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Feb. 4, 2012 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
32:53
2088 The State Is Not Great - Stefan Molyneux of Freedomain Radio at LibertyFest West

Stefan Molyneux rings down the house in Texas with a speech about how to align yourself with the goals of all virtuous people!

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I just want to point out that some of us who are here tonight knew each other before we came here.
Stephon Molyneux, I was honored actually to have him call with his enlightened libertarian child to wish me a happy birthday just last week, and Jordan Page, and Sheriff Mack, and Catherine Bleich, and everybody else.
I know I'm going to forget somebody that's going to be pissed off, but we're like this roving gang of loudmouths And whenever we're able to come together for an event like this, good things happen.
And I just want to let everybody know that we are at a very interesting time in terms of our movement and what we are facing and the dynamics in the world today.
There are a lot of good ideas coming out of here today, and I would encourage all of you...
I told them to take 48 minutes for your introduction.
Give me what? Three or four minutes.
Introduce yourself to say hi and make a connection and take advantage of the opportunity that this event represents.
But Stefan's influence, of course, his YouTube videos are just one measure of this.
He also is the host of freedomainradio.com and the most popular philosophy podcast in the world.
But his influence is...
Very much underplayed, understated, when you even look at his successful numbers as an internet pundit.
And you can look at his videos.
I mean, it's easy to make a video of a cute animal or, you know, stripping down your underwear at the airport and get a million views.
I mean, I did that, and I only got a few thousand, so I don't know what I'm doing wrong here.
But Stefan Molyneux, a lot of his videos, and I'll just Let's read a few of the titles here for those who aren't already all too intimately familiar with his playlist.
The story of your enslavement.
Yes! The money sold abroad is you.
The sunset of the state.
Even if you haven't heard of that, can we get a round of applause?
Yes, of course! But most importantly, I'm getting too long already.
True News 13, Statism is Dead, Part 3, The Matrix.
I had to write that one down.
And he's got over 9 million views on his channel.
And by YouTube standards, that's not particularly high.
You can make videos about viral videos and get millions of views every single day.
But in the millions of views that Stefan has created for people on his YouTube channel, I would go so far as to say that almost every single one of those represents an epiphany for somebody.
That's right. Every single one of those views...
Every single one of those 9 million views was part of somebody's personal revolution and awakening and the raising of their awareness.
And there's been a lot of talk tonight about evolution.
And where we are going as a species and what we are capable of that we have never been capable of before.
And to me, Stefan Molyneux represents the epitome of the modern evolved human mind as a way of thinking, as a way of looking at the world, as a means of philosophical examination of what it means to be a human being in the world today.
There are four people who have made me the man I am today.
I'd like to thank my mother, who by the way, don't tell anybody, used to be Canadian.
She got her citizenship eventually.
She's better now. Four people.
my mother, my father, Ron Paul, and Siphan Molyneux. - Well, thank you so much.
I appreciate that. I appreciate everybody who's hanging on like grim death to your chairs.
I really appreciate that. I'm not a good standard for these kinds of things.
So I wanted to talk, we were at the TV station yesterday, and, um, oh, we've got the cameras here.
Do anyone want to stay? You can follow me, is that right?
It's a challenge.
I'm the wind. Quicksilver.
And there was this fight in Texas, in Odessa, about the texting, right?
No texting and driving.
And I had just a little mini debate with one of the reporters there.
And it was very interesting. It sort of got me to thinking about ways.
This is not, you know, I had another speech, but I thought this would be more relevant.
Ways that we communicate and ways that we're misunderstood.
And that's a huge, huge challenge when you're trying to get people to think about peaceful ways of solving problems.
You know, everybody's had this. You say, oh, this is what the woman said.
Oh, you're a libertarian, which means you're fine with people texting and driving.
You know, you're against the welfare state, so you want to drive by and watch people slowly starving to death in the gutter.
That's what gets you off, isn't it?
And what I found to be helpful in that conversation with the reporter was to align ourselves with the goals.
Align ourselves with the goals.
Look, every sane, rational, moral, just human being in the world wants Poverty to be optional.
Eh, you can choose to be poor, you want to be a monk, be a monk, but we don't want it to be involuntary.
Every sane, rational, moral human being in the world wants great education for children, wants old people to live in dignity, wants the use of force to really only occur in an extremity of self-defense and wants that to be as little as possible.
Every sane human being in the world does not want to ply in the next generation with unsustainable debts.
And to align ourselves with the goals of all just and fair-minded people in the world is a real trick.
The reality is that we are the only group that cares about the poor.
We are the only group that cares about peace.
We are the only group that cares about the old, that cares about the sick.
Because statism is like morphine for a toothache.
Makes you feel better right away.
And now the libertarian is saying, get thee to a dentist, brother.
And people are saying, a dentist?
That guy's an asshole. I don't go to a dentist.
That hurts. Give me some morphine.
I'll feel better. But the guy who cares about your tooth and your health is the guy who says, get to a dentist, not the guy who gives you morphine and says, doesn't that feel better?
Because one of the things that's so amazing about where this movement is, and we've had a couple of people talking tonight about this tipping point in the movement.
I think 2012 is a tipping point.
I am more pumped, excited, and anticipating good things and powerful things out of this movement this year, and I've been doing this Well, I've been a libertarian or objectivist or anarchist for 25 years, give or take.
I've never been as excited because now we are in this amazing situation where the lies have fallen away.
The propaganda has cracked and fallen.
The idols are down. And it's visible to anybody with the eyes to see.
The idea that the state has solved the problem of poverty is not taken seriously by anybody over the age of three anymore.
The idea that we have a Department of National Defense is not taken seriously by anybody who's given up on their GI Joes.
Defense, I mean, America, of all the places, friendly neighbors to the north and south, massive oceans to the east and west, shouldn't be very hard to defend it.
No, there's lots of sticks everywhere.
Look, we're being attacked.
That's shocking. - Cheers.
But the data is in.
You know, Poverty!
I mean, poverty is the dream of human civilization to get rid of poverty.
And most of human history has been mired in the most unbelievable poverty.
Post-Second World War period, bang, bang, bang.
Every year, poverty went down by one percentage point every single year.
The measurable rate in poverty in the U.S. was vanishing.
Government claims that it wants solutions, but if government solved everything, there'd be no government.
So they're not that interested, and you see it's strategic.
When the government sees a problem about to be solved, blocks.
Comes in and blocks it.
Shit, we're running out of poor people.
We need those.
I know. Let's help them.
That way, we'll always have them.
And so they set up a little enclosure called the welfare state.
It's like a roach motel. You can check in.
Just can't check out.
And it's tragic. And you see the data, right?
Poverty declining, 1%.
In another 10 years, another 15 years, there would have been almost no involuntary poverty left.
Welfare state comes in.
Stops. The decline stops.
It's absolutely heartbreaking.
Every time the free market, voluntarism, trade, peace is about to solve a problem, government comes in and blocks it.
That's why you'll never solve these problems as long as you have a government.
We had some speakers here. I just wanted to mention this while it was on my mind because we had a bunch of speakers here who were talking about they couldn't quite make the crossover.
To voluntarism, as Adam mentioned it, I use the A word.
Because people then say, well, what's voluntarism?
Isn't that just anarchism? And you have to say, yeah.
But I like that word.
It makes me feel like an angry kid with a balaclava's hurling thumping through a Starbucks window.
But one of the things that is true about when you have a government is, just think about the broad sweep of history.
Every time there's an empire, what comes before the empire?
What comes before the empire is free trade.
Think of the Roman Empire.
They built roads to trade all over the world.
The British Empire, what did they have?
Right before the British Empire, the 18th and 19th century, 17th century, 18th century, free trade.
Adam Smith. They had free trade.
The Netherlands had an empire because they had free trade beforehand.
America has an empire.
What did America have? The freest damn economy in the history of the world.
Why does that produce an empire?
Any guesses? Don't you feel like you're in school now?
Free market. Bueller? Anybody?
Bueller. Why does a free market produce an empire?
What does a free market produce?
Good economy. Tremendous wealth.
Tremendous wealth. Amazing optimization of resources.
Amazing use of human and fixed capital.
You get incredible wealth coming out of a free market.
Now, think if you're a chicken farmer and somehow you can find a way to get your chickens to produce five times as many eggs.
What happens? Let's go spendin'.
Right? The free market produces wealth.
And the government takes that wealth and takes more and more of it.
And because people are so wealthy, why did the Arab Spring happen?
Because the price of wheat doubled and people living on $2 a day.
40% of the population in Egypt lives on $2 a day.
Price of wheat doubles, you've got a revolution.
But when you're making $50,000, $60,000 a year, the government takes instead of 10%, 15%, 20%, you can get by, you're okay.
Freedom is food for the cancer of the state because freedom produces the wealth that they take and freedom produces the wealth that they use as collateral for the worst four-letter word in the English language, debt.
Right? We are collateral.
We are the ATMs of the future that they can use to borrow on, right?
It's our future productivity that they can use as collateral to borrow from, which is why You get more wealth, which then produces a bigger government down the road.
You rewind back to 1776, it plays out exactly the same way.
I'm tired of that cycle.
Yeah. Tired of that cycle.
Yeah. And you get this absurd thing that happens in politics.
I mean, you see the thing.
See the same things I do.
What is the big thing that all the Republicans are saying about why they should be president?
They're outsiders. They're mavericks.
I don't know the inside ways of Washington.
I don't know how government works.
I don't know shit. Put me in jars, will you?
Picture that in any other industry that you can think of.
You got a car that's broken?
I don't know even what other engine in.
Bring it in! I can't get the head out of my own ass, but I'll fix whatever's broken you got.
You need brain surgery?
I got a guy. He's a maverick.
He's not even sure where the brain is.
But he's got a scalpel, a six-pack, and he's motivated.
Sign me up!
I really want to learn French.
Just speak it.
No, I'm in!
Just give me a bad French accent.
That's all I want. I mean, that's how insane it is that you have to campaign that you know nothing about government to be put in charge.
This is how absurd the system has become.
Nobody in the future will look back and think that we weren't just faking it for everybody's amusement.
And Mitt Romney, all the hair gel in the world cannot hide the fact that you still That's kind of important.
I kind of want a magic underpants believing guy not on nuclear weapon triggers.
It's just my funny preference.
Yeah! So if we align ourselves with the goals of all rational and just sane people, right?
So to get back...
I'm known for my tangents.
To get back to the debate with the reporter.
Am I in favor of texting while driving?
No. Of course not.
But if people are going to do it, they do it like this.
I know, because I drove with Bob Fonger.
At least I think I did.
I was killed up in the backseat in a fetal position sucking my thumb and screaming.
You drove with me. Two wheels, two wheels.
But I want people texting like this.
You know, where did the hand go when the law says no texting?
And now they're driving like this.
And unless you've got that third Illuminati eye here, that's not very safe.
So no, we definitely don't want people to text and drive.
You're not as good a driver when you do it, but the law is not the way to solve that.
You know, seatbelt laws. Everyone knows the fascinating data behind seatbelt laws?
It's amazing. You never hear about this.
People think that seatbelt laws save lives.
They don't. They cost lives. What happens when you wear a seatbelt?
You drive like an idiot.
What's that old Simpsons line?
He just starts taking up dangerous sports when he visits Canada because healthcare is free.
If you wanted to make drivers really good, you'd build a car with a big giant spike coming right like a big ass lance coming right out of the car.
And that way people would just be like, shit, is anyone near?
I can turn gently, gently.
Okay, I think we're there.
But the reality of what happens is you put seatbelts in, people drive like idiots, But the pedestrians and the motorcyclists and the bicyclists are the ones who get creamed.
They don't have seat belts and that's statistically what happens.
This is the law of unintended consequences.
People think you pass a law and people will just obey it.
They don't. They adapt. They change.
This is the big argument against the welfare state.
I mean, even if you discount the absolute moral obscenity of initiating force to steal from people and think you can make virtue out of evil, The welfare state is a trap.
This has been proven, Charles Murray wrote a book about it two decades ago, Losing Ground, that you change people's behavior when you have a welfare state.
And they then adapt themselves to the reality of that.
And you get fragmented families, which produces more poverty.
You get people who put less value in education because they don't need to necessarily get a job in order to survive.
You have people pumping out babies for money.
It changes. It changes the way that people work.
But the data is in there.
And the great morphine of statism, which is debt, is trembling apart.
Dr. Gutsman was talking about, it can't last, it can't last.
What was it? 100% of GDP? The debt just passed?
And that's just the debt they talk about.
I mean, don't think that they're fessing up to every dollar that's missing.
But that is beginning to fall away, and people are seeing that it doesn't work.
People are seeing that it doesn't work in a very practical and pragmatic way.
Really, to be an effective communicator for liberty, I think you just need, I mean, I think you need the moral argument.
Just give them the data. Because statism almost seems to work for a little while.
It's like you got some neighbor, he had some high parent job, he was a lawyer or something like that.
And then one day he's just like, I quit.
I don't know why I'm doing a southern accent when I do that.
Everyone who quits is a southern artist.
But he says, I quit. And you got some job, and you know, like every job, you like some of it, you don't like some of it.
You're heading off to work every morning.
You can just see him through the window. He's playing poker on the internet or something like that in his undies.
Well, you hope he's got his undies on.
You can't see because the window's kind of higher.
And you start driving to work every day.
You're like, damn, he's really got something figured out there.
That looks like a pretty great life.
You sit there in your skivvies playing internet poker.
I'm going to work every day and I'm doing stuff that I don't like sometimes.
That sucks. And, you know, it all seems fun and games until you find out that the guy's half a million dollars in debt to a loan shark.
And then it doesn't look like such a great life.
Well, we're in that situation now.
The debt kept For a long time.
It's like the morphine with the toothache.
I feel better, but my rot is getting worse.
And now we're in a situation where the debt has cracked to the point where we can see the disasters that are coming.
And not just us. I mean, we've been the pilot fish, we've been the searchlights, we've been the lighthouses warning people about these rocks for decades, but now it's absolutely Indisputable.
And anybody who can't see those facts is not worth talking to.
You know, we've got to be triage people, right?
I mean, you've got to be triage, right?
I mean, can this person be safe?
Can this person listen to reason?
Can this person see the evidence?
If not, you just got to keep moving because we've got a lot of work to do as far as waking people out.
What's the big line you hear now?
What's the big... You see the movie Terminator 2, you know, when the robot goes into that vat of lava and starts twisting all these different guys.
Some new disguise, some new lie is coming out from the state now.
Oh, we just tax the rich.
If we just tax those rich people, we'll be fine.
And that's the great lie.
It's all nonsense. I mean, it's ridiculous nonsense.
You could take all of the wealth, all of the wealth, Including the foreign portfolios and the wealth that Romney's got stashed offshore because he's all about the people.
You could take all of the wealth of the top 1% of Americans.
How long would that cover the deficit?
Not the debt. How long would that cover the deficit for?
Anyone want to guess? It's a year.
They're rich. They're really, really, really rich.
But it would cover the deficit.
The deficit for one year.
Assuming the deficit didn't go up.
So, taxing the rich isn't going to work.
That's just something that's thrown out there to get us to fight amongst each other.
The problem, the difference in society has nothing to do with wealth.
There's only two people in society.
There's only two classes of people in society.
Those who interact voluntarily and those who interact coercively.
They're the only two classes that matter.
They're the only two classes that matter.
Anybody who fights about wealth is missing the point.
Doesn't matter whether somebody is poor and gets their money through coercion directly or indirectly through the state or whether they're rich and do it voluntarily.
The only thing that matters is, is there a gun in the room or is there not a gun in the room?
That's the only thing that matters. It's the only thing that matters.
I don't care if somebody's rich or poor, black or white.
I just care if they have a gun or not.
Because everything they do without a gun doesn't affect me that much.
Everything they do with a gun kind of does.
And that's becoming increasingly evident that the coercion of history, the lie that we can get good out of evil, the lie that we can produce wealth out of violence, the lie that we can save people through force, is exposed.
And it is at the time when people become desperate that change is possible, and it seems historically to be almost impossible beforehand.
But that time when people become desperate is a very delicate and dangerous time.
Very delicate and dangerous time, which is why our commitment to truth and clarity is so essential.
I would say this year more than any, because this year, I predict, will not look exactly the same or even close to the same at the end as it does at the beginning.
And what we put out, the signals we put out, the guidance that we put out, we who are the doctors of the future, who can actually heal the cancer of evil from the soul of the world, the words that we put out, the commitment that we put out, is so essential this year.
Because in a time of crisis, the darker angels or the darker devils of human nature come out and attempt to use that crisis for power, for control, for destruction.
And to get people to understand that it is not freedom that has failed.
But it is violence that has failed.
It is not voluntarism that has failed.
It is coercion that has failed.
It is not people even who have failed.
It is a blindness to the immorality of a system that has failed.
Because this is a crossroads time.
This is a crossroads time.
Mathematically, that which cannot continue will not continue.
And we need to find a way, and I spend a ridiculous amount of hours every day trying to figure out how we find a way to get people to step towards the light through the crisis of the present, rather than be seduced into panic and surrender by fear mongers.
Because that is so important.
You know, for those of us who are parents, you know, I'm looking at the path my daughter's going to take in the world and in life.
I want her to live in a society of peace and freedom and virtue, or at least one that's heading in that direction.
But in a time of crisis, the fear mongers cause people to panic and the fight or flight mechanism deep in the base of the brain kicks in and people huddle towards leaders and demagogues in a very dangerous way.
The economic crisis in the 1920s and the Weimar Republic in Germany had a pretty nasty outcome.
Because the demagogues came to power by blaming those who weren't to blame.
The Jews. The people who are to blame are the people who counterfeit currency legally and call it virtue.
Not people who have businesses.
The free market in the state, it always reminds me of, you know, your parents who come home and your prized dishes on the ground in pieces and your kid points at the dog and says, he did it!
And of course, you know, the dog can't reach it and it was the kid who did it.
But that's what happens, right? The state breaks everything and then brings freedom.
The state destroys everything and then blames those who interact voluntarily for that destruction.
And I remember thinking very young that whenever there's a crisis and someone in power is pointing at someone else, you want to find the real source of the problem?
Just travel all the way up the arm to the guy who's pointing.
I guarantee you that he or she is the source of the problem.
So, we've got to align ourselves with what people actually want.
Everybody wants jobs.
Everybody wants increased wealth.
Everybody understands that the goal of the welfare state, the goal of the new society, the goal of the LBJ, a new society, was to minimize the wealth gaps in American society.
You know, all we have to keep asking is, how's that going?
How's that going? Oh, the goal of the welfare state was to eliminate poverty.
How's that going? Oh, the goal of socializing education was to provide a fantastic education for children.
How's that going? Well, 50% dropout rate before high school and those who graduate have to take remedial courses on how to apply for a job.
How to fill in boxes on a form that says, what is your name?
After 13 years, financial stability was the goal of the Federal Reserve.
How's that going? You feel stable?
You feel that you live in a predictable economic universe?
Or is it just a mad dash from the end of some bad science fiction movie when the asteroids are hitting the spaceship?
I hope I get out alive!
And, of course, to make sure that the old don't have to live on cat food.
That was the goal of Social Security.
How's that going? We just have to ask that.
How's that going? Now, anybody with a sense of integrity and an actual caring for the people that they claim to care about will look at that and say, it's not working.
It's not working. And that's very, very important.
If people think things are working, if people judge the state by its stated intentions rather than by its actual results, then they are useless to talk to.
I hate to say it, because I hate to write any human being off, but in this particular round, with time this particularly short, we need to make the connections that count.
We need to reach the people where we're not spending three days rubbing sticks to make a tiny fire, but where we say five words and their brain illuminates.
That is the speed that we need to communicate and the urgency with which we need to communicate in this time.
Because I think that the disasters that have been coming for a generation or two are coming faster, I think, than most of us.
It's certainly coming faster than I anticipated.
Not that, you know, that means much.
I'm no expert on it, but...
We are in a great rush.
We are in a great hurry. And we need to bring the data to people.
And if people can look at the system and say, I'm satisfied with how the poor are taken care of.
I'm satisfied with the health care the sick are getting.
I'm satisfied with the stability of pension plans.
I'm satisfied with the quality of education.
I just don't know how you can wake somebody up who doesn't have senses.
I don't know how you can talk to somebody who has no ears.
So I think we need to keep moving and find the people who have enough brain cells left to recognize reality and at least doubt the solutions that have been in place since the dawn of time.
At least doubt them.
Because without doubt, there can be no knowledge.
What was that? We're all here.
We're all here. Here we are!
Well, let's go find some people and talk to them!
So that's what I tried to do with this woman.
Yeah, I get back to the story. The woman at The Reporter.
Said, yeah, look, we don't want people to tax and drive.
And she's like, well, if you don't do a law, how can you do it?
And I said, that's the great question.
That's the question which actually helps you to think.
Because thinking that a law Solves a problem?
I don't know what it's like. It's like thinking that the solution to a physics problem is God did it.
Maybe it's true, I don't know, but it doesn't actually answer the question in any satisfying way.
Saying that a law will solve the problem is not an answer.
It's a magical thinking designed to just make people feel like the problem's been solved.
So I said to her, I said, well, what could you do?
do if you weren't allowed to use a law to stop people from texting and driving what could you do?
And that went on I won't give you how long that went on for That's a pretty significant pause.
I was waiting for it. There's a truck coming, dear.
Anyway. And I said, well, why don't you go to insurance companies and say, listen, I'm only going to take a policy out with you guys if you don't cover people who get into crashes while they're texting.
Why not? I mean, I don't know what the solution is.
That's the great thing about the free market.
You don't have to know what the solution is.
You just have to know it ain't this.
I don't know who gets married to who, but I know that people shouldn't get raped.
I don't know how everyone should make a living, but I know it shouldn't be as a thief or a politician.
Sorry. But I repeat myself.
Or, you know, social ostracism.
I don't have friends, you know, some wife says to her husband, I'm not going to drive with you if you text.
My kids aren't coming in the car either.
That's how you get things to change in society.
The power of personal relationships, the power of economic advantage, that's how you get things to change.
And those things are sustainable.
So, I mean, the takeaway, if there is one, I hope there's one.
The takeaway We are not against the poor.
We are for the poor. The people who've made the poor dependent upon a system which cannot be sustained, which has created a permanent underclass of underskilled people who have no choice almost now but to rely on these federal teats, these are the people who don't care about the poor.
Somebody giving you morphine for a toothache doesn't give a damn about your health.
He wants to give you some morphine, make you dependent.
We care about the poor.
We care about the old.
We care about the sick because we want to create a sustainable system.
A system that doesn't end in calamity and disaster as statism and its growth always does.
So I think it's time that we reclaim the moral high ground and stop being defensive about, yeah, oh, you want to get rid of Medicare.
You want, they say, the sick and the poor to have no access to health care.
To which I reply, no.
It is the statists who do not want that.
Because statistically, that's exactly what's going to happen if the current trends continue and there's no reason to disbelieve that they do.
So align yourself with the goals.
Take back the moral high ground.
We are the people who care.
Because we care intelligently.
Caring unintelligently is incredibly dangerous.
We care with data. We care with moral arguments.
We care with facts.
We are the doctors to the witch doctors of the state.
We peddle facts and reality and truth, not illusion, deception and propaganda.
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