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June 12, 2011 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:54:35

1935 Freedomain Radio Sunday Call in Show, June 12, 2011

More on Bitcoins, the evolutionary value of child abuse, the emotional aftereffects of divorce, and the road to a truly free society.

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	Hi everybody, it's Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio.
	June the 12th, 2011.
	I hope that you are going to come out to Porkfest, P-R-C-F-E-S-T dot com to the Liberty Fest on September 10th in New York City, LY. FNC. That's the way to get there and of course Libertopia.org for more to see.
	I guess I'm emceeing that and I'll be all over the place.
	I have a bunch of speaking gigs at Porkfist and Roast, so I hope you can join us.
	This is the Sunday Philosophy Call-In Show.
	I'm gonna start with a couple of...
	I did Facebook questions last time.
	These are gonna be YouTube questions.
	Thank you everybody for your patience.
	Somebody wrote to me, I guess it's mostly because I don't think that you can join the mafia and turn it into a virtuous organization.
	The state is defined by a monopoly of the initiation of force, and I don't believe any philosophers who are into the non-aggression principle should be anywhere near it.
	So no, it's not something that I've been tempted to do.
	So somebody wrote to me, said, I like to eat tomatoes and watch your videos.
	It's been about six months now.
	I really, really appreciate that.
	And in your honor, I am going to go get a sunburn on my forehead this week.
	So, somebody has asked, you need to make more of your hour-long videos, Steph.
	Me and my wife are impatiently awaiting the release of your more in-depth discussions on all topics related to your brilliance.
	Well, one of the reasons that the videos got shorter was because I was getting a number of comments from people who listened to the show saying that they enjoyed putting Free Domain Radio on as background to their lovemaking and they couldn't sustain the lengthy podcast.
	And so they asked me to whittle it down to six or seven minutes, which I think is really, really impressive.
	Ah, youth. So really, this is why the hour-long ones...
	Sting really liked them, of course, because of his sexual predilections and other people who were into tantric sex really liked it, but some of the people who were slightly more impatient didn't, so that's why.
	Somebody wrote and said, thank atheist Jesus for Steph's brain.
	I'm quite grateful to have the brain that I have.
	As far as brains and boobs go, I have a decap.
	And so I'm quite pleased with it.
	And I am very grateful for it.
	And I try to put it to as much good use as I can.
	So thank you. Somebody wrote, said, I have my first baby on the way and found your philosophical parenting podcast.
	Very interesting. If you go to freedomainradio.com, under the podcast section, there's a whole series that I've done on philosophical parenting.
	My partner and I hardly ever raise our voices to one another or anyone else unless I have a megaphone in my hand.
	I think... That no violence, no aggression principle is going to be a great experiment.
	We'll see what happens though. Thanks a million.
	It's been working absolutely fantastically and beautifully.
	I couldn't be more pleased being a parent.
	I couldn't be happier with my relationship with my wonderful, affectionate, funny, funny daughter.
	She's so smart. She was out yesterday.
	I was doing some gardening and I gave her the hose with a fair amount of water and she was making it spin around and she said, Dad, look, I'm making hula hoops with the water.
	I love it. I love it.
	It's just, it's Fireworks fertility of the mind.
	And I do enjoy the challenge of making up stories on the spot for her because she's very into hearing stories at the moment and so that's pretty cool.
	So it's a real great challenge.
	Somebody wrote kindly to say, I can say without a doubt that this is the greatest channel on YouTube.
	Thank you, Stefan. You can't even imagine how much you've helped me.
	Well, Thank you for those very kind comments.
	Philosophy has helped me.
	I'm really just trying to pay it forward.
	The thanks all go to Philosophy and to the listeners who donate and subscribe and all of that, who make all of this possible.
	So thank you, everybody, so, so much.
	Oh, yes, somebody posted that I have reached 666 videos.
	Stefan is clearly the Antichrist.
	And I think of myself as more of the Uncle Christ, but that's my particular approach.
	Somebody wrote and said, why don't you debate real Christian philosophers like Dr.
	William Lane Craig or Dr.
	Keith Ward? You're a chicken-shit wannabe philosopher who picks on Christians who are not very bright.
	Not all Christians are Bible-thumping morons.
	Many have as much and more knowledge of philosophy and science than you have, but simply keep Christianity as their personal faith.
	You are a coward who only debates or talks to the Christians who aren't so bright.
	Try debating Dr. Craig or Ward amongst many others and you would be owned.
	You are trying to create your own kind of philosophy and it's bullshit.
	Is it petty to point out that there's a lot of grammar errors in this?
	No, I guess it's a little late to ask that question now, isn't it?
	Yeah, look, I mean, if you want me to debate with these people, send them my name.
	I'm happy to debate with anyone.
	Honestly, I am a throw-down debater.
	I will talk to anyone about philosophy at any time.
	So you email them, give them my website, tell them I want to debate, and I will debate with them.
	I have a debate coming up in August with a lawyer who is a minarchist who wants to take me on on anarchism.
	Fantastic. After my debates with Michael Badnarik and...
	Oh, I can't remember what's his name, the other guy.
	People haven't seemed to want to debate me.
	I've sent out a bunch of invitations for debates, but nobody wants to...
	Nobody wants to debate the step-by.
	So we'll see what happens with that.
	But no, please send them. Send them.
	I'm more than happy to debate with people.
	And if they school me, wonderful.
	I love to learn.
	So if I'm incorrect about something, please, please, please have people come and correct me.
	Somebody wrote, said, I would like to see a weekly conversation with Jeff Tucker.
	You guys have a great dialogue with one another.
	I agree. I don't know if we can do it weekly, but we'll certainly try.
	Somebody wrote, said, I haven't seen all your videos yet.
	Well, I can understand that.
	But I'm wondering about your economic views.
	Where would you put yourself in the spectrum?
	Actually, I don't even understand yet if you're a far leftist or a fiscal conservative.
	It is really quite fascinating to see the degree of projection that can occur.
	I mean, I've been accused of being a Marxist, A fascist, a laissez-faire, a Keynesian.
	I mean, everybody, you know, if they watch one or two videos, they don't exactly know where I'm coming from.
	The story of your enslavement, which is, I think, my most popular video, gets me called Marxist quite a bit.
	But that's all right. I mean, I'm actually extremely vehemently anti-Marxist.
	There's a false and destructive doctrine.
	So, on the economic views, private property is the only form of property that is valid and the non-initiation of force.
	That's where I stand economically.
	I go with the Austrian Praxeological School, which has as its essence that there are certain basic facts that you really shouldn't interfere with in the free market, right?
	So, you can go to Mises.org to find out more about that, but that's a good place to start.
	Again, you know, this is more for people to, I mean, I get this stuff a lot.
	This is not meant to be a pat-pat on my head, but just for you to get how much this conversation is helping people.
	Hi, Stefan, I would just like to let you know how much I personally appreciate your efforts.
	I truly can't find the words to illustrate how much everything you say resonates so deeply within me.
	I know that living a virtuous life isn't easy, but seeing that there are people like you out there really helps me to keep pushing myself in that direction.
	So thank you, and best wishes.
	And I appreciate that.
	And remember that a lot of the shows that I've done have been conversations with listeners like this show or interviews and so on.
	Steph, why on earth should I listen to you about parenting when you've had less than three years' experience as a parent?
	Well... You shouldn't listen to me about parenting because I have or do not have experience as a parent.
	That's not the essence of why you should listen to me or not listen to me because I make rational, consistent arguments either from first principles or with evidence.
	That's why you should listen to me.
	You're not listening to me, right?
	Not about my opinions.
	People say, you're a philosophy, or you're trying to create philosophy, or it's Molyneux's philosophy.
	It's not my philosophy.
	It's either good philosophy or it's bad philosophy.
	We don't say that Dawkins' biology is really good, and other people's biology, creationist biology is really bad.
	No, it's either good biology or it's bad biology.
	Good science or bad science.
	We don't say that the mathematics that Einstein did, Einstein's mathematics is really good.
	No, it's either good mathematics or it's not.
	So it's either good philosophy that I'm putting out or it's bad philosophy.
	It's either valid or it's invalid.
	It's true or it's false. Rational, irrational, empirical or anti-empirical.
	So you're not listening to me.
	Don't worry about agreeing with me.
	I'm, you know, I am hopefully a fairly clear conduit.
	of arguments and evidence.
	So you're listening to the arguments and the evidence.
	This is why it's so important to detach the argument from the person.
	So somebody wrote, I disagree with many of your views on politics.
	However, I wouldn't want to live in a world where people like you can't speak up.
	People like you make this world more curious and interesting.
	Well, I appreciate that. But again, people say this a lot that they disagree with me.
	Somebody wrote on my free will video series that free will is not my strong suit.
	I don't know what that means. That's not an argument.
	That's not a rebuttal of anything that I've got as content in the video.
	And people try this all the time.
	Just lob these stink bombs hoping to find doubt and insecurity within me.
	And I don't really know what to do with them because there's no actual argument there.
	So, you know, for everybody out there who wants to rebut me, fantastic.
	Rebut away. Call into the Sunday show.
	Let's have a rebuttal. That would be fantastic.
	But just telling me that I'm wrong, blah, blah, blah.
	Okay. Somebody wrote, Steph, you have touched me.
	Where not many people have.
	My mind. Sorry, I couldn't resist, he wrote.
	Thank you, I appreciate that.
	And you might want to get that or I'll change that.
	So this is a common error.
	Dawkins talks about it too. He said, last time I checked, evolution was still a theory.
	Since when has it been proven? You have to understand the way that scientists use the word theory.
	They don't mean something that's unproven.
	In legal terms, allegation is unproven.
	And theory simply means it's a way of describing the world.
	And theories accumulate evidence and so on.
	So there's a theory of gravity.
	That doesn't mean that gravity doesn't exist.
	I mean, the theory may be correct or not correct.
	But the theory of evolution, if you listen to or read The Greatest Show on Earth by Dawkins, is about as proven as anything can be in science.
	So the fact that they call it the theory of evolution doesn't mean that it's not proven.
	You just need to look that sort of stuff up a little bit.
	Somebody wrote, this is a good statement, said, in a world of corruption and ignorance, being intelligent and morally upstanding is a curse that is burdened by the few, for the many, for all mankind.
	And I think that is absolutely a beautiful way of putting it.
	Somebody wrote, still can't decide if you're a shill or not.
	Please don't take that personally.
	I see so much piss and wind and disinformation, but at least you seem to be making an effort in some way.
	I'll take the same stand as George Carlin and Spectate.
	Whether one is a herder of livestock, we've all ruined the gift.
	I don't know if that gift is divine or just the universe unfolding in its unbiased logic.
	But whatever stance you come from, Stefan, make sure you look after your family and get your kicks before the whole shithouse goes up in perdition's flames.
	That's good writing, I think.
	It's good writing, and I just wanted to pass that along.
	Oh, and I did, sorry, I did forget to mention that the person who's saying, why should I listen to your parenting?
	When you've had only three years of it.
	Remember, there's three years of full time.
	Full time. Full time.
	Right. I parent for like 15 hours a day.
	If you're a working parent, you know, you leave at 7.30 in the morning or 8 o'clock in the morning, you come home at 6 or 6.30 at night, you may be parenting two hours a day.
	So, I'm parenting 15.
	A lot of parents are only parenting at least weekdays, too.
	So, by this time, I've accumulated as much parenting as a lot of people do by the time their kids are in their mid-teens.
	So, it is quite a lot of quantity.
	Hopefully, it's quality as well.
	Somebody said, saw you on Adam vs.
	The Man and had to sub.
	Great work! Well, thank you.
	I appreciate that. And Adam vs.
	The Man, you can catch on RT.com weeknights at 7pm.
	See, Stephen Molyneux is very short-sighted.
	Private property is more sacred to him than the life of his children.
	Even if the upper 0.01% acquired 99% of the planet's property by means of the gold standard, he would still be preaching about the sanctity of the private property, even though his children would work as bad-paid peasants.
	Again, this is simply assertions and statements without any evidence.
	The upper 1% could never acquire 99% of the planet's property.
	It simply would be not possible.
	What people don't understand is that in a free market, you get a huge churning between the classes, sort of upper middle, lower classes for want of better phrases.
	So in any 10 to 20 year period, a third of people in the upper class drop down a class or two, and a third of people in the lower classes go up.
	A class or two. And this is even in the vestigial remnants of the free market that exists in North America.
	So there's a huge amount of churn, right?
	I mean, there used to be some saying in America, rags to riches to rags in three generations, right?
	Which is the idea that you make a lot of money and your kids all blow it and everybody ends up poor again.
	The only way that the upper classes can maintain their privilege is through the state.
	Because you never know which brain-spanning genius of economic productivity is going to be born to some poor person and then revolutionize the world, become very rich.
	And, of course, think of all the people in the 19th century who were wealthy as all get-up because they had carriages.
	They had a monopoly of the carriage trade.
	Well, along comes the car.
	And they all start to lose their fortune and the sort of young entrepreneurial car manufacturers come along and Think of IBM versus Microsoft.
	You know, blah, blah, blah. We can sort of understand that.
	Okay, last one, and thank you so much everyone for sending these comments in.
	He wrote, very good videos.
	I can certainly feel and relate to your indignation.
	I felt the same way about the state all my grown life, and it is soothing to listen to the words of someone who has the guts and clarity of mind To tell the truth to others.
	Again, thank you very much. I really, really appreciate those.
	And everybody else who sent in comments through YouTube, it is a very, very interesting view to see what the thought processes are of people as a whole.
	I'm in a unique position, at a very privileged position.
	I read almost everything that comes my way, so I really, really do.
	So thank you so much for everyone.
	Just before we move on with the Sunday show, I did a podcast recently on Anthony Weiner and wanted to correct myself.
	I said that the US-UK blockade had caused the deaths of 5 million Iraqi children.
	That is not correct. Estimates are in fact between 500,000 and 1 million.
	If anyone's interested, the mistake came because in one article I wrote, I converted that to the number of American children who would have had to die as an equivalence.
	That number stuck in my head. So I'm very, very sorry about that.
	And thank you for those who pointed out that it's well worth correcting.
	And since the title of the video was Don't Tweet Your Meat, some people sent me something which I will not be able to do justice to, but which I will attempt to do now.
	Excuse me. How can you have any pudding if you don't tweak your meat?
	Alright, my question involves Bitcoin.
	There's been a lot of rage about Bitcoin now that the value has been going up due to speculators.
	I take kind of a contrary position.
	While I think that Bitcoin is a really good exercise in an alternative currency and maybe a private currency, That I think we should strive for.
	I don't think that the specific implementation of Bitcoin is very good because it is still not backed by anything.
	And it seems like whenever I try to bring out Austrian theories to people about money and currency, they always chastise me.
	Like, anyone who is against Bitcoin automatically gets...
	Just chastised by people.
	And it seems like these people are more of the computer science nature and less of the economic kind of mindset.
	So I was wondering if you could just set the record straight on Bitcoin and why, even though it's a private currency and that's really good for free market principles, I still think it's bad as a currency in and of itself because it is not backed by anything Just like gold or silver.
	Like, it cannot be used for anything else other than as a trading medium.
	Whereas gold and silver have industrial uses, etc.
	Do you think that you could maybe articulate what I'm trying to say better?
	Or maybe if you disagree, give your reasons why?
	Well, sure. So, I mean, this is way back.
	Aristotle came up with these five characteristics of what a currency should be.
	And one of the ones is what you're talking about, which is that it should be something that can be used for something else.
	So I guess back when they used seashells, they couldn't really use seashells for anything else.
	And so that's one of the things that he said that it should have.
	It should be divisible without losing its value.
	So you can divide up gold, you can melt it back together, it doesn't lose its value, unlike something like a diamond or a cow.
	You can't divide up a cow and have it not lose value.
	And there were a bunch of other sort of things that Aristotle wanted to talk about in terms of currency.
	And your issue with Bitcoin is that it's purely digital, right?
	It's a peer-to-peer currency. Its only value is trade-based.
	And it is not a reflection of any hard assets.
	And therefore, it can't really be said to have value except in the mind of people who use it.
	Whereas you would prefer to use a currency that has value outside of just the minds or the preferences of the people who use it.
	Is that a fair thing to say? Yes, it is.
	And like I said, I'm not against Bitcoin.
	I would never use Bitcoin for anything other than donations.
	However, I think that it's good that it exists as an exercise of free market private currency.
	I just don't think that it's a very good currency.
	And so you would prefer it to be based on gold, right?
	Well, I would prefer a currency based on something that has Perhaps industrial uses like gold or silver or any of the other elements.
	Now, tell me why it is that you, why is it that you say that Bitcoin is a free market currency?
	Well, because it's a, I would say it's, I don't want to say free market currency, it's just a, it's a currency that I guess can compete, that is incompetent, that has the ability to be competed against other currencies.
	It's not, how do you say it, it's not forced upon people by government.
	There's no monopoly.
	You see what I'm saying?
	Well, but it's defined by a monopoly, right?
	I mean, I would argue that there's no human currency that can exist, certainly in America.
	That is not fundamentally defined by the government's monopoly on currency, right?
	So there's the guy who came up with the Liberty dollar who just got like, what, 15 years in prison for daring to use the word dollar as if the US government didn't just take it from some other place.
	So, the fact is that I don't believe that a currency based on gold would be allowable in the existing system, right?
	So, if you and I sat down and said, well, let's start making Steph Bucks, or your name Bucks, or whatever, and we're going to back it with gold, and we're going to circulate it around, and we're going to stamp on it, and we're going to say BUX, or maybe we'll call them phalangeramas, or whatever, right?
	And this is going to be a new currency, right?
	You know, about eight minutes after we launched, we'd have a knock at the door from whoever was running the government currency saying, you know, cease or die, right?
	Sure, that's to be expected.
	Right, so Bitcoin, I would argue, is not a free market currency because it can't have any fixed assets.
	Because the moment that you have fixed assets backing your currency, you then have something that the government can come in and take, right?
	Right. Yeah, I argue, though, that there are ways of designing a currency such that it is more distributed, unlike the Liberty dollar.
	Well, and that would be Bitcoin, right?
	But I still don't think that Bitcoin is an example of a free market currency because it is specifically, well, I shouldn't say specifically, it is virtually disallowed from backing itself up with hard assets, right?
	Because the moment it does so, it needs to keep them somewhere, and then the government's going to come and take them, right?
	Most likely. Sure.
	So, saying that this is a free market currency that has problems is problematic because it's not a free market currency because it's not allowed to have assets.
	It's not allowed to have gold backing it up, right?
	However, in the absence of government, it would be a free market currency.
	But in the absence of government, it probably would have some assets backing it up.
	Or, see, this is the interesting thing as well.
	The most important thing, I think, about Bitcoin or the free market aspect of it is...
	The most essential aspect of Bitcoin is that you're free to not use it.
	Correct. That is the only free market aspect of Bitcoin that to me means anything.
	It's that you're free to use it or to not use it.
	And that's the only aspect.
	So if you don't like Bitcoin, then you don't have to use it.
	But if you don't like fiat currency, well, you have to use it.
	So I would say that Bitcoin is a huge step up in that you can say, I don't like it, and so on, right?
	But the interesting thing is that I still think that you are falling prey to a sort of statist paradigm, right?
	So tell me a food that you really dislike.
	Dislike? Yeah.
	I mean, obviously Brussels sprouts because you're a carbon-based life form, but what else?
	Yeah, so I really don't like anything that ends in nam.
	So I don't like ham, lamb, spam, or yams.
	Ah, okay, okay.
	So, but I bet you don't get into big arguments with people about whether they should or shouldn't eat them, right?
	No. Right, so the interesting thing is that you're getting into arguments with people about Bitcoin.
	And that's falling into a status paradigm.
	There's lots of products that you don't like, I bet.
	And you don't probably get into big arguments saying people shouldn't go and buy them, because you're free to exercise your choice about what you want to buy.
	Well, it seems to me that a lot of people are telling other people to use it, and they claim that they have this great economic understanding of how things work, but it seems like their arguments They don't really mesh with mine.
	Or they might say that it's Austrian economics that they're following or that they're preaching from, and it's really not.
	You know what I mean? No, no. Look, Austrian economics does not say that a currency has to be backed by gold or any other fixed asset at all.
	And anybody who says that Austrian economics says that that is the case doesn't understand Austrian economics.
	Austrian economics says that the initiation of force should not be used in financial transactions.
	And so, look, we all understand that if there were two currencies, let's call it Currency Bob and Currency Doug, and everything was exactly the same except Currency Bob I can guarantee you that currency Bob would fail the free market test precisely because it was backed by a fixed asset which is additional overhead to run the currency.
	You got to get the gold, buy it, which means you got to pass those costs along to the consumer.
	You have to store it, you have to guard it, you have to have a mechanism whereby it can be delivered to people who want to cash in the currency.
	So all other things being equal, a currency that can operate without fixed assets backing it up It's hugely more efficient than a currency that requires a fixed asset to back it up.
	Now, whether such a currency would ever be generally accepted or not, I don't know.
	It's hard to predict.
	But I will say that there would be massive economic drivers for there to be a currency not backed by anything because it would be so much cheaper to have a currency not backed by anything.
	And as long as no force or fraud was used, In the dissemination of that currency, then for sure.
	But yeah, I guarantee you, anybody who figures out how to have a currency that is not backed by fixed assets is going to dominate the market.
	Because it'll be so much cheaper to have that currency than any other currency.
	So Bitcoin may be exactly how future currency works.
	I don't know. But for sure, there's going to be massive economic drivers to keep fixed assets out of the currency mechanism.
	I would like to clarify just definitions before we proceed.
	When you talk about backed by, do you imply that that means the same as having a use other than as a currency?
	Yeah, sure. I mean, look, very few people are going to want to cart around gold bars in their pockets, right?
	They're going to want some sort of chit, some sort of payment scheme that is electronic, so they don't actually have to carry the asset around because it's inconvenient.
	And that's fine. There's nothing wrong with online banking or anything like that.
	I'm not against that.
	It just seems like people...
	It's like they're trading a commodity, but it doesn't actually exist.
	Or, excuse me, it doesn't have another use that that commodity could be used for.
	For example, if I have oil, I can trade the oil, or I can refine it, or I can do many other things with it, and I'm sure you understand that, but it's just...
	I guess I just get frustrated by when we try to make this argument...
	You know, people just attack us.
	You know what I mean?
	Sorry, I don't think you're getting the argument that I'm making.
	And I'm not saying my argument is correct, but I really want you to understand it.
	You understand that if a currency is not backed by anything or convertible into anything else, that is economically more efficient if you can get people to adopt it, right?
	Purely digital dollars are much cheaper as currency.
	You want your currency to be as cheap as possible.
	If you have a purely digital currency that has nothing in the real world, not even a stock certificate, it's simply bits and bytes floating around in your wallet or in your computer or on some server.
	If you could have a purely digital currency with no convertibility or use to any other thing, that would be about as cheap a currency as you could possibly get.
	And if you can make that work, you will absolutely win out against gold-based or gold-backed currencies because it's, you know...
	It's going to be virtually free to use, whereas the gold currencies is going to be a couple of percentage points on every transaction to pay for the costs of buying and storing and transferring and transporting all of the gold.
	So my argument is that it doesn't matter whether something is backed or not.
	There's ways to overcome The gold standard is simply don't print fiat money.
	That's all the gold standard really fundamentally means.
	And there's ways to have a digital currency where you don't print fiat currency, where you're not overprinting.
	And so I imagine that you'd have to pay a few more accountants and a few less metallurgists so that you could convince the public that your currency was not being inflated.
	But if you could do that, then the Bitcoin model would win over the gold standard every time.
	I don't really have a response to that specifically, but I will say that the market has created many ways of lowering the overhead of doing transactions in hard currencies that are just bits and bytes in digital,
	because a lot of times the gold doesn't move around, it doesn't physically get transported, it's just It's in one vault, it's got a certificate of authenticity, and then people just trade it back and forth online from there, but it always exists in a reserve somewhere, like an allocated gold.
	So I think that there are, while I can't really argue against the fact that bitcoins have little overhead, I can say that gold and other things, the market has found a way to make them Well, sure, but you still have the overhead of buying all the gold to begin with.
	In a free market, of course, the economy would grow, I would guess, 8% to 12% a year, because that's what Even relatively free markets in the third world.
	Now, that may be diminishing returns over time, as Tyler Cowen has argued that the low-hanging fruit of economic development has already been achieved.
	So maybe that would diminish over time.
	So you would need to expand your currency in a free market to match production.
	Otherwise, you would get deflation, which is hard to predict.
	Everybody wants stable currency over time.
	You can't really do that with Bitcoin, because mathematically, it's just going to go to an asymptote, and then it's just going to stop.
	I don't know enough.
	Tell me how is the currency generated, so to speak, in Bitcoin?
	Technically speaking, there is a mathematical problem that has a difficulty level.
	And all the clients agree to the same rules.
	The reason why Bitcoin works is because all the clients are all the same and they're all following the same rules.
	You have this mathematical problem with a certain level of difficulty.
	It takes a computer a certain amount of time to compute the answer to that mathematical problem.
	What the client is set to do is to automatically normalize or average out the amount of time it takes for new bitcoins to be created by increasing the difficulty level.
	And the delta, how much the difficulty level gets raised is computable by all the clients and all the clients can agree on it.
	So if you start creating, if you start solving this mathematical problem and you get awarded bitcoins for it, all the clients are going to see that and everyone's going to up their difficulty level In such a way that it averages out that about every 10 minutes, somebody's computer solves the problem.
	And additionally, every year, the amount of Bitcoins that you get awarded to you for solving that problem diminishes.
	I believe it goes like 50, 25, you know, and then it just goes down from there and, you know, asymptotically until you get to nothing.
	So, Over time, it's asymptotically going to grow and then just, you know, level off, and there's not going to be any more growth.
	The amount of Bitcoins in circulation is going to be static.
	Right. Okay, so there's a way of limiting it based on computer cycles and the toughness of problems, and to make sure that people don't fiat up their currency by buying some Cray, you get diminishing results of new Bitcoins every time you solve the problem.
	And in theory, you could create more Bitcoins by making sure that every single person It changes their client because the only reason why Bitcoin works is because you have a bunch of people collectively running the same software that follows the same rules.
	Right, right. Okay, okay.
	Well, yeah, look, maybe that's a good solution.
	Maybe it isn't.
	I generally would prefer a solution wherein, you know, a bunch of economists measured output and tried to figure out how to match currency to keep prices as stable as humanly possible.
	That would be my preferred solution, whether it's the valid one or not, I don't know, but that's one I would look for.
	But yeah, look, I mean, the fact that you don't like certain aspects of Bitcoin means that in a free market, I would be more prone to choose a non-hard asset-backed currency, and you would prefer a hard asset-backed currency.
	And I think that's perfectly great.
	That's cool.
	Yeah, I'm totally cool with everyone making their own choices as to what currency they want to use.
	I guess I'm just more frustrated from an academic perspective.
	And if somebody wants to use it, they can go ahead, but when people start making the academic arguments, I get...
	And especially the non-academic arguments like, you're an idiot, etc., it just gets a little frustrating how much everyone goes against you if you say you're against Bitcoins.
	As if you are some status monster.
	Sorry, but you're not against Bitcoins.
	Okay, I'm against Bitcoin for myself.
	You would prefer a hard asset-backed currency, right?
	Okay, yes. I'm against Bitcoin for my own personal finances.
	Yeah, you prefer a hard asset-backed currency.
	And so you're willing to pay the overhead that such a currency would require, and other people would want less overhead and would want cheaper transactions, right?
	Yeah, I don't know if that's the reason why they do it.
	I mean, I think that a lot of people find value in Bitcoin not because of the efficiency, but rather because of the semi-anonymous nature of it, the fact that, you know, it's very difficult to trace if you know what you're doing.
	I think there's a couple of senators in the U.S. who are I'm starting to think about going after Bitcoin because there's some website where you can order illegal drugs coming in through the Tor network, which is apparently an anonymous network.
	You can then order drugs and have them delivered to you using Bitcoin and an encrypted Tor connection.
	I don't think that they like it because of the efficiency aspect.
	I think they like it because of the SU government aspect of it.
	Sorry to interrupt, but this I think is why I would argue that it's not a free market currency.
	A free market currency is going to exist when there isn't a government monopoly squeezing it off into the sidelines and determining a lot of what it's all about.
	Could you restate that a different way?
	Sure. If people are saying, I like bitcoins because it's a massive screw you to the government, then it's not a free market currency because people are just using it because they're sick and tired of fiat currency, not because they love bitcoin in isolation, right?
	It's like revenge sex, right?
	I mean, you're really mad at your ex and you go and bang her sister.
	It's not like you're really attracted to the sister.
	You just want to get back at the ex.
	It's not exactly a free market bang, so to speak, right?
	Well, I guess. I mean, I guess it depends.
	I mean, if, you know... I mean, I guess if they're using it, does it really matter why they're using it?
	It's just the fact that they use it?
	Sorry, somebody's just asked me if I want to tell everyone more about revenge sex.
	Well, I mean, that's obviously when you use your right hand.
	That's revenge sex, you know, because your left hand's been a bit slappy.
	But anyway, we can sort of get back to that.
	But no, I think it's important just to remember that people's ability to choose or reject currency is exactly right.
	I mean, I think that in the future, people who have lots of money Are going to prefer a gold-backed currency.
	And people who don't have a lot of money probably won't care that much.
	Like all people who don't have as much money, they're more interested in price than quality.
	And so they probably will want a non- Yeah, and that's totally fine.
	I guess we've almost exhausted Just to summarize, I'm totally cool with everyone using whatever they want.
	I just get frustrated when people Like, chastise and do those kinds of things.
	You know what I'm saying?
	Oh, listen, and of course, if people are calling you an idiot for questioning the value of bitcoins or suggesting alternatives, then the problem is not probably with bitcoins, but with the people you may be debating with.
	So you might want to rethink that as a strategy.
	Yeah, I love that cartoon.
	I mention it at least once a year on this show, where this guy's sitting fiercely typing at his computer and his wife's like, Honey, are you coming to bed?
	And he's like, no, no!
	There's somebody who's still wrong on the internet!
	So, yeah, we have to avoid those temptations, for sure.
	But, yeah, I appreciate that.
	I've had some questions about Bitcoin, and I really appreciate you bringing it up.
	And I really appreciate the explanation of how they're generated.
	I think that's very interesting. Oh, yeah, no problem.
	Anytime. Thanks for taking my call today.
	My pleasure. Thank you for calling in.
	Alright, do we have...
	We can either... I can take questions if you're a good typist.
	Of course, I can take questions in the chat room.
	Somebody's written, how does human child abuse fit into the Darwinian theory?
	It isn't just a theory, yeah.
	A tribe that dumps down and makes its children unhealthy can't compete with a tribe that doesn't.
	Aggression isn't an answer.
	Lions can rip us apart in seconds.
	They fail to become... The dominant species.
	Brains mostly win over body.
	That is a great, great question.
	That is a great question.
	You people. You people are just too bright.
	I'm going to take a pause to think, to come up with something hopefully vaguely intelligent before I open my mouth.
	Well... The Darwinian theory, of course, would have to argue that there was...
	Look, if Lloyd DeMoss and the psychohistorians are correct, and I think they are, I mean, I think there's enough evidence, though, you know, certainly always open to contrary evidence, then they say that child abuse has been virtually all-pervasive.
	Actually, no, he would say all-pervasive, because he's had a $10,000 reward out there about anyone who can find a parent before the 16th or 17th century who would not be convicted of child abuse now.
	And so far, I think over 40 years, no one's come up to collect that money.
	So they would say that child abuse was omnipresent throughout human history up until pretty modern times.
	And so it must have had some adaptive, some positive adaptive strategy.
	And look, the reality is that human history begins with dictatorship, right?
	The tribe, as people say, well, where did the state evolve?
	No, no, no. We're trying to hack back the state from human affairs.
	And the state, in terms of, you know, hierarchical, usually age-based dominance, the state has been around from the very beginning.
	The Stone Age tribes were statist because they had, no, they didn't have the two ingredients.
	That is the opposite of statism.
	Two ingredients are the opposite of statism.
	Private property rights and the non-aggression principle.
	Well, if child abuse is prevalent throughout history, certainly the non-aggression principle is violated from the very beginning.
	And if the non-aggression principle is violated from the very beginning, there's precious damn little that you can do with society as a whole if that is the case.
	So, there certainly was no private property other than a few inconsequential personal items throughout most of human history, and there was certainly no commitment to the non-aggression principle, and there was certainly no philosophy, because superstition and religiosity and, you know, culture in the way that I use it dominated human history up until very, very recent times. So, the question is, what is adaptive in that kind of environment?
	Well, in that kind of environment, conformity is Is adaptive, right?
	In other words, most tribes had rituals that if you didn't follow them, you would be killed.
	You would be killed. And, of course, you can simply look at the Old Testament for proof on this, that any father, sorry, any child who deconverts from a religion can be killed.
	Any child who speaks up against his father can be killed.
	Unbelievers can be killed.
	Witches can be killed. Sorcerers can be killed.
	Apostates can be killed.
	A lot of A lot of murder.
	A lot of murder commandments in the Old Testament.
	Of course, thou shalt not kill.
	But I think that just means people who agree with you to the point of just being a mirror.
	So in human history, conformity to tribal rituals, to tribal culture, was absolutely necessary.
	And if you didn't conform...
	Then you would be killed.
	Or you would be ostracized from your tribe, which effectively meant you had to go and make it on your own in the woods, and whether you survived or not didn't really matter because your genes wouldn't be reproduced, wouldn't be passed along anyway.
	So ostracism versus murder, to a large degree, they're pretty much the same when it comes to biology.
	In neither situation do your further genes get transmitted.
	So, you know, what is it that causes children to be terrifyingly Well, child abuse, of course, right?
	So it has that adaptation.
	Secondly, of course, states are violent.
	And states in a situation of increasing want tend to be increasingly violent.
	The way that you bond together your tribe when your leadership is throwing everybody into the shitter is you start a war, right?
	This is always the case, that when something goes wrong at the top, they start a war.
	And, of course, as America launches more bombs into Yemen.
	We can see now that this is the fourth one in the Middle East that they're starting up.
	Because remember, they hate Americans for their freedom.
	So, if you want to start a war, then what you need is people who have very enlarged amygdala and very small neofrontal cortexes, right?
	So you need people who have a very enlarged fight-or-flight mechanism, who can pump gallons of adrenaline into the body, and who have almost no impulse control and very little ability to coherently assess risk and to defer action for fear of consequences.
	I mean, that's really what war is all about.
	To breed those kinds of warriors, you need to abuse children.
	Abuse against children has the scientifically documented result of increasing the amygdala, the fight-or-flight mechanism, and, of course, harming children.
	The hippocampus or memory issues within the brain and diminishing the neofrontal cortex or the seat of higher reasoning.
	So you end up with highly predatory efficient killing machines.
	So that is, and this is well known, this of course occurs in daily and monstrous tragedy around the world where children are forced to murder either their parents or siblings or other children in order to be inducted into the gruesome undead hordes of child soldiers.
	One of the Greatest tragedies, not only for what it does in the present, but for what it does to the future of these societies.
	Absolutely monstrous. So that's just a very brief overview that the two...
	The two prime results of child abuse that would fit, I think, the Darwinian theory in a state where, or in a situation of roving local violent statism, is that you get conformity and hair-trigger violence.
	And that, I think, serves it very well.
	You know, it's only in the recent...
	And you could even argue shorter than that, that raising children peacefully had any benefit at all.
	I think it would have a huge negative at most times throughout history.
	One of the reasons humanity is so successful as a species is we adapt from conception onwards to prepare for our local environment.
	It's an amazing thing.
	And I think that we're certainly the only species that does that, to my knowledge, to the degree that we do it.
	So there's studies that show that women who experience hunger, significant hunger, while children are in the womb, have more aggressive children.
	Of course they do. Of course they do.
	The human organism is assessing its future social, economic, and political environment almost from the moment of conception onwards.
	It is scanning through its tight integration into the biomechanics of the mother System.
	It is scanning. It is using the mother as a sonar, as a tricorder to scan the surrounding system.
	Am I going to grow up in a situation where food is plentiful or in an environment where food is scarce?
	Well, if food is plentiful, then I'm going to get the most value out of being a peaceful trader.
	If food is scarce, I'm going to get the most value about being an aggressive hunter.
	And so the brain is adapting to the environment based upon The cues provided by the maternal system.
	And so we can adapt to various environments in a way that is not multigenerational, is not evolutionary in that sense, but is based upon cues received by the growing fetus from the mother herself.
	It's astounding. Just amazing.
	So that would be my answer and I hope that makes some sense.
	Yes, he has written, Lloyd DeMoss quote, the source of most human violence and suffering has been a hidden children's holocaust throughout history, whereby billions of innocent human beings have been routinely murdered, bound, starved, raped, mutilated, battered, and tortured by their parents and other caregivers so that they grow up as emotionally crippled adults and become Vengeful time bombs who periodically restage their early traumas in sacrificial rites called wars.
	Yeah, that is from Lloyd DeMoss, and I believe that is very true.
	Somebody has written...
	I notice that an enormous amount of disagreement I encounter with other people in my life comes from differing word definition.
	Often words have numerous similar but significantly different meanings.
	For example, you use the word culture in a slightly different way than most people in most instances.
	I'm curious what strategies you use to avoid this problem in discussion.
	Well, that's a great question.
	And... What I do, if anyone begins to best me in an argument, is simply to redefine me as correct and go from there.
	No, I mean, that's great.
	I mean, you have to do definitions.
	So if I'm using the word culture in a way that's different, I'll mention that I'm using it in a way that's different.
	This is show 1930 or something, some god-awful number like that.
	So... I think most people know what I mean when I talk about culture, but you try to define your terms.
	If you're using them in a non-traditional way, then the onus is on you to define your terms.
	So if I'm going to use taxation to mean theft, when most people think it means the price we pay for civilization, then it's up to me to make the definition that I'm using clear.
	So if you're going to use words in a non-standard way, it's your job to make that definition clear.
	Steph, what has happened to other societies after they've hit the 100% debt-to-GDP point?
	Well, two things. Well, I guess three.
	One of which remains rather theoretical.
	The first is hyperinflation.
	The second is war.
	And the third is actually reducing the size, power, and scope of government.
	The third one remains largely theoretical, but could be possible.
	And this is after they've bled as many other cultures dry as they can, right?
	Which is something that's more modern.
	There was no IMF around in Germany in the 1920s during the hyperinflation of the Weimar time, so...
	Steph?
	Yes? Yes, I would like to ask you a question.
	I would like to get your opinion on something.
	Half a year ago, I was together with my uncle and a cousin, and I was telling a story to them that happened to me when I was young.
	With my father, so...
	Oh, you cannot hear me?
	No, you're good, go ahead.
	Okay. So, what happened was that I was like 11, 12 years old, and I was in a boarding school together with my brother.
	I was sleeping in the same room, and we were like fighting every evening, but also in a funny way.
	We had fun with it. That was how it was.
	And one evening, the priest of the boarding school, he came in, because we were making a lot of noise, and he said, be quiet!
	And then he went out again, and then at the end of the week we went home, and our father, he took us apart, and he gave us a sexual education with the book, How the Body Was, and all that.
	And then he asked if I had oral sex with my brother.
	I'm sorry, your father asked if you'd had oral sex with your brother.
	Yeah. Right. Yeah. So the priest had called him, and he had said that I was giving oral sex to my brother, but that was not the case.
	We were fighting with each other, and he was sitting on me, but that was not the case.
	And I do remember from that day, I was like, no, I was shocked that he asked that.
	And I said, no, and that was that.
	But afterwards, I really felt like, how could he?
	I didn't even felt believed in it, you know?
	It was really like, that happened.
	You said, of course we weren't, and you felt that your father didn't believe you, is that right?
	No, no, yeah, he didn't believe me.
	Or it felt like it.
	And also all the other people there in that family, the stepmom that we had, and the stepson, and No, it was really like, this happened, this is true, you know?
	And a half year ago, I was telling this story to this uncle and to this cousin, and...
	Oh, something is popping up here.
	And I became actually angry at it, because they continued to laugh with it, like, Mark, yeah, funny story, funny story.
	But I noticed, I became really angry about it, and I'm actually wondering...
	What is the abuse here?
	Is there abuse?
	Is this abuse? Well, look, I would certainly say that it's a strange thing to even talk about, but if the priest said to your father that he saw you having oral sex with your brother when this wasn't the case, then that's just wretched beyond words.
	That's just a staggering thing to say.
	It's not too surprising to me That a priest would have a bizarre reaction to, like in some sort of sexual context.
	I know the sexual context wasn't you and your brother, of course, but that there would be something funny going on between a priest and sexuality, right?
	To get someone to want to frighten and lie to children, right?
	So a priest, their job is to terrify the children into conformity because they're a hangover from Prehistory almost.
	Well, you have to get that priest to be deeply unhappy and deeply at war with himself and repressed.
	And to do that is very easy.
	To make somebody repressed and angry and destructive is very easy.
	All you have to do is you have to tell that human being that every single natural impulse, that every single natural impulse that he has is evil.
	That sets him at war with himself.
	With his basic human nature, with any chance that he might have for happiness.
	So you tell him that desire is bad.
	You tell him that sex is bad.
	You tell him that aggression even is bad.
	You tell him that if he is wronged, He should never ever retaliate because we have a natural and I think just desire for retaliation to wrongs that are done to us.
	You tell him that that is bad and then you change the story all the time.
	You change the story all the time, right?
	So you give him turn the other cheek in one situation and then you give him an eye for an eye in another situation, right?
	So you tell someone You should never seek any redress for wrongs done against you, right?
	And then if that person displeases you, then you attack them.
	And then they say to you, well, wait a second, you told me not to seek vengeance for wrongs done to you, but now you're seeking vengeance against me for a wrong you've perceived I've done to you.
	And he's like, well, yeah, but then you say, but I'm pointing to this part called an eye for an eye.
	And then you just completely screw with his head at every opportunity so that he feels wrong about everything, so that every impulse he has, every natural human instinct he has, he immediately checks and questions and opposes and undermines and attacks so that he's endlessly punching himself like a dog chasing his own tail round and round, burrowing himself into the endless earth.
	Of self-hatred, discontent, and a vague inner spiritual itchiness that he can never quite scratch.
	And once you've got somebody in that situation, you just turn them loose on kids and the virus reproduces.
	It goes out of his mouth like any cold or flu or airborne virus, goes through his mouth, through language, and replicates itself through the nesting snakes of polysyllabic abuse into the children's minds where they then have natural impulses and instincts that are continually opposed and undermined and attacked till they end up at war with themselves and replicates itself through the nesting snakes of polysyllabic abuse into the children's minds where they then have natural impulses and instincts that are continually opposed and
	And then they too will turn and spew that same toxic venom on those who come after them and the cycle goes round and round and it's as long as religion is long.
	And if it's not religion, then it's socialism or Marxism or statism or some other nonsense.
	So I would say that for sure it is not – I mean it's outrageous beyond words that the priest would say this to your father.
	It's outrageous beyond words that your father would take this with any seriousness, and it's outrageous beyond words, in my opinion, that your family would consider this a joking matter.
	It's not. It's not a joking matter.
	It is not a joking matter, to me, that your parents put you in the care of somebody willing to say something absolutely slanderous and outrageous, like you had oral sex with you, you were having oral sex with your brother.
	I mean, this is completely astounding.
	If my daughter...
	I mean, I can't even imagine it, but if I put my daughter under the care of somebody who told me something like that, I would be beside myself.
	I would feel terrible. Like, how on earth could I have exposed my children to a twisted, malevolent soul like this?
	And... So, yeah, I think there's a lot of stuff that's problematic.
	And, you know, I always suggest, you know, be honest with your family if this topic comes up.
	Say, look, this is really painful for me.
	I don't consider this a laughing matter.
	This has a lot of pain if this is the case.
	Whatever the case is for your emotional experience, think that this is it.
	If it's not, then obviously tell them the truth about what it is.
	But say, this really bothers me.
	This is not something that I find funny at all.
	It's always bothered me, and I'd like to talk about it.
	You know, that's my suggestion.
	I mean, you can do whatever you want, but that, I think, is the most honest thing to say at the time.
	Still, I am very, very bothered by it.
	And, like, I'm wondering, the typical defense that they would use is, yes, but how can I know if it's true or not true?
	Say it is true.
	And imagine that it would be true.
	How would you handle that in a proper way as a parent?
	like if like say it would happen with your daughter and you think it might have happened no no no no no no listen I mean I mean sibling incest wouldn't just pop up for no reason so that's yeah that's
	I'm no expert, but my understanding is that the amount of trauma that people would have to go through in order for there to be sibling incest would be pretty enormous.
	If you have a healthy and functioning household, it's just not going to happen.
	I don't think you could just say, well, what if it did?
	A lot of pretty specific circumstances.
	Yeah, that makes sense.
	And it's interesting that you...
	I also had to...
	Just to be clear, right?
	So let's say that my daughter is playing in some other girl's house and the, I don't know, the parent comes up and says, your daughter was involved in torturing another child or whatever, right?
	I'd be like, no, she wasn't.
	No, she wasn't. Of course she wasn't.
	Of course she wasn't. It's not even a question for me whether she would or wouldn't be involved in torturing another child.
	It's not going to happen. Because it takes a lot of messed up stuff to happen to a kid for the kid to get involved in torturing another child.
	It would be exactly the same as if she goes and plays at some Chinese family's house and the mom then comes and says, you know, your daughter started speaking to me in fluent Mandarin.
	I'd be like, no, she didn't. No, she didn't.
	Of course she didn't because she's never learned Mandarin.
	She doesn't know how to speak Mandarin. And so, if bizarre, dysfunctional, weird stuff, like torture and sibling incestence, no, no, he doesn't speak that language.
	It doesn't happen. It's not possible.
	So, yeah, I think that's pretty much it.
	And what I would do, of course, is recognize the nature of the person who was telling me that and what they were up to.
	Yeah. Yeah. Because he didn't even believe us when we said, no, it didn't happen.
	So it's like double insult.
	Yeah, why ask, right?
	If you're not going to believe, why ask?
	Anyway. But indeed, I think I'm so angry about it because it's really breaking of trust that he did.
	In like one hour, he totally broke the trust.
	Yeah. Well, I have to think about it, but yeah, I'm really glad to hear how you would respond, and it makes sense.
	I also had a nightmare, actually, because I don't remember a lot of Dreams, but that period...
	Listen, I'm sorry, because I had some requests that Dreams can take a long time, so if you want to email it to me, maybe we can talk about it offline, but Dreams could take the rest of the show, and some people like them and some people don't, but I like them.
	Okay, great. Yeah, just send it to me, maybe we can do it offline.
	Yeah, thanks for this a lot, Steph.
	You're welcome. I'm really sorry. I mean, I certainly believe you.
	If that means anything to you, of course that didn't happen.
	And I'm so sorry that you didn't get more belief from those around you.
	Yeah, that means a lot.
	Thank you. Take care.
	Yeah, sorry. I need to get some new metaphors.
	It is, in fact, always with the Mandarin, and I do apologize.
	I do have a new book coming out.
	There's a preview, if you're a donator, in the bronze press section.
	I also threw it in the chat room here.
	I'm very, very pleased with it.
	Although I still think it could have been funnier, but it's called The Handbook of Human Ownership, A Manual for New Tax Farmers.
	Yes, I've got some good feedback on it.
	I've got the audiobook read, I've got a video with captions ready.
	I'm just making sure, just having people go through it to make sure I didn't accidentally break into ancient Aramaic and thus disprove my own atheism or start speaking in tongues or whatever.
	If you want to get in, just give James a ping with your Skype ID or phone number and you can just whisper to him in the chat and that's how you can get it.
	Hey, I don't really have a question, but I just sort of wanted to, I guess, share.
	There are two things, actually.
	I'm not sure if I want to talk about the latter.
	It's more of a current events thing I want to talk about with the local people first.
	One of the things that I've been processing to a pretty good extent lately is the effect of my parents' divorce.
	And I think most of it recently has just been sort of understanding how long in actuality it was occurring before they actually split, if that makes sense.
	You mean how long your parents were not, quote, having a marriage before they actually split?
	Yeah, yeah. And of course, it wasn't exactly vibrant and alive before that, but it turns out that their divorce, in terms of a dead marriage, lasts for like six years before they actually did split.
	And what I'm finding is that there's an awful lot of rage.
	Anger in you about the deadness of your parents' marriage before they got divorced?
	Yeah, and how that affected all my social relationships, the lack of social relationships, all the lack of support in the community, the lack of support that they had for me as a child.
	And then how that's reflected in what's going on in the present day.
	I know that's really vague.
	Yeah, no, I get it.
	I mean, it may not be that comprehensible to others, but I think I understand where you're coming from.
	Yeah. And you know, divorce has a huge effect on kids, and divorce, of course, is just the tip of the iceberg.
	Because there's all this stuff that comes beforehand.
	Like, I was reading, I must confess to a mild addiction to Huffington Post, just because I think their iPod application is really cool.
	And occasionally I'll sort of browse on there, Because you can only watch the wheels on the bus go round and round about 12 million times before it starts to seem a little old.
	And there was a sort of slideshow on, you know, how did you know when it was time to get divorced or whatever?
	And people just posted the most astounding stuff.
	You know, like, oh, I had to go in for emergency surgery.
	I was in the hospital for four days.
	My husband never came to visit once.
	He only sent me two text messages or whatever, right?
	And then another one, there was a guy saying, yeah, after my wife and I hadn't had sex for three years, I figured it was pretty much done.
	And it's like, whoa, three years.
	Three years, really?
	And so there's a whole lot of stuff that comes before the divorce that has a huge effect on the family and the kids and all of that.
	So, yeah, I don't doubt that it was a massive shadow over the emotional life of the family.
	Yeah, yeah. And people are asking questions about specifics, and I'll just be really, really, you know, brief about it.
	My father dropped the D-bomb on their fifth wedding anniversary, on the day of, actually.
	So I was, like, four and a half, and then I was ten.
	So, you know, six years from, like, the kill shot to, you know, six years.
	Of course, by then, like, the corpses.
	It's not even, like, a cold body anymore.
	It's, like, a, you know, bones pick clean.
	In terms of that relationship.
	But there was a long, long bitterness afterwards as well, which is also part of the divorce.
	The bitterness, what do you mean?
	Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
	On the part of my parents, my mother especially, was incredibly bitter towards my father.
	Right. Which is in no small part, I'm sure, due to her decision to stay in the marriage after my father said he wanted out.
	Right. Yeah, so when I mentioned that there was something big, that's like the big thing that's sort of occupying a lot of my energy and time.
	How do you think it has affected you since?
	Well, I mean my last romantic relationship, which is still just Beth, there were so many parallels in that relationship to my parents' marriage.
	Right. Um, there was, uh, like, by the time Beth and I broke up, it was, like, again, a corpse picked clean the bones on the ground.
	There was, like, no feeling.
	It was just melodrama at the very end.
	There wasn't anything genuine organic left.
	Um, and, I mean, that's in terms of romantic relationships, but, um, I also looked through my school report, which also re-triggered some of the stuff.
	I looked through some of the school stuff.
	I had a friend over the other day and I mean there was a this is a more historical point but there was a lack of attention to like my most needs as a child I really have a lot of trouble with a lot of that stuff.
	What sort of basic needs?
	I'm paying attention, good sleep hygiene, good food hygiene.
	I've got problems with my teeth now.
	Oh, because overall hygiene and all, right?
	Yeah. That's more related, somewhat related to diet but also related to not going to the dentist as often as I should.
	I'm not saying that these are all their fault because I have the knowledge and everything.
	You know, as an adult, to take care of myself.
	But at the same time, for a long time, I was unconscious about that stuff.
	Does that make sense? You know what I'm saying?
	Yeah, self-care.
	And how do you think that's related to your parents' divorce in particular?
	Or the parents' deteriorating relationship?
	That's a really interesting question.
	I'm not really sure if I have a...
	Nothing's coming up right now about that.
	Well, let me ask you, in terms of your parents' modeling of self-care, I mean, self-care is not something we just do or something we have to learn.
	It's like a language again.
	So, I mean, was self-care modeled by your parents or not, right?
	I guess that's sort of my question.
	It was like, it's not a strict dichotomy, but like, No.
	The short answer is no.
	Not on either side because my father had all kinds of addictive behaviors.
	In and out with one thing, you know, being an addict with alcohol and then, you know, jumping from that to several other things for becoming a religious addict.
	Yeah, and addiction and self-care are kind of antonyms, right?
	They don't exactly go in hands, right?
	Yeah, and my mother is, you know, is not someone who takes care of herself at all, you know, in terms of her, she's obese and smokes and drinks and all that, so...
	Yeah, very much, very clearly, not learned behaviors from my history.
	I don't know if that relates specifically to the divorce.
	I think that's more of the environment that would have been there whether they got divorced or not, if that makes any sense.
	Yeah, and you could make an argument that if the relationship is that dysfunctional, that divorce may actually be a form of self-care in a weird kind of way, right?
	Yeah, but it was the most reluctant kind of self-care.
	Right, right, right. Yeah, okay, okay.
	Well, I mean, I obviously can't say what is occurring for you.
	I could share with you a few thoughts of my own experience of parental divorce.
	And I mean, I grew up in, you know, I used to call it the matriarchal manors.
	I mean, it was a series of apartment buildings that were all rent-controlled and were all cheap and were all single moms.
	I mean, I knew...
	Two families out of the dozens of friends, no, three families out of the dozens of friends that I had whose parents were still together and only one of those where the marriage appeared to be happy.
	So a happy marriage did not seem to me the commonest of pigeons around, right?
	And so that was sort of my first thought about it was that An intact marriage appeared to be the exception in the world that I grew up in.
	I think that's pretty common, you know, because a broken marriage has effects far beyond the mere breakup of the marriage.
	It has significant economic effects and sociological effects and class effects, too, right?
	You shift down at least one class, possibly two, right?
	I mean, my dad was a PhD professional.
	My mom I had a secretarial degree.
	So when my mom got custody and my dad went to Africa, yeah, we dropped down to social rungs pretty much, right?
	We were upper class and we went to lower class.
	And it took a long time to get back from that.
	My mom never did, but yeah, it's got massive effects.
	And that has an effect on everything around you, right?
	So because you're lower class, you then have to live in a certain neighborhood.
	Because you live in that certain neighborhood, you're exposed to certain kinds of dangers.
	And certain negative influences that you wouldn't have been exposed to otherwise.
	You're exposed to other similarly dysfunctional and problematic forms of family life and so on, right?
	So it has an effect on the whole environment that you live in as a kid, right?
	Right, yeah. Yeah, for sure, for sure.
	And the other thing that I would say that was hugely tragic for me around the issue of divorce Was, you know, I'm very...
	I'm very aware of and sensitive to the need for my daughter to respect me.
	And, of course, to never achieve this through fear or intimidation or just say so or whatever.
	But for her to respect me and to know that I'm not perfect, I make mistakes and all that.
	But I think that children really want to look up to their parents.
	They really, really want to look up to their parents.
	They want to worship their parents.
	And the problem with divorce is that it reveals parents as incompetent.
	In a very fundamental way.
	In a very fundamental way.
	Because either they were incompetent at the marriage or they were incompetent in choosing the marriage.
	But either way, they fucked it up, right?
	Yeah. And then what happened to me was because I couldn't respect my mom in this area, I began to question my respect for her in other areas as well.
	And then, when she would tell me or want me to do stuff, a lot of my basic attitude was, well, who are you to tell me how I should live?
	Right. You know, I just...
	I couldn't take a lot of advice with a lot of seriousness.
	It just seemed to me like an exercise in power.
	She just wanted me to do stuff rather than she had a great and deep knowledge of virtue and goodness and wanted to help me to live a happier and better life.
	Yeah. That was my experience with my father as well, for sure.
	I don't think I was as...
	I'm not sure what level of awareness you might have had at the moment.
	I don't think it was that explicit for me, but certainly it was more about This is not because I respect him, it's because I fear him.
	If your life is a disaster, how am I supposed to take instruction from you?
	I'm not going to take language instruction from the guy who can't speak the language.
	That's a joke, right? If my parents want to teach me the language called, be a good person and do the right thing, And fundamentally, it's not the divorce that was the issue for me, fundamentally, because, yeah, okay, so the divorce was the divorce.
	But it was the fact that my parents, I shouldn't say, because I only talked to my dad once or twice about the divorce, but it was that everybody just wanted to pretend like there hadn't been a divorce, and my level of respect should continue no matter what.
	Oh, yeah. Do you know what I mean?
	So, parents get divorced and they say, okay, look, we've really messed up.
	We've really messed up. We've failed at being co-parents.
	We've failed at being husband and wife.
	That is a huge, massive failure.
	And that has a huge negative impact on you, the child.
	So let's sit down and talk about it.
	We'll try and be honest about what went wrong.
	We'll try and be honest about the limitations that it's revealed about us.
	And we'll talk about ways that we can move forward.
	And we recognize that we are not going to be very credible in terms of telling you what to do until we have rebuilt your respect.
	So it's not the divorce itself.
	It's the pretense that nothing happened afterwards, that nothing has changed, that I'm still your mom, I'm still your dad, you should still do what it's like, but you got divorced, we're not even talking about it.
	Right, right, right. I wonder, you know, since you and I have sort of the reverse, you lived with your mother, I lived with my father, but I had my mother saying stuff, at least when I was in my 20s, stuff like, I'm sure I may have mentioned this before, where it was like, she would say, I think I did a pretty good job for the time I was around, which is like, but you fucking left, you know, and you fucking...
	Just stop being a mother.
	And, of course, as I've said before, the local pizza place will give you a survey about how well they did.
	They don't just walk up to you and say, that's the best piece of pizza.
	I think that's a pretty good piece of pizza.
	You must be really happy. And then walk off.
	That would be ludicrous. What they'll do is they say, how's your pizza?
	What do you like? What do you not like?
	This is the problem, of course.
	I can't tell my wife whether I'm a good husband or not.
	I can ask her whether I'm a good husband, whether she likes being married to me.
	I can't tell my daughter that I'm a good father to her.
	I can't. I mean, I can, but how ridiculous is that?
	I can't tell you this is a good podcast.
	I think it is, and I try to take feedback, but it's not me to tell you.
	For parents to say, I think I did a pretty good job, it's like, I'm in the room.
	The answer that you're looking for is in the room and all you have to do is ask me and we can talk honestly about it.
	So I think there's a lot of heartbreak when your parents fall off the pedestal that I think nature intends them to be on.
	I think that's really heartbreaking for a kid.
	Because now, parental authority is no longer respect.
	It is now power.
	If the fall from grace is not openly discussed and the child's feedback is solicited and it's dealt with in a mature and positive manner, right?
	But if it's just like, well, whew, I'm so much happier that we're divorced now.
	Let's keep moving. And now you've got to do this and go clean your room and go take the garbage out and do this and do that.
	That's really heartbreaking.
	Because now, you obey not out of respect, but you obey.
	Out of fear or power or guilt or some other thing.
	And that's very sad.
	Because no child wants to do stuff out of fear or guilt or obligation or resentment or whatever, right?
	Or because the parent has power.
	We want to do stuff because we get it and we understand it.
	I mean, I have to do this as myself.
	Now, Isabella is at the age where I can explain to her why certain decisions are being made, right?
	You know, so if she wants to climb up on a white couch in the mall with her shoes on...
	I can stop her and I have to remember that she can do this, right?
	I have to stop her and say, well, you know, your shoes are on the ground.
	The couch is going to get dirty.
	People are going to sit there. It's not our couch.
	I can explain it to her and then she gets it.
	And then she's not obeying me.
	She's obeying a reasonable set of expectations.
	Not me, my personal thing, but an explanation that is independent of me, that I'm merely delivering, right?
	Like, somebody delivers a check to me, I don't think that they're giving me money like a charity, right?
	And I'm just delivering a rule or a perspective to her that is not my power over her.
	It's not me, my opinion.
	These are the facts, right?
	And most times she gets it.
	Most times she understands, and God bless her, she doesn't do it again.
	And that is something that we want.
	But if parents mess up so fundamentally, like a divorce or an affair or something, and then it's not talked about.
	Then I think the children's relationship fundamentally shifts and that's really tragic.
	Right, right, right.
	And what you were just talking about just there with the sadness is I think that there's you know, there's still a tremendous amount of grief for me to process in this grief and sadness and the pain.
	You know, the anger comes but I don't I don't know if that's primary.
	I think that comes later.
	I mean, there's an injury, but I think it's the injury I still have to work on.
	Yeah, and the injury is about the future, right?
	So what did it mean for my future?
	What did it mean for my definition of relationships that my Parents got divorced.
	And, you know, when I say that, again, I just want to say that it's not about the divorce.
	It's about the communication and honesty about it afterwards.
	But what does it mean? What does it mean about my trust in people that my most foundational relationship shifted from respect to, or maybe there was never respect, I don't know, but to power, right?
	What does it mean for me? Are relationships based on power or virtue, right?
	This is all the way back to podcast 10, I think it was, power or virtue or love story, right?
	Are my relationships based on power or...
	Desire, like sexual desire or companionship desire, is it based on need?
	Is it based on power? Is it based on virtue?
	What is a relationship? These are very fundamental questions I think that everybody needs to ask himself or herself.
	What is a relationship?
	What is a human relationship?
	What are they for? Why do we have them?
	Why would I ever get married?
	Why would I want to have a girlfriend or a boyfriend?
	Why would I want to have these things?
	What are they based on? And what has my experience taught me that they're based on?
	And what does philosophy ideally say that they should be based on?
	How far apart are these things and which train track am I on, so to speak, right?
	Right. The relevant touch point for present day is not just romantic stuff because I'm not quite there.
	My initial estimate was a bit off.
	It wasn't just going to be a year.
	I've got more to process, but it's got to do with some stuff that's happening in local community.
	And that's a lot of those questions are coming up about, you know, what does it mean to be in the community to have these relationships, to have that kind of relationship?
	And the most fundamental community was this, you know, was my parents and that was a total failure.
	Worse than failure, you know?
	Right, right, right.
	And what does that mean, right?
	We all have these unconscious things that we We get about our relationships.
	And I think that they're correct in the relationships that are, but if we want to change that, then we really have to work on getting a new definition, on challenging the old definition.
	Accepting the old definition was probably correct about the past, but it's not going to be correct about the future, or we damn well hope that it's not going to be correct about the future.
	Yeah, for sure. Well, thanks for letting me sort of explore that a little bit.
	Oh, you're welcome, and again, huge, huge props and sympathies.
	It is a real challenge, and I mean, we are far from alone.
	I mean, this has almost become the norm now.
	This has almost become the norm now.
	I mean, how many, you know, less than 50% of marriages stay together now, and I don't think that that's necessarily indicative of how many should stay together, because you say, well, some of the people who divorced, maybe they should have stayed together, or maybe they could have.
	Yeah, maybe. But how many of the people who stay together shouldn't?
	Lots of people, we all know that, right?
	So a 50% failure rate on relationships that people choose, you understand?
	The people are free to engage and people get to test drive for years beforehand if they date, right?
	There's a 50% failure rate on relationships that are purely voluntary where people can leave at any time.
	And that they get to test drive for years beforehand.
	So what should the, quote, failure rate be for children within a family where children didn't choose the family, never got to test drive them, and couldn't leave?
	It's an interesting question.
	I think it's an essential question.
	So, yeah, it is a very challenging question.
	Yeah. Yes, and thanks again.
	And it also does a lot of stuff to sibling stuff, to sibling relationships as well, which sibling relationships get very strongly affected by divorce for a whole variety of reasons, right?
	Because there may be favorites among the parents and the children, and sometimes children will blame, elder children may blame younger children.
	For additional pressures on the family that may have, quote, resulted in a divorce and so on.
	So there's lots of effects on sibling relationships as well.
	It's, I think, very often underestimated.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I just... I remember talking about this a while ago, but my brother and I had these roles that we had to play, and the moment I tried, I stepped, like, I stuck a toe outside of my role, it was, the conversation just shut down.
	You know, it wasn't even like, and this was before, you know, I had any real conscious knowledge of how to sort of be honest, but...
	Right. As additional children pile up in a marriage, I think quite often the marital stresses pile up as well.
	Do the elder siblings then, quote, blame the younger siblings for causing additional stresses in the marriage?
	Do they then want to control the spontaneity of the younger children?
	In order to preserve the parents' marriage.
	I mean, there's lots of dynamics that go on in a family that is teetering towards the cliff edge of divorce.
	And it's, you know, the innocent get blamed and the guilty get praised.
	That's almost inevitably how things work.
	Yeah. Yeah.
	Somebody's asked me to elaborate on the sibling relationships.
	Yeah. When I get a chance.
	And I think I have a little bit.
	And you understand, these are just my thoughts on the matter.
	But I think also siblings recognize that, elder siblings recognize that if the parents get divorced, they're going to have to do a whole lot more parenting than they did before.
	So for the...
	Sibling relationships get negatively affected by...
	I mean, do you understand?
	These are just generalities. I'm not saying this is true for every case.
	And it may not be true for any case.
	These are just my sort of theories. But...
	Wait for that to pass.
	Hello? Hello?
	Hi. I'm sorry, I just added this guy...
	Oh, sure. Sorry. Hang on just one second.
	Let me finish my thought and then we'll get to you.
	Okay. The lack of freedoms that they have now,
	and they will resent the younger siblings, and it causes lots of problems between siblings when this occurs.
	My parents got divorced shortly after I was born.
	I'll never know the degree to which my brother may or may not have thought.
	That, at some level, I was responsible for the divorce, or if I hadn't come along, they'd still be together, or whatever, right?
	I don't know, I don't know, but it may explain some of his malevolence towards me when we were kids.
	So, you know, it's hard to say, but it has shattering effects on every dimension, right?
	So it's not just parents, children, they're siblings.
	Sibling relationships are massively important in people's lives because the sibling relationships follow you in a way through life that parental relationships don't, right?
	Because with a parent, you become an adult.
	But siblings, you're always in parallel.
	So, yeah, the degree to which divorce has an effect on sibling relationships or if one parent likes one kid more than the other and that has an effect or...
	If one kid reminds one parent of the other parent, right?
	I mean, my mom was constantly saying how much my brother was like my father.
	I mean, to what degree did that affect their relationship?
	Well, to an enormous degree.
	So, yeah, it's a big, big deal.
	And it's really something worth exploring.
	It's one of the biggest things that can happen in a family.
	It's really the biggest thing that can happen that's negative other than the death of a family member as a divorce.
	And so, it's really worth exploring.
	And the obvious place to look is the parents, and that's useful.
	But look at the effects and try and figure out what was going on for your siblings during this divorce and how they processed it emotionally and what their relationship was with you.
	If you're the parent, like, let's say that...
	If you're your mom's favorite and the two siblings end up living with the mom and the dad's favorite is the other kid, then the other kid's going to feel like, well, damn, now I'm in a situation where my mom prefers this sibling to me and my dad prefers me to the other sibling, but I don't get to live with him, so resents that. That kind of stuff just really sticks in kids' minds.
	So it's really worth exploring from every angle.
	I think it really does help to look at these things very deeply.
	Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
	And just sort of to echo some of what you're saying, and it's just a lot more for me to think about on this, but it was never said explicitly, but I got the sense that I reminded my father of my mother.
	I look a little bit more like that side of the family, you know?
	But also with my brother, I remember him saying, and this is sort of the resentment you're talking about, he always felt that in the schools that we were in, we had the same teachers and he was always being compared to me.
	He was always in my shadow.
	Part of it, I'm not sure exactly how that relates to the divorce aspect, but he also got along better with my father, but in sort of a real compliant way.
	It was weird, though, because they actually were, as my brother was a teenager, he was actually able to kind of have a fight with my father, but then they were sort of amicable afterwards, where that was never the case with me.
	It was always like, just retreat back into the foxhole if I can.
	It was never a standoff, never being able to enjoy sports together.
	I didn't like sports. My father and brother did.
	Anyway, that's a little off the case.
	I'm not sure about the divorce, but I'm sure there's definitely something in there for me to explore.
	Yeah, I would. I really would.
	I mean, strange parallels in life.
	You know, I mean, it's sometimes not even evident until afterwards.
	I mentioned this before, but I was in a long-term relationship and then left it at the same age.
	I was the same age I left it as my dad was when he left my mom.
	So these things, these parallels can occur if you don't really understand them.
	Yeah. Anyway, sorry, let's go on.
	We had another caller who wanted to ask a question or two, so I'm sorry about making you wait, but thank you for reminding me Morse code stutters in the chat room to apologize.
	Please go ahead. Sorry about that.
	Yes, I'm relatively new to all of this.
	I just kind of stumbled in.
	I actually discovered this entire world of rational thought as part of the Alex Jones listenership, which So now I've stumbled into this.
	I've read your first book, and I know this is kind of off topic from the theme of what was just discussed, but I wanted to kind of get this question in here to see what you thought about it.
	There's no off topic, so please, by all means, whatever you come up with is great, and you're more than welcome.
	Okay, great. Okay, so if we can accept, I guess, that statism is unsustainable, then we can accept that due to What seems to be a lot of recent indicators or factors that the state is on its way to a state of an operation, or not being able to function, it seems like.
	That is the downward hill that we're going on.
	And if this happens, I guess my proposition is that if this does occur, then the rate at which it takes, if this happens, let's say, in the United States, in this geographical region, If it does, then the rate at which it takes for people to follow the majority of bias and just go ahead and implement another state,
	if that can take long enough, do you not think that the tangible benefits, by effect, the tangible material benefits would be able to be experienced by those in that region to inform their ethics?
	Oh, hello?
	Yes. Sorry, I just want to make sure I understood.
	Sorry, which region was this?
	The U.S. The United States.
	Sorry, just step me through.
	So the tangible benefits, if what happens?
	I'm sorry, you may have cut out. I just missed that.
	If, for example, the United States became stateless because the state's inability to function because it is unsustainable, if it does become stateless in this geographical region, do you think that the tangible benefits of a stateless society Would be able to inform people that, hey, maybe we shouldn't reform another state.
	Oh, yeah. If we accept that the state is, in effect, going...
	It's by recent indicators of hyperinflation and things, which seem to be likely, which would...
	Inevitably make the state unable to pay soldiers to go initiate force against others because it's like telling someone to go punch someone in the face in exchange if nothing of value.
	I just don't see how that's going to work.
	Sorry, was that question convoluted?
	No, no, listen, I think I understand.
	So you're saying, let's say that the government collapses and we have a state of society in the United States.
	Wouldn't people say, well, damn, this is so good, I never want to go back?
	Over time, like over time, you know, the rate...
	So it's going to take a while for people, even though let's say that the majority of people flip out and they want to reinstitute another state because that's all they've ever known, right?
	Well, if that takes long enough, do you think that the tangible benefits of it being stateless during that time are going to be realized?
	Well, listen, I mean, I'd want to...
	Quibble a little bit with your idea about how it's going to happen.
	I don't believe—look, anything can happen, but I would make a strong argument that we do not get a stateless society because the government collapses any more than we get an atheist society because a church collapses.
	So the state, you have to remember there's two words of the meaning, sorry, two meanings of the word the state or the phrase the state.
	The first is the particular form of government we have now.
	So this predatory clusterfrak of debt-ridden democracy, that's sort of what we have now.
	And if the state collapses, well, that doesn't mean that we don't get a state.
	Usually what that means is we get a worse state.
	So you look at The collapse of the Weimar Republic in 1920s, early 1930s Germany, well, you get a dictatorship, right?
	You look at the collapse of Tsarist Russia in 1916, 1917, other than the brief interlude of the Mensheviks, who were more focused on democracy, you ended up with a highly predatory state.
	If you look at the collapse of the ancient Chinese empire in the Second World War and post-Second World War period, you end up with communist The communism under Mao.
	So there are examples to the contrary, but they're kind of few and far between.
	The collapse or the slow collapse of Rome resulted in the Dark Ages for 700 or 800 years.
	So there's the collapse of the existing system, but not the collapse of statism itself.
	It's sort of like you're a slave and you say, well, my master's going to die someday, and then he wills you to his even more brutal brother, and you're like, damn, I guess my master died, but slavery didn't, so I'm still a slave.
	So I want to caution you that the collapse of the existing system is very unlikely to lead to a stateless society.
	The reason being that... There's not going to be like an...
	Sorry, I didn't... No, go ahead.
	I just want to clarify.
	So there's not going to be like this, not even a smallest window of in-between, like that, you know, where there might be an opportunity to say, hey, now we're stagless, and then five minutes later, now we're not.
	No, because that's not how it's going to happen.
	The way it's going to happen is that there has to be a moral revolution first.
	In other words, people have to first identify the state as immoral before they can get rid of the state.
	See, the state is only supported by people's positive opinion of the state.
	And people's positive opinion of the state It sits on two basic approaches.
	The first is moral and the second is pragmatic.
	So people say, we need the government because it's the only way we can help the poor and the old and the sick and be charitable and have streets and have sanitation and have clean food and have clean water and if we don't have these things then we're going to be just back to eating potato bugs in the dirt beside a giant stone chicken.
	So people say, well, it's moral.
	And then there's a practical thing.
	Well, in the absence of the state, all these terrible things, the warlords and nature red in tooth and claw and all these terrible things are going to happen.
	And so when you say, well, let's get rid of the state, people sort of look at you like you go to the doctor with the athlete's foot and he says, well, I think I'm going to need to remove your heart.
	And people are like, what?
	What are you talking about?
	It has nothing to do with my athlete's foot.
	And so people just don't understand it yet.
	And so you need a moral revolution where people are going to say, we're going to look at society from first principles.
	Because that's what you needed with slavery, right?
	You needed for people to say, slavery is immoral.
	Slavery is immoral.
	Only then, and America was the only country in the world where it took 800,000 murders and a civil war to get rid of slavery, although many argue that wasn't the real purpose of the civil war, but rather to Control the tax revenue flowing from the southern states, but It took a moral revolution, and it took a long time for that moral revolution, 150 years or so, for that moral revolution to take root.
	And for people then to say, not...
	So people would say, well, let's get rid of slavery, and people would say, well, that's insane.
	Society can't function without slavery.
	We wouldn't have any food because nobody would grow the crops.
	The slaves would all just lie down in the ditch and die because they're not competent to organize their own lives.
	So you're completely insane, right, to say we should get rid of slavery.
	And what eventually happened was people said, how can you defend slavery, right?
	So the balance of power shifted because the moral understanding had grown to the point where originally it was the people saying let's get rid of slavery who were considered insane.
	But then it was the people who were defending slavery – Who were considered crazy.
	And that's when the system ends, right?
	So, anti-Semitism was enshrined in Christianity and in particular in Catholicism, though it also ran pretty rampant in Protestantism, various streams of, flavors of Protestantism.
	And so to be an anti-Semitic throughout most of human history was, you know, of course, of course, right?
	Saying Jews were corrupt or nasty or inferior or whatever was sort of the equivalent of saying dogs are not as intelligent as adult humans.
	It was just like, well, of course, right?
	But now to be anti-Semitic is, you know, how can you be anti-Semitic, right?
	Because there's been a moral revolution.
	And so... I think I get what you're saying.
	It's basically – so basically as – if we're to do our work from a philosophy standpoint, we can do our work from a philosophy standpoint while the state's existing or while it's There's no other way to do it.
	America was the world's experiment in the smallest government that was the most principled in terms of its commitment to liberty.
	Why did that happen in the 18th century rather than the 14th century or the 10th century or the 10th century BC? What was the difference?
	Between America, it wasn't the first revolution.
	It certainly wasn't the first revolution against the colonial power.
	It wasn't the first declaration of independence in human history, right?
	It wasn't the first new land that had been discovered and colonized by a superior civilization technologically.
	None of these things were unique to America.
	There was only one thing that made America different from every other country and that was a hundred years of enlightenment philosophy that preceded it.
	That's the only difference.
	That's the only difference because that had never before Occurred in human history, which was the Scottish Enlightenment, you had John Locke, you had Hume, you had even Kant to some degree, all of them arguing for universal ethics, all of them arguing for a diminishment of state power.
	You had massive amounts of...
	Voltaire! Who said one of the most radical things in the world where he said, I disagree with everything you say, but I would fight to the death for your right to say it.
	Unthinkable in human history.
	So you had the late Middle Ages Renaissance.
	You had the Mediterranean Renaissance that spread throughout the world where people focused on the earthly and the secular rather than the divine and the dead.
	You had the Enlightenment, the most incredible thing.
	You had the growth of the scientific method.
	You had secularism. You had skepticism towards religion for the first time.
	And therefore, the ingredients were in place.
	And all those things happened without a state necessarily collapsing beforehand.
	They just happened through philosophic work.
	Yeah, and look, I would even make the strong argument that there would have been nothing to fight for in America.
	If it wasn't for the Enlightenment, there wouldn't have been a Declaration of Independence if it hadn't been for the Enlightenment, because they had ideals that they wished to follow.
	Otherwise, why bother?
	Yes. I see.
	And I think that's, you know, there's a lot of information out there that is, you know, it's just constantly hammering home the idea that, you know, inflation is going to increase, which it is, and, you know, the economy is getting shredded, and I guess it just seems like there's a lot of And I drew my conclusions thinking, well, if the economy is continuing to get worse, then would that not have a practical effect on the state's ability to function?
	And so I got even more optimistic and went to the next conclusion saying, well, if the state has a window of period of not being able to function, then that might be some time where people could experience the effect of statelessness.
	But now that we've kind of closed that gap and I understand that That window can't exist if people's moral outlook has not been changed whatsoever.
	No, and look, remember, as things in the government get worse, what is the ruling class going to do?
	What are they going to say? Are they going to say, yeah, we fucked up?
	Oh, my God. It's too much state power.
	We have too much of your money.
	Fiat currency was a really bad idea.
	And so we are going to do the right thing and surrender all of this power and return the power to the people.
	No, they're not going to do that because they control the mainstream media to a large degree.
	I mean, I would say almost exclusively.
	And so what they're going to do is they're going to say, freedom has failed.
	The free market has failed.
	And this mythology has already been put in place, right?
	Because everybody thinks that it was deregulation that caused the financial crisis, right?
	Even though these financial crises did not occur in the 50s and 60s when regulation in many ways was much looser.
	So people are already blaming freedom, right?
	Everything goes wrong.
	And so when you say that smoking causes cancer, everyone says, well, if you don't want to get cancer, then at least lung cancer, stop smoking.
	And so when everybody believes that freedom causes financial disasters, then they'll say, well, we've got to stop having freedom so that we can have stability.
	And that's what people believed in the Weimar Republic, and that's what dictated Hitler coming into power.
	So a misdiagnosis is the same as poisoning.
	So that's why we have to keep getting the word out there that it's not freedom, but violence that has failed.
	It is not liberty, but coercion that has failed.
	It is not the market, but the state that has failed.
	Because otherwise people will put the wrong pill in the wrong end.
	Right, and I guess...
	My hopes were crushed just a little bit.
	My optimism was crushed just a little bit, but that's okay, because it really helps.
	I was thinking too much from effect.
	I was thinking way too much from effect, and I should have been thinking more that, you know, the only thing that really matters are the ideas that inform people's beliefs and actions.
	So that is the only fight there is to fight, and that is through debate and effect alone.
	For some reason, I just think that If people can see that something isn't working, then I guess I give the majority too much credit to be able to critically, because if they can see that something is not working, then I assume that it doesn't matter what the mainstream media says that is controlled, they would be able to recognize and connect those dots.
	Well, how's your experience of that?
	Forget the theory. What has your empirical experience been of that?
	Is that something that you see happening a lot?
	Well, there does seem to be a slight increase in probably due to the advances of the Internet to increased information awareness, but that might not be because the state's not correctly working.
	It might be just because, oh, they have access to more information.
	And I agree with you, yeah, I agree with you with that, that the information is definitely there for the people who want it.
	But let me say, okay, so out of your family and friends, how many people would you say have woken up to some semblance of the truth?
	Well, that's kind of why I've even initiated this discussion is because my own parents who, you know, I wouldn't have dreamed they were deep religious, strict Church of Christ background, they just recently are starting to consider, and it might, and I think it's more attributed to just, oh, there's more information on the internet, and that they are considering the possibility that they're being lied to on the TV. - Wow, hey! and that they are considering the possibility that they're being
	Wow! Hey!
	I've got to tell you, you've got to post how you did this on the board.
	A, fantastic, and B, good for you.
	Good for you. That is a beautiful thing to hear.
	So, you have reason for optimism for sure, particularly if you're getting skeptics out of, as you say, very religious people.
	So, yay!
	I just think that's fantastic. Good for you.
	Well, and I don't know.
	I think... I mean, I'm...
	I'm kind of an overload because I'm just very recently aware of a lot of things of how everything is working.
	So I think that some of it has come from my observation of the state's inability to just simply function.
	For some reason, something tells me even though the mainstream media is controlled, I still feel like there is a growing sentiment that, hey, things are just not functioning.
	And that they don't necessarily just believe the explanations that come off the television, I suppose.
	So, I don't know.
	I definitely think that...
	And I think this is where I draw my optimism.
	It's just based on just a few of those observations.
	But more than likely, it's people...
	The masses are definitely still ringing in the propaganda.
	I don't know exactly how long, but it just seems to me like propaganda is funding.
	And if you can't fund propaganda, then because the economy is declining, then it just seems like propaganda is less effective.
	Yeah, but remember, of course, people have 15,000 hours of propaganda from their schools as well, right?
	So it does take a while.
	It's important to be patient with people.
	It takes a while to unplug from the Matrix, for sure.
	Yes. But good for you.
	Good for you. And I think the key thing, though, in the long run is to make the argument for morality and say, look, we've got to stop using this force to try and get things to work because everybody gets that it doesn't work.
	And if we can get people to accept that, then we're just a heck of a long way further.
	So good for you, man.
	I think that's just fantastic.
	And for what it's worth, say yay to your parents for me.
	Okay. All right. Thanks.
	All right. Thanks for taking my call.
	You're very welcome, man, and keep in touch if you can.
	It was a real pleasure chatting with you.
	All right. Well, I believe, unless we had any last-minute communities, if you could give me your questions.
	I think we have time for one minute.
	Yeah, I'm sorry. You've asked this question about growth of democracy.
	I don't really quite understand it, so perhaps if you can...
	Ah, that's a question. When you're able to say, I'm a Canadian, I do this or that, what's called identity, very often religion is there too.
	What would you call identity?
	The identity of a person in a free society.
	Wow. Fantastic question.
	I have goosebumps. I have goosebumps.
	That's a great question. I wonder if I have any useful things to say about the identity of somebody in a free society.
	Well, I think there would still be something to do with work, because work does have some aspect to who you are as a person.
	Yeah, human, for sure. But I think work does have something to do with who you are as a person.
	What you choose to do as an occupation has some relatedness, so I think that's relatively okay.
	But I think it wouldn't be driven so much by vanity.
	I mean, a lot of stuff is sort of driven by vanity.
	And as far as geographical location goes, I don't know.
	Maybe we would say I'm a member of XDRO. Oh, I'm a member of YDRO. Let's take this outside.
	No, I'm kidding. I don't know.
	That's a great question.
	I actually don't have anything intelligent to say about that, but it is a great question.
	And I'm going to add it to the list of podcasts to work on because I wouldn't want to diminish the quality of the question with a substandard answer.
	So I'm afraid you have stumped me and you get a prize called, Oh my God, I stumped Steph.
	So I hope that's gratifying.
	Yeah, hobbies. Maybe hobbies as well.
	I don't know. You'll name yourself after the local sports team.
	Well, it's a free market, so obviously they would get a tattoo on your forehead as a baby.
	So good for you.
	I'm going to take this right now and copy and paste that question straight into my list of podcasts to do.
	So yeah, that's a free gift.
	Send me your username.
	I will upgrade your message board account just for the intense quality of that question.
	So I'm more than gratefully accepted.
	This is not to say that other people's questions weren't really good.
	You know, I'm just saying. I did...
	I put out a few new podcasts this week, so I hope that you will check them out.
	And I believe that's all we've got.
	Who says that Countries Borders' old relics would disappear in a stateless world?
	No, they'd still be there as markers for how crazy things used to be, so...
	Alright, well thank you everybody so much for all of your support.
	If you have, you know, summer can be a little bit of a lean time for, you know, Free Domain Radio because, I don't know, people are buying sunscreen or other things of utility to them.
	So if you have a little bit of extra money but like to sign up for a subscription or a donation, it is always, always highly gratefully accepted at freedomainradio.com forward slash donate.
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	And thank you everybody so much.
	Have a wonderful, wonderful week.

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