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Aug. 7, 2011 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:58:13

1970 Freedomain Radio Sunday Show, 7 August 2011

Culture and violence, the promise and failure of government programs, message boards and philosophy, evil and DROs!

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	All right. Hi, everybody.
	It's Stefan Molyneux.
	Sunday, August 7th, 2011, 2 p.m.
	in the time of Eastern Standardization.
	I hope you're doing very well.
	And I won't do an intro today because we have callers aplenty.
	And so if you would like to step up, I think we had a gentleman who'd called in already.
	Is that right? Yes.
	All right. How can I help you, my friend?
	Yes. Political question.
	Um... For us to believe that any ruling class would offer the masses a tool to get rid of them and fire them is utterly ridiculous.
	It must be that a mechanism that would work either has to be derived from something which is not currently offered or possibly even repressed.
	Because these people are not going to go just because we asked a nice little leaf.
	So it seems that in history, every tyrannical king, queen, or whoever it is, never seems to be satisfied once they've discovered that they have a mechanism of taking other people's money.
	They never seem to be satisfied until they've taken all of it, and it becomes one of the worst places in the world to live.
	Also in history, because these people have never left because we've asked them nicely to go, it always seems to be that the majority of the people have to get really angry and visibly angry before something appears to be done about it.
	Now, I'm not an elitist.
	I'm just one of those people who took the red pill.
	I don't see how there can be any just government, or government that represents the people, if the people are apathetic and ignorant of the facts.
	I mean, I'm an engineer, and I know how to fix healthcare, the energy crisis, and the economy, and it's not my job to know these things.
	So, surely, it must be within the scope of the intellect of hundreds of people who have vastly more resources than I do available, it must be easy for them to figure this out.
	The very fact that they haven't must mean that they don't want to.
	So if they don't want to, then they're not on my team.
	They're not representing me because if we are supposed to be the government and these people are supposed to be our employees, This certainly wouldn't happen in my company if I had an employee acting like them.
	Now, Gandhi said it, I think, most brilliantly.
	He said that if the people lead, the leaders will follow.
	Now, I've seen a lot of presidential candidates who want to be president, and the media love to ask them, what would you do if you became president?
	And I've never heard one of them say, The will of the people.
	Because that's the only reason why they would be employed in the first place, is to do the will of the people.
	So we appear to be in this colossal mess because America is, or was, very, very rich and influential.
	And if there's adversity, it appears that adversity makes men and prosperity makes monsters.
	And because of the prosperity of the United States, We're surrounded by monsters.
	And they're not going to go by asking nicely.
	So what the hell do we do?
	Up to you. Well, listen, first of all, I wanted to compliment you on your thinking and speaking skills.
	I thought that was a very well-phrased, well-put-together, well-positioned position.
	So I just really wanted to thank you.
	Obviously, you've spent a lot of time thinking about this stuff.
	I like it. I have no life.
	Well, I hear what you're saying sometimes.
	But I just really wanted to compliment you on that.
	Your lack of a life has paid off in this area.
	Well, it's interesting to me, this question of what to do.
	I am not an advocate of violence, and I'm not saying that you are, but I don't believe that violence...
	Yeah, these people don't go if you ask them nicely.
	Of course not. But violence is not the answer for reasons I've sort of put out before.
	But let me give you a metaphor that hopefully will help.
	If we are all gazelles and we are being hunted by lions, but unfortunately we have blindfolds on, We don't know that we have blindfolds on.
	What does the reasonable man do, or the reasonable gazelle who wants to help his fellow gazelle do in that situation?
	Well, there is no point in my mind telling the gazelles who are blindfolded to gang up on the lions.
	Because they're blindfolded, so it doesn't matter how many of them there are, they're still not going to win because the lions have the advantage of sight, which is pretty critical.
	And so there's no answer as far as, like, let's get mad at the lions.
	Telling them to develop better hearing isn't going to do it because you still have the disadvantage of blindness on the part of the gazelles and you have the advantage of sight on the part of the lions.
	So it's not going to do, say, listen better.
	And it's not going to do much good to say get mad at the fact that there are predators and prey in the world because that's not going to do much good either.
	In my mind, there's really only one thing to do in that situation is that you have to work as hard as you can to take the blinders off the gazelle so that people can see the reality of what is around them.
	Now, this metaphor is limited because, I mean, I think it's a good way of saying get the blinders off, but it's limited because the lions are not a different species in the real world.
	They're just people. And I would also submit that if you have gazelles who are blindfolded, what that does is it invites more predators to come and feed on them.
	And that is a real problem.
	It's not that people want to have power over others and therefore they have power.
	What happens is that the fundamental difficulty that people have in seeing the coercive nature of the society around them, that fundamental problem, that blinder on about the nature of violence and the role of coercion in our social system, That invites a ruling class in.
	Now, of course, the ruling class will continue to say there is no violence, or if there is, it would be much worse.
	If we weren't here, they'll do all the standard tricks.
	But it is the fundamental inability for people to connect these two wires together that complete the circuit.
	Taxation is force.
	Taxation is violence.
	If people could connect those, then the blinders would come off.
	We would not have to worry nearly as much about exploitation.
	So the major question to me is always, well, why is it so hard for people to see a coercion?
	Or why is it so hard for people to see aggression or bullying in society?
	They can see it in other societies, right?
	So it can't be universal, right?
	So most reasonable people will look at sort of female genital mutilation in various parts of the world and say, oh, that's horrible, right?
	And they will look at honor killings and say, that's just, that's heinous.
	So they can see it in other cultures.
	So it's not like human beings simply can't see violence at all.
	It's just they have a very difficult time seeing it in their own culture.
	And that which is hard to see, the first place that I look, and I think the first place that is reasonable to look for what people cannot see in their own society, is their early experiences.
	Their experiences within the family, within the church, within schools, and so on.
	And my argument has been for many years that people face aggression when they are young from a variety of sources.
	And so aggression becomes something that, in a sense, they can't see.
	Like if you live next to some piece of machinery that's going, you will eventually stop hearing it.
	And then after a while, you would have to really concentrate to hear it.
	And so there must be something in people's early life that renders violence or coercion invisible to them at a social level.
	And so that's why I've done some work in trying to figure out what's going on with parenting, what's going on with education, what's going on with religion, and other forms of indoctrination, particularly in public schools, that make people unable to see the coercion within their society.
	It's a great challenge to break, in a sense, to peel off the blinders from people.
	But once those blinders are off, Then there will be no such thing as a ruling class.
	It's not like people... I don't sort of believe in this Rousseauian ideal that man is everywhere born free, but...
	Sorry, man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains.
	I believe that we're born free as infants.
	I don't believe that we were born free as a species.
	I think we're clawing our way out of this stuff.
	But I think that the goal is, or the hope is, that once people can see the endless amounts of coercion that is involved in a status system...
	That they will reject it because people reject violence as a way of solving problems.
	The vast majority of people reject it.
	And so that's my hope, right?
	So you can't...
	I mean, so something like underfunded Social Security or something, I mean, the debate is never about what it's really about, right?
	So you can read hundreds or thousands of debates upon Social Security.
	Outside of a small cadre of libertarians and anarchists and so on, you will never read what the debate is really about.
	The debate is really about the initiation of force and the force that was initiated to take these people's money.
	Terrible, tragic. The people who...
	People didn't even want to be part of social security.
	Their money was taken from them by force.
	That money has been spent and blown and used for bribes, or as Harry Brown used to say, it's been used to prop up the Russian ruble for two hours ten years ago.
	It's all gone. And now the initiation of forces against the young to pay for the old who themselves were stolen from.
	So as long as people are still talking about shuffling social goods around and Our obligations and duty to the elderly and so on, which I think are reasonable things to talk about, but only after we look at the initiation of force, the fact that we've ended up in a situation where we have a rapidly aging population, we have a huge debt.
	I mean, the system would be in enough trouble if there was as much surplus as there is debt at the moment, but that is far from the case.
	So until people are able to talk about the reality of the force that is used at the base of the system, then we won't be able to solve these problems because people will just be, as I say, arranging deck chairs in the Titanic.
	Sorry, go ahead. I've got a very quick comment and then I'll get off and let somebody else speak.
	In this immediate vicinity where I live, it's approximately 100 people.
	It's a very nice community.
	It's not poor by any means.
	But I'm known as the nutty Brit.
	Because I'm the one running around saying, there's lions, there's lions, look, see the lions.
	And they're all saying, eh, you're crazy, let's just sit down here and eat this beautiful grass.
	There are no lions. I'm saying, yeah, there are, look, it's right over there.
	Well, it appears that if the majority of the people don't see the lions, then the only time the majority of the people, which is when we're going to have the power to make change, When the majority of the people actually start getting eaten by the lions, then they will say, who the hell is eating me?
	And I say, the lions, remember?
	I told you 20 years ago there's lions.
	Then when they know there's lions, in other words, it's got to get really, really bad.
	Really bad. I think it's bad now, but we can stop it now.
	But they want it to become spectacularly bad.
	Before they take their blinders off, because then it'll be obvious even to them that there are lions.
	I remember my dog. I was watching television and did a spectacular job.
	So clever. It's an Einstein dog.
	And he came in and he put his nose under my arm and he started to lift my arm up and down.
	And I said, Jack, go away.
	I'm watching the news.
	And he kind of sat down for a little bit and then he came over and he lifted my arm again.
	And I said, Jack, go away.
	I'm watching the news. Well, he went inside the kitchen area.
	And he came back and he started running around in a circle.
	And I said, what's wrong with you?
	So I followed him into the kitchen and there was a pigeon that had gone in through the window and was flying around the room.
	So my poor dog was trying to do everything in his power to tell me that there was a problem.
	And all I wanted to do was watch television.
	And this is exactly the situation now is that I'm the dog seeing there's a problem in the house and everybody's just consumed by being dumbed down By TV. So I guess what I have to do is just sit on my hands and wait for it to be so obvious until everybody's being eaten by the lions before I can say, okay, now you agree we have lions.
	Is that what I've got to do? Well, I think that certainly doesn't hurt.
	Of course, the danger is that that's too late, right?
	So, I mean, that's a risk of that for sure.
	I mean, we can't control that.
	I mean, all we can do is speak the truth as passionately, as positively, as engagingly as we can.
	It's always a question, you know, if somebody's an alcoholic and you say to them, listen, my friend, I'm concerned about your drinking.
	I think it's too much and I'm just wondering how you're doing and so on.
	Ah, I'm a social drinker.
	Ah, what's wrong with having a few drinks?
	Ah, there's no problem. Ah, don't be such a stick in the mud.
	But, eh, right?
	Well, once that person realizes that he has a problem, maybe, you know, what is his relationship to the person who told him for years that there was a problem?
	Well he might say thank you.
	He also might feel ashamed and shy away from that person because nobody likes to have admitted that they could have solved the problem years ago and had to wait for it to get really bad.
	So I don't know.
	I wish I had the answer.
	One of the great challenges about knowing what is coming down the pipe is That it requires that people be open to reason and evidence in order to accept the reality of what is coming down the pipe.
	And if people aren't open to reason and evidence, then there's nothing you can do.
	It's like trying to sculpt fog.
	You can't do anything. If people are not open to reason and evidence, then there's nothing you can do.
	because there's nothing that they will listen to.
	So, yeah, so that's, you know, it's one of the things that you really hope that you're wrong about.
	You know, you really hope that you're wrong about, but unfortunately the evidence has accumulated, at least for me, to the point where, you know, we're not wrong.
	We're not wrong. I mean, by God, by God, if only people could stitch together their history a little bit more, even as a culture.
	You know, in the United States, I mean, there's catastrophic debt, this downgrade of the credit rating.
	And yes, okay, it happened to Canada, and Canada didn't fall into the sea, and it happened to Japan.
	But these are not countries with a military empire.
	You downgrade the debt of a military empire and you are dealing with a very different situation than if you downgrade the debt of your standard socialist basket case.
	It's quite a different matter.
	Economic tremors in an empire reshape the world.
	They are not minor.
	They are not contained within its own borders.
	So, I mean, but just look at what the U.S. is facing.
	It's compared to what was promised The expansion of the state in the 1960s under the Great Society compared to where it is to what was promised.
	And you can see how far people's expectations have fallen.
	What was promised was equality for minorities, for blacks and Hispanics in the United States.
	What has happened? Catastrophic unemployment, catastrophic drops.
	In income for black and Hispanic families.
	Massive, wretched, disgusting increases in the schisms between the rich and the poor and the whites and the non-whites.
	They don't see the lions either, even though it's happening to them.
	Well, some of them do.
	But look at what was promised.
	The gap between the rich and the poor.
	Everyone was going to become middle class.
	The gap between the rich and the poor was going to close.
	All that's happened is it's completely widened and the middle class is disintegrating.
	So if people could just go back in time or just look on the web about what was promised in the past with all of these social programs and all of this massive expansion in government power, we were promised a paradise.
	And what happened, which was inevitable with an expansion of violence, is we did not even retain The system or the society that we had in the past, we are now in a much worse position.
	And this is true for the West as a whole, if not the whole world, with a few exceptions.
	We are now in a much worse position.
	But people don't ever want you to think about that, right?
	I have not seen one newspaper article that says, okay, let's look at the big picture here.
	So we tried this radical expansion of the state in the post-Second World War, and particularly in the 1960s.
	Let's look at the promises and let's look at what was achieved.
	Let's look at how much it was expected to cost.
	Let's look at how much it actually does cost.
	I mean, the U.S. is financially fundamentally bankrupt just on healthcare alone.
	Healthcare costs alone are over $5,000 per person in the United States per year.
	But if you look at the after-tax income for a family of four on average, it's barely higher than that.
	So people, I mean, the whole healthcare system in the United States would bring down the entire economy if it wasn't subsidized temporarily through borrowed money and the overprinting of money.
	And none of this was how it was supposed to be, even close.
	You know, the society was getting better.
	The middle class was growing.
	Blacks were moving out of poverty and into the middle class, as were other minorities.
	Wealth was increasing. It was just supposed to solve the last few problems in society, and now look where we are.
	And people won't think about that.
	And that's a great tragedy.
	So, yeah, anyway, listen, I could sort of crab about this all day, and I know we've got other listeners.
	What I would like, if you could, is to put up an area on your website called the Red Pill, and those people can then sign in so that we could find out who's in our area, who would like to talk about this more, just so that we're not completely isolated and in a vacuum.
	I appreciate that.
	I think that's a great idea. All right.
	Okay, so we have another...
	Yeah, okay. Thank you very much.
	I'll talk again later. Thank you.
	Hey, Steph. Hi.
	This is Chris R. We talked last week.
	Oh, hey, Chris. How's it going?
	I'm not doing too well this week.
	How are you? You're not doing too well?
	I'm fine, but what's up with you?
	It's what I'd like to talk about a bit.
	But first, I wanted to apologize for something I had said in the last call.
	I forget the context, but I think you had pointed out some false modesty that I portrayed in the conversation.
	I got psychologically defensive, so I wanted to apologize for that.
	Oh, no problem at all.
	I thought you handled it beautifully, but I appreciate that.
	Okay.
	Well, thank you for that.
	And around my negative feelings of me not doing too well, I believe you saw my post on the board recently.
	What's this?
	Sorry.
	Could you just remind me?
	Sure. Myself in post, Exile from the FDR Forum.
	Oh yeah, I thought that was a very interesting post.
	I appreciate you posting it and I appreciate you talking about it.
	Well, thank you for that. I'm glad that you liked it.
	And I thought it was very cathartic to put it on the board and to type that up in the first place.
	And I was wondering if you had any thoughts about it?
	I do. I do.
	Do you want to talk for a second or two about, just for the context of people who haven't read it, what your post was about?
	Sure, of course. Maybe it would be more helpful to have the post read, or do you just want me to sort of summarize?
	If you could summarize, I think that'd be great.
	Okay, sure. Well, I've been having a lot of negative feelings around the FDR forum for the past few weeks, especially in the last two weeks.
	A lot of anxiety, a bit of anger.
	Just a lot of like really negative stuff that I don't want to be feeling.
	Maybe a lot of fog too.
	And in discussing this with other people, I've come to the conclusion that I think it's because there's a lot of trolls and people without a lot of self-knowledge currently on the board.
	And there's a lot of that sort of back and forth conversation without too much philosophical content, if that sort of makes sense.
	Or like pseudo-philosophical content where it's not really about what it's really about.
	Sure, exactly. And there are some good gems on the board that I enjoy talking about, or there's heavily people on the board that I do enjoy talking with, but it's so sort of sunk down within everything else that I don't want to talk about, like pseudo-philosophy, that it's really, yeah, it's just a really negative feeling.
	So you had talked a bit recently about Low-tech ways of dealing with this, which is basically, you know, don't respond to people who you don't want to talk with, and basically practice voluntary association and trust your feelings.
	And I realize that I preach that a lot, but it might be something useful to apply to the forum.
	So I've decided, given my negative feelings and how they're not being alleviated, I'm going to disassociate from the board for at least a little while and see how I feel after a bit.
	Right, right, right.
	Yeah, look, I thought that was very interesting.
	And what I appreciated about your post was I got to think a little bit more about my experience off the board lately.
	And I said to myself, self, I said, well...
	When was the last time I got a very interesting insight or piece of information or some kind of great philosophical argument or something like that from the message board?
	And I thought that was a very interesting question to ask myself.
	And the answer was, I can't remember.
	And so I sort of mulled that over.
	And I I think that that aspect of board life is interesting.
	Now, I will drop into the board and have a look once or twice a day, just as a vague admin kind of thing.
	I have not seen a lot of great philosophical conversations.
	And so, but tell me, when was the last time that you got a sort of great interesting insight or argument or stuff?
	I know, sorry, there's lots of stuff.
	I mean, there's lots of people who post stuff that I find very interesting, like they link to articles.
	You know, Alan posts great stuff about the economy.
	Joey posts some wonderful stuff about psychology.
	And I find that stuff to be very helpful and very interesting.
	Those are resources that are available, but they're not exactly the same as back and forward philosophical arguments.
	And I personally have not found the message board environment, and this is not FDR in particular, it's all message boards I've been a part of, and it's not like I have a lot of experience with it.
	But I have not found message boards to be very good in terms of philosophical knowledge, in terms of having productive philosophical discussions or debates.
	For a number of reasons.
	The more important the topic, the more volatile it tends to be to people emotionally.
	And there's a wide variety of maturity levels on the message board.
	And so it's a very public way to have a philosophical conversation.
	So it's sort of like trying to have a debate, two postgraduate students trying to have a debate about evolution, let's say, while you have a bunch of creationists who are able to interrupt them at will.
	You know, and so two people are trying to sort of discuss some advanced aspect of evolution and then you can't hear them anymore because people are yelling that they're going to hell because they're getting rid of God or something, whatever it is, right?
	I mean, that's sort of an extreme example.
	But because it is such a public forum, there's no way to...
	I guarantee the quality or emotional maturity of people in there.
	So I think that constantly derails stuff.
	And it tends to be a bit of a pylon, right?
	So somebody could post something sort of controversial or immature and then other people sort of jump on to correct that person or react in some way that then takes the conversation further away.
	And then the quality of the conversation tends to or can deteriorate quite quickly.
	So I think there is that problem with the message board.
	And I don't know if there's any particular way to solve that.
	I mean... I don't think that there's a clear way to solve that.
	I mean, you could try some technological approaches, but I think that fundamentally it's just that the medium is not really great for philosophical discussions.
	I think it's been useful for discussions about some stuff to do with economics, some science issues I think have been sort of interesting.
	But the stuff where there's emotionality involved...
	In other words, the stuff that's most important, right?
	So around free will and ethics and virtue and all that kind of stuff, that's pretty volatile.
	And the more volatile it is, the less it is suitable for a public forum.
	I think a conversation, a one-on-one conversation or a group conversation with people that you trust is a very productive and positive way to have philosophical discussions.
	And that is something that has been spontaneously occurring through the FDR community for the last couple of years, sort of people meeting up in person or having conversations over Skype that are regularly scheduled to have discussions about philosophy or whatever is on their mind.
	And I think that's a wonderful way.
	That's a wonderful way to do it.
	So, and I mean, I certainly don't get involved in philosophical discussions.
	On the message board, and I can't think of any that I've had for the last couple of years.
	Allocation is sort of throw my two cents in, but that's more because I'm succumbing to temptation rather than thinking it's some sort of great idea.
	So, I mean, to me, the most important stuff around philosophy is the stuff that you can actually do something about in your life.
	And the stuff that means something to one's quality of life.
	And that tends to be very volatile for a lot of people emotionally.
	And depending on the level of emotional maturity, they may or may not be able to handle this kind of conversation.
	I think that people should demonstrate some reasonable level of self-knowledge before getting into advanced philosophy.
	See, to me, self-knowledge is like high school, and then philosophy is like graduate school.
	And I really have a tough time talking about post-graduate physics with somebody who's never taken physics in high school.
	Like, it just doesn't work. And so for me, I look for knowledge or indication of self-knowledge.
	So I look for some sort of signs or some sort of indication of maturity and self-knowledge.
	Before I would get involved in a philosophical discussion, I just, you know, I hate to say it, but if you want to get into the post-grad course in physics, I need to see at least your high school transcript to see that you've taken some physics courses in high school.
	Otherwise, it's not going to work, right?
	You're just going to be confused and you're not going to know why you don't understand things and you're going to be hostile and it's just going to get weird and sorry.
	But, you know, there has to be some standard for entry into philosophy.
	And to me, the first standard of entry is self-knowledge, self-knowledge and some reasonable level of maturity.
	So, yeah.
	So what I suggest is, you know, if you find the message board useful for thought-provoking questions, I think that's great.
	I've seen some very good questions on the message board, which I've tried to respond to in some podcasts.
	If you find the information or the links that are put there to other topics that are of interest to us, I think those are very useful and very good to have.
	But my strong suggestion is that the board is a resource for getting information and for meeting people.
	So if you see somebody who's posted you like, you know, send them an email.
	Give them a ping. Say, hey, and I've really, really appreciated and enjoyed your posts.
	I'd love to chat with you sometime on Skype and have a chat and talk about those ideas there or an email back and forth if you like.
	But I think it's just very important to remember that it's a public forum and the quality of the participants cannot be Gaged or determined in advance.
	So yeah, that would be my suggestion.
	So I think that, obviously, anybody can do whatever they want, but I think that the way to approach the board that is most empirical, based on the evidence that I've seen over the couple of years, is to say, okay, this is a great place to meet like-minded people.
	I'm going to look for quality posts with people I might want to engage with outside the board, and there's some great information there.
	There's some thought-provoking questions.
	It's rare to see a philosophical conversation that comes to a productive resolution on the message boards.
	Philosophy is a verbal discipline.
	And I know some people prefer that it be written down, and I certainly have written stuff down, and I think that's valuable.
	But, you know, physics is not a verbal discipline.
	Physics is a written-down, mathematical, scientific discipline.
	But philosophy to me has always fundamentally been a verbal discipline.
	And so, I think that's an important thing to remember.
	Philosophy was not designed with, you know, it was designed 2,500 years ago or sort of came into being 2,500 or more years ago, long before multi-thread server-based message board system came in place.
	So it may be a little bit of a case of trying to put a round peg into a square hole, if that makes any sense.
	So yeah, I mean, obviously people can come to the board or not come to the board, but I wouldn't come to the board with the idea that you're going to get great productive philosophical conversations out of it.
	But I would come to the board with, you know, can meet some great people and can get some great information.
	That's my experience.
	And remember, too, that Free Domain Radio is not the message board.
	And Free Domain Radio is not philosophy.
	It is a philosophy show.
	And if you find the philosophy valuable, fantastic.
	But it's not like...
	If you're not on the message board, that has nothing to do with whether you're interested in free domain radio or whether you're interested in philosophy as a whole.
	You cannot be interested in free domain radio at all and be completely fascinated by philosophy.
	You can find my contributions to philosophical topics to be mealy-mouthed, immature, ridiculous, contradictory, whatever, and you can still have a great and deep love of philosophy.
	There is no individual who defines, no individual, no show, no group who define philosophy.
	The discipline. It is a collective human endeavor.
	So I certainly wouldn't feel like, oh my heavens, I'm not going to the Freedom Aid Radio Message Board.
	I'm not doing good philosophy.
	I certainly wouldn't feel that at all.
	So I think, you know, take a break certainly by all means if you find that valuable.
	I think it's generally good to stay in philosophical conversations with people because the culture as a whole tends to be pretty down on philosophy because it reveals culture as culture for what it is.
	And so it's easy to slip out of philosophical thinking if you're not in A group, at least occasionally, with people who have that.
	But yeah, if you see people you like on the board, develop friendships.
	You know, the board is not a friendship system, in my opinion.
	It's an information exchange system.
	So I hope that helps, and I certainly don't want to keep talking about it all day.
	But I just wanted to say I really did appreciate your post and your thoughts about it, and it certainly got me to think about it some more.
	Yeah. Well, I'm glad that it was useful to you, and it seems to be of use to other people as well.
	And if we had had this conversation a year ago, I think I would have been very confused because for a while I was unsure about why you weren't posting on the board.
	I could go back, you know, five years ago or however long, I could see that your posts on the board were much more regular.
	And then as of late, or maybe as of the past three years, they stopped coming in.
	But now, both at an emotional and intellectual level, I can better understand why you don't post on the boards as much, as well as other more experienced FDR people.
	And I think you would ask me a question in the beginning of what you had said about the last time I had found value or a good discussion on the forum.
	And yeah, I do feel that there are some good discussions on the forum, one of which is a discussion I had with Metric about physics.
	I think I critiqued your response to the cosmological argument.
	And I'd made some error regarding the physics that I cited.
	And it was a very positive and good exchange with him telling me, you know, where I'd gotten wrong and all that good sort of stuff.
	So I thought that was very good. And that's an exchange of information more than it is an exchange of philosophy, so to speak.
	And I'm not saying that that makes it any less important or less good.
	But that, I think, falls into the pattern of information exchange, which I think the board is really good at.
	Right, right. And then as far as I can see myself after this sort of conversation and what I post on the board, I feel like my self-knowledge and my intellect has sort of grown to the point where I'm now becoming more of a teacher and sort of spreading more philosophy than I've been currently taking in.
	I don't know if you have any thoughts on that specifically.
	Can you tell me a bit more about that?
	Sure. Like, when I came, I joined a bit over a year ago, and at that point, I was relatively noobish at philosophy with self-knowledge.
	And as far as that sort of stuff goes, I didn't have too much to contribute.
	But over the past year through Free Domain Radio and other philosophical resources that I've been really digesting, I feel like, or I think that I've...
	I've gotten a lot of knowledge to whereas before it was really people teaching me things.
	Now I feel like I have a lot to contribute to the board or to people in general.
	So no longer is it me learning.
	I mean, of course I'm still learning, but no longer is it me Am I the only one that can't hear anything?
	I wasn't able to hear anything either.
	Oh, I'm so sorry. I forgot to unmute.
	Oops. So yeah, I mean, there is a tipping point, sort of when you get to be more...
	When you get to a certain amount of mastery in a particular field, you can go from sort of student to teacher, and there is a tipping point as far as that goes, which I think makes sense.
	All right. Well, that's all the thoughts I really had on this topic for the moment.
	I know there's other people on the call, but I think as I emailed you about this week, I have another epistemological topic to talk about.
	So if there's time at the end of the show, maybe we can talk about that as well?
	That would be great. Okay.
	Thanks so much. So, anyone else who is looking to chat?
	I'm up for it. Go for it.
	Awesome, thank you. So, hey, how's it going, Steph?
	Good, how are you doing? I'm good.
	So, we were just talking with a few people on the chat and I've touched the topic on the topic with a few people on Facebook and stuff as well.
	I've experienced a few sort of negative emotions after the After the barbecue, by that I mean more negative.
	I guess the metaphor that I sort of used was that I feel like I just got out of this You know, this beautiful theater, right?
	And there was like a ballerina in front and she was dancing in the theater and there's like all these people just really focusing, concentrating on the beauty of the ballerina, right?
	And so, you know, the play is done and so I feel like I just got out of the theater and it's like really crowded outside, like there's like fire trucks running by and there's like ambulances and there's, you know, all this noise and honking and all this kind of stuff and it just feels like my ears are just so sensitive to all the noise, right? I don't know.
	I've been feeling a lot of stress just the last week.
	I guess there's a lot of practical stuff for me.
	But I guess I just wanted to point that out because I know that there's a lot of people that say that they've been experiencing some sort of barbecue withdrawal symptoms in a sense.
	I just felt like it'd be an interesting topic.
	I love the barbecues.
	I love meeting everyone.
	I love the benevolence and curiosity and happiness of the community, of Like-minded and reasonable, rational people.
	So it is, you know, it's our little gold scotch, so to speak.
	And it is a beautiful place to be.
	To me, it is a glimpse of the future.
	And it was a great deal of fun.
	We had fun on Saturday, had some great conversations, a nice walk.
	And I really enjoyed the dinner and I thought karaoke was just...
	Great deal of fun, and I really enjoyed everybody's renditions and getting up and doing stuff, and so I thought that was a great deal of fun.
	So, yeah, it's really nice.
	It's really nice to be in that kind of environment, and so all I can say is that I understand it.
	It makes perfect sense to me, and I think if you did enjoy something and didn't feel sad when it ended, that would be an indication that you didn't really enjoy Enjoy it, if that makes any sense.
	Yeah, I totally feel sad, definitely.
	Definitely. Yeah, the happiness now is the pain later.
	That's inevitable, right?
	I mean, there is a movie called Shadowlands that talks about this, which is actually quite good.
	And I won't sort of get into the plot of the story, but everyone who we love is going to die on us, or we're going to die on them.
	And I mean that's something to remember when it comes to who you give your heart to and how much of your heart you give, which hopefully with the right person is everything you've got.
	But everyone's gonna die on us and we're gonna die on everyone.
	And one of the temptations in life is to hold yourself back because of a fear of loss.
	And I have not found that to be a great strategy.
	It sort of gives you short-term happiness, but it gives us, I think, a long-term sense of missed opportunities and loss that I think is even worse than that.
	Sorry, fear of what? I'm sorry?
	Oh, fear of what? I missed your word there.
	A fear of loss. Oh, right.
	Okay. Yeah. Right.
	Yeah. So, I think that is...
	I think that is the reality that we face.
	And there's no solution to it because death is an inevitable part of life, death and loss.
	And so, I don't know, I'm talking a lot about death and loss.
	We're talking about a barbecue, but something that you really enjoy, you're going to feel sad afterwards.
	And that sadness, I think, is an important emotion to have.
	Because I think one of the things that that sadness does is it says, well, I'd like to do that again.
	And maybe there's things that I can do in my own community to develop that kind of Interaction with people to recreate it around where I am and sort of spread philosophy that way or just have more positive and more relaxed interactions that way.
	So I think the sadness has really good things to help us with that.
	Yeah. Yeah.
	Yeah, I appreciate that. I am...
	Yeah. I guess my mind just sort of went to...
	I think...
	I think...
	For me, and this might be more of a subjective thing, I know there's been a couple of people, a few more people that sort of Mentioned it as I said before, but for me it seems like there's like two towers, right?
	I've talked about this metaphor before with other people, but it's like two towers, right?
	One tower is just made of stone, right?
	And it's like all the FTR people and sort of more philosophical communities.
	And there's another tower, which is like sort of like this tree tower with like all these ghouls, right?
	And you got to go there to work. And it's just like...
	I feel like there's two forces sort of pushing me back and forth.
	I felt a sort of resistance often.
	I still sort of do to getting more involved in the community, in the FDR community, but I also feel a resistance towards Getting sort of just, I guess, going back into the public, right?
	Into sort of more mainstream lifestyle and partying and stuff like that.
	Like, I definitely don't want to do that.
	I don't enjoy that as much.
	But I still, like...
	You know what I mean? Like, I feel like I'm in the tug of war.
	Like, I'm just hanging from a rope.
	And there's, like, people pulling me and pushing me from each tower.
	And... I don't know if that makes any sense, I guess.
	But it's... No, it does.
	It does. I think it does make sense.
	And... The structure of the world, that is, has...
	The structure of the world that is has always been hostile to, I think, real philosophy.
	Because real philosophy is not so friendly or supportive of a good deal of the structure of the world that is.
	And the structure of the world that is is not in reality, it's in everybody's minds.
	And so when philosophy comes up against the structure of the world that is, there is a conflict.
	And I think that the future and freedom and happiness and peace and non-violence wants us to follow the path of philosophy, but the mindset of a good number of people in the world that is does not want us to do that.
	And so the fact that there's this tug of war, I think, makes perfect sense.
	Yeah. Yeah.
	Yeah. Yeah. What about my resistance towards hanging out with or just getting more involved in the FDR community?
	Maybe it's a more personal, historical thing for me.
	Part of me is not sure whether we can actually get any value out of talking about this right now, because maybe it's more personal for me.
	I guess. I don't know. If it is, then we can stop.
	Yeah, maybe what you can do is just – I mean, certainly nobody has to or has not to or anything like that to get involved with any kind of community.
	But if you want to sort of mull it over your resistance, we perhaps could talk about it another time.
	But I think it might take a while to figure out what it is and – I want to make sure that we have enough time for other calls.
	Yeah, for sure. Okay. Well, yeah, I just appreciate sort of your thoughts there.
	I guess I just wanted to bring it up and we'll see what spurs out of this or what bubbles up from this topic.
	So thank you.
	Beautiful. All right.
	Thanks so much. Take care.
	Bye. All right.
	You can unmute if you like.
	Okay. Hi, Steph.
	Hi. I have a more personal question.
	Sure. After I realized how bad my parents treat me in my childhood and that I don't really have to have any relationships with them anymore, I decided to defo them.
	So the first time was when my mom called me.
	I told her, That I feel bad when she calls me.
	And after that she just hung up.
	But I did try to talk with her again.
	This time I didn't really use RTR. I guess I was just scared or upset.
	But I did use a lot of conclusions.
	Because of you, I'm probably going to live 20 years less or something like that.
	I'm sorry, I just missed the question.
	First of all, I want to say that I'm sorry that you had this conversation in this kind of way.
	After that, I told her that if I Ever hear that she raised her hand at my sister's children.
	That we will meet in court.
	I wasn't really happy about that.
	But I didn't really know what to say.
	And after that I naively thought that our relationship is over.
	But funny thing, today she did call me.
	And asked if I feel resentful towards her.
	And I said no.
	And actually I felt kind of curious.
	What does she want from me?
	And I felt kind of happy.
	And I don't actually understand why I felt like that.
	Was it because I wanted to finish this relationship with the proper RTR? Or did I feel guilty?
	How did I treat her before?
	Or maybe you could clear it up.
	You mean you said when your mom called you felt happy?
	Yeah. Right, right.
	Well... Look, I don't think I can give you any answer to that because that's a lot of complex stuff to do with history and how the conversations have gone.
	I certainly think that if you have a desire to talk to somebody, that it's worth talking to them.
	I mean, particularly a parent, a family member.
	If you want to or if you have a desire to talk to your mom, I think you should talk to your mom.
	I wouldn't assume that your desire is some negative or nefarious thing.
	I think that you should try and talk to her and tell her what your issues are and explain to her as best you can how you feel and what your experience was of having her as a mom.
	It's always complex with parents, right?
	But all the complex stuff that's going on.
	So, if you have a desire to talk to her, I think that's a good thing to do.
	As I was trying to say, trust your instincts around that.
	And if you can find a way to connect and to get some understanding and to get some easing of past grievances or current grievances, I think that's great.
	If that doesn't happen, then it seems to me quite likely that your desire to talk to her will diminish over time.
	And then you can follow your instincts there if that's what your preference is.
	But, as always, you know, to put my usual caveat in, I would strongly suggest that you try and talk to a therapist if you're going through these kinds of conflicts with your parents.
	Because I think that it's such a challenging series of conversations to have that I think having somebody who's professional in your corner is really, really important to help you process everything that's going on, if that makes any sense.
	Yes, that makes perfect sense.
	I'm actually looking for a good therapist.
	I have seen a while, but he was not actually very good, so I'm still looking.
	Thank you for your information.
	Yeah, and keep looking.
	Yeah, of course. I mean, there are therapists out there, I'm sure, who aren't very good, and there are therapists out there who are very good.
	I think it's, you know, don't throw the baby out of the bathwater.
	Don't let a bad therapy experience keep you from what can be great, which is a very positive and helpful therapy experience.
	So I hope that you will keep looking.
	And you just wanted to express my sympathy for what you are going through at the moment.
	It's very tough.
	And, of course, this is an outcrop of what you went through in the past.
	So I just wanted to express some real sympathy for that as well.
	Thank you.
	I'm going to definitely keep trying to.
	Thank you. All right.
	Good for you, man. All right.
	We have time for more.
	Perhaps a question in the chat.
	it.
	Let's do it. Let's get the non-verbals in as well.
	There was a question about IP. Did you want to talk about that a bit?
	Sure, let's give it a shot. Let me find it real quick.
	So, Guest asks, people respect property lines generally because they are usually well-defined perimeters, rights of way, etc., which anyone with eyes can see.
	Is it possible there are more subtle fences or, on the other hand, people who can't see so well when it comes to the idea that there's no such thing as intellectual property?
	I mean, after all, doesn't one run into the going gulp problem if there's no way for investors or creators to make a claim to their property that they will just keep them secret in their basements forever?
	So the idea is that without intellectual property there will be less, or without IP laws or patents or whatever, there will be less innovation or creativity?
	That seems to be the tenor.
	Seems to be what he's asking. Like, people will get an idea and then they'll just hide it because there won't be no protection.
	Right. It's an odd...
	It's an odd argument to get delivered or sent to me.
	Who's handed out just about everything for free and have not hid things.
	Look, most of the internet is stuff that's handed out for free or maybe it's ad supported or whatever.
	Linux is free or at least is sort of user supported and so on.
	So, you know, I think it's important to remember that people do stuff for a wide variety of reasons.
	They're not just looking to maximize Economic value.
	So I think it was Salk, S-A-L-K, the guy who came up with the polio vaccine, he declined to patent it.
	He said, this cure belongs to the world.
	And I'm obviously quite glad that he did, because polio was a very nasty ailment to get, which could leave people immobilized for life or kill them.
	And there was a significant amount of panic and terror when polio was around.
	I think that's what got FDR, the president.
	And There was a great deal of fear and anxiety around things like public swimming pools and so on.
	And there was, oh, it's a terrifying thing to think of as a parent that there's some ailment floating around that could paralyze your child for life or kill them.
	And so he worked hard and came up with a vaccine and polio has to a large degree been, I think almost completely eliminated in the West, sort of like the smallpox thing.
	But he could have made a fortune, of course, with this vaccine if he patented it, but he didn't.
	He just said, no, I'm going to hand this out.
	And there are enormous numbers of communities who put significant amounts of work into creating stuff which they do not patent and do not attempt to control through any kind of legal means.
	There are of course other companies who take slightly different approaches.
	But in terms of whether this stimulates or inhibits creativity, the arguments that I've read appear to come down on the side that Patents inhibit the creativity rather than enhance it.
	So if you don't have a patent, then the way that you need to keep your clients or your customers is through continual innovation.
	Because other people can copy what you're doing.
	And so the way that you keep your...
	Client base or your customer base is through continual innovation.
	And so that's sort of one argument, and that does seem to be the case.
	So if you sort of look at societies where there's no particular patent law control, there's historical societies, I think there are even societies in the present where you can find a lack of IP law.
	They seem to be enormously creative.
	And the people do not hang on to their great ideas.
	Whether they want to just share them like SOC did with the polio vaccine or whether they, you know, for reasons of certain kinds of ethics or enthusiasm or like I do.
	Or if they want to continue to be innovative so that they can continue to create the very best experience for their customers, then that's another reason.
	So I'll sort of give you another example that's just off the top of my head.
	And you can read Stephan Kinsella's book, I think is available for free through Mises.org.
	I think it's called Against Intellectual Property.
	He's the guy who really revolutionized this stuff and is well worth reading.
	He's a very great expert at this and has instructed me to no end about this sort of stuff.
	And so to give you another example, right?
	So In terms of creativity, I think it's pretty fair to say that most expensive Hollywood movies are not very innovative in terms of imagination.
	I mean, you feel like you've seen the Transformers 3.
	It's not like anything really innovative.
	There's some technological innovation in terms of 3D or CGI or whatever, but that's not usually developed by the movie studios, but rather developed by outside third parties.
	Now, I would argue that one of the reasons for that lack of innovation in movies is the basic fact that if you have intellectual property control over your movie, then obviously you have a monopoly over what it is that you have created.
	What that means is that you can expect to make a lot of money.
	And what that means is that you will need to spend a lot of money, or you can spend a lot of money.
	Now, when you can spend a lot of money, you need to target your movie to the lowest common denominator in order to reap Profits, right?
	I mean, if I put out a podcast in Urdu, that would have a smaller audience potentially than a podcast that's out in English.
	Here's an example where innovation and also the number of films made and the degree of creativity or originality in those films is diminished as a result of IP. There's lots of different examples around how IP has really inhibited creativity.
	For instance, there are people called IP trolls.
	And what they do is they go around buying up IP or they sort of create patents or whatever.
	And I know I'm mixing up these terms and I apologize for my lack of precision.
	I just can't remember how they all detail out, but I think we know the general idea.
	And what they do is they'll basically just sit on a patent or sit on some sort of control over some sort of abstract thing and they'll just sue people.
	And some companies will settle just to avoid a lawsuit and some companies will fight and so on.
	And they're just called patent trolls.
	And it's a pretty significant area of business, unfortunately.
	And that has forced at least some people to stop developing, for instance, for the iPhone or the iPad.
	Because these patent trolls will just squat on you and they will make your life hell for quite a long period of time.
	So there's an example of where it does diminish that kind of creativity.
	So I think those are some ways of looking at it.
	I think the majority of servers on the internet run Apache, which I think is open source, on Linux, which is open source.
	And there's a huge amount of creativity and innovation that's going on in those fields.
	So I think that if you're going to sort of do the argument from effect, I think that it comes down on that you get better creativity and innovation without IP laws.
	I'll just mention Kinsella's got an article from 2009 on mises.org forward slash daily forward slash 3682 the case against IP a concise guide.
	I was just looking for another question.
	Steph, is it exploitation if someone accepts wages low enough to only cover basic things to exist like food and shelter?
	Is it exploitation if someone accepts wages low enough To only cover basic things to exist.
	Okay, that's a good question. Because this word, I mean, the exploitation does get kicked around quite a bit in economic circles and other kinds of circles.
	But I will tell you what I think.
	Well, there's one of two possibilities.
	Maybe that person is only economically worth that amount for whatever reason.
	So that's one reason why somebody may accept that wage.
	And I can't imagine why somebody would be worth that little.
	But let's just say, for example, somebody wants to write a novel and they only want to work two hours a day, and they don't have a lot of job skills, and so they will accept that, work two hours a day, and blah, blah, blah.
	I mean, it's a bit outside the bar, but it's a possibility.
	I don't think that's exploitation myself.
	The other... The possibility is that somebody is worth more than that, but they accept that anyway.
	So, I don't know, let's take an example like Brad Pitt can command $20 million for a movie, but for some reason he decides to go and work in a sweatshop for, you know, $2 a day on room and board or whatever.
	Well, I mean, the question would be why?
	And that would be a very tough question to answer.
	You know, maybe he would be researching a movie role or maybe, I don't know, he got tired of the hustle and bustle or whatever.
	And maybe you got tired of trying to kiss Angelina Jolie and falling off her cheekbones.
	I don't know. But it would be, I think, a question more for a psychologist to answer in that case.
	Now, somebody may have some innate abilities or capacities that are worth more than what they're willing to accept as pay, in which case I would assume that it might be a self-esteem or insecurity issue as to why they would be accepting lower wages.
	And that to me would be a tragedy of insecurity that would come out of some problem with their childhood, right?
	Most likely that they've not been raised to think about or evaluate or trust in their innate worth and so on.
	And so they had no ability to negotiate for better wages or conditions.
	And that to me, the primary fault there would lie with however they were raised.
	And yeah, so to me, that would be how they were raised.
	That would be the major issue.
	It's an interesting question.
	If somebody has really low self-esteem because they were raised not to think very well of themselves, is it justifiable for an employer to pay that person a low wage even though they're producing more economic value than the wage that they're being paid?
	Significantly more. I don't think it's particularly nice on the part of the I think a sensible employer...
	Would recognize, and I've sort of been in this position, not I think of underpaying people, but of recognizing that they have more value than they think they do.
	My particular goal when I was a manager in those situations was to do what I could to encourage the person to be more confident, to put them in situations where they could learn better skills and learn more assertive ways of doing things.
	So I would take some programmers who I thought had the potential and I'd Introduce them to the sales process so that they could feel more comfortable doing that kind of stuff.
	Because if you're a manager, I think that your goal is to try and make your employees as economically productive as possible.
	As a consequence, you will pay them more, but you will still be getting more value out of them than if they were sort of inner typists, so to speak.
	So somebody's asked, what are your thoughts on how something officially goes from being unowned to being owned in a philosophical sense?
	An example could be undiscovered land or gold deposits.
	In a river. Now, I've talked about this years ago in a couple of articles and podcasts, so I'll just touch on it briefly.
	You know, it's always good to get the refresher, at least I hope that it is.
	I think that, let's take the example of a fish, right?
	So when does a fish become owned?
	Well, I would argue that a fish becomes owned when it gets transferred from something that is unusable to something that is usable.
	So let's say that you want a nice orange roughy for dinner, but the orange roughy is currently 100 feet under the ocean, a mile offshore.
	Well it doesn't do you any good to want that orange roughy because you can't get access to it.
	Now if somebody takes a boat out, puts a net in and leaves Nemo behind but scoops up the orange roughy, then I think that's useful.
	Now you can actually have the orange roughy and eat it for dinner.
	And it's the same thing with gold.
	If I want a gold ring, then it doesn't do me much good if the gold is scattered in 40 tons of rock because I can't assemble it and get it to make a ring.
	Now, if somebody goes and drills it and puts the rock through all of the processes required to extract the gold, and I think there's some places where it's like 40 tons of rock will give you an ounce of gold.
	Well, they have now put the gold into a format that is usable for me.
	And so I think... In a sense, property rights is really the transformation from something that is unusable or inaccessible into something that is usable or accessible.
	So the various components that make up a laptop are of no use to me if I want to type a book.
	They're of no use to me if they're scattered throughout the world in the ground.
	But if somebody takes the trouble to extract and manufacture and create and write the operating system and so on, then these materials have been transformed into something that is unusable or inaccessible into something that is both accessible and usable.
	So I think that is the way that I would define this, these kinds of things.
	It's not so much that property is owned as it is created.
	In other words, the orange roughy, 100 feet under the sea a mile offshore, is unowned and can't be used in any way.
	The gold that is scattered throughout rock and half a mile under the ground, or diamonds or whatever, they're just not usable in any way.
	And so, property to me is created, not homesteaded, so to speak.
	And so, you know, if I said to you, I will sell you a square foot of air a mile above the earth, you wouldn't really be very interested because you couldn't use it for anything.
	It couldn't be transmuted or transferred into anything.
	Useable. And so I think those kinds of things are really important.
	So when I look at something like property rights, what I'm looking about is what property has been created that can be used by other people that formerly was not usable or was inaccessible.
	And so that, I think, is where the real ownership arises.
	So the orange ruffy that ends up on my plate, somebody had to go and get it.
	And if that person didn't go and get it, there would be no orange ruffy on my plate.
	So that would be my argument for that.
	Yeah, somebody said, sell me the air above an airport and I could monetize it.
	Yeah. Yeah, I think this is generally why land is considered to sort of go up into the stratosphere and then down into the center of the earth like an ever-expanding piece of pie.
	Somebody said, how do you think markets are going to react to the recent S&P USA downgrade this week?
	Do you think they will continue to go down sharply as they did on Thursday?
	I do think, again, I'm no investment guy, so this free advice from an amateur is worth exactly as much as you pay for it, as some people have said to me.
	But I do think that the markets are going to continue to slide.
	I think that the degree of malinvestment in the West, particularly in the USA, and to some degree, if not more degree, in Europe, the degree of malinvestment is truly staggering.
	And You know, malinvestment is, you know, we built too many houses and not enough of whatever else was supposed to be built in the absence of building too many houses.
	Was it 10 or 11 percent of the U.S. housing stock is currently unoccupied, unused, unoccupied, staggering, astounding.
	And so the degree of malinvestment and, I mean, government programs are a form of malinvestment and government agencies are a form of malinvestment.
	The amount of malinvestment in the U.S. economy has become truly staggering.
	And it is politically inexpedient would be the least amount of emphasis that you could put on it.
	It is politically inexpedient to allow market correction in the form of malinvestment because everybody who's going to get corrected will vote you out of office and all the people who benefit from that correction have no idea what happened or why they have a job or why they have an additional income and it takes a long time.
	This is why, of course, democracy and special interest bribery is synonymous.
	Somebody's asked, do I ever notice a change in likes and dislikes as you've delved into philosophy and psychology?
	In entertainment media, for example, I used to find myself drawn to wide-open worlds with deep-back histories, such as Dune or Lord of the Rings.
	However, after a year of exploring the ideas of voluntarism and personal psychology, I find character dramas to be much more engrossing.
	Oftentimes, many movies that deal with subjects I know more about, usually glorifying war or politics I just cannot watch.
	Yeah, I think that's a very good observation.
	I think that's very true.
	When you develop self-empathy, then you develop empathy for others and sympathy for some others.
	And I find myself much more interested in personal stories, personal histories, realism, naturalism, and everyday stuff.
	I'm less drawn to galactic battles.
	I'm less drawn to fantasy.
	I still enjoy it to some degree, but...
	It's less interesting to me now.
	And war, I just can't watch that stuff.
	I can't watch that stuff anymore.
	I can't watch violence anymore in the media.
	And it's quite a lot.
	It's quite a lot to see, even when you're not looking for it.
	So, I think that there are some significant changes that occur in your consumption, or certainly in my consumption of popular consumption, Art and literature, so...
	All right.
	Somebody's asked, what do you think Ayn Rand would make of the present American economy?
	Well, I personally think that she would think that it was about 40 pages from the end of Atlas Shrugged, minus John Gall's speech.
	I think that she would...
	I think that she would be sad.
	I think that she would be sad that the predictions...
	Her capacity to predict these things so many decades ago did so little to alter how they turned out.
	And I can understand that.
	And I think it would be a vindication of her theories.
	And I think it would also be a condemnation of her solutions.
	She got involved in politics and so on.
	And I certainly try to learn as best I can from people who've loved freedom and pacifism before.
	I've tried to figure out what they did wrong so that if I'm going to make mistakes, at least there'll be new mistakes.
	And so hopefully that will be the, you know, new mistakes is about the best you can hope for sometimes.
	And so that's why I've sort of focused a lot more on the personal and so on.
	We do have somebody added on to the call just now.
	Sleepy Salsa. Sleepy Salsa.
	Good. Yes. Hi. Thank you for having me on.
	It's actually really good.
	I've been looking forward to talking to you, Molyneux, for quite some time, so this is actually quite exciting for me.
	I actually had several questions to ask you, but I think I'll just start off with one, at least for today, depending on how much time you have.
	What is the, how should militias be treated?
	Because obviously we've all heard of this kind of stuff before, and even if you go back in history, the entire notion of a militia is more of a minarchist concept.
	Would there be something like that as far as like a stateless society goes, or how would that work exactly?
	You mean sort of a neighborhood watch with weapons?
	Yeah, that would be the one way to put it, yeah.
	Right. Well, I'll try a new way of approaching this.
	I've sort of answered about military stuff one way before, but I'll pillage from myself in a violation of IP law from 45 minutes ago.
	And I will say this, that before you have a vaccine...
	Against an illness like polio, everybody's terrified of polio.
	And they say, well, how are we going to deal with polio?
	And how's polio going to be solved?
	And oh my god, what if my child gets polio?
	How much insurance do I need? And how am I going to do it?
	Everybody's worried about it. Can they go to the public pool?
	Can they play with this kid? I heard somewhere over in this town some kid got polio.
	Should we keep our kid away? Everybody's trying to organize their life around this dread disease.
	And Yet when the vaccination comes in, it vanishes from people's heads and they no longer have to organize their lives around avoiding or preventing or trying to cure polio because the vaccination isn't.
	So as far as police and prisons and militias and armies and so on, well these are all precautions against the virus of violence.
	These are all precautions against the virus of violence.
	The only way that a stateless society is going to come into being, according to the arguments I put forward over the years, is when children are raised without aggression.
	When children are raised without violence.
	When children are raised without abuse.
	That is the inoculation against violence.
	And that is how a free society and a society without war And with no particular criminality, I mean, somebody may have a brain tumor and go haywire and shoot someone or strangle someone, but that I think would be recognized more as a medical ailment than a problem of morality.
	And so if we can raise children with honest and clear and philosophical values, With full respect for their personhood from as early an age as conceivable, and I certainly found that it kicked in for my daughter at about a year, and certainly now that she's two and a half, she has full personhood, in my mind, and has had for quite some time.
	Then we won't have this virus called violence in society.
	We just won't. And so, for me, your question, and I mean this with all due respect, your question to me is like saying...
	How are we going to deal with polio after we have a vaccination for polio?
	No, no. Well, you won't need to.
	You won't need malicious once you have a stateless society, because the only way you're going to have a stateless society is when children are raised peacefully, and then you simply won't need them.
	So those just become irrelevant.
	Okay, so really a lot of what – and I've read several of your books.
	I'm still working through them and they actually are very, very eye-opening at the very least.
	But I think a lot of what you're saying really does come down to peaceful parenting as far as the closest thing to a silver bullet then, right?
	Well, a silver bullet has connotations of supernatural faith or mysticism and so on.
	Okay, minus that then. No, I mean, I just sort of wanted to point out that this is all pretty well documented.
	This is, as far as, I mean, as far as I've been able to explore the science and as far as I've talked to the experts involved, this is about as proven as you can get that violence arises from childhood trauma.
	The studies have been very clear on the cause and effect and on the changes within the brain and so in particular the extension and expansion of the fight or flight mechanism when exposed to early violence and aggression or neglect.
	The diminishment of the neofrontal cortex which is for reasoning and for the suppression of instincts.
	And so all of these things are very well documented.
	I don't have enough expertise.
	I don't know if anyone does to say it's an open and shut, ironclad case.
	And there certainly do seem to be, through epigenetics, or the idea that genes get turned on and off based upon...
	be that there are some people who are more susceptible to becoming aggressive if they are aggressed against his children, if they carry particular genes.
	So it's not like everybody's the same with this.
	You could have two kids in a family who both get beaten up and one becomes violent and one doesn't.
	That's because one kid may have this gene that triggers more brain changes based on So it's not an open and shut black and white case with each individual, but the science does seem to be very clear.
	That if children are raised without violence, they will no more speak the language of violence than if children are raised without any Mandarin around, that they'll just spontaneously start speaking Mandarin when they get to be 18 years old.
	Alright, that makes sense.
	Well, I guess one question I've always wanted to ask you, as far as the stateless society goes, is that yes, obviously if people were raised more peacefully and a couple other things that are related to that, there would be dramatically less violence and stuff like that.
	And it's not just systematic stuff like with the state, but also with common petty level, what we think of as petty criminals, like muggers and that kind of thing.
	My additional question is that let's assume all of this goes through well.
	We get rid of the state.
	Everything's fairly peaceful for the most part.
	How would, in a volunteeristic society, would psychopaths be dealt with?
	And what I mean by that is just people who from a...
	Either due to personality or genetics or whatever, they may have been raised in the best way, with the best possible conditions, fantastic parents, but for some reason, they like torturing people as a hobby or whatever the case is.
	How would the rare individuals, how would they be dealt with if you don't have prisons and stuff like that?
	Well, I mean...
	So there's two possibilities with psychopaths, right?
	Either they have some capacity for rational thinking, or they don't, right?
	If they don't, then they would be...
	they would not have the free responsibilities of sovereign and independent adults.
	Right, so their parents would say, gosh, you know, we have, like, so let's just say there's some kid who's born mentally handicapped, right?
	So the parents hopefully will have taken out some insurance about this ahead of time, right?
	Because it would be pretty cheap.
	And so they would say, okay, so before I even try to get pregnant, I'm going to have, we're going to buy insurance.
	We find out, and there may be some variation in the price of that insurance based upon The age of the mom or whether there are any other genetic factors that may predispose of family history or whatever.
	But overall, it's going to be fairly cheap because it's a pretty rare condition.
	And so the parents are going to say, okay, so unfortunately, we did have a child who's born with a mental handicap, so we're going to need to save some additional money.
	There's going to be the insurance and so on.
	And so that person is going to be set for life.
	The insurance company is going to take care of them through accredited facilities or whatever, right?
	I mean, that person is going to be taken care of for life.
	Now, if the psychopath is sort of cruel and nasty, well, this is going to be seen very early on, right?
	So this doesn't just pop, you know, somebody doesn't turn from Gandhi to Charles Manson, you know, on their 18th birthday, right?
	So there's going to be indications of this ahead of time, you know, cruelty to animals, cruelty to other children, and so on, right?
	So hopefully, of course, right, there's going to be Intervention as early as possible because the schools aren't going to want this kind of kid around, right?
	Certainly the other parents won't want them.
	So there's going to be some sort of intervention in society ahead of time.
	And so either there's a way to cure this behavior or there isn't, right?
	So again, we're just sort of going through the logic tree, right?
	If there's a way to cure this behavior, then the person won't need to be dealt with as an adult because they'll be reformed, so to speak, right?
	So some sort of therapy, some sort of, I don't know what, who knows, maybe medication, who knows, right?
	And so then that person is cured.
	Now, if the person is not cured, then the parents face a significant challenge, which is that they are not going to have a school for their kid, right?
	Yeah. So kind of like ostracism then, by default.
	Well, you know, I mean, if I'm a school, I'm not going to want some crazy, cruel, eye-gouging kid in with my other students, right?
	You know, I'll hopefully get the parents to the right resources and help them out as best I can, but you just can't do that, right?
	In the same way you run a match factory, you don't invite the arsonist over, right?
	It's just not the way you roll.
	Yeah, it's irrational at a very high level, yeah.
	Right. So, now, of course, then the situation is, well, what if the child simply cannot be reformed?
	Well, then the parents are responsible for that child, right?
	I mean, nobody else can be, right?
	It's their kids, right? Yeah, that makes sense.
	So what would the options be available for parents?
	And this obviously would be very rare once you get rid of the systematic stuff and whatnot.
	This will be like once in a blue moon.
	But yeah, I mean, if you're...
	Yeah, yeah, sure. Well, society is not going to want this, I don't know, potential...
	I mean, okay, so let's just say he's...
	I mean, it's hard to say, right?
	Because you can't sort of... If somebody's mean, you can't sort of, quote, throw them in anarchy jail or whatever, right?
	Because that's preventative justice, which is not really justice, right?
	And so the parents are responsible for the child's actions.
	In a free society, they would have to be, right?
	I mean, this is, I think, true even now.
	If your kid goes and kicks in a window, it's the parents who have to pay for the window to be fixed, right?
	And so I think that's something that would be the case in a free society.
	And the parents would want to have less insurance, so they'd want to have as few liabilities through their kids as possible, right?
	And so there would be DROs, if this term means anything, dispute resolution organizations, or there would be agencies that would say, well, here's how to minimize the risks of having such a kid in your life.
	You've got to try this, you've got to try that, you've got to try the other.
	And, you know, hopefully that would be another round of defense if the school thing didn't work out.
	And then, you know, maybe there's still a few people who trickle through and who come to adulthood as...
	Intelligent, rational psychopaths or sociopaths, right?
	Yeah, the high-functioning ones, the usual ones that are also attracted to the state, exactly.
	Well, yeah, of course. I mean, the first thing we do is don't give them armies, right?
	That's kind of obvious, right, right.
	Yeah. Well, look, if this person goes out and harms other people, then they would be subject to exactly the same responses that other people would.
	I mean, there would be no particular difference, right?
	And again, this is all theory.
	Who knows, right? And if this is even going to be an issue, again, we might be talking about how to cure polio after polio is cured, right?
	But let's say that this is an issue.
	There's two ways that this can occur.
	That this kind of criminality can be dealt with.
	The first way is the person goes and lives in the hills of Montana, 100 miles away from any human settlement.
	Right? I think we can agree that that does deal with the problem.
	Yeah, you basically ostracize the guy, kind of like what the Greeks and the Romans did and whatnot.
	You get them away so they have as little opportunity as possible to harm other people.
	Right, right, right. So their, you know, their name, their fingerprints, their retina scans, their whatever goes into a database and they don't have a DRO and nobody wants to deal with them because this is the Mark of Cain or whatever, right?
	So this is one way. You're just not in civil society anymore.
	Like, sorry, didn't work out.
	We gave it a shot. But we as a society are breaking up with you.
	Getting a divorce. Walking away.
	We're getting a divorce, right? Right.
	And... So that's sort of one solution.
	Now the other solution is that the person agrees to withhold himself or herself from certain behaviors in exchange for a minimal and hopefully growing with good behavior over time participation in civil society, right?
	So, I mean, there would be...
	I'm just guessing here, right?
	But this is sort of how it works in my head, whether this is going to be true or not, who knows, right?
	But there would be the ultimate level of social acceptance, which is where you can do a 99-year, $100 billion deal on a handshake because you're just that well-respected and so on, right?
	And people will lend you money at 0.01% interest because your credit is that good and whatever, right?
	You get as much positive treatment, as few restrictions as humanly possible because...
	You've just earned that kind of stellar reputation.
	So the top tier. Now, for people who've been bad or whatever, right?
	Then there's going to be lower tiers of participation.
	And this, you know, this is nothing new.
	This is all, right? There's different levels of investment grade worthiness or, you know, S&Ps downgrades or whatever.
	I mean, they shouldn't be a monopoly and certainly shouldn't be associated with the government.
	But... You know, in a free society it would be quite different.
	So if you do something to harm someone, well of course you face the risk that they just shoot you, right?
	That's, you know, that risk is sort of faced anyway.
	Although I don't think there'd be a lot of guns in a free society.
	Just, again, it's like having, you don't have an EpiPen if you're not allergic to anything.
	But there is that possibility.
	But if you do something to harm someone, then you're just, you're going to get downgraded based upon the severity of what it is that you've done.
	you get a non-grade, right?
	Yeah, I see what you're saying, yeah.
	Right, so like I say, look, you can no longer do this.
	The people who, you have to take the bus because nobody's gonna insure you for your car, nobody wants you driving on the roads, and you have to rent, nobody's gonna let you buy a house, you get downgraded, right?
	Now you're either gonna accept that downgrade and say, "Whoops, I did a bad thing," I've got to live with this downgrade for a year.
	I've got to pay back this money to the people I did harm to.
	And if I fulfill all of those conditions, then I'm going to get upgraded again, right?
	And of course, everyone says, well, the DROs will just downgrade you and you'll have to bribe them to re-upgrade you.
	And it's all nonsense, right?
	Because there would be any DRO that treated people unjustly would lose its customers overnight because that's a fear that everyone would have.
	Right, because they lose their reputation as being unfair business practices, etc.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. Right, so you're going to get downgraded.
	Now, I don't know, there may be some instant downgrades that can never be recovered.
	Like if you say, for instance, go and shoot 90 young people in Norway, then there's probably not, you know, you have to drive a moped, not a motorbike.
	It's probably going to be like, you're done, right?
	And so you're either out of society or, because I think a lot of people wouldn't want to go live and try and eke out a solitary existence somewhere outside of society.
	That's a miserable situation.
	It's a horrible, highly risky situation to be in.
	So people may just say, okay, so lock me up.
	I'm not going to take banishing.
	I'm going to take lock me up.
	And, you know, I'll work for my keep and all that.
	But obviously, freedom is not for me.
	So that would be one way of doing it.
	And, you know, ostracism, complete ostracism would be another.
	And of course, everything's privately owned.
	So it's pretty hard to find a place where you can Right, you have to go into the wilderness where there isn't somebody who owns something.
	No, it's fine, Molyneux.
	Yeah, exactly. If you were in a position like that, you'd literally have to go out into the very edges of civilization to the utter wilderness where literally nobody actually owns anything out there.
	It would pretty much be you, the sky, a couple dolphins maybe if you're near the sea.
	Yeah, exactly. Most places near the sea, people want.
	But yeah, and it's like, oh, now I have a toothache.
	Oh, shit, I've got appendicitis, right?
	I mean, you need a lot of stuff from society.
	So yeah, I see that kind of thing approaching, that you're either going to have the person surrender their liberties in exchange for a diminished existence within society in terms of freedom, or if they simply won't do that, and this would be like one in a hundred million people.
	I just can't imagine that's going to be very common.
	And then they're going to go out into the woods.
	And look, if they don't like the woods, then they can come back in and submit to whatever loss of freedoms society as a whole.
	None of this involves the non-aggression principle, right?
	None of this violates the non-aggression principle, right?
	Ostracism does not violate the non-aggression principle.
	And so people say, well, it's mean or it's cold or it's cruel.
	It's like, no, no, because if you don't want to do business with someone, if you don't want to sell someone your wares, if you don't want to house someone or sell them a car, then nobody has to.
	Yeah, exactly. It's kind of like when people would mention about going on a date, like if the girl tells the fella that, no, I don't want to date you, that's somehow cruel or whatever, that she's rejecting him.
	And that's where it's like, well, I mean, technically she doesn't have a gun to her head, so it's a choice, right?
	And so, yeah, it's definitely the liberty of association, absolutely.
	I also just wanted to ask you very briefly, and I hope you don't get this question too much, but I don't know.
	It just seems to me that anarcho-capitalism and agorism kind of seem to be the same thing.
	Is there really much of a difference between the two or not?
	I don't think there is in terms of the theory.
	And I'm not an expert on...
	I've seen like three presentations on agorism.
	Just enough to know how to pronounce it correctly.
	But as far as I understand it, agorism is a strategy of...
	At the moment, it's a strategy of attempting to minimize one's exposure to the state through a variety of economic and social means.
	I don't think that there's any agorist who would continue to do that in the absence of a state.
	So I think it's more of a strategy for dealing with the state.
	So it's more of an intermediary thing then?
	Yeah, that's right.
	That's right.
	It's not, it's sort of like, you know, when there was slavery, there was an underground railroad, which was only to do with slavery, right?
	And once there's no slavery, you don't.
	Right, exactly.
	Because it's usefulness is more, yeah, there's no more need or desire to do that.
	Yeah, exactly. - Exactly.
	Well, actually something I've been trying to do is quite simply just find out what are our options for dealing with the situation we're all suffering under.
	And so when I hear you mentioning about peaceful parenting, you're like the only guy that's actually mentioned that.
	Initially when I heard that because I watched your Bomb the Brain series, I was like, well, actually this guy's got a point.
	So I've just been kind of learning just from all the various different types of people, grassroots people and whatnot, just what the options are.
	But what I thought was interesting about Gorsen was that he mentioned something called the counter-economics, which actually kind of sounded like the underground economy, I think.
	But I don't know.
	I'm trying to kind of figure out what to do.
	Yes, there's a place for the non-aggression principle.
	There's a place for having your own...
	A lot of the other FDR people I've talked to have mentioned about Forming your own voluntary society just like your network of people you stay in contact with and you don't associate with people who like this state or anything or who would be happy if the state used violence against you and stuff like that.
	Coupling your own personal version of a voluntary society with peaceful parenting with possibly this agorist notion of the counter-economy, I guess technically you could combine all these different methods and just see how much liberty you can actually get.
	I don't know. I don't know, which has just been something I've been looking into just to see if it's even possible or not.
	Yeah, look, I mean, I, you know, this family stuff, I mean, it's certainly some of the more volatile, if not the most volatile stuff that I've discussed.
	And, I mean, I would love to be proven wrong about peaceful parenting.
	I would be. I would love to, because, look, there are, you don't get into a lot of trouble in this world talking about economics.
	Right. You know, people may disagree with you and all that.
	You don't get into a lot of trouble in this world talking about politics.
	You don't get into a lot of trouble talking about property rights or whatever, right?
	You can get into trouble talking about parenting because parenting is a very sensitive topic and, you know, there are good parents out there and there are some not so good parents out there.
	And the good parents usually email me to say, yay, thanks, that was very helpful and all that.
	And the bad parents take other strategies which are difficult and unpleasant.
	And so I would look, I mean, I would love to not talk about the family.
	Unfortunately, I'm sort of honor-bound to follow the facts as far as I can.
	And there are a number of facts that have dictated, so to speak.
	I mean, when you're a rationalist and an empiricist, this is what you've got to do.
	Of course, of course. Whether you like it or not.
	Yeah, exactly. And you can't...
	Oh, sorry, Molyneux.
	Yes, you have to go where the evidence takes you, and even a lot of the kind of minarchist or constitutional types who I do spend most of my time with, in one sense or another, because that's usually the people who are available.
	Yeah, I mean, they kind of understand it to one degree, but then other ones don't.
	So I kind of have to mention, well, look, just follow it.
	You know voting doesn't work, right?
	Right. Okay, good.
	Then why do you guys like protesting?
	You know it doesn't work, right?
	And then I explain, and I go through the evidence, and I'll mention certain case studies like the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle, or I'll mention other stuff, and I'll mention about the cops specifically prepare for stuff like that, and then they say, but it's our right to do it, right? I was like, well, maybe, but frankly, it's immaterial either way because they're really...
	Well, you only have that right because it's not going to change anything.
	Fair enough. If it was going to change something, you wouldn't have that right anyway.
	Yeah, so look, I can't say to people who are religious, look, you have to follow the reason and you have to follow the evidence.
	I can't say to statists and to minarchists, follow the reason and follow the evidence.
	If I myself am not willing to do that in areas that I'm uncomfortable with.
	And yeah, you bring up peaceful parenting as a, quote, political strategy, and people talk to you like a carp that suddenly just emerged from your armpit singing Ave Maria.
	I mean, it's like, what on earth would parenting have to do with our political situation?
	Unfortunately, if you follow the science, if you follow the evidence, if you follow the facts, this is where you have to go.
	I, in many ways, would love...
	If Ron Paul could achieve liberty, do you think I would get criticisms for throwing whatever weight I have behind Ron Paul?
	It would be fantastic. I would love it.
	If something as non-controversial as pounding lawn signs for Ron Paul...
	Would achieve liberty in this world.
	I think it would be fantastic and I I have had arguments out there for years, and I'm always open to examples to the contrary.
	Yeah, but it doesn't work. But it seems to me.
	Yeah, but it doesn't work. It doesn't work.
	And this is even before we get, like, the very first video I ever saw of yours was the truth about voting.
	Outstanding, by the way. Very unique argument about, actually, the morality of voting itself, which no one has talked about before.
	You're the first one I've ever noticed.
	And it actually was very well pointed out, and I do mention it.
	Actually, to be fair, to be fair, I got pretty schooled by Wendy McHale Roy, who you might want to check out.
	Okay, fine. I got pretty schooled by Wendy McElroy on that, so I'm not going to claim.
	I think some of that argued. Well, yeah, but even on a pragmatic level only, it doesn't work, even if you vote for third-party people or you vote in protest or whatever.
	I mean, the only thing you can do is just abstain and instead of voting, do something else.
	I mean, there's people right now actually trying to organize and form groups of one kind or another.
	It'll be different versions.
	Some people are going to go off and do the homesteading thing.
	Other ones are trying to form like survivalists or prepper groups.
	I mean, they're trying to kind of handle anything.
	I mean, technically, without realizing it, they're forming their own voluntary society, which I find is a hoot.
	Yeah, I mean, people are trying every possible method that works to secure their liberty as best as they can.
	And some stuff works, and actually, most of the stuff doesn't work.
	Some of the stuff does work, and other stuff is experimental.
	And yeah, I mean, if people...
	And some of it may work at an individual level.
	Right, exactly. And so... But it may not work at a social level or at a permanent level.
	No, no, that makes perfect sense, actually.
	And one thing I was trying to do was kind of give a typology to whatever options we have available.
	And, you know, yeah, some things are going to work on one...
	You know, on one scale versus another and stuff like that, which is something I've been really looking into.
	But actually, specifically, one thing I've been really examining and talking to certain people about in depth and studying really is like internal balkanization or infighting, like you have with a lot of these different kind of groups, whether it's the constitutional types or with other people and whatnot.
	And it's kind of interesting, Molyneux.
	It's almost like I've been working from the other end of where you've been working from with the families and with like studying families.
	Because it seems like a lot of people who like to do infighting, whether it's causing trouble, I don't want to get too much into that.
	The point, though, is what I've noticed is that if you look into their backgrounds, and some people were able to look at their backgrounds and whatnot, they either come from broken families...
	Or they had a troubled childhood.
	Or their personality was where they were kind of like weak and cowardly people.
	And then you look into why were they that way?
	Well, it had to do something with the way they were raised.
	And so every time, I mean, it was literally, and I thought, well, maybe this is just a coincidence.
	And then no, it wasn't that at all.
	What happened And so I was thinking, like, why is this one constitutionalist guy fighting the other one?
	They're supposed to be on the same side, right?
	Well, the point was that when you actually looked at how, you know, their personality and how they grew up and all that, really it showed that there was some family problems.
	Then there were other cases where they didn't care at all about the political situation or, like, bigger stuff like that with the state.
	What they were doing was that they were projecting their personal issues or smaller level, like family level stuff, onto I think we're good to go.
	of their personality or how they were raised.
	As time has gone on, I've actually looked more into what you've put out and other people have mentioned about peaceful parenting.
	I'm like, you know what? A lot of infighting would actually not occur If people were better raised, which is also kind of part of the problem when people are trying to organize and form groups of any kind, quite frankly.
	Why it's so hard to find good quality personnel is because people have been kind of screwed over by how they were raised.
	And like your first book, for example, really kind of examined that as well.
	So even people who are allegedly like-minded, whether they're both anarchists or both constitutionalists or even the monarchists, yeah, the monarchists that are running right now in America, whatever they claim to be allegedly like-minded, they'll fight with each other because a lot of it has to do with how they were raised in other weird personal issues they've never actually solved.
	Right. Right, yeah.
	So, I mean, I've just tried as rigorously as I can to follow the reason and evidence to try.
	It's sort of clear your mind.
	Let's say I have no history, no prior prejudices.
	How would I survey the landscape of the freedom movement and look at, you know, what has been working and what has not been working?
	And if what has been tried isn't working, and I think we have to at least admit that what has been tried in the past, with all the best intentions perhaps in the world, isn't working...
	No, we're good to go. It's part of the freedom movement, but is unthinkable within the freedom movement.
	And unthinkable doesn't mean, like, people think of it and say, oh, that's terrible.
	But they just, they literally don't think of it.
	It's simply something which is not talked about.
	Not because it's avoided, but it's just, you know, like, you and I are not sitting here discussing the digestive tract system of orcs, because, I mean, it doesn't exist.
	We wouldn't think of talking about something like that, because it wouldn't ever strike us.
	And it has to be something that conforms With the general ethics of the non-aggression principle.
	And the only thing that fulfills all of those standards is parenting.
	You know, parenting is a very, very important aspect of the non-aggression principle.
	Right, so I'm just going to...
	Somebody put demandeuphoria.blogspot.com.
	This is something... Which I thought was interesting.
	Because to me, the non-aggression principle has to apply to children first and foremost.
	It has to. And children cannot physically aggress against adults in that way.
	Oh, and then I'll ask you why you were using my last name.
	But anyway, so this is a blog post from May 23rd, 2011.
	When am I allowed to hit someone?
	So, am I allowed to hit someone who isn't obeying me?
	Are you over 18?
	No. No.
	We don't hit, use your words.
	Right? So if you're a kid, then your parent is going to say, we don't hit, use your words.
	And so absolutely not.
	You're not allowed to hit. Now, if you are over 18, is the subject human?
	If not, well, that would be animal cruelty, so absolutely not allowed to hit a dog who's disobeying with you.
	Is the subject human?
	Is he under 18?
	If he is not under 18, then you're not allowed to hit him because that would be assault.
	If he is under 18, then the question is, is he your child?
	And if he is not, say, is he your student?
	And if he's not your student, then you're not allowed to hit him, unless you're in a bunch of states there or whatever, right?
	But if he is your child, then the caption here is, well, he probably deserves it, go right ahead.
	This is really, really confusing and a mess.
	Like, it's a complete mess, philosophically and rationally and morally and so on.
	And if hitting children is as prevalent as it seems to be in society, then of course that's going to have an effect on how children perceive authority as adults.
	Of course it is. And for us to think that People's inability to see coercion in society has nothing to do with any aggression or any violence they may have experienced as children.
	That's just ignoring the evidence.
	I would love to be proven wrong.
	I would love to retract everything I've ever said about child abuse and statism and the future freedom and peace of the world.
	Because it is controversial stuff and it is challenging stuff.
	It's earned me friends and it's earned me enemies.
	And I would love to drop the whole topic completely in some ways, but unfortunately, or fortunately for the future if I'm right, I don't have that choice.
	I don't have the choice to just say, well, despite all the reason and evidence, I'm just going to not talk about it because...
	Until somebody comes up with reason and evidence against what it is that I'm saying, or against what the science seems to be saying, then we're stuck, you know, we're stuck with the truth, no matter how difficult it may be.
	So, and now, so why do you use my last name?
	I'm sorry? I was just curious why you kept referring to me as...
	Oh, I'm sorry, I meant to say Mr.
	Molitor, sorry. No, I'm just wondering why you wouldn't just say Stafford.
	Oh, is that how you prefer to be addressed?
	Oh, okay, that's fine. Well, anyway, thank you, Stefan, for answering my questions and whatnot, and I would like to call you again in the future.
	Oh, listen, I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation.
	You are, you know, like all listeners, you're absolutely welcome to call in at any time, and I really do appreciate the time and the thoughtfulness.
	I also really wanted to compliment you, and I'm sorry if I don't do this as often as I should with you amazing callers.
	I'm sorry if I don't, but...
	Your speaking skills are fantastic.
	I mean, seriously, it's beautiful.
	I mean, the clarity, the concision, the precision, I mean, it really is amazing to hear you speak.
	Well, I appreciate the sentiment, Stefan.
	I really do, and it does mean a lot.
	And yeah, there are actually more people like me who unfortunately do not get on stuff like Russia Today, so a lot of us are kind of rooting you on and all that.
	But a lot of us are busy with trying to engage in various other projects.
	So I do think if a lot of the time we can talk with each other and share evidence and observations and all, I think that would actually benefit us all in a very big mutual way because if we're all kind of isolated in our own certain pockets, we can do some things to some degree.
	But if we can try and get together and kind of compare notes, it's kind of like the – The Parable of the Six Blind Men and the Elephant.
	Have you ever heard of that? Yes, but for those who haven't, please elucidate.
	Okay, the short version is, I think it was an old Indian parable, where you had literally six blind men and an elephant, and each one was trying to literally feel up an elephant and ascertain what it was.
	So you have one blind guy feeling up the trunk and saying, oh, it's like, you know...
	Yeah, yeah. And somebody was feeling up the side of the elephant saying it's a wall.
	Somebody feels up the leg, says it's a pillar.
	Guy feels up the ear and says it's a fan.
	Guy who feels up the tail thinks it's a snake.
	And the problem is that they all...
	of their own independent conclusions because they were very compartmentalized.
	They didn't really know what an elephant was.
	They knew certain features, but they didn't really know what it was.
	Now, had the blind men actually compared notes, they would have a very, a lot less compartmentalized view and actually would understand much more fully by comparing those different features what an elephant really was.
	And the whole parable was an example of how to try and ascertain reality.
	Right, right. And I would certainly argue that, I mean, this is why I try to engage as much as possible with listeners in conversations and Sunday shows.
	Philosophy is a conversational and collective endeavor.
	You know, the last thing I think that anybody who's in this field wants is for philosophy to be identified with any particular individual.
	Philosophy is a collective endeavor that is empowered by everybody who participates in it.
	And so I can no more see the full elephant than I think anybody else can, but it is in conversation through correction, through feedback, through criticism, and through praise at times.
	That is how we get to see the full shape of the elephant.
	It is not something that's owned by anyone, and it is a collective endeavor to outline this beast.
	Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I was basically saying, hey, I mean, we're fallible creatures in the story.
	That's being a blind man is by being a fallible creature.
	And see, this is the problem I have with people that are basically solopsists or folks that think that, oh, you create your own reality.
	I think you've heard a lot of this. Some of it's kind of the New Age-ish stuff that even a lot of political dissidents are kind of subscribing to.
	Some of it does come from David Icke specifically.
	But it comes from other areas as well and it's basically just repackaged solopsism and actually repackaged a lot of other things too.
	But yeah, like you create your own reality and you're kind of conjuring it up out of nowhere.
	It's like, well, wait a minute. Either, you know, the sky is there and I am perceiving this phenomenon that's there.
	But I don't think the sky needs me or a wall or a desk or a chair needs me to perceive it.
	It just exists on its own.
	The syllopsis. Well, yeah.
	So, yes. The syllopsis, the moment they come up and say, you, I don't even let them get any further.
	Wait a minute. Am I just part of your reality?
	Well, why are you talking to me then, right?
	I don't talk to hand puppets.
	I don't talk to my video game characters.
	I mean, come on. Are you crazy?
	The moment they come up to me and say, you, because they want to say, you create your own reality, it's like, well, you just started talking to me.
	So, clearly, there's something objective between us and I don't exist in your head altogether.
	Well, you're even crazier than you see.
	Well, yeah, exactly. I'm glad you brought that up.
	That's even funnier. Yeah, where if you're talking to a human being, if the solopsis really were right, whoever you're talking to, which is a figment of your imagination anyway, and ironically, the solopsis would be as well.
	So if you're creating it, all you have to do is just snap your fingers and just do something else.
	You could fly, you could...
	But obviously, that's not the key.
	Or just snap your fingers and, you know, if somebody's disagreeing with me and they think that you create your own reality, you can just say, well, snap your fingers and have...
	We agree with you, because I'm just part of your reality.
	So just do that, and then we don't have to have this.
	Right. And then, of course, because there is solopsis, then you can kind of see where the contradictions just start piling up like a big, fallacious pile of you-know-what.
	But, yeah. And this to me would go back to childhood, right?
	So why would you need to create a reality that you could control?
	Well, obviously, it would be because your existing reality was unbearable in some way.
	And again, people who don't understand that, the source of philosophy in early childhood is, they're just, I don't think they're ever going to break out of the matrix, right?
	The matrix is early childhood.
	That's the fundamental reality.
	And our hope, of course, in the long run is to have a matrix, a childhood that isn't in the matrix, but is in reality.
	But for the most part, I think the childhood is in a kind of matrix.
	And it's something that I have sympathy for a lot of parents with, right?
	I mean, I think philosophers have done a terrible job of trying to work out a system of ethics that is clear and understandable and comprehensible to parents and to children.
	And in the absence of philosophical support, parents are left with emotional tricks, in a sense, to attempt to get children to do the right thing.
	And they end up with inconsistencies.
	They may end up with sort of manipulation or guilt or bullying.
	Because, you know, how do you get your kid to be good when the goodness you're trying to subscribe your kid to is not rational or consistent?
	And I certainly don't expect parents to Invent morality for every...
	You know, when they become parents, you're sleep deprived and you're busy and all of that.
	But, you know, I fault the philosophers in particular who've not taken up this flag and this banner to help out the world.
	And so, you know, I do think that the onus is upon...
	And I talk about this in our truth, but I do think that the onus is upon parents if they're confronted with limitations of their ethical thinking to say, yes, those are limitations in my ethical thinking.
	You know, because honesty is a virtue and certainly something we teach our kids.
	So... Yeah, I think that we've really got to just keep pounding the ethics and make it as easy as possible for people to figure out how to communicate this stuff, which is why I've done a podcast on UPB for Kids and all that kind of stuff.
	And I'm certainly talking about...
	I'm having full-on UPB discussions with my daughter that are just completely fascinating.
	I'll talk about that another time.
	But it is something that I think that parents have been left a lot in the lurch.
	And they've been turned over to people like priests and politicians and so on to...
	Try and describe virtue, and that's just not a good place to be for parents.
	Well, of course, and I know I've been kind of on with you for a while.
	I have one last question.
	I think this should be a really, really quick one.
	As far as peaceful parenting goes, and this is something I am looking at as far as more specific techniques go, and again, I'm going to kind of try and make this as hard as possible.
	Let's say you're one of the great parents around.
	You're doing everything right, et cetera.
	What if one day you're in the grocery store, kind of a public or semi-public place like that, and your kid just goes nuts?
	They're whining, they're screaming, you're doing everything you can to calm them down and otherwise, but they're running around, possibly running into a wall and stuff.
	What do you do when, for example, your kid just goes nuts or is basically acting like a brat?
	How does a peaceful parent deal with harder situations like that?
	Well, I mean, again, that's how do you deal with polio when you have a vaccine for polio, you know?
	I mean, my daughter's never done that.
	Okay, I see what you're saying.
	I mean, and she never will.
	Because, you see, a kid is, I mean, that's the culmination of a long series of things, right?
	So it's important not to say, well, so you've not shown your child, you've not modeled aggression against your child or to your child or in the environment of your child.
	You know, your child has never seen her parents raise their voices to each other.
	Your child has never... Had a voice raised against him or her, certainly never been hit, has never been physically restrained, has never been bullied, has never been intimidated.
	And so what do you do when they just start going around intimidating people?
	It's like, that's not going to happen.
	Right? That's not going to happen.
	That's not going to happen. I mean, look, if my child just spontaneously freaked out like that, I would take her to the doctor.
	Okay. Because, I mean, God help, maybe she has epilepsy.
	I don't know, right?
	Check this out, right? I see what you're saying, okay.
	Because any sort of sudden, bizarre, out-of-context behavior, like, if my daughter is upset about something, and she gets upset every day, of course, I mean, of course she does, right?
	She's in the phase of trying to learn and master things that are challenging, and she gets, you know, she's trying to learn how to throw a frisbee, that's hard.
	And she can see other people doing it.
	She wants to do it. And she doesn't know how to.
	And it's frustrating for her.
	So she gets upset.
	Of course she does. And so I will stop whatever I'm doing.
	And I will sit down with her and I will say, Are you feeling sad?
	Are you feeling angry? Are you feeling frustrated?
	Then we will talk about it.
	But she doesn't just sort of freak out and start throwing tantrums.
	Because we talk about it and I take her emotional experience very seriously, as seriously as I would take anyone else's emotional experience.
	I mean, one of the things, and I find myself falling into this from time to time as a parent, that, you know, because she's so small and adorable, it's sometimes, there's sometimes a bit of a habit to think that her emotions are small and adorable, you know?
	Like, oh, she's frustrated, you know, but there's not.
	I mean, they're very, very serious to her, very important to her, very powerful for her.
	Her emotions are inversely proportional to her size in terms of their seriousness and importance.
	Yeah, this would be for any one of us, yeah.
	Well, if my wife suddenly burst into tears, I wouldn't poopoo.
	Oh my heavens, what's going on?
	What's the matter? That wouldn't happen.
	So, if a kid blows up like that, that's...
	That's not going to just come out of nowhere.
	That's the result of a long series of experiences and frustrations and belief that the emotions aren't going to be dealt with, that there's no recourse to logic, that there's no listening, that there's, I mean, no, that's the way the child feels.
	I'm not saying there is no listening, but that's what the child would feel in the moment.
	So, it's, you know, this is sort of, just to give you sort of the equivalent, right?
	It's sort of saying, a more extreme example, right?
	It's sort of saying, so Steph, you know, your wife loves you and she says every day that she loves you and she couldn't be happier and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	But what are you going to do if she divorces you?
	Okay, I see what you're saying.
	That makes sense. Well, divorce is a long process, right?
	Yeah. Obviously, I would get her committed.
	Okay, so obviously...
	No, but I mean, that's the way that I would approach it.
	Right, so Steph, when I see stuff like that, like at the grocery store, that's more reflective of how they were brought up or more reflective of how their parents are?
	Yeah. I mean, I would certainly assume that would be the case.
	And whether that is the case or not, that would be the first place to look.
	I mean, that would certainly be my first place to think about.
	I'm not saying that that's the whole story and maybe there's lots of other things.
	Maybe both parents had to work for financial reasons.
	They had to put the kid in a daycare.
	Maybe the kid didn't have great experiences in daycare.
	It may not be that the parents are like bad people or may have done the very best they could with very challenging circumstances.
	And so it doesn't automatically mean, you know, parents are bad parents and blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
	There may be necessities.
	There may be limitations in the family that are challenging.
	There may be lots of things that have contributed to that.
	But it definitely would not be evidence of, you know, positive, tight and peaceful experiences that the child has had over a long period of time.
	Well, hey, thank you very much for having me on, Stefan, and I would like to come back on in the future because I have a lot more to talk with you about.
	Fantastic. You're always welcome.
	Thank you so much for your call. And thank you, everybody, so much for coming by this wonderful Sunday.
	I hope you're having a wonderful week, and I will talk to you soon.

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