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April 15, 2011 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:17:35
1890 Empire's End - An Interview with Stefan Molyneux of Freedomain Radio
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To find that setting place, don't you baby?
Well, good evening everybody and welcome to Truth Transmission.
I am your host, Jake Kendall, and thanks again for joining us.
Live with us tonight is Stefan Molyneux of Free Domain Radio.
So he is with us this evening.
And remember, next week we're going to have on Dr.
Roger Lear. And he's going to be talking about the alien implants that he's finding in all these different people across the United States.
So remember, he'll be on with us next week.
But tonight, let's focus on tonight's guest.
We have Stefan Molyneux on, the great philosopher.
And he is the largest philosophical conversation on the web.
Stefan, welcome to tonight's program.
Thank you so much, Jake. It's great to be back.
So it's been a couple of months that you've been on.
Yes. But it's always great.
Yes. But basically what I do is between shows, I just go into a cryogenic chamber and wait for Your command to return.
So I've basically frozen out with my hands out like Han Solo in the second Star Wars that counted.
And so thank you for resurrecting me and bringing me back to life.
It's great to be breathing again.
Thank you. The second Star Wars.
Yeah, that's right. The first three were on the prequels were not as good.
Yeah. We won't go there.
But welcome to tonight's program, and it's great to have you on again.
And remember, Stefan's website is freedomainradio.com, and you have a live philosophy call-in show, which happens every Sunday at 2 p.m.
I believe, is that Pacific time?
No, it's Eastern, where the sun should be, and people can just go by the website, drop in the chat room, and be included.
Well, that's great to know, and I hope that all you guys will go over there and join us.
Stefan, this coming Sunday for his call-in show.
But I want to get down to the issues.
I want to get down to the real issues that everybody in the United States is facing.
Because the economic times here are really hard.
People cannot find work.
Anybody that has a job is lucky to have one, is really what it comes down to.
At this point, my family were fortunate enough to have retained our jobs with the economic collapse, but many of our friends have not been able to do the same.
Yeah, it's awful.
So the first thing that I want to talk about is you had mentioned to me earlier when we were talking that you want to talk about the myth of deficit reduction and the lowered unemployment.
Because in reality, at least in New Jersey, I have not seen any lowering of any unemployment because nobody Has a job.
I mean, I go into the city and there are people sitting on the front porch at 12 o'clock in the afternoon who should be working, who could be working, but they can't find jobs.
Right, right. Yeah, look, I mean, it's absolutely brutal out there.
And unfortunately, the worst aspects of it, Jake, tend to be concentrated among minorities, right?
So you have blacks and Hispanics and the poor.
Tend to be disproportionately hammered.
I mean, the unemployment rate for people with a college education and so on is like a couple of percentage points.
Three, four, five percent.
The unemployment rate for young blacks or Hispanics, twenty, thirty percent or more.
It is just wretched out there for the young and for the minorities.
And that's one thing that you don't talk about.
When you blend it all together, it doesn't break out the class elements of what's going on and how much has been targeted.
To the poor and the lower middle class in this kind of wretchedness.
I mean, manufacturing jobs have been wiped out by the millions over the past generation or so.
This was the entree from going from lower class to the middle class.
Gone! Vanished!
And that has been just tragic.
So it really is wretched.
They have so many There's not even enough truth to call them falsehoods in the statistics that are floating out about unemployment.
It's 8.5%, 9%.
It's all nonsense. First of all, you're counting people who are employed by the government.
Is that fair and reasonable?
I'm not exactly sure because it's really tough to get fired.
It doesn't reflect real market conditions if you're in the government.
They're also then counting people who've given up looking for work.
Who've just said, oh, you know, I'm just going to take an early retirement.
I'm going to move back into mom's basement and lay low for a year or so and play Xbox until the economy improves.
They don't count those people. They don't count the people who've dropped down to part-time because they can't get full-time work.
So underemployment is not counted.
Unemployment from people who've given up either at the tail end of a career or near the beginning if they've just graduated.
They don't count all the people who've said, man, it's horrible out here.
I'm going to go back to school.
Until the economy improves, that they could find that information out by surveying campuses.
But they don't want any of that information because they don't want the basic facts that if you start to count some of these factors in, you start to look at an unemployment rate that's significantly over 20%.
And that is just not what foreign bondholders of US debt want to hear.
I mean, the unemployment rate, as you said, is very, very huge.
And you're right, it's not reflected.
And people are beginning to protest.
The tax rates and things like that.
I mean, even if they're not the most desirable groups, it's still happening.
And there's an extremist protest down here.
But people are unemployed.
And I was doing a little talking with some of the people in Trenton.
I like to go out, which is where I live.
I like to go out there and sort of talk to people.
And see what they, you know, what their thoughts are.
Unemployed youth and things like that, which I did a few days ago.
And a lot of them are joining into these rallies and things like that.
And I believe that the one tomorrow is going to turn violent.
And I think that unemployment has something to do with that.
Because if these people had jobs, maybe they wouldn't be going out and doing these things.
I think that tomorrow's rally may turn into a riot.
It's actually between the neo-Nazis and the Black Panthers.
Yeah, well, you know, there's this...
You know, society has a big problem, and the big problem is why should young people obey the rules?
It's a pretty big problem.
Young people are naturally skeptical, they're stronger, they're leaner, they're often smarter.
Genetically, I mean, the IQ tends to rise every generation.
And of course, rules that are put in place by society tend to really calcify over time.
I think there are about 40,000 laws affecting the average US citizen at the moment.
And so because laws get old and dinosaur-like and calcified and the older generation is often not as intellectually nimble or even as basically intelligent as the younger generation, there's a big problem, which is why should the young obey the laws of the old?
It's a big problem in society.
And the way that this is traditionally established What's been solved is just by dangling goodies, by dangling nice stuff that you can give to the youth for obeying the rules.
So it's like, hey, you know, you finish your school, you stay on the right side of the law, maybe you take a little college, you work hard, and looky-la, we have an apartment downtown, you can even get a car, you can get a nice paycheck, you can, you know, go clubbing, and you can start your life.
And so you've got these goodies that you dangle over the wild energies of youth, which will cause them to fall in line.
Big problem happens in society though, Jake, of course, is when you can't give the youth those goodies anymore, then you really don't have much to bribe them with.
And so why should a young person look at the society at the moment and say, I'm in.
I'm going to obey everything.
I'm going to, you know, dot every I and cross every T because they may have the example of their parents' generation if their parents have had significant setbacks in their career or employment and say, well, mom and dad did all the right stuff and they're completely hosed.
So what incentive do I have to follow society's rules?
And I don't just mean law rules.
I mean even sort of social norms and so on.
So, you know, without bribery, it's real tough to get the youth to obey.
And so I think that's one of the things you're seeing with these gatherings.
Yeah. Well, here's the thing about young people, and I do find this, and I may disagree with you a bit, and maybe you can correct me on this.
There are a lot of young people today.
I think that one of the big problems is that we treat anybody under the age of five like they're about 12 years old.
And I've noticed that a lot in schools, that that does happen.
In the public educational institutes, it's not up to the standard.
It's not challenging them. It's not getting them to try to Oh, you mean like the school system is teaching just dumb stuff to smarter and smarter kids?
I mean, it's not only that, but, you know, if you're treating someone who has the intellectual ability of a 30-year-old man like they're, you know, a 5-year-old child, I also think that impacts them because they're not being...
You know, I mean, at the turn of the century, when you were 17 years old, you had to be mature, you had to be a man, you had to take care of things, you had to have responsibilities.
Because life was hard.
And I think that now we're beginning to lose that, where people are, instead of thinking about the government, thinking about what's happening, thinking about what's going on around them and being aware, they are doing things like sitting in their mother's basement and playing Xbox, or doing things like talking about who likes who, and what we're going to wear to prom, and what limo we're going to have.
And this is especially prevalent among the privileged class, but I really think that that's an issue.
Yeah, I think two points come to mind.
I think you're right. I think one of the things that's just been completely catastrophic I've never talked about this before, but it's completely catastrophic in society at the moment, is the fact that entertainment for children has been privatized, but school remains socialized.
Those two things have created such an incredible cataclysm in Western educational systems, particularly in the U.S. And I'm talking about things like, this is just my opinion, of course, I'm no expert, but, you know, ADHD and the drugging of children.
And I think one of the, I mean, my daughter is 27 years old.
Months old, right? So she can flip open the iPod.
She can turn it on.
She can swipe to open it.
She can find her movies. She can find her games.
She can adjust the volume.
She can do just the most amazing stuff.
I mean, I think at her age I was still putting Monopoly houses up my nose on a regular basis.
And the amount of stimulation that she's getting.
I mean, she's going through all her letters.
She's learning different sounds.
We've got, you know, phonetic alphabet games.
We've got all of this amazing stuff to wire her brain up like a A Christmas tree on steroids in the middle of a supernova.
And so the entertainment and the edutainment or whatever you want to call it for children is in the free market which means you get iPads and you get computers and you get video games and you get cell phones and you get all of this kind of stuff that children can play with that's really really interesting and even just the regular games are fantastic with all the lights and sounds and singing and all this kind of stuff.
So children, before they get to school, and this is true even in daycare to a large degree, before they get to school, they've been in the free market as far as stimulation goes.
And then they go whap! You know, like a sprinter running into a wet concrete, they go into the public school system where everything is socialized and fundamentally indistinguishable from what was going on 150 years ago.
So the entertainment and outside of school education of kids is privatized and government schools are public.
and socialized which means that there's just a complete mismatch which is why it's so hard for kids to pay attention it's not because there's too much stimulation outside of school there's just so little What was your second point?
I think you had two points in there.
I want to make sure. The second point is the way we actually treat our children.
I made the example to the turn of the century.
We're not teaching them to be adults.
We're treating them like children until they're almost at the age of 30, which I think is absurd.
Well, sorry to interrupt, but you could be right, and certainly I've been known to have my damn kids these days get off my lawn, I've got to hitch my suspenders up to my nipples kind of thing, but But I always try to start with the principle or the premise that kids are doing stuff that makes sense.
Maybe I'm wrong about that and there are times when it's not the case, but a hundred years ago you could actually do stuff.
You could affect stuff. You could make changes.
You got out of school when you were 12 or 14 years old.
I'm not saying it was a paradise by any means, right?
But you could get married pretty young.
You could get a job and your job would have some stability.
You could get involved in your community through friendly societies and so on.
There were literary societies.
There were book clubs. You could do all of these fun things with people.
And now, I mean, entertainment is so enjoyable in the home, that's great.
And the government has become so large and so monolithic that anybody who thinks they're going to have any significant effect on the political process is smoking crack through their armpits.
So in a sense, the disassociation from the public sphere is, I think, the first place to look is, you know, does it make sense from a rational standpoint?
I think it kind of does in many ways.
Okay, and again, I'm just sort of looking at it from the standpoint of if we don't teach our children to be adults and take an active role in their society, nothing will ever get changed.
But you don't teach kids that, my argument.
And look, I'm saying this as a father of exactly two and a bit years, so I could be talking out of my armpit.
But you don't teach – it's like saying you have to teach your kids to have puberty.
It's like, no, if you get out of the way of children, you keep them safe and you give them some basic ground rules.
They grow into that kind of stuff.
I don't teach my daughter to jump off couches.
She wants to do it. She hurls my hand away if I try and help her.
So I don't think we need to teach kids to want to grow up and be mature and be adult.
We need to create an environment where that is a productive thing to do.
That's what I meant by teach.
I apologize. Okay, sorry.
Then let me not rant if we agree.
So go ahead. No, no.
No, I mean, you know, I just find that the school environment is a little condescending, especially for – because, again, as you said, younger people are getting smarter and older people are – I mean, even the educated older, I don't think that – for example, I was talking to my father and he knows that I do this thing on the internet, right, where I do the show and I make complaints and things like that.
But he said, oh, don't do that.
Don't cause waves.
Don't – and I think that he was an error there because if you don't cause these waves, if you don't say something, if you don't actively put out information, then it will never get to people.
But he said, you know, don't do that.
You know, that's bad.
You know, in our day, which is funny because he grew up in the 60s.
I don't understand how he has that mentality.
But I guess he figures now it's different, that it was different.
So I do understand what you're saying.
Right, right. So, the next thing I want to sort of move to a little bit is, of course, we've gone over the deficit reduction and how ridiculous it is.
Well, we talk more about the unemployment, but I can throw a few, like, 90 seconds.
Let me give you 90 seconds worth of numbers that hopefully will put it in some kind of perspective, right?
So, let's say you owe your bank $140,000.
And this has been piling up for a while and you're adding to this debt at like $16,000 a year.
$16,000 a year you're adding to this debt.
You call up your bank and you say, I've got the problem solved, man.
I'm all over it. I get that I'm way in the hole and I'm digging myself in deeper.
I owe you $140,000.
I'm digging myself in $16,000 a year.
I'm going to reduce my spending by $1,000 a year.
And then they're like, what?
And you say, oh, Hang on, crap, sorry, I just got another call.
Let me call you right back. So then you call the back and say, oh, I'm sorry, that was somebody who said that I owe them some money too, so I'm going to have to just cut my spending by $380 a year.
And then you have to call the back later and say, oh, you know what, I'm talking through my armpit again.
It's $140 a year.
And then you call the back one last time and you say, well, okay, I owe you $140K, $16K a year, but I tell you what, I'm only halfway through the year, so this year I can only cut my spending by $3.52.
I mean, how would that conversation go with your bank, especially when your bank reminded you that you have unfunded liabilities of over $1.4 million, and you're talking about cutting the rate in which you increase your debt by $3.52 per year, which is less than a penny a day.
I mean, it would be insane.
But that's what they're talking about.
These are the numbers that are being discussed with some level of seriousness in Washington.
It's mad, and I can only assume that people think that 100 billion is larger than a trillion because there are two extra zeros at the beginning.
That's the only thing that I can think makes any sense at all.
So, I mean, the deficit is not being reduced at all, and we're asking more money from China, which, I mean, China, I believe that we are the largest economy of the world at the moment, is that correct?
China is the largest economy?
No, no, the United States is at the present time.
It could be. I wouldn't be surprised, but I don't know for sure.
But I believe that we are going to be surpassed by China at some point, and I think that we're just digging ourselves deeper into a hole.
Well, to be precise, of course, as you know, there's no we, right?
I mean, the people who are at the top are making out like bandits.
I mean, the people who are at the top are just, I mean, they got an easy-baked government-money-printing magic machine.
And so they're just making out like bandits.
That's the only way to understand the system, right?
There is no we, there's no collective.
I mean, the Titanic is going down, and people are piling all the gold into the lifeboats and getting the hell out while the poor are down below decks.
So, yeah, everybody who's at the top knows that it can't conceivably last for another generation.
And once you have a system that can't conceivably last for another generation, you end up with this massive pillaging.
You know, it's like you have this money in the casino that expires at midnight, and it's like 11 p.m., And you've got $50,000 of this money that expires at midnight and you can't do anything else with it.
Well, you're just going to go crazy. You're going to throw down bets everywhere.
And so, yeah, it's, you know, the people at the top are doing great.
People at the bottom are getting hosed, but I'm sure that's nothing new.
Yeah, I mean, and I'll be honest with you.
I have many, many friends who are of the privileged class.
I'm not talking billionaires, though I do know a few, but, you know, millionaires and things like that who live in the nicer homes and things like that.
So, I mean, I do know people of the privileged class, and, I mean, they really don't think anything is wrong.
Well, how could they? I mean, everything's fine where they live and all their friends are doing great, of course.
Right, so they think, oh, nothing is wrong.
I talked to a few friends.
Oh, I'm transferring into Yale from Harvard.
I like their program better.
I was talking to somebody that I know.
Oh, I'm going from this job to this job because they're paying me $75,000 more.
That's somebody's entire income for a year.
That's like a public school teacher's entire income for a year.
And they're saying it like it's nothing.
They're just simply not being affected.
They don't see this.
No, and they'll read about it, and they'll drive past it with their windows rolled up.
I mean, you and I, we're not in the emergency ward of the hospital tonight.
Thank heavens, right? I mean, if we were, then we'd be aware of how many people got injured and got sick tonight.
But if we're sitting here chatting in our warm, comfortable middle-class homes, then we feel pretty healthy and it doesn't impact us nearly as much.
If we sort of stop and think about it, we'll say, well, yes, okay, I can understand that.
But if you're not actually down there, you don't see it.
And this is, of course, the problem that as the rich get richer, they control more political power, they infest the state more and more, and they create a hermetically sealed world where it can't crash for them.
You understand? It can't crash for them.
No matter what happens to the economy, the rich will be absolutely fine because they got their money offshore, they maybe bought some gold.
I mean, when Russia collapsed, when the Russian economy collapsed, there was nobody in the Politburo who had to stand in line for a pension.
I mean, Gorbachev retired to the US with two houses stuffed with money.
I mean, there is no crash for them.
There is only a crash for the poor and for the middle class.
For the upper classes, there is simply a change of ships, but there is no time in the water.
That is true. I mean, luckily, we're okay, and you seem to be doing all right here.
But see, even so, you and I do see this and we do realize this, but as we had said before, they're not going to go down.
If all this goes to hell, they're still going to have their millions in their bank accounts.
They're still going to have that house.
They're still going to have that nice car and their money while people are squabbling in the streets.
And I think that eventually, if it gets bad enough, people who have nothing will do anything to get something.
Because when you have nothing, when you have nothing, when your home has been taken by the bank, when your car has been repossessed, when your family cannot eat anymore, which there are places that this is happening, especially in the inner cities, where people are becoming homeless and people can't eat, then those upper class people are going to be, you know, I mean, I feel as if this is how it's going to go.
The poor continue to get poor, the rich stay the same, or get richer.
And then eventually the poor are going to have to try to steal from the rich to get what they want, and the rich are going to fortify.
Oh yeah, of course. They'll just hire some of the poor to beat their armed guards, and they'll be perfectly fine.
That's the way it always goes. I mean, is this the Middle Ages?
I mean, come on now. No, this is...
You and I both know that this is the inevitable result of a government program called Help the Poor and Level the Rich Down, right?
But there was this whole thing that came out.
It started in the 30s in the Great Depression, and it expanded significantly in the 60s under Lyndon Johnson's Great Society.
The whole point of pre- and post-war government policy, socially, has been to even out the class structure, to smooth it out, to make it more egalitarian.
That's why the argument went that you needed public schools for the poor.
You needed public schools for the poor because it evened things out.
Thus the rich and the poor went pretty much to the same schools, or at least the middle class and the poor, and that evened things out.
And you needed income redistribution programs and you needed inner city programs and you needed Head Starts and you needed all of these things because we didn't want to have the society where things hollowed out in the middle.
You end up with this sort of donut society where there's lots of an underclass and there's an increasing and ever more powerful overlord class.
And the inevitable result of government programs is that they always achieve the exact opposite of their stated goals, right?
And so the whole idea was to have a more egalitarian society by using the power of the state and inevitably what's happened in society has become the exact opposite of egalitarian.
It has become more polarized, more extreme, more haves and more have-nots and fewer people in the middle.
And there's also this, I mean, cultural separation.
Generally, I mean, just a cultural separation of the richer and the poorer.
Because, I mean, even the upper middle class.
The upper middle class and the upper class, and then there's the working class and the poor.
And it's like there's almost a cultural separation from what I've noticed.
Because, like you said with the school system, the poor and the working class and some of the middle class will send their children to the poor.
The upper class and the upper middle class will send their children to the private school.
Now when I was in school, I went to a public school for a little while and then I transferred into one of the private schools where the upper class were going.
It was a huge difference.
It's such a huge difference.
Just culturally, being in a culture, I feel like you have the rich culture and the poor culture.
It's not even like we're Americans, it's like we're rich and poor.
Well, absolutely. The poor have much more in common with each other than, like, the poor in England and the poor in America and the poor in Canada, they have much more in common with each other than they do with the rich in their own country.
I mean, the real geography is the economy.
It's not physical.
It's class, I think. It is.
But anyway, you know, speaking of class and speaking of the upper and the middle class, I want to move into a little topic that I was – somebody requested that I talk about.
This is a friend of mine who is very into Roman history, which I had mentioned to you before.
So there was a civil war in Rome after the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BC between – You know, they took control, and there was a civil war between Mark Antony and Caesar, and then that ended, and they made the first trimunitive, which was between Lepidus Caesar, well, Augustus Octavian Caesar, and Mark Antony.
Eventually that fell apart, and then, of course, there was a war between...
Mark Antony and Caesar, excuse me, Mark Antony and Octavian, and then against Brutus and Cassius, and then finally it ended where Mark Antony and Caesar went to war, and Caesar took control, you know, Augustus took control of the empire.
And then there was a 40-year period there, which were called the Golden Years of Rome, other than the period of the Five Good Emperor, which was the Flavian Emperors.
Because there was peace, right?
What was called peace throughout the empire, right?
Well, yeah, I mean, loosely peace.
And then, of course, you had the Flavian emperors, which ended with Marcus Aurelius when he died, his son Commodus took control, who was a crazy man and totally ripped everything apart again, and the Praetorian Guard killed him.
And there really should have been, somewhere in the middle, a Flava Flavian empire, you know, with huge watches and bootylicious babes dancing on a yacht.
But that's maybe a little bit of alternate history.
Let's keep going. So, you have really these two golden periods of Rome that, of course, Rome converted to Christianity, there was strife throughout the empire, and it finally collapsed when Odeker burst down the doors of the Senate, and Rome collapsed.
So, I feel as if we are like Rome.
Now, the 40 golden years of Augustus, people argue that, because it was a more socialist time, the republic had fallen, it was an imperial government, it was a very large government.
Because Octavian was spending so much money to buy grain, and they were feeding the people for almost nothing.
And then, of course, the 40 years ended, and Tiberius took control, who was okay.
And then after that, things sort of went downhill.
Now, my question for you is, people use that as an example.
Look at Augustus. Look at the 40 years.
So many social programs.
So many entitlement programs.
So much government.
And it was 40 years of peace and prosperity.
And then, of course, you know, after Tiberius, the Empire descended when, you know, Caligula came in and then they had Claudius, which was entitlement programs and social peace.
And then Claudius was murdered by his wife, Livia.
I believe it was Livia. And then you had Nero.
And there was, again, strife and just, you know.
I think we get the picture.
Otherwise we could end up reading the whole Wiki article.
No, I'm actually not reading anything.
This is all from memory. That is really good.
So do you want sort of like a couple of thoughts on that whole period?
So what is the deal?
If anarcho-capitalism or the pure free market works so well, then why did those 40 years of Augustus and the time of the Flavian emperors, why were they so prosperous with this very socialistic government?
Well, I mean, prosperous compared to what?
This is always the question you have to ask about ancient history.
I mean... What was the gross domestic product per person in the Roman Empire?
Well, the average life expectancy was 21 years old.
And it was pretty wretched.
Scientifically, it made very little progress.
Economically, it made very little progress.
The Empire lasted hundreds and hundreds of years.
They knew about the steam engine.
They knew about pendulums.
They knew about all these kinds of cool things.
And there was no industrial revolution throughout the entire period.
That's important. It's not...
Okay, so maybe there was some bit of a pool of stability for these 40 years.
What's really important is what wasn't happening.
What wasn't happening was an industrial revolution.
What wasn't happening was an agricultural revolution.
And there's lots of reasons why.
I mean, there was the usual, you know, knee-jerk, aristocratic reaction to a life of trade.
Patui, you know, a life of trade is just terrible.
And of course they had slaves, which means that labor-saving devices actually threatened the social order by reducing the demand for slaves, which would mean that people wouldn't want to have slaves, there'd be an excess of slaves, slaves wouldn't get fed because they were less valuable, so there might be revolts.
So there was labor-saving devices only really have any traction economically when you have wage laborers, which is why there was very little economic progress during the Middle Ages when you had serfs rather than wage laborers.
And so, the important thing is to look at what wasn't happening during this 40 year period.
I mean, look at 40 years ago, between 1971 and 2011.
I mean, look at how much has changed since then.
I mean, did any of that occur at the Roman Empire?
Hell no! Sorry, go ahead.
Let me just add, there was an initiative under Julius Caesar when he was in Periatur to actually reduce the slave population.
So at the time of Augustus, the amount of slaves actually working in the fields was much, much lower than it was during...
But that's another government program.
It didn't occur because of some desire to replace slaves with machines, right?
Right, okay, true. Now, so the other thing that I would mention is that, you know, people can do quite well if they're counterfeiting and aren't getting caught, right?
I mean, so if I'm able to print off magic money in my basement, I'm able to do quite well.
And people are like, wow, how's he pulling that off?
That's amazing! And all of the later Roman emperors did exactly the same crap, which was they debased the currency.
And that was the only way that they could make this stuff work.
And debasing the currency works if you can maintain a monopoly on currency, which is what they largely did.
I think that the actual gold and silver content of Roman coins fell by like 95% or 96% over, I can't remember what period it was, but it was relatively short.
And then, of course, they would just call all the coins back and they'd recast them and they'd start all over again.
And secondly, it's like, well, peace for who?
I mean, there was still conscription.
So a lot of people would be dragged into the military service for years or decades.
It's not peaceful for them.
It's not peaceful to have to go and join an army or get your head cut off.
That's not exactly peace.
So, you know, yeah, you can have these times where there's peace, the calm before the storm.
But I think as a society, we should be looking a little better than...
Okay, so there was only counterfeiting and bribery of the population and economic stagnation and, you know, the guy was, what was he, pretty much murdering hundreds or thousands of political enemies to get to power.
Yeah. So, okay, it only started with some bloodshed and so, I mean, I think we need to raise our standards a little bit higher.
I think we should raise our standards just a little bit.
Yeah, you are definitely right on that.
Right, and they had 40 years of peace, and then of course that all fell apart when Caligula took power anyway.
Right, right. And the other thing, sorry, and the other fantasy that people have is like, damn, if we could only get the right guy in there, if we could only get a guy who didn't want to wage war against the ocean and have sex with his sister's heels or whatever crazy crap Caligula was into, right?
I mean, people have this fantasy of like, if we just get the right guy in there, then everything's going to be great.
Well, what a ridiculous thing to say.
First of all, right guys generally aren't interested, like good, decent, reasonable, honest, virtuous people aren't generally interested in achieving the kind of power that requires you kill opponents or lie or cheat or steal or whatever.
And secondly, so even if you do get some magic Dudley-Do-Right in the seat of power, I mean, what about the next guy and the next guy and the next guy and the next guy?
I mean, let's not cross our fingers and hope for Virtue to land on the bloody seat of power.
Let's just get rid of it and not have to cross our fingers.
So the next question I have before I talk about Vermont healthcare is how would we transition From this monstrosity of government that we have to a purely, purely capitalist, stateless system.
I mean, how would that transfer go?
Is there going to have to be a bloody revolution?
No. A bloody revolution won't work.
A bloody revolution won't work.
You cannot elevate the soul of mankind by drowning it in blood.
You simply can't do it. Violence begets violence.
And I would characterize it as, you know, how are we going to have a society that is based upon nonviolence?
I mean, that to me, capitalists, I agree, and I agree with you.
I'm a total free market guy, property rights, blah, blah, blah.
But we're really looking for an acceptance of the basic principles of non-initiation of force, respect for property rights, and, you know, let's throw in a respect for property, sorry, for contract law at the same time.
So how are we going to transition from a society based at the moment on Coercion, which is a state of societies, are all fundamentally based on coercion.
It's a big inverted pyramid with a big gun at the very bottom.
Well, the way that you elevate mankind, in my opinion, is you simply open people's eyes.
I mean, there's no great trick to it.
There's no great magic to it.
You simply have to keep repeating over and over and over.
Violence will not solve our problems.
Violence will not solve our problems.
And there's no shortcut to that.
And you have to repeat it over and over and over again until people click and get it and understand and can apply it in a universal way.
Violence will not solve our problems.
Violence will only make our problems worse.
This is what you and I were taught in kindergarten.
And if we could only get back to the moral wisdom of your average drooling-on-themselves four-year-olds, we'd be a much better society to live in.
We have to just keep repeating.
Once people get That statist systems are violent in their core and never stable in that violence.
They always escalate over time until they collapse and then you start again.
It's this perpetual cancer that you have to cough up losing one lung and then it starts growing all over again.
Once people get that statism is the initiation of force And that violence, force, coercion, pointing guns at people, throwing them in jail, dragging them down the street, tossing them in the back of cars, clubbing them, macing them, shooting them, none of that is going to solve a single problem that society has.
Not one! Except, perhaps, immediate self-defense, which, you know, it's nothing to do with the state society.
Once people get that statism is violence and violence doesn't work, If violence makes everything worse, violence is a cancer, then it would be irresistible to change, because once people accept that something is immoral, they can no longer support it.
So, of course, there's a huge amount of propaganda.
You fight it every day, I fight it every day, a huge amount of propaganda out there, which is designed to obscure What I call the gun in the room, which is every time you ask the government to do something, you're just having someone load a gun.
Once people begin to see that our society is based upon the initiation of force, Everybody who accepts that violence and their personal relationships is wrong, once we get rid of this myth called society and the government, we'll see it's just a bunch of people with a bunch of guns.
And we know. Everybody who's ever seen a Francis Ford Coppola movie knows how that ends, no matter how much swelling classical music you have in the background.
So here's my next question.
Some people believe that it is impossible for humans to live without violence.
And they've pointed out many, many examples of this.
But I don't believe that that's the truth.
Because if you look at the city-state of Ur, which is in the fertile crescent between the Tigris and the Euphrates River, there was not a single instance of violent death there.
It was a completely peaceful society.
Now, that's the argument that I've always used against people who say that it is impossible for people to live in a non-violent manner.
Now, what would you say to that?
Well, I mean, the science...
The neurobiology of violence has taken enormous strides over the past few decades.
And I've got a whole series on YouTube at fdurl.com bib.
It stands for the bomb in the brain.
And I interviewed Dr.
Vince Valletti, who's the director of...
I won't get into the whole name.
But then I've come up with...
I've got lots of statistics, lots of charts.
I know it sounds dry, but if you really want to understand, the neurobiology of violence has become remarkably clear.
In that children, particularly those who have a particular genetic predisposition, who are exposed to abuse as children, develop a very heightened amygdala, which is the fight-or-flight mechanism.
They have shrunken neofrontal cortex, which is the part of the brain that is responsible for inhibition.
Like, I feel angry, but I'm not going to punch someone because I think of the consequences or the morality of it or whatever.
And so we have kind of different species in the world of human beings.
We have the species of human beings who are raised in a primitive and brutal and violent fashion.
You know, they're hit.
They're beaten. They're screamed at.
They're emotionally abused.
They're sexually abused. And these people grow up with significant cognitive challenges and significant impulse control problems.
And the results that brings into their life in terms of statistically it's incredibly correlated.
The more abuse you suffer, the more likely you are to do drugs.
The more abuse you suffer, the more likely you are to be promiscuous.
The more abuse you suffer, the more likely you are to be a criminal.
The more abuse you suffer, the more likely you are to be a smoker.
To be at risk of significant child abuse can cut an average of 20 years off someone's lifespan.
You're actually even more at risk for cancer.
And so when people say, well, human beings can't live Without violence, it's like, well, yeah, of course.
If you're raised with violence, then that is how your body is going to respond.
Because your body, if you're raised with violence as a kid, your body's going to say, oh my god, we're in a violent society.
Resources are scarce.
Cooperation isn't going to help me.
So I'm going to develop the brain to be hair-trigger and violent to make sure that I get whatever I need.
Whereas if you're raised in peace and volunteerism, then you want to cooperate.
You don't have those impulse control problems.
You don't have those rages.
You don't have that entitlement.
And so you just have to raise children peacefully, and that's how you end up with a world that is less violent.
Right, but now, are you claiming that the majority of smokers, the majority of drug users, the majority of miscus people were abused as children?
Oh, absolutely. The statistics on that seem very, very clear.
It's not 100%, but certainly the correlations are extraordinarily high.
Because I was never abused as a child, but I'm a smoker.
I mean, that's not, you know...
Right. And that fits within the paradigm, right?
Right. Now, but of course, the argument could be made.
I wouldn't necessarily make it, but you could make the argument, which is to say that if you grew up in a society which didn't have, I think you said you went to public school for some period of time, right?
Yeah, yeah. So a very small period of time.
Oh, okay. Well, I went throughout middle school.
So I would say about eight years.
And then for high school, I went to private school.
Eight years is more than a small slice of time, right?
Did you go to daycare or were you raised by a primary parent at home?
I was raised by my parents.
I didn't go to daycare. Oh, cool.
Okay, that's good. That's good to hear.
Yeah, I mean, look, it's not 100%.
It's not like every time you see a smoker, aha, this person was abused by X, Y, and Z. But the correlations are still very high.
Let me ask you this. Did you suffer any peer bullying in your school?
Um, I wouldn't say so.
In high school, I wasn't outcasted, but I wasn't as popular as some of the other people because of some of my beliefs.
Mm-hmm, right, right.
But I brought it by myself.
And why did you start smoking, do you think?
Um... Why did I start smoking?
You know, I'll be honest with you, my father owned a bar for a very long time, and I was always around it, and everybody smoked around me, and my parents, and I mean, and then I just kind of picked it up.
One day I saw my father's cigarettes on the counter when I was about 12 or 13 and said, I'm going to try one of these, and it's a downhill slide from there.
Well, yeah, I mean, look, and yeah, I think I've already stated the case.
It's not 100% correlation.
And the other thing, too, is that these things tend to cluster.
So, the more people are abused, the more they tend to have symptoms that go together, like alcoholism, promiscuity, and drug use or whatever.
So, I mean, it's more than just one thing.
But yeah, you might want to take the...
It's called the Adverse Childhood Experiences Test, or ACE. You can find it.
Just do a quick search on Google.
It's an interesting test to take.
And I certainly recommend that people take it to see...
It's not quite the same as abuse, because some stuff can happen to you as a kid.
It's nobody's fault. It's just bad.
A parent dies or something, right?
Right. That's an adverse childhood experience.
That's not the same as being abused by someone, I guess, unless you think God killed him or something.
But... But it's worth taking the test.
I think it's an interesting piece of insight to have about your own history.
Let me also ask you this. Let's take...
Let's take these, since we're on the topic of religion, do you believe that specific religions do adversely affect people as a child?
For example, me being raised in a Christian home versus being raised in a, let's say, a Native American village where the tribal shaman is, you know, when we worship the tree and the rock and, you know.
Yeah, I think...
Because that's very controversial. That's a very controversial topic.
It is a controversial topic.
I mean, I don't have anything against religion per se, or in particular.
I have an issue, of course, with things that are told to children that aren't true, but are told to children as if they are true, or are told to children as if there's no doubt.
Right? So, I mean, obviously I'm going to teach my daughter about religion.
It's an important part of the mindset of the species at the moment, but I'm not going to teach it to her as if It's true, right?
So I say, well, yeah, there are people who believe in hell, and if you don't perform certain rituals or do certain things or give some people money or whatever, then They believe that you're going to go.
And she says, is that true? I say, well, no, it's not true, but this is what people believe, right?
And so my concern is, and look, I hold myself to this standard, too.
I'm not going to teach my daughter my conclusions about the world.
I'm hopefully going to teach her how to think and how to discern true things from false things and how to analyze an argument and how to look for evidence.
And logical fallacies and where they show up so that she can think for herself.
Because certainly I hope that she's going to teach me as she goes along as well, which she already is starting to do.
So no, I don't think it matters what things are presented to you as if they're true.
My concern with culture and society as a whole and its relationship to children, Jake, is that there's just not enough humility in culture, right?
So I mean, America, number one!
It's like, but... It's not.
I mean, it's just not true.
I mean, in just about every measure, America is usually not even in the top 10.
And so, my concern is just let's not tell things to children that aren't true as if they're incontrovertible.
I mean, even if I believe that something is true, and believe very strongly that something is true, I'm still going to hesitate a huge amount before I say to my daughter, this is true.
I mean, I'm a big advocate of religious openness.
I have practiced almost every religion that you could think of.
Everything from Native American shamanism to Christianity to Buddhism.
I mean, I've done all that. And I don't think that has adversely affected me.
But I do have a question from the chat room that I'm going to take.
Tommy Cuk from the United Kingdom asks, How do you explain the kids who have it good all of their life that end up smoking and drinking and using drugs?
Well, I mean, you have to be careful with this stuff.
And please understand, I'm just an idiot on the internet with Google, so I have no expertise, no training or expertise in this area.
So take everything I say as not even close to factual.
It's just stuff that I've read and stuff I've got some evidence for, so I just want to put that out there.
But, you know, who knows what's going on in other people's households, right?
So you say, oh, this kid, you know, he has it good.
Well, how do you know?
You know, it takes a long time to get to really know somebody.
It takes a long time to open up those channels of communication to the point where you feel comfortable talking about maybe sensitive stuff that happened in your kid as a child and difficult stuff that happened when you were a kid.
So I think it's easy to look at the sort of the gossip girl characters and say, oh, they don't have a worry in the world and so on.
But it has been pretty conclusively shown That money beyond a certain minimal amount is not a big predictor of happiness.
It's something we all want, of course, and everybody thinks, oh, if I were on the lottery, I'd be over the moon.
But the facts are that it really doesn't last.
And so the happiness that we have as human beings comes from our relatedness.
It comes from our connectedness.
It comes from love.
It comes from passion towards a meaningful cause.
It comes from bettering the world.
It comes from making a difference that is positive in people's lives And that is not an easy thing to discern in somebody when you're just looking from the outside in.
Okay, so since we're back on the topic of children and households, one thing that I've noticed is that American culture promotes a certain ideal, especially in the media.
And I wanted your take on media influence on young people.
Because, for example, I was listening to a film reviewer.
I'm not sure if you're familiar with him.
with him he's on the bbc 5 live mark caramode no i don't know okay well he he he reviewed sex in the city too and he said that uh oh that's a brave man that's really it's a brave man anyway go on he did review sex in the city too and basically what he said about this film is that you have these stinky
and and and as he put it these stinkingly rich american consumerist pig dogs who who are these women who who you're supposed to sympathize with these these wealthy women and and he used one as an example um
This one woman is talking about how she doesn't get to see her husband enough because he works so much at this corporate job, and this man who's basically her servant in this hotel room can only see his wife once every three months because he can't afford a plane ticket, and somehow we're supposed to feel sorry for this, this as again as mark put it this stinkingly rich american consumerist pig dog and um and you know he said at that point he was ready to you know to sing oh comrades comment
because you know he uh he was disgusted by by the way that this is put out there and people are supposed to sympathize with this and understand this when and especially young people because i mean most of the people who are going to go see this are you know 16 17 18 19 year old girls uh or women and and you know they're supposed to look at this and say oh this is a good thing that there are these people who are ignorant and who don't understand how reality works
and who are just so filthy rich that one person quits their job and they don't even notice that they quit their job at I mean, what is your take on this media influence that is keeping people in that state of mind?
That's a very interesting question, and I'm just going to take a swing at it.
This is some thoughts that have been percolating for the last couple of weeks.
I haven't structured them very well, but I'll try and keep it brief.
You and I are obviously big fans of the free market, and we think that the free market is good.
But in its current state, the free market produces a lot of crap.
A lot of ridiculously expensive...
Junk. Like, who really needs a $6,000 Hermes or Prada bag?
Who needs $400 shoes?
I mean, that stuff is kind of ridiculous.
And it is kind of stupid.
Like, you know, you go to the mall, right?
Now that I'm a dad, we go to the mall because it's Canada and it's winter and you've got to get out of the house, right?
And my daughter's still too young for a lot of winter sports.
So you go to the mall, right?
You open the door to the department store.
What's the first thing you see?
Oh, you're asking me that question? Makeup, right?
Yeah, sure. It's the makeup counter.
It's the makeup counter.
And the mall just the other day said, makeup counter, big sign, makeup counter, be yourself.
Are you kidding me?
Are you kidding me? That's like having a gallery called Bare Walls.
I mean, anyway, there's a lot of stupid crap that gets produced, a lot of milking The teats of insecurity, right?
For profit. Make people feel that their skin needs to be flawless.
Make people feel that they need to be thinner.
You know, like, I remember my...
A woman I knew once was talking about some...
There was some cellulite commercial that...
Like, anti-cellulite cream that was plastered all over the city.
And it turned out that it was a 13-year-old gymnast.
That was who they had a picture of.
A 13-year-old gymnast!
I mean... Women, I guess, in their late 20s or 30s or whatever, they start worrying about cellulite, I guess, because they're just, I don't know, those dimples are the moon craters of ugliness, whatever, right?
But at least that's the way they're portrayed.
But now they're comparing themselves to a 13-year-old gymnast.
I mean, heaven's sakes, I mean, get real.
So the free market is great, but the free market is not a value-neutral system.
And my concern is that people are insecure And their insecurities are not just created, but also exacerbated by the market, which chisels in and says, you know, like, you got to have a six-pack abs.
That's what's called sexy.
I don't have six-pack abs.
We're working on our keg, right?
No, but I mean, that's...
Since when the hell did you need to see these ridiculous muscles?
I mean, this is ridiculous.
I mean, it's insane.
And yet this is what...
We feel is important.
You know, how do I look in a bathing suit?
Not how good a person I am, not what's a husband or friend or father or son.
How good a person am I? What am I contributing to the world?
It's do I have back fat?
This is sort of where things are.
Sorry? Feel free to confess.
I understand. I weigh 250 pounds.
I'm only 5'9". It's not good.
Well, yeah, I mean, there's obviously some health stuff around that.
I'm not saying, you know, let's eat ourselves into, you know, pure beanbag status.
But what I'm saying is that it's gone way beyond that which is healthy.
And so my concern is that the free market is a profit-seeking mechanism.
And I have no problem with profit.
I mean, if I don't profit in my eating, I starve to death.
So profit is life.
I'm happy with profit.
But it is a profit-seeking mechanism.
Like a river sort of coming down the side of a mountain, it will find whatever avenue it can to the fastest profit.
And my concern is that the media in particular, it's not just the media, but the media can find a lot of profit out of making people feel like crap about themselves and holding up these ridiculously impossible standards.
I remember once having a conversation with a guy in a bar and he was a friend of a friend and I mean this guy was like crazy good looking.
And he was a Calvin Klein model, like an underwear model, right?
And he said, yeah, I have to work out for, you know, three hours a day, and then before a photo shoot, I can't drink any water for two days.
I'm dying of thirst.
I'm freezing cold when I'm doing these photo shoots.
I feel about as horrible as a human being can feel, and that's how I have to look that good.
I mean, that's insane. We look at that in the billboard, and we sort of look down at our own little muffin tops, and we're like, holy crap, you know?
But this is his job.
This is his job. Right.
And so the profit-seeking mechanism is not always a good thing.
It is something that, you know, like water goes into cracks in a rock and widens those cracks and then eventually breaks the rock apart.
The water is just seeking its path down.
Well, the profit is just seeking, the money is just, the resources are just seeking their profit.
And a lot of times they do it by breaking up people's self-confidence and breaking up what is actually important in their lives and focusing them on bullshit trivia.
And my concern is that we don't have enough ammunition, particularly young people.
We don't have enough ammunition to fight back against that because we live in a ridiculously shallow culture.
And we live in a culture that avoids some pretty deep and essential questions and as a result we end up like bubbles on the surface of a little eddy in a lake.
We're just going round and round not getting anything achieved.
I mean, I'll be honest with you. I am guilty of going to Banana Republic and buying the $97 button-down shirt.
I'm not going to lie to you.
But I do not do it because I'm self-conscious.
I do it because when I go to a dinner, I want to look nice, you know?
So I am guilty of being the American consumerist pig dog.
No, no, but look, I personally, I mean, if you have 20 of them in your cupboard, that may be a little excessive.
I have a suit because...
You have ten? Ten of these $90 ships?
How many dinners are you going to, man?
Or you just wear them all at once?
You're coming in like the Michelin man, you know?
And I'll go out and I'll buy the khakis from Banana Republic and whatever.
But generally speaking, I don't really mind going to a local store like this C.H. Martin that we have down here and buying a $15 pair of jeans.
So I understand, but I don't allow that to consume my life.
I'm not taking the focus off of what is important because I bought a $97 shirt.
Right, right. And look, I mean, it's not about the price of something.
I mean, beyond a certain amount it is, right?
But I mean, a $97 shirt might last five times longer than a $50 shirt, right?
So to me, it's not around the price of stuff.
I mean, my personal thing is, you know, when clothing becomes impractical, like I can't eat in this shirt in case I get a spot on it.
I mean, that to me is when things have gotten kind of a little bit nutty.
I mean, because... Sorry, go ahead.
I... That's...
It's... How should I word this?
I don't go overboard.
I don't go out. And I had a girlfriend about two years ago.
I bought her a birthday gift, but I didn't buy her the $400 coach bag.
I bought her a nice blouse and conservative-looking skirt.
So, I mean, it was nice, but it was not overboard and she was happy with it.
Whereas if I was dating someone else who was from a different...
Who saw the ideal of, I want to have a buttocks like a 13-year-old girl, a 13-year-old gymnast, you know, she would have been happy with that.
She would have wanted the... I'm actually just going to splice that sentence out for your show, just so you know.
Which one? I want to have the buttocks of a 13-year-old gymnast.
Oh no, now you can do it to me, Dan.
Okay. Mutually assured destruction.
No, you can splice it out when you're on YouTube.
But I mean, I don't have any problem leaving it up as the archive.
I do not want to have a buttock to a 13-year-old girl.
That's not my goal.
But I do want to take some calls.
Sure. So you can call into our program.
The number is 716-608-3007.
And if you have the buttocks of a 13-year-old girl, please do say so.
Excuse me, gymnast.
Gymnast, yes, that's right.
I'm sorry, but the women with the craters and the looking at that and saying, this is what I want to have is completely absurd.
But it does things to you, right?
I mean, whether you like it or not, the inundation of images, it does things to your brain.
You have standards, right?
I mean, why is it that men are beginning to have dysmorphic body images to a large degree the same way that it's because?
I mean, there's so much more of these images that are floating around.
But sorry, let me interrupt the caller if we've got one coming in.
Okay, and caller, you're on Truth Transmission.
Welcome. Hello, Jake.
Good evening. Oh, Rocco, how are you?
Good to talk to you again.
Jake, you know, you misrepresented this guy.
I thought you said he was an anarchist.
This guy's not an anarchist.
He's right on time.
He's right on time.
I was getting ready to come in and argue with Baldy.
I said, okay, let me argue with Baldy.
This guy is right on fucking time.
Rocco. Everything is correct, you know?
Really. Well, thank you.
No, really, I'm serious.
I'm serious. Well, you're right on time with me because, especially, let's go back to the unemployment.
Let's go back to the unemployment.
I'm a member of a minority group.
I am not unemployed. I'm retired.
But when they say unemployment is at 9%, they forget about the 20% in minority neighborhoods.
Right. You know, you got that absolutely correct.
You guys were hitting on the class structure of this country, and of the world for that matter.
Absolutely correct on that.
You know, I'm surprised, really surprised when I hear conversations like this, because, well, I guess you just don't hear anybody touching on them even, touching on them in mainstream media.
You know, I guess it's up to us to figure it out.
Let me get to this point.
We're talking about the welfare state or the great society of Johnson.
I was raised in the 50s and 60s when it was still pretty much a Jim Crow segregated country.
That has changed somewhat.
Now the segregation has to do as it goes along class lines and race lines.
But when I was a kid, we had our own community.
We had our own businesses.
We had our own everything.
Suddenly, in the 80s, the 80s in particular, the scourge of crack cocaine hit America.
It destroyed America.
All those things, all those institutions that I grew up with.
It destroyed our families.
It destroyed our businesses.
It destroyed our forward progress.
I wonder if you got anything to say about that.
Well, you know, I would make this argument, my friend, and I really appreciate your kind words, thank you so much, but I would make this argument that it was not crack cocaine that destroyed the black communities, it was the war against drugs that destroyed the black communities.
Because if crack cocaine had been available in the same way that heroin was available in England after the Second World War, Then it would be a nickel to buy one.
And so there wouldn't be all these crazy profits in there.
And if there weren't all those crazy profits, then people wouldn't be drawn towards this drug culture.
It wouldn't have fundamentally...
Warped in many ways, I think, some of black culture in the inner cities, right, to the point where this sort of thuggery is elevated to some sort of ideal in many ways.
And please, heaven's sakes, don't let me tell you about the black experience, so don't let me go there.
No, no, no. Hey, look, look, if you're wrong, I'll correct you, but right now you're right on time on this.
Yeah, so the war on drugs has been, the two things have destroyed the black community.
You could say three, but I think it really comes down to two.
I mean, the welfare state, the education, education in black communities in the inner cities is unbelievably atrocious.
And combine all of that with the profits that can be made, artificial profits that can be made by artificially restricting certain things like drugs and prostitution and gambling and other things that creates this gangbanger style of idealization.
This has all just been completely catastrophic.
I mean, blacks were doing great after the Second World War, relative to how they'd been doing before.
Black poverty was coming down, black middle class was swelling.
You know, the cynic in me says, my friend, that governments didn't want the black man to achieve equality, and so began to help the black community.
And you all know what happens when the government comes to help.
Actually, you are absolutely, absolutely on time with that one, too.
Absolutely on time with that.
When they started to help us is when we took that downward spiral.
When they started to do things for us is when we took that downward spiral.
Right. Especially, of course, given black history in America, where you all had a lot of white people trying to help you out, you know, with religion and working conditions and living accommodations and all that, right?
I mean, that really was slavery, was the white man trying to help you out, you know, because blacks, according to the legend at the time, blacks needed the whites to help them out.
So it was just terrible to see that come back.
He was trying to Christianize us.
He Christianized us.
And unfortunately did a very good job, because the black community is still, I mean, I think significantly more Christian than some of the other communities, and I think that's a challenge as well.
So yeah, I have huge sympathy.
I mean, I think that black youth at the moment, oh my god, it's like the third world.
It's just catastrophic.
It is unbelievable.
It is a waste. It is a wasteland.
But it's wasted potential.
You know, I think the only time I've ever agreed with Rupert Murdoch, and we all know who he is, the only time I've ever agreed with Rupert Murdoch, he made a statement one time.
He said, it is pitiful the waste of resources in the black community in America.
Pitiful. You know?
I feel every...
I thought there was a great scene in the movie Malcolm X with Denzel Washington where there was this guy who was running all of the booking numbers, right?
And he was an incredible genius with numbers.
And he was like, in another world, he'd have a PhD in economics or mathematics, but this is where he ends up, right?
Man, most of the guys I grew up with, the ones that went to prison, some of them died in prison.
They weren't stupid people.
They were not stupid people.
Had they taken another road, they would have been on their way.
They did not take that other road.
It wasn't about intellect.
It wasn't about intellect.
I think all of the amazing things we could have— I mean, it could be any community, but in particular, if the black community in the United States did not have all of this messed up stuff, keeping them down, I think of all of the amazing things that we could have.
I mean, we could have a cure for cancer.
We could have anti-gravity boots.
We could have jetpacks.
I mean, the amount of intelligence.
Entrepreneurial energy that is locked up and trapped in this underworld of the black community in certain sections of the U.S. It's just, it's absolutely heartbreaking.
Hey, Rocco, let me... So now, wait, I'm going to get off in a second.
So, what we give you is like rap music and funny green suits, okay?
Thanks a lot for talking to me.
Jake, thanks a lot.
Keep on going, man.
Keep on going. Love the program tonight.
Thanks. Nice to talk to you.
All right. Thank you, Rocco, and hopefully we'll hear from you next week as well.
Yeah, sure. Bye-bye.
Thanks, man. So, yeah, Rocco is one of our better callers, I have to say.
He always has great questions for you.
And actually, I have another caller I already have lined up.
He wants to talk about that Vermont Healthcare I was telling you about earlier.
But back to the – you were talking about the – you know, that we could have a cure for cancer.
I have heard certain arguments among people who are involved in holistic medicine that – That there is actually a cure for cancer in the South American jungle-type area, but that drug companies are keeping it down, or the government is keeping it down, and the FCC doesn't want to approve it because of the immense amount of profit that the rich make off of the sick and the dying.
Yeah, I mean, I've heard those kinds of things.
It's the electric car argument, right?
I honestly, I don't have any expertise to know whether that's true or not.
So it's certainly, it's economically conceivable, but it sounds like a pretty intense operation.
And I mean, that would be some extremely heartless people at the center of that kind of stuff.
So yeah, I mean, if any evidence comes out, I certainly would be happy to look at it, but I don't have any knowledge of that in depth.
Okay, and Kohl, you're on the air.
Yeah, hi Stefan.
Hi. Yeah, I'm not sure if you know about the Vermont Healthcare that's going on right now.
Is this where they are making the doctors take the Medicare patients?
It's a huge plan right now.
They're taking their own initiative, opposed to Obamacare.
It's called a single payer system.
You can have a payroll tax.
So, what's going to happen in Vermont, they're going to get rid of the, you know, private healthcare system.
You're basically going to have to, you'll be forced to go into the government system.
And this is one example.
2016, they're going to start taxing, you know, they call them high-tier taxed, high-tier healthcare plans.
You're going to, say if you have a family plan in Vermont, You have to pay 40% extra off your healthcare plan to the state of Vermont.
And what they're trying to do is they're trying to phase it over so that everyone buys into the government system.
Right. And if you don't know a whole lot about it, it's kind of, I guess, pointless asking about it.
No, listen. I mean, I live in a socialized healthcare system.
And, I mean, I live in Canada.
And I live in one of the socialized healthcare systems.
I mean, in many other healthcare systems that a government run, you have some private options.
And here, it's almost completely impossible, if not illegal, to attempt to arrange your own healthcare or to opt out of the system.
So, no, I understand.
I understand. And it is...
You know, I had a guy, a Canadian expert on the show, I think a year or so, a year and a half ago.
And his basic argument was, look, access to a waiting list is not access to healthcare.
Access to a waiting list is not access to healthcare.
It is only the illusion of access to healthcare.
And all that happens, of course, when you increase demand is you create waiting lists, you create shortages.
And so whenever you can, whenever you, if you legislate too low the price of something, all that you do is create shortages of it, right?
So if they're going to reduce the price of healthcare, and they're going to try and do this through legislative fear, through violence, then you will simply end up with shortages.
And shortages are catastrophic for the poor.
They say that this healthcare is supposed to help the poor, right?
It's because the poor can't afford healthcare, and so you need to have all of these people have access to this kind of healthcare.
But it's nonsense, because generally what happens is you end up with a healthcare system where it's not, it's who you know.
That gets you in there. And it's not like the poor have a lot of contacts and help from doctors.
I mean, it's not that doctors are bad.
I think doctors are great people for the most part, but it is not good.
I mean, do you think that Barack Obama has to go to emerge?
Do you think that the political elite have to wait in line like everyone else?
No, they have their own gold-plated healthcare system.
Yeah, they have their own plan.
And what you're talking about, though, with Medicare and Medicaid before...
I was talking before with someone else.
You know the Mayo Clinic in the United States?
Yeah. They, in 2009, they lost, was it $840 million by taking Medicare patients?
Sure. So the government, you know, they set the rates and they're just too low.
The payout's too low and they lose money off of it.
So what happens is the hospitals, they see less than Medicare patients the next year.
And so what the government is trying to do, at least in Vermont, they're going to have to force them to see all Medicare and Medicaid patients.
It's going to be a huge mess, to tell you the truth.
When you fix a fixed rate for a service and it's not paying out, you're paying out to the government.
Yeah, I mean, look, and doctors are responding entirely rationally to this.
There was an article in the New York Times recently, last month, I can't remember the name of the article, but basically it was saying, look, we used to have doctors that worked 60, 70, 80 hours a week or more, particularly rural doctors, and now we have doctors who they don't want to do that.
Because they want to get a 9 to 5 job and they want to have some kind of family life and they want to have some kind of balance.
If you're going to restrict what doctors make, if you're going to restrict what they can have in terms of income, then there's a couple of things that are going to happen.
Doctors are just going to work fewer hours and this happens up here in Canada.
There's a billing cycle in Canada and you can't find a doctor on particular weeks before that billing cycle ends because they've already billed too much so they just take a vacation.
And so fewer people, they'll just work fewer hours.
So you're going to have an increased demand at the same time as you're going to have fewer hours.
Well, what's that going to produce? It's going to produce massive waiting lists for people who probably can't afford to wait.
Because when you're sick, it's not like take a number.
It's like you're in a deli and you can cool your heels playing Angry Birds for 20 minutes, right?
So yeah, it's going to have all these horribly predictable results.
And also, people who are interested in becoming doctors are going to look at the profession, and the more intelligent they are, the more research they're going to do into what it's actually like to be a doctor, and they're going to say, well, is this a good idea?
They're not going to become doctors. No, they're not going to become doctors.
They're going to become lawyers and politicians and other kinds of people, right?
Of course. My dad is actually, you know, my dad's a doctor, and...
Now, he went, you know, he went through medical school for all his years.
He had a huge debt. So, you know, he went to the Air Force for years and years working off that debt.
And it's kind of, he actually, you know, at first I think he was telling my brothers and I, you know, get medical profession.
I think now it's a good thing we didn't go into it.
He's kind of, you know, warning the tides have been turning the last, you know, 20 years or so.
Oh, yeah, and of course, you've got this massive overhead of malpractice and all that, because it's all unrestrained.
It's all not in the free market, and so it just gets worse and worse.
Adam, I've got to cut you off there for a minute.
I've got to take a long-distance caller here.
Caller, you're right in the air. Sounds good.
Talk to you. Yeah, hi, Stefan.
It's Kevin here. I'm actually phoning from sunny Brixton.
Well, it's quite late here, actually.
I'm going to change topics slightly.
I was wondering, because...
You know, living in England here, people have some...
I'm not actually English, I'm Canadian, but I'm living over here.
But people have some very strange views, at least from the way I was raised around gun rights.
And I wonder if you think there's an anarchist that gun rights are critical.
I know in the States they're kind of lucky to have their First Amendment.
And I see that as being maybe perhaps one of the best blockers to government full takeover of their society.
But we don't have it over here. I wonder if you think that's important or...
Because we believe in nonviolence that it's not really necessary to have gun rights or maybe your views on that.
Yeah, I haven't shot a gun in probably 30 years.
Oh my god, you're privileged, Stefan.
God, you need to go out of the range with me when you come to New York.
The last time I shot a gun was hunting in Africa when I was in my teens.
That's the last time that I shot a gun.
I don't particularly like guns.
I don't think that...
I mean, I know that they prevent crimes.
I know there's lots of good stats about them.
I think there are other ways that you can work to prevent crimes, like choice of neighborhoods and choice of what you do.
And there's other ways to reduce crime.
But the basic reality is that if somebody wants to own a gun, if somebody wants to have a gun, they are not initiating the use of force.
As long as they don't steal it, right?
So, it comes down to just basic principles.
The basic principles are so simple that it just blows away so much of the confusion.
I don't mean you, but people have as a whole.
Like, well, should we do this with guns?
Should we restrict them? It's like, no!
If you go out and you buy a gun and you put it in your drawer at home, you have not initiated the use of violence against anyone.
And until you do use that gun to initiate the use of violence against anyone, It's none of my damn business whether you have a gun or not.
It is none of my business.
Now, I may want to live in a neighborhood where there are no guns.
I may want that if I really, really don't like them.
Well, no problem. In a free society, if there's enough of a demand for people to not have guns in the neighborhood, then some guy is going to come and buy 100 acres and build a whole development called Gun Free City.
And he's going to not sell you the house.
He's going to lease you the house for 99 years on the condition that you never have a gun in the house.
And the moment you have a gun in the house, you lose your lease and you've got to move.
And that's perfectly legal, perfectly moral, no initiation of force or fraud in that.
And then someone can go live in a gun-free society if they want.
And then every criminal in the world is going to want to go to that.
He's going to want to go to that, you know, whatever.
So they'll have to have guns around it, not in it or whatever, right?
But the reality is there's no initiation of force in owning a gun, so it's nobody's business.
We only have about four minutes left, so just go ahead and give your phone.
Well, I'll let you go then, but thanks for that.
Cheers. A really great answer.
Thank you. Alright, well thanks for calling in.
And Stefan, I think I'm going to have to end the show here because I don't really have time to take another call.
Any final thoughts from you? No, look, I really appreciate it.
You have great callers.
I really, really wanted to the elderly guy, the retiree who called in.
Rocco was his name? Yes, Rocco.
Yeah, he gave me enthusiasm goosebumps, which is a really nice feeling.
I've got to tell you something about Rocco.
Rocco calls in in almost every program that I have, and he's always in the room, and he's very encouraging.
I've talked to him outside of our program here.
He's a very intelligent guy.
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