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June 23, 2011 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

56:36

1936 Students for Liberty Presentation - The 2011 Porcupine Freedom Festival (Porcfest)

Stefan Molyneux, host of Freedomain Radio, takes questions from the audience in New Hampshire, discussing ethics and animal rights.

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	I think just a reminder, too, that the polyamory is not just a discussion.
	I think it's also a demonstration.
	Is that right? Because I saw a big vat of jello and baby oil back there.
	I don't think that's for me. So bring your rubber duckies and prepare to be shown.
	So I want to read from the newspaper because I suck at public speaking and I have no preparation.
	No, I'm kidding. I just read this in the car coming up because...
	I'm a careless driver. I thought it was really interesting, so I'm going to do just a few minutes of stuff from this.
	Can you guys hear me okay? Just a few minutes from this, and then if you want to do a Q&A, I'm happy to listen and help if I can.
	So this is Montreal. Montreal is a socialist nightmare that has been chugging away towards its pit of doom and destruction in Canada for the last couple of centuries now.
	So check this out.
	Montreal's municipal unions, we all know what friends of liberties they are, say that they don't dispute the goal of reducing the city's pension fund costs, because they're way, way oversubscribed in terms of pensions, right?
	But they will refuse to raise the retirement age for city workers, They refuse to hike their own contributions to their pensions, and they don't want their pension recipients to bear any of the risks of any lowered financial returns from stock market crashes or whatever.
	So, in other words, they're very keen on solving the problem, but just not on any possible way of solving the problem.
	And this is around systemic incentives.
	One of the problems with having a state is this problem of systemic incentives.
	So, I mean, what a nightmare.
	The contributions to, they have 28 pension plans for Montreal.
	They're going to go from $326 million this year to $438 million next year and $540 million the year after.
	This for a number of reasons, because when these things were negotiated, people were living a lot longer now.
	And also when they were getting these massive stock investment returns in the early 2000s, they all said, well, we don't need to top these pension plans up because we're getting so much return on our stocks.
	Then when the stocks crashed and people are living forever and so on.
	So the average age of retirement for members of the city white-collar union is 55, because it's hard to type after 55.
	I mean, that's not easy.
	Their average pension is $35,000 a year.
	A Montreal police officer retires at 53 with a $59,000 So, look, the reality of the system is, and this is what's so horrible about stagism and why it's so impossible to work within the confines Of a system that's funded by a monopoly of force is everybody goes mental for perfectly rational reasons.
	So you can't go to the firefighters or the policemen who've put up with pretty crappy jobs and a really crappy work environment and say, you can't retire at 53, you have to retire at 60 instead.
	I mean, why would they say, well, I made my whole decision to be a policeman based on, you know, these great benefits and these early retirements and so on.
	Or are you going to go to the white-collar workers and say, well, you guys can't retire, or we're going to have to shave off more of your percentage of contributions or whatever?
	They're not going to do that.
	And the politicians are going to make noises, like, well, he says here in this article, he says, well, the taxpayers have reached their limit in what they'll pay, which is, of course, complete nonsense.
	When you have a monopoly of force, there really is no limit on what people will pay.
	You can actually have them pay 150% if you're willing to go into deficit, which I've read a few governments around the world are.
	So, the politicians are going to make noises, but they're going to end up hiking the property taxes by 4.5% next year to pay for all this, and then another 9% the year after.
	Of course they are, because concentrated benefits, dispersed costs.
	This is the big problem with statism, right?
	So, everybody who's got these retirement benefits, they don't want to see them cut back a penny.
	They don't want to see their age of retirement extended even a single day.
	But the taxpayers, so they have, you know, you say you're going to cut these guys 10%.
	They've got, you know, $5,000, $6,000 a year worth of incentive to fight that tooth and nail.
	But the taxpayers, they're going to pay maybe $500, $600, $700 a year extra.
	So they have almost no incentive to fight against it.
	This is imbalance of incentives we're all pretty familiar with.
	But the system as a whole can't be solved because of this.
	Or perhaps you go to the union leaders and say, listen, guys, pretty pleased.
	If you could just work with us on this, well, of course they're not going to because they will be fired by their members and they'd never get another job in the union industry if they renegotiated their contracts to cut any single benefit from any of their retirees.
	So this whole system can't possibly survive.
	This imbalance of incentives, this craziness in the system is always going to...
	You see, funny, the governments are put in because the powerful are so powerful and the weak need to be protected.
	But in this case, the powerful are the people who are screwing The less powerful or less incentivized property tax payers.
	And of course, property taxpayers, we all think is guys with mansions, but no, I mean, property taxes in Canada are higher per square foot on apartments, little tiny apartments than they are on big houses, even though it's much cheaper to send sewage and electricity to apartment buildings.
	So it hurts the poor and the helpless, and it really rewards people who are willing to have temper tantrums and have...
	You know, throw themselves in front of barricades and have strikes.
	There's now a Canada postal strike because apparently everyone has to get their junk mail circulars because that's all mail is good for.
	Does anyone get anything else that's useful in the mail?
	So I just sort of wanted to point out, you can look at this stuff and draw these kinds of principles all the time from just how insane the system is and how...
	I know that the ideal of some of the minarchists...
	Do we have any self-confessed minarchists in the audience here?
	Anyone? Yeah, they're always at the back out there looking to make a break for it, but if the crowd turns ugly, we pull out our balaclavas and...
	Death to Starbucks!
	Anyway. But this is the problem.
	You collapse it down. You still have this problem.
	It's called public choice theory. If you ever want to be really bored, go look it up.
	It's also a way of proving that you can never have a just election in a state of society.
	There's always going to be an imbalance of some kind.
	But this is why you can't substitute the market with anything else.
	You can't have a government that stays small because of these imbalances of incentives.
	So, you know, I don't generally read the newspaper because...
	You know, you get that Klingon vein going in your forehead, your neck, and it takes you a while to unclench.
	You have to have Indian. Anyway.
	But I did.
	I did because they had it free at the place we stayed last night, and we were driving, and my wife said, at least stop practicing your speech.
	And, you know, when my wife's bored of it, it's ready for general consumption, because that means she's heard it so many times.
	But when you do read it, you can, I think, pull out some really, really interesting...
	There's no one to blame.
	This is the annoying thing. There's no one to blame, really.
	I mean, you can't go to the firefighters and say, you can't get your pension, you can't retire this early, because they made the whole decision.
	You can't go to the union leaders and say, screw your career, do the right thing.
	You can't go to the politicians and say, you know, take on the unions who have concentrated power and can stop the whole city, as opposed to, you know, slowly screwing the taxpayers when they can't do anything about it.
	No one's to blame. That's the annoying thing about statism.
	It's this general fog of everyone acting in their own rational self-interest at the expense of the entire community in the long run.
	But everybody individually is acting perfectly sensibly from a rational calculation standpoint.
	So you can't solve the system by appealing to self-interest within the system.
	Well, we'll get to the Rumpel argument maybe later, but you can't solve it.
	I mean, the whole system has to change. It's like, you know, if you live in the Soviet Union and you're kind of sick of there being a shortage of bread and you go to the guy for the local bakery and say, you know, you really should get more bread.
	And the guy's like, yeah, I really should, but you know, man, there's this system.
	You can't solve it. You just have to get rid of the communist system and you have to get rid of the state in order for these people to act in a sane way, in a rational way that benefits everyone in the long run rather than this war of all against all, everybody acting rationally in the short run and ending up with a financial collapse in the long run.
	I just thought it was interesting.
	I kind of have sympathy for everyone involved and everyone's screwed.
	Except us. Because we have a tent.
	That's it. Sorry, that was my big intro.
	I know I'm going to keep it short, but if anyone has any Q&A, if I can bring some philosophical canons to bear on anybody's tender-bellied questions, I'm more than happy to.
	Well, one thing, too, this isn't just about ideas and Steph's ideas, but we'd also like to learn about the practical aspects of what you do and how our students could maybe come to where you are today.
	Yeah, so just questions on anything in that nature, I mean, and on current events.
	Yeah, in fact, I drove for 12 hours.
	I was pretty quiet for the most part, so I'm backed up, baby.
	You all know my production, right?
	Yeah, I drove in from just outside Toronto.
	What's a... Later, after a career in the tech industry, I believe, you decided to go into internet blogging or podcasting.
	What was it that made you make that jump?
	And throughout the course of your entire life, I'm sure you've been reading and, you know, doing research for your own personal sake.
	What does that mean you want to go public with that kind of, you know, everything that's going on in your head?
	Well, I think, I mean, there were two reasons, one of which is selfish and the other of which is hopefully mildly noble.
	The selfish one is that I really like it.
	Yeah. You know, once you get into philosophy and you get into ideas and you get into, you know, virtue and all of that kind of good stuff and you see that what you're doing is helping some people in a positive way, it's kind of tough to go back to, you know, we've got another new software release that we really need to get out and let's hope it's bug-free and let's, you know, resolve the conflicts between the programmers and the testers and all that.
	It's tough to get excited by that stuff, which I was excited for.
	I was an entrepreneur for like 15 years, started companies and worked fairly high up in the software industry.
	It's just tough to get, you know, once you get bitten by that bug, it's kind of tough to go back, you know?
	So, I really, really like it and I find it a very powerful thing.
	The other thing is that it's sort of like if you're a doctor and you're in a restaurant and somebody swallows something that goes down sideways or whatever...
	You can sit there. I'm just finishing my Chablis, so if you could keep it down over there, that would be great.
	But I think you've kind of got to do something.
	If you have the skill and ability and desire and passion and whatever, then I think you kind of need to do something.
	Whether it's Heimlich or Tracheotomy, I'm still figuring out whether my approach is either or.
	But I think if you have the ability, you kind of need to do something.
	And so I feel that there's an obligation, if you have a capacity to do something that I think is good for the world, that you do it.
	And I really, did the world need more philosophy or more mid-level B2B software applications?
	You know, it was hard for me to come down on the ladder, even though the ladder was a little more financially secure.
	I think the world needs more philosophy.
	And I really feel that philosophy has been so underserved by philosophers as a whole That if there's one thing the world really needs, I think it's reasoning from first principles, which I think we're all about, right?
	Non-aggression principle, property rights.
	No matter where it leads us, we have to keep following that rationality.
	And so I really felt that there was an obligation on me if I had that ability and had studied that much to do it.
	And I felt that the internet was the best way to do it because getting a PhD takes a long time.
	Does that answer your question?
	That's always important to know. Yeah, absolutely.
	That's a great way of looking at it.
	Yeah, if you can do it, you need to do it.
	Because there's very few people who can do it.
	And I think if you can, and hopefully you can do it better than me, because that would be even better.
	So, yeah, I think there is an obligation.
	I'm sure you're familiar with Richard Dawkins' idea of memes and, you know, the cultural transmission of ideas.
	The state seems to be a really powerful idea that's really good at getting passed on, and it sort of evolved all of these mechanisms for...
	Transmitting itself, like educating the children, that's why the state needs to control education.
	Education being used very loosely there, yes.
	Education camps, facilities.
	Given that it sort of evolved these mechanisms, these really powerful mechanisms of transmitting itself, do you think that argument alone, that we can just reason people out of believing in the state?
	Yes, yes. In fact, I don't think there's any other way.
	That the state, like all irrational and exploitive ideologies, the state claims universality.
	You can't get any power in the moral realm without claiming universality.
	Like if I came up to you and said, you can steal from that tent because that's completely immoral.
	But you can't steal from that tent.
	We wouldn't accept that as morality.
	Morality has to be universal, otherwise it's just, you know, I like green ice cream and you like purple ice cream.
	So the state claims a universality of morality.
	That's the only way that you can bring any kind of moral power to the masses or get them to obey anything.
	You have to make it with all the thunder, might, and power of universality.
	That's the only way that morality works.
	But exploitive ideologies have a fatal flaw, which is that they're clearly the opposite, the complete opposite of universality.
	So we say the non-initiation of force.
	We say this to four-year-old kids in a daycare.
	Don't whack people or whatever, right?
	Especially if they're in a mafia daycare.
	It's a different meaning. So we'll give these universal moral rules, but then, of course, the state is a complete violation of these.
	The non-initiation of force, but taxation is necessary.
	We need to steal your property because we need to protect your property.
	It's insane. It's completely mental, right?
	The same thing is true of a lot of religious ideologies.
	So if you take the principle that gives statism its power, and we say, let's make it truly universal, truly universal, then the state vanishes in terms of its moral legitimacy.
	But having the courage or craziness to make it universal and make that argument is really tough.
	Now, the other argument that the state makes is that it's practical.
	Well, you know, without the government, blah, disaster, Mel Gibson, flaming motorcycles, Mohawks, whatever, right?
	Mel Gibson alone, I think, is dangerous enough.
	If your breasts are, in fact, made out of sugar, I think he'll point that out to you.
	Sorry, I just lost myself in an image there.
	Let me just come back. Caramelized.
	Anyway, so...
	So, there are all these practical arguments, but those practical arguments are really, really falling apart now, because, I mean, it's so obviously impractical.
	Like, I was reading the other day, half of the population of Detroit is functionally illiterate.
	Half of the population of Detroit, I mean, and then they say, well, you see, without government education, who would be educated?
	Well... So the practical arguments are falling away as the empirical evidence for the catastrophes of statism arise.
	And if we just keep working on the moral argument, I think human beings are fundamentally driven by universals.
	Fundamentally driven. My daughter's two and a half, and I can see her.
	All she's doing all the time is trying to see how far universals go.
	Right? This rock falls.
	Does this rock fall? Does this helium balloon fall?
	No. Ah! Right?
	I mean, so that's not a universal. Got to figure something else out.
	Right? She's constantly, I can jump this far.
	Can I jump this far the other way?
	Yes, I can. So she's just trying to find universals all the time.
	And if you look at your own mental process, all we're trying to do is figure out universals all the time.
	You know, that banana tasted like crap.
	So if I don't eat any more bananas, I'm short of one food source.
	But if I try another banana and I can eat it and it's good, then I don't have to universalize that, right?
	These berries kill everyone they eat, so okay, we'll take those off the list, right?
	So we're always trying to universalize.
	That's the amazing thing about the human brain.
	It's a universalization machine, which is why morality is so powerful.
	If you can get people to believe in universal virtues, they'll just start obeying them, or at least they'll start self-attacking if they don't, which just makes them easier to control than us.
	But... So using universality, I think, hooks into the most powerful aspect of our mind, which is conceptual and is very, very powerful.
	I mean, if you think Newtonian physics was limited, right, because when you go real fast, the speed of light and all, it doesn't work that much anymore.
	It's fine for local use or whatever, but if you want to go to Jupiter, you need...
	But the constancy of the speed of light in Einsteinian physics is much more universal, much more powerful, and the amount of power that was unleashed by that...
	You know, some destructive, some not, was amazing.
	And I think the same thing is true. The more we universalize, the more we take the hooks of statism, which is that it's supposed to be virtuous and it's supposed to be practical.
	And if we can prove that it's not virtuous, then we can prove that it's not practical.
	Because if virtue is the opposite of practicality, but practicality is claimed, then we've got to get rid of virtue, obviously, right?
	That's like saying that, you know, you guys are smart enough to know what it means.
	So... So, yeah, I think that it is the universality of moral arguments is the only way, it's the only thing that we can do to eliminate this and say, well, why should one group of individuals have the moral right to initiate force against everyone else?
	Clearly, that means that there's no such thing as the initiation of force is wrong, so why is it only a slave morality?
	Why do we slaves not allowed to use force, but the masters must use force?
	That cracks that. And clearly, if we say that violations of universal moral laws result in practical disasters, Then not only do we make the argument against state morally, but we say that the state is failing because it is violating these universal moral laws, the non-initiation of force and a non-respect for property rights.
	So we can say and point to the collapse of the statist economics as proof of its immorality, because morality is fundamentally practicality in the long run.
	Sorry, did I even remotely answer your question?
	Now you've finished talking.
	Can we get back to my question? Just briefly, do you think that we're better off just advocating for reason and consistency rather than spreading an ideology like libertarianism or anarchism?
	Do not spread conclusions. People say to me all the time, are you an anarchist?
	No, no, no. It's like calling Dawkins an evolutionist.
	Yeah. No, I mean, you just follow reason and evidence.
	If it leads you to anarchy, then obviously you've done it correctly.
	Steph, since we're talking so much about universality, why don't you talk a little bit about UPB and maybe we can get into some discussion about that because I know people always have questions about it.
	UPB? Easy as ABC. No, I'm kidding.
	If I had a guitar, you'd all be running, running for the hills, I tell you.
	Yeah, look, I have a free book out there, which is my approach to ethics.
	It's called Universally Preferable Behavior, and it is basically the idea that you can't ever argue about anything unless you're going to accept universals, that truth is better than falsehood, that reason and consistency is better than irrationality, and that you have to conform to evidence.
	And if you accept those things, then, lo and behold, if you walk down that logical path, you end up Validating all of the ethics that we accept.
	So you can validate the non-aggression principle philosophically.
	You can validate property rights.
	And what I mean by that is if somebody comes up and says property rights are invalid, then you have to ask whether they're exercising self-ownership to make that statement.
	And obviously they are.
	If I say property rights are invalid, I'm exercising property rights over myself.
	Self-ownership Right?
	In order to make the case that self-ownership is invalid.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Or if you want to have fun, right?
	So let's say you come up to me and you say property rights are invalid.
	And I turn to your friend and say, I don't agree with you.
	Well, you're going to say, no, no, no, it's me who said that.
	It's like, oh, so you're responsible for the effects of your actions, your argument.
	So that's your property, so I shouldn't respond to him, right?
	And if you say, like if a thief says that the violations of property are good because he's stealing from somebody else, then clearly he's okay if you steal from him.
	Because it's good, right? But if you steal what he stole, he's going to get mad at you because he wants to keep what he stole.
	In fact, you only steal something because you want to keep it.
	So stealing something, philosophically, is both a rejection and an affirmation of property rights.
	I'm rejecting your property rights to steal from you, but I want to keep what I've stolen, so I'm affirming my property rights.
	So that's an inconsistency. It doesn't stand up logically or philosophically.
	How does that differ drastically from either argumentation ethics or the other Stefan's estoppel theory?
	Is it similar, along a similar vein?
	Yeah, I don't know enough about either one of those, because they use some pretty big words.
	And there's no pictures, no pop-ups.
	It's hard.
	Hey, if they do hand puppets, like, I'm there.
	No, I know a little bit about arguments.
	If you're aggressive against my rights, you clearly, by action, show me you don't believe in rights, so I can clearly steal back my property.
	Yeah. Yeah, he goes well with actions.
	I really extrapolate to the philosophical.
	My understanding, I'm no expert of Hoppe's argumentation ethics, is to say you can't argue someone out of logic.
	Well, the fact that you're arguing, and it's similar to my determinism free will thing, is that if you're going to say that there's a preferred state of any kind, it has to be universal, otherwise you can't correct someone.
	You know, if I like chocolate and you like bananas, I can't argue you that mine is universally correct and yours.
	But if I say 2 plus 2 is 4, and you say 2 plus 2 is 5, then we're talking universals.
	So the moment you bring universals in, you have to be consistent with reason and evidence, otherwise you're wrong.
	Whereas if you're just talking about personal preference, yeah, you know, whatever, right?
	You can make it up.
	Hopefully that helped.
	Anyway, the book's free, freedomainradio.com.
	We just revamped the website.
	It's sexier than me.
	It doesn't mean anything, right?
	No, okay.
	Sexier than Phil Collins.
	Yes?
	It's clear to me that everybody has the capacity to use reason, but it also seems to me, in my experience, that most people that I come across don't actually use reason to deduce their moral systems from first principles.
	And if they use reason at all, it's more like they're justifying traditions or cultures that they picked up from their parents or school or church or whatever.
	So do you think that it's more important for us to create a culture that they can copy without necessarily understanding, like how the market works, or to convince more people to deduce their ethics from first principles, or to just work on our arguments?
	The first principles fetish is rarer than, I don't know, like in Grease Nuns or something, right?
	So the first principles fetish I don't think is going to be for everyone because working from first principles is really hard.
	I mean, that UPB book, there was sweat and blood from my brain when I was writing it because it's so hard.
	So I don't think that we need everyone to know how it all works.
	I think we just need them to have the correct conclusions, right?
	So I don't know how my car works, but I can drive it, you know?
	So I don't think everybody needs to be a mechanic to drive a car.
	I don't think everyone needs to be a philosopher in that way.
	But the reason, and I rely on some pretty sophisticated science for this, They've done a fair amount of brain imaging recently, and I've got some interviews with some psychologists on my channel on this, that have proven fairly conclusively that people invent reasons for their actions after they've done them.
	So you do something, and then you justify it afterwards, and that's called philosophy, which of course it's not.
	It's just called the justification.
	And the reason that people do that is that if they're harmed as children, either by parents or teachers or priests or caregivers of some other kind, Then they lose rational capacity, right?
	They lose rational capacity, their neofrontal cortex tends to shrink, and their amygdala, which is the fight-or-flight mechanism, tends to increase, which means that they're more impulse-driven and less rational-driven.
	I mean, they can see these effects, and it's proportional to the degree of trauma that people experience when they're very young.
	And so, this is why I say you can very rarely argue someone into a rational position, because they're not using reason in the way that we are, which is, from first principles, no matter how uncomfortable it is.
	What they're doing is they're saying, well, this is approved of culturally, this doesn't get me in trouble, everybody likes this opinion, and therefore it's true, and I'm going to go backwards and make up some reasons to get me here.
	Right? Like, the catapult of culture landed me here.
	So I'm going to call it a mapped journey that I planned, right?
	And so this is why I say that we're not going to be able to get people to be more rational until children are raised more peacefully, until children are raised more rationally with full human rights in a way that we simply don't give them at the moment.
	I mean, I think we do, right?
	We want children to be full persons, but...
	Unfortunately, childhood at the moment, particularly with government schools, childhood at the moment is preparation for a citizenhood as adults in that citizens don't have the same rights as the masters and children don't have the same rights as their teachers and so often their caregivers.
	They're viewed as, you know, somewhere between pets and hobos in terms of how they're treated.
	And so I think until we start giving children more respect, giving them more choices, and helping them to embrace rationality, which grows their frontal lobes.
	It's like a muscle. You have to grow it, and you can't grow it if they're traumatized.
	That's why we have to treat children better.
	That's one thing I advocate most strongly, because you can't have philosophy until people can think, and they can't think until they grow up more peacefully.
	Get out of high school. Yeah, or get out of high school.
	Yeah, I mean, those things are monsters.
	I used to...
	I came into libertarianism from pretty strict first principles, like Rothbardian self-ownership.
	And I've since grown away from that, and I don't really try to universalize morality.
	I tend to think it's somewhat arbitrary.
	Like, the way that I understand it is the product of my limited human nature, my limited...
	But you said you don't universalize because it's somewhat arbitrary.
	But then you're saying arbitrariness is a universal principle that you have to conform to.
	But if something is arbitrary... Yeah, like, there's no such thing as absolute truth.
	I understand it's an inherent contradiction, but I just, I don't try to universalize morality.
	I don't really think it's that possible.
	I'm very dubious of those claims, really.
	I don't even think it's really necessary either.
	I focus on decentralism, that there's room on the planet for everyone to live according to their values.
	We should just make space for each other and allow these experiments in social order to run their course.
	Well, but you face the problem then of what happens with the groups who want to impose their values on others.
	I would, from my limited understanding, I would oppose them, but I wouldn't declare...
	How can you oppose them?
	Well, I wouldn't declare, like, from my perspective, they're in the wrong, but I wouldn't declare that it's absolutely wrong.
	I think it's a bad idea, and I think those people are the scum of the earth.
	But that's just my arbitrary delineation of how I view these people.
	Well, I think that that's tough to uphold logically.
	So if you're going to oppose them, then you have to oppose them on some sort of principle, right?
	It's just personal preference.
	It's personal preference that other people not impose their personal preferences.
	But yes, it's just, for me though, yes, I think.
	It's just from my understanding, yes.
	But I don't think it's like woven into the fabric of the universe or this is some sort of...
	Look, I completely agree with you that morality does not exist.
	Of course, yeah. I mean, but that doesn't mean it's subjective.
	Like, the scientific method doesn't exist.
	You can't knock it, you can't tie a rope around it, you can't mail it.
	It doesn't exist. But that doesn't mean it's arbitrary or subjective.
	Mathematics... Numbers don't exist, right?
	I mean, you've got four coconuts, you've got four coconuts, but there's no number four woven into the, you know, take one, it changes to three.
	So numbers, mathematics, science, rationality, none of these things exist at all.
	I completely agree. But that doesn't mean that they're arbitrary or subjective.
	They're still universals and they're still absolute.
	Pretty skeptical. You can go ahead.
	On the issue of morality, would you agree with someone like Sam Harris, who's wrote a book called The Moral Landscape, and trying to sort of use science to determine good and evil, right and wrong, and his basis is morality is well-being, human well-being, which is kind of a...
	No, I think that the argument, this is a problem I have with the Randian argument as well, the argument from personal well-being leads to statism because well-being, I mean, how well did Bill Clinton do from being president?
	How well is Barack Obama's income and stature and retirement and healthcare and benefits and wealth and fame?
	I mean, he's doing fantastically through the state.
	I mean, look at these ass clowns in Montreal.
	Who are arresting homeless people and drug addicts, throwing them in jail because that's all kinds of just.
	They get to retire $55,000 or $60,000 a year with free healthcare for the rest of their lives.
	Pensions are indexed, and the people who go into work doing something productive are all getting robbed to pay for them.
	So in terms of personal well-being, people on the sort of dark side of state power do fantastically.
	And then everyone says, well, it has to be everyone's general well, but...
	But human beings do not operate on general well-being.
	They operate on, like all animals, I want to maximize my resources and minimize my energy expenditure.
	I want to maximize my intake and I want my food delivered.
	I don't want to go out and get it. That's how human beings operate.
	And the state is a massive apparatus to benefit people and to hook into what we all want, which is to get more with less effort.
	And so that's how human beings operate on an individual level.
	So the moment you have the state, you have a whole bunch of people getting more from the government than they ever would from a free society, at least in the short run.
	And so the idea of individual benefit...
	Leads to the state and leads to people using the state and leads to long-term destruction.
	Now, they'd say, well, we don't want that long-term destruction.
	But human beings don't think three generations down the road.
	The people getting $3 back in every benefit for every dollar they paid in taxes in the post-war period, post-Second World War period, they weren't thinking, well, you know, but in 2012, might be a problem with the currency.
	No! They're like, woohoo!
	Free roads! Yay!
	Free healthcare! Woohoo!
	You know, you can't beat that.
	You can't offer people something for nothing and say, well, but in the future there might be a lot of Chinese who own a lot of foreign debt.
	They don't care. You know, I mean, that doesn't make any sense.
	People smoke, and they're the ones who are going to receive the negative benefits down the road.
	They'll still do it. I mean, if someone on the dark side of the moon you're never going to meet gets lung cancer because you're smoking 2,500 years from now, you're not going to stop.
	So the individual benefit thing leads to the state and leads to this imbalance of incentives fueling people's destructive tendencies.
	At the level of the individual action, though, wouldn't you be able to evaluate, like, if I hit you, that is obviously, you know, hurting your well-being, and therefore it would be immoral.
	Does that argument hold any water? No, holding well-being, I mean...
	It might make... What if I like it?
	You know? I mean...
	Well, then...
	What if I hand you the beat-me-eat-me-licorice whip and say, go to town on my hiney, man?
	That's my thing, you know?
	And bring me a grease nut.
	I mean, that's...
	People like it. That would not help my well-being.
	That would not help my well-being. What's going on right now?
	What's going on? It's like, get the mic, get the mic, get the mic.
	No, well-being doesn't count.
	Well-being doesn't count because...
	Look, somebody who's sick and dying, who goes and gets healthcare because the government's willing to use force against other people, is clearly better off.
	But the people who you were aggressed against aren't.
	Well, yes, but if you say the guy doesn't die of cancer because a thousand people get robbed ten bucks to pay for his treatment, clearly he's doing better than they're losing.
	Right? Well, yeah, but I mean, that's all people make decisions off is based on individuals.
	I mean, of course, we have our communities and that's all important and so on, but no, I don't, I do not, there's no argument to be made for individual benefit.
	That's just pure pragmatism and utilitarianism.
	And it doesn't take into account the fact that lopsided systems create benefits for some at the diluted expense of others, the immediate benefits versus the long-term costs to others, you know, people who got all these great benefits.
	I mean, the wealth in the post-war period was largely government debt financed.
	So they did all great.
	They, the greatest generation, we've got huge amounts of money, houses, they're the richest generation who ever lived.
	So they did fantastically, and then strangers and foreigners and the immigrants and the illegals, they all bear the burden of it down the road.
	You can't ask people to live, to sacrifice immediate gain for the sake of long-term costs to strangers they will never meet.
	People are never going to work like that.
	that.
	Or if people are that good, you don't need a government at all because everybody's a saint walking on water.
	In a recent video you mentioned you became a vegetarian, but I remember several years ago when I was reading UPP, you said that animals were not included in UPP.
	I was wondering if you've changed your mind about that, or if you think that animal rights, if you have any new opinions about that.
	Well, you know, it's funny. I mean, my wife's a vegetarian and has been forever, and my daughter doesn't like to eat meat at all.
	We have to call chicken barbecue because she likes chickens, right?
	She sees them on, like, TV. Oh, the chickens.
	So we say, here, eat some chicken.
	You know, it's like, here, eat a Wiggles.
	You know, she's just not going to... If you're not a parent, you don't get that joke.
	We've got some fried Australian entertainer for you.
	But... I think that's actually at a 10...
	Anyway. But doing some of my research or doing video clips for some of my videos, I came across the slaughterhouse footage that, boy, if you watch that, it's kind of tough to enjoy a burger again.
	And also, I mean, there was a practical thing that my wife doesn't eat meat, my daughter doesn't eat meat, so...
	And I didn't eat meat that much, maybe once a week, but it just sort of made sense.
	I don't... I don't accept, at least...
	This is my reasoning at the moment.
	Maybe it'll change. I don't think that you can get into a social contract with an animal.
	I don't think you can have philosophical interactions with an animal who can't process philosophy.
	That having been said, I think the cruelty to animals is sickening.
	I think it's revolting.
	And I think it shows a moral horror at the core of both the individual and the society which tolerates it and funds it that is really, really tragic and does not speak well to the future of that society.
	I think that if we want animals to be treated well...
	I hate to sound like a broken record.
	Sorry, everyone here is too young to understand what that means.
	A scratched CD. No, no, you're too young for that.
	Corrupted audio file. A corrupted audio file.
	Thank you.
	And for the people at the back, it's eight tracks that don't.
	A singer who gets stuck.
	But child abuse is strongly correlated with cruelty to animals, right?
	And in fact, one of the prime determinants or prime warning signs of an adult sociopath is cruelty to animals as a child, as in George Bush liked to blow up frogs with fireworks, and therefore he moved up to Iraqis later on.
	But... It's a serious correlation.
	I mean, if you're cruel to animals, your chances of not being cruel to adults is almost nil.
	So, I think if we raise children well, I think that there'll be much less cruelty to animals.
	In fact, I think it will largely disappear.
	Also, I'm sure everybody knows the basic math, that it takes seven times the amount of grain to produce one unit of meat, and the water is ridiculous in terms of keeping the cows watered, drunk and drinking and all.
	And this is all taken care of by government subsidies, right?
	So in the absence of government subsidies to agriculture, particularly to meat farmers, dairy farmers or whatever, I think that you'd see meats that would be staggeringly more expensive than the vegetarian options.
	I mean, vegetables are just so cheap and meat is very, very expensive if the free market were determining its spread.
	So I think if you didn't...
	We'll just wait for the tent to stop peeing and I'll keep going.
	Yeah, so I think, you know, treat children well, you get much less animal cruelty.
	Let the free market take care of the genuine costs of meat eating, and I think you'll see an incredible reduction in the amount of meat eating to the point where I think it would become such a specialized, you know, hoity-toity thing that it would almost virtually vanish.
	So that would be my approach to it.
	But yeah, I can't find a way of folding animals into the social contract of philosophy and laws and moral understanding.
	Thank you. What about food?
	Most people already know that food is contaminated and that's something people are already starting to wake up to.
	So talking to them about agriculture and how it doesn't have to be hard.
	Chickens are so much easier to take care of than cats, and everybody has cats.
	So telling people about being self-sufficient because, well, most people are under the impression that the government can't hold us up, even everyday people.
	So teaching people how to do things for themselves, even things like patching in on clothes.
	I think that's either going to happen voluntarily because people recognize that the change is coming to society or it's going to happen involuntarily in that people are going to have to scramble to become more self-sufficient if lines of communication and transportation and production are interrupted, which it seems, at least for some short period, it's inevitable that it's going to happen.
	So, yeah, I certainly do try to urge people to become a little bit more self-sufficient and to have a little bit more of a relationship with their food.
	The food that you grow is...
	Just better. I mean, it tastes better.
	It's like I had a vegetable garden with lettuce, because I love salads, and it was like, oh man, I've never tasted food like this before.
	Like a rabbit just gnawing at the leaves, you know, it's great.
	So I hope that people do try and get a little bit more self-sufficient.
	You know, all this factory pre-processed, jammed into a cellophane package, it's kind of not like a real thing, so I hope that will happen.
	If you don't think the UPB can be applied to animals, Well, first of all, I mean, people who are mentally handicapped, and I'm talking to the point where they can't function even at a low level within society, I think that's sort of what you're talking about.
	Well, I mean, I think that we already have restrictions on those people, and I think in a rational society you would.
	So you can think, of course, of them as children who can't grow, so to speak, right?
	So we have fewer rights for children than for adults, which makes sense, right?
	I can't just go move into your house, stick up my legs up, ask you to wipe my ass and give me a bottle.
	You have tried. And it really...
	That was some rough cloth, man, I'll tell you.
	So we already accept that children have rights and requirements that adults don't have.
	So where people... If somebody gets stuck at the intellectual or emotional age of five...
	So, if they're not capable of understanding the consequences of their actions, if they're not capable of reasoning at any abstract level, then they would be closer to the animal kingdom, which doesn't mean carve them up for food, right?
	Because we don't do that to kids, right?
	But it would mean further away from a morally responsible adult, if that makes any sense.
	So how do you justify what moral rules apply to them?
	I mean, clearly we feel that there is some sort of universal moral standard for people who either arm as their people or for animals.
	Right. But how does that derive from what I'm experienced about?
	Well, I think it's in terms of a limited understanding.
	Morality is a form of abstraction, like mathematics.
	And so the way that we figure out what level someone is at in mathematics is we give them math problems until they can't solve them.
	And then you go, hey, that step right before you can solve it, that's where you are mathematically.
	So we would give, I would assume, some sort of moral test or some sort of way of figuring out where they were morally.
	And you would obviously retest them if they learn or grown or whatever.
	But there would be a way of figuring out, okay, you can...
	You get basic property rights, but you can't enter into a five-year lease for a commercial building, because that's complicated stuff, right?
	So you can't sign a mortgage, but we will assume that you won't beat up your neighbor, and so on, right?
	So there'd be some way of figuring that out.
	It would have to be empirical.
	It would have to be something that would need to be retested, that wherever the limits of their moral understanding was, further from that, they would have no moral responsibility, but they would not have freedom of moral action in that realm either, if that makes sense.
	Yes, exactly. That's a great question.
	They all are. People are too smart.
	I'm working here. I'm working. So, since you're vegetarian, I thought I'd say that there's like a salad station or something in Agora Valley.
	Oh, I'm in. In Agora Valley.
	So I thought you might be interested. Thank you.
	I appreciate that. Love me a good salad.
	All right. Just because we're kind of time, Nick, why don't you go ahead?
	Sure. I was wondering, you've been talking a lot about virtue and universality and stuff like that.
	I think UDP did a good job of weeding out internally consistent moral theories, but I'm not so sure on how it weeds out moral theories that are morally nihilistic, because they're already kind of universal as they say that moral rules universally don't exist.
	Yeah, that's a great question.
	The question is, UPB versus moral nihilism.
	The cage match! I try to make morals as exciting as I can, but it's really tough.
	So, let's go!
	I've got a video on nihilism, which is just black.
	Except if you turn your speakers up really loud, there's this annoying high-pitched whine.
	So, moral nihilism is the argument that you can't make universals because they don't exist.
	That everything you come up with is just your prejudice that you're trying to pass off.
	Like fiat currency is some sort of universal.
	But the problem with moral nihilism, one of the many problems, is that it still says the truth is better than falsity.
	And the truth is that there is no such thing as truth.
	Which is a contradiction, you know, like right out of the gate, the horse eats mud, right?
	Because it's saying you can't have moral rules because there's no such thing as moral rules.
	And you should conform your philosophy to the truth statement because there's no such thing as any universal preference.
	But it's a universal preference that you're putting forward immediately, not you, but the nihilist is putting forward a universal preference.
	See, I know it's kind of trippy, but, you know, just try circling it a few times like a shark before you eat it because it's important, right?
	Right? The nihilist says, it is universally preferable that we accept that there's no such thing as universal preferences.
	But didn't nihilist say that?
	Or did they say, I don't really care if you accept this, it's just...
	Facts. Facts of reality.
	In other words, it's universally preferable that we conform to the facts of reality.
	But you might have to say that truth exists universally, but that a universally preferable behavior might have.
	Like, universals might exist in certain realms, not others.
	Ah, yeah, but all philosophy, all philosophy is behavior.
	Because if you just sit in a room alone thinking philosophy, it's like that tree falling in a forest, which I'm sure is next with this rain.
	But, you know, if you just sit, all philosophy is an action.
	You and I are acting. At the moment, right?
	I'm acting like I know what I'm talking about.
	You're acting intelligent, right?
	So we have to do actions, right?
	So the mere act of proposing a truth claim of whatever kind is an action.
	So if somebody says, I am now going to take the action to make the argument that there's no such thing as universally preferable behavior, I'm going to behave or act in such a way, they're already contradicting themselves.
	I was just wondering, so I like, I mean, I'm pretty hardcore about partying, but my basic problem is essentially how you define property rights.
	And so I think that's, I don't really think you can define them a priority.
	I think you can.
	And let me give you the two-second argument for that, right?
	So, property rights really is saying, do I own the effects of my actions?
	Do I own the effects of my actions or not?
	Clearly, if you don't own the effects of your actions, then if I go strangle someone, I'm not morally responsible.
	So, you can't have any morality if you don't own the effects of your actions.
	Wait, wait, wait. Sorry, tell me what I'm wrong in a sec, right?
	So, first of all, the person who's making an argument is making an argument that they own.
	It's their argument. So, the argument is an effect of their action, their action of vocalizing a particular perspective.
	Historically, I think there have been examples.
	One I like to use is fishing rights on Native American rivers versus modern water rights.
	And those two examples, I think, are both examples of legitimate property, but they were based on the constraints existing to the people.
	And I don't think there's any way to...
	I don't think one is particularly more just or unjust.
	Wait, wait, wait. So the second one is state-driven, right?
	Well... Yes, but I think...
	So, we have an injustice there.
	From the anarchist perspective, you're saying that one was spontaneously generated through cultural preferences, right?
	Yes, but I think it would be plausible that the current...
	I mean, I don't think Indian fishing rights would exist in modern society because the constraints facing modern society are hidden.
	Well, the technology over fishing is such a problem that, because it's a technology, that you would have to have more defined, I think, property rights, right?
	It's the lack of being Americans to fish to begin with, so...
	Well, and the Native Americans may not want to have those particular property rights if they lived in a free society, because they may say, well, we have more profit working in a more modern...
	So, an example of that is the East Coast fisheries in Canada, which for 400 years functioned perfectly well without government intervention.
	And then the moment the government waded in, within, I think, about 15 years, they're completely bare.
	It's completely fished out and never coming back.
	So that was a spontaneous order that came out of the local fishermen, which was enforced through ostracism, like if you fish too much, people wouldn't talk to you and stuff.
	I think spontaneous order can lead to two different variations of property rights in similar circumstances, and I'm not prepared to judge one as inherently better or inherently worse, so long as they essentially fall spontaneously and are oppressed.
	Well, but the non-initiation of force is the key.
	That's the first thing. So as long as the property agreements...
	The homesteading, I mean, how do you find homesteading?
	It's like if you pour some orange juice in the ocean, you don't own the ocean, but if you take the potter out of the ocean, pour it in the orange juice and you own that, and defining the specifics of containment definitions and all these things, I think, are inevitably going to be based on historical contingencies are inevitably going to be based on historical contingencies that you can't...
	Well, okay, let me just...
	I'll just touch on that very briefly, and that's a big, big topic.
	And if you... Please fall into a Sunday show.
	We'll talk about it some more. But there's no question that there's some challenge...
	At the extremes...
	At the extremes, there's no problem with property, right?
	So if I build a house in the middle of nowhere, clearly it's mine.
	I mean, I think that nobody has any problem with that.
	If I pour my orange juice into the ocean, everybody gets I don't own the whole ocean, right?
	So at those extremes, there's no problem.
	And most of property issues fall in those two extremes, right?
	So somewhere in the middle, right?
	Like the question about the people who are mentally handicapped, right?
	We all understand that, you know, politicians should never be allowed loose without a leash.
	And there are other people who are free, right?
	More free. Somewhere in the middle, there's going to be a gray area.
	And now the problem is the gray area can become kind of like a black hole for people mentally, right?
	It's like, okay, so 99% of human problems fall in these two extremes that nobody has any problems with.
	But down to this 1%, you know, like you wander in there and it's like going into Mordor, you know?
	You go in and you just don't come back out.
	Or it's like Roach Motel for the brain.
	So you have to be careful because these grey areas are exactly why you need a free society.
	Because society will continue to negotiate these without the initiation of force.
	Will there be conflicts?
	Will there be lawsuits? Yeah, of course.
	And will they be renegotiated over time?
	Absolutely. But people, I'm not saying you, but people get lost in these 1% of things and say, well, what if somebody's smart enough to kind of understand property rights but not quite smart enough?
	It's like those property arguments.
	I wrote an essay a couple of years ago because some guy was talking about, okay, so you're into property rights.
	Guy's hanging from a flagpole outside an apartment building.
	He kicks in the window because he doesn't want to fall to his death and he goes into the apartment that's not his.
	Isn't that a violation of property rights and isn't that a good thing?
	Can we deal with the government first and then get to the guys hanging from the flag poles?
	So, and I'm not putting you in that category, I understand, but there are going to be great areas in human freedoms, in property rights, in, you know, when does a child gain moral autonomy?
	God knows, right? But we all understand that a two-year-old doesn't have it and a normal 20-year-old does.
	And so there is a little bit of gray area, but don't imagine that philosophy fails in those gray areas.
	No, that's not my point.
	My point is just that I see, I mean, I really like the non-direction principle, but I think also central to it is essentially decentralized, voluntary, I mean, Hayekian law versus legislation, how law is going on how to decentralize, plot them up.
	And I think that's also very important.
	I think that's what I'm thinking.
	Yeah, I agree. I think that we both agree that the non-initiation, of course, will lead to very creative and positive solutions, like your competing communities and so on.
	Very creative and positive solutions.
	I mean, some genius woman might come up with some idea for resolving property disputes that nobody else has ever thought of.
	It's going to spread like wildfire, you know, it's going to be like the iPod of the law or whatever, and that's going to be it, right?
	Whereas we've got, like, the government selling Zooms at the moment.
	Oh, the humor is too geeky.
	Starshild, how are you, my brother?
	I want to go back a little over to the animal rights question and the non-aggression principle.
	There's a famous book, the animal rights movement, by Peter Zanger, and he basically talks about, kind of taking on you during the anthem, that the rights are based on the passing of suffering, which I think, in the argument of animals being that animals are known,
	most animals, by the march, You were emphasizing the non-aggression principle and also people's ability to reason, and I'm wondering, I mean, it seems to me, well, suffering, I think, is just actually a sub-category of awareness, or sort of a manifestation of awareness.
	The greater your awareness as a being, I think, the more capacity you have to suffer.
	You know, if you're aware of your own body to the extent that you're connected by a nervous system, for instance, and for intubable, you know, awareness of physical pain, It should really be a continuum,
	in that we shouldn't, you know, come off the line at the bottom of a few games that we, you know, children, or they're going to be targeted, or whatever, that animals and, you know, even other life ones deserve some degree of consideration.
	And I would say under the law, So the idea that capacity to feel suffering is involved in moral empathy and understanding.
	And I actually completely agree with that.
	I guess there's two issues that pop into my head, which is not conclusive, but this is sort of what I think.
	The first is that there are some life forms that I'm perfectly willing to eradicate.
	If I get an infection, I'm going to nuke it with some medicine to get rid of it.
	Like, I'm just not going to, you know, I'm not going to have it in my body.
	So, I have to at least accept that.
	When it comes to me and E. coli, as a standoff, E. coli is going down, man!
	I mean, it's going down!
	Or up, or wherever.
	It's coming out of me somehow. If I've got to sneeze it out, it's coming.
	Is it just out there? Prevention is better than cure, but I'm happy for those microbes, millions, billions of them, to go away so that I can go and play a video game.
	So I think at that level I sort of accept that that's the reality of my decisions.
	I think that that's kind of morally justified, but some people who don't like me may not agree with that.
	But the other thing that I would say is that For me, when you start to look at rights, then you start to look at violence.
	To me, that's inevitable, right?
	So, we all, I mean, I think we would all accept self-defense, right?
	So, some guy's running at you with a chainsaw and you can't get away and you've got a gun, hopefully shoot to maim, but you don't just say, hey, you know, lop off whatever you want because I'm a pacifist.
	So, I think we all accept that where we define something as immoral, as evil, then we unleash the dogs of war, so to speak.
	We accept that some woman who's about to get raped can stab the guy in the neck if she has to.
	More power to you, sister.
	Stab him somewhere else if you can.
	So, we all accept that, right?
	And so, whenever you define something as evil, I'm not saying that's what you're doing, but what happens is the weapons come out.
	So, I'm very careful about defining things as evil.
	This is why, you know, property is kind of tough, right?
	Somebody steals my iPod, can I shoot him?
	It's just an iPod, right?
	But anyway, right? But maybe I can pursue some legal recourse or whatever, right?
	In a free society, some...
	So my concern is that if I saw somebody about to take a bite out of a child, and if the only way I could stop that person was through force, then I think you are morally justified in doing so.
	Because that person is about to initiate chomping on an innocent human being.
	I can't find my way to doing that with a chicken burger.
	I genuinely can't see shooting someone to prevent them from eating a chicken burger.
	I just can't get there.
	Or, at a further level, you're about to take an antibiotic, so I've got to save the E. coli, so you're going down or whatever, right?
	So, I mean, this could be my limitation of empathy or understanding, but I can't, and it doesn't, because I can't emotionally get there, it doesn't mean that I'm right.
	I'm just saying that I can't logically and emotionally get to the place where if somebody's going to eat a hedgehog, then I'm going to shoot it.
	So, that's my concern, is that whenever we define the thing as evil, then the weapons come out, and I'm fine with that in certain areas, because I think it's necessary and just, but not when it comes to animals.
	animals, I think there's better ways to protect animals. I think there's better ways to protect animals.
	- What's wrong with you?
	Yeah, but I think our inability to do something morally is a good, not proof, but it's a clue that it may be worth examining.
	Like, when it comes to animal rights, what I want is for people who eat meat to at least watch the videos of the factory farms.
	That's all I want them to do. Just look at how it starts.
	Look at these poor animals.
	Look at this suffering that they go through.
	Look at this wretched existence that they have.
	Look at it.
	And if you can look at it and still eat your meat, Then at least they've looked, right?
	Like the people who are into the drug war, go to the Mexican villages.
	Go to the jails where poor pot smokers are locked up for years, rotting in their own filth.
	I mean, just go and look at it.
	If this is the moral world you want, look at the consequences or look at the source.
	I think that's a very powerful thing to get people out of meat-eating, is just to look at where it comes from.
	It's a way to get people out of, oh, you want taxation because you think it's the only way.
	Well, look at these poor tax evaders, right, who've gone to jail, either on principle or through.
	I mean, just look at how they're being treated.
	Look at how they're living. Look at the squalor.
	Look at the torture. Look at the lost human opportunities and capital.
	Then it's a little harder for people to sustain that stuff, I think, if they look at it.
	We are out of time for questions, so...
	Please, do a striptease at the end for small donations.
	First of all, if it's a striptease, they're not going to be small donations.
	No. Please make an appeal at the end for small donations to pay for the big tent, which is keeping one of us dry.
	Not me. We've almost got it paid for, yes.
	And thanks to Pericles and the Students for Liberty.
	If you've enjoyed this, if you could, let's pay our volunteerism forward and put a little bit of time in it for the people who've put in effort to have this happen.

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