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April 24, 2011 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:52:12

1895 Freedomain Radio Sunday Show 17 April 2011

Stefan Molyneux answers a number of questions from Facebook listeners, the historical reality of child labor, dissects the horrors of the suburbs, and how long will the recession last?

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	All right. Well, hi, everybody.
	It is the 24th of April, 2011, just after 2 p.m.
	I hope you're doing wonderfully, having a great, great long weekend.
	And I guess I'll start with – there's a Facebook application, apparently, which allows people to ask me questions, and I have been receiving quite a ton of them.
	And let's see here.
	So someone named Bonita – La Isla Bonita, I think, as Madonna sang, asked you a question.
	Who, in your opinion, is the enemy?
	And I think I used to think more in those terms than I do now.
	I'm not sure that I would say that any particular individual is an enemy.
	I would focus on those who have ideas in their head, who claim rationality and empiricism, and then when rationality and empiricism goes against those ideas, they simply do an ex post facto justification for their existing beliefs.
	So people who say, I believe in God because of reason X, Y, and Z, and those reasons X, Y, and Z are proven false, and then they back off to maintain their faith while rejecting things, and this can happen to all of us, right?
	I mean, we all have confirmation bias, we all have ways in which we want to be right, and we reject information that goes counter to our preferred perspectives, and so I think that the I think that the enemy is the rejection of reason and evidence, while claiming reason and evidence is the basis for your beliefs.
	I mean, somebody who rejects reason and evidence up front, you don't worry about getting into debates with.
	But people who claim reason and evidence and who then reject reason and evidence that goes against their beliefs, I think that's – really that perspective is an enemy.
	All right. Let's see here.
	A fellow named Keith asked, do you need God?
	I think that's a great question.
	And for those of us who are atheists, particularly strong atheists, the answer, of course, seems obvious, but I think it's important to look at this perspective.
	The idea of goodness...
	Philosophically is virtue, obviously.
	And the question that needs to be asked about the relationship between virtue and religion is this.
	Are religious edicts or religious moral rules, are they good because they conform to some external standard of goodness or are they good simply because they're stated, right?
	So is Thou shalt not kill.
	Is that true or a valid moral rule because it is written in the Bible or because it conforms to some moral standard that is external?
	To the Bible? And that really is a very, very powerful and very, very fundamental question.
	And I would argue that people who say that it's simply good because it's written in the Bible, of course, have enormous numbers of problems reconciling contradictory beliefs and so on.
	But then they're saying that goodness is what is written in the Bible.
	And that, of course, is hugely problematic, not only because there's Numerous versions of the Bible, but there are numerous holy texts around the world, so it gets very complicated very quickly to take that perspective.
	But if somebody says, well, thou shalt not kill is good because there's some external standard, and of course, if by kill we mean murder, then I think UPB validates that as a moral prescription.
	Then it is not religiosity that makes thou shalt not kill good, but it's conformity to some external standard of morality.
	And so I don't think you can claim that something is good because it's written in the Bible, because there's lots of stuff that's written in the Bible that's pretty heinous.
	And you have to say that there's some external standard of morality, in which case the Bible...
	It's sort of like the wrapping around a present.
	It's not the present itself and it conforms to the shape of that which it covers.
	In other words, the morally justified aspects of the Bible, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, and so on, are moral because they conform to this external standard.
	So we should really, in a sense, not confuse the wrapping for the box.
	And so we should open the box called the moral standard and forget about that which conforms to it.
	Look at the thing itself, morality itself.
	So I think that's another great question and that would be my response to that.
	Somebody else has asked, Steve has asked, would you like to see the government taxing the rich rather than the poor?
	No. I would rather that taxation not be part of society's ways of dealing with social problems because it doesn't deal with social problems and it creates huge problems in society.
	See, I mean, democracy can only fundamentally work if It is, if you give more to the people, then you tax from them.
	And this means sort of as a whole, right?
	So, for instance, if you are earning minimum wage, let's just say you're earning some amount at McDonald's, and then some demagogue comes along and says, well, we need to tax the corporations, and then you'll do a lot better.
	And they're not allowed ever to print money or to deficit finance.
	Well, then what's going to happen? They're going to raise the corporate taxes on McDonald's and that's going to result in some loss of benefits or wage opportunities or raises or whatever for you.
	Because if the government can't print money or borrow money, then it is simply moving around money from one section of the population to the other with its own considerable overhead in the transfer, right? So... It's sort of like two people each have a bank account of – let's say one person has a bank account of $1,000.
	Another one has a bank account of $100.
	And the guy sends $100.
	So he's got $900, sends it to the guy with $100.
	So he has $200. But Western Union takes its couple of percentage points cut.
	Well, they have ended up with less money between them, right?
	So if the Western Union takes 5% of the 100, they now, instead of having 1100, they now have, I guess, 1095 or whatever between them.
	Now, of course, the government takes far more than 5% cut.
	I've heard estimates that the bureaucratic overhead for something like the welfare state is upwards of 70, 80 or more percent.
	And so it would very quickly be revealed in a status society that couldn't print money or borrow that the redistribution of wealth was a net loss to society as a whole.
	And it would very quickly be revealed that the poor would not benefit.
	So the only way that this kind of bribery works – and it is very openly talked about.
	There's a Maclean magazine sitting downstairs here because there's an election coming up in Canada.
	And they actually talk about the election promises.
	What is being promised to your family?
	What benefits are you going to get?
	What bribes are you going to receive for your votes?
	And that is pretty open and pretty naked.
	People who, I can't remember the ratio exactly, but people who in the post-war period when government debt was beginning to really climb, received several dollars in benefits for every dollar they paid in taxes.
	And the only way, of course, that can be sustained is if the government is borrowing or printing money.
	And so it's just a bad idea overall.
	A taxation is not wealth redistribution.
	It is using the productivity of future workers to use as collateral to borrow money to bribe people in the present and deferring an increased bill into the future.
	There's no way to get around that.
	And so I would definitely be careful about that kind of stuff.
	I mean, this is, again, all of this is predicated on ignoring the basic fact that taxation is the initiation of force.
	So I really wanted to sort of point that out.
	Nicholas has asked me, is there a god?
	And... Again, this is all in the definitions.
	And this is the trick with philosophy at all times.
	This is all about the definitions.
	And so I certainly would say that given the commonly understood definition of a deity, I would of course have to say that there is no God.
	There is no God. And so I've got lots of arguments about that.
	You can check out my free book, Against the Gods, available at freedominradio.com forward slash free.
	But no, I would have to accept the non-existence of God.
	Aaron has asked me, should Barack Obama be required to disclose his original birth certificate?
	Well, I have read a little bit about the birth of controversy.
	I'm certainly no expert on it, but for those who may not know about it, the question arises whether Barack Obama was born in Hawaii or some other place.
	And of course, if he wasn't born in Hawaii, then he's ineligible.
	Four... The presidency because you have to be a native-born American citizen to be eligible for the presidency, which is why we don't have the presidential terminator yet.
	And no, I think it's, you know, whether he's born here or born there, the presidential powers that he has are unjust from a moral standpoint.
	And so to me, whether there's a piece of paper from one piece of earth or another piece of earth, I don't think it really matters as far as the basic ethics go.
	So I don't think it's a… Hello?
	Yes, hello. Hi, Steph.
	How are you? I'm well, thank you.
	How are you? I'm great.
	My name is David.
	I've been just starting to listen to you.
	I had a few questions, if I can ask.
	Please. Well, I go to a college nearby my house and I'm studying philosophy, and I'm going to like a philosophy club, and I know it's kind of,
	you know, the teacher there is, I think he, you know, like how you think all teachers are, you know, like they're more liberal, socialist, you know, and, you know, he even openly admitted to being a utilitarian, I mean, yeah, utilitarian.
	But the thing is, what I wanted to ask, we're about to have a symposium, and the topic is the greater good versus self-determination, and I wanted to know, I mean, I wanted to see, you know, how would you approach this topic, and, you know,
	just, yeah, just give me your, if you can give me your opinion on it, because the thing is, We were discussing it and, you know, they were kind of putting greater good that we need both because greater good, you know, they were kind of saying that greater good could be, you know, a morality, you know, kind of...
	I was thinking about the non-aggression principle, you know, and I don't know if that can be a greater good or if that's just the good or something.
	Right, right.
	Okay, so the question is sort of self-determination or...
	Making your own decisions about your life versus deferring something that is of net benefit to you for the sake of a greater good.
	Is that right? Yeah.
	More so, yeah. All right.
	I will give you my thoughts on this and then you can tell me if they make any sense.
	One of the problems I have with a lot of philosophy, and this doesn't mean that there's any problem with it, it just means that I have a problem with it, which may mean nothing at all, is that it deals with abstractions first.
	First and foremost.
	And so there's an abstraction like the greater good.
	And there's an abstraction like individual autonomy and so on.
	And so to me it's like trying to build a machine out of fog.
	You can kind of pretend whatever you want.
	And so I generally prefer when talking about things like individual autonomy versus the greater good...
	I prefer to start with things that are tangible, things that are physical, things that aren't abstract, in the same way that I think most scientists or most engineers will prefer to start with something tangible and then work something out from there, or at least test a theory with tangibility.
	The empiricism of the scientific method, the empiricism of, say, prices and supply and demand in the free market are, I believe, the greatest geniuses of those systems of thought.
	You have to have a system of thought that has some empirical test, that has some rational test.
	And so one problem I have is that people talk about the social contract and the greater good and the collective and the individual and they don't have any empirical test.
	They don't have any way in which these abstract things actually touch on reality.
	So what I mean by that is...
	Let's forget for a moment about something called the greater good, whatever that might mean.
	And let's look at something that's tangible and something that's tangible and physical and measurable and testable and hits us in a visceral way.
	So everybody – well, most people have two kidneys and there are people who need kidneys.
	And certainly if you just look at it from a utilitarian standpoint, you could make a very strong argument – That a man loses less by going down one kidney than another man gains by getting a kidney if he needs one.
	So if you have to give – let's say your brother loses his kidneys in some accident and he needs a kidney and you go into hospital and you give him a kidney.
	Well, your life becomes – 10% worse, but his life is like 100% better or at least 80% better or whatever.
	And so from that standpoint, there is a quote greater good from a utilitarian standpoint by making people give up a kidney for those who need a kidney.
	You could make a practical utilitarian argument for all of that.
	Now, we understand that there's something pretty repugnant about forcing someone to have a kidney extracted from their abdomen in order to give it to someone else.
	We kind of get at a visceral level that there's really something wrong about that.
	But a kidney and your body is, of course, the basis for property, property rights.
	And so we understand that we can't have a moral system that justifies drugging people and cutting open their kidneys and there are these urban – I don't know if they're urban myths or whatever, right?
	Like the people who just sort of wake up in a toilet with – they've had a kidney removed and some – they get drunk or whatever.
	And so, I don't like to think about things like the collective good and the individual, because I don't know what any of that stuff fundamentally means.
	And it can be used as a cover to justify mostly anything.
	And I also fail to see the fundamental difference between an organ and time.
	And what I mean by that is if you have worked very hard to get a good job, to get a good education, to make some money, to provide for your family and you've saved and you've scrimped and so on, well, that is an investment of time.
	And I can't – and what you have, the money that you have as a result of that is the result of your time investment.
	And I'm not sure I fundamentally understand the difference between a kidney and time – So when people say, well, let's tax the well-off to pay for the less well-off, I don't fundamentally see how that's different from, let's take an extra kidney from people who can live with one less and give it to people who really need one.
	And not only do we not like that as a society, we won't even let people be paid to give up a kidney.
	And that's something that is really, really important.
	And so money, to me, is...
	An extension of your property rights.
	A kidney is an extension of your property rights.
	You can live with one less kidney and you can live with 50% taxation.
	But I think that those two property rights – I mean I understand that there's a little bit of a difference between something that's inside your body and something that's in a bank account.
	But the fundamental principle of property remains the same for both.
	So, again, I would really say let's break it down to something that is much more tangible.
	Of course, people can live with one eye and there are other people who need an eye.
	Should we force people to give up an eye or whatever?
	You can sort of go through the list of what people are able to live without and what other people desperately need.
	And we understand that at a physical level, we would never accept that as a good moral argument.
	So... Yeah, so the collective good and all of that, I should say just break it down to something physical.
	And if you can't justify a kidney or an eyeball, then you have to explain why...
	That property is sacred and other property which you have worked to create is – it's moral to violate someone's property rights for the money that they've worked hard to earn but it's completely immoral to violate their property rights with a kidney that they actually really haven't done anything to earn.
	They were just sort of born with them.
	So that would sort of be my approach and I hope that that has some utility to you.
	Yeah, I guess I will look at it that way, if it just affects the individual instead of...
	Could I ask one more thing?
	We were talking about it in the chat earlier.
	Another thing I was...
	I had a conversation with the teacher I told you about, and I was telling him, you know, these things, you know, about your ideas, and one thing he kind of attacked me with is, you know, it was an argument from effect, obviously, but he was saying, you know, like, you know, there would be child labor, you know, in a...
	You know, the corporations in a free society, you know, that they would have child labor and, you know, you're saying that it was a bad thing.
	But, you know, like I've heard on some of your other podcasts, and I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but I mean, I think from what you've said that, you know, some kids, it's okay, you know, if they want to work, then they should be able to work,
	you know. You know, that there's been, like, astronomers, like 12-year-old astronomers, you know, and, you know, that kids aren't able to, you know, do what they choose to do because, you know, of the government.
	Yeah. No, I think that's – and that's an objection that you hear a lot and I understand it's a very powerful objection at an emotional level because we think back to these satanic mills, the Dickensian children, the sort of one-toothed, scurvy-faced guys who are like forcing them to climb up chimneys and so on.
	And that is the idea that where there was a free market, children were – We're exploited and children were sent to work in the mines and so on.
	And this is to a large degree true, that in the 17th and early 18th century, Children were used as laborers, no question.
	And this goes all the way back to ancient times.
	Child labor – see, this is interesting.
	Child labor was not invented by the Industrial Revolution.
	Child labor was largely eliminated by the Industrial Revolution.
	Some people have this idea that in the Middle Ages, children – I don't know, like they skipped around and played hula hoops in the fields and didn't have to work.
	And this, of course, wasn't the case at all.
	Child labor has been a foundational and essential aspect of rural agriculture since the dawn of time.
	And children went to work at extraordinarily early ages when they were children.
	Shortly after they were born.
	And so child labor ended during the Industrial Revolution.
	I mean, more or less, give or take, and so on.
	And the reason that it ended was because most parents don't want their children to go working in a mine or go up chimneys or whatever.
	And so with the Industrial Revolution, you had – the statistics vary, but in general, you had a doubling of household income in 50 to 60 years.
	And as soon as parents could survive without the children laboring… Then that's what they did.
	They took their kids out of work and they put them in school or whatever.
	And of course employers would rather have adults than children because children get distracted.
	They have to pee a lot. They have all of these problems as workers because of the immaturity of their minds and their bodies.
	And so... It's interesting how the economic movement that ended child labor in the West is blamed for child labor.
	I mean, that really is astounding.
	It's like you've got some illness that is cured by nobody for like a decade and then you go to some doctor and he cures you of that illness and people think that He was responsible for that illness, as if you didn't have it before and as if he wasn't the one who cured it.
	So I think that's important.
	Now, child labor, though, is a very interesting concept.
	And I would argue that there are two ways in which child labor has continued in ways that people don't see.
	We don't see it because of the propaganda.
	But putting children to work for profit Against their will and against the will of the parents is obviously horrendous.
	But if you look at public school education, it's hard to see how this doesn't at least to some degree fall into the category of child exploitation.
	Because children are put in rows and have to work.
	And the educational system, the state educational system, profits from those children being there against their will and against the will of the parents.
	And I don't mean that no parents want their children to be educated.
	I simply mean that because of property taxes and for the most part compulsory attendance laws, the parents aren't paying voluntarily and the children aren't in school voluntarily.
	So is this not a form of child labor that you're profiting from enclosing and putting children to work for money, for profit?
	So I think that's one way in which you could look at child labor.
	The second thing that I think is really important to understand when it comes to child labor is that national debts are only possible Because of the future productivity of children.
	So if the government is selling a 20-year bond or a 10-year bond or a 30-year bond, sometimes I think you even have 40-year bonds, those bonds will only be sold because the future productivity of children is going to be used to pay off the interest or perhaps the principal or whatever.
	So if you have...
	A 20-year bond, then you're only able to sell a 20-year bond because there's some 10-year-old who's going to be paying taxes when they're 30.
	So you're actually selling off the future of children when you're selling international debts and so on.
	And the same thing is true to some degree for fiat currency, that its future value is assured through taxation, not through any intrinsic value.
	It's just paper, right? So as far as child labor goes, profiting off the involuntary labor of children, in the present, that would be public schools, and in the future, that would be national debts.
	So I don't really think that the existing system has solved the problem of child labor for profit.
	I think it has just hidden and obscured it.
	So that would be my argument.
	Well, another thing that they mention is like...
	You know, like, this kind of happens.
	I think that doesn't only happen to me, but it happens to everybody.
	But they were, you know, doing this argument against child labor, and they were telling me that, you know, I was trying to make an argument.
	You know, I stuttered like, I didn't know at the time, you know.
	Like, you know, when you come up with an argument like, you know, three days after the argument happened, you know, and you're just like, God damn, I wish I could have said that then, you know.
	Oh, yeah. No, I have that.
	And, of course, one of the reasons that I'm somewhat fluent in arguments at the present is not because of any particular smartness and rapidity.
	It's just because I've had so many of these before that I've got a big bin full of responses.
	Yeah. Oh, yeah.
	It's a matter of experience.
	But yeah, they were telling me, you know, if I'm so against child labor, then why am I wearing stuff made in China?
	But then again, I forgot.
	I was thinking about how you can say you split the argument against them, and they're doing the same thing as well.
	But then again, if they're arguing against, then aren't...
	I don't know.
	I kind of reached confusion there.
	Yeah, I think it's tough to say, well, we're equally hypocritical and think that you've won a moral argument.
	I think that doesn't elevate things particularly well.
	I think as far as child labor goes, look, there's wretched stuff that happens in China.
	There's wretched stuff that happens in other sort of sweatshops around the world.
	And I think a lot of children have some pretty miserable lives that way.
	I remember when I was – I went to Morocco and For Y2K. Because, you know, I figure it's better to be in a foreign country where I don't speak the language if everything goes to hell.
	And I took a tour of a carpet factory and, yeah, there were children working there, weaving together these rugs.
	It was heartbreaking. I mean, I took almost all the money I had on me and gave it to the kids because they felt terrible about what it is that they had to experience.
	And that was...
	That's a terrible, terrible situation.
	But the question is, what is the alternative?
	Infanticide has been such a common feature of societies throughout the world, and it still is a common feature in some societies, particularly female infanticide in China, because of the one-child policy and particularly in rural communities.
	The girls are less strong and they're not considered to be able to take care of their parents in old age and so there's a lot of infanticide and the gender ratios.
	Lloyd DeMoss has done some work on this which you can look up at psychohistory.com.
	Gender ratios indicate that one of the biggest holocausts in history has been infanticide particularly.
	Of girls, because we all know that it's more or less 50-50, but where you have societies where there's a 5% discrepancy, 55 boys, 45 girls or more, you have a pretty sure indicator that there's been massive amounts of infanticide.
	And there's the infanticide, of course, that's parental, and there's an infanticide that is simply because of circumstances.
	There's just not enough food.
	I think most people would rather work than die, even if they're children.
	And it's horrible that a society is in that kind of situation, but that occurs because of statism.
	That occurs because the free market is not allowed to operate because of the initiation of force or a lack of protection for property or contract rights and so on.
	So yeah, it's awful.
	It's awful, but... My sort of question is, okay, so let's say that we don't accept any labor from children.
	We never buy anything that was made by children.
	What do people think is going to happen to those kids?
	I mean, it's like, oh, okay, well, go play then.
	No, that's not the reality of what happens to their kids.
	Most parents, I believe, want their children to get educated.
	They want their children to have good and happy and relaxed and fun childhoods.
	And so it is an economic necessity that no amount of boycotting or ostracism is going to just wave away.
	So I would sort of mention that as well.
	It is a deep tragedy, and the best way to eliminate child labor is to free the marketplace, is to free up the marketplace.
	So that would be my suggestion.
	Well, another thing I was thinking about, because it's like another argument for the...
	Like, how you say, you know, if you don't like this, then, you know, that's going to be offered, you know, in a free society.
	You know, if there's this huge incentive, you know, to not have, you know, like, say, child labor, then, you know, that's how it's going to be in a free society because companies won't benefit, you know, like, you know, if people know that they have child labor, then they might not support it, you know, or bad child labor, you know. Yeah, yeah.
	Look, people say, well, you need to have laws against child labor.
	Okay, fine. So what that means is that a significant majority of people don't want there to be working children.
	And if that's the case, then that is the case.
	Then the majority of people don't want to have working children, which means that if in a democratic society the majority has voted for these laws – If voted for these laws, then we know that in that society, the vast majority or significant majority of people don't want it.
	And so they'd be willing to help out parents to say, oh, you know, if you're so poor that your kid has to work, then, you know, here's some charity, here's some help, here's some alternatives.
	I think that's wonderful. But, you know, I guess, you know, I've always sort of said I got my first job when I was 11 or 12, but I actually was thinking about this the other day.
	And, you know, the first thing that I did for money was in 1977.
	I was 10 years old.
	And I don't know where my mother got this, but she got some contract or some relationship where – because it was the silver jubilee for Queen Elizabeth II.
	She'd been in power for 25 years, I guess 1952 to 1977.
	And we painted these little plaques of the crests and, you know, all of that sort of stuff, which I guess were then sold in stores or whatever as souvenirs.
	And I don't think it was a big – I don't think it was a big problem.
	I don't feel particularly traumatized by that.
	You know, I can paint a picture or I can paint this pretty cool logo or whatever.
	So, you know, I don't think it's the end of the world.
	And I don't think it's a huge problem.
	And I certainly appreciated some of the money that I made from that and used it to buy all kinds of things that weren't good for me.
	So, yeah, look, I agree.
	And in an ideal society...
	We don't want child labor, and the best way to achieve that is—everybody wants this shortcut, right?
	Everybody wants this shortcut. But the best way to achieve that is to free up the market so that wealth is generated as quickly as possible, which allows parents to not require their children to work.
	That is the best way, and that's the permanent and sustainable way.
	There's no magic solution called ban it, and the kids all go to great schools and play all day.
	That's just not what happens. So I hope that helps.
	Yeah, that's about it.
	Just one last question about this.
	Does this get recorded so that I can hold it for a future, or is it just a stream?
	Oh, it's recorded, baby.
	In fact, it's going to be, let me just tell you, just in case you want to reference it in the future, it's going to be show 1895.
	Okay, 1895.
	Yeah, so you can check this out.
	All right. And, you know, sorry, just to mention, you know, I mean, I commend your teacher for his concern about children working.
	I think that's great.
	You know, I think we should be concerned about these sorts of things.
	I think we do want to have a society where children don't have to work.
	It's really just a matter of how to get there.
	Well, I guess the correct way is just saying not work against their will.
	But I think if they, you know, they really, really want to work, then, I mean, well...
	I guess their choice is if they're able to make that choice, I guess.
	Yeah. There's a guy who spoke at Mises once who I think runs one of the biggest restaurants or fish markets or something.
	I can't remember his name. And he talks about when he was in boarding school.
	I think it was boarding school. They went on a day trip.
	And he was young.
	He was a kid, right? I don't know, eight or nine years old.
	But he was entrepreneurial. And so what he did was he I think it was getting sick in the bus.
	And unfortunately, they may have eaten something bad.
	I'm really paraphrasing the story, so I apologize if I've got parts of it wrong, but it's something like this.
	So apparently they ate something really bad, and so everyone got sick on the bus ride on the way home.
	And so his insurance...
	Was busted, right?
	Because he'd taken, I don't know, five pennies from everyone and offered to pay them a quarter if they got sick and he didn't have enough to pay everyone.
	And so I think he got beaten up.
	And so he talks about that this was his first exposure to the negative risks of entrepreneurial activities and he never forgot it and so on.
	I don't know. What does that mean?
	When I was a kid, we used to trade stuff all the time.
	So it was sort of a barter economy of toys for candy, for sometimes a little bit of money or whatever.
	So it's – why not?
	I ran a paper route for a couple of years when I was in my early teens, 11, 12, 13.
	It was kind of necessary.
	The fact that my brother and I are kind of running the household from 15 onwards, we really needed to be able to work.
	So, I don't like the idea that these opportunities would not be available, but anyway, so I just sort of wanted to pass out some personal experience about that.
	Great questions, though.
	Thank you. Thank you so much.
	Yeah, thanks for all you're doing, and thanks for the help.
	I really appreciate that.
	Thank you. I can read some questions from the chat room, or if people have questions that they wanted to bring up, I think it's better to do it live.
	I can do the other questions in a solar show.
	Hello? Hello.
	Hi, Steph. Hi.
	My name is Angela. I wrote the thread about a month ago about suburbia rage.
	Do you remember that one? I do.
	I do. I thought it was a very interesting thread.
	Yeah, a lot of people seem to think they'd like to hear about it, so I thought I'd call in and see if you had any thoughts.
	Well, if you just wanted, because obviously some people haven't read the thread, if you just wanted to maybe go over some of the basic ideas behind the thread, I thought that would be a worthwhile place to start.
	Sure. Do you want me to read exactly what I wrote or just kind of say what I said?
	It's completely up to you, whatever you like.
	Okay, well, basically, I grew up in the suburbs, like I said, very close to where you're living right now.
	And I don't know, I had a pretty negative experience in general, and it just, for a long time, it's really bothered me.
	I have this really strong hatred towards the suburbs, and I can't get to the root of why it bothers me so much.
	You know, it's just the idea of going back and living there as an adult really freaks me out.
	Right, right. Yeah, so...
	I don't know.
	And like I said in the thread, you know, the work of Tim Burton, when you hear about, you know, like Edward Scissorhands and stuff, what he wrote, you know, I really identified with that movie because it's exactly what my growing up experience was like, you know?
	Right. Like just feeling like this alien creature where everyone's in these perfect little houses.
	I don't know. I don't know exactly.
	Anything else you wanted to talk about?
	No, I just find so many people, you know, they hate the place that they grew up and they don't know exactly why or, you know, like a lot of people just want to get away from where they grew up and I don't know if it has to do with the actual physical place or the people or like what people are looking for when they move away from their hometown exactly.
	You know? Right, right. Have you ever heard the song Little Boxes?
	No, I haven't.
	If you ever watch the show Weeds, they play this at the beginning.
	And actually, it's pretty cool.
	I can't remember if it's season one or season two, but they actually have different versions.
	This is a song. It's an old song, I think, from the early 60s.
	And I think it talks about suburbia in a way that...
	Tell me if this makes any sense to you.
	It goes, Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky-tacky, little boxes on the hillside, little boxes all the same.
	There's a green one and a pink one and a blue one and a yellow one and they're all made out of ticky-tacky and they all look just the same.
	And the people in the houses all went to the university where they were put in boxes and they came out all the same.
	And there's doctors and lawyers and business executives and they're all made out of ticky-tacky.
	And they all look just the same.
	And they all play on the golf course and drink their martinis dry and they all have pretty children and the children go to school and the children go to summer camp and then to the university where they are put in boxes and they come out all the same.
	And the boys go into business and marry and raise a family in boxes made of ticky-tacky and they all look just the same.
	There's a green one and a pink one and a blue one and a yellow one and they're all made out of ticky-tacky and they all look just the same.
	So that's the sort of thing you're talking about, right?
	Yeah, thank you for serenading me.
	Yeah. Very nice.
	We'll see about that. I can sense a remix coming with some disco.
	Anyway, I've always found that song interesting because I think there is that sense of conformity, of uniformity, of cookie-cutter living, so to speak.
	Yeah, exactly. And that song, you know, I mean, like, that sounds exactly like my life.
	You know, my dad played golf every weekend.
	And it's exactly that.
	It's that song, you know?
	And just everyone was so the same.
	And it was a really big culture shock for me because when I was 18, I moved to Toronto.
	And, you know, just seeing how people live so differently, like, it was really surprising to me.
	And it was really, I got really mad for a while, just because I felt I'd been so sheltered from kind of what real life was like.
	What were your negative experiences in Sebabia?
	You know, in a nutshell.
	Well, like...
	There's this general feeling like all of the kids are really mad and pissed off and all the adults are trying to make everything look really perfect and it's all about the facade and the veneer, you know?
	Like, my general experience was as long as you look like you're doing well, you act properly, whatever, then nobody really bothers to look at what's going on underneath.
	Right, right, right.
	Anything a little more specific?
	That's very generic. You don't have to talk about it.
	I'm just sort of curious for a start.
	Because, I mean, I have some thoughts about it.
	I've been following the thread to some degree, but I just wanted to, you know, if there was anything sort of more specific.
	Like, you know, growing up, I always got good grades and I did all the things you're supposed to do.
	You know, I did activities, you know, soccer, dance, whatever, all that kind of stuff.
	You know, like being a normal kid, but inside I felt so normal, like un-normal and weird.
	And I don't know, like I didn't identify with any of the adults that were around me.
	Like I just, I couldn't imagine myself growing up to be like any of them.
	And I didn't really know where I was going to end up.
	So I just felt like I was doing what everyone told me.
	I was going to do this and you're going to grow up and have a great life.
	And I just didn't see it happening.
	Right, right. Yeah, there is an artificiality that I associate with suburbia, and this comes from when I was younger.
	I lived in a small sort of rental apartment, didn't have any property or a car or anything like that.
	But nearby, on the other side of the school where I had some friends, was suburbia, and I just remember there was a kind of...
	to the whole situation.
	And I associate that with the wood paneling in the basement.
	You have a basement where the kids all go and it's a little grungy and the carpet could probably use a shampoo or two and the couches are kind of creaky and the TV is not always getting the best reception back in the day.
	But I remember this wood paneling and wood paneling is kind of strange.
	It's like, well, it's not wood, so why are you trying to pretend that?
	Like, we're not living in a tree down here.
	We didn't carve out the middle of an oak tree to repose in.
	And so there's just kind of a...
	A strange thing. And this used to be the case for cars, too.
	You get these strips of wood paneling on the sides of cars, like you're some sort of Flintstones tree mobile or something.
	I mean, it's just very, very odd.
	And so I had a certain sense of distance from nature.
	I had a sense of all the food seemed pretty artificial when I was a kid.
	Of course, most of the people I knew were parents who worked or whatever, so there wasn't a lot of natural stuff around, not a lot of natural fibers on the body.
	It felt sort of like a space station or sort of like this artificiality, this artificial environment, this artificial bubble.
	And with this strenuous attempt to try and bring some sort of naturalness into it through sort of wood paneling or other kinds of things.
	So, I mean, this is just sort of off the top of my head.
	There was something odd about suburbia when I was a kid.
	And there is a certain amount of conformity that goes on in the world, in suburbia, right?
	I associate some – like to me, it's sort of like a bell curve in terms of the lower classes and the upper classes.
	The lower classes have less requirement for conformity because they have gained less from society.
	And the upper classes have less need for conformity because they have – they don't need to work for a living, right?
	But to me, the people in suburbia are the people in the middle class and maybe the middle class, upper middle class.
	And they have achieved a particular lifestyle that requires conformity or obedience in order to maintain.
	They're not entrepreneurs because entrepreneurs are either broke or rich in the long run.
	Right. They are – they tend to be mid-level or upper-level employees or accountants or lawyers or doctors.
	So they're all within particular restrictions and there's not really a lot of freedom in that.
	So I think there is some genuine conformity in the suburbs that's concentrated in the suburbs that you don't get elsewhere.
	So like near where I grew up and I used to bike there to go to university.
	There's a section called the bridal path, a street called the bridal path.
	And this is like ridiculously expensive homes and so on.
	And in there, you had like entrepreneurs, you had to act like famous actors, you had I think Rush, one of the guys from Rush has a house in there, not the movie The Band.
	And so there was a lot of individuality around that kind of stuff.
	And there was a lot of chaos in the low rent district that I, various low rent districts that I was in.
	And So there was...
	And I'm just trying to think of something else just popped into my head around when I was...
	I think from the age of six or so to eight or so I was in a boarding school and the boarding school was for upper middle class kids and there was a huge amount, ferocious amount of conformity in that boarding school.
	The kids were always striving to get away with stuff.
	The kids were always striving to break the rules and we had these shows of pointless rebellion like we'd all throw our paper airplanes out the window at the same time so no individual could get caught and so on and then they'd come down on us hard about that.
	We'd find some other way to express some sort of rebellion against authority.
	And so there was a lot of conformity there.
	But these are people, of course, who would end up in, I think, pretty conformist professions or pretty conformist areas of life.
	So I think the lack of individuality and some of the rigid conformity, I think there's some arguments to say why that might concentrate itself in the suburbs.
	And for me, conformity always comes with fear and anxiety.
	And that, I think, is entirely understandable.
	So I think when you have gained...
	A middle class existence, there is a precariousness because you've got some place to fall, but you're not rich enough to basically say to hell but the rules.
	And so I think that there's a certain amount of anxiety around sort of middle class, upper middle class stuff.
	And I think the suburbs concentrates that and I think people get a sense of that.
	And that's why I think there tends to be a lot of emphasis on, you know, get good grades and get a good education and so on.
	And there's nothing wrong with getting good grades or a good education.
	But I think the motive for the authority, like for parents or whatever, may be more on fear or anxiety about their status or whatever.
	And I think this is – the last thing I'll say is I think this has become particularly true since the 1970s.
	Because since the 1970s, middle class wages, I believe, have stagnated or declined.
	And so there is a sense of precariousness.
	There is a sense of anxiety.
	And that has not – I think that is translated into a kind of oppressive conformity that may have sprouted more in the suburbs than in other places.
	This is just thoughts that I have.
	Does that sort of make any sense?
	Yeah, that's really great stuff, and that sounds a lot like what I was going through growing up there.
	One example that came to mind actually was, I went through a very serious illness when I was about 13, 14, and my mom's response to that was, don't tell anyone, don't tell any of your friends at school, just act like everything's normal, you know, you don't have to focus on this.
	Like, I had to keep up this big facade that I was okay.
	And I think a lot of that had to do with her worrying about being different.
	I don't know exactly, but that was a really hard time for me because I felt like I was just being fake all of the time.
	I had to smile all the time when I was really, really ill.
	It was really stressful.
	Because when you're that age, you don't really have a sense of any other possibilities besides What's going on in your immediate experience?
	That's interesting. Have you ever talked with your mom about why that was something to be kept secret?
	Well, she said things like, you know, kids can be mean and you don't want anyone to pick on you.
	You don't want to stand out. She said things to me like that.
	I think she was trying to protect me in a way, but it ended up really giving me sort of a complex about having to keep up appearances all the time.
	Right, right.
	It was very weird. Anyway, I just thought I'd call in and I didn't know exactly what I was going to talk about.
	I didn't make a plan or anything of what I wanted to say.
	The topic has been on my mind for a while.
	Yeah, I mean, if it's okay with you, I mean, I think it's a great topic.
	I'd like to share just a couple of more thoughts about it that might be of some utility.
	Sure. I mean, because I live in the suburbs.
	Yeah. How do you feel about it?
	Maybe I'll do a podcast.
	That's a big, complicated topic, and I want to make sure that I focus on stuff that's generally useful rather than sort of my specific experience.
	When I was a kid... I had friends from a variety of, I guess, economic classes.
	I don't think... Oh, no, actually, I did have some friends who were pretty super rich.
	But that sort of changed.
	When I was younger, it was mostly the lower class kids that I was with.
	We had no money and we had no real organized sports or anything like that.
	So we'd sort of try and get together stuff, whatever we could, for free.
	And we used to sort of play soccer or football and then what would happen is you then required a fee or a license.
	The restrictions kept sort of coming in to the point where… What we ended up doing, what I ended up doing with some friends was we would simply just go to the woods, build a little fire and shoot the breeze and maybe whittle a few sticks or something, like 80-year-old Kentuckians or something.
	And to get to the woods, you'd have to sort of cross railway bridges and stuff like that.
	And so that was exciting for us and all of that.
	And occasionally rather hair-raising.
	Don't recommend it.
	I strongly do not recommend that.
	But we sort of had to invent a lot of our own entertainment or enjoyment.
	You know, we didn't have video games at home.
	You know, the TV was, you know, a 12-inch black and white that was bought secondhand for $10, where usually there was some squiggly thing somewhere that would warp things, like people were just coming out of water every time they walked out of the left-hand side of the screen.
	And There was a kind of freedom in that, a kind of inventiveness that was required.
	You know, couldn't buy a bike, so you'd have to sort of get parts and build a bike or whatever, which, you know, gave you something to do and hopefully you got something cool out of the other side of it.
	And this was not part of...
	The middle class kids experience, like you couldn't get your middle class friends to go and build a fire in the woods.
	Again, also not recommended, but just to sort of mention.
	And so there was a kind of Lord of the Flies aspect to the poorer kids that I grew up with that really wasn't part of...
	The richer kids or the middle class kids, they had their structured entertainment and they lived in the suburbs so a lot of times they couldn't do things without driving somewhere.
	So they had much more at-home entertainment.
	They were the ones who had the computers or the video games or… Endless board games or whatever, right?
	Reasons to stay home.
	And there was much fewer reasons for the poorer kids to stay home.
	Often if there was parental conflict or whatever, that was another reason.
	So there was a lot of wanderlust, a gypsy kind of nomadic aspect to us poorer kids.
	And I think there were some benefits to that.
	It's not a recommended way of getting those benefits, but I think there were some.
	Some benefits in that.
	And I think that there was just a little bit more, actually quite a bit more, less exploring and more sort of stay-at-homey kind of stuff in the suburbs.
	And so I think those were some aspects as well that I experienced growing up.
	Well, that's interesting. It made me think, actually.
	When I was in high school, I had a friend, and we used to go camping illegally on the Bruce Trail.
	You know, we'd just, like, go find a place.
	Like, you know, we'd go kind of a little bit out of the suburbs, find a place, and just kind of set up a tent, make a fire, and camp.
	Just for fun, you know?
	So those were some of the things I actually...
	I actually did stuff like that, too, and that was really fun.
	And we would try and kind of escape whenever we could, and that was sort of...
	It was very, like, adventurous, you know?
	You know, it was like getting out of what we were supposed to be doing, you know.
	We would just kind of sneak away and go on a little camping adventure.
	So I identify with that.
	I think most kids weren't doing things like that in the suburbs, for sure.
	Sorry, you said most kids weren't doing that?
	No.
	Right, right.
	No.
	So, There was a lot of hanging out in basements, too.
	Oh, yeah, the basements, yeah.
	And it's weird because, you know, there's the whole upstairs, but you don't want to mess up.
	You know, it has to be clean upstairs, so the kids go downstairs so they don't make a mess, right?
	It's like you don't want to break anything, any of the good china.
	You've got to go downstairs and go in the old couch, not in the new one, with the plastic on it, you know?
	Right. That kind of thing, like the upstairs is for the adults, you know?
	Right. Right. Yeah.
	And then, of course, there's no basements or departments or whatever.
	So if you wanted to do stuff without parents around, you had to go out.
	You had to go somewhere. And that's not really the case.
	And, you know, again, these aren't particularly good or bad things.
	I just think that there are sort of interesting distinctions between growing up in the burbs.
	And don't get me wrong, I liked my friends who had the birb houses.
	I thought it was great.
	One of my friends had a pool, and so of course summers we would go there as often as possible, and I think that was just fantastic.
	So there was lots of good stuff with that as well.
	But I think...
	I think it is an interesting question because a lot of people have a significant hate on for the burbs.
	And obviously, it's just houses, right?
	I mean, you can't dislike – I guess you can aesthetically dislike a house, but you can't sort of emotionally hate a house or whatever or have sort of a major issue with it.
	But there is a very strong continuum of thought, which is that people in the suburbs are robots.
	People in the suburbs are conformists.
	People in the suburbs are very restrictive and unimaginative with regards to their children's behavior.
	And that is portrayed.
	What I remember, I don't remember much of the movie Edward Scissorhands other than Is it open with everybody driving from these houses in patterns?
	And there are real patterns in the suburbs that aren't as much the case with the poorer.
	So in the suburbs, everyone's dropping their kids off at daycare and heading to work for the most part.
	Certainly that's the case on my street.
	It's a commuter culture.
	Almost everyone I knew, their parents commuted to somewhere else for their job.
	Not a lot of people worked in the same city they lived in.
	So, for example, when you go to Union Station in Toronto, there's a rush hour, and you see the people walking in and out of the trains like cattle.
	There's just hundreds of them, and they're just streaming in and out of Union Station in Toronto, going to work, going back home.
	And when you go there during that time, you just feel like you're in a big herd of people.
	It's very freaky.
	Right, right, right.
	And I just couldn't imagine myself living that kind of life, you know, like going with the rest of the people in the big crowd during the rush hour, you know, like it just, I don't know, it just seems very unappealing to me.
	I've never worked a nine-to-five job.
	I always work during off hours because I just can't stand going with the masses like that, you know.
	Right, right. Yeah, and certainly with the poorer kids, you know, kids whose parents were waiters or kids whose parents worked in factories, sometimes split shifts.
	So there was less, you know, everybody leaving at the same time, everyone coming home at the same time.
	There was a little bit less of that sort of cattle car conveyor belt feeling of timing.
	And there was a lot more random kind of hours and so on.
	So again, that just seemed a little bit less like...
	You know, like the cuckoo clocks, doors open, everyone comes out at the same time, cuckoo cuckoo, they go back in.
	There can be that sort of rhythm, like the tides with the suburbs.
	Yeah, and it's just like, it almost seems like people aren't taking advantage of the spaces in between that, you know?
	Like, one thing I really enjoyed was just driving around at two in the morning in the suburbs and the streets were empty and you could just, you know, you felt so free at that time, you know, because there's just no one around and you just feel like you're the only person alive almost because everyone's, you know, got to sleep because they have to work the next day or whatever and it's just, it's really bizarre.
	Yeah, you know, something else has just struck me, and I'm sorry if this is completely boring to everyone else, but I think it's a pretty common experience.
	Something else struck me, I've been thinking about this off and on since Izzy was born, which is there seems to be a lot more anxiety about children in the suburbs than in the poorer districts.
	I mean, I think back to the things that I did when I was a kid, the things that I was, quote, allowed to.
	To do, you know, I remember being, you know, five, six years old, just riding my bike all over the place.
	I remember walking to school from the age of eight.
	It was a long way to walk.
	It was at least three or four lengthy traffic lights and then another couple of streets to get to school, just walking on my own back.
	I don't think you could even do that legally anymore.
	No, we didn't get away with any of that kind of stuff for sure.
	Right. So I, you know, I have very strong memories of just Enormous stretches of unsupervised time.
	No, that was not even a possibility for me when I was a kid.
	Right. Right.
	And of course, the suburbs are a lot safer than wherever I was.
	And so I just, yeah, unsupervised, just like really, really unsupervised time.
	And taking risks that, you know, in hindsight, I would never allow my daughter to do.
	I mean, everything kind of worked out.
	But, you know, taking risks and so on that would be pretty outrageous today and having a kind of roaming liberty to just, you know, go and build a fort in the woods, go bike it around, climb some trees, you know, really self-supervised.
	Or sometimes, of course, it would be with my brother.
	Right. Sorry, go ahead.
	I just think not having the freedom to take risks and make mistakes like that, it's very crippling and it's very, you can feel it, you know, you can feel like you just want to do something, anything, just that you're not allowed to do and there's so many things that you just can't do and there's not really, it's not really justified a lot of the time, you know?
	Yeah. All these memories are coming back to me and I – geez, I remember almost every day of my childhood.
	But I remember maybe being seven or so and I used to – yeah, we would get – we would buy sometimes bottles of pop or whatever.
	And I was allowed to take the pop bottles back and then buy whatever I wanted with the returns.
	I didn't know at the time.
	I thought you just basically got paid for bringing them back.
	I didn't realize there was a deposit return system until I was older.
	But I remember wanting to go and buy a Spitfire model plane, 124th scale.
	And no, 172nd scale.
	The 124ths were very rare.
	172nd scale Spitfire.
	And so I gathered up the pop bottles and I ran into town.
	And it was a fair amount of ways away from where we lived in England.
	I couldn't even remotely guess the distance now.
	But it certainly wasn't around the corner.
	I mean, it was quite a ways away. And I didn't have any shoes on.
	So basically, I had a big bag of pop bottles and just sort of ran down into the grocery store because they also sold these little model planes as well.
	And I remember very clearly running into this store and there was a guy with a beard behind the counter, black hair and a beard.
	And the first thing he said to me was, no, I'm sorry, son, we don't sell shoes here.
	Because, of course, I was running in barefoot.
	It was kind of a joke, right?
	So, yeah, funny, funny enough, I guess.
	I remember trading at seven years old, going off with no shoes to a store and trading in the bottles and getting a model airplane, then coming back and fixing it up and so on.
	I mean, there was just, you know, I just can't really imagine that occurring.
	either at the time, perhaps, certainly not in the present.
	I'm not saying it should happen or not.
	I don't know, right?
	I mean, my daughter's not seven yet, but I just wanted to sort of mention that there did seem to be that kind of self-directed, you know, quote, liberty that was available.
	Right.
	I think self-directed is a key word, you know, because a big breaking point for me was my final semester of high school, I just had one credit left, so I went into a self-directed learning program.
	And I really, I couldn't do it at all.
	Like, I totally struggled with that, like, because I was so used to, you know, high school, having someone breathe down your neck at every moment.
	When I tried to do this self-directed course, I really couldn't do it at all.
	Like, it was really... And then, you know, going to university after that, I had a hard time, too, you know, getting myself to do things because I was so used to the structure and I was so used to...
	You know, being worried about deadlines and the punishment and stuff like that, that I couldn't find positive motivations to do things and stuff like that.
	So that was one of the problems I think that came from having so much structure.
	Right, right.
	Yeah, so it's sort of like you're a container, you're sort of water put into a container and when that container is taken away, it's like sploosh, right?
	There's no sort of structure that you've internalized, if that makes any sense?
	Yeah, exactly. All the motivations were negative ones, like if you don't do your homework, you're going to get in trouble or whatever.
	There was no real positive motivations, or not ones that made sense to me.
	It was all very far in the distance, like, oh, if you do this in 20 years, you're going to have a good life, you know?
	There's nothing immediate about it.
	Right, right. And of course, the question is, do you want that life, right?
	And that's a... That's a challenge, right?
	Because, you know, you have to want the life that people are selling you if that structure is going to work, right?
	Right. And so when you start to question that, then it becomes very hard to find, you know, to make your own direction, I guess, in a way.
	And it's taken me many years to kind of break out of that and find my own motivation to do things because, I don't know, I'm just used to being bossed around.
	I hate to say that, but...
	Yeah, I mean, you become reactive, right?
	I mean, there's this carrot and there's this stick and this carrot, this carrot, this stick, now another stick, another carrot, and all you're doing is sort of responding to that as opposed to what do I want?
	It's sort of like going through a maze, being followed by something and looking for some cheese rather than being in an open field and saying, well, where do I want to go?
	Yeah. Yeah, like I'd look at my parents' life and my dad's life and, you know, they're successful and everything, but then I'd say, well, if this is what I have to do to be successful, I don't really want to do it.
	You know what I mean? Like, if this is the way I have to live in order to have what they have, it's not really worth it in a way.
	So, I don't know. That was my feeling growing up in the suburbs, like, I guess.
	I don't know. I think that's probably all I have to say about it.
	It's a very interesting topic and I've got some friends who just load the suburbs with skin-crawling intensity.
	I think there's a...
	I mean, I think that's – I'm not saying this is the case with you, but I think that's sort of misdirected.
	I know that they had some pretty tough stuff as childhoods, and I think they may be blaming the environment more than the individuals.
	But, yeah, it's very interesting.
	I think it certainly has given me some stuff to ponder.
	And I think that – I mean, they're a huge feature of North American society for sure.
	And the environment does shape.
	It does shape us to a large degree and there's a lot that's implicit and buried in the suburbs.
	And of course, I mean the suburbs are to some degree statist, right?
	I mean suburbs exist because roads are quote free and suburbs exist because zoning laws separate places of work from places of living and so on.
	So, I mean, we don't know what society would look like in the absence of these sorts of rules, but there is a sense of living within a rule structure that is not organic.
	And maybe that's why – this just struck me.
	Maybe this is why I have this association of living in basements with fake wall paneling because you're kind of living – that's the whole structure.
	The whole structure is this sort of artificially natural environment that's run by laws and regulations and zoning.
	And so there's this sense of living within rules like you've got all these rules at school and then you go to this environment, these suburbs that themselves are the products of somewhat arbitrary rules.
	And so maybe there's this just sense that even in the basement, you're not away from the rules because the basement is only there because of the rules, where it is and the environment that you're living in.
	So yeah, maybe it's just this feeling of living within rules that are arbitrary and enforced and so on that has people's emotional responses there.
	Yeah.
	I think so, yeah. Because, I mean, in the suburbs, if you want to do something just very small, like, I don't know, paint your house hot pink, you know, people are going to get really offended by that.
	Like, you couldn't even do something small like that, you know?
	If you wanted to grow dandelions in your front lawn instead of lawn, that would be very...
	That just doesn't work, you know?
	It's like, you can't even...
	Even something very...
	Some very small preference is just not...
	Yeah. No, I think there's some real truth in that.
	If you look at the balconies of low-rent apartments, there's a lot of, quote, individuality.
	Whereas, yeah, the houses are ticky-tacky boxes all the same.
	All right. Well, thanks. It's a great topic.
	I think it's really, really interesting.
	I think there's a lot to be said about looking at the environment from an outside eye that you grew up in.
	Sorry, we had somebody waiting patiently.
	You are absolutely welcome to talk.
	You've just mentioned that in the Skype, so please speak up.
	Hello. Hello.
	Can I talk? You certainly can.
	Great. Hello, Teph.
	It's me again, the person with a weird accent.
	Right, who I mistakenly thought was French last week.
	Yeah, just living in France and from Serbia.
	Right. So, I'm actually trying to get Kyle Seed's question from the chat room in, but...
	Oh, yes. Yeah, I want to ask him something before, if I can.
	And then we'll ask him to copy-paste his question again, because it's quite interesting.
	And few people want to hear your thoughts on it.
	Okay. My question is if I can start with a sort of confession.
	I used to be and I'm still quite a bully.
	I have extremely strong personality.
	Wait, wait, wait. Are you saying that you're from Eastern Europe and you have a tendency towards bullying?
	No. I've never heard of such a thing.
	This is unprecedented, unthinkable.
	What a break of stereotype.
	Anyway, but then you went to France and you stopped showering.
	Just kidding. Sorry, go ahead. No, I realized a few things a long time ago.
	But the strong personality that I practiced for such a long time, you know, it doesn't disappear.
	And so I'm realizing that other people have other views, other people have even other truth, you know, where I was forcing that I always say the truth and I'm fighting for the truth and even fighting for the weak people or something like that.
	I was just forcing my own opinions.
	So the problem that I'm encountering now is...
	That at work, my strong personality is highly appreciated.
	And last week, I had a situation in which I really, really felt...
	I felt I went too far.
	I felt I was a bully.
	I was a bully over a man who is obviously in a lot of emotional troubles.
	But he was not performing.
	He was not doing his job very well.
	And as a result, he decided to resign.
	And I thought...
	Because his resignation kind of came in over the weekend.
	And over the weekend, I was kind of like, oh, you know, this is not good.
	I don't feel good about the whole thing.
	And I thought I went too far.
	And when I came to work, my colleagues, even my boss, they were all almost happy.
	You know, everybody was struggling. He's a very negative man.
	And everybody was struggling with him for over a year to make him get on the right track.
	So they were kind of happy with the result.
	But my problem is that, you know, what do you do when you know that something you have done wrong didn't result in anything wrong?
	You see what I mean? I didn't have a punishment.
	I didn't have a poor response.
	I almost got an award for it.
	So how do I learn?
	How do I learn? Because I still feel that was wrong.
	Okay, so this guy, is he an employee of yours or a co-worker?
	Yeah, I'd say sort of employee, yeah.
	Okay. And so he resigned after you had some confrontations with him, is that right?
	Yeah, there was some email that came to him where I criticized...
	Sorry, the details, again, it's not particularly important what the details are, but I just want to make sure that we sort of stay on the general topic.
	And did he talk to you before resigning or did he just resign?
	Just resign. Right, right.
	And he just pointed out how horrible I am towards him, and this is why he is resigning.
	Right, right.
	And were you horrible towards him?
	Yeah, again, you know, I'm trying over time.
	He's the third person that is, you know, giving this kind of feedback.
	And over time, I'm trying to see...
	Where I stepped over the line of being just a stronger personality who is forcing them to, you know, almost like manipulating these people into resigning because they are not performing.
	It's like this. I persuade them that that job is not for them, which is true.
	And they go and they have a better job.
	But I don't think the way, because I'm very impressed by the ways of communication that you're talking about.
	And I'm thinking, you know, are there other ways in which I don't have to turn out to be this, you know, horrible bitch that is making them resign and still lead them to the same result?
	Because this result is better for everybody.
	Right, right. Right, so I can certainly understand that.
	I can certainly understand that. And look, I really appreciate the sensitivity that you're showing in bringing this up as a topic.
	Now, you know, there's a great quote from Hamlet, because, you know, let's go highbrow for a second, right?
	So Hamlet's talking to Guildenstern, something like...
	He says, Guildenstern's an old college friend of his, and he says, what have you, my good friends, deserved at the hands of fortune that she sends you to prison hither?
	Guildenstern says, prison, my lord?
	And he says, Denmark is a prison.
	And he says, then the whole world is a prison.
	And Hamler says, a goodly one in which there are many confines, wards, and dungeons, Denmark being one of the worst.
	And Rosencrantz says, we think not so, my lord.
	And Hamlet says, why then, tis none for you, for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
	To me, it is a prison.
	And this is a kind of chilling relativism.
	But the reason that I'm bringing it up is because you have said about your bullying that it is the result of a strong personality.
	That's what you meant, right? Yeah.
	Sorry, go ahead. Well, it's just my power that, you know, I think I can persuade people in anything and I have a very strong way of talking to people and I always get them back to the point where, you know, they say exactly what I'm saying.
	Right, okay.
	Now, strength is generally considered a good thing, right?
	And bullying is generally considered a bad thing, right?
	And so I think it's going to be a challenge for you to approach this aspect of yourself if you define it as both good and bad at the same time.
	Like, if you describe this as having a strong personality, then you're like Guildenstern who says, no, Denmark's not a prison.
	It's a great place. And if you then say, well, no, it's actually a bullying aspect of my personality, then you're like Hamlet saying, no, no, Denmark is a prison.
	But I can understand that for you it's not, right?
	So I think that when dealing with an aspect of the self, this is all just my amateur opinion, of course, but when dealing with an aspect of the self, the language...
	That we choose is very, very important.
	Because you don't want to go from being a strong personality, so to speak, to being a weak personality.
	But at the same time, you would like to not be, I would assume, you would like to not be a bully.
	Is that a fair way to put it?
	Yeah, because I always come across as all strong-minded people.
	I come across as arrogant, as inconsiderate, as all the things that I'm not.
	I don't mind so much.
	This person, I will not see him again.
	We might not work again.
	I don't mind.
	But I get this repetitive misunderstanding of my intentions because of the way I approach.
	Right.
	Well, in an ideal world, what would this person have gotten out of his interaction with you?
	Even if you did want him to leave or to quit, what would this person have gotten out of their interaction with you that would have been ideal in your mind?
	Well, for me, the first thing would be the objections I made about the way he's doing the job, because it's not related really to the job.
	It's the whole approach to work, you know, just being extremely negative and he didn't...
	You know, it was like babysitting a grown-up person.
	And that was very, very demanding.
	So the first thing would be, you know, in an ideal world, would be that he learned something from my comments.
	And at the end, almost like appreciating leaving this job that is not for him and finding a new job, which is what happened with the previous two people who resigned after talking to me.
	You know, they were kind of angry and after six months I get sort of a feedback, you know, like, oh Maya, thank you for, you know, for leading us to this place.
	Right, okay. And what do you think was particular about this man that you weren't able to have this kind of positive interaction?
	Or, I guess, not positive necessarily, but helpful or useful?
	Well, that's the thing.
	You know, I would...
	If you ask me like that, I would have to go to him and tell you the way he behaved and what he did.
	But I want to look at myself and I want to understand what I can do about my own behavior...
	the result that I want to have.
	Because with him, it's very obvious.
	I mean, he's emotionally a very disturbed man.
	I don't know how to say.
	He's, you know, he has really, really a lot of problems where, you know, in every email he was saying, okay, if you think that somebody else can do it better than this, than that, you know, he was very, very, he had a very low opinion of himself, he had a very low opinion of himself, where, you know, I was always trying to.
	And he was doing a fine job up to a point.
	And then again, at the end, he didn't, he didn't listen to an advice that he had to, because my job is to give an advice and his is to accept it.
	So, what I'm saying is, what I can do to lead to the better result, what I can do not to come across as arrogant, you know, like controlling or whatever.
	Because this is not my aim.
	My aim is not this. My aim is, you know, the best benefit for everybody.
	Now, the other two employees that you said you had more positive interactions, were they both women?
	No, no women in my job, just me.
	No, just me.
	I work with a lot of men.
	That's another thing. I love myself much more than they would because I know I'm not going to get away with it because I'm a woman.
	They're all men and they're all much older than me.
	15 to 20 years older than me, so that's another problem where they cannot really put me in the right place.
	They don't like me giving them comments that they don't want to hear.
	And again, I'm saying that the way I approach I think is wrong, the way I say some things I think is wrong, but then I get positive feedback, I get promoted, I'm now in a very high position.
	It's a little bit clashing in me.
	Right, right. Yeah.
	Well, yeah, it's a complex question, and obviously I can't give you any answer.
	I mean, this is a question of preferred behavior for you, and obviously I can't tell you what the ideal solution is, or what maybe even a better solution is.
	But... I do think that you have to have some positive affection or feeling for someone in order to want to help that person.
	Because, you know, if this guy had been annoying you for a year or been difficult or obstructive or negative or whatever for a year, then he may have bled out some of your, quote, patience or positive feeling or regard for him, if that makes any sense.
	Yes, which I mean, yeah.
	Yeah. In which case it can be kind of tough to help ease him into a wiser and better place in life, you know, if you're sort of exhausted by his negativity or his difficult behavior, if that makes sense.
	But can you answer me to this, Dan, if we cannot really put a clear message on the first question?
	Can you tell me this? How much are the skills that we are exercising at work?
	Because this is actually my fear.
	How much are these skills, these behaviors, reflecting on our personal life?
	Because I don't make a very...
	Okay, I go to work and I don't bring my work home and these kind of things.
	But... We are still the same person.
	This is the person who is behaving this way at work and I don't want to be a totally different person when I come home.
	I want to have some sort of continuous.
	For me, this is stability.
	People who are very different at work, I don't think it's very good.
	I think it's like split personality.
	You might have problems.
	So I wonder how much is this, what we exercise at work, where I am very strong and whatever, how much is this reflecting to my personal life?
	Yeah, I mean, I understand that concern.
	And I think that there is some value in trying to have more common ways of interacting between work and home.
	But that having been said, I mean, work is a very different environment from home because work, I assume you're, you know, to some degree aiming for profit within your organization.
	And so work is different from home in that there is the profit reality.
	There is the profit. It's not even the profit incentive.
	It's the profit necessity. And so...
	So for instance, to fire an unproductive employee may be a good thing.
	I mean, I know you don't regret him quitting, but you regret the way that it occurred.
	Whereas not seeing a friend, for instance, is a pretty big deal and so on.
	And so because there's the profit incentive that really defines one's work environment, that one may choose to be in business with someone who may have personality traits that are annoying to you, Because you have a great working relationship and you can achieve mutually beneficial things from a productive standpoint, right? So what's that actor who had that rant on the set?
	The guy played Batman.
	Lord, help me out, you fast typists in the chat room.
	He was in American Psycho.
	What's his name? Anyway, he had this rant on set and – no, it's not Keaton.
	It's – you'll get it.
	Yeah, Christian Bale. A pretty intense actor and I think a highly skilled actor as well.
	And – I had this rant and so on, and there are lots of actors who can be difficult to work with.
	Marlon Brando showed up to the set of Apocalypse Now having not even read the book or lost the 50 or 100 pounds he had promised to lose, so they had to sort of shoot around all of that.
	And so there are lots of people who are very, very difficult to work with, but people work with them because they can just do some...
	Some great things. Freddie Mercury's assistant, I think Freddie Mercury, at least according to the assistant, once broke a pane of glass over the guy's head, but the guy continued to work with him because he found him an exciting and stimulating person to work with, I suppose.
	And so there's a mutually beneficial, productive, profitable thing that occurs when you work with people that can override personal considerations.
	So I'm not sure that I'm not sure that it's Necessary or even healthy to say, well, I should have the same standards because personal relationships are not for material profit, but fundamentally business relationships are about that.
	And I mean, I obviously believe that it's better to share values and you're more likely if you're rational and positive and good, it's better to share values in your business relationships.
	I think it's going to reduce problems, but it's not essential, particularly for shorter term projects, right?
	So, I mean, if I was making a film and Christian Bale wanted to be in it, um, I wouldn't just say, well, no, because you have a temper.
	You know, because, oh, whatever, right?
	I'm a Christian Bay leader. But I'll tell you an example of what I mean, because you explained something else.
	But what I mean is, for example, this.
	To my employees, I'm not very forgiving.
	I mean, I would set the standards and they need to be fulfilled.
	I'm pretty much the same to my friends.
	You know, I always tell my friends, the fact that we are friends and that we are doing good things to each other and, you know, we are having this kind of relationship, this is not giving you the credit to do something really, really horrible one day and then tell me, oh, but tell me your friend. You should forgive me.
	I mean, I can, of course, as I would in a business relationship, but only to a certain point, which is not very far.
	So this is where my friends say that I'm too strict with them, that I'm behaving like they are my employees and stuff like that.
	But actually, I feel like I'm behaving the same way.
	And of course, again, I'm just thinking about the ways that I deliver things.
	Right, right. And it's all related to the values that we are talking about.
	I'm sorry, it's all related to the...
	It's all related to the values that we are talking about, you know, all the moral and the preferable behaviors and stuff like that.
	I wouldn't be very flexible in those things to my friends and to myself.
	I mean, I'm not excluding myself from them.
	Yeah, and I think that it is important to not be flexible in certain things.
	Like in lots of things, I think flexibility can be very helpful and positive, but yeah, when it comes down to basic ethics, it is important not to be flexible.
	When it comes down to the business reality of profitable versus unprofitable employees in the long run, it's pretty essential to not be very flexible in those kinds of situations.
	They basically told me it's okay.
	Yeah, look, this is what I would say.
	I would say that if you were harsh At the end of your relationship with this employee, the most likely explanation, in my opinion, is that you did not act soon enough to deal with the situation where you still had some positive regard left and could actually help the person.
	And so if you had been either avoiding dealing with the situation or just hoping it was going to get better or whatever, then I think if I have problems in relationships, to me it's very important to act before I am out of positive regard for the relationship because then it's just not going to to me it's very important to act before I am out of
	So my advice would be to act soon enough or proactively enough that you still retain some positive aspect to the relationship so that you have some desire to – if you wait until you're just completely done and exasperated and angry and frustrated, then it's almost impossible for it to go well.
	Great, thank you.
	Does that make any sense?
	Yeah, no, great, great, thanks, yes.
	I always get, you know, listening to you, I always get these amazing aspects that never came to my head.
	Good, good. Yeah, I'm sorry, that one took a long time, but I really just wanted to get a sort of delineation, and I certainly don't want to say, you know, coddle people who aren't productive or whatever, but yeah.
	Sooner is always better than later.
	The moment that you have an issue, then you bring it up and that's obviously the best chance it has of resolving positively and if it can't resolve in a positive way, at least you're not about to rip your hair out when dealing with the person.
	What actually happened, what I realized why, because I was wondering why these people are okay with me behaving this way, is that he was belonging to my other two colleagues over the last year I'm belonging.
	He was working with them. And they gave up.
	They just gave up.
	They just couldn't bear with him and they just gave up.
	So they were happy that I was consistent to the end.
	And he gave up.
	The guy gave up and he resigned.
	They were happy about that. So I also felt a little bit used to do the dirty work.
	Yeah, the suggestion that I would have, if I were in your shoes, the suggestion that I would have is it might be worth sitting down with your colleagues and saying, you know, why did this go on for a year?
	You know, what did we, you know, what happened that it got to this point?
	And I think that that would be a useful conversation, I think, to have with your colleagues.
	Okay. Thank you very much again.
	You're very welcome. It's a great question and it's always a pleasure to chat with you.
	Thanks. I hope Kyle will post the question again in the chat room because it's something related to the personalities and it's quite a good one.
	Yeah. So, okay, this is a question that somebody posted in the chat window.
	It said, can Steph speak about the difference between thoughts of yourself and thoughts of your parts in the ecosystem?
	In other words, is there a difference between your thoughts and your parts?
	Are all thoughts parts?
	Well, again, this is all just my sort of amateur opinions about personality, but no, not all thoughts are parts.
	Absolutely not. I would strenuously argue that not all thoughts are parts, right?
	So if I see somebody walking down the street in a hailstorm because they have to walk their dog and it's 7 o'clock in the morning, and I say, geez, I'm really glad I don't have a dog because I really wouldn't want to have to go and walk them in a hailstorm at 6 o'clock in the morning or whatever – That is not a part of my personality, right? If I look at a cloud and say, hey, that looks like a bunny, right?
	That's not a part, right?
	So thoughts, to my mind, thoughts are not parts.
	There's lots of thoughts that we have that are observations or even stuff that is emotional for us.
	These are not parts.
	So, and the self is the whole personality, and there are aspects of the personality that seem to form their own sub-personalities.
	And again, you know, I'm no expert in this, but you might want to read books by Dr.
	Richard Schwartz on family systems therapy.
	He's actually been on the show.
	There's a podcast and a video which you can find about that.
	But, and generally, I think that there are two kinds of parts, right?
	So the first kind of part is, well, you know, I have one particular way of being when I am in my doctor's office than if I am, you know, relaxing on the couch with my family or my friends or whatever.
	And I think that's healthy and appropriate and natural and so on, right?
	If I have a weird cyst, I don't necessarily show my grocer.
	I will wait until I'm at my doctor's or whatever.
	I don't know. Make something up, right?
	So I think that there are parts that are – or approaches or attitudes that are healthy and flexible.
	It's like different jackets, right?
	So it's raining. I'll put my rain jacket on.
	It's sunny. I'll not wear a jacket or it's just kind of cloudy, so I'll put on my windbreaker or whatever.
	I think that's valid and appropriate to the situation.
	There are other parts that I think arise or are separated from and isolated as the result of trauma as a child or as an adult and that needs work with a therapist and all of that kind of good stuff to help reunite those kinds of parts.
	So that would be the situation.
	I hope that helps to some degree.
	A question about Marx.
	In philosophy, we recently talked about Marx's arguments.
	What do you think about Marx saying work loses all meaning in factories?
	E.g. it's pretty hard to feel proud of what you're doing on an assembly line screwing one bolt on over and over again.
	Well, this is sometimes called alienation and the argument is sort of something like this.
	So, you know, back in the day, a man would make A buggy, you know, like a horse and buggy, make a cart or whatever.
	And, you know, he'd go and buy all the parts and he'd have to be good at putting the wheels together and then the axles and then the, you know, painting and getting the glass put in.
	I don't know, whatever. What do I know about buggy making?
	And so he was kind of a craftsman and he would do that whole deal together.
	And that's good. And...
	But then what happens is when the later becomes commodified, it becomes split up, separated, atomized.
	And so now instead of building the whole cart, all he's doing is he's just tightening three screws on the wheel on an assembly line.
	And so he's no longer building the whole thing with a variety of skills and all of that sort of stuff.
	He's now just a machinist, so to speak, or a machine.
	And so the idea is that that is a negative experience, that it is a loss of his humanity, that he has gone from a man who makes machines into a mere machine.
	As Sting sings in the song, Rehumanize Yourself, I work all day in the factory building a machine that's not for me.
	Must be a reason that I can't see.
	You've got to humanize yourself.
	And that is a very common perspective.
	And I can certainly understand it.
	But what that misses, of course, is a number of factors.
	And it is, I think, sort of important that Marx never worked in a factory.
	And there is an EconTalk.
	You can do a search, econtalk.org, I think.
	There's an interview with a writer who went to work at Walmart because Walmart is considered to be kind of a dumb job to have or whatever.
	But it's not really the case.
	Just about anybody in Walmart can suggest a sale or can suggest a display or can – it's very entrepreneurial that way and they get benefits and bonuses because Walmart understands that they don't know the local situations.
	So let's say there's some small town where the actor in the small town, the big actor in the small town has a small part in a big movie.
	Well, of course, Walmart's head office has no idea about that.
	But, you know, the guy who stocks the video shelves at the local Walmart knows that if he sort of puts a big display on saying, you know, local kid makes good in big movie that people are going to rent it just to look for that guy that they know.
	And so he would then put in and say, well, yeah, I want to get an extra 150 copies and let's mark it down by two bucks and I'm going to put this display up and maybe we'll get the guy in to sign some of the videos or whatever.
	Yeah. And so that is important.
	And that's the way it works at Walmart.
	If you've ever worked in a factory, you'll know that you tend to get cycled around because everybody recognizes that doing the same job for 30 years is a problem.
	You lose attention, you lose focus, you might get repetitive strain injury, you get bored.
	And so they sort of understand that you need to keep people alert and so they'll try and keep your I actually sort of think that grinding out – I'm not this person, but grinding out Marxist clichés about labor is even more repetitive than tightening the same three screws over and over again.
	So that's sort of one aspect.
	But the second aspect I think that's really important is to – There's a lot of paternalism about the, quote, working classes in socialist thinking.
	So it's considered to be a bad thing for a man to no longer make the whole cart but simply tighten three screws around a wheel.
	That's a bad thing. He's alienated from his labor.
	He's become dehumanized. He's turned into a machine and so on.
	And it's like, well...
	What's wrong with that?
	Right? It's like the working classes can choose to build an entire cart by themselves, some guy.
	And then he can go and sell it.
	Now, he's not going to sell it as cheaply as the factory line.
	No question. But he can do it.
	And if there are people who want to buy the fully handmade carts, then they will buy them if they find that to be of value.
	But the reality is that people wanted to work in the Ford factories in the 1920s when they first began cranking out the Model Ts.
	Why? Because they got double the salary for working there.
	Why did they get double the salary?
	They got double the salary because there was an assembly line and therefore things were much more efficient.
	And so rather than have a bunch of guys swarm around one car, the car just went on a conveyor belt from one guy to the next and they all put it together that way.
	And yeah, they would switch things around and mix things up a little bit.
	People wouldn't get too bored.
	But the reality is that people wanted to work there because they said, like in their own minds, I would assume, they said, well, okay, so it's a little dull, but I get twice the money.
	Maybe it's not quite as interesting as doing the whole car by myself, but I get twice the amount of money.
	And they may be falling into that category of people.
	Who work to live, right?
	Okay, I'll go to the factory for eight hours a day and then I'll go do X, Y, and Z, whatever.
	I go bowling and have a cottage and a squash league or whatever.
	And so they go to work and they put their time in so that they can go and do other things.
	And I don't fundamentally see what's wrong with that.
	I think what's important, rather than saying, well, you know, if you can only do one thing during the day, that's alienation of labor and that's bad...
	I wonder why people do that.
	Talk to the working classes, so to speak, and ask them why they prefer this.
	The guy who was interviewed on EconTalk He said everybody there was perfectly aware of the benefits and drawbacks of what it is they were doing.
	Walmart made free training available to everybody.
	They wanted to go and train. If you took these training modules, you'd get increases in pay.
	There was up mobility if you wanted it and so on.
	They were aware of what the pay was over at Zellers and the benefits were over at Target or whatever.
	I don't know. Just saying, well, it's alienation of labor and that's a bad thing, I think, is to not respect the choices of people who will say, okay, I'll take a job that's 20% more boring for double the pay.
	It's not like putting the cart together is really exciting, right?
	So that's just a rational choice that people make and I don't – I think that the important thing is to simply continue to ask why they would make that choice rather than just say, well, that's a bad thing.
	And, you know, the other thing I would say is that intellectuals, I think, have a peculiar horror of manual labor.
	I mean, I was a gold penner.
	I mean, talk about repetitive job.
	But, you know, you put the radio on and you chat with friends who you're working with or whatever, it's not the end of the world.
	And so, yeah, I would say that it's – just because intellectuals will feel horror at tightening the same screws all day doesn't necessarily mean that it's the same for the people who are working there.
	Like the guy who was on EconTalk said, yeah, well, I quit because, you know, it was just so mindlessly dull.
	But the people who were there kind of enjoyed it.
	They had their little community. They could do their little entrepreneurial stuff.
	stuff, they could get some raises and bonuses and for them it was fine.
	All right.
	We have, I believe, a question or two.
	"Steph, I've heard you talk many times and I agree about the massive anxiety that one feels when a major transition in our lives occur.
	In your experience, that process continues throughout your entire life." I think it comes and goes.
	I think that first couple of steps is really a doozy but I think that there will be some anxiety when you're making a big life transition and that anxiety will then peak right before and then diminish afterwards and I haven't found one as bad as those first couple.
	Yeah, I think, you know, the real challenge is that, you know, once you start really thinking for yourself, there is a lot of, you know, there's a lot of conflict that can arise between you and society as a whole, whether it's implicit or explicit.
	And some of that stress, in a sense, may never go away, because I don't think that philosophy is going to rule the world imminently.
	So, yeah, I think it's going to sort of come and go, but I wouldn't say that it's a permanent high state, if that makes any sense.
	How long is the U.S. financial collapse likely to last?
	Well, I guess next time I have a financial expert on, I should ask their opinion.
	I think that collapse may be too strong a word.
	Collapse may be too strong a word.
	I don't think it's going to go like...
	Argentina or the Weimar Republic because I think there's enough knowledge and I think that Austrian economics has gained enough of a foothold in people's thinking that it's not going to be hyperinflation.
	I think that there's going to be an adjustment.
	And I think people are going – like inflation – some people say that inflation is already running according to the way that they used to do statistics rather than – every time they get an increase in a number they don't like, they just change the way they measure it to make it look better, like unemployment or whatever.
	And there's some arguments that say, well, if inflation was being measured the way it was in the past, that we'd have an inflation – the US inflation would be 10% or more.
	And – That's some pretty significant inflation.
	And the reason that that's important is, of course, that if inflation is running at 10%, and it could be even higher if you just look at food and other commodities, but if inflation is running at 10% per year… What's going to happen, of course, is that people's mortgages are going to be renewed at a much higher rate, right? And loans as a whole, right?
	So if you have interest running at 10%, then you need a base of 10% just to break even on whatever you loan people, right?
	So if what you loan a dollar now is worth 90 cents in a year, then you need to at least put 10% on what you loan as a base just to get back what you have now.
	Lent out. And so, you know, if you've got a 5% loan on your mortgage and inflation is running at 10%, then when you go for renewal, it could be 15% or more.
	It may be higher, of course, if inflation is increasing because there's a future hedge against it going to 12% or 13% or 14%.
	And I remember back here in Canada.
	I think it was in the 80s.
	I mean, there was mortgage rates of over 20% because inflation was running very high.
	Yeah, shadowstats.com is a good place to look at some of that sort of stuff.
	So, of course, if inflation is running that high and people's mortgages...
	Are renewing, then I think it's currently over 10% of US housing is currently sitting vacant, but that's only going to increase.
	Inflation really only becomes a problem if wages don't keep pace with inflation.
	I mean, fundamentally, right? And I strongly doubt that wages are going to keep pace with inflation, except in the public sector where there may be indexed or whatever, or pensions.
	And so, yeah, as usual in the private sector, the wages are going to lag behind inflation and people are going to be paying more for loans, which is going to diminish people's capital purchases like houses and cars and other big-ticket items.
	And that's significant.
	But, of course, there's already some significant signs of downturns in the U.S. economy simply based on the price of gasoline.
	I was reading that Yellowstone National Park has had a 10% decrease in visitors already because driving vacations are out.
	And up here in Canada, I think Aeroplan is already upping the amount of miles you need for free flights because, of course, flights are becoming more expensive and so on.
	So, yeah. It is going to be completely predictable based upon what people do.
	So if there is an economic downturn and the government prints money, the government controls, the government does not allow the pain to pass rapidly, Then it's going to last as long as the government interventions in the economy lasts.
	I mean that's the reality, right?
	So there was a sharp contraction in 1920 in America and the government did almost nothing and it was done in about a year.
	And then you had a similar contraction in 1929 and the government… Put in all of these controls and tried to manipulate the economy and tried to, quote, fix everything.
	And so you basically had, in the US, a depression that lasted...
	Well, I mean, it lasted pretty much indefinitely.
	It lasted for, you know, 12 or 13 years until the US got into the Second World War, and then it lasted, in a sense, through the Second World War.
	It was simply financed through deficits.
	And what happened, of course, after the Second World War was that most of the 1930s interventions were dismantled, as was the case in Europe, and that's why Europe and America recovered fairly well in the...
	In the post-war period.
	So it really, really depends.
	It depends on the war of ideas.
	It depends on who wins the war of ideas.
	So if statists and interventionists and socialists win the war of ideas, then...
	It will be perceived that freedom and capitalism and voluntarism and the markets have failed and therefore we need a strong paternalistic government to shepherd the poor people to a higher economic plane.
	Well, then it's going to last as long as the interventionist policies last and it's going to be as bad as those interventionist policies are significant.
	If the free market...
	And people understand that it was government controls and interventions and so on that caused the recession or depression or whatever it's going to look like, then there will be calls for the dismantling of government interventions in the economy and then it will be relatively short, more painful than the short run and relatively short to solve or to fix.
	And so... There's no way to predict, I think, at the moment which way it's going to go.
	There is obviously a lot of intellectual momentum behind pro-state, anti-market policies, but there is a growing recognition thanks to the internet and to small-degree shows like this.
	There is a...
	A greater recognition that it is coercion and legalities that are causing the problems.
	So that's why I think it's important to keep talking about freedom and voluntarism, to share the shows that you find to be effectively advocating for free and peaceful solutions to complex social and particularly complex economic problems.
	So it's going to last as long as the war of ideas determines it's going to last.
	So that's up to you.
	That's up to me to find as...
	Positive and effective a way of interacting with people and communicating about freedom and peace and voluntarism.
	So that's my answer to that.
	Well, thanks everybody so much for a great show.
	It is now four o'clock.
	So we've made it through another two hours together on the Sunday.
	And I hope that you have a great and wonderful and delicious week.
	And I hope you spend it with loved ones and friends and families.
	And I will talk to you next week.
	I'm sorry that I've been a little bit slow in producing some of the podcasts lately.
	I did put out four this morning.
	But we will continue to plug away.
	It's a little bit of work on the new website and so on.
	But we will continue to plug away at stuff.
	And don't forget. Oh yeah, one last thing.
	You know, let's throw the big plug in right at the very end.
	But I will be speaking in New York, New York, New York.
	And I will be speaking in New York in September.
	And if you don't come to see me, come to see the inestimable Tom Woods, who I'm sure will have many more intelligent things to say.
	Then I will. But you can catch me at Liberty Fest in New York.
	And that will be September the 10th, 2011.
	It's Liberty Fest 2.
	And I hope that you will be able to check it out.
	You can go to lfnyc.com for more information about that.
	And I think until the 27th, you can use code FDRWINNING, all caps.
	No spaces to get your discount on the entrance exam.
	We will talk to you soon.

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