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May 8, 2011 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:14:33

1906 Freedomain Radio Sunday Show 8 May 2011

Investing in a downturn, Ron Paul and voting, freeing all drug 'offenders', bullying, and letting go of childhood guilt.

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	Well, I guess we are ready to roll.
	Hi, everybody. It's Stefan Molyneux.
	It's the 8th of April, 2011.
	And I hope you're doing well. My voice, it's back!
	Well, it's very close to being back.
	It was savagely attacked by an FBI-planted virus.
	Or my daughter.
	Ah, potato, potato. Anyway, I hope you're doing very well.
	And just a reminder of upcoming speaking gigs, FaceTime gigs, family time gigs.
	May. Yes, it's May.
	Oh my god. I can't believe it.
	No, it's April. No, May.
	Yes, it's right. It's May. Thank you.
	I don't know why I can't get that right.
	So yeah, I'll be, of course, at the Porcupine Freedom Festival at Porkfest.
	I believe it is. Porkfest.
	Yeah, I know. I got lots of people who said, dude, you sounded a lot better with a cold.
	And so I'm obviously going to go out.
	And lick children's toys at the library.
	So porkfest.com, you can catch me.
	I will be woven into the very fabric of space-time in Porkfest.
	You can go to porkfest.com and hopefully you will be able to drop by June 20th to 26th.
	It is a blast.
	If you want to see little boys with strangely long hair, that is The place to go.
	So I hope that you will join there.
	And then I will be at the Liberty Fest 2 in New York, which you can get at lfnyc.com.
	That's going to be September the 10th.
	What a lineup! What a lineup!
	Tom Woods, Mike Church, Jack Hunter, Adam Kokesh, Gary Franchi, Dan Halloran, John Dennis, Joe Kennedy, Jordan Page, and only a few people with two first names.
	Never trust those ever since George Michael stole my corgi.
	Anyway, I hope that you will join us there.
	Tickets are on sale now. And last but not least, Libertopia.org.
	That is a very cool place to go.
	It's going to be in San Diego this year.
	Let me see if I can spell Libertopia.org correctly.
	I believe I can. Let me just double check the...
	Libertopia.org.
	It's going to be in October 21st to 23rd in San Diego.
	It is some really great speakers.
	I'm going to be Master of Ceremonies, which I believe comes with a cape and nothing else.
	The founder from PayPal was there last year, and Peter Boss is going to be there.
	Bill Ruppert. Gary Chate.
	David Friedman. Patry.
	Friedman, who is the seasteading dude, he will be there.
	He will actually, interestingly enough, be taking his anti-anti-nautia pills for being on firm land for a while, I think.
	Anthony Gregory, research analyst at the Independent Institute.
	Rod Long will be there.
	He was there last year and a very great and enjoyable public speaker.
	And Angela Keaton, development director of antiwar.com.
	Spencer McCallum, Isaac Morehouse, Jim Perron, Sharon Morehouse, Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Enough of my telling you to come and see Liberty Fest.
	I recommend. I mean, even if you don't like what I'm going to say, which is perfectly fine, come see some great speakers.
	But really just come to meet people that you can be completely open with.
	I think that's a really, really, really cool thing.
	I believe that the Liberty Cruise is full up, but you can check it out.
	FDR.com. Sorry, FDRURL.com forward slash cruise.
	And so I hope that you can check that out.
	Maybe you can squeeze your way in there by making and batting eyelids at somebody who already has a cabin, myself not included.
	But that's it.
	Other stuff coming up. We're working on some other projects that I think are very interesting.
	Don't forget! Don't forget!
	I am, shockingly, on TV once a week these days.
	That's RT.com, Russian television, where I do an outrageous Scottish accent because my knowledge of geography is truly pitiful.
	And I hope that you will be able to check it out.
	It is on RT.com weeknights at 7 p.m.
	And if you really want to see some manly biceps next to some pretty girl guidey noodle arms, just look at Adam and I standing together.
	I think it's, well, it's striking.
	And it shows you that you do get to do push-ups in the Marines.
	So that's it. I don't have a huge list of things to do.
	I'm just working up on finishing up a very short book called A Guide to Human, which is a sort of tongue-in-cheek instructional manual for new political appointees.
	So I'm working on that, finishing that up.
	I have another book. Floating around that I'm just starting on.
	So lots of fun projects cooking around.
	And thanks again to recent interviewees.
	And thanks again to everyone who commented that I seemed woefully underdressed relative to Jeffrey Tucker, who is the man with a bow tie.
	And I believe that I am going to get a monocle with Sparkles.
	Something like that. Some sort of fireworks or sparkles.
	I think that should put that disparity to rest.
	I suppose is the best way of putting it.
	So, enough about me.
	Let's get to the brains of the outfit.
	The bedrock upon which this show rests.
	The listener is you with the microphone.
	If you'd like to talk, just let James Pirich in the chat room know and he will put you in.
	You can listen in the chat room. And, oh, I also wanted to mention that I had a very, I think, a very good podcast with a fellow who has some issues around going to be an entrepreneur.
	And it's FDR 1905, because we are now in the 20th century of Freedom Aid Radio podcasts.
	So, I hope that you will check that out.
	And of course, 1904, the Jeff Tucker interview, part three, great.
	And a good Sunday show, I think, 1901.
	So I hope that you will check those out.
	Thank you for your patience. If you have a question or comment, now would be the time to speak up.
	Super, Stef. Well, I really enjoyed your entrepreneurial terror podcast a lot.
	I think it's one of your best related to entrepreneurship because it really goes down to the essence and that is to take risk and And to jump in.
	And you talk about all the barriers that are there to do with it.
	It is actually trying you to not take risks.
	Relate to that, because I'm really wrestling with this issue also, but not in relation to entrepreneurship, but in relation to investing.
	And especially Harry Brown had a very big influence on me.
	I talked with you before about him, about his permanent portfolio ID. And Harry Brown says that, do not speculate with the capital you cannot afford to lose.
	And two years ago I discovered him and I said, yeah, he's right.
	I have these savings.
	I shouldn't speculate in the markets if I cannot afford to lose it.
	So I follow his vision and have a permanent portfolio.
	But today I'm thinking like, it's not correct what he says there, you know?
	I mean, the disadvantage of the permanent portfolio is you don't take a lot of risk because it's spread between different assets and thus you don't make money.
	You make about seven, eight, nine percent, which is actually through inflation.
	So you don't really make money.
	And then I'm asking myself, like, okay, can I afford to lose this money?
	No, I cannot.
	It would be not good to lose it, but there is no other way.
	If you want to make money, you have to take the risks, even with the capital that you cannot afford to lose.
	So I have this idea that Harry Brown actually jumps on the bandwagon to scare people off taking risks, you know?
	But I would like to get your feedback on that.
	Sure. Look, I'll tell you what you think.
	Just, you know, an important caveat.
	I am no expert in any way, shape, or form on investments, right?
	So I'm just going to give you my personal opinions.
	None of this is investment advice or anything like that.
	I'll just give you my personal opinions about the way that I look at things.
	Now, and correct me if I'm wrong, it's been a while, but Harry Brown had an idea that you have, you know, quarter bonds, quarter stocks, quarter cash.
	And what was it, a quarter gold?
	That way you're protected against just about any way that the market goes.
	Something like that, and he's got a whole book on that.
	And it looks, 7 or 8% a year is pretty good.
	Inflation is not quite that high, at least official inflation is not quite that high at the moment, depending on where you're calling from.
	I think, my argument would be this, that The important thing over the next little while is not to try and make money, but to try not to lose money.
	I think that's the important thing over the next little while.
	And there are some ways that you can not lose money or at least minimize your losses.
	And one of those ways is to buy We're good to go.
	I think by definition, if you can't afford to lose the money, you shouldn't be trying to make the money.
	I believe that investments are slow and steady wins the race.
	If you can get 7% or 8% over 10 or 20 years, you've made a fortune.
	Even if that means in terms of real dollars, you're not hugely far ahead, but you haven't lost anything.
	And I think that's very important.
	I think that where the economies of the West are going is to a place where if you can hang on to the value of what you have, you have done very well.
	And I think that's important.
	And I've been in business where you've gone through sort of recessions or problems in the marketplace and so on.
	And you change the way that you look at things when you're in a recession in a business, right?
	So in a boom period, you invest and you try to grow your business because business opportunities are coming up all the time.
	Whereas in a recession or a depression, what you do is you try to maintain the core value of your business.
	You feel like a bear going into hibernation, right?
	You're not out... Hunting, you're just losing a third of your body fat trying to stay alive for the winter.
	I believe, again, this is all just personal idiot, amateur nonsense opinion, but I believe that the next few years are going to be a time to attempt to maintain the value of your assets, not to try to grow them.
	That's my opinion.
	Of course, anybody can do whatever they want, and this is just my approach.
	But I think that there's ways that you can do that by converting Instruments into things that actually exist, right?
	Because a house will drop in value, but it's very unlikely to be wiped out.
	But stocks and shares and maybe even bonds, right?
	Can lose significant amounts of their value and you can't do anything with them.
	At least a house you can move into it or whatever and it serves some utility for you or other things that you can buy.
	So that's my particular approach.
	I don't think it's a time for big risk in the stock market.
	The one exception being, with I think astute knowledge of economics, you can predict there is going to be some areas where the marketplace is going to do better or worse I think it's a tough time to go out at the moment and try and make a lot of money in the stock market.
	That's just my thoughts about it.
	If any use to you, but definitely take Harry Brown's advice or anybody with any competence advice over mine.
	These are just my thoughts on it. Yeah, Steph, the problem is my definition of investing is not going in the stock market.
	That's only one option. It can be equally going into gold.
	And I think that's also speculating, that's also investing.
	And I think you also take a high risk there, but you can get high rewards.
	But the problem I have is, you're saying, okay, it's not a moment to take risks.
	So, play it safe.
	Okay. But would you say that to an entrepreneur also during a recession?
	Like, stay where you are.
	No, no, no. Because, look, being an entrepreneur, sorry to interrupt, being an entrepreneur is very different from being a speculator on the stock market.
	Because being an entrepreneur, you have much more control over the value of what you're doing than if you're buying some stock or gold or whatever.
	And I think gold is, I mean, from what I've heard, gold is still a pretty good investment.
	But as an entrepreneur, you can control how hard you work.
	You can control how many cold calls you make.
	You can control how much marketing you spend.
	You can control the quality of your work.
	You can control so much more than you can.
	It's almost infinitely more than you can control in the stock market.
	So I wouldn't put the two in that kind of classification.
	The other thing that's true, which I mentioned in the 1905 podcast, FDR 1905, is that if you go into some investment and you lose your money, then you're just out a lot of money.
	But if you go into entrepreneurship, you are adding to your human capital no matter what happens.
	You're adding to your knowledge of business.
	You're adding to your well-roundedness as far as business goes.
	And that has value no matter what.
	So you have far greater control in entrepreneurship than you do in investments.
	And no matter what happens in the entrepreneurial field, you are adding to your human value, your economic value.
	So I think those would differentiate it.
	Yes, I wouldn't agree there.
	I think it's the same.
	True, you have more control as an entrepreneur, but in essence it's the same.
	It requires a lot of study to invest right, to bet on the right assets.
	And so I think that it's very, very comparable.
	But yeah, I wouldn't agree there.
	I think it's the same story.
	Like you say during recession, it's a very good time to be an entrepreneur.
	You can make good money.
	There are a lot of chances.
	And I think the same is true for an investor.
	Well, then I don't have enough expertise to disagree with you on that.
	I certainly think that during a recession, You can make good money as an entrepreneur because people are looking for cheaper deals and a startup tends to be less expensive.
	I mean, that's what the startup offers that is different from the more established companies is a willingness to work harder for less money.
	And during a recession, that's the kind of deals that people are looking for.
	So I think, as an entrepreneur, a recession can be a very good time to start a business.
	And yeah, I'm sure there are undervalued stocks in a recession and so on, but I just don't have the expertise to speak with any competence on that.
	Yeah, but when I talk investing, I don't mean stocks, I mean gold also.
	And my idea is if I would take the risk as an investor, it would be gold.
	And I do think that that's a very good example.
	When it would happen, what you also predict, that we get hard times, a serious recession, gold will raise a lot in purchasing power.
	It will be not just to preserve your value, no, it will raise a lot.
	Oh yeah, there's no question that Austrian economic theory, and it's fairly mainstream in economics now as far as I understand it, Austrian economic theory is very clear on this, that increases in the money supply add to the value of gold, increase the value of gold.
	And people like Doug Casey, whose investment expertise is very good, I would imagine, still says that even though gold is quite high, It's well worth investing in at the moment.
	So, you know, I simply passed that along from him.
	And, yeah, I think that you're quite right about that.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	But one thing I digress with a lot of gold investors is they always say, play it safe and Gold is the safest, but I think that's totally wrong.
	It's a very risky asset and that's why you can become very rich if you are at the right time in gold.
	But you can also become You lose like 80% of your purchasing power with gold when you invest during bad times.
	So I would say it's also very risky.
	Sorry, did you say 80%?
	So you're saying that there's been a time where gold has gone down 80%?
	In purchasing power, yes, exactly.
	During the 80s and 90s, the total loss was 80%.
	And that is counting only official inflation.
	So if you count...
	Well, listen, I'm sorry, I don't mean to interrupt you, but I'm just not sure that I have much of value to add to this investment stuff.
	So I just want to make sure I get to the other callers.
	But I really do appreciate that...
	That feedback. I wish you the best of luck.
	I tend to be very conservative by nature.
	I'm very much a bird in the hand.
	It's worth two in the bush when it comes to finances and investments.
	But that may be just my time in life and my circumstances.
	It's different for everyone. But I really do appreciate your input on this.
	Thanks a lot, Stef. Thanks a lot.
	You're very welcome. All right.
	We have...
	Look at that. We have lots of time for other callers if you want to speak up.
	We've got lots of people, I guess, in the queue.
	Grab the mic. Grab the gusto.
	Carpe the fish.
	Hi, Stefan. Hi.
	How's it going? We spoke briefly at the Freedom Summit.
	I also spoke briefly to you on Facebook about the possibility of conducting an interview.
	Michael Connolly, I don't know if you remember, but...
	I do, I do. Oh, awesome.
	Well, good to talk to you again.
	My question, I'll try to keep it not wordy and everything, but I watched your video about Ron Paul, and I absolutely agree.
	I consider myself an anarcho-capitalist to most extents, and I do agree entirely that it could be very catastrophic if Ron Paul was to actually implement the policies that he speaks about, and I don't know of how their implementation would go.
	I tend to side more with you on it.
	But in regards to that, he just did an interview where he said that he would pardon all non-violent drug offenders and things of that nature.
	And it seems so tempting to want to believe in that kind of candidate as a stepping stone towards the type of society that people like you and I believe in, which would be a stateless society.
	But on the same token...
	I also think that anyone who thinks they can demand freedom from the state has a fundamental flaw in their logic because freedom is something that you have to have innately already.
	So demanding it from the state is like a paradox.
	So I was wondering if you think that there's any value at all in backing a candidate like that if you are an anarcho-capitalist as you and I tend to agree on.
	Yeah, no, I guess because Ron Paul wanted to get half a million dollars in his money bomb the other day.
	He's back in the game.
	I actually just read his recent book on End the Fed.
	And yeah, look, I mean, he's...
	I think he's bang on the money as far as his analysis of fiat currency goes.
	I think that he obviously would lean, like anybody who's principled, and I'm sure he has some very solid principles, he would lean towards the non-aggression principle as an axiom.
	And whether he's small government or no government, I mean, the causal chain between him and anarchists is very close, right?
	I mean, Lou Rockwell wrote the introduction to...
	Murray Rothbard's book on anarcho-capitalism and he was the aide and good, I think, close friend and supporter of Ron Paul for many years.
	So you don't even have to play two degrees of separation to get between Ron Paul and Murray Rothbard.
	He speaks very highly. So I don't have any particular reason to believe that Ron Paul would be opposed to a stateless society.
	I'm sure that he would, like anybody, with any sense of integrity, he would be intrigued, if not excited, by the very idea.
	And yeah, some people have, I guess it was 2000 and, oh my god, six or seven that I did a series on Ron Paul.
	Look, I would love to see drug offenders out of prison.
	I think in the future, it is going to be looked at a vile, disgusting, sickening Soviet-style gulag that these people are caught in.
	Because of the hysterical self-righteousness of a largely Christian nation who is supposed to love its enemies and turn the other cheek, punishing people who are having a moment's pleasure in this world.
	So I think it is monstrous.
	And my heart breaks for the, you know, what is it, 800,000 Americans arrested every year for some sort of drug problem.
	My heart flames with anger at the double standard of politicians who...
	Gain easy votes from dumb and angry people by demonizing drug users who then turn around if their own kids are ever caught with drugs and pull every string they can to get them off and into rehab.
	Drug use, drug abuse is the symptom of child abuse and it needs to be treated as a problem, as a medical health, mental issue, mental health problem.
	Punishment is the source.
	Violence against children, abuse of children is the source of drug abuse and therefore it is a grim and hideous cycle to throw them in an abusive situation like a government run jail.
	So I'm with him there.
	I'm with him there. I think it would be a fantastic thing to do.
	I think that it is not going to happen.
	In fact, I know that it's not going to happen.
	I think it would be great if it did happen.
	But it's the magic wand theory.
	Politics is the magic wand theory.
	That if we can wave this magic wand and let all of the non-violent offenders, drug offenders, out of prison, then that will be great.
	But unfortunately, that is not how human society evolves.
	Human society evolves when people understand the ethics and the virtue of the situation.
	They empathize and they have evolved to the point Where they look at these poor people in jail with horror and sympathy and compassion and caring and that's how they get out of jail.
	I don't believe that there's a magic wand where somebody goes kaboom and these people all come out of jail and society then evolves.
	No, society evolves to develop empathy first and then these people will come out of jail.
	I know that that's painful and I know that that's slow but that's the way that it works.
	There is no magic wand that is going to move human compassion and empathy and virtue and philosophical integrity forward.
	So let's just put a few examples of what might happen out there.
	Maybe this is catastrophizing, maybe it's not.
	But let's say Ron Paul gets into office.
	Next day, Ron Paul releases all nonviolent drug offenders and millions of people stream out into the streets who've been in prison for many years.
	Well, some of those people are going to commit crimes.
	And what's the media going to do?
	Terror, crime, wave, sweeping across the nation as deadly criminals released by libertarian president to terrorize your children and steal your cats and rape your garden gnomes.
	The horror, buildings in flames, right?
	I mean, this is what's going to be portrayed because humanity has not evolved yet to the point where it feels compassion for these poor victims of state power.
	And therefore, there's going to be some...
	These people have... It just angers me so much that there's this easy drug world for people because it causes them to make such staggeringly bad decisions and it profits them.
	It causes huge profits because of course the drugs are illegal for them to make these terribly bad decisions like getting involved in the drug trade.
	And so what's happened is people get involved in the drug trade because they've had terrible childhoods and they then fail to develop empathy, they fail to develop social skills, they fail to develop literacy, they fail to develop business or marketable free market skills and so they then go to jail where they're further traumatized, messed up, screwed up, abused, become violent, become terrorized, don't have any vulnerability or sensitivity or empathy left.
	And we then take these people and put them back on the streets with no social understanding about the level of care and compassion that they're going to need to reintegrate into society, and things are going to go very badly very quickly.
	Yeah, absolutely. Let me just give you one last example.
	To me, trying to steer society through politics, trying to achieve your ends through politics, It's like getting a giant hand and grabbing the front of a car and turning it.
	Well, all that's happened is the car's going to flip over.
	No. You need to educate the driver.
	You need to take driving lessons.
	You need to have practice and then you can steer the car.
	You can't just whip the front of the car around and think you're going to do the same thing as steering.
	It needs to be organic. It needs to be built from the ground up.
	That's my very strong opinion.
	And so... And look, I say this as a guy who has at times tried to move a debate forward too fast.
	The amount of blowback that you're going to get if Ron Paul were to release criminals and then one criminal, one criminal somewhere is going to do some really bad thing.
	Ex-criminal, ex-drug guy.
	These people are symptoms of intergenerational aggression against children and there's no amount of political edicts that's going to make that all better overnight.
	Yeah, I agree 100%.
	It's just that I think that my main question would be in trying to rationalize that it wouldn't be cognitive dissonance to say that I am for a stateless society, then at the same time somewhat backing Ron Paul when I do explain it as being an atheist and knowing that it is mainly Christian movement.
	When I do speak to these people, I speak to them more saying that the ideas that Ron Paul speaks about Would be, they're good to get into the mainstream.
	They're good to have people to hear them.
	And, you know, that's what I say.
	I don't think that he would get elected.
	And I definitely don't think that if he did get elected, these things would be, you know, implementable in any way.
	And I do agree with you 100% on the blowback and how it would be.
	But it's just from a philosophical standpoint, it's hard not to want to sympathize with the first candidate that I have ever seen that actually embodies these ideals.
	And that's just more of my question would be, do you think it is even useful at all to back a candidate when you are for a state-free society and to try and get on his side to let those ideals be heard?
	But look, it depends on how you think social change is achieved.
	It's not Ron Paul or nothing, right?
	That's the argument I've made for many years.
	It's not Ron Paul or nothing.
	You know, there is that old, old, old fairy tale that I've always loved.
	The tortoise and the hare.
	And I like it because the hare loses and my hare has betrayed me so significantly that any fairy tale where a hare loses is good for me.
	But you know, they've got a mile to run or whatever and the hare runs around and he's all skittish and he goes up trees and then he takes a nap because he runs so fast, right?
	The turtle is just sort of, the tortoise is plodding along, plodding along slowly.
	And then... The tortoise crosses the finish line because the hare doesn't wake up from his nap and so on.
	So there's that slow and steady wins the race versus this hyperkinetic footprints on the ceiling kind of stuff.
	And the liberty movement as a whole has a choice to make.
	And I believe it's sort of an either-or choice in that if people believe that voting somebody into office, however wildly improbable it is, That it's going to occur or that he's going to be able to achieve what he wants or that society is going to perceive what he does achieve in a positive way.
	All of those things to me would need to be satisfied first.
	In an educated population where a third, almost a third of the people believe or don't know that the earth goes around the sun.
	I mean we're asking people to understand the Federal Reserve and fiat currency.
	And a significant percentage of the American population believes that they've seen a ghost.
	I mean, in a sense we're trying to explain I know it's not Ron Paul or nothing and I absolutely don't believe in the working mechanisms of politics at all,
	but it's like the absolute despondency of the people and their inability to understand these concepts make it seem like supporting Ron Paul, even being an anarchist, would be more of a step forward into getting anyone to know anything about these issues.
	Yeah, look, I mean, the reality is that, look, I am in a unique position.
	I'm not the only person in this position, but in terms of the history of philosophy, I'm in a unique position in that I now have five years of accumulated evidence of feedback on rational arguments.
	And this doesn't mean that all my arguments are perfectly rational or that I'm never wrong, but I try to put forward rational arguments with evidence.
	And I'm in a unique position, which I can't think of any philosophers prior to the internet who would have ever had this kind of feedback, where I've read, I don't know, maybe 100,000 comments on YouTube videos, and I've got, I don't know how many thousands and thousands and thousands of emails, and there are hundreds of thousands of board posts and so on.
	I have a pretty good...
	Which is not to say scientific, but I have a pretty good lay of the land as far as people.
	And these are the people interested in philosophy.
	These are the people interested. This isn't the general population.
	This isn't being played in high schools across the country yet.
	But people can't think.
	They can't think.
	It's absolutely tragic.
	It's absolutely horrible. But people can't think.
	What happens is they either like an argument for emotional reasons and then get behind it, or they dislike an argument for emotional reasons and then they do ad hominems and other kinds of straw man attacks and so on.
	But people can't think.
	The number of people who've actually sent me emails where they've said, You know, this logical step you made was not consistent with this one.
	There have been a few. There have been a few, but it's maybe one in a thousand.
	Maybe. And so the idea that we can take rational arguments to a general population that simply cannot think, that simply cannot think, to me is not rational.
	I mean, we're as crazy as the people we're trying to...
	We need to have people around who can think before we bring rational arguments.
	Why people can't think is pretty clear.
	I mean, the science on it is fairly clear that people can't think because of childhood trauma and the trauma comes sometimes from the family and sometimes from the church and sometimes from the schools and sometimes from all three.
	Yeah, definitely. You know, over 20% of adult Americans are not able to locate information in a piece of text.
	They can't make low-level inferences from printed materials.
	I know. I was actually really surprised by your conversation with the feedback that you got from Peter Joseph.
	I was really looking forward to that debate, even though I was into his first film and I've followed him slightly since then, but even he couldn't argue rationally, and I was really disappointed by that.
	I thought it would be a good debate, but I totally agree with you.
	Almost 50% of American adults, they read so poorly that they earn significantly below the threshold poverty level for an individual.
	I mean, this is what we're working with.
	One in seven Americans can't read basic text.
	Yeah, 14% of the American adult population can't fill out a job application.
	30 million people. They can't read a newspaper story written at the eighth grade level.
	I mean, this is what we're working with.
	The idea that we can then explain how currency came into being and how the Federal Reserve causes inflation.
	I think what happens is people who get into intellectual topics, the listeners of this show are in the top 1% or 2% of intelligence.
	I'm convinced of it. We all hang out with each other and we have these great debates, but you've got to go into the marketplace.
	You've got to go into the general population or at least read the statistics about them before recognizing that we do not have the mental capacity At the moment, sorry, somebody just asked if a lack of ability to reason comes from childhood trauma.
	Have I proven this? I haven't, but the science seems fairly clear.
	At least it was, I think, a year or so ago.
	You can go to www.fdrurl.com forward slash B-I-B and you can check out the science there.
	There's a series called The Bomb of the Brain, Long-Term Effects of Child Abuse.
	And so there's this choice that the freedom movement has.
	Are you going to go for politics or are you going to go for parenting?
	It's the two Ps. It's the fork in the road that lead to two Ps.
	One road leads to political action and obviously this is the road that is enormously popular.
	It is enormously popular because it doesn't require personal confrontations with anyone.
	Really, right? So you send a check to Ron Paul and then you cross your fingers and you go out and you do work.
	I'm not saying it's easy, right? Maybe you go out and you, you know, pound in some lawn signs and all that kind of stuff and you follow politics and you hope that that's going to be.
	And then people may disagree with you, but it's just politics.
	It's not personal. But if you work to improve your own parenting, that can be very tough.
	If you work to improve or help people improve the parenting of those around you, that can be very volatile.
	That can be very difficult. That can cost you friendships.
	That can cost you relationships if people aren't willing to treat their children better.
	And so there's this...
	I throw some money over the mountain and freedom will come charging over.
	And I don't believe that's the case.
	I don't think the evidence is there for it.
	I think the evidence is entirely against that as the solution.
	I think we have to recognize that it's a slow and steady wins the race.
	And we should be Not sending money to Ron Paul.
	We should be sending people to parenting classes.
	We should be buying books on parenting.
	We should be trying to undo some of the damage that is being done by public education to kids.
	And that's my approach.
	Look, I could be wrong.
	I could be completely wrong.
	I try to work as consistently from the evidence as possible.
	Political action has been tried since classical liberalism started.
	Since Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations, since Ricardo was writing in the 18th century, it has been tried for hundreds of years, and it doesn't work.
	And the reason that it doesn't work is embedded in what's called public choice theory, which we don't have to get into right now, but it basically is that the governments are always going to have an incentive to grow, no matter what.
	And it can't be opposed by political ideology, because human beings are empirical, fundamentally not ideological.
	And so, the path that I suggest, based upon the latest science, based upon the historical evidence, based upon the failures of politics to achieve a free society, I mean, this is, what, 60 years since, more than 60 years since Atlas Shrugged was written.
	And then the movie comes out, and people are still pulling out of their fetid scabbard asses the same crappy, bitchy, non-arguments against Rand.
	Oh, mine ran. She took Medicare when she was old, so he's a hypocrite, and therefore her philosophy is wrong.
	Oh, come on. He had an affair.
	Oh, my God. I've never heard that talked about Sartre, who had threesomes with his wife and his students, for Christ's sake.
	Do you never hear about Sartre's sex life?
	Why? Because he was a cool, funky, gatoin-smoking existentialist, but...
	But, you know, people, you read anywhere in the mainstream media about Ayn Rand, outside of, you know, maybe reason.com, and all they're talking about is just shitty little snarky ad hominems, you know?
	Well, there's rough sex in her books, therefore.
	It's like, you want to talk about rough sex?
	Look at the fucking Bible, for Christ's sakes, if you want rough sex.
	Anyway. Yeah, that's always how it is.
	Yeah, so people...
	I don't think that the sex portrayals in Atlas Shrugged or the Fountainhead are very healthy or very good.
	And I think it does speak volumes about her history.
	And I think there's a premium podcast about this.
	But the reality is it has no bearing on the truth or falsehood of her philosophical arguments.
	And you simply do not see intelligible, intelligent analysis of Randian arguments.
	It's just the same snarky shit that's been going on for at least two generations now.
	This is the lack of progress that has been made from a genius woman who wrote some just truly astounding books.
	Her prose style is wooden.
	You know, her plots are out.
	What the hell does that have anything to do with anything?
	You know, I think Socrates had a bit of a funny accent, and that's my term paper on why he was incorrect.
	I mean, it's embarrassing. But this is the state of the nation, of the nations as a whole, of the Western culture.
	It is intensely degraded.
	In the 19th century, around 1840, American literacy rate in the North was 91 to 97%.
	91 to 97% before government schools.
	Half of Detroit is now functionally illiterate.
	The degradation...
	Of the soul of the West has been absolutely catastrophic since government took over education.
	There has been a slow and steady decline in literacy since government took over education.
	And it's catastrophic at the moment and attempting To make enlightenment philosophers out of this pitiful, broken, bloodied-up, brain-mashed clay is, I think, a complete fantasy.
	And people respond emotionally.
	They respond violently.
	They have the intellectual self-respect and self-control of a ferret on a double espresso with a side of Coke.
	And this is just the reality of it.
	So, no, we need to rebuild the human capacity for thinking before we can ask for human beings to live in a rational society.
	It's just not ready. Absolutely.
	I just think that sometimes, in the debate with Paul supporters, it seems that it might be a useful tool in communicating some of these ideas to people that don't understand them.
	I never have thought of the idea that Paul would actually get elected or would be able to implement any of these things.
	It just seems to be some kind of common ground where ideas are actually being expressed and more and more it seems like it hasn't been that way with the Tea Party co-opting the movement and blah blah blah.
	Yes, but where are the ideas going to go?
	The fact that people talk about fear currency is fantastic, but where is it going to go?
	That's my question. My argument is peaceful parenting is the foundation of the future society that we all want.
	Peaceful parenting. And I think the politics is a massive distraction.
	To me, it's like, you know, it is an addiction.
	Because it is not working.
	It is doing the opposite of working.
	It is an epic fail. People have poured billions of dollars and God knows how many man hours into attempting to reduce the size and power of the state through political action.
	And The fact is it hasn't worked, which is not the end of the world, but the reason that I say it's an addiction is that people can't admit that it hasn't worked and they can't figure out why.
	Because they just keep doing the same thing over and over again.
	I'll support this candidate. Oh, I'll support this candidate.
	Oh, this guy seems pretty, you know, his first name is Rand and he's got a nice toupee and he seems pretty liberty friendly, so I'll support this candidate.
	And it is exactly the same as an addiction because it is not achieving what people want.
	In fact, things are getting worse and worse.
	And people aren't stopping and saying, okay, wait a second, everybody, everybody, whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down.
	We've been trying this for five to ten generations, and the governments have kept getting bigger and bigger.
	So let's see if we can at least ask the question if we're missing something.
	But everybody's just like, oh, Ron Paul's coming back.
	Yay! Love illusion!
	Let's set a chance. It's not, like, there's no self-criticism.
	It has become, in essence, a government program, which is above self-criticism.
	And that's my issue. Why are people not asking why it hasn't worked?
	Well, that's what addicts do.
	See, that's what I try to embody when I speak to them.
	I try to be the self-criticism and somewhat of a participatory role in the movement, but not even because my questions about the fundamental flaws of it make it so I'm not technically even in support of it.
	I just think that it might be a means for these ideas to gain some momentum.
	And then when I actually get into debate with people of the Palm Movement and everything like that, It comes clear that we differ on too many actual ideas about the way things should be.
	But if I need to yield to the next caller, I'd be happy to.
	Thank you so much for your time. Thank you.
	I appreciate that. And I really do appreciate...
	Look, I don't want to sound like I'm dug it on the run.
	I mean, the man has done some pretty cool things.
	And he's obviously very intelligent.
	He's very confident.
	He has fought a tough battle in Washington for many years.
	I don't mean to say that he's like a bad guy or anything like that.
	But as Aristotle said, we need to value the truth even above those we hold in high regard.
	And I think that Ron Paul has done some great things in some ways.
	He obviously has helped spread the word about certain aspects of government power that otherwise...
	For a doctor to deny evolution, this is a problem.
	This is choosing a particular personal preference over a universal truth.
	That is problematic.
	If someone can show me evidence of government shrinking as the result of political action, I think that's great.
	But until the liberty movement and its approach to political action becomes more self-critical and at least ask the question why it hasn't worked and act as if there's not just one alternative to how people are going to spend their time and money.
	I've put out a number of other alternatives, the against me arguments, the speech that I gave, Living Free in an Unfree World at Libertopia last year.
	I've put myself front and center about what people can actually do to bring about freedom, which is to point out the gun in the room and their relationships with people, to ask people to stop advocating the use of violence against them.
	And there are very few people who are doing that.
	There are very few people who are doing that.
	And it may just be too soon.
	But that's something that people can do that is immediate, that they have control over, that doesn't rely upon the integrity of somebody else and voters to get somebody elected.
	And there are some, but there are very few people who are taking that approach.
	And I understand why, because it's very volatile.
	But I believe that that's the approach that will work.
	Pointing out the gun in the room, personalizing the violence that people are advocating when they talk about government solutions, and most importantly, raising your children without aggression.
	That is the way forward for me.
	I could be wrong. Maybe Ron Paul will get elected and I will have to eat an enormous amount of crow.
	I obviously don't think that I've done any particular image to Ron.
	No, it could be. Look, I mean, I could be completely wrong.
	I mean, this is true about just about everything that I say, except for UPB, which is the foundation.
	But no, because if I'm wrong, then it's through UPB that I'll be proven wrong.
	But look, I could be wrong.
	But I don't think there's any reason to believe that.
	Yeah, that's more the philosophy I try to embody when having any participation in the Ron Paul movement is more of pointing out the flaws in it and seeing how it could Maybe potentially be a stepping stone to these ideas, getting more exposure, but definitely not in any way, shape, or form a means to the solution.
	And it's hard to try and embody both of those realms, I guess you'd say, because I feel like the self-criticism needs to be a part of the movement, and there needs to be someone around saying these things to the Pulse supporters.
	And that's kind of more of the identity that I have in that.
	But I was wondering, you know, just absolutely what you said, specifying on your exact particular points.
	And I agree with you 100%. So thank you so much for your time.
	Yeah, look, I mean, the last thing I mentioned is that Liberty Movement does not have enough entrepreneurs in it, in my opinion, as yet.
	When you're an entrepreneur, you're constantly re-evaluating everything that you do, and everything is open to question everything.
	Even your core flagship product may be ditched.
	And so everything is open to question and reevaluation.
	And I think that the liberty movement has had a lot of professors in it, a lot of academics in it, which, you know, I obviously have some issues with.
	I think they should all quit and become podcasters, as I've talked about before, or whatever they're going to do.
	But that is not an entrepreneurial issue.
	And it has a lot of politicians in it, which is not exactly the same as being an entrepreneur.
	So I think maybe that's part of what I bring is just you have to look at everything from the ground up continually.
	And I just think that's something that the liberty movement needs to do.
	If we dedicate it to liberty and not the anxiety management of watching the slides into fascism and imagining that politics will solve it.
	Anyway, I appreciate your call.
	I will try not to rant too much, but I put a little extra in there because I've gotten so many questions about where I stand.
	Relative to the podcast I put out a couple of years ago, and I hope that answers people's questions.
	Definitely. Thank you so much. All right.
	Thank you. Hello.
	Can anyone hear me? I sure can.
	How are you doing? I'm okay, man.
	This is my second call, so I'm not as nervous, so I can be a bit more to the point, and then hopefully people can get across and stuff like that.
	It's just a query I had, and I tried asking about by understanding that you're busy, so I appreciate that the calls are the best place to get stuff out if you're too busy and stuff, so yeah, just want to fire ahead with that.
	Go for it. Okay, I was listening to, and this was a few years ago as well when you first started out the podcast, but you were kind of saying about how the situation that you were in, and I appreciate that you went into detail about your personal history.
	I think that was quite a brave thing to do.
	But yeah, so I was reading about that.
	Listening to that. And you were saying about how the experiences about being around violence didn't make you want to be violent.
	Because, you know, you were saying we have a choice whether or not we choose to be violent or not.
	And I think this bothered me.
	Sorry, and just to distinguish that.
	We have a choice whether to be violent.
	That doesn't mean we have a choice whether to feel.
	Violent. To feel like we want to be violent.
	But I think we have a choice about whether that actually happens.
	But sorry, go on. Yeah, and I think this is where I had a difference of opinion because for, well, I would say 20 years now since primary school, I've always, and obviously I don't do it as much now because I'm a big guy and I'd get into a lot of trouble if I did, but I would lash out in school and I would hit my brothers and stuff like that and You know, I feel awful for this and stuff like that.
	My brothers really don't like me anymore and, you know, people in school and stuff like that.
	But I was encouraged to be violent.
	It was like the military.
	It was kind of like the town I grew up in.
	There was violence everywhere.
	I couldn't walk down the street without a gang wanting to attack me or my family.
	The school were very aggressive with me.
	I'm physical with me.
	Teachers would say they were restraining me when all I did was kind of answer back and stuff like that.
	My dad would watch me get into fights and criticize me for not beating the other guy up.
	I had to be violent.
	And I think I said on the forums, and I think you responded to this as well, I had to stop my dad being violent to me by being more violent.
	I feel like I haven't had a choice.
	And even now, I just feel like...
	And obviously, I can't go around hitting people anymore.
	And I don't want to either, to be honest.
	This isn't something that I enjoy.
	Otherwise, I wouldn't be going about the steps.
	Oh, I wouldn't be ringing here, first of all.
	That'd be a bit pointless.
	But, you know, I'm doing therapy.
	I've had therapies and stuff like that.
	I've gotten into a lot of trouble from doing silly things, self-medicating.
	I think my argument is just that when you grow up thinking that it's a good thing, when your status is judged upon how much you can hurt someone, even though, you know, I knew that it was all rubbish.
	I knew it was all rubbish, but I had to survive, man.
	I had to survive.
	I had to survive in this awful situation.
	And I don't...
	And I still do...
	Look, what was the alternative?
	I mean, and I'm not saying there was any valid alternative, but what was the alternative to using your fists as a kid?
	Well, I used to get...
	What would have happened if you didn't? Yeah.
	Then my pride would have been hurt a bit, you know?
	No, no, no. It's more than that.
	Come on. You didn't start...
	Punching people because your pride might have been hurt a bit.
	What would have happened to you socially?
	What would have happened to you in your environment?
	I would have been in physical danger, well, even more physical danger.
	Yeah. I mean, I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, right?
	But I know that people don't give up peace for, you know, five bob and a hand job, right?
	People give up peace because the alternative is far, far worse, right?
	So you didn't just start hitting people or hitting your brothers or punching or self-medicating because of your pride.
	It had to be more than that.
	People don't sell themselves out that way unless there's a real, real incentive.
	And I don't mean this in any critical way at all.
	I mean, I really, really mean this with great sympathy.
	So tell me, tell everyone, tell yourself, what would have happened, my friend, if you hadn't taken to the fist?
	Um... Then I'd be in the position with my dad, I'd be in the position my brothers are in now.
	I was the one who apparently created my brothers to be anxious people.
	I haven't seen my brothers for years.
	I haven't seen my dad for years.
	My little brother, who was one of the most happiest Laughing little kids that I knew.
	I hadn't seen them for a few years and with continual contact with my dad has become this aggressive person who drinks and goes out and stuff like that.
	And they still blame me.
	They still blame me. So yeah, had I not reacted I would have been even more of a victim.
	I tried to reason with these people.
	As a kid, I think all kids are amazing people.
	I tried to reason.
	I tried to use those tools. I didn't grow up thinking, I want to get revenge on my dad.
	I grew up thinking, I want my dad to love me.
	I want my dad to accept me.
	But it wouldn't happen.
	And any logical, reasonable argument just would go out the window.
	And what would happen with your peers?
	What would happen with them?
	With the other kids at school or wherever.
	Okay. They would have carried on doing it.
	Because, you know, my school was violent as well.
	I mean, it was quite interesting hearing what you were saying about you not experiencing people that had gotten into fights and stuff.
	It was just, it was everywhere for me.
	It was everywhere, you know?
	It was like a real achievement.
	If you could really hurt someone physically, then that was seen as an achievement.
	Then that bought you a ticket to being left alone, you know?
	You know, I guess I was about 12 and a friend of mine and I, we were down in the woods.
	We had no money, right?
	So our entertainment was You know, picking up a 50 cent can of beans and going down to the woods, making a little fire and eating and shooting the shit and so on.
	And we were down there once and there were these kids, maybe 16 or 17, and you know, like when you're a kid, 12 and 17, I mean, you might as well be different species, right?
	And they wouldn't let us pass, like a bridge troll or something.
	And they made us stay and they were very threatening and dangerous and all that.
	We were there probably for an hour or two.
	We had to make them a fire.
	We had to give them our beans and all of that.
	And they were really nasty, nasty guys.
	And threatened us and called us names and all that sort of stuff.
	And they called my friend who was small.
	I was not a big kid.
	He was smaller than I was. They called him a sucky fag.
	I remember that. And they pushed him and all of that.
	And I just got so mad.
	Because we were so small and they were so big.
	And I said, man, why don't you pick on someone your own size?
	And, you know, that was just like pushing a button in the guy.
	Like he turned around and he just punched me in the stomach.
	Because he knew. You know, like he's verbally berating some big-ass 17-year-old guy verbally berating and pushing over some 12-year-old kid.
	I mean, how pathetic.
	Can you be? That's your life, right?
	And he turned over and he punched me in the stomach and I went down and I didn't fight back.
	What the hell was I going to do, right?
	I mean, you know, I guess the only thing worse than hearing, why don't you pick on someone your own size is hearing it from a squeaky little British kid, you know, with that kind of accent.
	And, but I remember even at the time, I'm still glad, and I'm still, you know, many years later, I haven't thought about this in years, but I still, I'm still glad I said it.
	I mean, it doesn't make any difference.
	But the punch wasn't so bad, you know, I got winded and, you know, all of that sort of stuff, and I certainly had no urge to fight back.
	And I think the only other, and they, you know, when they finally let us go, you know, they said, if you go to the cops, if you go to the cops, you're dead.
	Right? And, and, We were perfectly aware that that was a very real reality, which is that there's nothing that adults could do to protect us.
	If I think back, this is long before, I had any political thought in my head, but I think that probably had something to do with it, that you could just sort of be stopped, and you could be harassed, and you could be assaulted, and this and that.
	And yeah, we were both perfectly aware that if we went to the cops, there'd be some paperwork, the kids would be back out, they know exactly that the school wouldn't be able to protect us, then they'd just get us, right?
	I think it was sort of interesting.
	And so I have sort of been around people who are violent.
	And, you know, the only thing that happened, I guess, after that was, you know, one of them sort of sneered or smirked at me in the cafeteria on Monday and said, how was your weekend, little British boy, or something like that, you know, because it was on the weekend, I guess, we had been captured, so to speak.
	And... It really felt like Lord of the Flies, like in the middle of this civilized, quote, civilized world, you know, that this could happen, and there was no recourse.
	There was nothing that could be done. And I think a lot of people who were bullied, and I certainly was never consistently bullied, but I mean, probably go through that same sort of experience.
	And to the life of me, I can't exactly remember why I started sharing this with you, but I just thought I'd mention it anyway.
	Um... No man, I mean it sounds really similar to a lot of stuff that I went through as well.
	There was this gang of lads and they'd pretend they were your friend and you'd be walking along and they'd just suddenly turn around and attack you and stuff.
	And me and my brother would just kind of walk to the shop and we'd see them and they'd chase us and stuff like that.
	And then you look at where that comes from and it comes from their parents and stuff as well.
	Yeah, I was just constantly on edge, and I still feel on edge now, and I perceive threat where there is no threat, and I get paranoid.
	I got very paranoid about contact on the FDR forums this week, not just with the FDR forums, but with my friends, people who I know a lot, who I've known a lot longer.
	And I also, I'm dependent.
	I'm dependent on other people's opinions.
	My opinion of myself is so low.
	I need verification from other people that I'm worthy.
	Otherwise, I'm nothing.
	And I mean, the way I treat myself is just appalling.
	And it's deeply upsetting.
	And I've still not made...
	I mean, I kind of made that an emotional connection after our first call, and I got very upset, and I started looking after my flat a lot more because I actually wanted to, but there's still a lot more stuff to go, and I'm starting therapy, but I just wanted to bring that up with you because it was bugging me about that, and I felt like it was giving me difficulty to try and...
	You know, I think that our upbringings are a bit more different, and I just kind of wanted to explain that.
	I'm not trying to excuse that.
	And as I say, as an adult, I don't...
	No, listen, listen, listen. Let me just interrupt you.
	Look, first of all, I don't believe that what children do to survive in a violent environment sticks to them morally.
	I don't believe that. I don't believe that there's any fundamental difference between you and me.
	In other words, if I had been born exactly as you, we'd switched at birth, right?
	And if I had been in your environment, I believe that the likelihood is very certain, it's almost certain, that I would have ended up doing what you did.
	You know, like if I'm born in Turkey and you're born in England and we get switched at birth, I'm not going to grow up speaking Turkish.
	I'm going to grow up speaking English, and you're going to grow up speaking Turkish, right?
	Because that's the language that's around us.
	And I believe that the same thing is true of violence.
	So you're in this, you know, that Pogue song comes to mind.
	I kiss my girl by the factory wall, dream to dream by the old canal.
	I kiss my girl by the factory wall, dirty old town, dirty old town.
	If you were in that kind of environment...
	Where it's, you know, punch or be punched, or, you know, you have to be aggressive towards others, otherwise you're going to face significant physical danger, like broken arms or worse, then yeah, I mean, that's what you do.
	And, you know, this is the great tragedy of siblings as well, you know.
	I tell you, this just breaks my heart.
	It breaks my heart to think of This is as true of my own brother as it is for most of the other siblings that I've known, is that I think we could have been, my brother and I, we could have been such allies.
	We could have huddled together under the blankets and told the truth and given each other comfort and been strong with each other.
	Like you always see in movies, the brothers who stand together against all odds and nothing can tear us apart.
	We are a solid wall of fraternal truth and integrity.
	And this, you know, boy, this almost never seems to come to pass in the real world.
	It's a real fantasy that your brothers could have banded together And recognize the trials and tribulations and evils of your environment.
	I mean, and been a team and hung together and supported each other and stood up for each other.
	But it seems sadly true that it seems about the easiest people to turn against each other are siblings sometimes.
	Does that make any sense? Well, yeah, in a way, the two youngest ones have teamed up, but unfortunately it's against me because the deflection has been that great that, you know, like, it's all his.
	But they've not teamed up against violence as a whole, right?
	Oh, no, they embrace it, and, you know, yeah, my brother said to me once before we stopped speaking that using force was acceptable in certain ways and stuff, and he wasn't talking about self-defense either, but, you know, he's kind of, yeah.
	That's his stuff, but yeah, it's sad.
	It's sad, and I miss them, but I can't force them to want to speak to me.
	No, but you never know where your path is going to end up.
	You're doing therapy, you're starting to take better care of yourself, but the way that we get bowed down, there's that Atlas myth, the guy who's holding up the whole world.
	The way that we get bowed down We are forced as children into situations where we have to do wrong.
	And we are then told that we have chosen to do wrong.
	And then we tell ourselves, well, I chose to do wrong.
	I chose to do wrong.
	To hit my brothers. I chose to run away.
	I chose to lash out.
	I chose to do drugs.
	I chose to shoplift.
	As if these choices were just in the middle of an empty field and we just can choose anything that we want and we make these terrible choices.
	Because we're just dumb or bad or some damn thing like that.
	And I'm telling you, my friend, it's not true.
	Shrug that shit off.
	You were trying to survive.
	You were trying to survive.
	You know, a guy who doesn't put sunscreen on and then goes out and plays on the beach all day and gets a sunburn was kind of being dumb.
	A guy who's stuck on a rubber raft because his ship went down accidentally in the middle of the ocean who gets a sunburn is not being dumb.
	That's just the environment he's in, right?
	And if you were, and I absolutely believe you, you were in an environment where it was punch or be punched, kill or be killed, attack or be attacked, That is not a blank slate to start with.
	That is not causeless violence on your part.
	That is adapting to a situation that you did not create, that you are not responsible for, and that does not stain you in the slightest morally.
	It is tragic. It stains everybody who was an adult who had some other choices in the environment.
	But you as a child being dropped into this by random acts of biology, it does not stick to you, what you had to do to survive in that situation as a child.
	And if you let it stick to you, then you've lost something fundamental and you have unjustly continued to attack yourself when it is no longer necessary.
	You know there's that old nasty fraternal or sibling trick Where your sibling grabs your arm, makes you punch yourself and say, why are you hitting yourself?
	Yeah. Well, it's because the guy's making you punch yourself.
	And if you resist, it's going to get worse.
	And when there's a size differential, you don't need an explicit threat.
	And that is what happens.
	And then we have the choice later on, though.
	We have the choice to say, well, nobody's holding my hand anymore.
	And I'm not going to pretend that I was just randomly punching myself as a kid, but there was somebody's hand on my fist making me punch myself.
	I'm not going to pretend that I just woke up one day in a wonderful, peaceful, happy, secure, serene, well-loved world and just started punching the shit out of my face like Ed Norton in Fight Club because it felt fun and I just became masochistic or sadistic out of nowhere.
	No. Somebody's hand is around our fist making us punch ourselves or punch others.
	That's called the society we live in.
	The environment that we're in.
	But don't imagine that it was your choice or that it sticks to you morally.
	What children have to do to survive does not stick to them.
	And you don't want to continue the injustice you faced as a kid by continuing to blame yourself for what you did to survive in that environment.
	Okay. That's what it means to take care of yourself.
	First thing you do to take care of yourself is stop blaming yourself for stuff that wasn't your fault.
	And you have taken that stand.
	You say, well, I was a bit disappointed when you said, I don't do it anymore because I'm a big guy and bad things could happen.
	No, don't do it anymore because you care for yourself and you want to have love and peace in your life.
	That's why you don't do it anymore, right?
	Yeah, it's building up experience.
	You know what I'm saying about building up evidence and saying, well, does that really work?
	But I know what it's like to have a really good discussion with someone and feel like, you know, that real sort of, you know, we sorted this out in a really great way and that kind of feeling of, I don't know, unity or whatever, but, you know, it feels great.
	It feels great. It's just getting it in practice a bit more.
	Yeah. Anyway, listen, keep up the great work, my friend.
	Yeah, thank you. I appreciate it.
	Keep up the therapy. Keep taking care of yourself.
	Keep your place clean and exercise and eat well and keep taking care of yourself.
	You are amazing in what you're doing.
	Given where you came from, you are, you know, they all say these unsung heroes, right?
	People who abandon the violence of their youth, who begin to self-care, who go to therapy, who lift The half-broken spine of their old soul up the ladder to the new light and hold it aloft.
	Let the rays catch it. I mean, it sounds completely gay, but you're absolutely heroic in what it is that you're doing.
	And I think you should take enormous pride in that.
	And if you want to know just how rare it is, just ask yourself how many other people you know who are doing it.
	So I think you should be incredibly proud.
	Thank you very much. You're very welcome.
	All right, James, do we have any questions from the chatroom that had Yearning Burning?
	So do we have anybody who's got a briefy, brief question?
	Because we have six minutes, maybe seven, because we started late.
	No, not the moment.
	We had, just so everybody knows, if you're still listening, we had an awful lot of sympathy for the two callers that have been on.
	So just so that they're aware if they didn't see it.
	So just so, you know.
	Somebody's written, I have some doubts of my choice to not go to college.
	The only reason I even got through high school was because my teachers loved the little work I would do.
	I know that one.
	I'm fairly confident in myself that I can learn more efficiently on my own, but I have doubt and was wondering what your thoughts on it.
	You know, this has come up before, and you might want to do a search through the archives for the college question.
	I'll just give you my very brief summary here, and remember, I mean, nobody least of all me can tell you what you should do with your life, but these are my thoughts on the subject.
	If there's something you want to do that requires a professional degree, like, you know, being a dentist or a doctor or a lawyer, then you should go and get that degree, because you can't really do it otherwise.
	You can, in many places in the world, you can be a therapist without being a psychologist, and that may be worth looking into what requirements, what is required for that.
	If you're sort of interested in studying anthropology or art history or whatever, which, you know, may not have a direct path to a job, I think that you should look at the statistics of people who graduate from that program, how many of them find work, and what sort of average student debt they carry.
	There are lots of stories of people in the US, millions of college graduates at the moment because of the slow job market, moving back home with their parents with $50,000 of student loans to pay off.
	That is a pretty heavy burden to carry for a degree that doesn't lead you directly to a job.
	You can do a Google on lots of very successful people who've dropped out of college, and Steve Jobs and Bill Gates come to mind, but there are many, many others.
	It's not necessary to go to college to have a great life or a good career to be an entrepreneur or anything like that.
	I have found that it has been somewhat helpful to be.
	If I'd had high school, that would be a little tougher.
	Undergraduate was good. Master's is better.
	But I did it not because I wanted to be a professor, but simply because I loved the subject better and I really enjoyed having the opportunity to study.
	I did it more for the library even than the professors.
	And most of the professors I didn't find particularly helpful.
	And quite a few of them were not exactly...
	Synonyms for helpfulness, but perhaps even antonyms.
	I certainly wouldn't go to college unless you want to go to college.
	Certainly don't go to college because you think it's the right thing to do or the smart thing to do.
	You need to do the economic research and figure out what happens.
	I read an article a couple of months ago in Canadian magazine Maclean's about what are you going to do when you've got your degree in anthropology and then what, right?
	So, you know, if you want to go through to be a professor or you need something else, some piece of paper for credentials, then, you know, that's the only way to go.
	But I wouldn't do it just because it's the thing to do.
	I wouldn't do it just because other people are doing it or people tell you it's a good idea.
	There certainly are improvements in your lifelong salary when it comes to being a college graduate.
	But, you know, there's four years of lost earnings and quite often some debt that goes with it as well.
	The other thing that I would say is that if you're not going to go to college, I think that an entrepreneurial life would probably be a better approach.
	If you don't go to college and you're an employee, then I think there is some significant limitations that may accrue to you because of other people's perceptions, like, yeah, he's only got high school and so on.
	So I think college is good if, you know, if you want to be an employee and you want to sort of be able to move ahead, I think it can be useful.
	Of course, there's nothing to say that you can't do college when you get older, night school and so on.
	But I think it can be useful if your parents are going to pay, so much the better.
	But if you're going to be an entrepreneur, I think it becomes less useful.
	Unless, again, it's some particular career that needs a piece of paper.
	So I hope that helps.
	And thanks again for the questions.
	I also wanted to thank you to the listeners.
	A listener just wrote in.
	I talked to him once before and strongly urged him to finish high school.
	He just wrote to me to say, by Jove, I did finish high school.
	And he didn't finish high school in ancient Rome.
	Oh, and happy Mother's Day to all the great moms out there.
	You are the future, whether your mom happens to be a mom or, I guess in Isabella's case, a dad.
	Happy Mother's Day to everyone.
	And, you know, the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.
	And the personal peace of the mothers is the worldwide peace of the next generation.
	So I hope that you will...
	Take the time to applaud and appreciate what you're doing in bringing peace to the world.
	I hope that you will renew your commitments to non-aggressive, peaceful, philosophical parenting.
	It is a wonderful thing.
	It is working beautifully in our household.
	Izzy is the happiest child that I've ever known.
	And I just want to thank everyone, again, who's made this amazing journey, this amazing show.
	I say amazing show on the Sundays because it's mostly the listeners.
	I think that it's a wonderful and beautiful thing.
	I think we're doing great things in the world.
	And I think everyone who's part of the show should be incredibly proud.

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