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Aug. 8, 2011 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

08:34

1971 True News: The British Riots

The economic, political and social realities behind the rebellion of youth which cannot be resisted. From Freedomain Radio, the Largest and Most Popular Philosophy Show on the Web

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	London is burning again for the second night, spreading out from Tottenham.
	Rioters and looters have spread throughout London using Twitter and Facebook to coordinate their efforts and warn them of upcoming police incursions.
	The incidents that are occurring are immaterial, because only the causes matter, and the causes are very important.
	The first thing to understand, and I grew up in London and moved to Canada when I was in my early teens, the important thing to understand is that Tottenham is largely a government ghetto.
	It is a government ghetto.
	This is the most important thing to understand.
	The governments control the family through welfare payments, resulting of course in a lot of single families, resulting in young men who do not gain the beneficial aspects of masculinity through identification with a father or father figure, but rather end up with the worst tribal aspects of young male braggadocio.
	This is a problem created and caused by government welfare programs.
	Well, we also have the fact that the government is educating these poor young men and women, and the results of that education, their respect for others, their respect for property, can be seen very clearly.
	So the government creates the family environment through its program, the government educates these children for thousands of hours, and these The results, and I think that's something you won't hear a lot of.
	What you will see, of course, is that governments will say, well, we're just going to have to go in and control these kids because all this terrible stuff is happening.
	You won't see that anyone in the government take any kind of ownership for the policies that have led to these kinds of messes.
	The reality of social influence over the young is very simple.
	Young men and young women are rebellious, they are critical, they are volatile in many cases.
	That is entirely as it should be.
	That is healthy, that is positive, that is good.
	That is the renewal of vigor within every society.
	How do you rein in and focus the energies of youth?
	Well, it's quite simple. You give them goodies.
	Or you say, hey look, if you guys toe the line, if you defer gratification, if you get a good education, if you polish your skills, if you add to your human capital, we can give you the magic of jobs and stability and a future and prosperity.
	So, you restrain...
	The wayward tendencies of youth by being able to offer them goodies once they come out through the culvert or tunnel of self-restraint.
	What goodies has the West left to offer many or any of these young people?
	Massive debts, environmental degradation, A tax system that will leave them as revenue serfs for the baby boomers as they retire.
	Unemployment 20, 30, 40% or more, particularly in some places in Europe.
	A catastrophic lack of marketable skills as the result of being in a non-market-driven educational environment, i.e.
	government schools. There's an oxymoron.
	So society has very little to offer these people.
	It has corrupted their home lives.
	It has wrecked their minds.
	And so when they go around rampaging, I mean, the only shocker is that it doesn't happen more often, but it will.
	Now, the other interesting thing is that these people are very tech-savvy.
	As I said, they're using their Blackberries.
	They're using their cell phones.
	They're organizing themselves through digital media.
	What that means is that they are aware of and have access to News sources that come outside of the mainstream, outside of the government-sanctioned propaganda that comes out of the mainstream media.
	That's very important, I think, because it means that they are getting access to libertarian sites, or they may be getting access to socialist sites, or they may be getting access to anarchist sites.
	What that means is that they have probably read, at least some of them, because just because you're educated in a government school doesn't mean that you're dumb.
	What they have is access to information that is highly critical of their social environment.
	So they're probably quite aware that the bankers in England have been paid billions and billions and billions of pounds and are enjoying fat bonuses at the same time as their tuition fees for any young ambitious person in these environments.
	Their tuition fees are going up Three times.
	And that their social services are being cut back at the time when one in ten domiciles in Tottenham is without an indoor toilet.
	So these people have read a lot of the critiques of their own society that the people who are in power, who are at the top, probably haven't read.
	And there's this huge disconnect between the knowledge base of the young and the propaganda.
	Blinders of the older people.
	So, yeah, there'll be a lot of, quote, confusion about how all this happened and a lot of hand-wringing and what is the youth of today and so on.
	But this has always been the case, that the young, if society can't bribe them into compliance with goodies in the future and reward them for the deferral of gratification, that is one of the hardest things to do when you're young.
	Society has a harder and harder time.
	You can't win against the young.
	You can't. You can attempt to control and enslave them as the tax system is currently doing, but you can't win against them because when you're young, you usually don't have dependents.
	You can live in the backseat of a car and emerge springy-stepped and ready to roll in the morning.
	You have much less tying you down.
	You know, compare that to your average 45-year-old guy who's got kids and a mortgage and, you know, creaky back and knee problems and stuff, right?
	You can't win against the young.
	I mean, you shouldn't try because the young will always end up triumphing in a society that sets the young against the old.
	And unfortunately, we do have in the West societies.
	That are setting the young against the old.
	It's truly tragic, and I hope it's something that we can resolve as a society, but it is definitely something that's happening.
	But you can't win. The young can simply avoid taxes.
	The young can simply avoid working.
	And enjoy that for quite some time in a way that a 45-year-old guy with a job and two kids and a dog and a house and a mortgage can't do.
	Not nearly as nimble. And this is nothing compared to what a 70-year-old needs, right, in terms of healthcare and stability and income if he's not working, which is usually the case, particularly in England.
	So the amount of resources that need to get pillaged from the young by an increasingly decadent and top-heavy society, simply it won't work.
	It simply won't work.
	And until the older generations realize the degree to which they have completely screwed up the younger generations.
	Bad parenting. Bad schools.
	Bad environments.
	A terrible class system.
	I mean, you still have a monarchy, for Christ's sake.
	I mean, anybody who believes in the monarchy shouldn't be allowed to use medicines post-12th century, because that's where their mindset is at, and that's where they think all the great technology and great social institutions lie.
	Great! Next time you get an infection, you've got to go get yourself some leeches and monkey brains, because that's all you're good for.
	So until the elder generation recognizes that they have bequeathed, you know, crushing debts, bad skill sets, a wrecked statist, half-fascistic corporatist economy, and incredible liabilities for old people who got far more in resources from the government than they ever paid in taxes, the bill of which has been passed down to the young.
	That they've deprived a lot of these kids of any kind of decent and normal home life through just terribly skewed and wretched welfare programs.

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