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Jan. 16, 2012 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

14:25

2076 The Five Most Important Questions

What is true? What is good? What is government? What is law? What is money? From Freedomain Radio, the largest and most popular philosophy show on the web - http://www.freedomainradio.com

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	Hi, everybody. It's Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
	I hope you're doing very well. These are the five questions you really need to ask and answer within your own life to know that you're living in the right way and to accurately view the society that you're living in.
	These questions are important to everyone no matter what.
	They're especially important to people who believe that the existing way that we have to educate children is optimal.
	I will give you the answers to these questions, but first, let us go through them.
	Number one. What is truth?
	What is truth? How do we know when we have arrived at a conclusion that is true, that is valid?
	How do we know if a question is even answerable?
	And by what methodology do we go step by step to ensure that we arrive At a correct answer, how do we know the difference between truth and falsehood?
	Number two. What is virtue?
	What is goodness?
	When a course of action, a methodology, an ideology is proposed, how do we know whether it is virtuous, aesthetically preferable, neutral, Or evil?
	How do we know?
	What is government?
	What is government?
	It is the single most influential human agency in the world, in our lives.
	It regularly takes up to half or more of our income In our lives.
	It educates us.
	It provides health care, old age security.
	It is the most profound and influential agency in our lives.
	What is it?
	What is the definition of government?
	What is law?
	This is question number four.
	What is law? What is a law?
	What is that which differentiates law from every other rule, suggestion, guideline, or beseeching in human society?
	What is law? We are wrapped and surrounded by hundreds of thousands of laws and regulations with massive punishments for failure of compliance.
	What is a law?
	Number five.
	What is money?
	What is money? I mean, we use it all the time.
	It dominates our lives in many circumstances.
	We make major fundamental life decisions about career, investments, entrepreneurship, retirement, how much money to put into a bank, whether to buy gold.
	We make massive decisions, life-spanning decisions based upon money.
	What is money?
	Now, I would submit to you that there is not one person in 10,000 who has any even reasonably rational answers to these questions.
	People may have answers to these questions in specific areas.
	You ask a mathematician what is true and what is false or what is a valid or an invalid proposition, he'd probably have some answers in logical consistency and so on.
	The scientist will say, well, the scientific method A researcher in the medical field may say, you know, the ultimate double-blind experiment gives you the greatest approximation or evaluation of the efficacy of a particular medicine.
	So we can say this medicine is good.
	It's a true or false statement based upon those things.
	People have answers in particular areas.
	But relative to society as a whole, relative to the course, the journey, the superstructure of society, these are relatively unimportant.
	How many people can give you a clear and cogent description of that which separates truth from falsehood?
	People say, does God exist?
	Do ghosts exist?
	Does life exist on other planets?
	How do we know whether the questions make sense and how do we know how to rigorously arrive at an answer that is valid, that is true?
	Most people don't know. What is virtue?
	This is a fascinating question to ask.
	The reason it's so important is if we have a conscience, and I genuinely believe that we do, then our relationship to virtue is actually our relationship to happiness, because one cannot be happy with a bad conscience, at least not in the long run.
	And since we could reasonably argue that happiness is one of the greatest goals in life, certainly that's what Aristotle argued, because happiness is the one thing that we strive for, not in order to get something else, but for the thing itself.
	We strive for money in order to buy things, we strive for health in order to avoid pain, but happiness is the thing itself that we want.
	And the relationship between virtue and happiness, if we have a conscience, is very concrete, is very real.
	If we do not know What virtue is, if we do not know what goodness is, then we cannot achieve happiness.
	You cannot know what goodness is if you do not know what truth is.
	Because what is goodness is a subsection of what is truth.
	I mean, there are many things that are true that have nothing to do with virtue, but I would argue that there's nothing that is virtuous that has nothing to do with truth at all.
	What is government? The government educates you.
	The government is responsible, even if you're in private school, the government is responsible for educating you.
	The government runs the schools.
	The government compels taxation from property owners and other participants in the market system.
	It compels that money.
	It runs into debt. It controls teacher salaries.
	It controls teacher working conditions.
	It controls Whether the children have to or don't have to go to school, it takes the money from people, even if they homeschool their children or send their children to private school.
	The government is, A to Z, responsible for education.
	And when the government educates you, there are two things which we are educated about, right?
	I mean, fundamentally, there are two things.
	One is facts, and the other is principles, right?
	If you were like me when you were a kid, you learned your times table and you simply memorized those and then at some point you extrapolated those into the principles of multiplication of arithmetic.
	Because there are things that you can figure out from principles and there are things that you have to be taught as facts.
	You cannot rationally deduct what the capital of France is, just using pure logic.
	But you can work a lot in mathematics, science, and philosophy with pure logic.
	So you are taught facts and you are taught principles.
	The facts obviously dominate, unfortunately, our educational system.
	And the principles are value neutral, almost exclusively.
	And because it's government education, for fear of offending people, it cannot teach philosophy, it cannot teach virtue, it cannot teach morality.
	Yet at the same time, when you disobey your teacher, it is morally wrong.
	And you are taught a lot about morality In school.
	But when you're taught a lot about morality, but you're never given the definition of morality, what you are receiving, unfortunately, is propaganda.
	When you are taught conclusions without a methodology, you are not being taught how to think.
	You are being taught how to recite.
	You are being taught how to obey.
	The eternal why of the child is circumvented, sideswiped, smashed down and crushed because you are given conclusions.
	Your government is there to help.
	Democracy is good.
	We need to control the free market system.
	Or depressions and worse will occur.
	You are taught conclusions.
	But are you ever taught definitions?
	Definitions are really at the foundation of principles.
	Are you taught definitions?
	Were you in the entire 12 years or more of your government education Were you ever given the definition of what is true?
	Were you ever given the definition of what is virtuous?
	Were you ever given the definition of what a government is?
	Were you ever given the definition of what a law is?
	Were you ever given the definition of what money is?
	No. No, you really weren't.
	Do you know what central banking is?
	Do you know what fiat currency is?
	Do you know what a gold standard is?
	Do you even know the basics of economics?
	Government has had 12 years to educate you.
	You can teach quite a lot to people in 12 years, particularly energetic and curious youth clamoring for knowledge.
	But you are not taught these things, and that should give you some pause.
	Because you are told to obey the government because the government is good and right and moral.
	But then when you ask people in the government, or your teachers who are representatives of the state, or your children, when you ask them, what is the definition of virtue?
	How do I know what is right and what is wrong?
	Do they have an answer?
	No, they do not have an answer.
	So they are simply telling you to obey the rules, which they then call morality, for which they do not have An explanation, a justification, or a definition for.
	That is essential to know.
	And that is exactly what you would expect when the government teaches you.
	The government does not teach you the nature of government.
	When the laws compel you to be there, the government will not teach you the nature of laws.
	When currency is invented or taken in order to pay for your education, you would not expect the government To teach you about the nature of money.
	So I will give you the answers and it really doesn't take very long.
	I'm at 11 minutes and 12 seconds.
	Let's see how long it takes to give the answers to these questions.
	What is truth? Truth are those principle statements which conform to reason and evidence.
	What is good? Good is universally preferable behavior and the theories which delineate and support those propositions.
	What is government? Government is a group of individuals with the legal right to initiate the use of force within a given geographical area.
	Government is the legal right to use force to get what you want.
	What is law? Law is a rule enforced by the violence of the state.
	Law is not morality, because if the government cannot define to you what morality is, it cannot claim that its laws are based upon ethics or virtue.
	Law is an opinion with a gun.
	What is money? Money is theft.
	Money is debt. Money is a Ponzi scheme in a state of society where the state controls the printing of currency.
	Money is counterfeiting because the government can create as much money as it wants.
	It can go into debt in a multi-generational scenario.
	Money is theft in a state society, which is why you have inflation, which robs in particular from the poor.
	And the reason you need money In a state of society, the reason you need the government to control money in a state of society is because the only reason people really want to donate money to political campaigns is in return for government favors.
	But if the government steals from everyone right away in order to provide favors for everyone, they will get very quickly that it's a negative sum game.
	So if the government offers $100 million in subsidies to some company and then goes and taxes everyone immediately, that $100 million, everyone's going to protest and the whole system's going to come crashing down.
	The only way that you can get the bribeocracy we call democracy to work even remotely, at least temporarily, is if the government can print money, if the government can borrow money in order to bribe its donors in the here and now.
	And push the bill to the poor through inflation, to the future through debt, and to the needy and vulnerable through unfunded liabilities, which we're fast crashing up against now.
	I would bet good money, which there really isn't much of in the world at the moment, I would bet good money that you did not know the answers to these questions.
	If you believe that the government is really good at educating people, that it doesn't deal in propaganda, that it really strives for the deep knowledge and virtue of its citizens and their children, I wouldn't even say think again.

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