you have to violate property in order to have a state.
	So that's my basic argument.
	However else it gets solved, I mean, who knows?
	Who knows? But I think we sort of got to go back to the beginning of how all this stuff starts.
	All right. Sorry about that.
	That was a little longer than I thought, but I'm all ears, my brother.
	Hello. Hello.
	Hi, Stefan.
	My name is David Monzon.
	I had a few questions.
	I'm going to college at the moment and I wanted to know what would be the best video to show a class of other people?
	Because we're going to be talking about the topic of anarchy, you know, and I've been listening to your podcast and seeing your videos for a while now, and, you know, I would like to just, you know, spread the word out, you know, and, you know,
	what do you think would be the first, you know, the very most essential video that you think, because, you know, I can't make a choice, you know, there's so many videos, you know, or what would be the first thing to be, you know, How do you get out there to show them?
	That's a good question.
	That's a good question.
	I mean, I have one called The Proof of Anarchy.
	It's not visually very stimulating but I think that one is pretty good.
	I mean the ones that are popular, the money that is sold abroad as you is pretty popular.
	That's a good way of just explaining to people how political class views taxpayers.
	The story of your enslavement is, I think, my most popular video.
	And that has something to do with a sort of voluntary or free society.
	So you might want to just scroll through the ones that are the most popular because I would assume that they have the widest appeal and see if there are any of those that you think might work.
	Oh yeah, the sunset of the state is also something that is quite popular and I think is very interesting.
	And a good way, I think, of getting...
	I mean, in a video, you're only really going to be able to get people to start asking possibly some questions, not really get any particular arguments or explanations across in any concentrated way.
	So those would be the ones that I would suggest, if that makes sense.
	Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that a really big problem that would come across, though, I mean, is there a video that would explain how it doesn't really matter what the practical solution is?
	It's just that we have to get rid of the system we have now.
	Yeah, I mean, I did a speech at Drexel University about that.
	Okay. And let me just see if I can dig up the name of it.
	It's called Freedom is Humility.
	It was posted in October of last year.
	Stefan Molyneux speaking at Drexel University.
	And that's, it's got my attempt at a little comedy, which again, might be of value, or they might just go like, that dude, you know, as a standard comedian, he makes a reasonable philosopher, but that's about it.
	But you might want to check that.
	Check that out. Okay.
	Okay. And also, if I'm going to meet the, I guess, arguing for anarchy, and this could be either in video or the PDF, what would be a good thing to show to them?
	About ethics, because I think that, well, I mean, wouldn't you agree that it's the most important thing to find out first?
	It's what is evil? Because if we're saying that the government is evil, then they're going to contradict that by saying it's not.
	No, I think that's an excellent point.
	I mean, if you do a search on my channel, which is youtube.com forward slash freedomainradio, I do have a couple of presentations on ethics.
	The Students for Liberty recently invited me to do a webinar on ethics, which was posted, I think, just a week or two ago.
	And although the sound quality on that is not great, but if you do a search in ethics, I've got some stuff in the intro to philosophy, and I've got a couple of Powerpoint-y type presentations on universally preferable behavior, which is my approach to ethics.
	And you might want to have a browse through those and see if those work.
	But I think you're right. Yeah, you need to have a conversation about good and evil before you talk about solutions, if that makes sense.
	Yeah. Okay, well, that's about it.
	Thank you very much for all you're doing.
	Looking forward to hearing from you soon.
	Thanks so much and best of luck with it.
	And I also just wanted to, just as you head off, I mean, remind you that saying stuff like the government is evil I think is a challenge because the government as an entity doesn't exist.
	And so I would just say that And using the word evil without definition puts a lot of thoughts into people's heads that may not have much to do with philosophy because philosophy hasn't owned the word evil in I don't know how long, if it ever even really did.
	And so I would suggest just saying something like, you know, there are logical contradictions in the theories of statism or stuff like that.
	And I think that's where people will get the most value or the most questions out of it.
	Okay. Well, thank you very much again, Is there logical contradictions in the idea of statism?
	Yeah, something like that and sort of understand what they are and that way you can get into a debate with people about reason.
	If you start off with good and evil, given where most people are coming from in terms of good and evil, it can be really tricky to get to a productive place.
	So that would be my suggestion.
	I mean, it's okay if you're talking with libertarians, because they sort of get the initiation of the non-aggression principle and so on, but if you're speaking with people who aren't familiar with that, I would start off with the logic and the evidence rather than the moral stuff.
	All right. Well, thank you very much again, and looking forward to the future.
	Thank you very much for all you're doing, really.
	I think that you really helped me become a better person.
	I feel freer because of this.
	I just have you to thank.
	I know that you have the...
	I also wanted to ask you, how did you feel when you first started thinking about these ideas of freedom and living without the state?
	Well, I felt exhilarated and I felt frightened and I felt excited and I felt anxious.
	I mean, so it's a rollercoaster.
	And I mean, I'm not saying that rollercoaster ever particularly ends, but it's there.
	And so it has its highs and it has its lows.
	It is exciting and it is challenging.
	And every time I surmount new challenges, more challenges come up.
	So I don't regret for a moment the thoughts, the philosophy, the approach.
	There are times when it can be challenging for sure, but it is – I wouldn't trade it for the world.
	Thank you.
	Alright, thank you very much again.
	Thanks, man, and congratulations.
	It sounds like your brain is in full blaze, so good for you.
	All right, we still have some time.
	Hey.
	Hey.
	I actually have a few questions pretty much regarding libertarianism.
	I remember the first caller near the end of his discussion, he was talking about how he really doesn't want to put his kid in the public schooling system.
	I go to high school at a public school.
	I actually love my public school.
	I'm in all AP classes.
	I love my teachers. I love the people there.
	I'm sorry to interrupt.
	If you keep shifting around, we keep getting these noise from your headset.
	If you could just try and keep your head sort of steady while you're talking because I'm getting a lot of background noise.
	Okay. Is that better?
	Yeah. Go ahead. Sorry.
	Okay. Sorry. The public schooling system.
	I really wasn't aware of the statistics about what kids are actually learning until I recently started listening to you.
	It seems that It would work better if we had a voucher system that I know a lot of...
	I know you're one to advocate no state, but would you also advocate for a voucher system with public schooling?
	Do you think that would remove the problems, mostly?
	Just for people who maybe knew or just want to give you – so this is from Chris Hedges' book, Empire of Illusion, The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.
	He says – he writes on page 44, functional illiteracy in North America is epidemic.
	There are 7 million illiterate Americans.
	Another 27 million are unable to read well enough to complete a job application and 30 million can't read a simple sentence.
	There are some 50 million who read at a fourth or fifth grade level.
	Nearly a third of the nation's population is illiterate or barely literate, a figure that is growing by more than two million a year.
	A third of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives and neither do 42% of college graduates.
	In 2007, 80% of the families in the United States did not buy or read a book and it's not much better beyond our borders.
	Canada has an illiterate and semi-literate population estimated at 42% of the whole, a proportion that mirrors that of the United States.
	So a voucher system is a tough question because at the moment you – I mean there really aren't any private schools because they're still so heavily regulated by the state.
	The voucher system is where – if I understand your definition of it and let me know if I don't.
	A voucher system is where you say to parents, here's $10,000 or $8,000 or $6,000.
	You can spend it on any school that you want.
	Yeah, that's right. And you don't have to be bound by the geography and, you know, you have to send your kid to the closest school and so this will engender competition among schools.
	That's the basic idea, right?
	Yeah, that's it. Well, you know, the challenge that I see with that is that what is the definition of a school, right?
	So let's say there's this voucher system.
	Well, the moment you start getting a voucher system, you are going to get people springing up, saying that they offer a school and taking voucher money, and then the government says, well, that's not a real school, right?
	So then what they have to do is they have to start defining what a real school is and that's going to end up with huge amounts of regulations and controls and unionization and further on until it would seem that even the private schools may end up fairly indistinguishable from the public schools.
	So that's the way that I see that kind of voucher system.
	I'm not holding my breath for it, but instead of it being sort of a voucher system, just...
	Stop taking property taxes from people to pay for education and let them pay for education themselves.
	That to me would be the way to do it because you certainly don't need to spend $10,000 a year to educate a child.
	There have been times in history where education is much, much cheaper and many alternatives to sitting in a classroom for 15,000 hours or whatever it is are there.
	So I think that if the government puts in vouchers, it's going to have to define down to the last detail what a school is, what a curriculum is, what success is, what failure is, and all it will do is extend the power of the state even further than where it is in the educational system as it stands.
	That would be my very strong guess as to what would happen through a voucher system.
	All right. I didn't really think of that at all, that they would have to put definitions out there and regulate that.
	I mean the only problem I foresaw was a fluctuation of the population for every school.
	That would be a problem.
	I'm sorry. Were you about to say something?
	No, no. Go ahead. Well, I actually was about to move on to my other question.
	So you advocate no state at all, no government, just the people doing their own thing, allowing the free market to take place and everything, right?
	Well, just to be annoyingly precise, I try not to advocate anything because that's just – I like ice cream.
	It's not a philosophy, right? So I don't sort of advocate no state.
	That sort of saying, like, to a biologist, so you advocate evolution.
	It's like, no, I mean...
	I am against the initiation of the use of force.
	Because it is...
	Immoral, illogical, and impractical.
	And so I am for a virtuous society.
	I am for a society that is against the initiation of force, where the universalization of basic personal morality, and don't hit, don't steal, don't whatever, right?
	All of that sort of stuff. Don't kill, don't...
	So I am against the initiation of force, and that has a number of consequences in a variety of fields, right?
	So in the field of parenting, it means don't hit your kids.
	In the field of science...
	It means you have customers not grant money taken from people by force.
	In the realm of the state as a whole, in the realm of contract enforcement, it means that people need to negotiate contracts and their penalties ahead of time.
	In the realm of punishment, it falls in line with what I was talking about with the parents earlier that you want the withdrawal of a positive as much as possible and as little as possible the infliction of a negative because right now, If people disobey the law, which I never suggest or advocate, but if people disobey the They face, you know, fines and prison and all this sort of stuff.
	And I think that there are many better, more functional, more productive ways to enforce social rules.
	So ostracism or the withdrawal of a positive, the withdrawal of people wanting to deal with you in a civil society is a much more powerful and sustainable and positive way to deal with transgressions.
	I'm very much against – I'm very much for prevention rather than cure, which means that, you know, And abused childhoods, then that sort of falls well in line with my very strong and public stand against child abuse because we're not going to be able to have a free society if we have lots of traumatized and dangerous people around who can't reason,
	who have impulse control problems, who initiate the use of force, and who have significant problems with empathy.
	So, sorry to say – so it's not like I advocate no state.
	I think that's – and I have no problem with you saying that.
	I mean that's a perfectly reasonable way to put it, sort of coming into the conversation fairly fresh.
	But I accept the universality of the non-aggression principles and that has a variety of consequences in a variety of fields.
	And yeah, in the realm of politics, I am entirely for social organization.
	I am entirely for – Bad people being punished and good people being rewarded, so to speak.
	I'm entirely for all of that stuff.
	And because I'm against the initiation of force, we have to look at options for social organization that don't – that aren't based on the initiation of the use of force like the state.
	Okay. So you – I mean you would still say that there – It would be better if there was still some form of, I guess, non-aggressional government, I guess, you could say. Well, but non-aggressional government is a contradiction in terms because the government, as Barack Obama recently stated, the government enjoys a monopoly on the initiation of force in a geographical area.
	He knows what the state is, right?
	So you can't have...
	A non-violent state.
	Because if it is non-violent, then it is in the free market, it allows for competition, it doesn't initiate the use of force and therefore it's not a state.
	So, well then how would currency work exactly?
	I mean if there was no state, how would people just trade commodities?
	I mean because doesn't currency come from government?
	Well, certainly it is almost universally the case at the moment that currency is a government-enforced monopoly for sure.
	But currency is a universal – it's something called – it emerges spontaneously from human interactions just because trading commodities is so ridiculously inefficient, right?
	So if you have a bushel of oranges and I have a spade and we want to trade with each other, we have to go – we either have a coincidence of wants, which is very rare, or we have to go and find all these people who we can trade through to get what we want, like that guy who turned a paperclip into a house, I guess, through Craigslist like that guy who turned a paperclip into a house, I guess, And so currency just emerges from people trading because you need a medium of exchange that makes your trades that much easier.
	Sometimes it's gold.
	Sometimes it's seashells or salt or whatever.
	I mean in the future, who knows what it would be?
	It could be any number of things.
	It could be electronic.
	It could be physical.
	It could be virtual.
	It could be whatever, right?
	But there would be a lot of people competing to provide the best currency for people and there would be a lot of people making sure that currency had a stable value, was predictable and was backed by some real value and wasn't – they wouldn't print too much and drive up inflation.
	So currency would be provided as something that people really need outside of a state.
	And of course, I would argue very strongly that when you look at the US dollar, since the Federal Reserve was created in the early 20th century, the US dollar has lost over 97% of its value.
	So government does not provide currency in a stable kind of way.
	Just look at what's going on in the US at the moment in terms of what's the mess that the currency is in or over the euro, the mess their currency is in.
	So yeah, governments at the moment provide currency but they certainly didn't originally and there's no reason why they would have to and there's many better solutions that could come out of a voluntary free market way to approach currency.
	So, I mean, you're saying that there could possibly even eventually be a firm established simply for the purpose of creating a currency?
	Well, there would be many firms, I would assume, right?
	But it fundamentally, you know, this may sound odd, but the truth is that it fundamentally doesn't matter how currency is dealt with in a free society.
	It doesn't matter. The only thing that matters, the only thing that matters is that, at the moment, Currency is enforced through violence, right?
	So the government can print all the money that it wants.
	The government can run up crazy debts for the unborn.
	And if you say, look, I don't like this.
	I don't like this currency.
	I find it predatory.
	I find it destructive. I find it wildly unpredictable.
	And I don't know how much money the Fed is printing at the moment.
	And I don't like this quantitative easing.
	And I don't like trillions of dollars Two bankers at the expense of future generations.
	I don't like all this foreign debt.
	I'm done with this currency. I'm going to start...
	Me bucks or something like that.
	Well, then they're going to come after you, right?
	And so the fact is that the currency, it doesn't matter what happens in the absence of violence.
	What matters is that violence is used to create and sustain a monopoly on currency at the moment.
	So, I mean, there's some answers if you want to go digging around for them.
	And I talk about them, some of them in my book, a free book at freedomainradio.com forward slash free called Practical Anarchy.
	I think I got a chapter on currency in there.
	And those are interesting things to explore.
	But it's not, you know, it's like the physics of Dungeons and Dragons.
	It can be interesting to explore theoretically how does a fireball spell actually work, but it doesn't have any particular reality.
	The only thing that matters is that you should not use violence.
	You should not initiate violence in society, and that's how currency at the moment is created and maintained and used, unfortunately, to prey upon often the most vulnerable members of society.
	Yeah, I mean, I think you're definitely right about that, that we do have that force and monopoly over that.
	I mean, that's what's creating all this inflation and the bond bubble that we're in because we're artificially keeping interest rates low and that all happened because, I mean, the whole thing is definitely a broken system in a sense.
	I don't really see a definite remedy for it, but it seems like that could definitely work if there was just the absence of state and that could establish itself because of the free market.
	Yeah, I can see how that would work.
	Yeah, I mean the way I've explained it before – I'll just touch on it briefly here – is that saying how does agriculture work if we get rid of slavery?
	So let's say the 17th century in the south or whatever and you say slavery is immoral.
	Owning human beings like livestock is immoral.
	And people say, well, explain to me how agriculture would work in the absence of owning slaves.
	But that's not the point.
	The point is it's just wrong to have slaves.
	Now, maybe you'd guess that there would be massive gasoline-powered combine harvesters and factory farms and genetically modified crops and just huge explosions in agricultural productivity in the absence of owning slaves.
	But that's all just theoretical.
	And people can argue about theoretical stuff forever.
	So you point out any currency system that's private and somebody would say, well, what about this?
	Well, somebody could exploit it about this way.
	What if it was hacked? Or what if somebody counterfeited or whatever?
	And then you get involved at that level of debate.
	But I just strongly suggest just return to the basic principle, which is that… The initiation of forces is wrong.
	It's wrong to say that only certain people, often depicted in top hats with monocles and a gold watch on their distended capitalist banker pig belly, that only some people have the right to create and print currency and that's virtuous for them.
	But if anyone else tries it, they go to jail.
	That is a moral contradiction and it is – in the same way that it's a moral contradiction to say that some human beings are property owners and some human beings are property.
	Well, they're all human beings.
	So having these contradictory categories is illogical and immoral.
	And so I just, you know, return to that.
	You know, it's wrong for people to initiate the use of force in every sphere.
	And so it doesn't matter how currency works in a free society.
	What matters is that it's immoral to have a violent monopoly on the provision of any good and service, but particularly one as essential and elusive as currency.
	Okay. Last question, I promise.
	No, great questions.
	Great questions. I hope that you appreciate that.
	Well, so you're talking about the negotiation over contracts when you don't have force trying to drive that.
	But a contract, that's a legal document.
	I mean, wouldn't a contract be considered void without law, without some kind of law system to uphold that?
	I mean, how would that work?
	Well, if you want to see how that would work, just look at any political election in the world, right?
	I mean, I think it was Joe Biden who said, you know, somebody gives you, I don't know, $50,000 or $100,000 to your campaign.
	They don't do this with any strings attached.
	There's no paperwork that says, if you give me this, but you see them anyway.
	They come to your office, you let them in.
	And you sit down, you get them a coffee, and you have a nice cozy chat.
	I'm completely paraphrasing, but it was something like that.
	When people give money to political parties, they don't do so with a contract.
	So when unions give money, like government unions or public sector unions, when they give money to the Democrats, they don't do so with an explicit contract which says, okay, well now you're going to raise your benefits and you're going to protect your jobs.
	It's what happens.
	There's a quid pro quo. So the government itself, in terms of the campaign donations that are required to get into office and the payoffs that are made from office, runs entirely without contracts and without even...
	Like, the contracts aren't even written down and they're certainly not at all enforceable.
	If I give $50,000 to Joe Biden's whatever bid for it and he doesn't see me, I'm out $50,000.
	It's just that that never happens.
	So the state itself...
	It runs on a stateless system.
	And in fact it runs on a stateless system that is much more vague, infinitely more vague and infinitely less enforceable than a truly free society system would be.
	So that's just an example of how even if you can't speak a contract, even if you can't write it down, even if it's never mentioned...
	The entire example of a democratic government system is an example of how even if you strip away every conceivable way that a contract can be known about and published and enforced, it still works.
	Imagine how much better it would work if it were all public and write-downable and so on.
	Okay. I actually do have one more question, if that's okay.
	Sure. So, you know, no state, no legal system.
	How would one stop murder then if there's no consequence for it?
	There's no jails?
	There's nothing? No, no, no. See, no.
	It's a mistake that everybody makes.
	So, you know, I'm not going to single you out or anything like that.
	But the mistake is to say the government provides X. If the government does not provide X, X will not be provided.
	So the government provides roads.
	So if the government doesn't provide roads, there will be no roads.
	That doesn't logically follow.
	So when you say no legal system, Then what you're saying is negative consequences for breaking moral rules in society, whether they're to do with contract or property or respect for persons, so murder, rape or whatever. So the government currently has mechanisms in place to deter and punish these behaviors for sure.
	For sure. But to say if the government doesn't have sole responsibility for these things, then there's no conceivable way that they can be deterred or prevented in a free society doesn't logically follow.
	Because I think everybody recognizes the need for the protection of persons and property in society.
	And so – but the tough part is to say, well, How could it happen and should it even happen without the state?
	And I think that there's many, many examples of how these things have occurred very well without the state and even better without the state.
	So I mean I'll give you sort of a very brief summation of one example, right?
	So a man who murders...
	You know, the science seems to indicate and the argument seems to go.
	The man who murders, murders in part because he went through a terribly abusive childhood.
	He had a terrible childhood.
	He's beaten up or, you know, raped or some God knows what awful things happened to him as a kid.
	And that doesn't mean, of course, that everybody who goes through an abusive childhood becomes a criminal, but the vast majority of criminals self-report at least that they had these terrible childhoods.
	So clearly, if you want to get rid of murder, which I think is a good thing to do, then the first place you would look at is improving childhoods.
	I mean, in the long run, right? Not some guy stabbed down the street or whatever, but in the long run, you would look at improving the quality of people's childhoods.
	And there's ways to do that, and I've got a chapter on the protection of children's rights in, again, the sort of free book, Practical Anarchy, but there's ways of doing that or incentives that would exist in a free society that would encourage children.
	Communities to get much more involved in a much more proactive way in helping parents to raise their children as peacefully as possible.
	And so, you know, the key thing would be prevention.
	There may be people who have brain tumors or have head injuries that cause them to, I don't know, what do I know, but lose their cognitive restraints and just act in ways that are completely bizarre.
	And yeah, I mean, those people would probably be in more need of treatment than punishment.
	But society would have a number of mechanisms by which that could be controlled or restrained or whatever.
	So there's lots of different ways but a free society would be much more around prevention than punishment and it's really important to not make the mistake of thinking that just because the government currently provides That X wouldn't be provided by someone else.
	It's sort of like before there was FedEx and UPS or whatever.
	When governments had a total monopoly on the mail service, it's like saying, well, if the government doesn't deliver the mail, the mail will never get delivered.
	Well, no. Other institutions will spring up to fulfill that human need in ways that would be almost impossible to imagine.
	Yeah, but then don't you enter in greed or...
	I mean, you're talking about a law system, a legal system established by the people and couldn't the people running it, depending on conflicting interests or something along those lines, set up a whole legal system that could be considered immoral, more immoral than you would say it is now?
	Well, but who would want to be part of that legal system?
	Let's say Evil Legality Incorporated sends you a brochure that says, we have a really nasty predatory evil system.
	Would you sign up with us so we can buy guns and steal from you?
	You'd say, well, no.
	Thank you, right? Well, wouldn't the legal system encompass everyone?
	What do you mean? Well, how can you exclude someone from a legal system?
	Well, you call them a politician.
	I mean, politicians are regularly excluded from the legal system as it stands, right?
	So, I mean, let's not make the mistake of imagining that the problem of subjecting everyone to the law, right?
	I mean, George Bush can't, I think he can't travel to Switzerland now because they want to arrest him for war crimes, or some group does, right?
	It's not going to happen in America, right?
	I mean, he's above the law as far as that goes.
	But the reality is that the needs of a legal system, for want of a better phrase, of a dispute resolution system, the needs will be driven by the preferences of the customers.
	And entrepreneurs as a whole will be racking their brains to figure out how they can best and most cheaply provide the kind of services and protections that people need.
	So those are way – and there'll be, of course, I've given some examples.
	Maybe if – it might be cheaper, for instance.
	It might be cheaper to have televisions that are voice activated.
	And that way if you steal them, you can't use them because you don't have the same vocal cords.
	I mean just making stuff up completely out of my armpit.
	But these are ways in which you could prevent the incentive for theft.
	Of course you want a society that is as wealthy as possible, that has as much freedom as possible because you really want a society where it just makes a hell of a lot more sense to get a job than to become a thief.
	And that is – a free society will grow at a prodigious rate in terms of its economy because we've seen that happening in other countries in Asia, in India, in China, economic growth approaching 10 percent per year.
	I mean if you can get an entry-level job at $75,000 and you only have to work four days a week and blah, blah.
	You can work in your underwear for three of those days at home.
	I mean you want a society where there's as much economic freedom, as much economic possibility, as much economic growth as possible.
	So that it just doesn't make much sense to go and steal stuff.
	And so, I mean, these are just sort of some examples about ways that you can think about it.
	Yeah, there may be people who exist outside the law.
	Yeah, maybe there'll be hermits who live in the woods, but, you know, so what?
	I mean, if they live in the woods, who cares?
	But if they want to live in a city, they need the participation and interaction of other people in their society.
	And, you know, if I'm really disliked of in my community, maybe my grocer doesn't want to do business with me.
	Or maybe the electric company doesn't want to give me electricity anymore and it's going to cut me off the grid.
	There's lots of ways that society can deal with people it finds fundamentally offensive.
	There's nothing to do with having a massive state apparatus, national debt, the war on drugs, all of the stuff that goes on that is just terrible in the government.
	There's lots of ways that you can get society to self-organize or that society will spontaneously self-organize without having to enter into this very dangerous contract of giving a limited group of people unlimited power over everyone.
	Because if greed is an issue – this is an old argument – but if greed is an issue, then you can't have a state because the greedy people will gravitate to the state and print all the money they want and all of that.
	And if greed isn't a big issue, then you don't need a state.
	So if people are susceptible to significant evil, you can't have a state because that's where the evil people will go and rule over the good people to the detriment of everyone.
	But if evil is not a significant issue in society, then you don't need a state.
	And so that's sort of the two sides of the argument.
	Right. I just feel like racism, like bigotry could control that kind of thing, but I guess I could look into it more and figure that out.
	And maybe next Sunday I'll come in with more questions, you know, being more annoying.
	Sure. Not at all annoying.
	I think your questions are great.
	And I certainly do appreciate going over them.
	So thank you so much. I think we have somebody else who wants to jump in just before the end of the show.
	But thank you.
	Thank you for bringing it up. I really wanted to give you props about these questions.
	I think they're great. And it is a very, very important thing to be critical about any system of thought that you come across.
	So I really, really appreciate that.
	Well, thank you. Thanks again.
	And this was my first time calling and I loved it.
	So thank you. Ding, ding, ding, bing, bing.
	I don't know. Whatever. Some cool sound.
	Insert your cool sound here.
	But yeah. Thanks very much.
	Call back if you have more questions. All right.
	Bye. Bye. All right.
	My turn? Yeah, I'm on.
	Oh yeah, somebody said, amazing for a high schooler, and dude, I mean, seriously, I mean, the previous caller, I mean, I hope you get to listen to this.
	Seriously, brainiac-y questions, good for you.
	Sorry, go ahead. Okay, hi.
	Hi, Chris, how are you doing? I'm great, how are you doing?
	I'm good, good, thank you. All right, so I've been talking to a couple of friends of mine here on sort of FDR members lately, and we've been rolling over a topic which I think, or a question, I guess, which I think is Well, it's really, it's sort of really important for me in terms of like, because I'm sort of exposed to this all the time, right?
	And the question is, how do, how do, well, there seems to be like, let me just sort of give you the, what the topic is, and then I'll ask you the question.
	But just, there seems to be sort of like two types of communication, only for me and other members, which is, Like, once we sort of start talking to people in FDR, we get into the FDR podcast and listen to all the shows, we sort of learn how to communicate in a very sort of honest and abstract and maybe intellectual way or a very honest way.
	But when we go and talk to, when I go back and talk to people at school, they sort of don't have that form of communication as much, right?
	People are not usually as honest or don't have maybe the concepts or the Or the knowledge of...
	Oh, that's sort of a form of communication.
	So there's like another form of communication, which is like small talk or sort of mainstream communication, right?
	And it seems to be sort of hard for me to connect with people in the mainstream, right?
	And I understand it has to do with values and honesty and all this kind of stuff, but I think that there's other stuff like how to help people understand or how to be honest to people without sort of...
	Friguring them out.
	Freaking them out. Yeah, exactly, exactly.
	So I guess the question is, how to close that gap between the FDR type communication and the mainstream type communication?
	What are some ideas of how to bring these ideas?
	How to be able to be yourself?
	How for me to be able to be myself without having to sort of be too foggy or like, you know, isolating my, you know, in the back of the classroom because I can't communicate with people as much as I can with other FDR members.
	Right. So let me just make sure I sort of understand what you're talking about.
	So let's say you accept anarchism as the logical application of the non-aggression principle.
	So the shorthand, let's say you're an anarchist.
	And you're at a student pub and people are talking about politics and they say, what do you think?
	Right. And you say, or whatever, right?
	Or that African clicking language, you know, something like that.
	I'm sorry, I'm going to get lost in my slowly dancing hand puppets right about now.
	I hope that's okay.
	Or, hey, how about some lovely origami with fiat currency, because that's all it's good for, or something like that, right?
	So, how do you respond, right?
	Well, what do you do now? Well, what I've been trying on lately is sort of, like, I'll drop in little, like, facts, you know, or things, or maybe little ethical arguments of how the, whatever sort of solutions that the politicians bring up are, you know, illogical and they don't have really credibility.
	But that's one thing that I'll do.
	But people sort of recall from that.
	I usually won't get much of a response afterwards or they'll change the topic or something like that.
	Just generally, right? Not always, but generally.
	But something else that I've been doing is using, like speaking more metaphorical, sorry, using more metaphors to sort of convey what I mean.
	So instead of getting into the logic or to the facts or the arguments, Directly, I'll just throw out a metaphor, right?
	Which sort of reveals the logical contradictions or how to reason it actually works, right?
	And that doesn't work out lately.
	People tend to respond to it better, or I'll say, like, you know, I feel like whenever I come to school, it's like, you know, it's like I got, like, a big chicken, I don't know, like, we were debating on whether a magical chicken exists or not, you know, like, that would be an example, right? And then people are like, hmm, interesting.
	Yeah, I feel something like that, too.
	It's like I don't understand what's going on, right?
	And then conversations will start from that.
	But they usually don't get too far, you know?
	And I would like to sort of find ways to bring this stuff to people so that they're more enjoyable, right?
	Because I want to sit down and try to talk to people about maybe anarchism or some sort of logical ideas or virtues, stuff like that.
	Conversations, and this could be my thing, of course, but conversations seem to get really tense and like, you know, It's like you gotta green your teeth to sort of get to a point, and then they come up with—they're not exactly fluent in how to express their ideas and their experience, and so you have to sit there and just wait for them to get it through, and they'll be like, oh, okay, that makes sense, and then just sort of reciprocate it, but it's not that productive, and I'm sort of wondering what are the things I could do to have more success in that, I guess.
	Well, that's a very big question.
	And so I'm going to take the smallest and easiest part of that question and then pretend to myself later that I answered the whole thing.
	Does that sound like a good plan?
	Sure, sounds good. I'll do the same for me.
	Look, the first thing that I would say is cut yourself some enormous slack because you don't have control.
	Fundamentally, you don't have control over whether people are going to respond in a curious way.
	Manner, or a thoughtful manner, or a reasonable manner, or a thinking manner, or anything like that.
	What that means, what I mean is that you have some influence over it.
	In other words, if you, you know, if you grab them by the jacket and say, anarchism or death, join me brothers, let us run like limbings over the hill to freedom, then the odds of you having a positive response...
	Or not only low, but you probably don't want a positive response from that kind of interaction because that's pretty dangerous.
	So I would say that you can't make it happen.
	It's like if you want to ask a girl out, there are things that you can do that will make it very unlikely that she will happen.
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	So, you know, I mean, it's, you can't make somebody give you a job, but you can show up Neat and intelligent and well-spoken and prepared for the interview.
	So that would be – my suggestion is as long as you're passing the bare minimum of this is a reasonable way to approach people with unusual ideas, then you cut yourself some slack and recognize that the majority of these conversations will be unsuccessful in the presence of you.
	Right, that's important.
	People will almost never change their minds in the moment, particularly about something as fundamental as virtue and society and law.
	So, I mean, the last caller, great guy, smart guy, really loved the questions.
	I mean, he didn't come off the call A voluntarist, right?
	But, you know, he's got some hopefully reasonable things to think about and so on.
	And it took me a long time, although I'd never actually talked to an anarchist ever or had any exposure to the ideas.
	So that's probably why it took me so long and embarrassingly long it was too.
	But... You don't have the power to change people's minds.
	And changing people's minds is, I mean, it's a misnomer because only we can change our minds.
	And you can, you know, it is water wearing away stones sometimes.
	There are a few people who will jump up and say, you know, I get these emails like at least one a day of people saying to me, you know, you've articulated what I've always felt and known but couldn't put into words.
	And I think that they're specifically talking about You in a Bo Peep outfit fantasy.
	So maybe they're talking about other things, too.
	I don't know. So there will be a few people who will jump out of their chairs with Eureka, but that may happen once or twice in your lifetime.
	The majority of people, it's just ask some questions and maybe sow some doubt about the consistency of the existing system, talk about other opportunities.
	I don't like the argument from a fact, but it has some value in opening up conversations.
	So if people say, well, I'm very much for public schools or very much for government-run schools, then the facts that I quoted earlier about how 50 million Americans read at a fourth or fifth grade level, that really can't be counted as successful.
	People's reactions to that is, okay, well, we need more resources in the schools.
	And then you say, well, school spending, at least federal school spending has jumped by more than 80% over the past 10 years, but the scores have not improved since the early 70s.
	So more money has not solved the problem, and the US spends more per capita than most countries and has...
	We're very low educational standards to show for it.
	So just some basic facts will be enough.
	And some people will be interested and curious and want to go further into exploring those facts because they're empirically based and facts mean something to people.
	But for a lot of people – and again, the bomb in the brain part four, I think it is, talks about this in more detail – For the majority of people, ideology is serving a psychological need.
	It is not serving a philosophical need.
	It is serving a defensive need.
	It is not serving a truth need.
	Can't be solved through debate.
	You can't debate somebody into letting go of something which is serving a dysfunctional psychological need.
	At least that's my belief.
	All that will happen is positions will harden and people will get tense and people will get defensive.
	That's the tension that you feel.
	If we're dedicated to the truth at any cost, then new information doesn't make us stressed and tense and negative.
	But if our ideology is serving a psychological need, if it's a defensive emotional reaction to some bad stuff that we've experienced, which is what the science appears to show, like so for instance, Republicans generally have a much higher fight or flight amygdala response than Democrats, which means that they experience the world as a more fearful and dangerous place.
	Is that why they're so driven towards military spending?
	well there would be some good arguments as to say why that is but if republicanism and there's obviously some stuff for democrats too and this is not anything to do with comprehensive it's just something i'm pointing out if it's true that you're talking to a republican whose republicanism is being driven by base of the brain amygdala and fear responses from early childhood traumas
	then there's no amount of statistics that's going to overcome that that brain issue and And so those people will probably not be very good candidates for philosophical conversations.
	So whenever you come into that tension, you cannot continue the conversation, obviously.
	You can...
	Continue the conversation with as much honesty as you can muster in the moment.
	What that means is you continue the conversation by saying, whoa, did you just feel that spike in tension when I brought this up?
	That's really interesting.
	I've experienced that before.
	When I said X, Y, and Z just now, what was your reaction to it?
	What did you feel? Right?
	I mean, that's... A very honest, RTR, in the moment kind of thing to express.
	Does that make any sense? Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.
	Wow, that's amazing. I hadn't thought of bringing it up, but like, just sort of pointing out the tension.
	I don't know why. It's like, ooh, scary, let's just avoid the tension, right?
	But... And that may be the right thing to do.
	That may be the right thing to do, but I think it should ideally be a conscious decision to avoid it.
	But you should, I think, always at least have the option to be honest in the moment.
	And that can be somewhat startling to people, but it also can open up a very interesting conversation about what is really going on rather than the pretend world of politics, if that makes sense.
	Right, right, yeah.
	Yeah, I sort of found, like, I guess on a side note, I sort of found that Whenever I start with honesty, people will reciprocate with honesty to whatever degree they can or to whatever degree it's appropriate, right?
	But it seems to be like when you lead the way, people sort of follow, right?
	And just generally always, but that I think is a great approach.
	And so basically, like, okay, so I like what you said.
	So the objective or the best thing to do is sort of like adjust my expectations, not sort of I sort of expect success in moments.
	I don't think that that could happen either.
	My teacher, she has a metaphor, a really interesting metaphor.
	She says that talking to people about ideas and things that are outside of their comfort zone is sort of like planting a seed.
	You sort of throw a mental seed into the brain and then a month or two later it will grow into a little tree.
	They'll be like, hey, look, I got a leaf here right here.
	I'm growing tomatoes off my head or something, right?
	Right, and it could be like I've had – you could say, well, certain – the war on drugs is dysfunctional or destructive or something like that.
	And maybe the person is like, well, yeah, maybe, maybe not.
	But then maybe they read a newspaper article about the number of people in prison because of the war on drugs and the amount of money that is – and maybe they just sort of connect back.
	Oh, yeah, that guy says – you never know how these connections are going to be made or what – Or what occurs.
	So I just wanted to mention that.
	Certainly, if you don't speak, then connections are probably not going to be made.
	But if you do speak, you're entering into the ecosystem of somebody else's entire intellectual emotional environment.
	And that is an exciting place to be.
	And you have little control over what happens outside of the minimum of being reasonable and approachable and not weird, so to speak.
	Right, right. And to remember that it's always perfectly valid to not engage in a conversation if you don't feel comfortable.
	Your anxiety is there to tell you something and it's usually there to tell you something important.
	I've always strongly argued against feeling an obligation from philosophy to be philosophical because that is not the same as being free.
	You are free to not discuss.
	You are free to discuss. There is no Existential obligation to spread the truth if you have the truth because that is to say that philosophy carries with it unchosen positive obligations.
	I think if you enjoy it, if you find it valuable, if it's exciting for you, then I think go for it.
	But trust your instincts in the moment.
	And I say this from hard-won experience.
	There have been times when I have not trusted my instincts in conversations and later said, you know, I really should have.
	So, that is a strong suggestion that I have.
	Because if you're overcoming your own emotional reluctance to engage in a conversation because you feel some sense of obligation, then you're not really being true to yourself.
	And you're not really being honest because you can't say, I'm going to have this conversation even though I feel really anxious and a strong desire not to.
	So, in a sense, you're, quote, violating the first rule of philosophy, which is that honesty is the first virtue.
	Right, right, right.
	Yeah, I think that's a great point.
	I have to really listen to this to sort of get it more clearly, but I think that's very true.
	I get to...
	I get emails from people in very religious communities and they're like, you know, I'm the atheist to dare not speak his name.
	And, you know, certainly there's no rule that says you've got to get that tattooed on your forehead and engage in all of these destructive, nonproductive – sorry, destructive, nonproductive, redundant – these kinds of conversations.
	And I think one last thing that I'll say, and this is nothing that I'm claiming is proven or whatever, but I think we should be open to the possibility of That it's a lot earlier than we think in terms of the philosophical progress of the world.
	I certainly have made significant mistakes in terms of putting forward ideas that I thought the world was more ready for than the world is actually ready for.
	And there is, you know, just from a sort of strategic standpoint, there is the problem of rushing.
	And, you know, if you're right, then you're right.
	But I think everybody needs to come to at least some tentative conclusion.
	Or at least not everybody needs to.
	I think it's valuable.
	I think it's helpful. I would put the case forward that it's useful and valuable and helpful.
	To sit down and look at the evidence of your life, of your interactions, of your conversations, and say to yourself, where are we in achieving freedom?
	Where is the world in its receptivity to reason and evidence?
	How early is it in the process?
	How early is it in the journey towards a free and rational society?
	And I would argue that however early you think it is, it's probably earlier than you think it is.
	And that has ramifications I think in terms of what we do and what we speak and how we are in the world.
	And again this is a big topic and I don't have any particular answers.
	And – but I think that – just to take a simple example, right?
	So Mises put forward the calculation argument and the Austrian theory of the business cycle and so on 80 years ago or more, 90 years ago.
	I think it was in the early 1920s that he wrote.
	And, you know, since then, free market economists with very powerful arguments have won Nobel Prizes and free trade is, you know, there's not a lot that all economists agree on, but almost all economists agree on the idea that free trade is economically productive for everybody who participates, or at least for the parties who are free trading.
	And this has been I mean, you could go back to Ricardo and people like that.
	Adam Smith, hundreds of years ago, this has been a generally accepted tenet of economics.
	And it has some impact on the way that governments organize their trade treaties and this and that and the other, right?
	But has it, even after hundreds of years and a near unanimity in the specialist profession, to what degree do people understand free trade?
	To what degree is free trade accepted as even just a pragmatically productive value or program to follow?
	Well, I would imagine that not one person in a thousand understands or accepts the arguments for free trade, either because they've never been exposed to them or they don't like them or they pick at them or they find some fault with them that isn't there or just dismiss them or whatever.
	And so even something as pretty technical and pretty specialized as free trade remains largely rejected by society several hundred years after arguments have been made for it.
	I don't know the degree to which arguments occurred in the ancient world.
	They didn't seem to be very big on economics in the ancient world because when you have slaves, it's not really a big deal.
	But that's just sort of one example.
	There are other examples where progress has been, I think, quite remarkably swift.
	One of the things, as I mentioned before, that I really got out of my time in England as a child was the degree to which Europe understood, whether consciously or not, I don't know, but the degree to which Europe understood that aggressive parenting had something to do with the Second World War.
	I don't think people could explicate it.
	They certainly didn't have the psychohistory research to back it all up.
	But I don't think there's been a bigger change in parenting than has occurred in many parts of Europe over the past couple of generations to the point where now in many countries spanking is illegal and no hitting in schools and so on.
	That's a huge change, and that has occurred with great rapidity, but then, of course, it came out of the biggest calamity and disaster that Europe had ever experienced, 40 million people dying in the Second World War.
	Not, of course, all in Europe, but a hell of a lot of them did.
	So when their society was entirely destroyed by war, they did look at how to raise their kids.
	And as I've mentioned before, when my cousins would come to visit from Germany, they weren't even allowed to touch...
	The toy guns that my brother and I were playing with.
	They simply were not allowed to play.
	At war, which I'm not saying is the optimum solution, but there was a recognition of that.
	So in the absence of huge catastrophes, how quickly do people change?
	How quickly does society change?
	Well, it seems to be pretty slow.
	It seems to be pretty slow, and I just really wanted to point that out, that I think it's very helpful and valuable to look in the mirror and say, okay, well, where is the world?
	Where are we as a whole in this progress?
	So that we don't get frustrated by trying to measure in miles that which can only be seen in inches.
	So that we don't set ourselves goals that are Empirically unachievable and which then create an environment of frustration and despair and hopelessness and a sense of guilt at not doing something right and all of that sort of stuff.
	And again, this is not an empirical scientific answer that can be provided.
	There is, I think, some commonality in the information that we all have.
	But I do think that it's important to figure out for every one of us where we think we are in the journey.
	Is it earlier than we think?
	Is it more tentative than we think?
	Because I think that's going to have an impact on how we approach the challenges of living a philosophical life.
	Sorry for that long speech.
	I hope that makes some sense.
	No, it was great. It was great to hear.
	I don't know how much time we have for this.
	I'd like to share my experience.
	I felt this wave of despair.
	It's not too strong, but it is a wave of despair when I explore the thought that it's too hard.
	It's unlikely that That we can do much change in the now, right?
	Because for me, my future is pretty much I'm going to be dealing with people for the next, at least with the general public because of the field that I'm going to.
	I'm going to social work right now.
	So depending on what I do, I'm going to be talking to people and dealing maybe with teenagers or parents, stuff like that.
	Depends on what I do. But I'm going to be dealing with people constantly for the next, man, five, ten years, right?
	And it's frightening.
	It's frightening to believe that, you know, if it's true to accept that I can't, you know, that it's nearly sort of, I don't want to say nearly impossible, but like, you know, very hard to reason with people, right?
	And to reason about things as fundamental as ethics, right?
	So... And the other thing that I guess that I think is deeper for me than sort of just, you know, communicating about freedom and anarchism or politics or child abuse or stuff like this is being able to sort of express my thoughts and my opinions freely, right, which are so controversial to, I guess, a lot of other people's opinions, right?
	And I don't want to feel like I'm I live in this bubble and I have to push this bubble towards everyone and just keep them away from my bubble because they're too irrational or something or because they're too...
	Does that sort of make sense?
	I don't feel like I'm...
	I think I get it.
	I think I understand, but just keep going to make sure that we're on the same page.
	Okay, sure, sure. Okay, here, I'll give a more tangible example.
	I've been sort of I just started school maybe like six months ago, right?
	And I've been going to school and it seems like I don't have much of a relationship with almost anybody in school, right?
	I mean, I'm sort of like sitting in the back of the classroom, right?
	Teachers talking, there's people around, you know, everybody sort of, you know, people have their joke around and stuff like that, and I have less and more coffee to be that sort of intimacy or closeness.
	I mean, for obvious reasons, I can't have that intimacy with them if there's no sort of honesty compared to the intimacy and trust that I have with people from FDR, right?
	But I feel scared.
	I can't open up around people at school and stuff like that.
	And I found that I talked to some friends, some people at school, and I found that being able to have open conversations is possible, but it's...
	I don't know.
	I'm getting foggy now.
	Well, it's...
	I mean, not trying to put words in your mouth, but is it just scary?
	Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it is.
	It is, yeah. There's also other factors like where I'm coming from in my history and stuff like that.
	I've sort of just gotten out of my dad's house and stuff like that.
	I don't want to get too deep into my history and stuff like that, but I've sort of come from this background of pretty nasty verbal abuse and stuff like that.
	And lots of confinement in terms of how to live my life freely and deal with the consequences of maybe cooking my own food or dealing with a bank or stuff like that.
	And organizing and prioritizing my goals and stuff like that.
	And so I feel like I just jumped out of war and I'm still wounded and I have my weapons at home and I got to still fight the lions and go find food at the same time.
	And I'm learning all the skills and all this kind of stuff, and I want to be able to communicate with people, and I want to be able to have some sort of relationship with people, but it's really challenging.
	I think that's sort of what's motivating me to do this question, is that how can I communicate?
	How can I close that gap?
	Because when I talk to people in SDR, it's so fluid, and it's so, like, you know, It's so open and honest and so enjoyable and so motivating, right?
	And when I talk to people outside of school, it's nice, but it's sort of cold and there's this sort of distance, right?
	And the conversations can't go too deep, right?
	And every topic switches every 20, 30 seconds, right?
	And there's no depth, right?
	And I know that I don't have much control over that, but I would like to find ways to sort of Make that sort of more of a viable option, at least within the group that I'm at school right now, and just sort of learn how to do it with other groups as well.
	I don't know if that's sort of like a solution for the effect of it.
	I don't know. I'm ambivalent about whether this is something that I need to work on through my history, or if this is something that I need to accept about reality, or if this is some sort of Lack of communication skills or something that I'm missing.
	I'm sort of like in the pendulum whether it's in the world or me kind of thing.
	Does that sort of make sense?
	It makes complete sense to me.
	And anybody to whom it doesn't make sense isn't, I think, living much of a philosophical life.
	Because I think that everybody who's really trying to live according to reason and evidence is going to sympathize and understand exactly what you're talking about.
	I would certainly say that, given the history that you're talking about, that You know, verbal conflicts and going in to mix it up is not a good thing to do at the moment.
	And maybe not a good thing to do for like 10 or 15 years.
	Who knows, right?
	I mean, this is just my particular thoughts, which have nothing to do with what you should or shouldn't do or what's right or wrong.
	It's just my thoughts. That you need to...
	You know, get right and at peace with yourself and to get right and at peace with all of that before taking on the world in this kind of way.
	It's okay to live a philosophical life with friends and with yourself.
	You know, I think that's perfectly fine.
	And there's no fundamental necessity, and in fact, I think you could argue that's really counterproductive, to go out and try and change the world.
	I mean, particularly with this kind of history.
	That, you know, we are not missionaries.
	We are not missionaries.
	You know, we are not here to heal the ills of the world.
	We're not like a surgeon.
	I mean, I've used a metaphor occasionally, but we're not surgeons...
	When somebody's choking to death.
	Because those are unambiguous situations.
	And nobody's going to have a problem with a surgeon who does an emergency tracheotomy and saves a guy's life, right?
	So I would definitely take it easy.
	I would definitely work on my friendships and my peace of mind and my comfort level within my own skin and working at healing some of the pains of history long before I would even think about going out to mix it up in the world and all that kind of stuff.
	But yeah, you know, don't drop one combat for another.
	That would be my strong suggestion.
	Can you just repeat that? Don't drop one combat for another.
	Don't drop an inadvertent combat that you may have had with your family for a choosable combat like with the world.
	I think I was sort of afraid that I was just recreating my history by trying to fight and debate the world.
	I really appreciate you pointing that out.
	I want to fall in love with myself first before I want to try to save the world.
	But it's such temptation. Do I know?
	Yes, I know. Fuck.
	I know. I do know that temptation, and I would not for a million years say that I haven't succumbed to it on more than one occasion.
	But I'm sort of, you know, given that the world is not particularly accessible to reason, then...
	Maybe it is only a kind of love that will work.
	I mean this is just stuff that I'm mulling over so I don't have any particularly good answers as yet.
	But I'm leaning more towards – I've had my share of combativeness over the years and I think combativeness works.
	But combativeness only really works when there is enough of a momentum.
	That you can really get things moving.
	And so that I think is not empirically where the world is.
	So I'm sort of viewing things, you know, from the lens of...
	It's not manipulative because I'm sort of genuinely feeling it, but viewing things from the lens of...
	Maybe it is just a kind of a piece and love that...
	I mean, cliché though it may sound, a kind of piece of love.
	A piece and love that is going to move things forward.
	And maybe there is...
	Maybe it's too soon for, you know, that kind of charging up the hill at top volume kind of stuff.
	Right, right, right.
	Right. Yeah, I just...
	Not to bring to any more metaphors, but I was thinking the other day that I just...
	I feel like I've just escaped war and I don't feel like I'm ready to jump into the trenches just yet.
	And I would trust and respect that feeling.
	I would suggest that you trust and respect that feeling in yourself what a great conversation Short, quick, but very deep.
	I'm very glad that it was helpful.
	I'm very glad that it was helpful. Yeah.
	I guess the last sort of question that's in my mind right now is, I heard you mention on one of the podcasts or interviews that you had, one of the last ones was with, I think it was called Unusually Asked Questions or something like that, and you said that laughter is a very powerful weapon against sort of Abusers or the ruling class or, you know, yeah, just let's say abusers, right?
	Because it's such an unafraid thing, right?
	And now sort of like mulling over the idea, I guess, of maybe bringing a more comedic, like a more humoristic, you know, twist to philosophy, right?
	And see how that would turn out, at least just for my own enjoyment, right?
	And I don't know, what do you think about that?
	I think it's great. And I don't claim that that's an original.
	I think I got that off John Lennon's interview with the 14-year-old kid from his hotel room.
	So I'm not going to claim that as an original insight.
	But yeah, I think that it is important.
	And it can be a very healthy thing.
	And it is an unafraid thing for sure.
	So yeah, I would definitely, I've been working to try and, in my own ridiculously amateur way, try and work a little bit more comedy into some of my speeches just because I think that it is okay to, and can be very helpful to approach things from that standpoint.
	Yeah, and to credit, you're hilarious.
	Every joke that you make, even if you're like, oh, it's not that funny, I'll just crack up and laugh for 15 minutes and chuck them all over the joke.
	I appreciate that.
	Which means I'm very funny or you have no sense of humor, so we don't know if it's the world or you again.
	Either way, if it's my thing, I'll stick with that one.
	I like that little gap. Beautiful.
	Quite enjoyable. Well, listen, thanks.
	It was a great conversation, and I hope that you will take it easy in the world.
	And it's very, very important to pace yourself, to not tilt at windmills, and to constantly be open to better or different ways of communicating, if that's what you're sort of into at the time.
	So I hope that you will take all of that on, and thank you so much for bringing up a very, very important and powerful topic.
	Alright, yeah, thank you. Thank you so much.
	I would love to sort of explore maybe, I mean, understand and accept it sort of like, I'd like to explore this more too, because I don't think this is sort of my own sort of challenge, but I think that it is useful to find ways to communicate this more.
	Yeah, maybe we can do a conference call about it.
	I think that would be, I think a lot of people would probably have a similar interest.
	Sure, sure. I like that. Thank you so much.
	Great conversation again. Thank you so much for all your work and everything that you do.
	And I look forward to seeing you on the Absolutely.
	And thanks everybody for your interest.
	A great, great set of callers as always this week.
	It is an absolute highlight of my week to be able to split brain atoms with such uranium-enriched consciousnesses.
	Oh dear, that metaphor just completely fell over.
	And what a sad way to end the show.
	But there it is. We're out of time.
	Thanks everybody. Feel free to donate at freedomainradio.com forward slash donate.

▲