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March 12, 2011 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
38:43
1868 An Introduction to Virtue - Part 2
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Yo, it's Steph. Hope you're doing well.
This is an introduction to ethics, part two.
Now, I want to make the case here that ethics should not be associated with following rules.
I've made this case before, but I'd like to make it in a sort of more concentrated and focused fashion for once in my, sorry, babbling life.
So, traditionally, ethics is a series of commandments or laws, right?
I mean, this is the way that ethics has worked in the absence of UPB. Ethics is a series of commandments that you sprinkle magic pixie dust on called religion or God, and they suddenly become virtue, right?
So you have a set of thou shalt's or thou shalt not's, and they mean very little until you say, oh, well, God said it, and therefore...
Now, it's got the magic dust of deity on it, and that's called morality.
Well, of course, there is no magic pixie dust called religion, and so they are just a series of rules with imaginary ghosts baying them out.
It doesn't make them any more true.
It doesn't make them any more valid than any other set of rules you could come up with.
So, commandments are a very bad way to do ethics, because you can just pick and choose the commandments that you want, right?
And... Alright, so thou shalt not kill if you're in the mood to be pacifistic, and an eye for an eye if you're in the mood to not be pacifistic.
So, I don't like commandments, of course.
They're arbitrary, and infusing them with imaginary beings doesn't make them any more true.
It's not like 2 plus 2 make 5, and if I can sprinkle religion on it, it suddenly becomes true.
It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but it's sort of what people do in the absence of philosophy.
Again, I'm not saying that all the people who came up with this stuff were kind of deluded, people needed rules, and they couldn't figure out virtue for whatever reason, complicated, long-standing reasons.
And so they came up with a bunch of rules and then said, well, God said so.
And that was how they came up with ethics, and it doesn't work, of course.
Because of UPB, everyone can have the magic pixie dust of Godhead on their arbitrary commandments, and therefore this is why you get religious war and tyranny and so on.
Now, the secular approach to this, and it's obviously related as the church and state are so strongly related throughout history, the secular aspect of this is to have laws rather than commandments.
Now, laws are pretty much the same as commandments, except instead of the magic pixie dust called religion, you have the magic pixie dust called statism, sprinkled on these arbitrary rules, which are inconsistent and ridiculous for the most part, right?
There's like 40,000 laws that apply to the average American, and it's all completely insane.
It's just a bunch of Lilliputian spiderwebs designed to catch anyone the government doesn't like and compel them to do X, Y, or Z. And so...
Instead of a god, it's the law, it's the state, it's the court system, it's the country, it's, you know, the law, right?
So you've got arbitrary commandments called divine law, and then you have arbitrary commandments called state law.
And these are two ways.
And, I mean, I have some sympathy for this, right?
I mean, in the same way that the world sits on a turtle all the way down is...
An understandable attempt to explain something about or to try and learn something about where we came from as a species or as a planet.
I mean, it's a bad answer and it's a terrible answer because it tends to harden into ideology and religiosity and then prevent further explorations of better or at least vaguely true potential answers.
But it's sort of understandable that's where the species was, and I guess it's, um, monkeys don't have religion, as far as I know, and so it's a step forward to have religion over non-religion, because at least it's a way of saying, well, these questions is important, right? As some, I think it was some old Norse guy Who said something like, you know, well, before the Christians came along, we sort of looked at life like a bird flying through a room.
It comes from somewhere we don't know, and it goes somewhere we don't really understand.
And now we have a before, and we have an after, and we have, you know, heaven and hell, so we have some sense of what's going on.
Now, of course, the truth is that they don't.
They just have a mythology which cloaks genuine ignorance in pretend knowledge, which is very dangerous.
But... It was a step forward in that, at least now, these questions are being explored.
Where do we come from? Where are we going to?
And society needs rules, and there was no, well, in the absence of philosophy, there was no real way to come up with these rules that made any kind of rational sense, and reason itself was in pretty short supply.
Throughout most of human history, so that's the best that people can do.
It's not a big condemnation thing, it's just a reality.
So we have this view of ethics as just rules.
Rules you have to follow.
You follow these rules. And, I mean, think of all of the rituals, right?
I mean, circumcision in Judaism.
It's just a rule, right?
Sacrifice of something to Abraham or some damn thing.
It's just a rule. And you've got to follow it, because it's a rule.
And these arbitrary rules, sprinkled with divine pixie dust, are very tempting for people to, of course, to continue to add to, right?
This is the problem with that philosophy.
You get these arbitrary rules that just keep getting piled on and piled on and piled on.
So that is what people think of when they think of ethics.
They think of us rules that you have to follow.
And these rules are infused with magic.
And the magic is, God says so, or the courts say so, and this is considered to be valid.
Now, of course, there is this knowledge that everyone has about our rules versus other people's rules, right?
So our rules are X, and they are noble and good and true, and other people's rules, like cows are sacred in India, well, it's just kind of silly, right?
What people say, whereas quite the opposite is true in other cultures.
So, you know, to replay, rewind and replay that metaphor from a number of years ago in Untruth, every one is a liquid poured into a bizarre-looking container, saying as they look across the table at all the other bizarre-looking containers, whoa, those containers are really bizarre-looking, whereas their one feels like perfectly natural to them, whereas everyone else looking at their bizarre glass container saying, well, that one looks really freaky, because that's what culture is.
But this idea that ethics are rules that you have to follow, is so deeply ingrained that it's really hard to think of.
It's really hard to think of ethics outside this situation.
But, you know, as a materialist, as a rationalist, as a philosopher, there's just no way to accept any magic pixie dust on any commandments or any rules, right?
That's the basics of UPP. You can't just say, well, I really like this rule, so I'm going to be really passionate about it, or I'm going to wrap it in a mythology of statism or religion to make it So, well, you know, everybody who is a moral nihilist understands, or anybody who's rational just understands that these rules are, you know, almost universally arbitrary.
And however special we may feel that certain rules are, they don't, it doesn't make them true.
And it certainly doesn't, they don't work in society fundamentally.
And so I would like to make the case that it's a very bad idea to look at ethics as rules that must be followed.
I really think that's a bad idea.
I would argue instead that ethics are behaviors that must be earned by others.
Ethics are consistent behaviors that must be earned by others.
Ethics is UPB that is reciprocated.
So, to take an analogy, and of course the analogy doesn't make it true, but just to sort of put it in a framework, I send you $500 for an iPad, and you don't send me the iPad?
Well, that's clearly bad. You refund me my money, you've wasted some time of mine, but it's not the end of the world, but if you keep my $500 and don't, give me my iPad.
It's a theft, right? It's a kind of theft.
So, I think we all understand and accept that, and that makes perfect sense.
So, in this case, the ethics of the situation Is relational.
It's relational. In other words, what I am ethically allowed or permitted or whatever you want to sort of, you know, the ethical behavior that I can pursue is dependent upon the other person's actions, right?
So let's just say it's eBay, right?
Now, if I send someone $500, they don't send me the iPad, then I can initiate a complaint, I can downgrade their rating, I can do all of that kind of stuff, right?
So, and I think that's probably a pretty good thing to do because it helps inform other people that the person is not reliable or trustworthy and maybe dishonest and maybe a ripoff artist.
So, in this case, what is the right thing to do is dependent upon the other person's actions.
In other words, do they send me the iPad or they just keep my 500 bucks and rip me off?
Well, if I downgrade someone's rating when they did send me what I asked for, then that's the wrong thing to do because that's dishonest and it's hurting somebody's reputation and that's not a good thing to do.
So that is ethics that is relational.
That's sort of one example.
If you're in a situation where somebody is spreading malicious gossip about you, well, you may sort of have a rule that says don't spread malicious gossip.
What is it that line from the Wall Street Part 2?
If you stop telling lies about me, I'll stop telling people the truth about you.
But there may be a situation under which you would return the malicious gossip, or you would get involved in that kind of thing.
And I can certainly see that that would be a reasonable course of action to take under certain provocations.
So again, that is...
A relational situation.
Self-defense is a relational situation.
So you're not allowed to shoot some guy in the leg unless he's coming at you with a chainsaw.
And so that what you are sort of permitted or allowed or whatever to do is relational, not an absolute rule.
So thou shalt not kill doesn't help in terms of self-defense, doesn't help in terms of reward and so on.
And the reason why I think this is so important is I think it accords with common sense morality, which is, you know, again, I really follow Aristotle as much as possible on this.
If you violate common sense morality, like the stuff which everyone gets and understands, Then if your ethics violate common sense morality, you kind of done something wrong.
I don't care how sophisticated your physics theory is.
If your physics theory can be used to prove that rocks will fall away from the earth, then that's not a very good theory because it doesn't accord with common sense.
And this is equally true of quantum physics, which doesn't violate any of the everyday experiences that we have of the physical world.
So, here's one that helps, right?
So, here's a situation where relational morality...
Morality is something that...
It's consistent behavior that is earned by other people's consistent behavior.
Morality does not...
Virtue does not exist in isolation from other people's behavior.
Does not exist in isolation from other people's behavior.
Relationship is...
Sorry... Virtue...
My argument is...
I'm going to say it is, or I'm just making the case, right?
So, virtue is...
Consistent behavior that is earned by other people's consistent behavior.
Right, so virtue is something that we exchange with other people who have virtue.
And you start off small, then you sort of go big and so on.
And eventually, you know, obviously you gain massive amounts of trust and goodwill and all that kind of stuff.
But it is not rules that exist in isolation.
So here's the classic problem that people have, right?
So they say, well, you say honesty is a virtue, but some guy breaks into your house and wants to know where your wife is so he can kill her.
And you know where she is, right?
She's hiding in the basement. So you say, well, honesty is a virtue, therefore...
You have to tell the person where your wife is.
Now, if you lie, if you say, well, I don't know where my wife is, or my wife isn't here, or my wife is a man currently inhabiting Kurt Russell's little finger, then you're saying that honesty is not a virtue.
But see, that's an abstract rules-based approach to ethics, which says that you have a rule called, speak the truth at all times, and that's just a rule.
Why on earth would that just be a rule?
I mean, there's no reason, right?
I mean, why would that just be a rule?
Is it God? I mean, is it philosophy, the magic pixie dust called philosophy, which suddenly makes this a rule?
I don't know. These rules don't exist in reality, right?
It's not like rules of morality.
They're not like rules of physics. They're constantly violated.
Whereas if you take the approach that virtue is relational, virtue is earned, virtue is doled out in small and increasing dollops based upon the other person's consistent behavior in return, virtue feeds on virtue, virtue grows like virtue is doled out in small and increasing dollops based upon the other person's consistent behavior in Virtue is relational, virtue is earned, virtue grows based upon reciprocal virtuous behavior.
Then this problem is completely solved by that, right?
Because the guy who comes in and says, where's your wife?
I want to kill her.
Well, he hasn't earned honesty from you.
So you don't give him honesty.
He hasn't earned it. Some Gestapo thugs in Germany in 1943, you know, kick in the door in demand of some nice Dutch couple, whether they know where any Jews are, and they've got some Jews in the attic, and they say, well, no, we don't know where any Jews are.
Of course we understand that they're being moral.
And why? Because morality has not been virtuous.
Honesty, integrity has not been earned by the Gestapo thugs.
So, what this does, in many ways, is it reframes ethics from arbitrary myth-soaked rules more to the realm of economics, an exchange of value, an exchange of value.
So, it's more like eBay and less like follow the Ten Commandments, no matter what.
So, If you have a problem in your life and you have someone that you want to talk to about it, but you've never done that part of the relationship before, maybe he's more of an acquaintance, you want to make him more of a friend by being more honest.
So he says, well, you seem down, what's the matter?
Maybe you've got some problem with your relationship.
You know, you have, I think, developed the friendship further.
He can hopefully be honest with you.
You can be more honest with him. That's fantastic, right?
So honesty then, because the person has responded with sensitivity and goodwill and hopefully some utility, then yeah, you have extended and expanded your friendship.
Is that appropriate when you're getting your latte and the barista says, how are you doing today?
It's like, well, you know, I've got this problem and this problem and this problem.
Well, no, right? The awkwardness of that is explained by the theory of ethics as relational, right?
Because you've not earned, like the person hasn't earned the honesty or the openness.
And in fact, they're not really seeking it, right?
So the relational theory explains why that feels kind of weird or inappropriate or whatever.
So, I think that's another way of looking at it that hopefully makes a good deal of sense.
Why are you, quote, allowed to lie to somebody who's initiating force against you or who is simply untrustworthy?
Right? I mean, if you have, I don't know, $5,000 cash on you for some reason, and some shifty-looking glue-sniffing guy comes up to you in an alley and says, hey man, you got any money on you?
And you say, yes, I have $5,000.
Well, that's not, you know, according to the abstract theory of follow the rules at all costs, that's something that you would do, right?
You would say, yes, I have $5,000 on me, my friend.
Why? Oh, well, you know, if you could spot me a thousand, I'd really, right?
But the theory of virtue as relational says, well, no, this guy hasn't earned my honesty.
I don't know him. I suspect his motives.
He's giving me bad markers.
So, I mean, if a guy, I mean, take a silly example, right?
So a guy reeking of urine and dressed in a burlap sack comes staggering in, half-empty whiskey bottle in his hand, comes staggering into a Rolls-Royce dealership.
Are they going to say, he is a serious buyer.
Let's invest a lot of time figuring out what his needs are, as opposed to a guy who comes in in a nice suit and has driven up in a Bentley or something, right?
Then you'd say, okay, well, this guy is more likely to be a serious buyer.
Could you be wrong? Yes, the one guy could be a con artist, the other guy could be a secret bazillionaire, but, you know, life is short, and we have to make rational choices based upon the available evidence, and so it would be a pretty safe bet that the guys in the Rolls-Royce dealership would call security for the urine-soaked guy and would not for the guy driving up at a Bentley in a nice three-piece suit.
So, this is the idea, of course, that...
Virtue has to be earned in the same way that economic value has to be earned, right?
So you hire a guy to come and maintain your pool and he doesn't come and maintain your pool and then he sends you a bill.
You're not going to pay it because he hasn't earned it.
He hasn't earned your money.
Whereas if you withhold payment from a guy who has cleaned your pool because he has earned it, you're doing the wrong things, right?
So in one situation, based on the other person's actions, you're doing the right thing.
In other words, we're holding money for someone who hasn't done the job.
In exactly, well, in the same environment with the other person doing something different, you are doing the wrong thing by withholding money for somebody who's done the job, right?
So this is what I mean when I say things are relational.
If... If you have a friend who is generally responsible with his money, but, I don't know, a tree falls on his car or something, and he needs to borrow a thousand bucks to get it fixed for a week, and you've known the guy for 10 years, and whatever, right?
He's been responsible, and, you know, he's borrowed things from you before and always returned them in good condition, and so on.
Then, you know, would it be, if you have the money to lend, would it be kind of surlish not to lend this guy the money for a week to fix his car?
Yeah, you know, probably, you know, give the guy a break, right?
On the other hand, if some guy comes up to you in the street, you knew him 10 years ago, he borrowed $1,000 from you and never paid you back, and he comes up with no mention of the prior debt and says, hey man, I need you to lend me $1,000.
Well, he hasn't earned your generosity.
In fact, he's earned quite the opposite, which is your non-generosity and perhaps hostility.
So again, I know I'm making the case over and over, and I'm so sorry, but I hope that this makes some kind of sense.
Which is that a virtue needs to be earned.
It needs to be earned.
So, look at something like courage or loyalty.
Courage or loyalty, right? So, there was one guy in the First World War, possibly one of the greatest assholes in the history of military conflict, November the 11th, 1918.
As everybody probably knows, the war ended at 11 a.m., November the 11th, 1918.
And there was one guy, probably more than one, but this is the one that I know of, Who knew that the war was going to end in four hours.
He got the message at 7 a.m.
or whatever. He knew that the war was going to end, but he also had orders to send his men over to do a raiding mission against the enemy.
And he did.
He knew the war was going to be over in four hours, but he still sent his men out, and some of them got killed.
One of the biggest assholes in the history of the military.
And the history of the military has been full with more than its, perhaps, fair share of assholes.
So, um, that guy, uh, well...
Probably not engendering a lot of respect and loyalty from his troops.
Some other guy who tries to keep them safe, who does the very best to keep them equipped, who tries his very best to get them R&R, he is going to get, not fragged by his own troops, but he is going to get loyalty and respect, and people will probably act courageously to save him, right? So, you know, if he's under fire, people will probably work harder to save him than this other guy who sends his troops in to get killed.
Knowing that the war is going to be over in four hours after four years.
Well, anyway, I think we sort of understand.
So my argument here is that ethics do not exist in a vacuum.
Ethics do not exist in a vacuum.
Ethics are not just arbitrary rules that we have to follow.
To me, this is not human.
It's a robot. That's a computer.
You could program it with rules and just have to follow them.
That, to me, is a very bad approach to ethics.
And it is an approach to ethics that is very popular because it lets bad people exploit the living hell out of good people.
And that is not a good thing to have happen.
Right? So to take something that I've talked about before some years ago, the question of forgiveness, right?
So people say, well, forgiveness is a virtue and you should just forgive people who've done you wrong and so on.
Whereas I say, no, no, no, no.
That's exploitive. That allows bad people to do bad things to you, to exploit, rip you off and hurt you.
And then they say, well, you have to forgive me because forgiveness is a virtue, right?
It's not often put that boldly, but that's usually the way it works nonetheless.
Whereas I say, no, no, no.
Forgiveness is currency.
Forgiveness has to be earned.
Loyalty has to be earned.
Love has to be earned. Honesty has to be earned.
Courage, integrity, openness, vulnerability.
These things have to be earned.
They're not just abstract rules that we follow like robots or like trains on a track.
Regardless of the circumstances, that was all invented.
That theory of ethics is invented by bad people to give them a guilt leverage over good people and make the good people do things that benefit the bad people.
Like, forgive them. Anyway, I think we understand that to some degree.
What's true about ethics is that ethics has to be something that animals can't do.
Shifting gears, a little change in direction.
Ethics has to be something that animals can't do.
So if you look at something like courage, well, courage, oh, it's, you know, sacrificing yourself for others or whatever, but animals do that all the time.
Mama animals will sacrifice themselves for baby animals and so on, right?
And that's, you know, that's not uncommon at all.
That is a loud dog. So I would say that it's not really something that animals should be able to do.
Can animals be virtuous? I don't think so.
I don't think so because they don't have a sense of virtue in the abstract, right?
Sort of like the free will argument that we have the ability to compare our potential actions to an ideal standard or our potential choices to an ideal standard.
Virtue is an ideal standard and there's no animal that I've ever heard of or know about.
Who understands virtue as an abstract concept and can compare its potential actions against that standard and either fulfill the standard or find itself wanting with respect to that standard.
So, courage?
Yeah, okay, so a rat that is cornered will attack a grizzly bear, I guess.
Does that take courage? Well, I guess, but it's really hard to say that that's courage as opposed to what human beings can do.
I would also say that, maybe a little more controversial, and of course, you know, these are just my arguments, so let me know whether they fall short or fall astray.
I'd also say that courage is not really relevant to physical dangers.
Again, because animals face physical dangers.
I remember seeing some rather lengthy video on TV once about some mountain goat that was trying to get away from some predator and it was hopping up and down this slippery, slicey, icy slope and so on.
Obviously that was courageous and it was dangerous and so on, but we wouldn't say that that's a being conforming to the abstract philosophical virtue of courage.
So, for a man, let's say, does it take courage to climb Mount Everest?
I don't know. I guess so.
But a lot of mountain goats do it, at least to some degree, and it's kind of optional.
So, it's a little hard to say that that's the same as courage if you're putting yourself into a dangerous situation, right?
Does it take courage to jump into the water?
With sharks, I guess it does, but you don't have to.
So, at least I hope you don't.
So, it's a little less, I think, than...
I think it's a little less relevant than other kinds of acts of courage.
The guy who had to cut his own arm off because he was trapped under a vending machine in the green room of The Daily Show, or something like that.
He, you know, did it take courage to cut his own arm off with whatever, I don't know, an easy-bake oven or whatever the hell he used to pound that thing off?
I guess, but I mean, rats do that when caught in traps.
Wolves do that when caught in traps.
Bears do that. So, it's hard to say that that's specific courage, that is specific to philosophy, that is a specific virtue, because it can't be something that animals also do.
Not to say it's easy. I hope you understand that.
I'm not saying it's easy. I'm just saying that if an animal can do it, it's not really falling into the category called philosophical virtue.
Now, what I do think is closer to the realm of philosophical virtue is, as George Bernard Shaw said, all great truths begin as blasphemies, right?
So if you're saying something that is true, that you know is going to...
Cause problems in your social life, right?
So then that to me is much closer to philosophical courage.
And again, this is not to say that you have to do it again.
I don't like these, you just follow these rules.
But if you, like I'll give you an example of where I was not courageous.
So I was, you know, an old friend of mine who first turned me on to Ayn Rand, many, many years, of course, after I was 15 or 16 when I first read The Fountainhead, many years afterwards, I was standing with him and his wife on a balcony, and we were looking out over a beautiful visage, and...
I felt a very strong urge to ask him if he still was into objectivism.
Not to say that he wouldn't have any criticisms.
I mean, I think anybody who thinks would, but, you know, are you still into...
And I didn't ask him that, because I was afraid that his answer would be, you know, I outgrew that stuff years ago.
And that would have been very painful to me, because I think I would have felt that...
I know I would have felt that I had been left behind, that I was still so immature to be interested in this philosophy, and so on.
So I was afraid of his answer, and who knows, maybe he was thinking the same thing.
But there was an example where I was not courageous, and of course I wish I had at that time, asked him.
About it. But due to a variety of circumstances, I didn't have a lot of courage in me at that time in my life.
It sort of comes and it goes, I think, like most people, a commitment to virtue.
But there's an example of where I think that the relationship had earned that kind of trust, but I didn't say anything.
I didn't ask the question that was on my mind, and we talked about other things, and I let the opportunity slip, and I didn't do it.
There have been a few times where I, you know, thought I wanted to ask a woman out and didn't.
For the most part, I'd rather just go and Give it a shot and hope for the best.
But a few times where I didn't declare myself, so to speak, and sort of wish that I had.
But those situations wherein you will speak a truth, right?
So if you are, I mean, to take an extreme example, if you are a Muslim and you have doubts about the UPB-ness of Sharia law, then to speak that openly is going to get you some pretty heavy negative social repercussions, right? No question. And again, I'm not saying whether people should or shouldn't do that, but what I'm saying is that if you do it with knowledge of the consequences, that is something that animals can't do, and that is something that I think takes courage.
And this is the kind of courage that hopefully in the long run defeats itself, because as more and more people express doubts and think clearly about these topics, then you don't need people to put themselves out on the high wire of being the tip of the spear as far as social change goes.
So that is, to me, a much more specific evidence of something like courage, not regarding physical things, being trapped or being cornered or something, because animals can do that.
It's not about things which are...
To some degree voluntary, right?
So go climb a mountain, it's more voluntary.
Now, of course, it is voluntary to criticize Sharia law in an Islamic country.
It is voluntary, but it's a little different from flying all the way out to Mount Everest and climbing up it, because you're born into that country that's part of your culture and so on.
The people, you know, huge, massive sympathies.
I share some of your discomfort for sure.
But people who've written to me to say, you know, hey, I'm in the south or I'm in this particular location, south of the US, where everybody's religious and I just clam up around the topic.
I don't bring it up because I know what the repercussions are going to be.
Well, I don't consider that a lack of courage at all.
Again, courage is not a rule that you have to follow like just some commandment.
But that to me is, have people earned my honesty with regards to religion?
In other words, if they're coming over all Jesus beady and praise the Lord and all that, then no, they haven't earned my honesty.
A barrier to entry to virtue, that's sort of what I'm arguing for.
The economics of virtue.
You know, somebody can, you know, buy my iPad if they send me the money.
But I don't just hand out a bunch of iPads to people on the street.
I mean, I guess I could, but that wouldn't be really economic, so to speak.
Right? So, I argue for having a high barrier to entry to your cathedral of virtue.
Have... I mean, don't have traps, but, you know, have some fairly surly, wire-eared, big bouncers, right?
I think that's really important.
Don't be an ethics slut, I guess, is sort of what I'm saying.
Don't just open your legs for anybody who wanders down the street and has a wink and a smile and a gold-tooth grill.
And I think that's really, really important.
Ethics is relational. Ethics is earned.
This does not mean that ethics is subjective.
This does not mean that ethics is subjective, right?
So this is where the moral nihilists, and I think quite rightly so, have very strong criticisms of ethics, as they're commonly conceived, because they get that ethics is almost always arbitrary rules.
Or what they do is they say, oh, well, we have a rule called honesty, and then what we do is we can find a way to break that rule called honesty, and therefore it's no longer a rule, right?
So the one about, you know, where's your wife?
I want to kill her. That breaks the rule called honesty.
And because of that...
Honesty is no longer a rule, it's just kind of situational, it's just kind of what you'd like to do, depending on this, that, or the other.
And, of course, anybody who puts forward these kinds of rules, like honesty or property rights, people say there's a rule called property rights, and then they come up with this situation where they say, okay, so a guy's starving to death.
He's not allowed to steal an apple.
He should just die. Because property rights are sacred.
Or, you know, the one I wrote an essay about some years ago about a guy hanging from a flagpole, kicks in a window, and struggles into the apartment.
Therefore, in order to respect the other person's property rights, the guy who owns the apartment, should he just fall to his death?
Well, of course not.
I mean, if you say, yes, he should fall to his death, and yes, the guy should starve to death rather than steal a 10-cent apple, well, everybody gets that that's just kind of silly, right?
That that's placing rules above practicalities, that that's placing rules above human life.
Which, of course, is...
Well, it's kind of silly, right?
So... But the idea that...
Oh, sorry, there was one in the Zeitgeist film where...
What was it? Milton Friedman, I think, was being asked by someone who said, Oh, so, you know, this guy didn't pay his hydro bill and his heat was cut off and he died.
Is that what you suggest?
And, of course, how many people are going to say, Yes, I think that somebody who doesn't pay his electrical bill should die.
Of course not, right? I thought his answer was actually pretty good.
You know, this is his friends, his family.
I mean, come on. This isn't about the electrical bill.
When a guy chooses to stay in his apartment or chooses to stay in some house, doesn't pay his bill, chooses to stay in his house and dies, and doesn't go to a shelter, and doesn't go to his church, and doesn't go to his charity, and doesn't go to the cops, and doesn't go to the hospital, and doesn't go to lots of other places where people would be very happy to help him out, then clearly this is a guy who kind of wants to die.
It's not really the electrical company that is the primary cause of the man's death.
So, I don't think he went into that level of detail, or maybe he did, but it was just artfully edited by Mr.
Joseph, who I don't think gave the free market theorists exactly a fair shake in the film, but that's to be expected.
I guess I don't have a lot of Marxists on my show, so, you know, fair and square.
So, just let me sum up very briefly here, and I appreciate your patience for this.
It's an important topic.
I really, really, really want to urge you.
To have a high barrier to entry to grant or bestow the favor of your virtuous behavior on others.
I try, as I've always said, to treat people the best I can when I first meet them, and after that, I treat them like they treat me.
So, if they treat me like crap, I will try not to interact with them, and I don't have higher standards than those I interact with.
I genuinely and generally don't, and that's not a rule that I have, That is just, I mean, because I'm trying to follow these rules, like I don't have any choice in the matter, because if all you're doing is following rules, you don't actually have any ownership, you're not really making any choices, you're just accepting an algorithm and letting yourself, you know, it's like calling one of those wind-up cars that rolls and falls over and goes backwards, that this is a Danica Patrick-driven NASCAR special.
It's not. So, I would argue against ethics as a series of abstract rules of any kind that you have to follow no matter what.
I must be honest. I'm honest.
I must be honest. Well, no.
No, no, no.
That's like saying, I must pay all my bills.
Well, what if you sent a bill in error?
What if you sent a bill unjustly?
What if you get one of those fake bills that is a rip-off, right?
I must be honest, if someone phones you up and says, what's your credit card number and expiry date?
Well... I would say don't be honest, right?
They haven't earned your trust.
You know, if my wife calls, then I'll tell her, but I won't if it's just some person I don't know, right?
So ethics is something that is relational.
Ethics is something that is earned, and it is earned slowly.
It is earned in increments.
It is not an all-or-nothing proposition.
You don't owe virtuous behavior to random strangers.
I think you owe an assumption of reasonable goodwill.
I think you owe an assumption of reasonable rationality.
There are good enough markers.
For those markers, I sort of mean like physical evidence for that kind of stuff.
So, like if a guy, like the other day I was driving and a guy came up to my window and said, I'm five bucks short for the gas that I ordered and I don't have my credit card.
I'm so sorry. And, you know, a guy had a car.
He was dressed reasonably nicely.
He wasn't smelling of his own Euroma or dressed in a burlap sack.
And he wasn't holding up a toy car and he didn't have a facial tick.
So I gave him the money.
It's like, yeah, hey, I think we've all been there.
We've made those kinds of mistakes.
No problem, right? So, where there are reasonable markers, I think, you know, go with goodwill, go with a reasonable expectation of a positive interaction, for sure.
But, for heaven's sakes, don't spend your highest ethical standards on people who have not earned those standards.
Don't. Don't.
Don't do it. There's a rule for you.
It's just my argument, right?
You can do, obviously, philosopher has to accept that you can do whatever the heck you want to do, but...
My strong argument is that ethics have to be earned.
Ethics have to be relational. And people who are knowledgeable about economics understand all of this sort of stuff.
That economic reciprocity and generosity and so on is all earned.
It's all earned, right? So Christina and I, we don't make any big purchases without discussing it with each other first.
And we blend all of our finances.
We have no separate account.
I mean, that to me would just be silly. I mean, you're married, right?
It's the way it works. At least the way it works for us.
So we have complete trust in each other's economic conservatism.
Given my cheapness, I think that's, well, we're both pretty conservative economically.
But that's the kind of thing where you earn it over time.
It wasn't like, hey, it's our first date.
Let's merge bank accounts.
That's not the way it works. You build that trust up over time.
And I think your highest ethical behavior should really be reserved for those who have earned it, who have earned it.
And I wouldn't sell yourself short.
I wouldn't allow yourself to be open to exploitation by people waving a big book of rules that you have to follow that ends up benefiting them so often at your expense.
Thank you so much for listening.
I really, really appreciate it.
Thank you so much for donating, which you can do at freedomainradio.com forward slash donate.
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