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Sept. 23, 2011 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:11:00

2001 Liberty 101 - An Introduction to Freedom

Stefan Molyneux, host of Freedomain Radio, explains how to end war, deficit, debt, unjust imprisonment and all other manner of social evils. From Freedom Frenzy Radio!

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	There was this perfectly peaceful, unarmed man just standing there, thrown to the ground by five cops and put in handcuffs and brutally hauled away.
	I mean, they're just totally shell-shocked and in astonishment.
	This is scary.
	Where America's getting to is a scary place.
	And on that note, Jerry, how about I let you do the honors of giving a quick biographical sketch of our guest today?
	Well... Let me just bring Stephan on, and we'll get this started.
	Come on board, Stephan, and tell the people that are out there in the listening audience a little bit about yourself, and then we'll kick this thing off.
	How's that? That's great.
	Listen, first of all, thanks for having me on.
	Secondly, I'd just like to point out that the last things that you said before bringing me on were, we're about to go to a very scary place, and then you thought you would introduce me.
	I just wanted to point out the timing.
	I just mentioned that.
	I don't think I've ever had quite that kind of introduction.
	Oh, no! Half a mosque on my face or something.
	Well, I'll tell you what.
	I'll do a better job on the other side of this break that we're fixing to go into, Stephan.
	I promise. Just everybody hang loose.
	Let's bring on Stephan.
	We'll be right back.
	Hang loose. Alright, comrades.
	Our guest today, in case you haven't already guessed it, is Stephan Molyneux.
	Now, Stephan...
	I'll tell you how we got to have him on the program today.
	I contacted Larkin Rose, who we've had on the program several times, and I asked Larkin who he thought was absolutely the best insofar as offering the apologetics of anarchy.
	And he suggested Stefan.
	And, you know, I had heard Stefan's name a couple of times, and I went out and looked online, and I found, what is it, freedomradio.com, Stefan, isn't it what it is?
	It's a freedomradio.com, yeah.
	Freedomradio.com, okay, excuse me.
	Anyway, I watched some of Stefan's presentations in their video format, and quite frankly, Stefan, I was hoping that today, in the impossibly short time we have together, I think that's it.
	The preceptitional apologetics of anarchy.
	That's what Jerry promised me with you.
	I like how you're setting the bar low for this conversation.
	No pressure, but can you be...
	Hey, it's limbo. It's limbo, Stefan.
	Not jumping over it.
	You've got to go under it. That's good.
	So, please, please just jump in.
	And I want you to think that other than the commercial breaks and the few questions that we're going to throw at you, and hopefully we'll get some from our listening audience, you have control.
	Right. I like the apologetics of anarchy.
	It's like, sorry about your Starbucks window, but I had had a lot of coffee that day.
	So, look... Anarchy is a very simple thing, and it's so simple that it's almost incomprehensible.
	And that sounds kind of weird, but the reality is, I think every sane human being recognizes the validity of two things, sort of two moral bedrocks to any civilized society.
	And the first is the non-aggression principle, which is you don't get to go and start fights with people.
	You can end fights if somebody starts a fight with you, but you don't get to go and hit people and assault them and rape them and kill them and all that.
	The non-aggression principle is something that we all learn about in kindergarten and then we're taught that it is separate for other people in society for the rest of our lives.
	So the non-aggression principle is one foundation.
	And then the second is property rights.
	And property rights are really derived from self-ownership.
	I own myself. I own the effects of my actions, whether they're good or bad, whether it's property or crimes or a painting or whatever it is.
	I own the effects of my actions.
	You put those two things together, you get non-aggression principle and property rights.
	As universal principles, it changes society in a very fundamental way.
	It changes society the way that, you know, there used to be this idea that the Earth was the center of the solar system and all the planets and the Sun went around.
	And this was called the Ptolemaic system and it arose in ancient Greece.
	The weird thing was that because we go around the sun and Mars goes around the sun, at some point we accelerate faster and Mars goes backwards and then forwards and they had to invent all of these weirdly complicated mathematics and astronomical approaches to explain this retrograde motion of Mars.
	And then Galileo and Kepler and Copernicus all came along and said, okay, wait a second here.
	What if we move the sun?
	to the center of the solar system and then click you know everything fell into place the math all worked it was so simple but it was radical and it really scared people because they read in the Bible that God placed the earth at the center and it didn't move and so on and so what I suggest is our society is really messed up it's really complicated you have like a hundred thousand new laws being passed you have volume after volume of tax codes nobody has any idea How to obey the law, because the law is so convoluted and complicated.
	You've got national debts being passed from generation to generation, which is obviously unjust.
	I mean, ripping off the unborn is really horrible.
	But if you move the non-aggression principle and property rights, two sides of the same coin, to the center of how we organize society, it looks very different.
	It looks like a society without a government, because a government, by definition, by definition, and this is by Barack Obama's definition, this isn't something I'm just making up, A government is a group of individuals with a monopoly on the right and the obligation to initiate the use of force in a geographical area, to pass taxes, taxes of the initiation of force.
	I have not stolen from anyone, yet people can come and steal from me.
	I'm just sitting in my study, yet people can come and take my house if I don't give them money.
	And if I resist them, they'll shoot me down.
	So a government has a legal right to initiate force.
	According to the non-aggression principle of property rights, that is immoral.
	And the philosophy of immorality is really clear.
	Immorality leads to bad things.
	The initiation of force leads to bad things.
	This is why we have the war on drugs.
	We have overseas wars. We have national debts.
	We have the coming destruction of the currency through overprinting from the Federal Reserve.
	We have all of the masses that occur whenever you give people the right to violate universal moral rules at will.
	And so the government can do all of these terrible things.
	These terrible things benefit a small elite few.
	You guys were talking about the cost of Wall Street bankers.
	They're just in effect. Of the more singular cause of a monopoly on counterfeiting that the government has.
	So when you give people this kind of power, you know, the ring, it always leads to the same place and corruption always grows out of power.
	So we have to start taking away this power from people which always leads to bad things for the society as a whole.
	However, it might benefit people in the short run, like crime does pay in the short run to a few people.
	So when we put the non-aggression principle and property rights at the center of society, we end up with a lot of different things.
	We end up with parents not being able to spank their kids because that's the initiation of force.
	There can't be the initiation of force against peaceful activities like smoking drugs or using drugs or going to prostitutes or gambling or anything like that.
	You can't have taxation.
	You can't have a monopoly on money printing.
	You can't have any of these things.
	And so that really is the anarchic view of society.
	It is a universal moral rule called thou shalt not initiate the use of force, thou shalt not steal.
	When you put that at the center of society, everything clicks.
	Why society is going so badly wrong at the moment becomes very, very clear, chillingly clear.
	How it's going to get worse and worse until we learn this lesson also becomes abundantly clear, and the challenges of changing the orientation of society also become clear.
	I hope that It makes some kind of sense as a brief introduction.
	Can I interject a question here?
	Oh, yeah, please. One of the arguments that is always forwarded by those who believe in the perfection of the state is the argument of who will provide for what are now termed public goods.
	And by that, of course, they mean roads, bridges, and the other things that are viewed in that same category as the positive products produced by government.
	How do you address that issue?
	Well, I don't, because the whole point is that you don't address those issues.
	I mean, in the 18th century, right, so some crazy people came along and said, you know, slavery is pretty bad.
	We should not have slavery.
	And you know what everyone said?
	How on earth are we going to pick the cotton if we don't have slaves?
	Who's going to pick the cotton?
	But it doesn't matter.
	It doesn't matter who picks the cotton.
	What matters is that slavery is wrong.
	What matters is that the initiation of force is wrong.
	What matters is that kidnapping people and locking them up, incarcerating them for having little bits of random vegetation in their pocket is immoral.
	It's wrong. Sticking guns in your neighbor's faces to pay for your children's education is wrong if I do it.
	It's wrong if you do it. It's wrong if everybody does it.
	So it doesn't matter how these things get provided within the absence of a state.
	What matters is that the initiation of force is wrong.
	Nobody can answer these questions.
	I mean, think of trying to answer this question in the 18th century about getting rid of slavery.
	You say, well, how would the cotton be picked?
	And I'd say, no, no, don't worry. Don't worry.
	You see, we're going to have these giant horseless carriages painted red with these big thrashing machines up front and they're going to go through these fields automated and they're going to pick all the cotton.
	You'd say, are you nuts?
	That doesn't make any sense. How would that even work?
	What's going to be produced in a free society?
	How these problems are going to be solved?
	Nobody can predict ahead of time and it doesn't matter.
	What matters is the moral argument that we cannot allow people the legal right and obligation to initiate the use of force because then we have a situation of fundamental immorality at the core of our society and Most people, and I count myself with that number, I think most people argue that immorality, while it may benefit people in the short run, will destroy them and society in the long run, and we're currently seeing that process unfolding in all too tragic a set of circumstances.
	You know, Stefan, one of the things that just blows my mind...
	Is that people have, they have intentionally decided to embrace our current reality as peace and security.
	Because when I start talking about anarchy, and the fact that the Declaration of Independence established an environment of anarchy, and that was a beautiful thing, and, you know, I'm a volunteerist and so on, they're like, well, anarchy, in their mind, equals violence.
	And I always respond to that, excuse me, we live in an intensely violent society, down to the extent that we have laws forcing our children to attend government indoctrination programs for a certain number of hours each day, or their parents have to on some level prove that they're being educated at home.
	I mean, this is very violent.
	And, you know, they kind of look at me quizzically as if our society is actually peace and security.
	How do you deal with that?
	Well, I mean, an overwhelming excess of force results in an overwhelming compliance of the victims.
	And so to say that there's no violence is like to say that if most slaves don't get beaten, Slavery is not violent.
	No, no, no, no. Slavery is violent.
	The fact that most slaves chose to obey the slave owner rather than get beaten does not make it any less violent.
	In fact, it only confirms how violent it is.
	We know for a simple fact that society is exceedingly violent because the moment that you say to people parents should be responsible for their children's education and violence should not be used in the provision of that, everybody is shocked and appalled and they imagine that society would change enormously.
	that are incomprehensible, which is probably true.
	But, you know, they're already admitting that the system is violent inherently because the moment you talk about removing that violence, they find it incomprehensible.
	It's like, you know, it's like you're a fish living in the deep water and you say to some other kind of fish, you know, we're swimming in water.
	And they say, water?
	What water?
	Because they don't know anything different.
	It's all they know, right?
	I mean, so the fact that we live in a society where every solution is based upon passing a law, initiating force, threatening people, throwing them in jail, this is all that people can think of as like, oh, we've got problems with the environment.
	Well, we have to pass laws.
	We have to threaten people.
	This is all people can think of.
	And yet then they say that the system is not violent But that's fantastic. Then we say, okay, but if the system is not violent, let's get rid of the tax laws.
	Let's get rid of property taxes.
	Let's get rid of regulation because we don't need this ridiculous overhead.
	If the system isn't violence, let's stop threatening people because it's an empty threat if there's no violence.
	But then they get that if we get rid of all these things, society will be fundamentally different.
	So, yeah, they know it's violence.
	They just don't like to see it because that's going to compel them to make some changes and to become more activist.
	And, you know, people... Kind of get comfortable in the matrix, right?
	Well, in this fundamentally different society, Stefan, how will we resolve conflicts such as breach of contract or other wrongful acts, both commercial, maybe such as fraud and interpersonal, such as assault and battery against someone without the wherewithal to defend themselves or defend their property, or maybe even something along the lines of dealing with someone who, by polluting their own property, Impacts the well-being of others.
	How would we address those situations?
	What's my time before the commercial?
	You've got about five minutes.
	Okay, let's take the first one.
	Look, we have an example of the world's largest employer operates almost completely in anarchy.
	Can you guess what it is?
	The world's largest employer?
	Isn't that Walmart? No.
	The world's largest employer is eBay.
	And eBay operates in a lawless, stateless environment.
	Because you can't. I mean, it's all over the world.
	And half the people are anonymous.
	But it organizes itself according to reputation, right?
	So if you ship me 500 bucks and I'm supposed to ship you an iPad...
	And I don't ship you the iPad, then you come on and you mark me down in terms of reputation.
	I get enough of those and my business is done.
	There's no need for a government, no need for law courts, no need for suing, no need for breach of contract.
	You publicly rate people in terms of their reputation with the proper safeguards so that your competitors don't come and do it and all that kind of stuff, right?
	But the reality is that we have a perfectly functional example.
	Here's another one. The marriage market, right?
	The government does not tell you who to get married.
	Two, the government doesn't tell you how long to stay married, who to get divorced.
	People just go out and find each other.
	There are lots of websites and bars and friends and all of that, churches where people will go to find potential partners.
	There's no force involved. And now, of course, the funny thing is, if you were to say to people, Well, marriage is half of the men in divorce and the remaining half are miserable, so the government needs to step in and tell you who to get married to.
	People would be like, oh my goodness, that's appalling!
	That's terrible! What if we said the government needs to tell you what kind of job you're going to have?
	Well, that would be a... So people love the anarchy of the job market.
	They love the anarchy of the dating and the wedding market.
	They love the anarchy of the education market.
	They love the anarchy of where they can live or where they want to live.
	And so all of these things that people love, you say, well, let's extend it to charity.
	Oh, no! That would be terrible.
	That would be disaster.
	You've got Mel Gibson with a flaming helmet riding around shooting everyone with machetes and sharks with lasers.
	And people just imagine that if you take what they love in terms of freedom and extend it like one step forward, it turns completely satanic and evil.
	And that's, of course, just propaganda.
	But we all love anarchy in our day-to-day life.
	We just fear its extension into realms that we're not familiar with it.
	So it's really a fear of chaos, or maybe in some instances, equally strong fears of individual responsibility.
	I think there's that aspect, and you'd also said, you know, it's not your fault, this is just propaganda, but you kind of slipped something in, right?
	So you say, well, how would anarchy solve the problem of violence, right?
	But Embedded in that is the implicit idea that somehow our existing system has solved the problem of violence.
	Like, how would anarchy do such a great job of solving the problem of violence?
	No, no, no. Not solve it, Stephan.
	Not solve it. Deal with it as it comes up in interpersonal relationships.
	Right, so the question is like, so okay, how would anarchy deal with the problem of theft?
	Well, the first thing that anarchy would do would be to have a system where half your income wasn't stolen at gunpoint by the government, right?
	So automatically, we're 50% up just by not having a government.
	Now, you know, as far as theft goes, I mean, there's, you know, I mean, the economic growth under a free system would be enormous, so there'd be much less incentive to steal.
	You could obviously buy insurance against getting stuff stolen so that if you got your TV stolen, someone would just pay you the value of the TV and maybe try and go and recover it.
	You could also change it so that everything you had was voice activated or eyeball activated so that stealing it would do no good.
	I mean, I don't know what the future is going to look like.
	I sure know that if we get a 50% reduction in institutional theft through statism, we're way ahead of the game.
	And if there's maybe 1% or 2% theft left, we're still 48%, 49%.
	Up from where we are.
	So I think that's just a massive improvement.
	As far as pollution goes, you just buy pollution insurance, right?
	So I go to some company and say, listen, you've got to guarantee my air is clear.
	And that company then has to go around and make sure that nobody's polluting my air or they've got to pay me all this money and they'll find ways to do that.
	I mean, there's insurance and prevention rather than cure because, I mean, the government isn't interested in having you not be stolen from because they don't make any money from that.
	They're interested in You know, filling out forms and never looking for your stuff because that's the easiest way for them to justify their existence.
	But, you know, this is voluntary webs of entrepreneurial problem solving is the way things get done in society.
	The most anarchic area of the economy is the computer hardware and software, particularly software.
	You know, I mean, I was an entrepreneur for many years, co-founded a software company, grew it and sold it and sold it again.
	I'm really intimately aware that you don't need a degree to become a software programmer.
	In fact, some of the best programmers I had had arts degrees, myself included.
	And so the area where there's the most innovation and the most growth are those areas where you don't have to have a PhD in computer science, where the barriers to entry are very low and you can just be as innovative as you want.
	Would we say to Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, sorry, you can't do it because you don't have the right license?
	Of course not. I hear you. I hear you.
	Stephan, we've got to cut away to a break here, but, man, I'm having a good time.
	We're talking today with the apostle of anarchy, Stephan Molyneux.
	He'll be back with us in just a moment.
	but we hope you are too.
	Hang loose. - Hey, welcome back to Freedom Frenzy.
	Today we have, as we have knighted him, the apostle of anarchy, Stephan.
	And Stephan, I got a question for you, because my children do not get to enjoy self-ownership.
	I let them know that they live in a benevolent dictatorship.
	They're going to do what I tell them because I am caring for them and paying their bills and when I kick them out, they will then experience the beauty of self-ownership and the faster they come into that reality, the more I will like them.
	In fact, my favorite child is the one who grows up and doesn't need me.
	What do you say to that?
	So I sort of get this image of your parenting being sort of like an airplane and they better pack some parachutes because sooner or later they're just going to go out.
	I am kicking you out.
	Yeah, there's a big door that's always open.
	Don't make me throw this parachute after you.
	You might not catch it before you...
	Right, right. Well, I'm not sure that I would go with you as far as do what I say.
	And I'm sure that that's not exactly what you mean.
	I'm sure you sort of explain why there are things in a certain way, right?
	So, I mean... I try to, as a parent, try to reason as much as possible because I certainly don't want my daughter doing things because I say.
	I want my wife. No, I'm kidding.
	But I don't ask my daughter to do things because I say them.
	I want her to do things because she understands them, right?
	So today, I mean, just a reminder example, we were out for lunch and my daughter was running up and down the restaurant because she's Two and a half and sitting down is like you and I being poured into a concrete tube.
	It's just unbearable to her.
	It's like the cask of Amontillado.
	She must flee! And of course, waitresses going up and down with hot coffee and soup.
	And also I had to sort of say to her, listen, you can't run up and down because, you know, see all those people that we're going to fall, birdies, owies, you know, doctors and, you know, all the things that, you know, she doesn't want to do.
	And so she got it.
	And so she now sort of understands it.
	But otherwise, you end up in a dominant situation where she has to obey me because I'm saying it.
	And then you end up with an escalation system.
	And then she's always going to try and get away with whatever she can get away with because she doesn't really understand why.
	And so, you know, I think like all reasonable educators in parenting is the ultimate act of education.
	I want to teach her how to think, not what to think, which means giving her reasons for stuff.
	And I think that's great. But she, of course, I think yearns for independence.
	I mean, she wants to do things by herself.
	And, you know, she doesn't like it when I help her a lot of times.
	So... So I think children yearn.
	Like, plants grow to the sunshine.
	Children grow towards knowledge and independence and the pursuit of skill acquisition and expertise.
	And she – I mean, if I was in her position and people were just feeding me and clothing me, I'd just lie around like Jabba the Hutt and sipping pina coladas all day.
	LAUGHTER But she is like, you know, she's a hot potato propulsion tamale rocket as far as skill acquisition goes.
	And she's currently trying – she's two and a half.
	She's running two cartwheels and it's kind of heartbreaking because she can just sort of sag and fall over.
	But she still really, really wants to do it.
	So she's very excited by all of that acquisition and growth.
	So I think they grow towards independence.
	You just have to – Try to avoid the command and control thing and give them the sort of reasons, and I found that to be the most successful way, too.
	Because, I mean, there's no discipline, really, in our house.
	I think I've maybe put her in a crib once or twice in two and a half years.
	She's never had a time out.
	I don't need to punish her.
	I've never raised my voice, never hit her, never do anything.
	I mean, it's not necessary, because she has full human rights.
	I mean, why wouldn't she? I mean, she didn't choose me as a dad.
	She didn't choose this environment as her family.
	So I have to be... I have to have higher moral standards with my daughter than anyone else.
	My wife, you know, if I turn into a jerk and a half, she can just pick up and leave anytime.
	My daughter doesn't have that choice.
	So I have to, you know, it's an arranged marriage and I have to get her to love me by being super, super nice, so to speak.
	So there's no higher standard for me than there is with my daughter.
	I would love to reincarnate to your household, Devin.
	Well, but like you were saying, with humans, you know, they're born, they come into the world, they crave and want freedom.
	And unfortunately, in our current government environment and the amount of government intrusion in our lives, the idea of being without the government is terrifying, even to people who profess a desire for freedom and liberty.
	And, you know, I think we have really come into a dangerous place where now as adults, we are reduced once more to children having to get permission from the government to do every single act that we do in day to day life requires on some level the permission of the government.
	We're going to talk a little bit more about this when we come back.
	This is Freedom Frenzy.
	We got to cut away to a break.
	We've got Stephen Stephan, the anarchist, with us today.
	You guys stay tuned.
	We're going to talk a little bit about this.
	That is Mike taking over.
	Hey, Mike. Hey, Mike.
	Hi. You know, Stefan, in our household when we started reproducing, which John and I got married as children and decided to reproduce as children, we actually went about child training in a systematic progression of commands.
	Where we never used yes or no, but we would instruct, you know, starting on the diaper changing table at six months, you know, when they're obviously trying to wiggle around and they can hurt themselves.
	And so you train on be still and so on and so forth.
	Certainly, there is the presuppositional apologetics approach to parenting, where you are training them to teach and to think on their own.
	I'm not really a micromanager on that level.
	But then there are certain things that they don't have an option on, which they have to do.
	Yeah, they've got to go to the dentist or whatever, right?
	I mean, that's just stuff they have to do.
	They have to practice their instruments every day.
	They have to study their Latin.
	They have to memorize their poetry.
	Yeah. There's no option for this stuff.
	But with the intent of making them a productive human being to kick them out at 18.
	Yeah, I mean, what do you think would happen if they had the choice about what it is they were to pursue?
	You know, the unschooling thing.
	And I don't know much about it.
	I've just, I mean, I've read about it a little bit.
	There's the idea that they will pursue their own knowledge purpose in the absence of a structure.
	I don't know if it's true or not, whether you've tried it or heard about it, but what do you think would happen if you...
	Yeah, I think we ought to jump back in here, folks.
	All right, all right. We're back.
	And I'm sorry about that, dear.
	I didn't know you were going to do that. But you know, our timing was impeccable, wasn't it?
	Great minds to like, Jerry.
	Stephan is the sort of apostle that just loves the opportunity to deal with devil's advocates, we're told.
	And so if you've got a question or a thing that you want to put in front of Stephan to see what his response might be, give us a call at 1-800-313-9443.
	Now, Stephan, recognizing that the ideology of anarchy would probably most likely start as a nearly tribal phenomena, and one that maybe would expand to that of regional as it progressed in acceptance.
	How or what should the people do insofar as organizing to defend their own lives, liberty, and property from not only the control freak crowd locally, but from those outside of the region that would view such a situation as an invitation but from those outside of the region that would view such a situation as an invitation Right.
	Yeah.
	Look, I mean, one of the things that I hate about statism is that other people's mistakes become my tragedies.
	And so when people do stupid things like Keynesianism, quantitative easing and money printing and crap like that, or start wars or go and provoke hornet's nest in the Middle East, that becomes a problem for you and me.
	You know, if my neighbor decides to blow all his money on hookers and cocaine, you know, okay, I'm sorry, but that doesn't mean I lose my house.
	But when people make mistakes in a status society, we have to be involved with idiots who are wrong because the effects of their decisions are so catastrophic for us.
	that we achieve freedom is...
	I mean, there's two components to it.
	I'll start with the one that's more obvious, which is once people accept the moral argument that using violence to solve social problems is a bad idea, then things just end.
	Like once people understood that slavery was immoral, slavery just ended.
	And it ended pretty quickly. And everywhere in the world except the United States, it ended peacefully.
	Like in Brazil, they just stopped catching the slaves and it just collapsed.
	I mean, slavery was entirely a statist phenomenon because the government would go and catch the slaves and bring them back, socializing the cost of keeping the slaves.
	And so once people got that it was immoral, Then it ends.
	And once people get that statism is immoral and destructive and predatory and evil and so on, then we take the ring of power, we throw it in Mount Doom.
	And we are almost doing it because the people who are using this power are themselves becoming destroyed by it.
	It is bad for the masters to have this kind of power.
	It corrupts everybody in society for this kind of power to exist.
	And so we gently take the sword out of the hands of the master and the whip out of the hands of the master because it's bad for them even if they don't know it themselves.
	It's the intervention.
	It's the violent statist intervention that we need to have as a society.
	Once people get that it's wrong, that it's immoral, then it doesn't matter what the consequences are.
	Once we get that when Jefferson wrote all men are created equal and women, then we get that the next thing he said and therefore we need a government was a direct contradiction to that, right?
	Right. The moral argument then – I mean morality is the most powerful force.
	It is the gravitational strong force in the mental universe.
	A moral argument is irresistible once it is accepted and so we just have to keep pounding that same drum that it's immoral, it's immoral and it doesn't matter what the consequences of doing the right thing are.
	You just have to do the right thing.
	And so that's the aspect.
	And the second thing, of course, is I think that we need to raise kids to not be afraid of authority.
	We need to raise kids without aggression, without violence, without bullying, without abuse of verbal, emotional, physical, sexual, and all that kind of stuff, because that primes them to be owned by statists and political masters in the future.
	And so if we raise children with respect, they'll demand that from their society.
	Yeah, I think that's a good point.
	Well, we've got to cut away to another break.
	I hope you guys out there in radio land are having as good a time as Jenny and I apparently are.
	Okay, hopefully you grabbed a nice hot cup of coffee or maybe a cold glass of tea and you're sitting close to your telephone.
	Give us a buzz, 1-800-313-9443.
	Stephan, I want to put a sharp point on the question that I asked you that you started to answer before the break.
	And I kind of wanted to get you to focus in on a particular aspect of that question.
	Let's say that the entire country of America, United States of America, adopts and embraces anarchy.
	Now, let's say that Canada, or no, no, no, I know you live in Canada.
	Let's say Mexico has a person that's very, very similar in outlook to Attila the Hun.
	And he sees anarchy reigning in America and he decides that they're weak, they're disorganized, and we can finally move in and take all their stuff because they are a bunch of anarchists.
	There is no organization.
	There wouldn't be any concerted defense.
	How do you address that issue?
	Well, why wouldn't there be any concerted defense?
	So let's say that you and I live in America, the truly free, and we look to the south and we see a bunch of hopped up drug lords who want to come over and reinstate a government to us or whatever.
	I mean, the first thing we do is we'd say, holy crap, we need some defense right now.
	I mean, that's not good, right?
	So we would contract with an organization to provide some sort of defense.
	And there's a bunch of different ways.
	Look, I'm no military expert, so this is entirely speaking out of my armpit, but this is sort of the way I would approach it if I were trying to sell this, right?
	Is I'd say, look, okay, so nuclear powers don't get invaded, right?
	I mean, they don't. They may fight proxy wars like Argentina or North Korea or Vietnam, but they don't get invaded.
	So, you know, half a dozen nukes and we're fine because it just doesn't happen, right?
	And so that's one way.
	I have a hard time with it because I don't think even a nuclear force would do in their own country with nuclear power, with nuclear force, to stave off an invasion.
	I don't. No, no, but you would launch them into Mexico, not into, right?
	I mean, look, Russia and America throughout, what, 45 or 50 years of the Cold War, nukes prevented them from having a direct war with each other.
	With the minor exception of Israel, there's no nuclear power that has ever been invaded.
	So this is just one possible way of dealing with the issue.
	The second is that if you are looking to take over a bunch of land, and on your left is a farm, and on your right is just the woods...
	You're much more likely to go and take over the farm.
	Why? Because the cows have already been domesticated, the crops have already been planted, you can get milk and you can get meat and it's all fully functioning.
	Whereas in the wild, you've got to go and hack out all this stuff yourself, right?
	And so when you are an aggressive country, you don't want to invade an anarchic country because there's no tax system for you to take over, right?
	When the Germans rolled into France in 1940, the first thing they did was they took over the tax structure and got all the money that was coming out of the French citizens.
	There's no tax structure in an anarchic society.
	There's not a farm to take over with domesticated cattle that you can immediately start milking and slaughtering.
	It's really hard to invade an anarchic country.
	No matter how overwhelming your military force is, I'll give you a – it's a controversial example, and I apologize for its controversy.
	But it is quite obvious that if you look at the defenses that are going on in Afghanistan and Iraq at the moment, these are non-statist military maneuvers on the part of the insurgents.
	And the government, with all the resources, the military might of America that spends more than all the other countries combined, still cannot quell and subdue that country.
	And the entire purpose of it, of course, is to bleed the American economy dry to the point where it collapses.
	So it really is not sustainable to invade a country without a state.
	That's a very good answer, Stephan.
	It isn't sustainable to invade a country without a state.
	And I love the example of Afghanistan and Iraq.
	And of course, in my mind, it was coming, you know, England's efforts to subdue the Scots and just how frustrating and irritating it was because they were just such an independent spirit.
	but also the topography was inhibitive of, you know.
	Oh, look, all the empires of the world have all collapsed because they are detrimental to the states that, I mean, the Roman Empire collapsed for these very same reasons.
	The British Empire, Spanish Empire, Portuguese, Greek, I mean, they all collapsed because it's simply not sustainable to do that.
	So, you know, it is definitely an issue.
	I've got a free book on my website called Practical Anarchy that attempts to answer this in sort of more detail with some more historical examples, but it's really hard to invade an anarchic country.
	I mean, you just – there's nothing to take over and start harvesting right away.
	And you have a population that has – you don't know what weapons they've got because, of course, when you invade a country, for the most part, you're invading a legally disarmed citizenry.
	That's pretty tough. That's an easy thing to do.
	But in anarchy, you don't know who's got what.
	And so it's really hard to go in and know what you're going to face.
	And, of course – There's also an unwritten rule among state leaders that you don't go for each other.
	You don't take out assassination attempts on the political leaders because they're all vulnerable to that.
	So it's kind of an unwritten law that you don't do it.
	That wouldn't be the case in an anarchic society.
	You just go for an assassination.
	Imagine the technology that would be available to a truly free society with all of the entrepreneurial energies unleashed.
	They'd have sky lasers that take anybody in a moment's notice.
	You'd have to spend your entire life underground if you wanted a political leader to invade a Okay, well, you've posed a lot of things that I'm going to have to ruminate about, particularly the… The likelihood that an anarchic state would present such an obstacle to an invader.
	Yeah, you kind of lost me on the nuclear bit because I just don't see the nuke thing happening.
	But you regained me big time with the bit about, you know, just the...
	Practicality of trying to invade a massive anarchist society.
	And besides that, people who are truly free have a tendency to like it.
	And so they are going to be some feisty, aggressive people when it comes to kicking butts.
	And, you know, they're not going to follow any sort of sweet and fluffy aristocratic rules of engagement.
	It's going to be guerrilla warfare and it's going to be dirty.
	And it's going to be preemptive against the political leadership that is authorizing it.
	And I agree with you. The nuke thing is not a great example because, of course, there's the injustice of lobbing nukes into a country that may invade you, thus killing a lot of innocent people.
	So I agree with you. I simply wanted to point out that defense against invasion can be astonishingly cheap if we accept the historical reality that nuclear powers don't get invaded.
	And a couple of nukes are very, very cheap.
	So let's say they cost $300 million a year to maintain these nuclear weapons or whatever it is, some deterrent weapons.
	That's a dollar a year for everyone in America.
	I think that's doable to avoid the threat of invasion.
	I just think it can be really cheap and efficient to have these kinds of deterrents in place.
	Yeah, but then you'd have to figure out a structure for picking the person who decided when or when not to push the button.
	Right. Agreed. So, yeah, I agree that the nukes is not the best answer, but it is a way of showing that you can have a cheap solution as most of the countries.
	I mean, why has Europe stopped having wars for the first time in 2,000 years?
	Because they all have nuclear weapons.
	I mean, it's not because they suddenly discovered – I mean, if they had discovered that war was bad, they would have done that after the First World War.
	They did it after the Second World War because everybody had nukes.
	And suddenly it's like, hey, look, let's have peace because now the political leaders can get killed.
	So suddenly they find a way to live in peace.
	Hey, we've got a caller in the queue that I have not heard from in a long time, and it makes me grin big to see him.
	Rodney in Illinois.
	Hey, welcome to Freedom Frenzy.
	Hello, Freedom Frenzy crew.
	Hey there. You found us!
	I have. I don't have a cup of coffee or tea, but will a Hornsby's amber giraffe do?
	That sounds wonderful. If you share.
	If you share. Yeah. Yeah.
	Well, come on over.
	I've got plenty. Well, I thought I would play the part of the devil's advocate, but before I do, Mr.
	Stephen, I can't pronounce your name unless I hear it a few more times, but some years ago, somebody had sent me a link to a, I think it was a YouTube, and it was nothing but a scrolling text, and I think there was a voiceover,
	and I think it was your voice, And I lost track of that, and I looked and looked and looked and looked and could not ever find it again until I think I came across your video, and I'm guessing you're one and the same fella, and I so admire your work.
	You're certainly a kindred spirit, so it's really hard to play the part of a devil's advocate here.
	Well, I appreciate that, but it's a very, very useful – I mean it's very, very important and useful to bring up the most challenging arguments against a free society.
	When you're talking about the structure of society, you really don't want to get it wrong because when you get it wrong, you get the difference between the Russian Revolution or the French Revolution and the American Revolution, which whatever its flaws was a step forward for many people.
	So, look, the devil's advocate position is honorable, it's noble, it's essential.
	The last thing I ever want to do is to advocate something that could end up like communism, like 70 million people die in just one country.
	So, no, it's very, very essential that we are as critical of these ideas as possible, so I respect that role enormously, and I appreciate you taking it on.
	Okay, well, I thought about creating my own scenario, but let me start with two historical One is Tahiti, and the other is slavery in England took about a hundred years, and the entire life and all of the passion and energy of one named Wilberforce to bring that to an end.
	So it didn't necessarily die of a natural death in England.
	It did die, of course.
	But what about Tahiti?
	Would you agree that Tahiti, before Europeans set foot on their island.
	Did not they enjoy anarchy?
	I wouldn't say so, no.
	And I think it's a great point that you're bringing up, right?
	So I say that, you know, you wouldn't need to worry about being invaded by a state.
	But if you look at sort of the absence of a Western formal status structure, like a government structure, and say, well, there's Tahiti, there's the West Indies, there's, I mean, heaven's sakes, I mean, there's Africa, you know, where the European colonial powers came and took slaves and so on.
	So is that sort of where you're coming from?
	And I think that's a great, great Well, you know, I'm a Bible believer.
	I believe that Christ epitomizes the will of the Father.
	Rodney, I hate it, but I've got to jump in here.
	We hear the music.
	We're going to have to cut away to a break.
	Okay, I need to jump right back in here.
	And Rodney, you were in the middle of the thought before we had to jump away to that break.
	And if you would kind of pick it up from the top again.
	And so Stefan gets to hear it in its entirety.
	Well, of course, I'm a nanocrist by nature, and of course, I haven't prepped for this show, but the thought of the island nation of Tahiti came to my mind as a prime example of a naturally occurring And I'm still somewhat convinced that that may actually serve as a good example, but Stephen disagrees with me.
	Yeah, let me just – I'll respond before I forget the Tahiti thing because I tangent myself sometimes into a whirlwind of distractions.
	I want to make sure I stay focused on that so I don't have to up my riddle and drip.
	But I will say that I do not view primitive societies as operating in a state of anarchy.
	And the reason that I say that is because anarchy – true anarchy, philosophical anarchy – Thank you.
	in tribal societies, you have a very strong hierarchy.
	You know, the elders and there's a tribal chieftain whose word is law.
	They tend to be extremely brutal with their children.
	You can go to psychohistory.com for more information about this.
	The noble savage thing, everyone living in peace, is pretty much a myth.
	And so there's a very strong hierarchy – There is not a sense of equality.
	Property rights and the non-aggression principle are not respected.
	These tribes were at war with each other fairly consistently.
	They did not have philosophical equality.
	They had not even developed philosophy, let alone science, let alone the free market or private property in any kind of reasonable way.
	And so that to me is a very sort of primitive society and the more advanced and consistent societies tend to develop technologically very quickly because people like to innovate, they like to trade, they like to grow.
	So societies which are stuck in primitivism tend to be anti-philosophical, anti-equality, anti-free market, anti-property rights.
	This was certainly the case with the primitive societies that you've mentioned and certainly the ones that I've studied, though I'm no expert on this area.
	So I would not view those as anarchic simply because they lacked what we would call a state.
	They still had a very strict, powerful, and political hierarchy that was based upon the dominance of the warrior class and the dominance of the superstitious or priestly classes.
	It was not a rational society of equality and philosophy.
	Socrates would not have been welcomed there.
	In fact, he probably would have been thrown to the sharks.
	So I don't view that as a...
	Yeah, I don't view that as a state.
	And in fact, I would say that the advancements in the European civilizations occurred because they had outgrown the tribal model, had gone to the nation state, which at least gave some more room for human innovation than a very claustrophobic and locally controlled tribal model.
	So... You know, the anarchism to me is like science.
	It's in the future.
	It's in philosophical knowledge in the future.
	It is not represented by a highly hierarchical, primitive, superstitious, and aggressive primitive society, if that makes sense.
	Yeah. Hey, I've kind of gathered my thoughts here.
	I think I can finish my comments and get off it first.
	Jenny, I hope you don't let this pass.
	I mean, Stephen's coming very close to insulting your idealistic affinity towards the American Indian culture.
	So, let me finish my thought.
	You mentioned something, Stephen, that I wonder how many people caught, and that was, anarchy is the future.
	Isn't that what they have said about communism all these hundred years?
	Well, yeah, but I mean, just because somebody has said something incorrect doesn't mean everyone who says it is incorrect.
	Let me finish my thought.
	This is what I think is the Achilles' heel, and I think anarchy is an individual accomplishment.
	I don't know that you can organize anarchy.
	But anyhow, it comes down to this crux, and that is The inherent predisposition of the heart of men.
	Is it benevolent?
	Is it do unto others as you would have them do unto you?
	Or is it seize upon the opportunity, take the advantage for my own benefit and advancement at the expense of my neighbor?
	All right. Is that in the form of a question?
	Yeah, no. You've come to a very, very powerful point, and I really want to just – I won't spend too much time, but I really want to, first of all, compliment you for great questions, great thinking.
	And this is a very, very essential point, which is the question of human nature.
	Because what – I'm not saying you're doing this, but what a lot of people do is we say, okay, well, human beings should cooperate and they should be peaceful and all that.
	And then people will come along and say, but it is human nature to be selfish and greedy and win-lose and take and dominate and subjugate and blah, blah, blah.
	But the reality, and this is not coming out of my opinion hole.
	This is coming out of my science hole, which you probably don't want to see on the webcam.
	But the reality is that there is no such thing as human nature.
	Human nature adapts to circumstances.
	That adaptation scientifically begins in the womb.
	Parents who are stressed, mothers who are stressed, generally produce more aggressive children because the children are adapting to the coming environment even before they are born.
	Children who are addressed against, they lose IQ points, they gain the amygdala, the fight-or-flight mechanism within the brain gets bigger.
	The neofrontal cortex, the seat of reasoning and restraint and the deferral of gratification shrinks, so you end up very impulse-driven, very violent, very aggressive, less intelligent.
	So if you raise children in a situation of violence, you get one particular type of human being.
	If you raise children in a situation of peace and cooperation and plenty, you get a different type of human being.
	What is necessary for a free society is first and foremost to breed human beings who are capable Of looking at freedom without anxiety, who are capable of negotiating and feeling the security of win-win negotiations.
	They learn that in the family, then they will be able to reproduce that within society.
	It's not going to come from politics down.
	It's going to come from the family up.
	Wow! That was a really, really quick segment.
	Guys, we're going to cut away to a break here.
	We've got still almost a half an hour left to go.
	If you want to weigh in, 1-800-313-9443.
	Go grab something warm to drink.
	We'll be right back. Okay, if you've just tuned in for whatever reason, your team lost and you're very upset, you need something to maybe turn the sports off and turn the intellect on, today on Freedom Frenzy, we've got Stefan Molyneux.
	And I've introduced Stefan as the, what is it, the apostle?
	Apostle. The apostle of anarchy.
	And the other thing that I think Stephan has really done, and if you've been listening here for the last hour or so, I think it should have dawned on you that Jerry was spot on when Jerry said that this individual that we have the good fortune of having on with us today has actually constructed...
	The unified field theory of anarchy, because he has addressed all of these questions that have been raised in a wonderful fashion.
	But now, I'm going to wind up, and I'm going to warn you in advance, Stefan.
	This is a curveball that I'm fixing to throw you.
	Okay? And I'm a lefty, too.
	Jenny grins big.
	I love it when Jerry throws curveballs.
	I want you to address for me and for the audience just exactly what the shortcomings or the problems with anarchy as you view them might be because I think that's something else that we need to take into consideration.
	Yeah. Well, let me just give you the mental image that worked just before I answered that, right?
	So you call me the apostle of anarchy.
	So immediately I'm starting to think like I'm in a sort of Jawa robe, you know, with a commando.
	With a funny hat. No underwear, right?
	And then you're throwing a curveball at me, and I think about going down into a catcher's position, and I think, oh my goodness, that would be just a terrible visual for everyone.
	But I thought I'd share it with you anyway.
	Okay, so problems with anarchy.
	Well... It's taking too long to get here.
	That would sort of be one of the major issues.
	Well, look, the problems with anarchy is that, look, anarchy is not a perfect system.
	There's no question that there are, you know, even if we can raise children to the point where they just don't think of violence, there's still going to be people who get brain injuries and brain tumors that affect their personality.
	They go nutty and they'll, you know, shoot people or whatever.
	They're There will still be people who will be very hard or impossible to help.
	People with mental illnesses or there may be not enough charity for certain areas.
	So there are going to be problems within an anarchic society.
	Anarchy isn't a magic wand where you wave it and everything becomes perfect any more than the discipline of the scientific method produces perfect knowledge all the time.
	There are mistakes, there are corruptions, there are problems.
	I don't want anyone to think that this is a magic solution to problems because freedom is unpredictable.
	Now the good thing, of course, about freedom is that problems tend to be self-limiting, right?
	So if you get a bad government law, It stays, it stays, it stays.
	It's like a Mormon who comes into your house, you know, getting these people out can be a challenge, right?
	I mean, they're like Jehovah's Witnesses clamped onto your leg.
	It's not easy to get rid of a bad government program, but something that doesn't work in a free society, like let's say I come up with some, I call them DROs or dispute resolution organizations, that I say, I'm going to promise to resolve all your disputes, and I do that by kidnapping people's pets.
	Well, you know, people are going to say, well, that's a stupid thing to do.
	I don't want to deal with you anymore.
	So people who provide bad services, it tends to be self-limiting.
	In the same way that if you, you know, you ask for pizza and you get some piece of cardboard with three tomatoes on it, you could be like, well, I'm not going to order from that guy again.
	So there will be problems within an anarchic system, but I think they tend to be self-healing, self-solving, so to speak.
	But again, I really, really want to point out, you know, that I get sometimes I get called a utopian or, you know, I got my...
	Head up my ass of Nirvana kind of thing.
	But that's not the way it is.
	Freedom can be a mess.
	It can be imperfect.
	But the difference is, right, that statism is a black hole where the problems are permanent and get worse and worse all the time.
	I look at the problems in a free society like sunspots on the face of the sun.
	Yeah, okay, it'd be nice if they weren't there, but it's not like it can't light your way anyway.
	Would you say that anarchy lends itself to a Darwinian outlook?
	Do you mean sort of survival of the fittest?
	No, I don't.
	And the reason for that is that Economically speaking, a free society, a free market society, you could call me sort of a market anarchist or an anarcho-capitalist, a free market society by definition is a win-win society.
	So this comes straight from the praxeological Austrian School of Economics, to put a few extra syllables in my cheeks, which is that any economic interaction that is voluntary is win-win.
	So if I have five bucks and you have a pen, And we voluntarily exchange those things.
	Clearly, I want the pen more than I want the five bucks and clearly you want the five bucks more than you want the pen.
	We're both better off for that interaction.
	And so when you don't have the government forcing people to buy and sell, forcing people out of certain occupations, herding people into other economic arrangements like...
	Too many people buying houses for their creditworthiness, which results in an economic, say, explosion.
	When you don't have the government forcing people to do stuff, you get win-win negotiations.
	Now, it doesn't mean everybody never has buyer's remorse or anything like that, but in the moment of the transaction, it is win-win by definition because nobody's being forced to do anything.
	And so it is automatically a happier and more cooperative society without this central saber-toothed tiger primitive strategy I mean, the state is like 6,000 years old.
	What other piece of 6,000-year-old technology are you working with?
	I always say the state is if you want to use the state to solve problems, you don't get modern dentistry.
	You don't get computers. You get an abacus.
	You get faith healing.
	If you want rain for your crops, you don't get to water them.
	You've got to do a rain dance.
	Everything that was around in ancient Egypt, you can use because that's your level of technology.
	It's definitely retrograde.
	Oh, yeah. Yeah, definitely.
	Retrograde. That's interesting.
	I thought maybe that's where you were going in one of the comments that you made as far as there not being enough charity to go around.
	And that's why I asked you that question.
	I don't know. I think that people, especially Americans, they seem to be incredibly nonviolent as evidenced by the amount of violence they're willing to quietly mosey along and take.
	Yeah. But I would see the problem with anarchy would be perhaps a growing ambivalence for violence against individuals and erosion of individual life, liberty, and property that doesn't affect you as an individual.
	So you just kind of, well, that's not my problem, sort of.
	Like what? What sort of example?
	Um... Okay, let's say you're— Can I give you an example?
	Oh, go ahead. Maybe? Tell me if this is right.
	So let's say that we all contract for some defense agency that's going to protect us from invasion, and then that defense agency starts to get all these little black helicopters and starts to amass these troops and then just takes us over.
	Is it something like that? No, I was thinking more simplistic, much more simplistic.
	For instance, the lady down the street, she doesn't have family.
	She lives by herself.
	She's raped and murdered.
	It didn't really affect me.
	I'm not going to go figure out what happened and why it happened.
	I'm just glad we're fine and I'm going to go back with my existence.
	Well, okay, but would you really not care if some rapist and murderer was around in your neighborhood?
	Well, I would care intensely, but I care a lot about those things.
	Just like if you're in front of a prenatal murder mill, I'm going to get feisty because I believe that from the moment of creation, everyone has the right to life, liberty, life and liberty.
	They have self-ownership to an extent.
	Obviously, my children... I live in a benevolent dictatorship, but I do not have authority over their life and health.
	So I do get very upset about that sort of thing.
	But I see other people that are ambivalent, they're like, well, it doesn't really affect me.
	I don't really care.
	I'm going to go about...
	Okay, so let's accept that that's a problem.
	I would argue that there's ways around that, but let's accept that you're absolutely right, that that's a significant problem in a free society.
	How is that solved in a statist society?
	Because the statism has to make the case that it's worth violating the universal moral rule of non-aggression for a better end.
	That's the very least that it has to do.
	So how does that get solved in a statist society?
	It does not get solved in a statist society.
	And I think I like that response because instead of being forced into a position where you have to prove anarchy works, you turn the argument by demonstrating that anarchy is the only moral solution.
	It doesn't proactively mold the citizenry into a moral people, whereas with statism, there's an assumption, a superstition that their authority is legitimate and therefore whatever they do is moral and justifiably molding of the people's. a superstition that their authority is legitimate and therefore whatever So the problem isn't solved in a statist society and the problem isn't solved in an anarchy society.
	It would take some other solution or actually to...
	Well, sorry, sorry. No, let me just jump in for a sec because, look, it's not neutral, right?
	So with the state, we know we're going to get war.
	We know we're going to get unjust imprisonment.
	We know we're going to get a monopoly of fiat currency.
	We know we're going to get indoctrination of kids because all governments around the world do all of those things and have almost since the beginning of time and will until almost the end of time.
	So there's a huge negative, a huge series of negatives associated.
	I mean war and imprisonment of hundreds of millions of people around the world for non-crimes.
	We know we're going to get all of that with the state.
	And so there better be a huge amount of solutions that the state is achieving that anarchy can't achieve in order to even come close to justifying the not even risks but known disasters of statism.
	Right.
	Yeah, and I think you kind of – just by the single act, and I would strongly encourage our listeners to do the same thing.
	When people present just like I did the problem with prenatal murder mills, you know, throwing it back on the person saying, okay, explain to me how a status society is solving that problem, and getting rid of this presupposition that the anarchy is responsible for a proactively solving or molding society, and And statism is going to legitimately or morally mold society.
	Both arguments are false.
	It's the moral high ground of anarchy is the only moral solution, and each one of us is responsible to God for the manner in which we operate and function.
	Look, there's credible estimates that – it's called democide, it's murder by the state – that a quarter of a billion people or more were murdered by governments.
	This is not including war.
	This is not including war or incarceration.
	This is simply being murdered by your own government.
	A quarter of a billion, that's B, with a capital B, a quarter of a billion people were murdered by governments just in the 20th century alone.
	And so to me, any solution that says, well, we need the governments to build the roads, it's like, but you're paving them with the corpses of people.
	You're paving them with blood.
	I mean, a quarter of a billion people is a lot of people to be murdered.
	And so to me, the standard for statism in terms of what it's going to solve has to be pretty damn high if you're willing to step over all of those bodies and claim that it's an ideal.
	Mm-hmm. Good point.
	Good point, Stephan. I hadn't really thought – I hadn't couched it in those terms.
	That is interesting.
	And, you know, that's really the first time I've actually thought about it and the tradeoff that you've so very, very eloquently put in front of us.
	It's a difficult trade, and I think that that's one of the things that we need to put out in front of people, that this is the cost of the system that you think is so much more admirable than individual liberty.
	Do you mind if I switch gears here a little bit, Jerry?
	No, but we do have a caller in the queue too, dear.
	Oh, okay. I'm sorry.
	I'll go fast.
	Let me ask you this, Stephan.
	As you look at our current political situation, and as you're talking and teaching and spreading this truth of anarchy, to what extent do you urge people to check out of the system?
	Because I noticed that you have spoken at events where Ron Paul is a guest.
	Ron Paul obviously believes in government.
	He's running for president.
	People need to subscribe to government in order to elect Ron Paul.
	Tell me to what extent you encourage or are okay with legitimizing people's engagement with government systems.
	I would characterize Ron Paul not so much as a guest but as a heckler of mine.
	No, I'm kidding. I don't think he's actually heard me speak.
	He probably hasn't. I mean, it's a tough call.
	You can't tell other people what to do in terms of whatever works for them as far as activism goes.
	I mean, Larkin Rose, as you may know, went to jail for tax evasion.
	I don't make that choice.
	I make the choice to pay my taxes.
	I make my choice to legally minimize my taxes with a good accountant, but I make my choice to pay because I want to be free to concentrate on I think that people should try and stay in the system as much as possible.
	I don't think that people should become prison guards.
	I think that's, you know… I think that's going to corrupt people beyond the point of return.
	But I think to stay in the system, you know, you need to be in a hospital if you're a doctor.
	And that means making some compromises with a hospital system you may not agree with.
	But otherwise, it's really tough to get to the patients.
	And I think that we need to do this kind of triage.
	If we have the capacity to reason with people, to bring the truth to people, I think that It's a great power.
	I think with that power comes a responsibility and almost an obligation, not a contractual obligation, but it's like if you're a doctor and some guy's choking to death and you know how to do the Heimlich maneuver in a restaurant, you don't sit there and say, listen, can you bring my parfait because that person is really bothering me and if you could take that person outside to expire on the sidewalk, I would be able to enjoy my dessert.
	Oh, that much better! No.
	I mean, I think if you know how to help somebody who's choking, you go and help someone who's choking.
	But in order to do that, I think you need to be a little bit in the system.
	I'm not saying necessarily political power.
	I think that's not a healthy way to go.
	But I think it's perfectly fine to stay within the system, even to take some of the benefits of the system in order to be able to effectively communicate to people about freedom.
	But again, people who choose a different path, I mean, I certainly don't have a monopoly on the answers.
	This is just my argument and preferred way of doing it.
	That's real interesting. I was going to ask you a question along those lines because I wanted to find out if you thought it was appropriate or even rational to support any political entity or a political candidate, say Yvonne Paul, or even you, Stefan, if for some reason you decided to run for elective office.
	I'm not going to run for elective office, though.
	I appreciate the thought. No. Look, I appreciate the passion and dedication that people bring to the approach of changing the world through politics.
	I appreciate that Ron Paul and others like him have done an enormous amount to educate people.
	and economic aspects of liberty.
	I in no way, shape, or form believe that it is through politics that we are going to achieve freedom.
	I do not believe that an individual can go in and reform the state.
	And there's an easy test for this.
	There's an easy test for this, which is if we believe that we can go into a criminal organization and turn it to virtue, then we need to prove that theory with our local drug gang, with our local mafia.
	We go and infiltrate them and turn them into a charity that helps kittens.
	But everybody knows that this is not going to be what's happened there.
	That if you join the mafia and rise in its ranks, you are not going to be able to reform it.
	And so I don't believe that you can reform criminal organizations.
	I think that we fundamentally need to outgrow them.
	And we need to outgrow them by building slave-on-slave solidarity rather than attacking each other, which is the foundation of the power of the state.
	And I think that we need to really focus on...
	Growing a generation of kids who are unafraid of authority, which is a change in our parenting.
	The state is something we outgrow.
	It can't be outvoted because the government itself is a violent entity.
	And even if you were to say, look, I want to join the mafia to cut its murderers or kneecappings in half, we all know that that wouldn't work.
	So why would it work with the greatest criminal gang of all?
	If it's not going to work in a small situation, it's not going to work in a big situation.
	If we can't lift five pounds, we ain't going to be able to lift 500.
	I agree. I agree.
	We're going to have to cut away to a break here, and I do have three callers in the queue, and I'm going to tell you...
	Let's have them all talk at once. It's anarchy.
	Yeah, that might work, but we wouldn't get anything accomplished.
	You guys that are hanging out there, I'm going to try to get to every one of you when we come back from this break, but you're going to have to make it very sweet, short, and concise to give Stefan an opportunity to respond.
	So, while you're thinking about that, we're going to cut away to this break, sell some stuff, because capitalism still is a pretty good idea.
	We'll be right back. Okay, you guys in the queue are kind of lucky because you got reduced by 33% in number, so we're going to go to Mike in Chicago.
	Make it short, Mike. What you got for us today?
	Yeah, well, I've often thought about the way to do it is not to participate.
	The problem with that is there's a lot of immigrants and multicultural people that are here.
	Everyone seems to think the middle class has got the upper hand, but the middle class just got the rug pulled from underneath them.
	They're living in their foreclosed houses.
	They don't have jobs.
	Their unemployment is running out.
	Their wages are decreasing.
	Their gas, their inflation is eating them alive.
	And how are we supposed to get together and say, all right, we're not going to buy Coca-Cola.
	I'm not picking on Coke here.
	I'm trying to make an example.
	Okay, we're not going to buy Coca-Cola no more.
	Okay, alright, well then maybe we're going to see a change, you know?
	But the fact of the matter is, Obama's going to get in there again because people are out here on the street and other places and they don't, they're just trying to get by.
	Jump to the question, jump to the question, Mike.
	Go ahead. Are you done, Mike?
	That really wasn't a question.
	Let me just comment just very, very briefly on what he's saying, though, which is that, to me, a status solution is like taking heroin for a toothache, right?
	So it will cover up the problem, but unfortunately, the rot...
	It just gets worse. So we have a status solution called the welfare state or Social Security or Medicare or Medicaid and it certainly is true that if you borrow, which is what the government does, it has to in order to bribe people because if it just transfers money then it creates as many losers as winners and the system doesn't work.
	So it has to go into debt in order to bribe people.
	I think we're good to go.
	When the cocaine or the heroin wears off from the toothache, you're just that much worse off.
	And that's the situation.
	It's all been masked up to now, but the situation is really unraveling right now, as has been predicted, of course, by freedom lovers for the last few centuries.
	The reason I'm calling in, I'm trying to present solutions.
	This is not easy for me.
	It's not easy for your guests.
	Okay. Hey, Mike, thank you for calling.
	We are running out of time. We've got to go to Eddie.
	Eddie in Cleveland. Hey, welcome to Freedom Frenzy.
	You've got about a minute and a half.
	Hello. Can you hear me okay?
	Yes, we can. Quick, quick, quick.
	Okay, very quickly. Number one, anarchy would work if everyone was cool.
	Number two, just because a country has nuclear weapons, that doesn't mean that it cannot be conquered or invaded.
	Goodbye. Yes, so the argument is, I think when he means cool, he means sort of good.
	So the idea is that we can only achieve a free society if everybody is virtuous.
	I would actually argue the complete opposite, that we need a free society because people aren't virtuous.
	So people often ask me, okay, so what would happen in a free society with psycho killers and murderers and so on?
	It's like, well, the first thing we would do is not give them an army, not give them a police force, not give them a prison system.
	The fact that people are evil is why we can't have a state.
	Because if you're an evil guy and there's a state, where is it that you most want to go?
	It's to the summit of political power because you want to be a really good criminal, not a stupid street corner criminal.
	The state, the very power that the state holds is like a gravity well for the most evil people in society to come up and to gain political power through lying and bribery and cheating and then use political power to dominate and enslave all the good people in society.
	Or enrich themselves. Yeah.
	If people were 100% good, we wouldn't need a state.
	If people are mostly bad, we can't have a state.
	It's certainly not a democratic one because there's to vote evil people in.
	If there's evil in the world, you cannot have a government.
	We accept the reality of evil.
	Therefore, we reject the legitimacy of the state.
	That was a wonderful answer.
	That's an awesome argument.
	Thank you so much for joining us today.
	This has been a really fun, informative Freedom Frenzy.
	Thank you. Yes, I've enjoyed your presence on the program today, Stefan, and I'm hoping that sometime in the near future we can have you back so that we can elaborate on some of the topics that we've touched on today.
	Folks, I hope you enjoyed what we did today.
	I hope you enjoyed having Stefan Molyneux with us on the program.
	I sure wish that we'd have got a lot more calls a little bit earlier, but say, you know, c'est la vie.
	We'll be back next Sunday to see you.

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