Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

May 15, 2011 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:27:26

1909 Freedomain Radio Sunday Call In Show 15 May 2011

Philosophical parenting update - Isabella's imagination, Jim MOrrison of the Doors, emergency ethics and lifeboat scenarios, overcoming anger at the state, and what happens to the poor when fiat currency flames out?

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	Hi everybody, it's Stefan Molyneux.
	It is, let's get it right, it's the 15th of May, 2011.
	Look at that. I did that.
	I did it. I did it.
	Hope you're doing very well. A couple of, not even items of business, just items of rank rambling before we begin.
	My daughter. Oh, she's a treasure.
	She's so much fun. Yesterday morning we were playing...
	Groceries, which is where she has a little shopping cart and some fake food and all of that and a cash register.
	So she charges me for everything.
	And I think she really understands inflation and the role of fiat currency because everything is $8.
	Everything is $8.
	But the good news is two of everything is also $8.
	So there's a way to counter-effect the fiat currency of toddlerhood.
	And anyway, so I have a little coffee bag.
	You know, the single serve coffee maker.
	So I got a little coffee packet, which she knows is coffee.
	And I said, Oh, Isabella, some of this?
	And she said, No, Dada, I'm too little for coffee.
	And you just fall down with the cuteness of it all.
	Because there's several things that she knows that she can do when she gets bigger.
	She can drink coffee.
	She can eat nuts. She can eat gum.
	She can drive a car.
	And she can drink what she calls beard, which is a beer.
	And so she will tell me.
	And I just – she's doing this amazing growth thing at the moment.
	So she just went up like another inch in the last three months.
	And so we have this little thing on the wall, right, sort of how she gets taller.
	And I was explaining to her that she was growing and all of that.
	And she listed off everything she could do when she got bigger.
	And I don't know how the incredible alchemy of the toddler brain does this, but she went through a list of everything.
	That grows. And remember, this is, you know, according to the stats, she should maybe have two to three word sentences at most at this age.
	But, so she was saying, you know, Isabella grows, and plants grow, and bunnies grow, and grass grows.
	And she was going, and it was, she got it.
	Like, she got that it was organic things that grow.
	She didn't mention anything that wasn't organic, except, she said, and the beach grows.
	And I started correcting her and I said, no, no, no, beaches don't grow because, because, right?
	But then I remembered, no, wait, because when we were at the beach, the tide went out.
	And so the beach grew.
	So this is the, you know, always have to, you know, this is the great challenge, right?
	With parenting at this age is never assume that they're wrong.
	Because you have to look at it from the kid's perspective, right?
	I mean, what does she see?
	She sees the beach getting bigger and bigger as the tide goes out.
	And we were sort of chasing the water out.
	And I pointed out when we were at the beach that the sandcastle we built is now further away from the water and all of that.
	And, oh, I just, yeah, fantastic.
	So... It's very humbling to realize just how much thought and processing and all of that is going on in her absolutely delightful, fun, and beautiful brain.
	And I think she's got a very good sense of humor, which I guess goes to show how it skips a generation.
	She does things that are just very funny and she knows that they're funny but it's not cutesy cutesy funny like it's genuinely funny and I'm just like, oh man, it's too cool.
	She'll hold something out for me to eat, yank it back at the moment and then stuff it into her own face and giggle and then command me to cry because I'm sad that she hasn't fed me and all that.
	Oh, she's just too delightful.
	It's a fantastic age and if you can manage it, I would just incredibly strongly suggest Staying home for the first couple of years.
	I mean, it's just too much fun.
	Too much fun for words.
	And seeing how she pieces together the world in a way that is original and provocative.
	Like, thought-provoking.
	The way that she assembles various concepts together to sort of understand how things work and what things are in the world.
	I mean, it's just amazing.
	Every single day, every single day, I am astounded.
	You know, because when you've been there from, you know, I hope, conception...
	Just kidding. When you've been there from sort of the first ultrasound to...
	She's 27 months now.
	You know, I mean, I think I went away once to do that speech at Drexel University in Philly.
	That's the only time I've been away.
	And... So when you've seen that whole process up close and detailed, it really is the most amazing, incredible thing that there's this person running around her house who has very distinct likes and preferences, who you can negotiate with.
	She's a good negotiator.
	There is a temptation and I think it comes from...
	I think it comes from general culture and it certainly comes from my family history.
	And that belief, it goes something like this.
	If you give an inch, they'll take a mile.
	Or for people who know metric, if you give a hectare, they'll take a parsec.
	And the idea is if she wants something extra and you give it to her, then she'll just keep wanting more and more.
	And so that is the...
	That is the belief that says we're not going to give her more, which means that you don't negotiate with the kid, right?
	So if she wants a second bite of – we have these little baby cookies, which are basically just wheat and baby milk, I think.
	And so she wants a cookie and then says, oh, I want another cookie.
	Well, the impulse is, okay, well, if I give you another cookie, then she'll want another cookie and so on.
	If she wants to stay up five minutes later, then – She'll want to stay up ten minutes later and she'll just keep pushing for more.
	I have not found that to be the case, though it is tempting to believe that it is so that you don't negotiate.
	But I have found that if you offer her more, then she's fine.
	If she wants to watch a second Timmy time before bed and we talk about it and reaffirm that after the Timmy time you go to bed, then she actually will go to bed without complaint.
	She doesn't then start crying and say, I want a third.
	And that's really interesting.
	That is not what I was sort of taught to believe or taught to expect.
	Like you've got to be not giving to kids because then they'll just take and take.
	That really hasn't been the case, at least as far as we've experienced it or I've experienced it.
	So I just sort of wanted to point that out, that it really is well worth negotiating.
	I mean, she has so little power.
	She has so little power. She can't even get out of her crib yet without that little flaming catapult that I've built for her.
	And we're also trying to...
	Yeah, yeah. Somebody's written here says, yeah, my parents believed in that and then used the excuse of me being spoiled to save face.
	There is this belief, of course, that if you give in to kids, you're going to spoil them and this and that and the other.
	But, you know, what I keep, keep, keep reminding myself is that While it is my job as the parent to set limits on things she cannot understand, the purpose, the long-term purpose of my parenting is for her to internalize limits.
	And if I'm constantly the external source of her limits, then what she learns is to try and extend her desires beyond the limits that are imposed around her.
	Whereas if she internalizes those limits Then it is for her own self-interest that she will limit her behavior in the future.
	And so I try to – and it can be a little stressful at times if she wants to jump from something very high and I'm not sure.
	But she is really good at that.
	She's really good at setting those internal limits and not doing things that are risky.
	So yeah, I have to keep reminding myself.
	If I restrict her behavior, then she's going to be like a ferret in an empty aquarium just trying to get out.
	And then when she gets out, she may go too far in whatever behavior – To the point of risk, but it is to get her to internalize limits, not to impose limits upon her, except where she can't figure out the consequences yet and so on.
	But that's very rare.
	But that's something that is taking a big...
	I mean, there's no template.
	I don't have a template for this, and I'm certainly not trying to say or even imply that there's no template because I am the best parent ever.
	I don't think that's true.
	But... In my personal experience and in the experience of those I've seen who are parents not counting the FDR crew, it is new for me.
	It's a constant reasoning from first principles.
	It's not memory. It's invention of how to make it work.
	And we're going through potty training at the moment.
	First me, then Izzy. Because we felt...
	Anyway, we'll get into that another time.
	And she's doing well.
	She's doing well. She's not a particular fan of it, of course, right?
	Who wouldn't be? I can't wait until I'm old and can wear the pens.
	But that way, you know, I can just keep typing.
	But, you know, she's doing well and she's just fantastic.
	So I wanted to mention that. I also wanted to mention for those of you who have Netflix, there's a very good – I think it's a very good documentary on the doors called People Are Strange, narrated by Johnny Depp.
	And in it, I'm quite fascinated by singers, particularly charismatic singers, particularly charismatic singers who have a self-destructive streak.
	I think that's just a fascinating documentary.
	Personality type to have a look at.
	And he, of course, is pretty much the typical Lizard King pitching off a high cliff into an endless chasm kind of character.
	So have a look. Have a look at that if you have a chance.
	It's interesting. What I found particularly interesting, and this just shows, you know, when you look at America, and it's not just America, but it happens a lot around the world, but just this one happened to be about America.
	You look at America, and Jim Morrison...
	Was sentenced to four months of hard labor in a deep southern prison, which is not where you want to be when you're a hippie and when you're a drug addict and an alcoholic and addicted to every other kind of substance.
	I think he was addicted to oxygen as well.
	And it's not where you want to be.
	And why did he get convicted and sentenced to a four-month stint at hard labor?
	Well, because... Rumor has it, he exposed his peepee on stage.
	He introduced Mr.
	Mini Lizard King to the open air.
	And that is an amazing thing.
	And apparently he simulated a sexual act on stage.
	My goodness, my goodness, can you imagine simulating a sexual act on stage?
	Which reminds me, don't forget to come to Libertopia.
	But his father at the time, his father at the time was commanding aircraft carriers off the coast of Vietnam.
	His father at the time was commanding aircraft carriers off the Shores of Vietnam where bombers were regularly going in to drop phosphorus and Asian orange and other forms of hideously and near permanently destructive materials on the helpless, innocent villages of Vietnam and Cambodia and I'm sure other places.
	And this is how astonishing society is when you view it through, I mean not even UPB, just any kind of universal moral lens.
	That a man who is rumored to have shown people his penis, which I would assume just about everyone in the crowd, not his, has seen before in one form or another, He goes to jail, but the man who is involved in the murder of two to three million innocent, helpless Vietnamese and Cambodians, well, he gets all the respect in the world.
	He gets medals. He gets a pension.
	And it is genuinely mad.
	It is genuine madness when you look at these moral standards that occur in the world.
	I think that I'd like to do a series on the youth movement in the 1960s.
	Just what an amazing potential it was and what a tragic manifestation it was.
	But yeah, somebody wrote, Agent Orange or a penis, which would you rather be exposed to?
	That is a good question.
	Yeah, nobody knows if he showed his penis.
	There's no photo of it.
	There were a hundred cops there at the time, half on stage and around the stage.
	None of them arrested him or seemed to have seen it, so who knows?
	But of course, there was a destabilization that was going on in American society.
	In the 1960s, you had the very first – well, no, the first anti-war movement was, of course, in the First World War, where Eugene Debs was sentenced to 10 years in prison for anti-war activities.
	I think he died in prison.
	Eugene Debs is a socialist candidate for president.
	But they needed to come down hard on this counterculture because it was threatening.
	The military-industrial complex.
	A lot of these guys were doing some fantastic work.
	But there was, of course, an undercurrent of reactionary bomb in the brain stuff.
	Jim Morrison, I think, had a fascinating snippet of poem where he said, I drink so I can talk to assholes, myself included.
	And so I believe, and this is something I've really had to watch out for in what I do, I believe that when you attempt to really advance the Communication about virtue and ethics in society.
	You have to watch out for the reactionary within you, right?
	So he had his father in him who was hating what he was doing.
	And I would imagine that it was his father in him who pushed him to drink and drugs, or it was through the drink and drugs that he attempted to I think we're good to go.
	And his father had strongly urged him, even when he had sold quite a lot of records, to avoid the music business because he said that, Jim, you have no conspicuous or even latent talent whatsoever in this field, no ability, and blah, blah, blah.
	And it took his dad, until 10 years after Jim's death, his dad finally said, my son had a unique genius that he expressed in a very powerful way, and so on.
	But it really is a challenge.
	And, yeah, somebody said here, I recently read an article about the musicians who lived in Laurel Canyon.
	It's amazing to realize how many of them came from military families.
	Yes, yes, yes.
	And tragically, it was strongly suggested, I can't remember, by someone in his life that he go to see a psychiatrist or a psychologist.
	He went for one session.
	And never went back.
	And that is a great...
	It's sad.
	It's sad. I wish these people who had these amazing, explosive stage presences and astounding talents were to spend a little bit more time focusing on self-knowledge, even at the cost of some of the brilliance of their music.
	I think it would be great. Sustainability is the key when it comes to change.
	And, of course, society wanted these people to...
	The conservative society in America needed, needed, needed These people to self-destruct so that they could have an easy out.
	So there was an enormous amount of psychological pressure on these people to self-destruct.
	And unfortunately, so many of them did just that, which is a real tragedy.
	It gives people a good way of saying, see, that stuff doesn't work.
	The ferocity and depth and passion of their creative abilities, Hendrix, of course, Joplin, and Morrison as being the sort of holy trinity of sacrifices for the sake of conservatism, People remember how they ended if they don't like them and they remember how they lived if they did like them.
	So I think that's important.
	I think that's important to remember.
	Don't push the envelope too hard because the reaction internally can be very challenging as well.
	Alright, well that's it for My intro of Unduction.
	So if we have people who wanted to chat, I'm always happy to hear.
	Hello. I don't know if I was the one next in line, but no one else...
	Well, you certainly are now. Good to be assertive.
	It's good to talk to you, Steph.
	Good to talk to you too, man. What can I do for you?
	Hi, Josh. I recently came across a video about Sam Harris.
	He's given a lecture or whatever, and he talked about a trolley scenario.
	I don't know if you...
	Oh, yeah, I know this one.
	But go ahead. Do you want me to describe it?
	Sure, you can describe it.
	I had some thoughts on it, and I wanted your opinion about it, too.
	All right, let me just see if I can find his actual definition.
	But if I can't find it, I will just...
	Okay, trolley problem.
	Okay. I thought that was about internet trolls, but okay.
	Okay, so the trolley problem is something like this.
	So there's a troll...
	Trolley. A streetcar coming down a hill.
	And the track splits in two, and on one side, there's one guy, and on another side, there are five guys.
	They're tied to the tracks.
	If you don't do anything, the people on the trolley are going to die.
	If you switch it to one way, then one guy dies.
	If you switch it to another guy, then five guys die.
	So what do you do, right? Is it something like that, or have I missed some nuance about...
	It's been a while since I've...
	Something like that, right?
	Yeah. Well, I certainly have some thoughts about this, but I'm happy to hear your thoughts first.
	It is the call it, Joe, after all.
	Well, you know, it got me thinking about, you know, the whole situation where we make decisions, whether it's, you know, based upon, you know, scenarios like that where it involves, you know, like one person versus someone.
	You know, five people. Or maybe, you know, it involves you.
	And five people, you know.
	I mean, if it was, let's say, you're the one guy, and then there's five people on the other track, you know.
	And I didn't really think about, you know, whether or not it would kill anybody on the train.
	I'm assuming, you know, a train, you know, run over people.
	It doesn't really do anything.
	But... At least my thoughts, if it were me, let's say I was the one guy on one of the tracks and I had the ability to switch it over.
	So my thoughts are, if the train was coming to me by default, then morally, Using first principles and non-aggression principle.
	I can't see in my mind, logically, that I would be morally justified in pulling the switch so that I wouldn't die.
	But then, whether it was one person or five people dying on the track that I'm switching it to.
	So, Sorry, is there a version of the trolley scenario where you're going to die?
	I'm just saying, in any of those situations, you know, where we have to make decisions based upon, you know, whether it's, you know...
	Okay, so I get it.
	So if there's some scenario, you can set it up, right?
	But, okay, let me just share a few of my thoughts and see if this makes any sense.
	You know what I'm reminded of when I hear the trolley problem?
	I'm reminded that in – and this is an extreme example but it still pops into my mind that in the tens of thousands or maybe even hundreds of thousands of child soldiers around the world, one of the ways in which they are traumatized into becoming child soldiers is they're forced to murder their parents or their siblings or someone else.
	They're forced to get involved in killing someone and that's obviously very traumatic and breaks their moral spirit of course and makes them feel guilty and all this, that and the other.
	I can't view the trolley problem as anything other than a psychological manifestation of that same impulse that people inflict these kinds of horrible things on people.
	On children. So, like, if you've ever had the trolley problem, right?
	If you come up with some solution that involves no one getting killed, what's the person going to say?
	There's not a problem. No, he's going to say, well, that's not possible.
	So if you say, okay, I'm going to switch the train so that the tracks – or I'm going to switch the switch so that the train doesn't go to either way.
	So it's in the middle and the train derails and goes skidding to a halt in a shower of sparks and no one dies at all.
	I guarantee you the person is going to say, well, that's not possible in this scenario.
	In other words, they're forcing you into a situation where you have to become an accomplice in murder in one way or another, which is exactly what happens to these child soldiers.
	I mean, conceptually, not physically, of course, right?
	So it's a form of turning moral choice into a form of abuse or trauma and saying, okay, so you have to kill either one guy or five guys, which do you do?
	Well, personally, I don't think that there's any morality in that situation anyway.
	The moral crime occurs for the person who didn't maintain the trolley.
	He's the one who's morally responsible for not having a trolley with brakes or the guy who tied these people to the tracks.
	I mean, go after those people as far as morals go, but don't put me in a situation where I have to choose between one dead or five.
	That's not a moral choice.
	That is not a moral choice.
	Once you're in a situation, a lifeboat scenario, a disastrous scenario, a situation where someone has to die, a Keanu Reeves speed situation or whatever, that's not what morality is for.
	It's like going to someone who's a nutritionist and saying, a guy is currently having a heart attack.
	What should his diet plan be?
	Well, it's like, well, by the time he's having a heart attack, it's too late for nutrition.
	He should have taken a different diet plan like 10 years ago and then maybe he wouldn't be having the heart attack now.
	But philosophy, moral philosophy, is not about you have a gun to your head and this guy's doing it.
	All that shit is way too late.
	Philosophy is all about preventing these kinds of situations.
	Once these situations come into being, philosophy goes out the window.
	Just like once you're having a heart attack, your diet plan for the rest of the day doesn't mean squat.
	So if somebody says it's not a moral situation, I mean you can switch one, you can switch, but it's nothing to do with ethics.
	Nothing to do with ethics. Ethics, to me, would be about having a world where this crazy shit doesn't happen.
	And of course this crazy shit doesn't happen anyway.
	I mean I don't think there's ever been a trolley situation in the real world.
	Someone's tied to these tracks and the trolley's coming down and only one person can see the switch and nobody else can intervene.
	It's such a made-up scenario that you always have to wonder, what is the psychological motivation for people putting this shit forward?
	What is the motivation?
	Why would somebody want to invent a completely ridiculous theoretical where you become complicit in murder no matter what you do?
	To me, it's a form of verbal abuse.
	It's a form of entrapment.
	The reason I think it's called trolley is only trolls would come up with this sort of shit.
	It's nothing to do with ethics.
	Ethics would be, okay, well, from first principles, not from last-minute emergencies and extreme ridiculous made-up nonsense, but from first principles, how should we live a moral life?
	What does morality mean? What is virtue?
	Are there exceptions to the non-aggression principle?
	That is what...
	Morality and philosophy is about.
	Like, physics is not about throwing rocks at people, right?
	And morality is not about ridiculous, emergency, lifeboat, death-dealing, murder-based, imaginary, non-existent situations.
	That's just nonsense. You've got to start working from first principles.
	You've got to start, not you, but we have to start working from first principles and figure out what is virtue, what is truth, what is reality, what is goodness, right?
	Is there a role for violence in society?
	If so, where? Is self-defense justifiable?
	Is the initiation of force justifiable?
	If so, how? If not, well, let's get rid of it or whatever, right?
	And so coming up with this kind of crazy shit, to me, is just missing the entire point of philosophy.
	You know, start from first principles, not with last-minute imaginary non-existent emergencies.
	Yeah, I agree.
	Yeah, when I heard him talk about it, When I thought it through, I could try to figure out a solution to it.
	But when I kept thinking about it using logical morality, the only thing I could really come up with is that there's nothing for me to do.
	The best thing to do is nothing.
	If it's an impossible situation.
	Don't get into the trap.
	Don't get into the trap.
	Say, I reject the scenario. I reject the scenario.
	Don't accept the premises of this kind of crazy stuff.
	This is like, what the hell are you talking about?
	This is not what philosophy and morality should be working with.
	Because this never happens.
	You will live a hundred lifetimes in this world and this will never happen to you.
	So what these people are saying is that the most important question in philosophy is something that will never, ever, ever happen.
	You will never be in that situation.
	This will never occur.
	So what they're saying is philosophy is both abusive and irrelevant.
	Now, what will occur in your life is how well you treat people around you.
	Do you tell them the truth? Do you refrain from abusing them physically, emotionally, verbally, sexually?
	When you see someone being hurt, whether it's an adult or a child, will you intervene?
	Will you do something moral?
	Will you use the against me argument?
	Will you point out the gun in the room when it comes to people supporting statist violence?
	Will you oppose war? And what will you do with the people in your life who support war?
	These are all things that people can do.
	Fuck this trolley bullshit.
	That's something that people will never experience.
	What I am always curious about is what can people actually do in their lives to advance the cause of virtue and truth and goodness and progress?
	In the human experience.
	And this trolley stuff is, I'd say it's intellectual masturbation, except masturbation is a lot more fun than this sort of nonsense.
	At least so I've heard.
	Alright, yeah. But yeah, just reject the premise.
	This is complete nonsense.
	Why don't you come up with the real morals?
	And somebody who had genuine self-knowledge, which is where virtue starts from, virtue starts from self-knowledge, would first of all, rather than inflicting this sort of nonsense on other people, would ask himself, why am I even asking this question?
	Why is this question important to me?
	Because there's so much that we can do from the standpoint of virtue and integrity.
	Look, even if people don't believe anything that I talk about in terms of UPB or whatever, certainly there's a basic thing called honesty.
	So if somebody asks me that question, I say, well, why do you think you're drawn to this question?
	And I would expect them to answer honestly.
	And if they couldn't answer honestly, Which has been my experience to some degree with determinists and other people.
	If they couldn't answer honestly, then I would know they lacked the very first virtue, which is self-knowledge.
	The unexamined life is not worth living because it is not being alive.
	It is to be an automaton. So I'd ask someone, Sam Harris, whoever, say, okay, well, why are you inventing this?
	Why is this important to you? What does this say about morality?
	What does this say about you? What are you trying to achieve with this?
	And if they had genuine self-knowledge, they would say something very interesting, almost inevitably to do with their childhoods.
	And then they would hopefully say, well, I should stop reinflicting my trauma on others through these sorts of imaginary nonsense questions.
	And if they did not answer that, or they said, well, I just think it's a stimulating point of discussion and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, then I'd say, okay, well, this is not true.
	A stimulating point of discussion is something you can actually do something about.
	Since morality is about action, and there are about 10,000 things you can do in this world that are moral, that are honest, that are true, that are good, that take courage.
	And they're vaulting over all the 10,000 things you can do to talk about one traumatic thing that has nothing to do with morality and you'll never experience.
	Somebody doesn't know why they're asking that question, then they have no self-knowledge.
	And they are simply Simon the Boxer, bomb in the brain, re-inflicting some sort of paralytic trauma from their own histories on other people through creating this sort of nonsense.
	And then they don't even have the basic virtue of self-knowledge, which means they can't have the basic virtue of honesty, which means that they're just not pursuing virtue, but rather something else entirely.
	All right. Well...
	I thank you for your thoughts on it.
	I hope it was useful. I'm sorry if it was too much of a rant, but I have for quite many years, I have heard about these sorts of problems.
	Anyway, just sort of mention that.
	Alright, thanks. Thank you.
	I think somebody wanted to jump in with another view on the trolley problem, is that right?
	Yeah, just from the chat.
	Go on. I feel there's more to that thought.
	No, I'm sorry. I was just looking it up.
	He said he wanted to jump on.
	I said, okay, let's get you on the call.
	And he said he'd just type it out.
	So he says, the trolley scenario is a bit of a false dichotomy, but I think when we look at the scenario and take a lesson away from it, and then how it can fit as an allegory to statism.
	We're drawn to the question because it falsifies consequentialism.
	How does it falsify consequentialism?
	Yeah, I don't know.
	I'm going to add somebody else, and he has an extension, so there's going to be some phone tones over the line.
	So just give me two minutes.
	Let's do that. Hello.
	Hello. Hey, Steph, how are you?
	I'm great. How are you doing, man?
	Good, good. I had a question, and it's a hypothetical one, and I wanted you to have fun with this, and basically it's something that I've kind of been thinking about for the last decade.
	Oh, I hope this question is really good, because if it's bad, man, you're not going to look very good.
	It's kind of a silly question now in retrospect, but at the time when this first occurred to me, it was 2000, it was during the polarization of the whole Bush versus Gore thing.
	I just started reading Harry Brown and I was just getting to hardcore libertarianism.
	I wasn't there yet. I had not yet read Atlas Shrugged and had not seen how the two parties were basically the same thing.
	Anyway, there were rumblings on C-SPAN about how – well, what if we had a civil war?
	There was talk about that, like just – and it kind of just stuck in my head.
	Sorry. What do you mean? That was – from the States I guess, right?
	C-SPAN, right? Yeah, yeah.
	Sorry. Why were they talking about the civil war?
	Well, because I guess it got so heated with the recounts that people were calling in on Republican and Democrat and the lines on C-SPAN and saying, you know, Well, you know, I want a civil war, or they were just entertaining it like they were talking about it, and I guess C-SPAN would cut them off before they could really get into their diatribes.
	But it kind of just stuck in my mind, and I was just like, well, hmm, you know, how would that even work?
	And at the time, again, I wasn't really fully absorbed in libertarian thought, and I thought to myself, well, it really wouldn't be that much of a civil war in terms of a clear-cut dichotomy.
	It would be a lot of special interests warring with each other.
	It wouldn't really be about You know, whether or not we're going to be children of the state or not, which is the fundamental question, obviously.
	But, and then as time wore on, you know, I got more into libertarian thinking and that was shrugged and all this.
	You know, the question was always at the back of my head.
	And then a year and a half ago, during that whole mosque...
	Sorry, what's the question? Oh, the question.
	During the whole mosque debacle, it came up again about a civil war.
	I want to know, in your mind, what...
	I'm sorry, I'm sorry to interrupt you.
	You said the mosque debacle?
	Yeah, like with the whole mosque deal.
	I remember someone called in...
	Oh, the mosque deal. Sorry, I thought you said mosh.
	I'm like, was there some party at a concert I wasn't aware of?
	Okay, got it. No, sorry, sorry.
	I think it was like, you know, obviously the O'Reilly factor, which I watched for laughs to laugh at him.
	Someone like on an email said, you know, something about a civil war or something, and it just came back into my head.
	So I was just wondering, your take, how would a civil war even work?
	Could it even happen? What would happen?
	Would it be as scattered as I originally thought it was?
	And just how silly or ridiculous is it?
	That's basically my question. Well, I'm going to be annoying as usual and just ask why you think there's not one occurring at the moment.
	That's a very good point. That's a very good point.
	No, no, I don't mean that facetiously.
	I'm not trying to be clever.
	Lord knows whenever I try to do that, that doesn't work at all.
	It's like trying to be sexy. I end up looking like George Costanza in that picture from Seinfeld.
	But we have, of course, a civil war in two major directions in America, or you all in the West at the moment, which is a civil war between the classes and And a civil war that is temporal, that is between now and future generations, right?
	So lobbyists will give money to governments in order to have governments move money and resources from some people and give them to other people.
	The military-industrial complex, the financial blood-sucking squid brain-eating financial industry, and of course through national debt, we have the selling off of the unborn.
	Which is horrible and ridiculous and immoral.
	And so there is – and through fiat currency, we have the moving of money or really goods and services from those close to the government and away from those further away from the government.
	In other words, a predation on the poor in order to benefit the wealthy.
	And you could go on and on, but I'm not sure how – Our current system could not be characterized as a kind of civil war at the moment, and I could be wrong in that analysis, but that would be sort of...
	Maybe that's why it's been sticking with you for so long, because it's not a description of a possibility, but rather an actuality.
	Right, right. And, you know, obviously an intellectual revolution is underway and is needed and all of that, absolutely.
	But I guess, you know, a cold civil war versus a hot civil war, you know, if it ever could get to, you know...
	I guess some form of barbarism, if that's even possible, or obviously homicide, whatever.
	How would that unfold?
	Would it even be doable?
	Would the military just obviously control and shut everything down?
	Look, you can't have civil wars in a nuclear power.
	Right. Like the states don't have nuclear weapons, right?
	I don't know. I'm sure Montana may be somewhere.
	But the states, I mean, only the federal government has nuclear weapons.
	Nuclear weapons and the overwhelming might, right?
	There's only a civil war.
	In fact, there's only really a war of any kind between somewhat evenly matched opponents.
	Within a country, right?
	So the North and the South, they had a civil war because they were sort of evenly matched.
	There wouldn't have been a civil war if it was just Delaware that wanted to secede and every other state would pour all of its resources into keeping Delaware there, then Delaware would never secede, right?
	Because it would just get a bunch of people killed and for no good reason whatsoever, right?
	Right, right. And the exception to that, of course, is when you go invade someone else's country, obviously the insurgents in the Arab world They are vastly outmanned, outgunned and outspent by the American military, but their goal, of course, is to break the back of the American economy, not to drive America directly out of the Middle East.
	Their goal is you break the funding source and the troops.
	Vanish, which is of course what they saw with the French Empire and what they saw with the Spanish Empire and what they saw with the British Empire in the 20th century.
	You break the economy and the troops go away.
	You don't have to kill the troops.
	You simply have to kill the dollar and then the troops go away.
	Doing a good job. Yeah.
	Yeah, and I was just reading this thing, you know, this article in the Washington Post about anarchists in Greece.
	You see, Greece with youth unemployment is at 35 percent and that's just the official population.
	Youth unemployment. Youth unemployment is 35%.
	And they're talking about how Greece is being threatened by a breakdown in the rule of law.
	In the rule of law. I love that phrase.
	Rule of law. As if these books are going to – these law books are going to get up and mount themselves into some giant Iron Man book golem and then go sweeping down the streets and grab people with their paper and give them paper cuts and then lemon juice and something to make them feel, oh my Oh my god. It's the rule of law.
	I don't want any paper cuts in lemon juice.
	Oh my god. Or they're just going to flap in people's faces and they're going to sneeze and they're going to give them allergies because the books are so dusty.
	There's no rule of law. Books don't rule.
	The law is just scribbling on paper.
	There's no rule of law. But they have to say rule of law rather than rule of the ruling class because then that's something – Yeah, so oratorical that way, right?
	Oh, yeah, yeah. And of course – so a bunch of Greeks are setting up – they call it the don't pay, don't pay.
	And they're simply refusing to pay government bills.
	Government sends them a bill. Just rip it up.
	They're not paying. They're not paying.
	And why the hell should they?
	Why the hell should they?
	Because every dollar they – every drachma or I guess euro or every euro they give to the government is simply used as collateral to borrow five or ten or print five or ten more.
	I guess they can't print because they're on the euro.
	But to borrow five or ten more in which case – so every dollar they give to the government is enslaving themselves further another five or ten euros.
	So why should they pay? Yeah, so it's like a reverse Goodfellas.
	Instead, it's tearing up and saying, fuck you, I'm not paying.
	Fuck you, I'm not paying. Right?
	Right. And the funny thing is, of course, that this is the tragedy and inevitable hypocrisy of the media, right?
	That these people are being called anarchists, and I think a few lunatics have killed like four people over the past half decade or something, and that's no good.
	You can't go around killing people and expect to change society for the better.
	But the reality is, of course, that when Greek youth rebel against a system that has screwed them ridiculously badly or very, very well from the point of view of the ruling class, well, they're called anarchists.
	And the rule of law is threatened because the rule of law is important.
	Whereas when people in the Middle East kill people and blow up buildings, they're freedom fighters.
	They're rebels.
	And you don't sit there and say, well, you know, in Gaddafi's Libya, the rule of law is being threatened.
	You don't say that.
	You say, brave freedom fighters are standing up and fighting for what's theirs and a new Arab Spring and democracy, right?
	Yes. But these kids, these kids in Greece, I mean, they didn't vote in the system.
	They weren't even born when the debts they're facing robbed them of their future.
	Is this not democratic?
	Does it not pay these bills?
	But you can't ever report it like that because that's too consistent and universal a principle.
	Right. It strips away the visage, right?
	Well, I just had one further question, and thank you for that, and you did have fun with it, and I appreciate it.
	One final question, and this is just expanding on what I said about when I got into libertarian thinking.
	I hit a wall eventually where I started reading a book called Lost Rights by James Bovard.
	I'm sure you've heard of it. And it made me so angry.
	And Michael Bagnarok was right.
	It made him so angry. He could only read it a chapter at a time.
	It made me so angry. I could only read it a page at a time.
	And this is pre-911, you know, abuses of the government.
	And I actually had to stop.
	And I actually helped him during his campaign and stuff.
	But I had to stop completely with all the political stuff.
	It took me several years to even get back into it, because it wasn't making my life better.
	And I'm just amazed, you know, I only discovered you this past year.
	And, you know, I'm amazed by the serenity that you have and just the The peace of mind you seem to have and just how you manage to stem and a lot of the negative emotions.
	So I just wanted to get your thoughts on how you handle that.
	Let me just make sure I understand your question.
	So you feel a sense of rage or anger at the powers that be and that is something that is having a negative effect on your life and your question is how do I have less of that?
	Is that right? Yeah, obviously it took me some time to get back into it, and I've done a little better at it, but I just wanted to know because obviously I think I want to get to more where you are and just the serenity you have.
	It doesn't consume me like it used to, but any weaponry you have would be helpful.
	Yeah, look, I mean, I – look, first of all, I am not immune to the feelings that you experience.
	I am not immune to the feelings of helplessness and great anger and a sense of injustice and sometimes horror at the world.
	So I don't want to pretend that I'm some levitating – I think a lot of elemental anger at the base of a rational philosophy because it runs up against an irrational world so often.
	So I don't want to pretend that this doesn't occur for me, but I try to find ways to limit it.
	The first thing that I would recommend is a strong and rational sense of helplessness and despair.
	That would be my very first counsel, which is to say that there is nothing in this world as immovable as ignorance, as hypocrisy in particular is immovable.
	If human beings really wanted to, we could move Mount Everest.
	I'm not saying it would be easy.
	I'm not saying a few people wouldn't put their backs out, but we could move Mount Everest.
	But we can't shift or move ignorance.
	Ignorance that believes it is knowledge.
	You can't debate irrationality.
	You cannot reason with prejudice.
	You cannot change the mind of the mindless.
	So that would be my very, very first thing is to say there is no magic in your language that will wake people's brains from their slumbers.
	There is no rhetorical trick, there is no magic, there is no wand, there is no lightsaber, there is nothing that is going to wake people up.
	The act of awakening is either a dogged personal choice, which you've been following by pursuing further into libertarianism and into voluntarism, or it is something that just happens without you even noticing it.
	You say something in passing, it sticks in someone's head.
	And it just happens. Like I was reading this article about the architects for 9-11 truth or whatever.
	He was just this guy.
	I can't remember his name. He's got like a 600 slide PowerPoint presentation which he gives on 9-11.
	And the buildings, the inside job buildings falling down through some sort of controlled demolition and so on.
	Right. And I don't get into the 9-11 debate here, but what I did find interesting is that this guy said, you know, my life was pretty boring.
	I had a wife and kids and I went to work and design malls and stuff.
	And I'm driving home one day and I'm just like, hey, let's hear what the communists have to say.
	So he switches on some local communist radio station and they're talking about 9-11.
	And he's on his way to a business appointment that's pretty important.
	He pulls the car over.
	His hands are shaking. He's sweating.
	He's like, oh my god! Oh my god!
	He's late for his meeting.
	He doesn't care. He dives into this stuff.
	He loses his wife.
	He loses his kids. He loses his job.
	And why? Because he flipped a radio dial for 30 seconds.
	His life, right?
	So that stuff can happen.
	And of course, these guys running the radio show, they don't know that this is occurring.
	They're just talking about what they believe or making their arguments, right?
	So you don't know when...
	Some might sound like Christopher Walken.
	You don't know. But you don't know when something you say is going to stick in someone's head and just blow the whole structure.
	Blow the whole false structure apart, right?
	And so...
	Right.
	Right. Right. You know, when you have more than 50% of people believing that an evil spirit walks the world tempting you with tits and ass and money and power and so on,
	then you are not in a situation where people are going to respond to rational arguments.
	No, of course not. So, you know, I think recognizing the limits, right?
	There's nothing that's going to shorten your lifespan Faster than believing you can achieve something you cannot achieve.
	Which is my argument to people who are into politics or this sort of stuff, right?
	because you then are in a state of perpetual frustration because you feel that you should be able to do something.
	Like if my model for human jumping was the $6 million man, I'd stand in front of a 12-foot wall and keep waiting for that sound.
	I'm sorry.
	You're way too young for this reference.
	No, no, no.
	I'm old.
	You know?
	Okay.
	And I'd be like, what the hell is wrong with me?
	I keep bumping my – I should be able to do this.
	And so you keep doing it and you get stuck there because you feel like you absolutely should be able to do it.
	But it's actually impossible.
	Right.
	And so you feel your self-esteem goes down.
	Your level of frustration goes up.
	You alienate people around you.
	You become obsessed with this thing because you're trying to do something that can't be done.
	You can't change people's minds.
	I can't change people's minds.
	You can lead a man to whatever you can't make him think, right?
	Yeah, exactly. You can put some information out there and people are either going to respond to it positively or they're going to not give a damn or they're going to respond in a hostile or destructive way.
	And there's no control over that.
	I have control over the quality and integrity of what it is that I put out.
	And even that is not perfect because, of course, I change my mind as new information comes along, which I think is the right thing to do.
	Yeah, we don't just give up.
	Give up and recognize that you can't do it.
	I think recognize that it's a multi-generational change.
	I think recognize that the best thing you can do is help parents and remind people of the voluntarism of adult relationships if they're in abusive relationships to do those kinds of things which is where real change in society,
	real lasting change in society comes from and if people are If they are standing in front of a 12-foot wall waiting for cheesy 70 special effects to lift them up to the top, then you can tell them that was a bad piece of science fiction.
	That is not reality.
	And the same way if they're pounding lawn signs for Republican candidates, you can tell them this is bad 21st century science fiction.
	This is not reality. And they'll either listen to you or they won't.
	But Letting go of the need to control others, right?
	I mean, isn't that really what anarchism is, is letting go of the need to control others?
	And we have to show people what that looks like in our lives by letting go of our need to control them, to control what they think.
	Even if we're right and they're completely wrong, we have to let go.
	Let go of the need to control people.
	Let them make their own mistakes.
	Even if those mistakes spill over onto us.
	I'm sorry, go ahead. No, I was going to say, yeah, it's ironic because, you know, despising authority, both being under it and both, you know, giving it unto others, I think that's obviously the important thing because, I mean, I definitely feel that and feel it both ways, but it's like, so why would I want to control others, basically, right?
	Well, so you say, why would I want to control others as if it's possible?
	Why would I want to jump unaided 12 feet up onto a brick wall?
	Well, no, no, no, no, you can't.
	It's not why you should or shouldn't.
	You can't. You can't control others.
	You can't control others. You can't control others.
	And the best way, I believe, to convince someone of the value of volunteerism is to not try to control their thinking, to not try to control what they do.
	Because then you're showing what freedom looks like.
	Now, I don't mean be completely indifferent to what they're doing.
	I've got the against me argument and stuff.
	There are consequences to what people believe.
	So if a friend of mine believes that I should be beating my daughter, there are consequences to those beliefs.
	But I do not have to convince him that his beliefs are false.
	Because that is to make me his slave.
	The moment you try to control people, you become their slave.
	There's nobody less free, my friend, than the ruling class.
	There is nobody less free than the master, because the master is dependent upon the slave, but the slave is not dependent upon the master.
	And do not be people's slaves.
	Do not be drawn into...
	See, here I am trying to tell you what to do.
	But, you know, my argument, you can do it or not, right?
	But I think that's a very strong argument, right?
	Don't try to control other people.
	Show people what a great life you can have if you let go!
	Let go! Let go of trying to manage other people's thinking.
	Let go of trying to manage other people's thoughts.
	Let go of trying to manage other people's reactions.
	Let go of whether people are right or wrong.
	And be certain in your own mind and in your own heart about the value and virtue of what you're doing as a human being.
	All right, Steph.
	Thanks so much. Big help.
	You're very welcome, my friend.
	Thank you for the call. No problem.
	Take care. Hi, Steph.
	Are you there? I sure am, my friend.
	How are you? I'm doing very well.
	How about yourself? I am well, thank you.
	It's always a huge pleasure to talk to listeners.
	What's on your mind, my friend? Well, basically, I talked to you a bit at Porkfest.
	My name's Terry McClain.
	I'm a singer-songwriter.
	So I really appreciated your take on the zeitgeist Marxism with robots.
	I thought that was a dead-on.
	My question is, you know, we're talking about law and ruling over other people, and to me it would seem that, you know, anarchy would work best if we did it all at once, but I definitely agree with you in your,
	you know, you're kind of pulling people back to the other side, but with so many of us in the minority, what do you think is the best way of doing this to get most people to understand coercion and You know, plan by the masses, I guess. A small question, which is how do we get there, right?
	Right. Well...
	I think that human beings have a natural aversion to violence.
	If people didn't have a natural aversion to violence, you wouldn't need a state because everybody would just go and take whatever the hell they wanted.
	But people don't like violence, and they don't like violence for a number of reasons.
	I think that there's a kind of horror at violence as a whole for a lot of people, not everyone.
	Most people, I think, don't like violence.
	And also, with violence comes risk, right?
	Right. If I want to go and get money from my neighbors for my daughter's education, they might have weapons.
	So I don't want to do it myself.
	So once people understand that the state is coercion, then there will be an inevitable search for solutions that do not involve that coercion.
	And so I think we keep pointing out the coercion of the state.
	We keep pointing out that it is the initiation of force.
	And we keep asking people, what other thing do we use from 10,000 years ago?
	I mean, what other piece of technology do we use from 10,000 years ago?
	And we invite people to go back to, I don't know, farming by hand and eating berries if they feel that 10,000-year-old technology is the way to go.
	So we need to continually be creative and to reinvent and to not be afraid of things that are startling if we want society to grow.
	So I think just keep pointing out the coercion in the room without a sort of morally damning approach like, you bastards, you support this violence of the state or whatever.
	It is violence.
	It's just a statement of a fact.
	You don't have to be passionate. About facts, right?
	I don't yell at people that the world is round.
	You know, if it's raining and my daughter says, what's the weather like?
	I don't say, it's raining!
	It's raining! No, it's just a fact.
	It's raining. It's just a fact. The state is the initiation of force.
	I mean, it's obvious.
	We have a nation that doesn't even follow its own laws, so you're already beginning with an empty slate almost.
	Well, yeah, a law by definition is that which can't be universally applied because there's a monopoly of people who are excluded from it who get to apply it, right?
	So anyway, so yeah, I think we keep pointing things out.
	I think that the economy as a whole, and I mentioned this in my recent interview with Chris Whelan, the economy as a whole is going to help us.
	Because as the government runs out of money and tries to avoid hyperinflation, there's just going to be a massive sell-off of government assets, which is going to move things back into the private sector.
	This is how the government is going to try and restore, to some degree, the health of the private sector.
	They recognize that they're killing the goose that lays the golden egg, so they're going to want to fix that.
	So they're going to sell off.
	You know, buildings and cars and resources and ships and helicopters and people, right, by privatizing whole departments, they're just going to privatize the living shit out of stuff.
	That's natural. And there is going to be a lot of union resistance to that, but, you know, the union is going to find out the degree to which the government is loyal to them.
	When it's the government or the unions, they'll find that out very quickly, and hopefully they'll learn the lesson from that.
	But... So there will be, I think, a continual movement towards that and I think just reminding people.
	In America, people still have the delusion that their income taxes pay for government services, which is not true at all.
	Their income taxes pay for the interest on the debt.
	So people say, well, if we don't pay our income taxes, who's going to pay for education?
	But they just don't know.
	They don't know that their income taxes aren't going to any of these things.
	So, I think it's just helping people to understand.
	Patience and I sort of try to sort of live – I think living by example and all of that kind of stuff is really important.
	It's hard for a fat guy to sell a diet book and it's hard for people twisted and bitter and upset to say to people, join me in my crusade towards a better world.
	So, I just – I think the important thing is to work on personal happiness.
	To embrace the despair and helplessness of attempting to change people's minds and accept that as a reality.
	And look, this is something everyone has to do.
	Everyone has to do. Look, every doctor says to his patient who smokes, you need to quit smoking.
	And then they come in six months later, you need to quit smoking.
	You need to quit drinking.
	You need to quit eating so much sugar.
	You need to quit eating so much fat.
	You need to do, I don't know, whatever it is.
	Neither a doctor nor a nutritionist, but...
	And how many of their patients listen to them?
	Well, some do, I guess, and most don't.
	Until there's some disaster.
	And this is the frustrating thing about being anybody who can see, clear as day, disasters coming.
	Is that you say to people, disasters are coming.
	Disasters are coming. Disasters are coming.
	And they all come back and they, ah, you're such a downer, man.
	You know, what are you talking about all this?
	Everything's fine. I still got my big screen TV. My water's still running.
	I got food in the fridge.
	You know, it's a sunny day.
	You know, grab a beer.
	You know, let's go play Twister on the dock, right?
	I mean, that's what people say.
	And you know it's coming.
	I mean, Ayn Rand knew it was coming like over 60 years ago.
	And then it comes and nobody will say, oh my God, you were right.
	Just come over and ask to eat your astronaut food in the basement.
	Right? So, it's natural.
	Anybody who can see this kind of stuff coming inevitably goes through phases of frustration.
	Frustration. Oh, God, why can't you people listen?
	You know, like if you have a brother who's a drunk and you say to him, quit drinking, quit drinking, quit drinking, or bad things are going to happen, well...
	If he doesn't listen, it's really frustrating.
	But people and societies, they even have to be free to make these kinds of mistakes.
	You know, there are lots of people in the world who say, what's going to happen to the poor in the free society?
	And my answer is, well, what's going to happen to the poor in a state of society when the checks start coming?
	Because they will. Or, you know, the checks will still come, but the dollars will be worth pennies.
	What's going to happen to the poor then?
	I felt even worse talking about the healthcare argument when we were going through the, you know, people talking about universal healthcare.
	It's like at this point, you know, you should be asking the Chinese if they want us to have healthcare.
	You know, it's like everything is so convoluted in the economic theory of government and what is funded that, you know, like a lot of these arguments that we're making about legislation, they don't even make sense.
	You know, we're not even... Looking at the head-on problem.
	And it's hard for me as a songwriter, too, because I've always dealt with intellectual property rights, which now I'm realizing I'm looking at both sides of the issue.
	And it's weird because you have these publishing entities that are supposedly helping songwriters and just trying to figure out the new model that would be less coercive.
	Right, right. No, there is...
	Look, the other thing I would say in terms of having patience is that social change, any kind of fundamental social change, is about as terrifying a thing as anyone can consider.
	Because, you know, 9 times out of 10, if not 99 times out of 100, it really, really goes badly, right?
	Right. French Revolution, the English Civil War, the German religious wars.
	You know, whenever anyone comes along and says, we fundamentally need to reshape society, everybody thinks of, like, Lenin.
	You know, and occasionally people will think of the founding fathers and so on, but...
	But everybody knows we don't live in a new world anymore.
	So the situation is not the same.
	Maybe if we go and can live on Mars, we can have a society that's built more free from the ground up.
	But we've got embedded special interest groups.
	We've got dependent workers.
	We've got people on food stamps.
	We've got people on welfare. We've got people on old age pensions, Medicare and Medicaid.
	I mean everybody knows that this stuff is all embedded.
	And so when you come and say we need a fundamental social change, people are just terrified.
	And unfortunately, it usually takes significant disasters for people to accept that, right?
	Like, you and I are not going to dive out of a car that's going 30 miles an hour.
	Unless it's heading off a cliff.
	And then we'll take that risk.
	But when you go and say we need to fundamentally change society, what people hear is you need to dive out of a car going 30 miles an hour.
	Right. And they're like, are you crazy?
	I mean, I got lumbar support here.
	I got a headrest. I got good tunes.
	Oh, wait, there's a cliff! And then they'll go.
	But until people see the cliff, they're not going to risk it.
	One more question, too.
	Do you feel it's harder, even in Canada, than it is for the U.S., as far as just, like, you know, getting over the bureaucracy?
	What do you mean, getting over the bureaucracy?
	Just, you know, I mean, all of us, you know, all over the world, I mean, we're basically subjugated by these, you know, whatever it is, monarchy, oligarchy, you know.
	Do you think it's any...
	Any worse in Canada?
	I don't think so.
	I don't know. But you see, I don't take notice of the state.
	Right. I'll pay.
	I'll pay them off.
	Absolutely. But I don't take notice of the state really that way.
	I think it was a couple of days until I found out who won the election.
	I know who lost the election, which is everybody not in or dependent on the government.
	But do I care who wins?
	No. If the mafia comes to my store and says, pay us $500 a month, and I choose to pay, which I think is the wise thing to do, then pay them.
	But I'm not going to pay them my mind share as well.
	I'm not going to pay them my thoughts as well.
	So, yeah, maybe it's harder.
	Maybe it's easier. I don't care.
	I pay it off. I get my licenses.
	I'm a law-abiding citizen, and I counsel nonviolence, and blah, blah, blah.
	And they can take my money, but my thoughts are going to remain my own.
	It's a beautiful way to look at it.
	Well, I just wanted to say hello to you, man.
	I appreciate what you're doing.
	And I'm sure I'll see you again at Porkfest here in a little bit.
	I hope so, too. And remember, the Porcupine Freedom Festival is well worth attending.
	And I am going to give a really good speech.
	I'm sure you will.
	They're a little different than what I've done before.
	And you can go to porkfest.com.
	To get more. And don't forget to do...
	You might want to check out the Liberty Fest.
	That is at...
	Oh, I know this one too.
	My goodness. Where is the Liberty Fest?
	Don't forget to cut this out because you should really know this by now.
	It's two L's.
	I remember that. Here we go. LF... Not even two L's.
	It's httplfnyc.com.
	Tom Woods, Jack Hunter, Adam Kokesh, Jordan Page, and really down in small print at the bottom, there's me.
	So I hope that you will check them out.
	All right. Well, we'll talk to you soon, man.
	Thanks again. Thanks, man. That was a great question.
	Great call. I'm glad it was helpful.
	All right. Thanks. Thank you.
	Do they sell I got porked at Porkfest t-shirts?
	No, you actually don't need those t-shirts.
	What you need is just that slow, sappy, post-coital grin, and I think everybody kind of understands that.
	Yeah, I got porked at Porkfest on the front and on the back, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt and an itch.
	Topic of the Porkfest speech.
	Yeah, I mean, I... I want to do a speech, what the future is going to say about us.
	It's the thank you from the future speech.
	And I'm going to be hoarse by the end of it.
	I guarantee that. I want to do a little less strategy and a little bit more inspiration because I think it's later than we need for strategy and I think we need more inspiration.
	So that's really the point.
	School Sucks is going to come back up.
	I was just on a show. I was on Wheels Off Liberty.
	I'm not sure if they or I were slumming, but I was on Wheels Off Liberty last week.
	And he's sorry, he's just busy, but he's going to be back on.
	Yeah, I'm doing lots of work on my speeches this year.
	I'm never quite satisfied with my public speaking.
	I'm satisfied with most of my podcasts.
	I'm never quite satisfied with my public speaking, so I want to let rip.
	I think I've done the rational ones now.
	I can just do the screaming ones.
	All right, we have 10 more minutes.
	We have time for a question or two more.
	I'm happy to take them in the chat room.
	For what it's worth, School Sucks does look like it's back up.
	It's schoolsucks.podomatic.com.
	It's a little slow, but it does come up.
	I think he had his own School Sucks project as his actual website.
	Yeah, schoolsucksproject.com.
	Oh, redirects now.
	Redirects to that. But it used to be its own thing, right?
	Yeah, that's right. Somebody asked if I voted.
	No, I didn't vote.
	Somebody says, what do we have to do in countries where voting is obligated?
	Go vote. If you want, or pay the fine if you don't.
	I have not seen the Atlas Shrugged film.
	It's not available in Canada or any place within driving distance.
	I have not seen it as yet, though I'm very much looking forward to it.
	Yeah, come on back. Let's do the trolley issue.
	Why do I prefer The Fountainhead to Atlas Shrugged?
	I think that The Fountainhead is more of a personal story, and Atlas Shrugged was just a bit too global for me.
	Look, I have lots of problems with The Fountainhead, and I've really struggled with this with my own writing of novels, which is, again, not to put me in any kind of category with Ayn Rand, but the desire to sensationalize is very tempting.
	In a novel, it's like louder is better.
	And that's not true. I think my favorite part of LA Woman is where they slow down and Mr.
	Mojo rising, which is an anagram for Jim Morrison, by the way, apparently.
	That's my favorite part. So I think quieter is sometimes better.
	But, you know, I don't like the rough sex in her novels.
	I think that's a shame.
	That's a real shame. Because it gives people an excuse to ignore what she's actually talking about.
	I don't like the fact that Rourke blows up that building.
	I think that's childish and ridiculous and out of his character completely.
	He didn't do any reprisals against people slandering and bitching about them and so on.
	And so blowing up a whole building for poor people, I don't know.
	It just seems kind of silly. But I think she just needed something.
	I felt she needed something dramatic.
	And there is a great temptation, and I've succumbed to it once, to have a courtroom scene because it gives you the great opportunity for a speech, which I guess by the time Atlas Shrugged rolls around, she didn't feel she needed that excuse anymore.
	But yeah, I prefer The Fountainhead.
	I think it's more of a personal story.
	It's more useful to individuals than Atlas Shrugged is, though of course I think Atlas Shrugged is a complete masterpiece as well.
	Somebody has pointed out the music.
	And listen, if you are a musician and you'd like to shoot me some tracks, I'm always looking for stuff for background music.
	So music, if you guys are interested, he's definitely a musical anarchist.
	www.delvinshademusic.com.
	You might want to check that out.
	What book did I do that in?
	It's one I'm currently reading as an audiobook called Just Poor.
	Somebody's asked, what do we and the DRO have to do when a surgeon who saves 10 lives that nobody else can save a month?
	Oh, we answered this last time. We answered this last time.
	What do I think about the IMF dude getting charged for raping a woman?
	Has he been charged? Has he been charged?
	Last I read, he'd been arrested.
	He was pulled off the plane heading to Paris.
	Let me just check.
	I don't know if he's actually been charged yet.
	Oh, I guess he is. Yeah, it just came out today.
	He has been – this is from the Daily Beast.
	He has been arrested on rape charges.
	The head of the International Monetary Fund has been arrested on rape charges, removed from an airplane at Kennedy Airport on Saturday and arrested on charges of rape, allegedly forcing a cleaning woman at his Times Square hotel into his bed and sexually assaulted her.
	He allegedly allowed the woman to leave before departing for the airport, left belongings behind in his hotel room, including his cell phone, and authorities say he did not resist being taken into custody.
	he has pled not guilty so look I don't know I don't know I mean, this is, you know, he said, she said, maybe there'll be some evidence.
	I don't know. But I really can't comment on it.
	I mean, if it's true, then it doesn't surprise me that, you know, the head of these organizations is doing criminal stuff, so.
	Care to comment on antinatalism?
	Is that voluntary human extinction?
	Is that right? Yes, it's voluntarily not conceiving children.
	Oh, I think it's a really bad idea.
	I couldn't imagine a worse idea.
	I really couldn't imagine a worse idea.
	The reason being that if you are the kind of person who's sensitive enough to the long-term sustainability of the planet, then obviously you are at least of average or above average intelligence and you are willing to make personal sacrifices.
	To make the world a better place, then what you should do is have some kids and sacrifice your career and your income.
	Maybe there's a few people who've gone ahead and blazed a path.
	You can sacrifice your income and your career in order to stay home and raise your children.
	As peacefully and positively as possible.
	And your child, I think with that kind of upbringing, teach them a lot of science if they're interested.
	And maybe they'll find a way to turn air into electricity and save the planet.
	So, I mean, otherwise, you know, who's going to be having kids?
	Well, everybody else who may not be probably isn't as concerned about the world and the future as you are.
	So I think that's a cop-out.
	I really do. Yeah, where the thread in particular has gotten stuck, at least last time I looked at it, is people sort of talking about...
	Oh, now I'm trying to go from memory, but...
	There's this absolute sense of bringing a child into the world is – you can't help increase the suffering and there's a premise embedded in there that all suffering is bad and to reduce suffering is the greatest good or something like that, something along those lines.
	But this is so not UPB though.
	I mean anybody who's making that argument only exists because their parents didn't believe it.
	Right, right.
	So I'm glad my parents had me so that I could tell you not to have children.
	Nah! Come on, people gotta work a little harder than that to be consistent.
	Yeah, I mean, it blows up on several...
	There are so many ways to detonate that argument from a universal standpoint, it's just that's where it seems to be stuck in this particular case.
	Yeah, look, I mean, when you get stuck in arguments, it's because you're looking outside for some internal inconsistency, right?
	So just take the argument as it is, accept the premises, and just go from there.
	And that's usually the way that you can deal with these kinds of arguments.
	Just forget about all the outside stuff.
	This is what UPB does.
	Forget about all the outside stuff.
	Just look at the internal logic and consistency of the argument.
	Hello? Hello.
	Hey, I'm the trolley troll, I guess you could call me.
	How's it going, man? Alright.
	The thing I found with the trolley situation is that there are two questions in succession, and people naturally have a different reaction, even though the consequences are the same.
	Sorry, say that again? Okay, well, in the trolley scenario, you have two questions...
	But the person who's putting themselves in the scenario has to react differently to save a net of four lives.
	So in one scenario, you have to pull a switch.
	In the other scenario, you have to kick a person off the bridge to prevent the trolley from hitting the four workers or whatever.
	So I think what I can gauge from that is that because people are perfectly okay with pulling a switch, Versus actually doing the brunt work of pushing someone off a bridge to save four lives.
	That's why I see a statism allegory.
	Oh, so because the government is the switch, right?
	As opposed to you actually going to collect money for your kids' taxes from your neighbors at gunpoint, right?
	Yeah, think of it like a voting switch.
	Almost. I don't know if that's kind of a stretch or not.
	No, again, but I think it's a good way of approaching it, but I just reject the entire premise.
	It has nothing to do with morality.
	You can do whatever you want in that situation.
	I think I'd just have sympathy for somebody stuck in that kind of situation.
	I don't think I'd have the balls to judge them morally for being in such an impossible situation.
	Right. I mean, I wouldn't either.
	Like you said, because if anybody was in that situation, you could potentially freeze and it wouldn't be enough time to decide where we can sit back for five minutes and mull it over.
	Yeah, yeah. I mean, in that kind of situation, I mean, because you'd have to react so quickly, you wouldn't have an ethical argument at your disposal, right?
	You know, whereas if you're telling the truth to someone about something that may harm your self-interest, that's a more complicated thing.
	You have time to think about it, time to prepare for it, look at the ethics behind it and perhaps the practicalities.
	But yeah, that kind of stuff, you know, it's… To me, it's like saying someone comes into your ER, and they're bleeding from the jugular, and their femoral artery has been cut, and they're having a heart attack, and they're spontaneously combusting, and what do you do?
	It's like, well, this is not medicine.
	Can't do anything. Maybe I try to put his blanket out so it's easy to identify his body and put fire out with a blanket, but there's nothing that can be done to save that person.
	So medicine is about when you can do something, when there's a possibility of action that is not just going to result in complete disaster of one form or another.
	So, I don't know.
	I just... There are so many more pressing moral issues that people can actually proactively reason about and do something about rather than...
	It's a way of making morality destructive, impossible, frustrating, guilt-ridden, and completely impractical.
	And I have a very strong resentment towards that whole approach.
	Not to you, of course, but to that whole approach.
	It's very, very destructive to philosophy as a whole.
	Would you say that like...
	Because it's like a hypothetical, so you can't found morality on a hypothetical situation.
	Well, no, it's not a situation that morality applies to.
	Any more than a heart attack can be solved by nutrition.
	It's too late. It's too late.
	It's like saying, well, what do you do if you suddenly become drafted as being a prisoner in a concentration camp?
	Well, whatever the fuck you want, because it's too late for morality then.
	You know, morality is about prevention.
	It's not about cure. It's not about cure.
	You know, by the time you become a guard in a concentration camp, your moral choices are gone, long gone.
	Maybe you should have left.
	Hitler's Germany, unlike Stalinist Russia or...
	Leninist Russia did not stop people from leaving.
	There was no barrier to exit from Hitler's Germany, at least for quite some time.
	There were some barriers to financial, taking your money with you, but you could leave, so maybe that's when you should have made the choice.
	But by the time you're at concentration camp guard, I mean, you can do what you want, and maybe there's some slightly better things or worse to do, but it's not a situation that ethics...
	You know, ethics is about prevention. Okay.
	Yeah, I just reject that.
	Yeah, my question is always, why are people asking this question rather than other questions?
	The question is, what is moral?
	Not, what would you do in this situation?
	The question is, what is moral?
	Because a moral theory needs to be applicable to life as a whole, not to these completely impossible, one-off, every-ten-century situations that no one's ever going to encounter.
	I don't know. The reason I like the question is because it made me think, and it was because, like...
	In the two different scenarios, like, naturally in my head, I was trying to logically put it together, and I know you agree that it's not like a good...
	I agree, too, that it's not a good foundation for any kind of morality, but just to gauge, like, a natural reaction and what we can learn from that, you know, like I said, like a status approach versus, like, pulling a switch versus, like, actually having to do the grunt work of, you know, kicking something, like, violently reacting directly to the person.
	Yeah, no, I agree.
	I think that's an interesting approach for sure, and that may be one way in which you would reject it.
	But no, if somebody comes up to me with that problem, I'd say, I don't know, I mean, but what's your definition of morality?
	Because whatever people decide to do in an impossible situation can't really be called any kind of moral theory.
	You can't call that a moral theory.
	I mean, that's just an instance.
	Rock falls down is not a scientific theory, right?
	I mean, that's something that a dog can figure out who's trying to catch a rock or a frisbee or whatever.
	So, no, my question is, well, I don't care about this stupid shit about trolleys.
	What I care about is, what is morality?
	And before, what is morality?
	There is the question, what is truth?
	Right? And before the question of what is truth, there is the question, what is reality?
	And before you get to the trolley, you've got to go through reality, truth, and virtue, at the bare minimum.
	So there's no point starting at the end, start at the beginning.
	That's what philosophy is from, first principles.
	Not, a piano's falling on you, and there's a dog on one side, and there's a cat on the other side, and you're a dog person, but your girlfriend is a cat person, and which do you save?
	Blah, blah, blah, right? I mean, that's, who cares?
	I don't care about that stuff. What I care about is, what is reality?
	What is truth? What is virtue?
	And if people can't answer those questions, then they should shut the fuck up about trolleys and start thinking from first principles.
	Not you, of course, man. No, no, I appreciate it.
	I put a comment in the chat.
	I don't know, but it was a good one.
	Nice abs.
	Thank you. Sorry, nice ad abducto absurdum.
	You say my abs are absurdum. Well, I can't.
	That wasn't like an outstanding remark.
	It was like...
	Somebody has said, I saved neither the cat nor the dog and film it for Posh 2.0.
	That's the funniest video kind of thing, right?
	Sorry, and just before we go, somebody has been very patiently and persistently asking a question.
	Let me just scroll back to find it.
	This is again, like most things, I can't give you an answer.
	I could just give you some thoughts.
	Somebody has asked, for somebody who's 45, out of work and broke, what are your thoughts about mortgaging one's life for a BA or BS or MA degree in psychology?
	Well, I will tell you that – let me post something in to the – I'm sorry, I don't mean to laugh.
	That's a serious question.
	But let me post something in that you might want to watch when the show is done about the value of getting your psych degree.
	Let me see if I can dig this up.
	I had it on YouTube somewhere here.
	I really did.
	Sorry about this.
	Here we go, yes.
	So you want a PhD in clinical psychology.
	I think this is a pretty funny...
	I'm not going to try and read off the YouTube thing, but you can do a search on YouTube for, so you want a PhD in clinical psychology, and I think it's pretty funny.
	216,000 views, and I think it's what we're looking at.
	So, it's a long haul to get to be a psychologist.
	I don't know in your district or whatever, but it's quite a bit up here.
	And so, you know, it's a long haul.
	And you may want to do something a little bit less onerous.
	I think an undergraduate degree in psychology is not going to do you much good.
	Doing the master's will help.
	But then you've got a lot of...
	A lot more work to do before you become an independent practitioner so it might be quite some time.
	That having been said, there may be unregulated terms or less regulated terms like therapist or counselor or whatever that you might be able to get to sooner if that's what you really want to do and you feel you have the skill set for it.
	So I think that would be great.
	That having been said, I think that a recession is a pretty good time to up your human capital.
	Right? So, whatever, you know, human capital, whatever you do to invest in yourself that has some economic value, and I think that this certainly does, is a good thing to do when there's a recession because it's portable and it adds to your value as a human being.
	So, if going back to school when you're, you know, when there's a recession on it, certainly what I did in the early 90s when I went back to do my masters, and I think that helps.
	I think that helps. So, yeah, I would suggest that it's not a bad thing to do, but you really need to check into how to become a psychologist in your neck of the woods If that's what you want to do, because it can be pretty onerous.
	Alright, well I think that's it.
	Happiness consult. Or I think what they mentioned in this video is be a life coach.
	You can just set yourself up tomorrow as a life coach or whatever.
	There are also other courses. I think you can do courses in mediation.
	One of the FDR listeners was working on that for a while.
	I think that's a little less onerous.
	And mediation I think can be very positive in terms of helping people resolve their conflicts and so on.
	So I would suggest looking into that.
	But I think it's not a bad time to up your human capital.
	And, of course, if inflation is going up, then that may have some ramifications about debt, right?
	Because that can be quite the challenge.
	All right.
	Well, thank you, everybody, so much.
	I just can't tell you how much I enjoy these Sunday afternoon chats.
	And I also wanted to thank the people who've subscribed.
	It has been a good month for subscriptions.
	I really, really do appreciate that.
	And I think I'm also taking bitcoins now.
	You can go to fdrurl.com forward slash bitcoin, I think, for more on that.
	And again, as usual, freedomainradio.com forward slash donate.
	If you'd like to throw some, you know, 10 or 20 or 50 bucks a month at me, I think that you can shoot it in a BB gun with gold coins for your entertainment dollar.
	I think it's a pretty good deal. Or you can give one-off donations, all hugely, hugely helpful.
	Remember, I'm not getting paid for these speeches, so your donations certainly do help everybody from up here.
	Get down to where the speeches are and they do get quite a lot of views on YouTube and I think they do help.
	And they introduce a lot of people to what it is that we're up to here.
	So if you want to help out with that, I would really, really appreciate that.
	And thanks to everybody who has been helping out.
	I really, really, really appreciate it.
	It is an incredible honor that people put their trust in me and their money behind what it is that we're up to here.
	It is an immense, immense privilege.
	And I really can't thank you enough.
	So I won't even pretend to.
	Have yourself a great week.

▲