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Feb. 21, 2012 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

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2098 How to Become Free - Stefan Molyneux of Freedomain Radio interviewed by John Bush

John Bush of Rise Up Radio - http://www.riseupradio.com - interviews Stefan Molyneux, host of Freedomain Radio, on the evils of the present day, and the virtues of the future.

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	Welcome back to the show.
	Welcome back to the Rise Up Radio show.
	RiseUpRadio.com on KDRP Community Radio.
	You can listen live at KDRPLive.org.
	We're also broadcasting over the airwaves, 103.1 FM in Dripping Springs, 100.1 FM in South Austin in the Texas Hill Country, and now 99.1 FM in the beautiful...
	Fredericksburg out in the Texas Hill Country.
	We've got a wonderful guest here for you today, folks.
	His name is Stefan Molyneux.
	He's the host of the number one philosophy discussion in the world.
	Very insightful gentleman.
	He's got a lot of wonderful information, advice on parenting, relationships, political philosophy.
	And we're going to start by chatting a little bit about the political philosophy, but I want to get a little deeper than that.
	Of course, we always cover the political philosophy, libertarianism, philosophy of liberty here on the program.
	We're going to get into some of the nitty-gritty about parenting and personal relationships, which some people like to avoid.
	It's easy to place the blame on government or some external forces, but we often find that when you look in the mirror and you dig deep inside, a lot of problems lie within ourselves.
	But I want to thank you for coming on the show, Stefan.
	How are you doing today? Oh, I'm just great, John.
	Thank you for the invitation. Great, great.
	The website's freedomainradio.com, freedomainradio.com.
	And again, it's the number one philosophy discussion in the world.
	Stefan's got A multitude of YouTube videos, wonderful animated flicks that give you a great understanding of the message he's pushing out, a podcast that's followed worldwide, a great forum and discussion that Stefan is very active in answering questions and giving advice, so we appreciate all the work you do.
	Maybe we can just start with speaking about your speech.
	We recently at Liberty Fest West in Odessa, Texas, and you delivered a speech to a mainly pro-Liberty audience.
	There might have been some neocons out there in the audience in Odessa, Texas.
	But the message was essentially that as libertarians or as proponents of the philosophy of liberty, we ought to take the moral high ground when dealing with critics.
	Can you explain a little bit about what you were talking about?
	Why is it that we do have the moral high ground, the proponents of genuine individual liberty, Over those who subscribe to a philosophy of statism, thinking that we need government to organize society, why is it that we are actually in a moral right?
	Well, really helping people and really helping the world is a difficult and complex thing.
	It's like being a doctor, so to speak.
	I mean, any fool can give you morphine for a toothache, but it takes somebody with some actual knowledge to deal with the problem.
	You know, if you're overweight, there's some people who can say, well, you know, you're going to have to diet, you're going to have to exercise, you're going to have to, you know, learn about yourself and how you ended up in this situation.
	And that's all difficult stuff.
	And then there's other people, perhaps we can call them Newt, who'll say, I know how to make you lose weight.
	We'll move you to the moon!
	That will help people lose weight, but it doesn't really solve their problem fundamentally.
	So I think that the easy and not overly intelligent way of solving a problem like poverty is to say, okay, we'll use the power of the state and we'll just take a little bit of money from the rich and we'll give that money to the poor and bingo, bango, bongo, everything lickety-split is fine because we've taken a little off the peaks, we've poured a little in the valleys, and we've evened out the landscape.
	But unfortunately, when you overlook the fact that you are allowing or imbuing a social agency with a monopoly of what is traditionally called theft, which is taking people's resources through the power of law, through the force of the state, you set in You set in motion a really terrible series of events.
	We're sort of seeing the culmination of those now.
	Once you set the state up, not to be a referee, but to actively involve themselves to even out the score, then you grant people way too much power.
	You break the ban on force that is the foundation of a civil society, and what happens is you corrupt your entire democracy.
	It happened to ancient Greece, it happened to ancient Rome, it happened to England, it happened to countless empires.
	The great temptation is to overlook the means for the sake of the ends.
	Well, we want the poor to be better off.
	Of course we do. Of course we want the poor to be better off.
	We want kids to have a great education.
	We want everyone who's sick to get access to health care.
	But how we get there is a moral question.
	You can't just overlook the means and say, well, we'll shuffle around this money.
	We'll give the state the power to do X, Y, and Z and assume everything's going to be fine because human beings are fallible and power corrupts.
	And so the libertarian approach is to say we have to start with the non-initiation of force and a respect for property rights because that's the only thing that has worked in the past.
	Look at India, look at China.
	In the present, now you've got 30,000 to 50,000 people a month moving from poverty to the middle class because they're respecting property rights more and they have more free trade.
	That's the intelligent way of doing it.
	Everything else to do with the state, just like morphine for a toothache, makes you feel better in the short run, makes your problem worse in the long run.
	Yeah, and that's totally evident as government's been working to solve problems for quite some time now, yet the problems perpetuate on a daily basis, and poverty is precisely an example of that.
	Some people fail to recognize that government is force.
	I think one of the main factors is public education.
	We're made to worship presidents.
	It was just President's Day recently.
	They don't have philosophers or scientists.
	There are pictures on the wall at public schools.
	They have presidents. You open up a newspaper and you find that 95% of the stories on the front page are all about government.
	Can you maybe hash out the idea a little bit that government is force, perhaps pointing out the gun in the room For some of the listeners that may not grasp that concept.
	Well, I think people grasp it very quickly.
	It's more just, it's a scary concept to look at.
	And of course government is forced.
	I mean, because the word government itself is a bit of a fiction, right?
	So there's things that exist, like a tree, right?
	And the tree exists, it's got roots, it's got leaves, it's got bark, it's got squirrels, birds' nests and stuff like that.
	So trees exist. But we got this idea in our head that a whole bunch of trees together is called a forest.
	Now, the trees, individually, they all exist.
	The forest is just a concept in our head.
	Like, you can't take all of the trees out of the picture and still have a forest, because it's just an idea in our head.
	In the same way, people exist, and guns exist, and little cages called prisons exist, and blue costumes called police officers' uniforms exist.
	But there's no such thing in reality as the government.
	What happens is, there's a small group of individuals Who have the quote right to initiate force against everyone else in a geographical region.
	And we call that a government.
	Other competing agencies trying to do the same thing we call organized crime.
	A more apt description perhaps of the government is disorganized crime.
	And so once you take yourself out of the mindset of believing that the government exists and imbues in its members these amazing opposite magical moral properties called, well, you can't use force to get what you want.
	You can't even push a kid over to take his lunch money.
	But we can counterfeit through the Federal Reserve.
	We can start wars.
	We can incarcerate people virtually at will.
	Once you recognize that they're just people in the world, then you just have to look at the facts.
	You know, I always feel like Joe Friday, you know, just the facts, ma'am.
	You just have to look at the facts.
	The facts are that there's a guy in a blue costume, a guy in a green costume, a bunch of fuddy-duddies in a big dome waving bits of paper around.
	And that's all theater.
	That's all ritual.
	That's all imagination.
	What is real is that there's a guy with a gun, and if you don't give him your money, he's going to drag you off to a cage for pretty much ever.
	And once you get that basic moral reality and you kind of get out of the matrix of language and you get into the actual empirical facts of reality, there's a small group of guys with all the guns in the world and everyone else running around trying to evade them or obey them.
	That is never a productive way to organize society.
	There's no business meeting where you'd ever say, I know, let's get all the guns in the world and then we'll make our customers like our products.
	You'd never find a dating site which says, hey, we're going to send guys out and window those vans and kidnap you a date.
	I mean, that would just be completely wrong.
	So why should... The organization of law and the self-organization of society, which is more important even than dating and business, why should we apply these crazy opposite moral rules?
	It doesn't make any sense.
	No, it doesn't make sense at all.
	It's a very dangerous concept that we engage in when dealing with government, the concept of reification, which is making that which is abstract concrete.
	And one of these abstract concepts, of course, is government.
	Government is a fiction.
	It doesn't actually exist. You know, if you get in trouble with a traffic ticket and you go into the court and you ask the judge who the victim was, because a lot of people subscribe to the common law maximum of no victim, no crime, they'll be quick to say the victim was the state of Texas.
	In column, I don't see how a fiction that doesn't exist can possibly be a victim.
	That same concept takes place when people say, well, they attacked America because we're free.
	And people have this whole concept of they're attacking America, therefore they're attacking me because I am America.
	They're attacking what America stands for.
	And that just doesn't seem to be the case because, of course, I didn't vote for a war.
	I'm not in favor of the aggression that they use.
	You mentioned a second ago that government as a referee.
	Do you think there is a proper role of government to enforce contracts and make sure there's a level playing field?
	Or do you think there is no place for government whatsoever in society?
	Well, I really wish there was a way to violate the foundational moral rule of do not initiate violence.
	I really wish there was, because boy, it would be convenient.
	Everyone has this reference point called government.
	And when you try to argue for a society without government, it's almost like you've broken into fluent Esperanto and everybody just looks at you with the finger up the nose going, what are you talking about?
	So I really wish there was, but if you're going to have a moral rule called don't initiate force, the moment that you create an exception, then you don't have a moral rule anymore, in which case it's just a bunch of opinions and nonsense.
	So I would really love for there to be a role and say, you know the way that we protect property is we create an agency with the infinite power to violate property at will.
	I mean, that's something wrong with that right up front, that right at the beginning, we've got to understand that there's something wrong with that.
	I know how we're going to protect persons and property.
	I know how we're going to protect people from violence.
	We're going to create a monopoly agency of violence.
	It's like, no, no, no, no.
	Yes, you can create, you can sort of...
	You can say, listen, I can cure your migraine with a guillotine.
	It's like, but I still think you have in fact cured, but not really, really, very well.
	So unfortunately, this is, you know, and I spent years and years trying to find a way, voluntary taxation, trying to find a way to square the circle.
	But the reality is that if we're going to have a rule called...
	No initiation of force and a respect for property rights, and these are foundational moral rules of all major religions, of all major ethical systems, of every successful society in history, then what we have to do is make that a rule, which means no exceptions.
	And so when that happens, then you have to get rid of the state.
	Now, what happens, of course, John, is people say, well, the government has been doing whatever it's been doing for so long that if you get rid of the government, that thing won't be done anymore.
	So the government's been educating the kids.
	So if you say, well, no government, the people say, oh, you're against It's educating the kids.
	The government has been mediating disputes, I guess, which is something only claimed by people who've never tried to use the court system.
	And so you say, well, then if you don't want a government, you don't want people to mediate disputes and people will go back to the Wild West, bang, bang, bang, down the middle of Main Street.
	But that's not the case at all.
	It's because people interested in freedom and ethics, it's because we want the children educated that we need to get the monopoly of force out the way.
	It's because we want people to actually be able to resolve disputes rather than just hurl incendiary law books at each other that we want to get rid of the state.
	So it's looking for an active, creative, continual process of improvement problem solving, which is how we get the iPhone, versus that which has produced the Department of Justice and the Department of Public Education And the Department of Motor Vehicles.
	Yeah, for sure. So absent government, what does the alternative look like?
	What would a stateless society look like?
	What do we organize society absent a hierarchical force of monopoly violence?
	Well, it looks like your life.
	We're not trying to take people anywhere other than where they already live, for the most part.
	People want to get married, they ask.
	They don't force. People want to get a job, they apply.
	They don't kidnap and imprison and force people.
	Most people who have disputes with their neighbors sit down with their neighbors, or maybe they call some third party in or whatever.
	But almost all human interactions and conflicts are resolved without an appeal to the monopoly of force.
	The monopoly of force is used by the rich to maintain privilege and by the Yeah, people fail to recognize that 99% of their life is lived in anarchy without being forced to do things.
	But then, of course, the gun in the room is always present.
	You made a wonderful, insightful It's an expression that really stuck with me about the whole idea of limited government.
	So in the libertarian world, there's an ongoing debate between anarchism, the absence of government, absence of a hierarchical system of force, and minarchism, the belief that we should have a night watchman state, an ultra-minimal state that only serves the function of protecting life, liberty, and property, and enforcing contracts.
	And the insight that you came up with Is that this will actually lead, a limited government leads more often than not, perhaps in every single instance, to unlimited government.
	Can you hash that concept out a little bit?
	Sure, I'd be happy to.
	I mean we just have to look at the incredibly depressing and illustrative example of the government of the United States.
	It started as the smallest government In history, with the most rigorous philosophical underpinnings straight out of the Enlightenment, straight out of the Renaissance, the idea of a limited, constant balance of powers, a constitutionally limited government.
	And how long did it go?
	Eighty years until there was a civil war, just a few years until Washington was riding down with a musket to blow up all the Pennsylvania farmers who were resisting the whiskey tax.
	You know, you had at the beginning of the state, you had the very smallest conceived state, and it has since grown into the very largest government that history has ever seen, the most powerful government that history has ever seen, the government with enough arms to blow us beyond the orbit of Jupiter, should it so push four buttons in a row.
	And so it's instructive to understand that the reason for this, and we've seen this over and over again in history, how did Rome get an empire?
	Rome had an empire because it was the first country to institute relative free trade and the protection of property within its boundaries.
	So all the Roman roads were first built for trade, and then they were built for empire.
	If you look at England in the 17th and 18th centuries, how did England get an empire?
	Well, it was the first country to lower its tariff walls.
	Of course, in the Middle Ages, there was incredible tariffs, incredible controls.
	All the guilds had amazingly tight controls.
	Over the economy, England loosened all of those and there was a massive, this is the foundation of the Industrial Revolution.
	It was nothing more or less than free trade.
	And so it gathered enough wealth in the country that all of the governments began to go, hmm, that's a lot of money lying around.
	I guess we can just start to jack up taxes.
	Because look, there's so much money that we can jack up taxes without any revolution because people have more than they need to forbear subsistence.
	And so what happens is when you have free trade, you have a small and limited government, it is fuel, it is food for the cancer of the state because you generate so much wealth that that wealth can be used as collateral for borrowing.
	People can be taxed at higher and higher levels without...
	Falling into a sort of starvation or subsistence existence.
	And so small states inevitably grow into enormous states because, you know, just think of a farmer.
	If a farmer suddenly gets five eggs per chicken, what does he do?
	Well, he built a bigger farmhouse.
	He goes out and buys a Lexus.
	He, you know, rents callgills, whatever you want to call it.
	But he's going to increase his spending as his wealth goes up, and that's exactly the same with the state and the tax cattle.
	That's a really good point that you make.
	I don't know your views on the conspiratorial view of history, but do you think some of the ruling class, call them the Founding Fathers in America, were conscious of the fact that if they did give the citizens, the cattle, the sheep, the subjects is really what it is, more freedom that they would be able to expand their reach and expand their wealth beyond their wildest dreams?
	Do you think they were conscious of that fact?
	You know, it's tough.
	I mean, we'll never know for sure, but my gut feeling tells me this, John.
	I think that, if you look at someone like Jefferson, I mean, what an incredibly accomplished man.
	Washington or Ben Franklin, all those other people.
	You know, when you have a lot of brains and you have a lot of ability...
	It's really, really tempting to say, well, look, I'm such a successful and smart human being that I should really run other people's lives.
	And of course, when you're smart and successful and all that, you see people making bad decisions and you have this impulse.
	Boy, just give me the ring of power and I'll be better than everyone else and I'll do a great job.
	And so I think that they instituted government because they simply couldn't imagine life without it.
	We can't imagine life without government in the same way that people up until the 18th century couldn't imagine life without slavery.
	I mean, slavery was the foundation of just about every society in the world, slavery of different levels, from the impressing of the British Navy through, you know, rank Egyptian slavery.
	And so it's just really hard to make that leap to some new moral paradigm, which is really the expansion of reason and ethics to all human beings.
	I mean, we want to extend it to, obviously, we want to extend it to slaves, we want to extend it to women, we want to extend it to children.
	It's just really hard to imagine what the next extension of human rights looks like.
	So I think they succumb to temptation.
	But, you know, I've always sort of felt, just look at the Declaration of Independence, right?
	So let's forget the fact that men refer to middle class and up white men.
	Let's just pretend that it talks about everyone.
	So Jefferson says, you know, all men are created equal.
	And, you know, of course, the anarchist of the voluntarist says, okay, stop there.
	Stop there.
	That's all you have to say.
	All men are created equal. Therefore, you should not have a monopoly right of taxation and tariffs and impressing and debt creation and counterfeiting and money printing and war and empire.
	Just, you know, you know that Jerry Maguire line, you know, you had me at hello.
	It's like, you had me at all men are created equal.
	That's all we need to say.
	And then you just stop writing and disband everything.
	That's right. That's right.
	Yeah, I think... It was Benjamin Tucker.
	I don't know if it was him who first espoused the idea of equal liberty.
	But yeah, you violate the maxim of equality under the law or equality amongst men whenever you have one class of people that can necessarily violate the rights and get away with it of the other class of people.
	And that's exactly what government does.
	So that next moral paradigm, people need to awaken to the idea that we don't necessarily need to organize society through force and through monopoly violence.
	And when you really take a step back and look outside of the box, you know, as a fly on the wall looking at the way that society is organized, and again, when you see the police officers not as police officers with legitimate authority to abuse you as they please, rather just normal human beings just like you, except they wear a badge and they have a gun on their waist, you really begin to see how silly it is, especially with all the victimless crimes.
	They're locking people up, and it's not going to jail to pay your debt to society.
	It's literally being put in a cage, and when there's no victim, That's obviously a crime in itself to put someone in a cage for a victimless crime.
	Call it kidnapping, not call it arresting or incarcerating.
	So the next moral shift is something that you definitely push on the Free Domain radio, the next moral evolution, a peaceful evolution, so to speak.
	Why do you think it's so difficult for Americans to grasp this concept?
	Now, mind you, people are awakening more and more and it's being exponential.
	And we can attribute that to your work, to the work of the broader freedom movement, to the work of philosophers, even to the work of Ron Paul out there on the national stage, educating people about the philosophy of liberty.
	But why do you think it's been so difficult for people to grasp the concept that government is force and that it's not necessary to organize society through violence?
	What factors do you attribute that to?
	Sorry, just before I jump into that, you keep saying organize society through violence.
	I'm afraid I must stop you there.
	Because it's not organized through violence.
	It's just enforced. I mean, there's no organization in the state right now.
	I mean, I think we can all understand.
	I mean, look at the national debt. It's crazy.
	And these wars for no reason.
	And, you know, I mean, the Social Security vastly underfunded, multi-trillion dollar liabilities and pensions.
	I mean, it is chaos. I mean, shadowstats.com estimates, and I think rightly so, is 20% unemployment.
	And that's even if you don't count unemployment.
	All of the people who are working for the state who are not only unemployed often but anti-employment because they're taking jobs away through taxes and regulations and preventing jobs from coming into being, it's at least a 20% unemployment.
	I mean, the value of homes have dropped by a third.
	10% of US housing is vacant.
	People being tossed out of their homes when no one can figure out Who owns these homes?
	I mean, they bundle all these ownerships into these mortgage-backed securities.
	They spread them out all over the world.
	They atomize the ownership papers, and now they're trying to stitch them back together through lies and fraud.
	This is chaos.
	What we live in is chaos, and the chaos is only repressed.
	The manifestation of that chaos is only temporarily repressed through force and through debt, which are really two sides of the same coin.
	The bribery of the population through the selling off of the economic productivity of the unborn and the actual threat of force for disagreement.
	Society is not organized by violence, and I'm sorry to stop and harp on that point, but we have to be careful with the language that we use.
	But why is it tough?
	It's tough because it's late in the game.
	It's really late in the game.
	I have my excitement in terms of thoughts about the baby boomers, but this would have been a whole lot easier to do in the 60s.
	It would have been a whole lot easier when the government was about, what, less than 20% the size that it is now, not even counting the national debt.
	If you count the national debt, it was probably 10%.
	So it's really late in the game.
	The later you have to operate on a tumor, the harder it becomes and the less likelihood there is of success.
	So what's happened is that people have instinctively understood that the state is getting bigger and more powerful, more people dependent on the state.
	And so in a sense, it's like, oh, I don't know if I want to take this guy on now, you know, now that he's got steroids and Andre the Giant and Hulk Hogan on one shoulder and...
	You know, some sort of laser-guided missile from hell on the other.
	So, because the government has gotten so big, I think that people really don't want to think about the reality of the choices that we have to face.
	And the other thing, I think, John, is that, at a very personal level, I mean, everybody knows someone who works for the state.
	It's your brother, your sister, your aunt, your uncle, your cousin, your sister.
	Your dog, I don't know, has some job pushing papers around with his nose.
	You all know someone or somebody who's dependent on the state, someone who's getting old age security, somebody who's on mental disability or some other disability.
	So everyone knows. And so if you start talking about that these things are morally wrong, It's really tough, just at a very personal level.
	It makes for some pretty tense family dinners around Thanksgiving.
	And for the sake of what?
	I mean, so people say, well, it's wrong, but how do they imagine that that's going to change anything?
	All it does is make their immediate social environment pretty uncomfortable.
	So I think people are sort of making a rational choice of self-interest and saying, hey, you know, what can I as an individual do other than make everyone around me uncomfortable and not change a damn thing?
	So I think people, you know, sort of put their sword away and slide back a little bit from the fight, and I can completely understand why people do that.
	Yeah, and one of the solutions that you offer, which I think is monumental, is the idea of raising a whole new generation to believe that government is immoral because it forces people to do things against their will.
	And on the other side of this break, I want to get into that.
	Some of your insights on parenting and personal relationships, Because I'm sure we'll find if we all change our lives to live in a manner more consistent with our own inherent philosophy and a manner that's more moral from the bottom up, we'll be able to create a better society from the ground up rather than the top down.
	This is the Rise Up Radio Show.
	We're chatting with Stefan Molyneux of freedomainradio.com.
	KDRPLive.org is where we broadcast from.
	You can check out the live stream.
	RiseUpRadio.com is the website.
	We also have a Facebook page that we recently launched.
	You can check that out. Just search for Rise Up Radio on Facebook and click the like button.
	I saw Stefan Molyneux like the show this morning, so definitely check that out.
	But we'll be right back after this break.
	We're chatting with Stefan Mullen, and we'll be getting into parenting and personal relationships, so stick around with us, folks.
	Thank you.
	Welcome back to the show.
	Welcome back to the show. The Rise Up radio show bringing you the news, views, and tools you can use to live a more free, prosperous, and sustainable life every Wednesday from 7 to 9 a.m.
	Don't just wake up. But rise up with us here on KDRP Community Radio, 103.1 FM in Dripping Springs, 100.1 in the Texas Hill Country and South Austin, and now broadcasting free and live at 99.1 FM in Fredericksburg, deep in the heart of the Texas Hill Country.
	We're joined today by Stefan Molyneux of FreeDomainRadio.com, the number one philosophy discussion in the world.
	Got a whole slew of podcasts that I couldn't even count how many there are.
	Oh, don't, don't. It's too embarrassing.
	I just wanted to mention, too, I like how your tagline says, bringing you the news, views, and tools of liberty.
	I wonder which category that puts me in.
	Maybe that should be my new tagline, Stefan Molyneux of Freedomain Radio, a tool of liberty.
	There you go. In a nice, friendly sense.
	Yeah, you got the news, views, and tools all covered on Free Domain Radio, so people should, if they like what we're talking about here, definitely check out that website.
	And again, there's hours and hours and hours.
	I don't know how you find the time to do it, but it's good.
	Your story is actually, your personal story is rather interesting.
	You were a programmer, a software developer who started doing these podcasts on your ride home from work, and I guess it kind of turned into a career there for you, huh?
	Yeah, I actually started as a coder and then I co-founded a company.
	I was chief technical officer of that company for seven years, sold the company, and then did more technical and marketing and sales work, did lots of travel.
	And yeah, I had a long commute, so I had thought about philosophy for about a quarter century or 20 years at that point and studied it in grad school.
	I just started doing these podcasts and people said, hey, you should have a donation page.
	I'm like, okay, I guess so.
	And so I guess it ended up being a useful enough tool for people that a couple of years ago, I guess I quit and started doing it full time.
	And it's been a very great pleasure and an honor to be part of this movement.
	Yeah, you definitely provide a lot of value for the community and for your supporters.
	And one thing that sets you apart from a lot of the other Liberty podcasters and radio shows, which there's plenty of them out there, believe me, folks, This show, including one of them, is that you get into all sorts of personal stuff that people can do on a personal level, whether it's parenting, relationships, or health as well.
	And I think that's very valuable information that people avoid.
	And sometimes people avoid it because it's difficult to change one's life, and it's always easy to point the finger and to point blame at other people.
	But you'll find when you look in the mirror, there's a lot that needs to be changed with ourselves if we do want to create a greater society as a whole.
	Let me start by asking, this is a question from my lovely lady Catherine, she posted here on Facebook.
	How do our personal relationships affect society as a whole?
	All right. I'm going to give myself a cozy 45 seconds to answer this one.
	It's an easy question, and please thank Catherine for me.
	Look, if there was a devil in the world who was walking on his smoky hooves across the human landscape, he would sort of smell in the air the moral outrage of the citizens at the growing disasters and catastrophes and impending dooms of the world.
	And he would say, dang, you know, this moral outrage is not good, because if people harness this moral outrage in a way that they can actually change things in this world, that's not good for me, the devil, who wants to make bad things happen.
	And so what he would do, I think, this devil, is he would tempt people with being outraged against things that they cannot control.
	To make sure that they were not outraged about the things that they could control.
	And this way, they would spend their moral outrage like throwing coins out of an airplane window.
	They would spend their moral outrage at the stratosphere where it would scatter to nothing and do no good to anyone other than show people that moral outrage was futile.
	And they would not, as Voltaire says in Candide, tend to their own garden.
	And this is, I think, the great danger of...
	Libertarianism, political activism, and so on.
	Look, education is great. I mean, I find the central banking, the Federal Reserve, the debt, and all of this monstrosity, the wars, as horrifying and ghastly, I think, as anyone else.
	But the reality is that you and I and, you know, all the people in the world can't, as individuals, do much about those things.
	So my question is always, okay, non-aggression principle, respect for property rights.
	Those are the two sides of the same coin that's the foundation of the future.
	If we're going to have a free future, that has to be the foundation.
	Of course we can find six billion social institutions that are abstract and uncontrollable that violate...
	Of course, no question.
	But I want to spend my moral outrage on changing that which I can actually affect.
	Which is not these institutions, or even necessarily the opinion of my fellow citizens about these institutions, but in my own house, in my own home, in my own relationships.
	Look, we don't like the initiation of force, and we don't like the initiation of aggression.
	So what does that mean? Well, of course the Federal Reserve is wrong, but what it really means in terms of what I can control and what I can affect, John, is it means not initiating aggression in my relationships.
	It means not raising my voice at my child.
	It means never threatening anyone.
	It means promoting volunteerism and the quality of relationships that volunteerism results in.
	But it means do something about what you can do.
	We don't read diet books so that, what's his name, Rob Kriske can maybe lose weight and send him emails.
	If we ourselves are 300 pounds, read a diet book and put down the cheesecake and pick up a stick of broccoli, right?
	That's what it means. It doesn't mean that we should read diet books in order to go and protest against overweight people in other countries.
	That would be to avoid our own issues.
	So philosophy is about what you can do.
	It's not just about what you can think or what you can reason or what you can argue or what there's evidence for.
	Those things are essential, but they're only the first point.
	They're only the first stepping stone.
	Philosophy is about what you can do in your life.
	So my question to libertarians has always been, does the non-aggression principle apply to children?
	Of course it does. Of course it does.
	If human beings in society need protection from aggression, clearly...
	Hulk Hogan in a bar does not need a phalanx of bodyguards because he's a big guy with a handlebar mustache who's got biceps bigger than my thighs.
	So he's doing okay.
	It's a little old lady who's getting her purse snatched by some young thugs.
	That's the person. So it's the people who need protection that we need to bring protection to the most.
	The state can't protect children.
	And so it's up to parents.
	If, as libertarians, we say the non-initiation of force is essential and self-ownership is the foundation of morality, And property rights that result from it, then we need to put that in place.
	And we need to say, okay, spanking children is wrong.
	Hitting children is wrong.
	Yelling at children is wrong. Because they are in an involuntary dependent relationship.
	You know, you choose to have a kid.
	Your kid doesn't choose to have you as a parent.
	So where do we need to place our moral emphasis?
	It's on the raising of children.
	Everybody understands this. Old creepy Jesuit line that says, give me a boy until he's seven and he's mine for life.
	Well, why don't we give our children until 7 or 17 or 70 an experience of growing up in a non-coercive, non-bullying, non-violent, non-aggressive, non-threatening environment?
	That way they will not speak the language of fear and of compliance and of pointless rebellion and resistance and frustration and anger.
	They will grow up saying, wow, the world is a peaceful and reasonable place and we can deal with each other on a voluntary basis.
	That way, when they become adults, they look at the state and say, I don't speak that language.
	I don't speak the language called the state.
	I don't speak the language of subjugation.
	I don't speak the language of power.
	I don't speak the language of coercion.
	And once people don't speak the language of the state, the state will evaporate.
	Yep, that's great. Yeah, from the bottom up and Hey, you clocked in at just 46 seconds, so that was...
	Well, not Earth seconds, but yeah, maybe out in Pluto somewhere.
	That's great. Yeah, that's all wonderful insights for sure, and you know, we can't control the politicians.
	We can't compel them to change their minds.
	We can't compel them to stop abusing and using the system to further their own ends at the expense of the mini, but we can control our own lives, and I think that's where we should start if we do want to see change in this world.
	So, yeah, you raise a great point with teaching children.
	I recently had a baby girl Aliana, she's out there listening.
	I love you, baby. She's almost five months now, and we're already getting it.
	She's growing at a very exponential rate, and we don't really have to deal with discipline at such a young age.
	We pretty much just let her be.
	She's a great little girl, very well behaved.
	But yeah, dealing with discipline, when the child gets a little older and trying to teach between right and wrong, you raise a great point.
	It's not about obedience to authority.
	But more importantly, it's about obedience to reason and to learn that actions sometimes have consequences.
	What are some of the things that you can do to instill, that parents can do and that you do in your own life to instill this philosophy in their children?
	Because, you know, kids are going to act up.
	Kids are going to be kids. Kids are going to get into trouble.
	But, you know, compared to spanking them or berating them or throwing them in timeout, what are some solutions that you guys utilize in your family?
	Well, you know, it's interesting, again, not to quibble on your language too much, but you say to discipline your kids.
	I mean, we'd never talk, I mean, how often would you refer to disciplining your lovely wife?
	Well, you know, she's been acting up a little, so I really need to discipline her and, you know, set her back on the right path and maybe put a few bits of lead in her laptop.
	Well, I don't find that that's even an issue.
	I just, I think I gave her a time out once when I simply had to brush her teeth and she wasn't letting me do it and it was, you know, it'd been a couple of days and that's for her health.
	I think once in three years, I simply don't get into these kinds of disagreements a lot.
	I mean, if you want your kids to eat vegetables, eat vegetables yourself!
	My wife and I are both vegetarians, so she sees us eating a lot of vegetables.
	If you want your kids to read, then read.
	Not just to them, but read.
	Show them what reading looks like.
	Children will model themselves on your behavior.
	It's that old thing, I can't hear what you're saying over what you're doing.
	And if you, you know, positive reinforcement, you know, thank your children for helping.
	Find ways to make, you know, my daughter and I clean the bathrooms.
	That's our job every week.
	And so make it fun.
	Make it enjoyable. Tell stories.
	Explain what's going on. What do these chemicals do?
	You know, how much should you swig?
	No, wait. Sorry. That was a...
	That was a bit of a left turn there.
	But make it fun for them.
	Make it enjoyable. And really appreciate.
	Kids so much want to help.
	They so much want to grow up. They so much want to be a part of the adult world.
	Help them into that. Explain to them things like, if you only eat sugar, of course, explain the teeth thing.
	If you only eat sugar, then your poops are going to be owie.
	That's a pretty visceral thing for a kid.
	Whereas vegetables, you know, make it squishy soft and all kinds of goodness to come out.
	These are things that children can understand and appreciate at their level.
	So, you know, people always say, well, you know, what if they're running into traffic?
	My daughter has never run into traffic.
	What if they're about to pull something off the stove?
	She has never, you know, we explained the stove to her.
	We told her what was going on.
	She just doesn't do it.
	And she's free to not do it.
	Say yes a lot more than you say no.
	If you say no all the time, and it's tempting.
	A lot of things, you know, she's three, so, you know, a lot of things she wants to do are slightly inconvenient or mildly inconvenient.
	But just say yes a lot.
	And that way, when you say no, it's not a big deal.
	But if you say no all the time, then kids get this thing like they got to fight to get every yes and they got to...
	Just put their foot down and say yes all the time.
	It makes it so much easier.
	Be humble. We as parents are so much older and bigger and we know so much, but there's a lot that my daughter knows about.
	That I don't know about, which is, you know, what is it like to grow up in a really peaceful household?
	It wasn't the case when I was a kid, but she's learning that.
	So she has a lot of wisdom to impart to me about how to interact with people and that.
	So, you know, be humble and be a partner and be a coach and be enthusiastic and be fun and be enjoyable.
	And most fundamentally, I mean, your kids have to like you.
	You know, authority for what it's worth comes out of value, the value that you bring.
	Why do I submit myself to the care of my dentist?
	Because she really knows what she's doing and my teeth are great.
	So that's why I submit, not because she's going to spank me if I don't come.
	I mean, it doesn't make any sense, right?
	So be somebody that your kids really like.
	Be somebody that they respect.
	Respect them. If you want your kids to respect you, you have to teach them the language of respect, which means to respect their preferences.
	It doesn't mean always agree. Negotiate and all of that.
	All of these things work beautifully.
	They started at 14 or 15 or 16 months old.
	We were starting to negotiate with my daughter and it's just been fantastic.
	She's incredibly affectionate.
	She's got great social graces.
	She says please and thank you, which I think is pretty important because otherwise you're just demanding and all that and taking things for granted.
	She asks us if she can do stuff.
	She asks both of us and that's because we're always asking her.
	You know, kids live, they live what they learn, and they learn what they live.
	And so demonstrate everything, every virtue that you want your child to reflect back, you have to consistently demonstrate first.
	And that way, you know, as sure as if you speak only English to them, they're only going to learn English.
	If you speak all the language of the behaviors you want with them through the way that you model those behaviors, they can't grow up speaking some other language.
	It's just they're never going to learn Mandarin if they're not exposed to it.
	Yeah, that's great. And again, the parallels with...
	The discussion on political philosophy we had earlier.
	We obviously don't want government forcing us with guns to do things, just like we wouldn't want our boss threatening a spanking on us if we don't show up to work on time.
	Yeah, it's just back to the golden rule.
	Treat others, including your children, as you would want to be treated, and I'm sure many adults wouldn't want to be spanked or berated for supposedly doing the wrong thing.
	So one of the things that you've spoken of in the past in the political realm about how to solve problems outside of a monopoly court system of violence is dispute resolution organizations.
	And I've found that one of the most difficult places to resolve disputes is in a home with significant other.
	What is some of the techniques that you and your wife use for dispute resolution at home?
	A slavish husbandly obedient?
	Sorry, you haven't got that one yet.
	Is that something I need to email you privately about?
	Well, the important thing is obviously you have to remove your spine.
	Now, it tugs a little when you do that, but afterwards you feel all kinds of jelly-like and happy, and I find that works out really well.
	Well, look, shared values is important.
	You know, a partnership in a marriage, I now know my wife for 10 years, we've been married for nine.
	A partnership in a marriage has a lot to do, in fact, I would say fundamentally it's shared values.
	So people get into conflicts about money.
	Do you have the same philosophy of money?
	I don't like to spend it and my wife doesn't like to spend it, so we're pretty much okay there.
	Do you have the same philosophy about religion?
	Do you have the same philosophy about the world as a whole and the standards that you have?
	Do you have the same philosophy about raising children?
	I mean, these things are all important.
	If you can get that stuff worked out and negotiated beforehand and stick to it more or less afterwards...
	Honestly, I cannot remember the last fight that I had with my wife or any kind of significant conflict.
	We do have our disagreements.
	We can, you know, like everyone, we can get tired and snappy from time to time, but we sort of point it out and, you know, apologize.
	Apologize, too, and apologies are an amazingly powerful thing.
	It's not a battle of wills.
	It's not a win-lose.
	You know, we grow up with these win-lose relationships.
	I do what my dad says or I get a spanking.
	Well, that's win-lose. I go to school or I get in trouble.
	That's win-lose. I pass this test or I get an F. That's just win-lose.
	And we're just not used to win-win relationships.
	And that, to me, is so tragic.
	I mean, the fundamental value of a free market economy is that it's win-win by definition.
	Everyone who's doing stuff is doing it for their own advantage, as long as nobody's being forced.
	And what I found after getting married was to reorient myself from the win-lose paradigm, where I get my way at your expense or you get your way at my expense, but, you know, never the twain shall meet.
	We don't both get to go up in the same hot air balloons.
	And to recognize that what is good for my wife is good for me.
	If she's happy, I'm that much happier and vice versa.
	And so showing these win-win relationships.
	Remember, kids are watching you like a hawk.
	You know, they say big brother is watching you.
	What they mean is little toddler is watching you, eyes that never shut.
	Because she's always watching what's happening.
	So she's learning about how to interact through watching you and your partner, your husband or wife, interact.
	And so just looking to say, how can we structure this so we can all win?
	And those kinds of win-win negotiations.
	Parental Effectiveness Training is a great book.
	book, I can't remember the author, but it's well worth looking at about negotiating these kinds of win-win situations.
	And that just becomes so fluid that you no longer feel, as I felt earlier on, that you have to kind of defend your interests from other people making you do stuff against your will.
	And then maybe you'll hold those cards and then force them to do other things against their will because you did something against your will yesterday.
	And I find letting all of that go and win-win negotiations are the foundations of a peaceful world.
	And we can find all of those if we're creative and open-hearted in our relationships.
	Yeah, for sure.
	Yeah, and you got to humble yourself.
	And a lot of people, myself included, completely, and something I'm definitely working on, feel like they got to dig their feet in the ground and be stubborn.
	And now that we've engaged in an argument, it's a debate, and I have to hold my moral ground.
	and I'm the one that's going to be right, but you often find if you just step back and put your hands up, humble yourself, and realize that you are a team, And even if you are right, what is it going to solve by asserting how right you are?
	It's only going to further upset the problem.
	And sorry, what's wrong with being right later?
	If I'm right about something and my wife's wrong about something, if I don't trust her enough, That she's going to circle back, then we have a bigger problem than the disagreement in the moment.
	You know, I mean, there's nothing wrong...
	Fights don't have to be resolved that moment, you know?
	You can sort of put your position out there and say, you know, think about it.
	And then, you know, wife will think about it, or husband will come back and negotiate some more.
	But, you know, because when you escalate into win-lose in the moment, I mean, that really turns up the heat, and that does not make, I think, for very, very productive solutions.
	So you don't subscribe to the philosophy of never going to bed angry...
	Well, I mean, that sort of gives you the option.
	Like, the only thing is you've got to resolve the fight positively or you're going to go to bed angry.
	I think that you can maybe not even resolve that fight in the moment.
	I mean, we've definitely stayed up late talking about stuff if you've had a disagreement.
	But a marriage is a long-term haul.
	It's not a sprint.
	It's a marathon. And you don't have to resolve everything in the moment.
	Some stuff can take a long time to resolve.
	And of course, remember to talk about, I mean, this is very important to me, right?
	Talk about stuff that may have happened in your past, particularly as a child, that may be influencing the current discussion.
	And people almost never fight about what it's really about.
	You know, it's the dishes or the money or the, did you mow the lawn and all that, put the garbage out in the right way.
	And that's all nonsense. People are not actually, I mean, human beings are not that petty to fight about that kind of stuff.
	What's going on is much, much deeper issues and really exploring those issues, talking about history and influences on the current disagreement are so essential so that you can get to the root of the issues and that way they don't keep cropping up all the time.
	Sure. Yeah, that makes a lot of good sense for sure.
	Get to the root of it. A little psychoanalysis never really hurt.
	What about any advice on couples that are dealing with trust issues or one partner feeling vulnerable and hesitant to I think that's what true love is, being able to let your guard down entirely.
	Do you have any insights on how people can be sure and be confident in letting their guard down when perhaps there's been trust issues in the past?
	Trust fundamentally is about trust in oneself, not in the other person.
	Because it is your decision to lower your guard and to be vulnerable to another human being.
	The first thing I think to remember is that if your trust is violated, you will not die.
	I mean, this is not a bullet to the chest.
	If your trust is violated, you will not die.
	You will gain some knowledge about yourself and about your partner.
	You will gain some wisdom about the hows and the whys and the wherefores.
	You may find a particular limit in your relationship, and relationships are always expanding.
	They never get to 100% perfection in the first date or the tenth date or maybe even the fifth or tenth year.
	They're continually expanding, which is why it's worth staying in the same relationship.
	Somebody many, many years ago, actually when I was a kid in England, said to me, he said, you know, if you don't get married, you'll maybe date 15, 20 people maybe your whole life.
	But if you get married, you'll date thousands because you're both continually changing and growing.
	And I think that's really important to recognize that there are boundaries of honesty to push.
	I think between 20 years and 21 years of marriage, there's expansion and growth if you're willing to work at it.
	And to recognize that if your trust is violated, it's usually not your partner who has any ill intent.
	It's usually just something from her history that is unresolved.
	And what happens is then that that violation gives you the opportunity to go and help resolve that issue rather than taking it personally in the moment like you betrayed me and that was wrong and I trusted you but to go and say well obviously you don't want to hurt me you don't want to betray me but that's what happened so what happened that this occurred and you can go back you always find something in history or something in the past or something you know with friends or family as a kid that is causing that and that's what needs to be dealt with negatives or bad things that happen in relationships are incredible opportunities For the expansion of self-knowledge.
	Because if you knew in yourself what was making you do that, it wouldn't have happened.
	So the fact that it happens means that you and your partner lack some self-knowledge as to what steps led to this negative outcome.
	I hate to say it's such a cliché, problems are an opportunity in disguise.
	But as far as self-knowledge goes, negative behaviors in relationships are amazing, amazing signs about where to go to to expand your self-knowledge.
	Great. Yeah, for sure.
	That's definitely... That's some good insight.
	Back to the parenting.
	I think it's the story of your enslavement.
	It's a wonderful YouTube that people want to learn more about that YouTube video.
	You can just search story of your enslavement on youtube.com.
	It's got hundreds of thousands of views.
	But one of the things that I mentioned earlier was the idea of instilling in your children the concept that it's wrong to steal from others whether or not you have a badge on your shirt or not and the idea that if we can raise a whole generation To believe that individuals ought to interact voluntarily and to realize that government is forced and to point out the gun in the room that we'll soon find that we'll have a free society from the bottom up.
	What does that look like practically?
	How does one instill those values or encourage children to come about and to realize those values on their own?
	Well, I don't think children can realize many values on their own.
	I think that they... I mean, if you look around the world, right?
	I mean, Muslim kids are raised in Muslim cultures, and they tend to become, shockingly, Muslims.
	And, you know, people who are raised in Croatia end up speaking Croatian, you know, I mean, for the most part.
	And so children really reflect, and they are empty vessels, really, in which their local cultures are poured in.
	And 99.999% of children end up as relatively passive receptors or reflectors of the cultures that they live in.
	I mean, it's just an empirical fact.
	And so, if you want your children to live certain values, then you just need to demonstrate in a repeated and consistent way those values.
	And then, when you fail to live up to those values, as we all do, because we're human, then you have to apologize to your children and say, you know, that was not right, I did the wrong thing, and here's why.
	And I'm very sorry, and I will not do it again as best I can, and if I do, I'll apologize.
	You know, basic things. Keep your word.
	You know, if you say you're going to do something with your kids, then do it, or at least acknowledge openly that you have failed to keep your word.
	And that way, I mean...
	I've certainly worked that, even when I've had to grit my teeth.
	When I was going to the Porcupine Freedom Festival, my daughter wanted to go in the swimming pool in the evening, but it was kind of late.
	We've been driving all day. And so I said, oh, we'll do it in the morning, I promise, right?
	So in the morning, of course, it's cold, it's rainy, and we have to get on the road by 8, so I got up at 6.30.
	And I would have paid a goodly amount of money, if not one of my kidneys, to not go into that turgid, frigid...
	Swimming pool. And I said, you know, it's kind of cold, but we can go if you want because I did promise.
	And so, you know, you grit your teeth and you go in.
	You just do that. And the value of that is that my daughter has never broken a promise.
	She did once, but she's almost never broken a promise to me because that's just what she sees.
	That's what she knows. Any more than she's just going to suddenly invent a different word for orange.
	You know, what is an orange?
	It's called an orange. You know, what color is it?
	Same thing. It's easy. So if you want your kids to keep your word, if you want them to be trustworthy, then you have to show them what trustworthiness looks like.
	And then they will naturally reflect that back to you.
	So it's, you know, all change in the world, you know, I hate to quote the king of pop, but, you know, all change in the world does start in the mirror.
	And all the values that you want to see in the world, you first have to show.
	And demonstrate in yourself.
	And that's again the great danger that the devil, the great temptation the devil gives you is to imagine that you can change others without changing yourself first.
	And that's a lot easier.
	It's a lot easier to rail against the absence of a gold standard than it is to raise the gold standard of ethics in your own life.
	But it really is the only way that we can do it.
	One of us had to do it, and I'm glad that it was a younger voice with a greater falsetto.
	Right on. Well, we're coming up on the end of the program.
	I want to thank you for coming on the show.
	Was there any last insights or anything that you had for the listeners?
	Well, obviously, I really, really want to thank everyone who's listening in.
	And I would recommend, I've done, you know, spanking is still pretty popular in the US. And by that, I don't mean to say that parents like it.
	I mean, but it is considered to be the major tool of discipline, timeouts and spanking.
	And they do correspond, I think, to laws and imprisonment in a way.
	I'm not directly equating them, but I would recommend.
	I've done a video called The Truth About Spanking, and I've done an interview with Dr.
	Elizabeth Gershoff, who's done a lot of research in this area.
	Please, please, please, if you're a parent...
	Look into the scientific studies on how negative spanking is.
	It costs kids IQ points.
	It creates behavioral problems.
	It raises aggression in peers.
	It raises defiance against parents.
	It raises problems in school.
	It is one of these things that is like morphine for a toothache.
	It gets you immediate results, but long-term costs.
	It's the cheesecake for the belly of parenting.
	What a terrible metaphor. Anyway, but please look into that.
	And also, I would recommend as well for people who are more interested in the long-term effects of negative childhood experiences on adult interactions and our capacity to reason, if people want to go to fdurl.com forward slash B-I-B. I've done a video series with subject matter interviews called The Bomb and the Brain, which I would highly, highly recommend for people who are interested in this kind of approach on how we can change the world.
	Great. I got one more question for you.
	Let me pause real quick for station identification.
	This is KDRP, LP-FM, Dripping Springs, Texas, broadcasting at 103.1 FM and K261DW Henley and the Texas Hill Country at 100.1 FM, broadcasting and streaming free and live worldwide at KDRPLive.org.
	So, Stefan, do you guys have pets in your family?
	No. No, we actually have an animal shelter not too far, and my daughter likes to go a couple of times a week to pet all the cats in the known universe.
	And so, no, we don't have pets.
	I did as a kid, but not here now.
	The producer was wondering how these, my producer Denver here, KDRP, I want to thank him for the hard work he does on this show, and KDRP in general, he was wondering how this philosophy of parenting and lack of discipline would apply to pets and dogs.
	I guess it would be much the same way as you would treat any other animal, treat any other human being.
	Well, you know, it is interesting.
	You can't hit dogs, right?
	I mean, but certainly in the U.S. and in Canada, it's legal to hit children.
	It's tragic.
	And, you know, the whole idea of hitting comes out of a much more primitive place in our society.
	We should always be wary of everything that has been unquestioned since the dawn of time, because everything that has been unquestioned since the dawn of time is almost invariably wrong.
	You know, we don't go to leeches and balancing our humors when it comes to dealing with an infection.
	But, you know, things that were performed by the ancient Egyptians, we should probably be a little bit skeptical about.
	And yet spanking is one of these things that continues.
	And I think in general, it's simply because obviously that's how people were raised themselves and it's tough to change.
	But also it's because, you know, what alternatives are there?
	The idea that peace brings order is something that's very counter to our history, of course, and it's very counter to most of the propaganda.
	I mean, what do most people think? If we get rid of the government, a massive flood of mohawked Mel Gibson motorcycle-riding maniacs is going to come and set fire to everybody's gerbils.
	I mean, this is what people think, that there's this massive...
	Vat and boiling over cauldron of human malevolence that the lid of the state is jammed on top and people are standing on it and if they move, this eruption of mad and violent.
	But this is not true.
	I mean, this is not true.
	And it comes from this old idea, you know, well, if we don't repress women, then women will just be licentious and women will just go and break up society and so on.
	It's like this is all nonsense.
	When you remove repression, when you remove control, when you remove violence, society spontaneously self-organize in incredibly peaceful and productive ways.
	You get rid of public school, as Harry Brown used to say, in about a week, there would be amazing schools that would be doing amazing things, much to the benefit of kids and parents.
	It seems counterintuitive, but what actually happens, People say, well, we need a war on drugs because drugs are so prevalent.
	It's like, no, no, no, no. Drugs are so prevalent because you have a war on drugs.
	If you get rid of that, then you'll go back to the way it was in the past.
	There was not a huge problem with drug addiction when you could get it over the counter for a nickel in a bottle of soda pop in the 19th century.
	It is because of the repression that we have the problems.
	Getting rid of the repression gets rid of the problems.
	It's kind of counterintuitive, but so what?
	It's counterintuitive that the world is round when you're standing in the middle of a desert, but it still is.
	Yeah, that's a great point for sure.
	And there's thousands, millions of people all across the world that are beginning to live their lives in a manner that is more consistent with their individual and ethical standards.
	Well, hopefully the ones that are living consistent with the philosophy of liberty, because there's a lot of people that live consistently with the philosophy of statism and violence, and that's part of the problem.
	And one quick on the spanking.
	It seems like it's the utmost hypocrisy.
	You have a child that comes home from school, he got in trouble for punching a kid, and the way that you try to teach them not to punch children is to spank them.
	It's the same thing if someone murders somebody in society, and the way that you solve the problem is to murder that person.
	It's just not really going to change things.
	It seems like it's only perpetuating the problem.
	It's great to see the parallels again.
	It's been a real insightful interview.
	I want to thank you for coming on. The parallels between how we view society and the coercion and force present in society and how that's reflective of a lot of coercion and force present in our own lives.
	Again, folks, we're bringing you the news, views, and tools you can use to live a more free and prosperous life.
	The main thing that you can do and the main thing that you have control over is your own life and your own home.
	I think that's where it needs to start if we are to create a more free and prosperous world.
	Stephan, I want to thank you for coming on.
	Can you list out some websites people can check out if they want to learn more about the philosophy that you profess?
	Oh, sure. It's freedomainradio.com is my website.
	There's a message board and we do a Sunday show every 2 p.m.
	Sunday. You can check it out and call in with questions, comments, criticisms, notes about better hairdos for me.
	And you can go to youtube.com forward slash freedomainradio if you'd like to check out some of my videos.
	And John, if you wanted to, in case this goes out to my listeners, so you want to just mention your website again?
	Yeah, the website is riseupradio.com, riseupradio.com, and the show's on KDRP Community Radio here in Dripping Springs.
	All right. All my best to Catherine and to your absolutely, completely adorable and wonderful daughter.
	Great. I appreciate that. Thank you for everything that you do.
	Thanks for coming on the show, Stefan Molyneux.
	Always a pleasure. There you have it, ladies and gentlemen.
	Stefan Molyneux, freedomainradio.com.
	A wonderful, insightful interview.

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