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March 4, 2012 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:33:56

2103 The Five Words of Freedom - The Freedomain Radio Sunday Show, March 4 2012

Five little words that will release you from self-attack. Dlso, why we can only pray to God that our leaders are cynical.

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	Alright, welcome to the Sunday show, everybody.
	We're starting at 2 o'clock. I have...
	Well, you know, I think the only word that I can use is FAITH. Feel as if there's hope.
	It's the acronym for FAITH. I have faith that we will get to have a technologically mis-uninterrupted, mis-dis-uninterrupted Sunday show today.
	Sorry about last Sunday show. We got a bit nuked by the gremlins of TCP IP packets being brought down by digital cheaters.
	But we're back! And we have a backup, should we need to.
	So, thanks again to James for working his keyboard magic, caressing the listener waves and vibes into coherence.
	I appreciate that. And if we have a caller starting up, let's start with the question.
	I won't do an intro yet today.
	I have a topic or two which I can drop back to should the listenership prove scant or scantily clad.
	But let's start with the first listener.
	Mark, you're up. Hey, Steph.
	Hello. I really enjoyed being on your show, so thank you again for having us and putting this whole thing on.
	Thanks, James, for facilitating that.
	My pleasure. Thank you. I guess I'll get right to it.
	So intellectually, I kind of get it about the whole childhood thing and the humility and the frustration that was experienced.
	And I can tell myself, okay, this acts this way because of this, and this triggers that because of this.
	But I'm having a hard time connecting to that and, I guess, getting down to the dirt that's going to actually change me.
	Because I feel like the actual part I'm at is like a plateau where I get it.
	And, I mean, there's a little bit more I could get, but I think I should start finding ways to unlock the repressed stuff.
	So I don't really know how to do that, even though I know that's necessary.
	I'm not asking for a step-by-step plan, but I guess I'm asking for what methods worked for you to do that.
	Because it's easy for me to say, yeah, I have repressed stuff, but then it's a whole other story to actually bring it up and experience it and figure out how to do that.
	Right. Okay. Do you have any idea of the general categories of things that you may have repressed?
	A lot of social anxiety.
	Repressed social anxiety?
	That means you're very socially confident?
	Wait, wait, wait!
	I don't understand! Sorry, go ahead.
	I guess humiliation. Stuff like that.
	So you have repressed humiliation from when you were growing up?
	Yeah. It's kind of a really big ego blow, I have to realize that.
	Go on. Just, you know, basically people abusing UPB growing up for their convenience, that kind of stuff, and being subject to that, and kind of having to deal with the repercussions of developing what were once beneficial coping mechanisms, such as people-pleasing and things like that.
	And then having to learn that I no longer need that survival tool and in fact it's actually counterproductive if I continue using that strategy to survive for my own happiness.
	And just trying to figure out how to make those adjustments so that I no longer use things that I once needed in the past that will now make my life worse.
	Right, right. Well, of course, first of all, kudos and congratulations for recognizing that.
	I know what a hard thing that is to do, and so I just really wanted to mention that.
	You know, great job. Great job.
	That's very important. Now, just to get a sense, give me the before and after snapshot.
	So let's say that you achieve what it is that you want to achieve.
	What does it look like, and how is that different from what happens now?
	It looks like me being able to confidently assert my needs without feeling guilty, I suppose.
	That would be the biggest part of it.
	Right, right. Being able to, you know, would I give other people credit for to give myself that same, to be on that same level?
	Other people's needs are at the same level as mine, not more or less.
	Right, right. Okay.
	And can you give me an example that...
	That had occurred that you can think of recently, perhaps, where you did not achieve what you wanted to in terms of assertiveness and how you would like to have had it occur.
	Usually in the realm of, like, hanging out with girls and stuff, I wouldn't want to assert my needs because it might scare them off.
	You know what I mean? Are your needs ridiculously kinky?
	What? Are your needs ridiculous?
	I brought this monkey and a jello cannon.
	Where are the sharks? Hey, where are you going?
	Sorry? No, nothing outrageous.
	Even asking for a glass of water while they were up would be something I'd be like, ooh, I don't want to do that because I don't want to inconvenience them.
	You don't want to inconvenience them.
	Because in the past, inconveniencing people led to bad time for me.
	You know what I mean? And for some reason, it's particular with women.
	With guys, I can hang out with them and start...
	Being able to assert myself a little bit more, but if I do it with women, I'm like, well, if I do that, and they won't want to be around me, that inconvenience them, even though that's not necessarily the case.
	And it's actually off-putting to kind of give off that vibe.
	So again, I know all of this, but I just watch it play out as it happens, and I'm like, whoa, no, not again.
	And so I guess I was wondering if you struggle with stuff like that.
	Oh, yeah, no, listen, no question.
	I mean, assertiveness can be a challenge.
	I had a breakfast this morning, it came cold.
	And I'm like, part of me wants to send it back, and part of me is like, well, I don't want to waste the food, I don't want to inconvenience people, and so on.
	So, I think if assertiveness isn't bothering you, then you're not growing.
	Do you know what I mean? Yeah.
	If you're an athlete and you don't feel any stress going into a competition, then you're boxing with girl guides, you know?
	So I think to look to overcome challenges with confidence and assertion is a mistake.
	I don't think there's any calm lagoon that you get to.
	I mean, obviously, it's not permanent stress or anything like that, but the way that I use this term very delicately.
	The way that human nature seems to work best is it is a muscle that works with resistance.
	Our happiness is something that comes from success.
	And success has got to be something that is new.
	I mean, very few of us sit down and play tic-tac-toe once we're over the age of six, right?
	Yeah. Because, you know, we got it.
	We got it. You know, I got it.
	I got it. Okay. There's 12 things you can do and that's it, right?
	And so once you've mastered something, whatever that thing is, whether it's a skill or a personal ability or confidence or whatever, in a particular situation, then you move on to something else, right?
	So, you know, the one thing that I think is a real shame is if you have a stressful and exhausting childhood, then you kind of come to adulthood with this huge desire to rest.
	Because you're tired, right?
	Oh, man, that was stressful.
	That was hard. I just...
	I want to float on a lagoon with, you know, a 20-year-old Brooke Shield doing slow-motion cartwheels over the Azure water with dolphins!
	And so we have that desire for rest.
	And one of the things that is so tough about an exhausting childhood is that when you become an adult, you don't have a lot of, you don't take a lot of joy out of the natural stress of extending your abilities.
	Yeah. If that makes any sense.
	Am I sort of making any sense here?
	Yeah. And I think oftentimes that gets put off on, you know, being lazy or being a slacker that people don't see the underlying anxiety that really goes into all that.
	Yeah. Look, there is great joy in extending and expanding one's knowledge.
	And there's great joy.
	So if you think, if you join some company and you move all the way up the ladder, each new step of the ladder produces its own challenges, its own stressors, and its own rewards.
	And one of the ways that you breed an underclass, right, this is big sociology, but I'm really trying to get – I've had a couple of listener combos recently where it's been very helpful to help people to focus on the larger socioeconomic aspects of their own personal issues.
	So it doesn't feel like it's just me or just you or just my history or your history.
	Society breeds drones through exhausting childhoods.
	Because that way, when you become an adult, you look upon challenges with a certain amount of dread, rather than with excitement.
	So the ruling classes and the management classes and the executive classes, they keep their competition to a minimum through exhausting childhoods.
	So what was your experience?
	So did you have that same experience of finally getting to a position of, I guess, semi-independent and taking a rest?
	Or what was...
	I think the rest is important.
	So I think it's okay to minimize your exposure to stressful situations.
	I do think that it's important to cool your jets.
	And see, nutrition is something that we often use as a metaphor for...
	A philosophy for self-knowledge.
	I think it's a useful one, but I think one that's even more appropriate sometimes is exercise, right?
	Exercise is work and rest.
	If all you do is exercise, you're going to injure yourself, right?
	And if all you do is rest, you're going to injure yourself through a hardening of the arteries or obesity or whatever.
	So what is healthy is a combination of exercise and rest in the same way that what is healthy is a combination of eating and not eating.
	If you don't eat, then you get sick.
	And if you eat all the time, well, you...
	You won't be able to reach the fridge over your belly, right?
	So the combination of...
	And I've thought about this a lot in my life because there are times where I go through very productive areas in my life and then there are other times where I just feel a lot of lassitude.
	I just feel lazy.
	And I've really tried to accept that and to not run on the hamster wheel of ever-increasing rotations, but to try and find a way that, you know, harness the energy when the horses are charging and then feel free to rest and relax when they need to recharge.
	So I think it's okay to not put yourself in stressful situations in order to gather yourself for the next challenge.
	But, of course, if we view increasing challenges as reminiscent of traumatic childhoods, then the temptation will be to turn rest into avoidance.
	Does that make sense? Oh, that's exactly what I do.
	If something's stressful, I definitely avoid it.
	There is no such thing as good stress, and I know there is, but I don't experience it that way.
	Right, and that comes out of, you know, I just wanted to pause and give you sympathy, but that comes out of a very difficult childhood that has, well, you know, excessive cortisol, it changes your brain, it changes your nervous system to the point where...
	I've been reading Dr.
	Gabor Matei's stuff after seeing you post it, and it's been really useful.
	Yes, yes, he's heroic.
	And... So, what is experienced as exciting by others, we often experience as dread, right?
	I guess, or yeah, with a lot more reluctance.
	For instance, like, if I were to have to go in and complete a task, the initiation of the task would be far harder for me to do, I feel.
	There's no way to know for sure, but I feel that other people would just go do it, whereas I would find different ways to put it off until they finally had to do it.
	Again, the whole procrastination thing, obviously, but...
	Right, right. Yeah, I mean, I had a friend many years ago who...
	He also went through a very difficult childhood.
	And I remember talking to his wife at one point saying, oh yeah, you know, when we first met, he had boxes of mail going back months that he hadn't opened, some of which were very important.
	Yeah, but he just, you know, it was too stressful for him.
	He was too tired.
	He had a pretty high responsibility job and all of that.
	So it was, you know, I understand that avoidance.
	I think it's okay to have that avoidance, right?
	I don't think you want to just whip yourself and say, I must, I must, because that's just becoming a bad parent to your own inner child.
	So I think that the sort of, let's rest so that we can work.
	Let's cool off. Let's recharge so we can charge.
	But I think the management of that is very important because I think it's important to remember that our nervous system has been attuned to a traumatic childhood, which means that we just have a different horse to ride than most people.
	It doesn't mean we can't get far.
	It doesn't mean we can't even get further.
	It means that we have management to do, right?
	And it's not even... Yeah, so there's the stress that we have from whatever, okay, we have to get this done.
	That's going to naturally evoke stress.
	Then there's also on one half...
	Triggers that are going to trigger stress in times when somebody else wouldn't feel stressed.
	So you're feeling stressed more often as well.
	Right. So let's go back to the example of the water, getting a cup of water, right?
	So, Empathy 101.
	And please don't, I don't mean to imply that you don't have empathy, right?
	But Empathy 101 is how do you, Mark, feel when somebody asks you for a glass of water?
	Totally fine. No problem.
	Yeah, not an issue.
	Not an issue. All right.
	Not an issue. So that's Empathy 101.
	Why am I asking you that?
	Because why is it that I don't expect the same of others?
	Well, no. We know why you don't expect that of others, right?
	It's your history, right? But you want to be around people who have something in common with you, right?
	Yeah. Does that make sense?
	Yeah. So, let me introduce you to the three magic words of confidence building.
	Are you ready? Yes, I've got my notes out.
	Are you ready? You're sitting down.
	Actually, let's expand it to four.
	No, let's do five.
	Let's make this really complicated. Okay, here's five.
	Here's five. So, You don't mind.
	In fact, in some ways, it's nice.
	Somebody asks you to get a glass of water, you get them a glass of water, and they're happy.
	I enjoy helping somebody out that I like.
	Yeah, you enjoy helping someone out.
	Okay. So, let's say that you ask someone for a glass of water, and they're like, eh, screw you, get it yourself, right?
	Mm-hmm. So, here are the five magic words of confidence.
	Ready? I'm listening.
	Hey! You're just an asshole.
	I'm an asshole? No.
	Oh. So you say to somebody, listen, would you mind getting me a glass of water, please?
	And they say, like, screw it, get it yourself.
	Magic words of confidence are, hey, you're just an asshole.
	Hey, I'm right here. Hey.
	Now, you can just go, you're an asshole.
	But, you know, I think we want to note it with some surprise.
	Yeah. Yeah. It's not, well, it's completely unfair for me to ask you for water.
	No, that would be to say, I'm being bad, right?
	Mm-hmm. Yeah, somebody came up with a backup.
	James says, hey, look at that, you're a dick.
	That could also work. You, sir, are an ass clown.
	Right? Yeah.
	But... It's okay.
	I mean, it's empirically factual and useful and helpful that if you ask someone for a favor that is not, hey, give me a kidney, I have a spoon and a butane lamp, right?
	If you just say, hey, would you mind getting me a glass of water while you're up?
	And they say, oh, you're so lazy, get it yourself.
	Like, oh, so you're just an asshole.
	I need to add a question mark.
	No, no, no, no.
	There's no question mark.
	If somebody snaps at you for asking for a glass of water, they're just an asshole.
	Now, that doesn't mean that they'll always be an asshole.
	Maybe they then say, oh my god, I can't believe I just snapped at you.
	I'm so sorry. That is incredibly rude of me.
	It's like, oh, okay, you're not an asshole.
	You just were an asshole, but now you're not.
	You're acting like an asshole, yeah.
	Well, acting are...
	I know, potato, potato.
	You find me something that you can figure out about a person other than how they act, and I will give you kudos for the Vulcan mind meld.
	We only know how people are by how they act, isn't it?
	Yeah. No, tell me if I'm wrong.
	How can you... I mean, we perceive other people through our senses, right?
	I would say the majority of my experience has been positive with somebody, and they...
	Had acted like an asshole for one event, I would say you acted like an asshole.
	But I guess by and large, my evidence tells me that you're not.
	But this one particular case is leading me to believe that you were acting like one at the time.
	Now, the hey, you're an asshole thing is not necessarily something you say to an asshole.
	We're just going to call this the asshole show.
	I'm just looking up the graphic, right?
	Oh, my God. You don't call crazy person crazy?
	Sorry? It's like you don't call crazy person crazy?
	No, you don't call a crazy person crazy.
	And you don't call a cop a bully.
	Anyway, so the reality is this is the statement for you.
	Because what it does is it correctly identifies the situation.
	And of course what it does is it diverts self-attack.
	Because if you say, listen, can you get me a glass of water?
	The other person says, you lazy bastard, go get it yourself.
	I'm always doing stuff for you. You never appreciate it.
	Blah, blah, blah, blah, right? Yeah.
	Well, what they're trying to do is to get you to self-attack rather than notice the big giant ass is hanging over your head called them.
	Yeah, and that's starting to ring some bells, too, growing up as far as...
	Tell me, tell me, tell me.
	Oh, it was never physical.
	It was just always very much self-attacky.
	If you could get somebody to self-attack, it was...
	Again, you know, then he didn't...
	His work there was done, you know what I mean?
	Right, yeah, because when somebody...
	When somebody says, you're such a lazy bastard, go get it yourself, then there's an asshole in the room, and the asshole's going to want to make sure that you think it's you.
	Yeah. Right?
	Yeah, it's just so blatantly obvious, but it's very tricky if you're not aware.
	Right. Or maybe it's not tricky.
	No, it is tricky because when somebody behaves really badly...
	They know it. I mean, unless they're, I don't know, having an epileptic attack, in which case they're not actually behaving badly.
	They're just laying around, right? So if somebody just says something really nasty to you, the first thing to do, of course, is to not engage.
	I'm not lazy. Hey, all I did was ask you for a glass of water.
	I can't... Right, forget that, right?
	Yeah. So the first thing you do is don't engage.
	Now, when you don't engage, what happens is, you know, most people go through life, they never even hear themselves.
	Right? They never even hear themselves.
	They don't have, like, if you play them back what they've said, I bet you 99% of the time people would be just shocked.
	Right? I don't know if you've seen shows like Super Nanny or whatever.
	I don't know. You're probably too young for shows like that.
	I'm 23. Okay, so Super Nanny, she records these people and then she plays it back.
	And I believe them where they genuinely say, oh my god, I did not realize I screamed all day at my children.
	Yeah. Yeah. Like most people, they don't even hear themselves.
	So if somebody says to you something really cutting or nasty, you just don't respond.
	And suddenly, they hear themselves.
	It's an echo that comes back from you not responding.
	Suddenly, they look at themselves like a little character In a comic book with a little talk bubble over their heads.
	They're like, oh my god, I just said that.
	And they feel really bad.
	They start self-attacking, right?
	Now, what do most people do when they start self-attacking?
	I don't know.
	I mean, nothing's coming to mind.
	Well... They get defensive.
	When they start self-attacking, they start...
	No, what they do is they basically throw you...
	In front of the charging bull of their own self-hatred.
	They sacrifice you to make themselves feel better.
	Why did you make me experience myself?
	Yeah, like, I feel really bad because you didn't respond, therefore you must be really bad to make me feel so bad.
	Yeah, I get a lot of that.
	Yeah, exactly. I experienced a lot of that.
	Right. Very clever.
	Right. Right.
	So that's really important to understand.
	Just to understand the mechanics.
	Right? And this isn't everyone in the world, obviously, but this is just certain kinds of people.
	It's almost like how the sophisticated manipulator abuses kids.
	That sounds terrible. But yeah, it's almost like somebody who won't get...
	Nobody's going to bust them legally for that kind of stuff, you know?
	Right. Right.
	So, I mean, we had a call just to put it in a context that's a little less personal so you can understand it, right?
	So a couple of weeks ago, I put out a call for donations because that topic just happened to come up and I was thinking about it.
	And I tell you, a lot of people wrote to me and said, you know what, thanks.
	Thanks for kicking me in the butt, so to speak, because I'd really been consuming stuff for a long time.
	And you're right, I should donate, so thank you, right?
	And some people accused me of violating the non-aggression principle by saying to people...
	Right, so when I ask for donations, right, so what happens...
	My guess is what happens psychologically is that I am in a position of asking something from someone who has the power to give it to me or not.
	The complete power. So in that situation, I become the child and someone else becomes the parent.
	And what they do is they play out the parent-child template with me as the person asking for resources, for fair resources.
	And they then have power over me because they can say yes or no.
	And I've exposed a need.
	I need donations. I need support.
	So I have exposed a need.
	And so what happens is they then fall into, a lot of people will fall into this pattern where when they were a child, they had needs which they expressed to their parents.
	And how did their parents respond?
	Well, some parents would say, oh, you know what?
	Thank you. You're right. And other people would be like, stop asking me for things all the time.
	I can't believe it. Yeah.
	So, the phrase, hey, you're just an asshole, or you're just being an asshole, you're an asshole in the moment, or whatever it is.
	You don't have to use the word asshole.
	You can go stronger.
	Or you can go like, you are being interactionally unproductive in the moment.
	Whatever it is, right? Yeah.
	But, when you're a child, you really can't say, hey, you're an asshole to your parents, even in your own head.
	Even in your own head. Because they see it.
	Hey! Hey! It's like your parents can see your thoughts scrolling, you know, like those ticket tapes, like it's scrolling across your eyeballs like little LEDs.
	They just can't. I know what my daughter's thinking almost always.
	And it's very clear and, you know, we are much less able to cover up in December when we're kids.
	So you can't even think that, right?
	So the idea, if your parent's being a jerk, the idea of saying, oh my god, you're just being a jerk, is really not, is not possible.
	When you were a kid, right? Yeah.
	So you trick yourself into thinking that it was something that you did.
	You just, you continue self-attacking because there's no other option.
	No, no, no, no, no, no.
	Oh my God. Oh my God, man.
	Look, you're self-attacking about the history of self-attacking.
	No, of course not. Kids don't just sit there and start punching themselves.
	They have to have their hands held there.
	Yeah. Right?
	Because if a parent's being a jerk to a child, there's jerkiness in the room.
	Mm-hmm. And so the parent then has to have the child self-attack.
	That's the deal, right?
	Yeah. And then when that child can't bear self-attacking anymore, and they've learned that if you are mad at yourself or feel down, then you go attack someone else, then they go bully someone in the playground.
	To level up, to gain any sense of control or efficacy over the situation, all that kind of stuff, right?
	Yeah. So, and the reason that I, you know, the reason that I strongly urge this medicine, you know, from my idiot amateur armchair viewpoint, is that there are a lot of assholes in the world.
	And they are, for all intents and purposes, irredeemable assholes.
	Can't be fixed. Can't be changed.
	And you need to correctly identify with them.
	Otherwise, all the stuff that comes out of assholes will land on your plate from here to eternity.
	And you don't have to fix assholes.
	You don't have to change them.
	You don't have to make them self-aware.
	You don't have to make them apologize.
	You don't have to have them look in the mirror.
	You don't have to have anything to do with that.
	Because an asshole, by definition, is someone who's going to use any vulnerability, any need that you have against you to control you.
	You don't show needs around dangerous people.
	If you're being tortured, you don't say to the guy, wow, you know what's really sensitive?
	It really hurts when you do this.
	That is the power.
	Please don't do that, whatever you do.
	Don't do that, whatever you do, Mr.
	Torturer. Okay, now we're getting sexual up in here.
	Sorry. Sorry, but...
	The fact that you went from torture to sexuality is perhaps time for another call.
	And the fact that some guy in a leather-faced mask with a dripping candle, a nail, and a scrotum tether, the fact that that goes sexual for you, we maybe could talk about another time.
	No, but it's important.
	You don't show needs, right?
	Yeah. When the asshole attacks you, what he is trying to do also, other than unburden himself of his own poison, is he's trying to create in you a need for him to stop attacking you.
	He's trying to create in you a need for his positive.
	Oh, someone just called me lazy.
	Shit. Well, it's no good.
	I better work extra hard so that person doesn't call me lazy anymore.
	That person just created in you A need for his good opinion by inflicting a bad opinion on you.
	And what you want to do is take that bad opinion away because it hurts.
	And so now, bang, you are possessed.
	You are controlled. Yeah.
	This sounds stupid, but I mean, did you...
	Again, did you...
	You fell prey to the same type of thing growing up?
	Yeah, absolutely. Completely until...
	It's just nice to hear sometimes.
	I'd be a liar if I said it never happened ever.
	It still happens from time to time.
	Because I'm continuing to put myself in more and more challenging situations.
	Yeah. So asshole identification would be my numero uno priority right now?
	Absolutely. And I hate to say this, but once you figure it out, you will find out that assholes very easily pass the smell test.
	Oh, I can't believe I made that.
	However true it might be, it's just the imagery of these little winking, brown, defecating eyeballs.
	I was looking for some sort of asshole comment.
	It wasn't common there, but you saved the best for last year.
	All right, well, I'll start not taking...
	Think about this. Whenever you feel bad around someone, at least examine the possibility that they're just being an asshole.
	And put it all on them.
	And just walk away. When you were a kid, you had to spend time with people you didn't like.
	As an adult, you don't have to.
	That's definitely very, very, very helpful.
	Again, I work with kids, so I'll be looking at my own behavior to make sure I'm not blowing onto them, which would be very easy to do.
	Because clearly, like you said, they go pick on the playground, and the way that I used to do that was through, I wouldn't physically do it, but I'm very good at acquiring skills, so I would acquire a skill used to dominate, which made your survival about sports very much real to me.
	Why maybe I got so good at a sport, because I was so busy being dominated, I would find an outlet to dominate other people.
	Oh, yeah, no question.
	Sports is ritualized warfare, and so it is a way of attempting—it's a very primitive way of attempting to solve conflicts.
	We all agree that people dominate each other.
	I'm sorry? Yeah. It's like everybody agrees that we can dominate—that this is an okay place to dominate one another.
	Yeah, here's how we're going to resolve our disputes without going to war, and we don't have reason and evidence yet, so— Alright, so was that helpful?
	And, you know, I swear to God, write this down.
	I'm not saying get a tattoo. Hey, maybe you're being an asshole on the back of your hand or anything.
	Yeah, I guess I don't want to take up too much time and stuff.
	And this doesn't even be, I guess, public because I've taken up a lot of time plus this.
	Are you there? Yes, go ahead.
	So I guess the biggest thing would just, like I said, the asshole identification thing.
	And after I do that, if I do that properly, then I will no longer feel the need to go out and, you know, dominate people at sports or something like that.
	Well, I mean, you know, I don't think that dominating people at sports is necessarily a bad thing.
	I mean, sports is fun when there's a competitive element, right?
	Exactly. Everybody agrees that's okay.
	Yeah. Yeah, no, it doesn't have anything to do in particular with sports.
	But what it does, if you have the, hey, you're an asshole thing floating around, then you're free to ask for water without fear, right?
	Because they're just an asshole.
	Yeah, exactly. Because it's like somebody, hey, what's the water?
	Hey, fuck you, I got your own water.
	Why don't you milk your titties, you lazy bastard?
	I don't know. I seem to have a very cruel southern caricature in my brain somewhere.
	A combination of mater and leatherface.
	Anyway, but you're free to ask because if somebody is being a jerk, then they're the jerk.
	It doesn't land on you.
	It doesn't own you, right?
	Yeah. Because what you fear is not somebody attacking you.
	What you fear is the self-attack that triggers.
	Yeah, yeah, because that's definitely an ever-playing loop.
	Yeah, because you can move away from somebody who's attacking you, but as Flink Lockwood says in Claddy with a Chance of Meatballs, I tried to run away, but you can't run away from your own feet.
	Right? So you can't get away from self-attack.
	So if you have a button where people can push that says, Mark, self-attack.
	You're fucked. Yeah.
	Because you've got to live your whole life like, please, God, don't push this button.
	Well, actually, God's the last person you'd want to ask to not push that button since he seems to have a finger all over it.
	But if you have a big button called, I will self-attack if you push this button, it's an invitation to all the assholes.
	And you've got to live your life managing everyone else for fear that they're going to touch that button.
	Yeah. And that's a very frightened and controlling way to live.
	And so you just got to say, nope, no, I don't self-attack.
	I mean, look, I know that's a ridiculously easy thing to say, and it doesn't mean anything to say it, but at least it's an identification of the problem, right?
	Yeah, exactly. And then once it unfolds, I'll be able to more clearly at least even go back and next time come back with more gumption or blah, blah, blah.
	Yep. If there's a fart in the room and you didn't fart, you say, hey, stinks in here.
	Wasn't me. Wasn't me.
	If somebody doesn't give me a glass of water, I'll tell them they farted.
	And they'll know. They'll know.
	Hey, this is nicely carbonated.
	Hey, wait a minute. No, but it's like, hey, if there's a bad smell in the room, if someone's being a jerk in the room, it's not you.
	If you didn't fart, it's just an accurate identification.
	I didn't fart. It wasn't me.
	You farted. Right?
	So if somebody's being an asshole, you just, no, it wasn't me.
	It wasn't like this. It's just a factual statement.
	And in order to become mentally healthier, in my opinion, we just need...
	To go with the facts.
	Just the facts. You ask for a glass of water and someone's a jerk about it and doesn't like immediately apologize.
	They're being an asshole. That's just a fact.
	That's just a fact. You didn't provoke that by asking for a glass of water.
	Don't own it. It's not yours.
	It's like if someone you know gets the flu, you don't lie in bed for three days, right?
	It's not your flu. So just go to the facts.
	Just go to the facts. A, it's okay to ask for a glass of water.
	B, you don't mind if somebody asks for a glass of water.
	In fact, it can be kind of nice, right?
	Go get something for someone. And C, if somebody's being an asshole to you, hey, tautologically, they're being an asshole.
	And that does not trigger self-attack in you.
	Because you're not responsible for them being an asshole.
	Again, these are just facts that we're dealing with.
	I'm not saying that you get this and all problems go away.
	But we need to return to the facts.
	We need to start with the facts.
	What are the basic, dare I say, bald facts of the situation?
	I asked for a glass of water.
	Somebody got mad at me.
	Well, that person has an issue with his temper.
	And I'd have to assume that that other person wouldn't want to help me out.
	I'd have to go, they wouldn't want, I mean, I want to help them out, but they wouldn't want to help me out, which is just bizarre.
	Right, right.
	Well, yeah, I mean, bizarre or not, again, it's just a fact that you asked them for an inconsequential favor and they snapped at you.
	And again, we don't have standards of perfection.
	Everybody can snap from time to time, you know, but then you just say, shit, I'm sorry, that was not right, or whatever.
	But if they, you know, if they then escalate to the, you know, and another thing, you know, this kind of thing, right?
	And then they're just being an asshole.
	Sorry, you know, that's just facts.
	You know, I can get as complicated as I want with my emotions and this and that.
	But philosophy says, what's the evidence, right?
	Yeah. Philosophy says, what is the evidence?
	And that's how we get out of the thicket of confusion and chaos and self-attack when somebody is attempting to get us to self-attack.
	They just push buttons.
	And some people are really good at it.
	They'll find your buttons right away.
	Other people got to play whack-a-mole and try and find the buttons or whatever, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	The savvier kid is going to be able to find your buttons quicker.
	Right. And the great thing is that when you say, when you've got access to, hey, maybe you're just being an asshole, then what happens is you actually get to focus on your experience of the person.
	Yeah. Not on what they're saying or how it makes you feel what they're saying, but your experience of that interaction, which is like, that was pretty nasty.
	I didn't like that.
	I mean, this is not stuff you have to say, but you can then focus on processing your own experience of the interaction.
	It's mostly just, yeah, something to stop the self-attack.
	That's mainly what I'm concerned about.
	Right. Because, yeah, sometimes that was never even an option, surprisingly.
	I know it sounds silly, but it was never even an option for me to think that.
	Unless it was like blatantly, blatantly obvious.
	No, no, no. It does not sound silly.
	In fact, I doubt that there's a human being alive who went through a difficult childhood who ever had that option.
	But yeah, you just keep reminding yourself, this person might be an asshole.
	Everybody's a suspect. Yeah, thank you so much.
	I appreciate all the time that you've given me very much.
	And the last thing I'll say is, there are times in my life where it's literally felt You know, the presumption of innocence until proven guilty.
	In the world that we live in, there are times, I'm not saying it's always, I'm not saying I feel that way right now, at least not in this conversation, but there are times where it literally feels, asshole until proven innocent.
	That's kind of the position I'm slowly migrating towards.
	And there's nothing wrong, as long as you have a good standard for innocence, there's nothing wrong with approaching asshole until proven innocent.
	Because look, and asshole doesn't mean that they're just going to yell at you for asking for a glass of water.
	You know, asshole might be just rejecting reason and evidence.
	Or if you bring to them a political argument, they attack your character.
	Or, you know, people who just won't talk about anything that's important.
	Or people who are emotionally unavailable and then blame you for not...
	Helping them access their emotions.
	There's so many flavors and layers of arseholery in the world.
	It's an entire ecosystem of, you know, winking sphincters, sometimes it feels like.
	And there are more than in the night sky and so on.
	So there's nothing... Look, as long as you have a stand...
	For somebody to not be an asshole, it means that they have to have self-responsibility, self-knowledge, philosophy, reason they have to fought back the stinking wet diaper of culture.
	They have to have fought back religiosity.
	They have to have fought back statism and irrational peer pressure.
	They have to have done a lot of work.
	A lot of work.
	So, if you and I are sort of walking down the street, I assume...
	Not gymnast until proven otherwise.
	So if we're walking down the street, let's say I'm in Florida, you know, let's go real cliche, I'm in Florida, and we're at Disney World, and everybody there is at least 250 pounds, it seems, everywhere you look, right?
	It's just a sea of undulating, batter-fed flesh.
	I'm just going to assume, not gymnast, right?
	Yeah. Yeah. Not gymnast.
	Based on evidence. Proven otherwise.
	Now, if somebody is, you know, really lithe and whatever, and then it's like, okay, maybe gymnast.
	Possibility. Could be dancer.
	Could just be somebody who doesn't like to eat.
	Could be somebody who's a javelin thrower, I don't know, runner, but could be.
	Now, of course, if I see somebody whipping themselves round and round with twirly ribbons and shit like that, then it's like, ah, gymnast, right?
	Yeah. But not gymnast until proven otherwise.
	And is it more common to find somebody with genuine, deep self-knowledge and empathy, or is it more common to find a gymnast?
	It's more common to find a gymnast riding a polar bear riding a tricycle.
	You had that dream, too? Yes.
	No. Is the polar bear wearing a thong?
	Anyway, sorry, we'll talk about this another time.
	But the rarity The rarity of, you know, genuine self-knowledge and people who've really worked, they've gone to therapy, they've taken ownership for themselves, and it's rational therapy.
	It's not like, you know, the less rational therapies, I think, that are out there.
	But somebody who's, okay, what I'm basically saying, it's you and me.
	And maybe one other guy on the call.
	Could be James. I don't know. But everyone else is an asshole.
	That's all I'm saying. That's just, you know, until proven otherwise.
	But seriously, I mean, irrational, let's throw aside the word asshole.
	I think it's rational to say in the world, irrational until proven otherwise.
	Yeah, yeah, yep.
	I mean, if we're on the cutting edge of philosophy, which I genuinely think that we are, then yeah.
	I mean, the first guy to figure out what made the sunburn could pretty...
	Sorry, too much sun and not enough sunscreen.
	What makes the sun burn?
	The first guy to figure that out, first physicist to figure that out, didn't walk around and say, I guess everyone knows.
	Gosh, and I've dug myself into so many holes, assuming of the reverse, that rational until proven irrational is just a dangerous thing to do.
	So I guess this is kind of helpful in seeing that, too.
	Yeah, look, I mean, what has the evidence been?
	A resounding not rational.
	Right. By and large.
	Well, and not only not rational, but anti-rational.
	Yeah. Right, somebody who's not been to France probably wouldn't mind it if you bought him plane tickets to Paris, right?
	Yay, we're going to Paris!
	Yeah, yeah. Right?
	But anti-France is different.
	It's like when you offer the tickets, you say, don't, why'd you bring me that shit or something like that?
	You know what I mean? You wouldn't be happy with the tickets.
	There's no such thing as France.
	What kind of con are you trying to pull here?
	Yeah, yeah. So I think it's reasonable to assume irrationality until proven otherwise.
	That's very important.
	Because if we keep thinking that every tiger in the grass is a cuddly kitten, we're going to get mauled from here to kingdom come.
	It's tiger until proven kitten.
	That's the reality.
	Because if you assume tiger and don't go pet a kitten, that's not so bad, right?
	But if you assume kitten and try and go pet a tiger...
	Right?
	Exactly. Exactly.
	Well, uh... Yeah, I've found multiple things valuable.
	From talking with you, I appreciate it, and I really appreciate the large portion of your time.
	Thanks a lot. It's not a problem that you were alone or faced with, so I appreciate the questions.
	All right, let's move on, if that's all right with you.
	I think we got a lot out of this. Thank you, sir.
	Have a good one. Thanks.
	All right, Mark, can I ask you to disconnect?
	Oh, he did. Jack, you're next.
	Something not to say on an airplane.
	Hi, Jack. Hello.
	Hello, can you hear me? This is the part in the show where you talk.
	Hello? Hello.
	Go ahead. You can't hear me right now?
	I can hear you just fine.
	Okay. Just wanted to make sure my volume was right.
	Okay. I had a question about ethics.
	I guess...
	I get into conversations with people, sometimes online and sometimes in person, about things, pseudoscientific stuff, like homeopathic medicine or psychic phenomenon.
	And sometimes I get frustrated when I'm trying to talk to them and try to explain to them that, no, this medicine you're buying is just water.
	It's been diluted so many times that there's not even a molecule left of the original substance.
	It can't possibly do anything.
	They've proven that there is no water memory, and people just refuse to accept reason and evidence.
	And sometimes I get a feeling of frustration where I'll think, well, if people just won't see reason and they insist on buying distilled placebo water, maybe I should just sell it to them instead of trying to convince them to see reason.
	Okay, go ahead. So that kind of thought is pretty compelling to me, but it doesn't seem like that would be very ethical either.
	Why does it have to be one or the other?
	Because you're saying that there's two options.
	This is just what I'm getting.
	Two options. The first option is I will correct their irrational thinking.
	The second option is I will profit from their irrational thinking.
	But in both of those scenarios, you then have a need for irrational thinking.
	But why would you want to be in a situation in life where you have a need for irrational thinking?
	Well, Intellectually, I wouldn't want to be in one.
	But sometimes I find the idea of profiting from it satisfying, maybe almost in a spiteful way.
	Yeah, vengeance, right? Perhaps.
	If you're going to be that much of an idiot, at least let me get some coin out of it, right?
	Yeah, I think that's pretty much what's going on.
	All right. Well, let's go back to the beginning.
	I just want to make sure I understood that part.
	Okay. First of all, there's no such thing as pseudoscientific.
	Right. I just used the term because people would kind of know what I was talking about then.
	Yeah, but telepathy is not pseudoscientific, right?
	Homeopathy is not pseudoscientific.
	It's anti-scientific. Because it makes claims that are true, it makes truth claims in complete opposition to the evidence.
	That's anti-scientific, right?
	Right. So...
	Now, that's on the one side.
	On the second side, the placebo effect is incredibly strong in medicine, right?
	Yes. The placebo effect is incredibly strong.
	And so, it's true that there's nothing in the water.
	It may be true, I'm sure it is true, that a belief that there's something in the water does people good, but it is only the belief that creates the, quote, goodness, right?
	along with the sympathetic doctor who, quote, doctor, homeopathic doctor who sits and listens and puts on a concerned face or maybe even feels genuine concern and so on.
	It's like a very short burst of human empathy and contact that I'm sure makes people feel better.
	I mean, I think, in my opinion, pseudoscience, again, I just said something, but we'll just use that phrase for now because I can't think of a better one, but pseudoscience is just driven by loneliness.
	It's just driven by isolation.
	I mean, how lonely must you be in your life where sitting down with a homeopathic doctor for 15 minutes makes you feel better?
	I mean, how starved for human contact must you be in your life?
	And the other thing, think of psychic things, right?
	How starved for human contact must you be and how bad at human interactions must you be?
	In order to have a dream or a fantasy that somehow there's a standard of human interaction called mind-melding.
	I mean, that's just desperate.
	You know, that's like a man in a wheelchair who dreams about flying.
	Of course we understand the dream about flying.
	He's crippled physically, right?
	But how lonely and isolated must you be in order to put any kind of credence in this kind of stuff?
	I mean, I genuinely feel some people go to a doctor because they have nobody to talk to.
	Hypochondria is a way of inventing a topic when you have nothing honest to say.
	Okay. As you were saying this, I was kind of thinking of something else.
	Could any of this possibly apply to calling into an internet talk show?
	Well, yeah, I think it's a good question, but I don't think so, because I think the conversations we have here are pretty real and genuine about very important topics.
	This is not avoidance talk here.
	If you're talking about this show, I mean, I assume you're talking about this show.
	But what I talk about is how to communicate with yourself and with others based on reason and evidence.
	And of course, I've written a whole book about what I think are the best ways To communicate this real-time relationship, it's the logic of love.
	So I'm not about avoiding honesty and openness and intimacy.
	This is an intimate show.
	People talk about very important issues.
	This isn't a sports call-in show.
	They talk about history and feelings and thoughts and challenges.
	Very personal stuff.
	I mean, I'm constantly impressed by the honesty and openness of the conversation.
	So I don't think that it would count to this show because this is not anti-empirical, anti-rational avoidance.
	Because I know I feel a little bit of isolation just because there aren't a lot of people in my immediate vicinity who I can talk to about these things.
	But I see what you're saying about how it's a lot different when you're talking about it.
	when you're talking about things that are based in reality rather than fantasy.
	Right.
	Right.
	Yeah, I mean, there's a huge – I mean, we've never really talked about that in this show, although I think it is an important topic.
	But there's a huge amount of loneliness in the world.
	And loneliness is something that is generated through culture, through religiosity, through superstition, through irrationality.
	So the more irrational the culture is, the more lonely people are.
	And the more lonely people are, The more they dream of connection with the undemanding.
	So, I mean, it's an old complaint that men have about women who are religious, which is you can't compete with Jesus, right?
	Right. And so people bond with things that don't exist because that's lazy and that's easy.
	You can bond with Jesus.
	Because Jesus isn't real, and he just exists as a voice in your head, and so it's not the same as having to deal with somebody else as a real human being with their own needs and preferences.
	And you can bond with a country, because a country doesn't exist and isn't real.
	And you can worship celebrities and feel that you have, you know, all these people bursting into tears because Lady Diana, in the final tragic chapter of the postmodern fairy tale from hell, married the prince and blew up in a tunnel.
	So people can bond with celebrities and they can bond with gods and they can bond with musicians, they can bond with countries, they can bond with groups like the military, they can bond with all of this sort of stuff.
	Because that's not the same as having a human interaction with somebody else on a one-to-one level.
	It's easy. And it's like a drug.
	And it's a drug that is driven by laziness, but like all drugs, it exacerbates the problem that it's supposedly solving.
	So as people get more into these abstractions, into these non-existent things, as they pass from the material into a dead world of ghostly nothingness, when they literally enter into the collective dreams of the dead, when they pass over the hill, Of reality.
	And are lost to shadows. Hades was the word that was used in the ancient world.
	The land of the shadowy dead.
	And that is an unbelievably lonely place.
	But every time that people, quote, interact with things that do not exist, they lose the skills of the living language.
	They lose the ability to talk rationally and openly and negotiate with Rationally and openly with real people.
	You learn the language of the dead.
	You no longer have the tongue of the living.
	And that level of loneliness is created by irrationality and it feeds irrationality.
	It becomes a slowly spiraling circle into nothing.
	So if you come across one of these people who Have these irrational beliefs that are fundamentally based on loneliness, what's the best way to interact with them?
	Or is the answer not to?
	Well, it depends where they are.
	Right? It depends where they are.
	If somebody's just taken their first hit of heroin, you might be able to talk them out of it.
	If somebody's just finished their 500th hit of heroin, not so likely, right?
	Right. But my question is, how close are the people in your life who evidence this kind of behavior?
	In other words, why does this matter to you so much?
	And I'm not saying it shouldn't, right?
	I'm just, why? I don't know that I have anyone close to me that has those kind of beliefs.
	More, I run into it online, but occasionally in somebody's acquaintances that I meet.
	I'm going to college right now, so I run across a lot of people on a day-to-day basis sometimes.
	But usually when I come across somebody who has these kind of rational beliefs, I do feel a desire to talk to them.
	I don't like the idea of people being exploited to sell them distilled placebo water as if it was medicine.
	But then, at the same time, I have this desire, well, maybe I should just be in that business.
	Right. Well, my suggestion would be, when somebody is avoiding, then don't.
	Deal with them or interact with them in the language of their avoidance.
	When people are talking about homeopathy, it's just, you know, it's idiot amateur hour theory here as it is always.
	But let me tell you what I think. Certain beliefs take hold in people because they are directly analogous to early childhood experiences.
	I have to imagine that there is something good there where it's nothing, where there's nothing.
	Well, that is analogous to a child with a cold and empty-hearted parent who has to imagine that there's love there.
	See, people do this all the time.
	Homeopathy is about the human personality.
	So people say, oh yeah, my grandfather, he was...
	This bad guy and that bad guy and he was racist and he, you know, he hit his wife.
	But deep down, he really cared.
	Deep down, he really, you know, he really had a good heart.
	He just, he didn't know the right things to do, but, you know, he had the right intention.
	So deep down, he was a good guy or he had a good side to him or he was a nice guy or whatever.
	You may have heard that kind of stuff from people.
	Yeah, well... Well, but...
	That's kind of how I looked at my parents.
	You know, they're bad, but deep down they're good.
	Right, right. And so that is to say that it doesn't matter what's there.
	It only matters what I believe is there.
	Right? So when you sort of look at homeopathy...
	I'm no expert at this, it's just what I've heard.
	But when you look at homeopathy, you say, it's just water.
	And they insist that there is medicine in there.
	No, it's just water.
	They insist... That water has a memory and of course memory is a very powerful phrase in human life.
	What they're doing is they're projecting their fantasies of benevolence, of medicine, of healthiness, of caring, of healing into something that is empty of all of those properties.
	Well, we understand that that is from a childhood where you had to imagine your parents were good or your priest or your teachers or whoever.
	If they weren't good, you have to pretend that they were.
	So you have these skills, and then someone comes along and says, okay, we've just got a tiny little bit of medicine in here, but it's better that there's less medicine.
	Well, you already have the habit of projecting good onto emptiness, of projecting healing onto an inert substance.
	So you click, you fit, like a key into a lock, you fit right into that.
	And so if you want to talk to people about homeopathy or psychic phenomenon or whatever, then talk to them about their childhoods.
	Wow, it's interesting. So you're into homeopathy.
	So tell me, where did you grow up and, you know, what was it like and what were your parents like and how was it for you being a kid, right?
	You can make these innocuous, you know, tell me about your parents, right?
	It can have innocuous questions, but that's where if you want to know the truth about why people believe what they believe, look at their childhoods.
	That just seems like sometimes a high bar to get over to jump into that.
	Well, yeah, but that's the only bar that is anywhere.
	I mean, talking about homeopathy, like if people weren't reasoned into their beliefs, you can't reason them out of them.
	If their beliefs are a psychological defense mechanism, And that gives people an even more It makes it harder to reason with them.
	But I guess what you're saying is that it's going to be impossible to reason with them anyway.
	Yeah, look, there's nobody...
	To all intents and purposes, there's nobody in this world who starts with a blank slate, looks at all the reason and evidence, and comes to their conclusions.
	99.9% of the stuff that people believe is...
	Cultural, religious, nationalistic, racist, whatever kind of crap you want to call.
	And they believe it for psychological reasons.
	Again, you might want to look at fdurl.com forward slash bib.
	The science is pretty clear on this.
	People have beliefs and invent justifications afterwards.
	Now, the having beliefs means being indoctrinated as kids in irrational stuff by school, by church, by family, by whoever, right?
	But people do not reason themselves into their beliefs.
	They have an affinity for a particular belief and they never circle back to check it because it serves a psychological purpose.
	Sorry, I'm yelling at you.
	But it serves a psychological purpose.
	It does not serve a truth purpose.
	But it only serves a psychological purpose if it is believed to be true.
	So it's the same as religion.
	People believe because they have some need for believing.
	Not because any of their reasons make sense.
	People believe irrational things because they were punished for being rational.
	And they were rewarded for being irrational.
	And children must please their parents.
	That is a fundamental rule of biology in the human world.
	Children must please their parents.
	And so if your parents say, we believe in the nine-headed spiny toad of flaming hellfire from the eyeballs, you're like, yay, flaming fire toad of slimy hellfire from the eyeballs.
	We'll praise that. Because if you don't, right?
	I mean, most times people challenged irrational beliefs in human history.
	They just got killed. Right.
	So you have to please your parents.
	I tell you, I tell you, my daughter is three years old.
	And if I tell a complicated story...
	And I miss one word.
	I miss one character's name.
	I miss one detail. She's on me like white on rice.
	Correcting me. If I'm singing a song, I get a word wrong.
	Bam! That's not the way you sing it, Dada.
	It goes like this, and she'll give me the right word.
	So she is incredibly rational and empirical, and has no problem with UPB and correcting me, which I think is great.
	It's exactly what I want for her.
	And that's Because I have never punished her for being rational or rewarded her for being irrational.
	In fact, I actually can't think of a time when she's been irrational.
	Honestly, I cannot think of a time when she has been irrational.
	That definitely goes against the conventional wisdom of how children are.
	If you talk to people about parenting, they'll always tell you that children are naturally irrational and violent.
	Right. Right.
	Of course. Of course. And if I beat my dog, my dog is naturally irrational and violent.
	Right. This is the 90% of parents who still hit their children complaining that their children seem to be irrational and violent.
	It's fucking parents who are irrational and violent.
	It's all projected onto the children and scars them.
	I agree. That completely matches my own experience of being a child.
	Yeah, I mean, how much fun was it for you when you asked basic questions of nonsense that you were told as a kid?
	Yeah, I wasn't directly punished, but I would just get really, sometimes really incredibly sarcastic answers that I wasn't capable of distinguishing as being serious.
	So sometimes it would take a long time for me to realize that some of the stuff that I had been told by my dad especially was a sarcastic joke because he was so deadpan about it.
	Right. Right.
	And obviously you were concerned about calling him on that, right?
	My daughter calls me on everything, right?
	So I tell her not to talk while I'm brushing her teeth, right?
	Right. Because it's hard for me to brush her teeth when she's talking.
	And it's very hard to get her to stop talking.
	The moment she wakes up until the moment she falls asleep, she is talking all day.
	All day. And so I say to her, you know, I can't brush your teeth when you're talking.
	Can you just hold on? I will tell you a story, but just I need two minutes here to brush your teeth, right?
	And so this has become a thing, right?
	And she's accepted it.
	And I just remind her and she's fine with it.
	So the other day, she asked me how I slept while I was brushing my teeth in the morning.
	And she wasn't looking at me, so it wasn't a trap.
	She said, how did you sleep? And I said, I slept really well.
	I was brushing my teeth. What did she say?
	She called you on talking while you were brushing your teeth.
	Exactly. Exactly.
	Dad, you're not supposed to talk while you're brushing your teeth.
	What did I say? You're absolutely right.
	Thank you. Yeah. You didn't punish her for that or yell at her.
	No, of course not. I mean...
	It's fantastic. Or make excuses.
	No, that's different for adults, right?
	No, she's right. You're right.
	Thank you for reminding me. I'm sorry.
	Please go ahead and I will not talk until I'm finished brushing my teeth.
	Fantastic. That's UPB right there.
	I'll tell you one other story just while we're here.
	I think it's too funny.
	So if we have a conflict, then what I say is, Isabella, we need to sit down and talk about this.
	And I'll sort of put her on my lap and She calls them sweet chats.
	We have a sweet chat about them.
	And anyway, so she's doing lots of role reversals at the moment.
	And she was pretending to brush my teeth as me, and I was pretending to be her.
	And I kept talking while she kept brushing my teeth.
	And she literally, she put her toothbrush down.
	She took a deep breath and she said, Isabella, We need to have a talk about this.
	Exactly, exactly the same way that I would say it.
	Like even down to the slightly lower tone of voice, to the slower talk, which is different from her natural.
	It was a spot-on mimicry of me.
	I just about wet myself.
	I laughed so hard. It was just fantastic to be imitated by your own child.
	That note perfectly. And it came completely by surprise to me because, you know, we have maybe one conflict a month, but we need to talk about it.
	So it was just fantastic.
	So no, children are not at all irrational.
	That has to be flogged and screamed out of them.
	They are incredibly rational.
	Naturally, they are UPB machines, and they have no problem challenging and correcting those in authority at all.
	That's their natural impulse as far as I can see.
	I guess the moral I get from your last story is that you just have to live the way you want your children to behave, and that just kind of naturally happens.
	Well, yeah, that's exactly how we do everything else.
	Look, if I want my daughter to use the right word for tree, I say it's a tree.
	I want my daughter to speak in the way that I'm speaking, and therefore I model the speech for her.
	We understand that.
	We would never expect a child to suddenly break into Gaelic, right?
	Because all they do is learn the words that they're taught.
	And the language is just the tip of the iceberg, right?
	How do children learn how to walk?
	Because they see people walking.
	How do children learn how to speak?
	They hear people speaking. How do children learn how to negotiate?
	They see people negotiating and they're negotiated with.
	Everything that the child does is a mirror of the adult.
	We understand that. We understand that.
	We don't expect some kid in Morocco who's never heard a word of English to start speaking English and wearing his baseball cap backwards and low jeans and, you know, break dancing if he's never been exposed to those things.
	So we understand that as far as language goes, and as far as tons of behavior goes, children do exactly, do exactly what the parents do.
	But then suddenly we peel these things away from us.
	We peel these things away from us and we put them somewhere else and we say, well that behavior did not come from me.
	No. Bullshit.
	All behavior in children comes from the parents.
	But parents like to peel off the behaviors that they don't like in their children and say, well, that didn't come from me.
	I've been trying to oppose that.
	That's got to be innate. No.
	No, they do that because they don't like to see themselves reflected back.
	Right? Sorry, I didn't...
	Hello.
	Thank you. Thank you very much, and I hope it works out.
	And remember, just ask people about their history, so if you can get to the truth there, their personality will make sense.
	And if you can't, then nothing will ever go from there, I would say.
	Hey, Alex on the phone, you're up.
	Okay, great. I just have a...
	I just have 11 sentences.
	They're not...
	I'm sorry, you have what?
	I have 11 sentences.
	It's not a formal syllogism or anything like that, but...
	It's... I think they all follow from one another, so I guess you can interrupt at any time you see a problem, or maybe I could go through the whole thing, whatever you prefer.
	Do you want to put them in the chat window?
	Do you want to put them in the chat window as well so I can see along with the text?
	Oh yeah, sure. No problem.
	Please do. And I think most of this stuff we kind of already know, but the conclusion is where the topic is concerned.
	But number one is... Governments interrupt the market on a consistent basis via violent interruption.
	Number two, this interruption cycle is referred to as the business cycle outlined by Austrian economics.
	Okay, number three, with each cycle, the debt bubble is increased, also increasing the negative economic effect of the bubble popping or crashing the debt bubble.
	Okay. Number four.
	The bubble popped in 2008.
	We know this is the housing bubble and so forth.
	Number five.
	The bubble was stimulated, again, through Federal Reserve spending, but we seem to already be experiencing the bubble about to pop again, prompted with extraordinary amounts of spending.
	Sorry, the extraordinary amounts of...
	Like QE2. Oh, yeah, okay, okay.
	Okay, and number six is this indicates to me we're facing a scenario of economic turmoil that indicates greater than the Great Depression or hyperinflation.
	Number seven, this would mean that the market would be interrupted to such a negative degree that food shortages are imminent.
	Number eight, if food shortages are imminent, all other aspects of the market would be temporarily suspended or at least interrupted.
	Okay, number nine, if the market is suspended or interrupted, we would expect massive metropolitan exodus or the...
	Yeah, depopulation of the cities because cities are so dependent on the food supply.
	Right, right, exactly.
	Okay, so we're almost there.
	Number ten, should we as philosophers not only take the philosophy of objective truth, but also make a full continued effort to homestead, increase sustainable systems, food generation, food storage, and security measures, conclusively coupling the stockpiling,
	like short-term stuff, with the long-term stuff, like sustainable system preparation for our, which would necessitate our survival and could provide for where the market It would fail, which wouldn't really be the market failing, it would just be the market being interrupted.
	And then the last one.
	What good is our philosophy?
	Really, I should rephrase that, and what good is objective, true philosophy?
	Its only stated is, survive.
	Don't we as philosophers have a duty to prepare for economic collapse, as to not be affected by it, so that we may play a large part in restructuring society?
	If we are not around to discuss the objective truths of philosophy, the cycle will repeat might makes right.
	So that's the whole thing.
	I know that's kind of a big...kind of a lot all at once, but what are your thoughts?
	Well, I mean, I think that an economic dislocation is inevitable.
	I mean, again, I just look at the evidence, and the evidence is that it is inevitable that there's going to be economic dislocation.
	How it goes has a lot to do with us, I believe, as I've said before.
	But it really comes down to one fundamental question.
	It really comes down to one fundamental question, which is this.
	Are the rulers socialists?
	Or are they socialists as a means of buying votes?
	This is the most important question that faces us as a society.
	And what I mean by this is Is pandering to special interest groups, is printing money, is it because they genuinely believe that this is going to bring wealth and stability and happiness and egalitarianism and joy and peace and roses and puppies to everyone?
	Is it a genuine moral conviction that they have?
	Or do politicians just say whatever shit they can in order to get idiots to vote for them?
	I think this is a strange separation here because I see what you're doing.
	You're separating, you know, the appeal to politicians that they have.
	Please vote for me. I want to be in power with the politicians' personal convictions of, yes, I want socialism to be the holy grail or whatever.
	Is that right? Did I get that right?
	Yeah, but people are asking in the chat room why is this such an important question.
	Well, the reason it's an important question Is that if they are ideologically wedded to the use of state force as a moral goal and imperative, then there's no way they're going to change course, no matter how bad things get.
	And see, that seems to me like it's already pretty evident to me that the course isn't going to change, right?
	Yeah, there's a lot of people getting together for Ron Paul.
	No, sorry, sorry. No, no, no, no, no, no.
	The course can change. The course can change.
	Look at India. Look at China over the past 20 years.
	The only reason that we have any kind of free market is the course changed from feudalism.
	The course can change for the better.
	But the only thing it depends on is people's emotional and moral commitment to the existing structure.
	If the existing structure...
	Is the way it is because of people's moral convictions in power, then it will not change.
	If, on the other hand, people are using state power to give voters what they want to get into power, and they're just telling voters whatever moral shit they can string together with a straight face in order to get votes, then that's incredibly hopeful.
	The more cynical...
	And amoral, the leaders are, the better off we are in the future.
	Because what it means is that when things don't work, they will pragmatically change their strategies to better livestock management techniques.
	Right. When you say that they will pragmatically change the strategy to better livestock management techniques, to me that sounds like Soviet Union, right?
	I don't understand, because it's like a slippery slope.
	No, no, sorry, the Soviet Union came into power.
	Let's assume that Trotsky and Lenin and all the bunch of intellectual thugs genuinely believed that Marxism was going to bring about the workers' paradise and solve all the problems, and they believed that capitalism was about to implode and eat all of workers and so on.
	Let's say that they established Their monolithic communist dictatorship because they were morally wedded and ideologically infused with the monstrously great goals of communism.
	Well, then they're just going to fucking hang on to a grim death.
	And that's kind of what happened, right?
	You know, like, we're going to collectivize the farms even if 10 million people starve.
	I mean, what farmer does that?
	Right, and that's exactly what happened.
	What farmer is going to say, I'm going to keep building smaller and smaller pens for my cows until they fucking beat their brains out against the wall and all die?
	I mean, that's not a farmer.
	That's a crazy person, right?
	Or, you might just say, a moralist.
	Sorry, but if the farmer is saying, holy shit.
	Sorry, if the farmers are saying, holy shit, there is, you know, a lot of my cows are beating their heads to death because the stalls are too small.
	He's going to make the stalls bigger because he doesn't want his cows to die.
	He's just going to change what he's doing because he doesn't have some weird moral thing that's going to cause all his cows to die for the sake of some greater good.
	He's like, I don't want dead cows.
	So, and right, so the leaders are going to say, well...
	Too much government interference in free trade is causing the interruption in the food supply.
	So we're just going to open it up.
	This is what Lenin did with the new economic policy, the NEP. I mean, Russia was just going to starve to death.
	A year or two after the revolution.
	I mean, literally, the cities were already beginning to depopulate and there was no food supply of any kind really coming into the major metropolises.
	And so he instituted a free market called the New Economic Policy, which allowed people to trade and allowed farmers to sell their goods for profit.
	And that's what kept Russia alive in the 1920s until lunatic Stalin started collectivizing in this Khmer Rouge style and just, you know, the breadbasket of Europe turned into the Funeral house of the planet.
	So it depends if the rulers, like so the rulers in China, what the hell?
	I mean, they were all stagnating and there was nothing going on.
	And they looked over at the West and they went, holy crap, these guys, they're making a fortune.
	I want some of that.
	And so they, you know, because they weren't the first generation communists or even the second, they were like, okay, we'll change.
	We're going to open up the markets.
	We're going to allow entrepreneurship.
	We're going to allow private property.
	We're going to allow free trade. All that kind of stuff.
	And bingo, bingo, bongo, they're sitting on top of a wealth fountain because they're not ideologically wed to anything except power and wealth.
	There's nothing more dangerous than an ideological political ruler because they'll just kill you for the sake of their ideology and not even look back.
	Whereas, you know, the ruler who actually wants wealth and cattle and a flourishing society, he's going to have to institute free trade or claw back government control and restrictions.
	And he knows that. This is well known.
	I mean, 90% of economists understand that the minimum wage is a disgustingly racist and anti-youth measure and that before The minimum wage came in.
	The workforce participation among blacks in America was higher than it was for white youth.
	And now it's far lower.
	And so economists all say, yeah, you've got to get rid of the minimum wage.
	And so this is all well known.
	The basics of free trade is completely well understood and has been for hundreds of years.
	And it's completely available to the rulers.
	And so when shit starts to really not work in the economy, every economist in the world except three arsehole Keynesians and two Marxists are going to say, well, it's because you're not allowing free trade.
	So the rulers are going to say, okay, we're going to allow free trade again wherever this is being bottled up.
	As long as they're not ideological.
	If they're cynical, pragmatic, power-hungry, wealth-hungry jerks, fantastic.
	It means we've got a chance to survive and flourish.
	This is an interesting way to look at it.
	I haven't looked at it this way before.
	But I have to say, what you're talking about is statist individuals who are currently in power admitting failure.
	That's what you're talking about, right?
	No, they don't have to admit failure.
	No, no, no, they don't have to admit failure.
	They just have to say they're moving in a good direction.
	Look, did the communist rulers in China admit that communism was a failure?
	No. They did what every asshole does when they're proven wrong.
	They changed their story, move along, and they view any attempt to point out their past inconsistencies as completely unproductive.
	Let's look to the future. Okay.
	Okay, great. All right.
	I'm with you so far, and I agree to that regard that policies—you're right.
	It's likely that states— Those who are currently in power will attempt to start changing their policies because they're saying, oh my gosh, this is really not working.
	We don't, our cattle, like in your metaphor, the cattle are, they have no more room to move and it's less profitable in the powers.
	I get that. And sorry, just one last thing too.
	Statism cannot survive without cities.
	Because cities are much easier to control.
	You've got an aggregation of population.
	It's much cheaper and easier to collect taxes.
	One of the main reasons the Roman Empire fell was that they had to raise so much taxes and try and conscript so many people that all the young people fled the cities to go and live in the country and just work on the farms.
	And so you can't collect taxes in farms.
	It's almost impossible because there's so much barter and people...
	You can't tax...
	Rural areas. You need cities to have any kind of state of any reasonable size.
	And so the rulers desperately need to keep people in the cities where they use cash, where they can be taxed, where they can be controlled, right?
	Sure. And so if there's a depopulation of cities...
	I'm sorry?
	Cities are the tinier pin or the tinier fence-fin area for the cattle.
	Well, you can't milk cattle that are scattered all over the world, but you can milk cattle that are in stalls one after the other.
	And so you need cities to maintain political power.
	And in Rome, I mean, you went from a population of over a million to 17,000 in the space of a year or two.
	Because there's just no food, and the barbarians all came because they tried to pay all the barbarian mercenaries with silver that was shit.
	I mean, it was 98% not silver.
	98% seems to be the tipping point for the currency going into nothing, and of course, that's where the U.S. dollar is now relative to 80 or 90 years ago.
	And so they tried paying all the mercenaries with all this crap silver, and the mercenaries said, well, this is just junk.
	We don't want this. Give us the real silver.
	And they said, we don't have any. They said, well, we're going to come and get it then.
	They came and sacked Rome, and that was the end of Rome.
	Because Rome died from taxation and inflation and debt.
	It's the same damn cycle over and over again.
	I want to zoom in.
	I think we're on the same timeline, but so things get bad, so hyperinflation hits, state has changed their policy, and things start getting better again.
	I think we're in agreement on that timeline, but I want to zoom in on a segment of that timeline because I want to emphasize that the risks I'm pretty high, right?
	Like, the timeline where the states say, oh, okay, we're going to implement policy to allow more free trade.
	Well, that's probably not going to happen until things get really bad, right?
	No, it will happen when they know things are going to get really bad.
	Remember, the government has access to far more information than you and I do.
	The people in the inner circles of the government, they know how much fiat currency is out there.
	They know how much their real debt obligations are.
	They know what the real unemployment rate is, not the crappy single digits that they hand out to the deluded.
	So they have access to far more information than we have.
	And the moment that they see that the food supply is starting to get threatened, they will act.
	These are not people who go down with the ship.
	We live, thank God, we live in a postmodern philosophy age where truth and virtue are seen as manipulative bullshit by just about everyone, particularly the educated.
	Subjectivism and relativism and pragmatism, these are going to save our sorry asses because if we had ideologues in power, we'd go straight back to the Middle Ages.
	That's interesting. So what you're basically...
	I want to paraphrase what you're saying as best that I can.
	You're saying that things won't get too bad because the statists have access to enough information about how things really work in the free market.
	They will allow policy...
	Yeah, look, it's the same pattern.
	What do I need to do to stay in power?
	Right now, lying in the expansion of state power and the hyperprinting of currency is how politicians stay in power.
	When that no longer works, they will simply do whatever they have to do to stay in power then, which will be to reform the currency.
	To loosen restrictions on free trade and to make sure that the food supply is maintained into the cities, they will simply change their behavior to maintain power.
	Right now, if you try to do those things, you would be thrown out of power on your ass within a day.
	But in the future, when they have no choice, they will simply change their behavior With no reference to any kind of change, right?
	We are now always at war with East Asia.
	We have always been at war with East Asia.
	They would simply change their behavior to maintain their power.
	These ruling classes have been running human beings for about 100,000 years.
	They're pretty good at what they do.
	And it's only when they get infected with absolutist ideology or the superstition of irrational ethics, that's when societies become truly self-destructive.
	But we have modern, amoral pragmatists at the helm.
	And they will simply do what they need to do.
	As soon as we reach the tipping point and it becomes more advantageous for them to liberate the economy rather than repress it for the sake of special interest groups, they will do that.
	And they will be ruthless in their power when they do that.
	Which is... So conclusively, I can say...
	Sorry, go ahead. Okay.
	So conclusively, what you're saying is basically...
	The risks, because of the pragmatists who are in power, the risks of, let's say, the market being interrupted to a degree to where food shortages are imminent, will be minimized by their pragmatic goals.
	Yeah, they'll see that stuff coming, and they'll make sure it doesn't happen.
	Particularly in America, where everybody and their dog has a gun, right?
	Right. I mean, they know that if it ever comes to the point where people are going to start to use weapons to get food, it's done.
	I mean, they're done.
	They're toast. They can't conceivably rule America with all of its weapons.
	There's just no way they're going to allow that to happen.
	These people are not dumb.
	I'd hate to think we were ruled by idiots.
	It's not true. Okay, so this kind of feeds into some of my background.
	Some of my background being I come from the Alex Jones kind of background where it was more focused on, okay, well, there's a bunch of powerful people who get together and do weird things in California and stuff.
	All right, well, they get together and they declare a bunch of goals, and some of their goals are, well, to maintain an incredible, most useful function of power, to do it most efficiently, look, we've got to have So many people.
	The more people the tax, the better.
	I get that. And the more you allow the market to expand, which requires population, I get that.
	But why would these powerful people who just come together isolate themselves, declare a bunch of goals, put it in stone somewhere in Georgia, and then...
	So what I'm saying is that I get this.
	From those goals, those stated and declared goals from those individuals, It seems like they're willing to bail.
	It seems to me like they're willing to allow certain areas just to go up in chaos.
	They don't have to worry about controlling it because they're striving for the most efficient means of control, which is A population number.
	That's the bottom line.
	I don't know much about the population goals of these people, but statistically, there's no better population control than industrialization.
	The best contraception is capital.
	Because the reason people have a lot of babies, of course, is because they can't save enough for their old age and because they're driven to have a lot of babies by religious and nationalistic collectives because it's easier to indoctrinate than it is to convert.
	And so if you get people to be wealthy and allow them to save for their old age, and also when you have an advanced economy, you need more education to succeed, which means that you have fewer children and you invest more in their education.
	This is why Japan has like a birth rate of 1.2 or something.
	That's way too low, obviously.
	Too much control does not allow human beings to breed very well.
	But... If they want less people, that's easy peasy.
	A free market will produce a lower birth rate, a rationally sustainable birth rate in the long run.
	I'll just leave you with this metaphor and hopefully this will make some sense.
	The government is a criminal organization.
	That's my argument.
	It always has been. But that's good.
	That's good. If I said it was an ideological organization, that would be bad.
	That would be really bad.
	So, a criminal, look at the mafia, right?
	What does the mafia do if they're starting to shake down so many people so hard that people are starting to leave the neighborhood, that businesses are starting to leave the neighborhood?
	What do they do? When businesses start to leave the neighborhood?
	Yeah. What does the mafia do?
	Loosen its grip, right?
	Is that what you're saying? Yeah, they ease up.
	Of course they do. Okay. They ease up.
	Okay. Because they're not into ideology, they're into money and power.
	And if they're exercising too much, right, this is a self-conscious cancer, right?
	And so if they're exercising, if cancer could think and it knew it was going to kill the host, it would ease up, right?
	Right. And we're operating on the primary assumption that there are more pragmatists in power than ideological lunatics.
	That's what we're operating on.
	Right. Right. And I said, I don't have the final answer to that.
	I mean, nobody does. That's pretty high risk, isn't it?
	That's kind of, I mean, the risks are still high.
	You know? What do you mean, risk?
	Well, if the risk, well, if it turns out that the answer to this question is that there are more ideological status, then the result is going to be severe interruptions in the market, food shortages.
	That's the risk, right?
	Well, look, I mean, but the way you hedge that risk is you buy some food.
	I mean, I think that's a sensible thing to do.
	I've done it. You buy food.
	Yeah, you buy food and you buy the stuff with the 20-year shelf life and you can't lose.
	You can't lose buying food because you're either going to eat it because you need it or you're going to eat it because you don't need it and it's a lot cheaper than the food is going to be, at least in the short run.
	So I agree with you.
	I'm not saying, like, I know for sure that we're going to be more free in two years from now.
	I don't. I think it's 9 to 10.
	I think that it's most likely that we have enough amoral pragmatists in the world.
	And that's thanks to postmodernism.
	At least it cracked the monomania of religiosity where the ethics produced the Middle Ages when religion was not separated from the state and when priests had significant amounts of political power.
	We had the Middle Ages.
	That's not good. So I'm glad to be here.
	But yeah, absolutely.
	Get to food. Get to water.
	Try and grow a garden.
	Try and become sustainable.
	That's where we started. I agree with all of that.
	I think that's sensible stuff to do.
	It's a can't-lose proposition.
	It's a little bit of extra work. You lay out a little bit of money, but it's a great investment for the future.
	And so I really want to just mention that as a good idea no matter what.
	That's great. Because that's how I see it.
	It's a really high risk.
	It's a really high gamble, right?
	How many ideological status versus how many practical status there are.
	So, I don't want to just take my chances, because the alternative is just really dim.
	So, what I've done, you know, I'm homesteading, I'm...
	For any listeners that maybe you would be interested in something like that, there's an Austrian.
	He's sort of an Austrian economist.
	I don't know if he would... But his name is Sepp Holzer.
	He's a great permaculturist.
	I mean, he's got it. He's the free market entrepreneur.
	He's completely self-sustainable and has overcome the authorities in his region.
	So it's just really inspiring because I feel like the answer is not what we want the answer to be.
	The answer is that there are more ideological, crazy people in power than I think it would be really great if at the transition point of that, on the other side, at the other end of the tunnel, that there were a lot of objective, truth-seeking philosophers who can make it.
	You know what I'm saying? Right, right.
	Okay, well listen, I think I want to make sure we get to the other caller, so I really appreciate you calling in.
	It's a great topic, and I'm glad that we got a chance to cover it, and please feel free to call in again.
	And maybe if you want to email me this guy, he might be a good guy to chat with on the show, but...
	I'm going to move on to the next caller, if you don't mind.
	Alright, I'm ringing in the Latin American guy.
	Ah, yes. Hello, you're on.
	Oh, excellent. Hola!
	Ah, Steph, how are you? I'm very well.
	How are you doing, man? Excellent.
	I'm calling, actually, just to...
	When I was in high school, I came across an interesting group of people called The Movement, or El Movimento.
	My Spanish is terrible.
	And I thought I'd kind of share what they're all about with you guys because there's a lot of similarities with the FDR movement.
	Right. They're really cool.
	They meet in real time.
	It's not online. They're all over the world.
	It's started by a guy like Dr.
	Ayala, who is an El Salvadorian.
	He looks about 40 years old, but he's 80.
	He goes on these daily bike rides around El Salvador where hundreds of Salvadorians follow him around.
	And they... Get together in these big meetings, and then they separate into smaller groups, kind of based on your family role.
	And it'll be like fathers meeting together, mothers, sons, daughters, in different groups.
	And counsel them.
	I don't even really counsel them.
	It's more like group therapy kind of thing, where they all get together and kind of discuss more peaceful ways of effectively parenting.
	I've never seen them mention God or any politics whatsoever.
	The movement seems kind of in line with a lot of the philosophy that you guys recommend.
	Cool. And do they have a website?
	Is there a way that people can get in contact with them?
	I've been trying to find these guys on the internet forever.
	If I type it in in Spanish, I seem to find a bunch of links with information, but I have no idea what I'm reading, unfortunately.
	They're all over the world, though.
	I know they're especially big in Mexico and Southern California, but they even have meetings in Japan.
	I attended one once.
	Dr. Allen gave a great speech about...
	He gave a story. He was trying to go over the...
	He said that mind-body dualism is a false dichotomy.
	And he gave this example of a father...
	Whose son comes to him one day asking for money.
	And he gives the son the money and he starts to worry.
	Worry what? Why his son needed that cash.
	And he kind of sits around in his office not eating and just getting very depressed and concerned for his son.
	And within a couple weeks the guy ends up being diagnosed with diabetes from his new change in diet.
	Dr. Allen just kind of goes into how your mental psychology affects your physical body and vice versa.
	It's kind of just like lessons like that.
	It's really... I don't know.
	I think it'd be refreshing. If you can find any of them on the internet or anything like that that are translated or anyone else can, I totally recommend it.
	I appreciate that. Thank you.
	If you find anything, let me know and I'll put it on the message board.
	Okay. Excellent. Thanks, man.
	See you all. Hey, Chris.
	You're up next. All right.
	Steph, I want to say thanks for telling me about this show through YouTube.
	You're welcome. So I was talking to this guy who found one of my videos where I basically blame the government for the rain that ruined my sunny day.
	And he walked me through how necessary the government is and proved me wrong by saying, hey, you don't hear Canadians complaining about too big a government in their health care.
	And the whole time I thought, my god, I know a Canadian who might be able to tell me some stuff on this subject.
	So, Stefan, what does the average Canadian think about the government healthcare situation?
	Well, I don't know because they don't study it relative to alternatives, right?
	So, let me tell you a little bit about it.
	First of all, the waiting lists are terrible.
	The waiting lists are terrible.
	People can wait up to two years for cataract surgery, for other kinds of surgery, which is pretty important.
	And so we have access to a waiting list.
	And that's pretty wretched.
	It can take up to two or three months after you get a diagnosis of cancer to get to go and see a specialist.
	That kind of can get you killed.
	Right? And so that is a big problem.
	Up to a third of Canadians can't get a doctor.
	Wow. Because doctors tell you, you know, you have to go to emerge.
	And that's just a terrible, a terrible way to get things done.
	And it is a...
	It is just wretched.
	And now Canada has, like, a truly crazy...
	Socialism in its medicine.
	So, for instance, in Canada, you can't go and buy healthcare.
	Whereas in Europe, you can.
	There are private healthcare clinics.
	You can go outside the system in France and in other places in Europe, you can.
	So Canada is way more socialist than most countries when it comes to that kind of stuff.
	But see, here's the thing about healthcare.
	You don't get a lot of people who criticize Canadian healthcare for a couple of reasons.
	First of all, if you're healthy, who cares?
	Right? I mean, who cares?
	And if you're sick, you're kind of busy.
	Just waiting on a list.
	Yeah, and also you feel kind of like you don't want to piss anyone off.
	Because, you know, maybe you just, you can't see that list, right?
	So maybe if you piss off people, maybe you'll just dip on the list, kind of.
	Alright, yeah, I get that.
	Solid. Waiting list will probably be the biggest selling point.
	Two years for surgery, whereas I can go to the emergency room just down the street and probably get surgery two, three days.
	Well, so no, but see, these are all arguments from a fact.
	Because then he'll find some healthcare system where there aren't waiting lists for whatever reason.
	You won't win any arguments based on that.
	So what would you recommend?
	Well, you really shouldn't use violence to achieve ends.
	Theft through taxation being my selling point.
	Well, it's theft through taxation and intense regulation.
	I mean, it was only in the post-Second World War period, at least in the US, where doctors got the sole right of prescription.
	Why do doctors have the sole?
	Why on earth is there not a vending machine where if I have an infection, I put my finger in a tube, it pricks my finger and dispenses me the pills after it figures out what kind of infection I have.
	Why? Because, I mean, that would be real easy, right?
	Yeah. But those kinds of things don't exist.
	And if he says, well, that's to control the illicit spread of drugs in society, I'm afraid you're just going to have to laugh in his face.
	Because, I mean, everybody seems who dies from this sort of shit dies from prescribed drugs, right?
	I mean, they're all over the place.
	There's nothing to control them at all.
	And, of course, if we're really interested in controlling drugs that have bad effects, why are we giving so many to children for non-existent, quote, illnesses like Mental illnesses, right?
	So yeah, fear of reprisals from the system, the fact that healthy people don't care and sick people are too busy freaking out to go around criticizing the system.
	But it's pretty rough.
	It is pretty rough.
	You can get good healthcare, but it can take forever.
	Like I mentioned once, I had to get a cyst removed from my scalp, I don't know, 10 years ago or something like that, and it took two years.
	Now, this wasn't life-threatening, obviously, but, you know, I would have been happy to pay to have it done earlier.
	Happy! Oh, yeah.
	But no. The American system, we don't have super high prices because of a free market, you know?
	That's totally government, insurance companies, lobbying the whole nine yards, bureaucracy.
	So I think because of the misunderstanding about the American private quote-unquote market, that's why they say, well, look at Canada, you know?
	Well, yeah, of course, of course, but that's because people don't want to think in principles, right?
	But if you want to, you know, just say to him, okay, have you ever heard of laser eye surgery?
	And he'll say, well, yeah. Say, okay, well, this is pretty, it's pretty free market.
	It's about as free market as the healthcare system gets.
	And is the price for that going up or down?
	I have no idea.
	Way down. Way down.
	Laser eye surgery used to be thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars, and now you can get it for $500, $600, $700, $800.
	That would be going down.
	Yeah, way down. Way down because it's not covered by insurance and insurance drives prices up because every idiot and their brother wants to get their me and three other guys' disease on the enforced roles of what the insurance companies have to cover.
	But no, you know, he needs to...
	This is something in general, like something in general.
	When people have a belief, you need to look at the opposite evidence.
	That's the first thing you need to do.
	That's the first thing you need to do.
	And only when you've had a look at the opposite evidence can you really then say, so if this guy thinks that Canadian healthcare is great, then he needs to look at criticisms of the Canadian healthcare system.
	And there are lots of them out there.
	And if he's never read any, then it's like, okay, then you don't really know what you're talking about, right?
	Yeah, I mean, there are plenty of stories about the low quality of healthcare as per America.
	I think you read something once about MRI machines in British Columbia equaling out to be about a large town in America.
	Right. No, it's crazy.
	I've got a guy, I can't remember his name, but let me just see if I can find it.
	I had a guy on my show who wrote a book that's pretty critical of the Canadian healthcare system.
	You can forward my interview with him.
	Let me see if I can dig him up.
	Oh my god, I've done a lot of healthcare stuff.
	Let's see here. He was one of my first interviews, actually.
	Ah, yes.
	Yeah, so, okay, so True News 46 and 47 is a bunch of stuff on healthcare, but you can do, I'll put the link into the chat room, it's called True News, Canadian Health Policy Failures, an interview with Dr.
	Brett Skinner. And of course, Skinner, that kind of name, you should absolutely be a nutritionist.
	But let me just put this in the chat window.
	But yeah, you just need to give him some information and see if he's at all interested in it.
	But fundamentally, it is such an unbelievable violation of an individual's sovereignty for the government to dictate what can or cannot be accessed in terms of healthcare.
	Healthcare is the one thing, like, I would put up with the government taking over a lot of my life.
	I mean, okay, so they restrict me from buying certain stuff.
	Well, fuck that. I don't care.
	I mean, fundamentally, I don't care.
	But when they restrict me getting access to life-saving medicine, that's a big problem for me.
	That is an absolute violation of my sovereign rights as an individual.
	So, yeah.
	I mean, to me, part of anarchism is just a matter of pride.
	It's just a matter of...
	I don't want to be treated like a child.
	I don't want to be told what I cannot and cannot do, what free contracts I cannot and cannot pursue.
	I want to, you know, I will never taste what it is like to be an adult on this planet because I will be dead long before the state.
	I will never taste what it is like to actually be an adult on this planet.
	It's just, really, it's just a matter of pride.
	It's just, I mean, a lot of it has to do with pride.
	I want to be able to be free to pursue my own healthcare as I see fit with the advice of somebody I respect in the healthcare profession.
	I don't care if they have a label before or after their name.
	I don't care how many years they went to school.
	I care what their success rate is that is empirically measured and verifiable in whatever ailment I'm facing.
	I care about that.
	I may care about some credentials if I want to not do research on the background of the individual, but I want the freedom, the liberty, To actually choose what I can and cannot do with my own goddamn body.
	And if other people don't want that, I think that is a pitiful state of mind to be in.
	To surrender your liberty for the sake of a couple of pills and syringes is a truly tragic and silly thing.
	That was very well said.
	And I completely agree.
	Alright, well thank you for taking the time.
	You're very welcome. I hope it helps.
	Thank you. Alright, bye.
	Take care. Alright, so, as many calls as you'd like to take, Steph.
	Next up we have Alex.
	Wait, no, we already did it. There's only one, right?
	No, I think there might be two.
	Two! Shocking. Alright, go ahead.
	Can you hear him alright? Yeah.
	Great. How's it going?
	How's Izzy doing? She achieved her first syllogistic proof of rational ethics yet?
	She shows it to me every day.
	No, she's doing well.
	I mean, for those who are curious, we're certainly having a few more conflicts now than we did before.
	She's going through a phase where she says no to everything, you know, except maybe going for ice cream.
	And so we're trying to sort of negotiate that.
	I mean, she really is enjoying being at home.
	But, you know, I get a little stir-crazy after a while to go out and do things.
	So we're sort of trying to negotiate and navigate through that.
	But, you know, I mean, that to me is part of good.
	You know, she's learning that she has a will and can reject things.
	But, you know, I like to sort of go with that to a certain degree, but I don't want to show her that other people will accommodate her endlessly.
	I don't think that's too healthy either.
	So, yeah, it's a really enjoyable aspect at the moment because it's different from You know, mere entertainment and management and education and now it's really much more about negotiation, which is a very interesting phase.
	So yeah, she's doing great. Thanks for asking.
	Great. It's always fun to hear how that's going.
	What I called in about today was basically something that has sort of been touched on in about a billion podcasts.
	It came up a little bit in this previous call.
	It's something that I can never really wrap my head around.
	It's basically when you talk about the state as this evil institution that exerts its power on us and forces everyone to do things via violence.
	I understand all of it.
	It's just what's hard for me to get on board about is the sort of willful malevolence of it all.
	Because I just know only about a million people who support the actions of the state and like these, I don't know, for instance, economic regulations, healthcare regulations and all sorts of taxes to take care of this, that or the other.
	And it seems like when I'm talking to these people, I never get the sense as it comes out in a lot of your podcasts that there's somebody...
	Somebody's making these decisions, like you said before, about somebody making the mafioso decisions to relax the grip when people are starting to leave.
	Of all the people who just seem to be stumped by this wrong ideology, and I know you talked about this a little before, but it's still not making total sense.
	Of all these people, it just seems like most people are stuck on a bed I'm sorry.
	I just lost track of what you're talking about.
	Oh, sorry. Too many questions, too many comments, too many sides.
	Even for me, it's like, she's breaking up, Captain, the question, the thrust, she's breaking up.
	Sorry. Yeah, I feel like I'm on a race here.
	I'm trying to... No, no, no, don't race.
	Slower is better. Be like my first girlfriend.
	Sure, okay, so... Slower is better, right? Right.
	Basically what I'm talking about is when you talk about the state and you talk about how it's sort of the mafia metaphor, which is that they will take and take and take until people start to leave.
	And then they kind of let go of their – they ease up a little bit and kind of give some freedoms back to us even though at no point were you really free.
	You're following so far?
	I'm just kind of setting the stage for what's confusing to me because – well, I'll get to it.
	Because what's confusing to me is that when I talk to most people that really – you know, Democrat or Republican, they – there's nobody – let's see here.
	I just can't wrap my head around the fact that there would be somebody out there who's actually kind of making decisions with the intent of keeping their place in power and taking as much money from the cattle as possible.
	It just seems to me, in my own experience dealing with people, talking with people about politics and why they think there needs to be a government, that they haven't really thought about the morality of it or the Sorry, and you're breaking up a little bit.
	There's way too big a series of statements there for me to answer as a question.
	Let me just see if I can help you boil it down, if that makes sense.
	Is it your belief that there's sort of not a back alley of people who are plotting to do X, Y, and Z and thinking about it consciously and so on?
	Yeah, yeah, that's pretty much it.
	Because it just seems to be that there's a lot of support from people who just think that, you know, without a state it would all just fall apart.
	And I just can't see where this malevolence comes from.
	I just, I never... Sorry, which malevolence?
	That there's people out there, like the mafia, that are only going to let us be so free.
	When really, what I think the guiding, what guides these people to follow these policies is that they think life is better with this large government power in place, and not that there's actually somebody there exerting this control over us and keeping themselves in power just for their own profit.
	Right. Well, the first thing I would say is that if somebody says, I support the state, then it's not the state.
	Because I support is a statement of voluntary participation, right?
	It's like saying, I want to make love to my rapist.
	I want to have sex with my rapist.
	Well, then he's not a rapist, right?
	Sure. Yeah, I mean, I'm well familiar with that.
	Look, if somebody agrees with the state, then it's not the state.
	It's a charity. It's something that they would voluntarily support because they blah blah blah, right?
	Sure. So that's not the state.
	The state is when you don't agree with it.
	Yeah, and I follow that.
	I think where I'm diverging and getting a little more confused because I generally follow that metaphor.
	No, that's not a metaphor.
	The rapist one is. Okay, so if people say I support the state, it's like, okay, well, that's no problem.
	I want to get married now.
	So you can use this metaphor.
	So let's say there's a culture, there are of course lots of them, where there are arranged marriages, right?
	And if a woman says, of all the men I've ever met, I really want to be married to the man you're arranging me to marry, then in a sense, it's not an arranged marriage, right?
	Because it's what she would choose in freedom.
	Right. And I can understand that.
	Wait, wait, wait. No, no, no.
	So... So what you say to people then is, okay, what about the woman who doesn't want to get married to the man her parents choose?
	That she finds him repugnant and disgusting and hideous.
	Because they're saying, well, arranged marriages is fine because I'm really happy with the man my parents arranged for me to marriage, right?
	Yeah. You're not...
	No, absolutely you are.
	I think I have a question here and I think the problem is here is that I start with these broad questions and I'm kind of narrowed down the wrong place.
	Okay, let's go to the right place then.
	Okay, so if one of these people comes up, when you talk about the rapist versus voluntary...
	Okay, you be the person that you're debating with.
	Let's forget this third party thing, right?
	You be the person and I'll be me.
	Okay, so you be the person who's saying that it's good.
	Give me the argument they give.
	Okay, well, sure.
	Steph, I listen to all your podcasts and it seems...
	You know, as bluntly as it can be, that when you talk about the state, it almost sounds like there's some conspiracy going on, that all of these policies come from somebody making sort of these decisions in some back office, and they keep it secret and they don't tell anybody about it.
	Okay, this is what I would say to this person.
	I would say, how is that an argument?
	Look, I make moral arguments about the initiation of force, respect for property rights, I give definitions of good and of evil, and I apply these arguments to the best of my ability to existing social and political conditions.
	And I've made lots of, I think, pretty tightly reasoned and good arguments with lots of evidence.
	There are two dangerous words that you have said to me that really prick up my spider sense.
	It doesn't mean you're wrong, it just means that I can't...
	See, philosophy can't deal with the phrase, it seems.
	Right? It seems like.
	Because that's not an argument.
	What that usually is, is a reframing of something in some other context that is not part of the original argument.
	So, if you can tell me what I've said, or what I've argued, where there's an empirical...
	logical error, I'm perfectly happy to, in fact, I would thank you, I kiss you on both cheeks in the Spanish fashion to fix that argument.
	But if you say, well, it seems like this, then that's not an argument.
	So what I need is for you to identify an error in an argument that I've made, and then I will correct it or to provide me with evidence as counter to the evidence that I've quoted, in which case I will adapt the argument or incorporate the evidence.
	But so far you haven't made an argument, so I just need you to do that if we're going to discuss this at a philosophical level.
	Sure. And first off, I appreciate you letting me know that this is how this is coming across, because I'm certainly not intending it that way, and I think there's some meat and some substance that I might be dancing around.
	So let me know if I'm continuing to do this, and certainly not my intent.
	But to bring it to something that came up a little bit earlier, I think you sort of made a comment about...
	I agree with that.
	There's so much bad economics out there mixed with, in my opinion, the Austrians, for example, that talk about why there shouldn't be a minimum wage and so on and so forth, that because I see enough people writing articles on why you might want a minimum wage and how it might actually help out these people and so on and so forth,
	I don't know. I don't want to bring the it seems back into things, but I know that there's enough kind of idiot ideology that people – that could be driving these kind of policies and not necessarily – Oh, you mean so people think that – sorry to interrupt, but people think it's good for the young.
	Yeah. Okay, well, how do people deal – With the basic fact that youth unemployment is increasing lockstep with the unemployment rate?
	And how do they deal with the fact that almost all economists, in other words, people who are actually trained in this subject, make this case?
	So if people say, well, we really care about youth unemployment, or we really care about making sure that the poor have jobs, then there's two basic facts that they need to deal with.
	The first is that the opposite is happening, that as you increase the minimum wage, More and more disadvantaged people, particularly minorities, don't get access to the workforce.
	Don't get hired. That's the first thing you need to deal with.
	Which is a... Rank contradiction to the thesis, right?
	The thesis is more minimum wage means more money for young people and better jobs or whatever, right?
	But the exact opposite is happening.
	So if you really care about the poor and you really care about the youth and you really care about the disadvantaged, you have to deal with the fact that the theory is producing the opposite results.
	That's number one. And the second one, of course, is that the economists who study and understand this stuff far better than you and I all say pretty much the same thing, which is that It's a disaster.
	So the theory and the practice contradicts your preferences, your stated goals.
	So my question is, how am I supposed to accept your stated goals if you have not dealt with these things that oppose what you want?
	You're talking to me as this person who has this objection, correct?
	Right. But I think this sort of consensus, there's so many Keynesians out there.
	I don't really know what else is out there.
	Keynesianism is not to do with the minimum wage.
	Keynesianism is to do with government borrowing and spending.
	Even Keynesians understand that the minimum wage destroys youth employment.
	Right. But for instance, Krugman, for example, happens to be a Keynesian or whatever.
	And while that might have more to do with the theory of full employment and so on and so forth, he's one of these guys who just convinces many, many, many people with his op-ed.
	That, among other things, that minimum wage is a good thing.
	And it might not be on predominantly Keynesian grounds, but here's an eminent economist, totally fallacious every step of the way, but I know he's just one of many, many, many people spewing out this stuff and convincing people that there's some economic truth behind this.
	Okay, and I would ask this person to say, could you not find any prominent scientists who oppose global warming?
	And do you accept that?
	Could you say it one more time, please?
	Well, can you find any prominent scientists who oppose the anthropomorphic theory of global warming?
	I'd ask this person, do you believe in global warming?
	And they would probably say yes, because most people do.
	And say, okay, well, can you find a scientist who opposes global warming?
	Of course you can. Does that mean that global warming is false?
	Well, no. So you've already thrown out a scientist who disagrees with your viewpoint.
	And so, throwing out an economist who disagrees with almost every other economist is perfectly fine, right?
	Otherwise, then all you have to do is find one expert in the world who believes with something that you believe, and then you're fine.
	But that's not how you make rational arguments.
	That's called the argument from authority, and that is not a valid argument.
	And I would totally agree, but assuming that there are many people, and I just don't know who there are, because I've talked to them.
	Are you still there? Yep.
	There's some weird mic shifting effect I was hearing.
	So I know that people...
	I might not have had the time to let these people know that what they're resting their arguments on is the argument from authority.
	But I just know that because I haven't talked to these people yet or because nobody else with sort of my freedom-minded mindset, no one else has talked to these people and kind of weaned them off this sort of fallacious reasoning that this might very well be a huge chunk of what The politicians that are enacting these policies might very much be a reflection of what people think.
	Sorry, but who cares what the intentions are?
	Intentions are a complete red herring.
	Who cares what the intentions are?
	First of all, the intentions are not verifiable.
	And I certainly don't claim to have knowledge of every human being's intentions in the world.
	I sometimes don't even know what my intentions are.
	Do I really want this piece of chocolate or am I just being greedy?
	I don't know. Intentions are irrelevant.
	Intentions are irrelevant.
	In fact, to question intentions is to go down a rabbit hole, which only lands in Alice in Wonderland, not in the real world.
	It doesn't matter what intentions are.
	What matters is the basic facts about the minimum wage, which has nothing to do with Paul Krugman or any other economist or even the empirical facts of its disasters, although those are related.
	The only thing that matters about the minimum wage is that if somebody wants to work for $5 an hour and somebody is willing to hire that person for $5 an hour, I damn well cannot see it in any moral or rational universe that you or I or anyone else has the right to stick a gun in their faces and say, do this and you die.
	Do this and we will fine you.
	And if you don't pay those fines, we will throw you in jail.
	And if you resist being thrown in jail, we will shoot you down like a rabbit dog.
	I cannot see.
	The morality and the justification for initiating the use of force against two peaceful individuals who wish to enter into a voluntary contract between them where nobody is harmed and nobody is aggressed against and nobody is defrauded.
	Now, somebody says, I'll pay you five bucks an hour.
	Guy works for him for a month, doesn't pay him.
	Absolutely. Let's go get that money and let's use force to do it if we need to because that's a violation of contract.
	But if two people voluntarily want to enter into a contract to their mutual benefit, neither you nor I nor God himself has the right to initiate the use of force to prevent that.
	The immorality is in the violence, not in the authority of the consequences.
	Yeah, I agree. And this is not just me empty-headed agreeing, or just, you know, wanting you to tell me what I want to hear.
	It's not that at all. It's really...
	When you start to go into this stuff, I know that the moral argument that you're putting forth is 100% valid.
	I get it and I agree with it, and I'm still mustering up the courage to tell as many people as I can about it.
	Oh, and I agree. It's a terrifying thing to do, so I really do sympathize with that.
	I'm getting there. It's baby steps, but they'll be giant steps in a short time.
	Yeah. You know what? If there's anybody else that's on the call, I can give it back to them.
	I have a few things to mull over before I sort of come back.
	Yeah, my only advice is just stay away from intentions.
	Because you can make up all the—I'm not saying you in particular, but anyone can make up any intentions or say, well, where's the evidence for these intentions?
	Or you think all these people are evil?
	Prove to me that they are. It doesn't matter.
	It doesn't matter. It only matters the morality and the results.
	I mean, we would assume that something which is immoral will have bad results over the long run.
	Over the short run, it will have good results, right?
	Like morphine for toothache.
	But over the long run, you'll end up with no tooth or maybe half a jaw.
	And so we would, you know, one of the reasons you know something is going wrong morally is because there are really bad results practically.
	And that's, right, so you would expect the minimum wage is immoral because it has really bad results for those it's supposedly trying to help.
	And look, the minimum wage was not put in place because people cared about the poor.
	The minimum wage was put in place because unions lobbied very heavily for it for two reasons.
	One is that it reduced competition for jobs that unions wanted a monopoly over.
	And two, it allowed the unions to bargain for higher wages because it was too close to the minimum wage.
	So it had nothing to do with helping the poor.
	It had to do with, you know, greedy, grasping, immoral people using the power of the state to achieve their own best interests.
	But again, that doesn't make it right or wrong.
	It's just sort of the history of it.
	All right. So let's move on to the next caller since we are backed up a tad.
	And let's clear the necks.
	Sounds good. Thanks for the call. Thanks, man.
	Appreciate it. Come back with more.
	Stand-up hour. Let's go!
	I'll tell you what. Okay, so when I was in...
	In Odessa, doing a bit of stand-up at the beginning.
	I don't know if it's a stand-up, just a bit of funny stuff.
	About how politicians sell themselves as, I'm a maverick!
	I don't know what the hell I'm doing.
	You wouldn't believe, for the next two or three days, all of these better jokes kept popping into my head.
	I guess that's just the curse of trying to do something that's funny.
	And... So, all of these, you know, maverick examples sort of came in, right?
	So, you know, one of them was, this was actually when I was on the plane flying home.
	I was trying to get some sleep, but they just get rolling.
	Oh, this would be much funnier.
	Anyway, so one of them was, the pilot has a heart attack, and the co-pilot is drunk or something, and so you call the tower, and, you know, you're up there in front, and the tower says, is there anyone on the airplane?
	No. Who knows how to fly it?
	There are three guys back here.
	Don't give it to them. Find the blind guy, stick his head up his ass, and then have him grab the rudder from around his legs.
	That's how we're going to land this baby.
	And just these went on and on in my head.
	I'm like, oh my god.
	I'm glad I'm not a comedian because that would just drive me insane after a while.
	Wait, you thought that joke was good?
	I've got a better one. Anyway, I thought they were better.
	Can you hear me now? Yeah.
	Maybe I'll do them in the future.
	I don't know. Anyway, let's go on with the caller.
	Hello? Oh, I still can't hear you, James.
	That's weird. I don't know what's going on.
	Oh, you're back. I am back now?
	Sorry about that. Let's hit the caller, baby.
	One more guy. One last guy.
	I'll take you there.
	He's on. Hello.
	He's miming! Hello.
	Come on, come on. Mime is money.
	Oh, your Skype is muted. Oh, so the Skype is muted.
	That was a problem. Really more of a user error, I think, that we could describe that one to.
	No, I think it's a hardware.
	Okay. Somewhere in my brain.
	Somewhere in my brain is a hardware.
	I just want to know what you accidentally sat on.
	When you took that Skype photo, that's what I want to know.
	I'm thinking a spinning cactus with the Christmas lights.
	That's my guess, but we'll see.
	There are many different interpretations that that photo can take.
	Right. That doesn't go there.
	Mom, put your clothes on.
	Sorry. Anyway.
	All right. Last chance for the caller, given that we're pushing 4.30 now.
	Well, he's not talking yet, so I think we maybe can call it a day.
	Can you hear me now?
	Yes. Hello, go ahead. Hey, Steph.
	I tried to call in last week when we...
	Oh, yeah. Sorry about that.
	That was a mess. But hey, look at this.
	I'm pushing three hours with no internet interruption.
	Nice. Yeah.
	So I was wondering if we can quickly have a little conversation about what I sort of tried to talk about Talk about last time.
	And let me just reiterate.
	So what I was talking about last time was that I tried to make a new kind of argument that was taking a different step at trying to explain the sort of ridiculousness of having force at the center of everything and having basically a good anarchist argument.
	And the argument was I called it argument from solution in that I was talking to this person and we were talking about various problems in society and I kept talking about ways to solve them,
	ways we could quickly and easily solve them and that many of those solutions were prohibited by the government because they would Put somebody related to government out of business.
	For example, if we were allowed to make a lot of gated communities around all the residential neighborhoods and around everything and have a little more sort of private control over who were allowed in and out, we would quickly put the police out of business by having such a system, which would make sense given the amount of child abuse that has gone on and created a lot of A lot of problematic individuals and criminals.
	And so, stating all of these sort of solutions that are banned, I said, think about the next time you watch a political debate on television where they talk about some problem and ask yourself why there's no engineer present to talk about a way to solve this problem.
	All there is are politicians sort of trading or debating these sort of abstract kind of ideological points, despite the fact that everybody knows that it's a trade.
	It's a trade-off. Right, right.
	Sorry, maybe I just missed the question there.
	Well, what do you think about this argument?
	Do you think there's any sort of problems with it, or is it Is it something that I should pursue further, trying to sort of make it a little more, maybe trying to get it down on fewer words?
	You probably know my perspective that the argument from efficiency doesn't move much, doesn't move people.
	People who look at the world and say this can be better are very few and far between.
	The number of entrepreneurs in the world relative to the number of people as a whole is very small.
	And entrepreneurs are driven by the drive for profit and also for making things better and more efficient and so on.
	And so those people will get those kinds of arguments and say, well, yeah, I guess that's true, you know, if we had more competition and this and that.
	But it doesn't appeal to a lot of people.
	You see, how do I put this?
	I talked about this last week, so I'll just reiterate it here.
	But here's the reason why there's inertia in society, why people don't want change.
	So if you set up a razor factory for making men's razors, right?
	And that's your, you know, you invest $10 million or $50 million or $100 million setting up this factory to make razors, to make the best razors.
	Well, that's a big investment for you.
	You don't want the problem of stubble to go away, right?
	Because if the problem of stubble goes away, then you suddenly don't have any return on your $100 million investment.
	Does that sort of make sense so far?
	Oh, yeah, yeah, I remember now.
	Yeah, so let me just reiterate it because we lost that recording.
	And so if you went to your investors and you said, okay, here's what I'm going to do.
	I'm going to set, I want $100 million to build this razor factory, but at the same time, I want $100 million to develop a cream that stops stubble from growing for a month or two.
	They'd be like, what?
	So you want to invest $100 million in the solution to a problem, and you also want us to invest $100 million in the elimination of that problem.
	Yes! Do you understand that investors would look at you like, what?
	Pick one, right?
	Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely.
	So let me just follow the argument through, and then you can tell me if you think it makes sense.
	So monopolies...
	Do not want to eliminate the problem they're trying to solve.
	In a free market in education, there would be a drive and a desire to make education as short as humanly possible.
	Because education is overhead.
	Education is lost opportunity.
	The opportunity costs for education are insane.
	I mean, think, kids from the age of 5, often to the age of 25, just being educated, that's 20 years.
	That's 20 years.
	They could be playing video games, they could be out there running, they could be starting their own lemonade stands, they could be doing tons of stuff, right?
	I mean, in the Middle Ages, there was a court astronomer who was 11 years old.
	There were heads of construction who were 13 and 14 years old.
	If that's what they want to do and they have the ability and the drive and the desire and it's fun for them, go to it.
	Why not, right? You've got kids doing postgraduate degrees at the age of 14 or 13 years old.
	That's where they want to go. That's where they want to go.
	And so in the free market, you want to make education as short as humanly possible while still being effective because it's a net drawdown on your life's productivity as a whole.
	But of course, existing monopolies on education are not working night and day to eliminate education, right?
	Because people do not work night and day to put themselves out of a job.
	They work night and day to put other people out of a job and to take part of the profits of that, right?
	Or in economic terms, they work night and day to release other people to more productive ends, right, for their existing ones.
	So the guys who make horse and buggies don't invest in cars, right?
	And the guys who make cars don't invest in teleportation and stuff like that.
	So anyway, I don't want to belabor the point.
	But the problem with monopolies is that they cannot be overturned by outside forces.
	And so they stop.
	You know, I've made this argument many times.
	I made it in Philadelphia, I guess a year and a half ago.
	The things which are surrounded by force stop growing.
	The only growth that can conceivably come into them comes from outside.
	So you get iPads in classrooms because Apple is not a monopoly.
	So some of the non-monopoly productivity and growth spills into the unproductive dead zone called the monopoly.
	And so whenever you have a monopoly, you no longer have the efficiency principle at work, where people are seeking to overturn other people's capital, right?
	So some guy's selling a razor for $5, and some guy says, well, for $10, I'll give you a cream that will make your hair stop growing for a month perfectly safely.
	Well, people are going to choose the $10, right?
	But the guy who's invested $100 million in his factory is never going to work to eliminate that.
	The basic principle.
	People do not work night and day to put themselves out of a job.
	Why do we still have poor while we have a welfare state?
	Because there's no competition in taking care of the poor.
	This is why the bomb in the brain stuff, this is why the focus on childhood, which is the only effective way to reduce human suffering in the long run, is to improve people's childhoods.
	Well, who profits from that?
	Nobody in society profits from...
	Better childhoods. I mean, society spends about, what, $200 billion a year on child abuse just in America every single year, the results of child abuse, and that's a bare minimum of the total social cost.
	But who profits from the elimination of that?
	Well, in a free society, there'd be tons of people who would profit from it, but in a status society, just about everything that touches childhood is a state monopoly.
	And therefore, they do not have the same incentive.
	That doesn't mean that people are evil and saying, I want children to be harmed.
	In the same way that people who make razors don't sit there and say, I want people to get razor burn and cut themselves shaving, and I want people to experience it.
	No, it's just that's what they do.
	What they do is they provide razors.
	And what the welfare state does is it manages the poor.
	The poor is its crop, and farmers outside of the state do not voluntarily destroy the crops.
	They cultivate them. And so that's the big problem.
	Monopoly stops the inevitable creative destruction of the free market, which overturns other people's precious investments by coming in from the outside and solving problems.
	And solving problems by preventing them is the most economically efficient way to do it.
	So I just wanted to sort of mention that.
	Yeah, yeah. Well, I was talking to this woman for quite a while, actually.
	One of the things I also mentioned was relating to what you're talking about with childhood, that the end thing to do is to improve childhood, and then you will improve society as a whole.
	And, well, here in Denmark, to my best experience, most child abuse occurs in school.
	It's because it's not socially tolerated in Denmark to hit children.
	I have never in my life seen a child be hit in public.
	Never. And I'm 24 years old.
	And if you did it in a mall, people would call the police.
	People would react. And occasionally you might hear a very frustrated parent scream at a child, but people will look like he's crazy.
	We'll look at him like, dude, right?
	So all of the problems we have is in our public school, where almost everybody goes, all of the children in Denmark, curiously with the exception of children of politicians.
	Oh, that's not curious.
	That's inevitable, right? Yeah, it was something that the sort of libertarian media in Denmark sort of Grinded on about a year ago.
	There was a specific politician involved.
	Sorry, a lot of the Canadian politicians here go straight to the US when they have a health problem.
	But anyway, go on. So yeah, but what I see every time I talk to people is always this sort of reference people have towards our welfare system in Denmark.
	They always speak... Even the supposed libertarian parties in our parliament talk about, oh, we're gonna do all of these libertarian things such that there is money for a welfare system in the future, right? And it just frustrates me to no end that there's almost no one, almost no one who understands things here.
	And most of them who do understand it, they have left already.
	Like I mentioned, there's this blog site in Denmark, and one of the most genius people who write on there, he just dropped off and moved to Switzerland just last month.
	So I just need to get that off my chest.
	I'm just kind of frustrated with the whole...
	I feel like I live in a stupid, stupid, stupid place.
	And also the fact that there's so few people who are skeptical towards our public education system.
	Like, I was a pretty smart kid, right?
	So they were like, oh, you already understand this?
	Well, they just stare into the wall the rest of the day.
	But don't you dare interrupt the others, and don't you dare learn anything more than the dumbest kid in your class.
	And I just...
	Why aren't people skeptical towards this?
	I mean, I'm just getting frustrated, sort of.
	And I understand the guy who moved to Switzerland.
	I really do. And I don't know if I'm going to be moving there myself one day, but it certainly is tempting.
	Right. That wasn't really a question.
	There was more stuff I needed to say.
	Right. I am.
	It is so good on the other side that people don't hit children in Denmark, not in public at least.
	There's probably some religious fundamentalists who still do it in the privacy of their own homes.
	You'll find a few batshit crazy conservatives who will support it in public.
	This is sort of a thing that's already won.
	So all we need to do is do something about the public school, but that's where I run into the war, because nobody ever seems to be skeptical towards it.
	Oh, I see that the other guy from Denmark who is on our side, he's just written to me in the chatroom that people do hit children in private.
	So, yeah...
	Yeah, it could be. But look, I mean, this is...
	I think this is...
	You view this as a negative, but I think you could easily view this as a positive.
	What? So...
	The reason that people don't question public education is because they were educated by the government.
	Yeah. I mean, this is exactly what our theory would predict, right?
	It's a confirmation of...
	Philosophy. That people who are educated by the government do not question the government.
	I mean, wouldn't philosophy not make any sense if people were really critical about the government after having been indoctrinated by the government for 13 years?
	That's like saying, well, here I am in the seminary, and I can't find any atheists.
	What the hell is going on?
	No, you're in a seminary, right?
	Right. I mean, people spend more time being indoctrinated by governments than they do learning how to be priests, and you would not expect to find out.
	There's choice in one versus not the other to some degree.
	But it's like going to Catholic school and saying, well, wait a second, these people all believe in the Virgin Mary?
	What the hell is going on?
	Well, you're in a Catholic school.
	Of course they do. It would be weird if they didn't.
	In fact, there'd be no point having Catholic schools if it didn't work.
	There'd be no point having the government take over education if it didn't work that well, right?
	I mean, remember, governments get kids.
	I mean, not so much in certain parts of Europe, particularly where you're from, but governments get kids very early.
	I mean, what, you get 12 weeks returning to leave in the U.S.? A lot of people go back even sooner.
	You know, it's the old Jesuit thing.
	Give me a boy until he's seven and he will be mine for life.
	This is well known. This is well known that he who controls the children controls society.
	And so philosophy would make no sense.
	Developmental psychology, at least according to my amateur understanding, would make no sense if...
	People were able to question public school after having been raised in public school.
	It would make no sense. So it's a confirmation of philosophy that you run into this brick wall.
	It would make no sense if you didn't.
	Yeah, that's all true.
	I mean, I hated school.
	I hated every minute of it.
	And I happen to know that a lot of other people in...
	Maybe not a lot, but some others than me hated school.
	And I still hate it to this day.
	It wasn't like that when I graduated, I stopped hating it.
	I just, I guess, pushed it from my mind.
	I mean, don't the other kids remember what it looked like when other kids were subjected to all of this maltreatment, all these threats and all these guilt trips by these sadist teachers?
	Teachers, don't they remember?
	Can they think back? Hey, you know, it wasn't cool what the teachers did to that kid or whatever, right?
	Yeah, but you're right, you're right.
	I'm just very frustrated about it.
	Oh, and just one little note.
	In Denmark, it is the norm for priests in the government church to be atheists.
	That was a few years...
	Oh, this is the truth.
	A few years ago, or five years ago, a priest in the government church in Denmark, he wrote an article.
	Sorry, what do you mean the government church in Denmark?
	What the hell does that mean? What is a government church?
	I don't understand. Well, it is the church that is to Denmark what the CRV is to the Britain.
	Okay, got it.
	And most of those priests who are in Denmark, they are In fact, atheists.
	Or at least they have only a very, very sort of...
	You're a pretty messed up country, man, I'll tell you that.
	In Denmark, up is down, black is white, the priests are atheists, and the nuns do porn.
	I mean, it's just strange. Anyway, go on.
	Yeah, so...
	But I just...
	Yeah, what I needed to get off was basically how frustrated I am with the fact that So many people, like this girl I was talking to, she was like, oh, I like school.
	It was nice. But I was like, but don't you understand that we were forced to be there against our will and we didn't learn anything and we could have done so much more with our childhoods where we only allowed to it.
	And she's just, well, I liked it.
	It makes me so frustrated.
	Well, and so basically what you're saying is, if you start questioning your beliefs, you can join me over here and cleanse your bulging forehead frustration land.
	Yeah. Don't do that.
	No. Don't do that.
	Listen, I mean, you're not obligated, of course, but you are an advertisement for philosophy.
	The moment you self-identify as a philosopher or somebody interested in philosophy, you are an advertisement for philosophy.
	Yeah. And if you're really tense and frustrated and angry and upset all the time, people will be like, hmm, I don't really think that I want to join that particular group.
	I'm not saying fake it or anything like that, but if philosophy predicts that this is exactly how it's going to be and you're really frustrated by that, then you're still missing something about philosophy, I think.
	It's the way it is. It would be weird if it wasn't.
	It would make no sense if it wasn't, right?
	Yeah. Yeah. Well, I guess I just feel a little lonely about it.
	Lonely, yeah. I can understand that.
	I really can. I really can.
	But the best way to deal with that loneliness is to work for happiness.
	Because as soon as you're happy, you will be less lonely.
	And you can be happy, you can be happy that people reject criticizing public school.
	Because it confirms reason and evidence and all the good things that we believe in.
	Scientists are usually not unhappy with confirmation of their theories, right?
	No, no, that wouldn't make sense if they were unhappy.
	But you have confirmation of your theory, that's all I'm saying.
	Yeah, I guess. And we can be happy about that.
	Yeah. And also, I am a little happy to be in a place where at least we have that thing that is not socially acceptable to hit children.
	And I understand it's not like that in other countries.
	Right. Yeah, that's great.
	I mean, I think that's something... It's easier to deal with people's rejection of public school than it is to go out and see children being mistreated, I tell you.
	I mean, you try going to some places where they're more skeptical about government, maybe you run into that more often, you'd be like, damn, I wish I was back in Denmark when you were here to deal with people not questioning public school, right?
	Yeah. So, yeah, I don't know if you're gonna take another call after me, but...
	No, actually, I'm sort of...
	I'm almost out of juice. It's been almost three hours.
	And this is really concentrated work for me, so I'm running low on intellectual juice, so I think I'm going to pack it in for the day.
	But yeah, it's a great call.
	Look, I really do feel for your loneliness, I really do.
	It is, you know, what Nietzsche says, you know, if you go against the beliefs of the tribe, you will often be frightened and sometimes lonely, but no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
	You know, that does give me comfort.
	I mean, it's a slogan, it doesn't deal with all the demons, but...
	It is useful.
	It is still better to be with the truth than to be in the company of lies.
	And let me just thank you for taking the extra time this day.
	I can imagine that it's a little demanding.
	So, thanks. Thanks.
	It may be demanding or I might just be weak.
	I'm not sure. You know, I think Rush Limbaugh does a three-hour show every day, but he's dealing with bad politics.
	That's a little different. I understand he takes medications to help him.
	He does. He does. And he got that whole slut controversy, I guess, this last week.
	But he's complaining about people who want birth control covered by other people.
	I just, you know, what would it be like if a bunch of men said, we want women to pay for our condoms?
	I mean, how would... Anyway, it doesn't matter.
	Okay, and thank you for your patience in waiting to get to talk.
	I appreciate it. It's a long wait. And have yourself a great, I guess, evening now where you are?
	Pretty late? Yeah, it's now 10 minutes to 11 p.m.
	Wow. So I'm going to be going to bed soon.
	I also wanted to point out one of the most unusual phrases that is uttered by A Free Domain Radio listener was uttered in the show today.
	I just wanted to stop and point it out.
	He said, I was talking to a woman.
	No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding.
	That's all right. Have yourselves a great week, everyone, and I will talk to you soon.

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