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June 6, 2012 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:10:20

2157 Freedomain Radio Sunday Call-In Show, 3 June 2012

What effect do age differences have in romantic relationships? Why do children bond more with peers than their parents? Arguing with a statist, repairing your relationship with your teenage child, and the dangerous impatience of political action.

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	So, good afternoon, everybody.
	Welcome to June 2012.
	It is the 6th, no, 3rd!
	3rd of June 2012.
	If you're doing well, please tune in to the Peter Schiff radio show tomorrow.
	That would be Monday, and the day after that would be, well, you get it.
	You get the pattern from 10 a.m.
	to noon Eastern.
	You can go to schiffradio.com.
	I will be hosting, and I've got some pretty cool guests that I think you will really enjoy.
	And so thanks, of course, for everyone who let them know that they enjoyed my last hosting.
	Even if you didn't believe it, I appreciate it.
	But thanks, everyone, so much.
	And I guess I'm heading off to do some chitty-chatting live to Dallas and then to Brazil.
	And I would really like to thank the Brazilian government and the Canadian government for the really deep, root-canal-style pleasure of getting a visa.
	That is, you know, getting a visa from Visa is a real pleasure.
	In fact, they'll just send you stuff in the mail.
	Here's your visa.
	Here's $5,000 credit.
	Just go hog wild.
	But trying to get a visa from a government is not entirely a huge amount of fun and runs into these several hundreds of dollars.
	So thanks.
	I like to feel that people are sending me money.
	So that I can give it to the Brazilian government.
	What really could be more pleasurable than that?
	Not much more.
	No, I'm not going to Argentina.
	I'm afraid not.
	I obviously wanted to be in a blue sparkle bikini on the top of some Argentinian float.
	But when I sent my nude shot, their server attempted to commit harikari.
	So I think that will not be Time for StephBot.
	So anyway, listen, I had a massive star-studded extravaganza introduction, but hey, Bono, pipe down.
	I was almost moaning at something.
	So we will get on to the listeners themselves, who are cued, I believe.
	And so, James, if you'd like to pop up the first one, let's play whack-a-mole with the listeners' questions.
	So my question was, what do you think of age differences in dating?
	Your question was or your question is?
	My question was, but I would like to substitute a new one.
	What do I think of age differences in dating?
	Yeah.
	Give me an example.
	Well, I was thinking about getting involved with somebody who's nearly six years younger than me.
	And how old are you?
	I'm nearly 27.
	It's an interesting question and certainly there have been some relationships that have come out of FDR which are not exactly like twins popping out of a womb but I have dated young.
	I think I've dated a woman who's seven years older and I dated a woman who was ten years younger and So I have found that there's sort of two possibilities in life, right?
	So you're either growing or you're defensive.
	I mean, those are some of the two.
	You're either thinking or you're avoiding thought.
	You're either processing reality or you're avoiding reality.
	Now, I think that age differences can work if you kind of have been enlightened for the same amount of time.
	So, you know, if you're If some woman is 22 and she's been enlightened for two years and you're 27 and you've been enlightened for two years, I think there's a kind of concordance of experience, if that makes any sense.
	It doesn't matter how old you are, in a sense, if you start learning the language, if you start learning Japanese at the same time as someone else, then you're going to, assuming you're putting the same amount of work in, you're going to kind of progress at the same time and you're going to You can practice with each other and correct each other and so on, and there will be a lot in common, but you really can't have a very satisfying conversation with a native Japanese speaker if you've only been trying to learn it for six months.
	I mean, they can teach you, but it's not going to be mutual.
	And so I think it's, you know, within some limitations, it's not so important to me, the age difference.
	What is important is the length of individuation.
	The length of the pursuit of self-knowledge.
	That, I think, seems to be...
	I mean, I know very good friends with couples who have a wide divergence of ages, but what they do have in common is that they've been rigorously pursuing self-knowledge, you know, with therapy and journaling and philosophy and all that good stuff for about the same amount of time.
	And I think that is the more important aspect than physical age.
	Does that make any sense?
	Yeah, it does make sense.
	The difference in experience is really kind of worrying me.
	Yes, but experience doesn't add up to wisdom in any way, shape, or form.
	Right, I mean, so, I mean, look at, I don't know, what's the name of that?
	Charles Murray?
	No, what's the name of that dictator?
	Charles Taylor.
	You know, I always get that confused because I had a really bad philosophy professor.
	Named Charles Taylor at McGill once.
	Anyway, but Charles Taylor has had a wild set of experiences.
	I mean, he rose from, I assume, relative poverty to become dictator of an African nation.
	And that's a pretty, you know, broad set of experiences.
	Did he gain any wisdom or knowledge or virtue out of that?
	I mean, experience doesn't add anything to wisdom.
	In fact, experience can often reduce wisdom.
	There's a great quote.
	I played Gloucester.
	The eye-gouging ponce in King Lear when I was in theater school.
	And because they, you know, they saw how I was able to handle Jell-O with a spoon.
	And so they said, hey, let's give him an eyeball to play with.
	And there's a great line in that.
	I mean, King Lear at the beginning puts on this ridiculous love test, which is really just a metaphor for politics, which is, you must, each of my daughters must tell me in spontaneous eloquence how much they love me And the daughter who loves him the most doesn't have the gift of evil eloquence that her sisters have.
	So he banishes her and the fool is the one who can tell the truth because he's not believed and has no power so he can tell the truth.
	The root of comedy is the release of truth without any possibility of acting upon it.
	So it's really a neutralization or an emasculation of the truth to have the least powerful person in the Court, speak it so that everyone can laugh at it.
	It's a way of keeping the truth at bay and hammering a stake into its heart.
	But he says to the king, thou shouldst not have been old before thou were wise.
	Foolishness in the elderly is doubly ridiculous, assuming it's not based upon illness.
	So the mere act of accumulating years, for the most part, hardens people into their prejudices.
	The mere act of accumulating years generally does not make the face more pretty, but less pretty.
	And the general act of accumulating years does not make the soul more pretty, usually, but less pretty.
	So I don't think that the physical age is as important as the length of the pursuit of self-knowledge.
	Yeah, that does make sense.
	I'm not so sure that she has been really pursuing self-knowledge in the same way that I have.
	I just remember when I was talking to her, she just seemed a lot more level-headed and a lot more reflective than most of the people around me, so that kind of stood out.
	Yeah, and I think that's great.
	I think that's great.
	Of course, lust wars with accuracy in romance, right?
	So, I mean, okay, let me reveal something from my distant youth, which was really quite embarrassing.
	So, I mean, this is, you know, back when I was shallow, I guess this would be the age of 14 or 15.
	There was this girl in my class who had big boobs.
	Really, what can I say?
	And she was very coarse and very crass and all that.
	And I wanted to ask her to a dance.
	Actually, I wanted to ask her boobs to the dance.
	I was happy if she came along as well, but that was really, sadly, the hormonally charged bomb in the brain focus of my attentions.
	And I was considered to be a rather refined individual.
	I mean, I was reading good books and It was quite witty and had a, you know, fruity accent and all.
	And so some of the people were clustering around me asking me why on earth I would ask this particular girl for the dance.
	And, you know, of course, what can I say?
	It's the twin globes of infant nutrients that I'm really interested in.
	I couldn't say that.
	And so I had to say it was, you know, it's her personality.
	And right then, as if the gods were trying to teach me a lesson, She farted and made a coarse joke about it.
	And, of course, there was the silence because it was really too obvious to even laugh at.
	And that was sort of an important lesson.
	And I'm not saying you're in this situation, but when you say I'm not sure that she's really been pursuing the same level of self-knowledge that I have, I think that you may be glossing it over a little bit for yourself.
	I can kind of see what you mean.
	I mean...
	So can you still hear me?
	Yes, go ahead.
	Okay.
	Yeah, I don't think I'm just jumping on the lust bandwagon, so to speak.
	I work in an office that's got a lot of young women in there, so...
	I remember my grandmother used to work in a candy shop, and she said after a while she just got used to the smell of sweets.
	So I think that kind of happened to me a little bit.
	Oh, so how much did you get?
	That...
	I was basically just saying that, you know, when you pursue self-knowledge, all the people around you kind of turn to sand a lot of times, and you end up in a desert.
	And like people in a desert desperate for water, for companionship, for contact, for romance, for love, for sex, we can chase after a lot of mirages, right?
	Yeah.
	That was one thing I was worried about.
	And look, I mean, I have done my share of mirage chasing, so I am, you know, I am deeply sympathetic to this problem.
	But of course, if you waste your energy chasing a mirage, you just end up more thirsty and in a worse position, and it can become quite addictive, right?
	And sorry, you had also said that you have separated from your family, but she hasn't.
	Now, of course, there's no need.
	I mean, there's no fundamental need for her to separate from her family.
	I mean, if she has a good family, yay!
	You know, that's a good thing.
	That's a great thing.
	That's a wonderful thing.
	I certainly hope that for my daughter, it's not going to be the case that she feels she needs to separate from her family in order to have a good romantic relationship in the future.
	That would be, of course, my sincere hope.
	So I wouldn't hold that as a standard, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, it was kind of like I've had that fairly big experience in my life that she hasn't had, and I just kind of thought that I would sort of be bringing that into the situation.
	Yes, but I think that would be to say that...
	I think that would be like saying that if I've been divorced, I can't ever be with someone who hasn't been divorced.
	Does that make sense?
	And I don't think that's really true.
	Yeah, that does make sense.
	I hadn't thought about it that way.
	I mean, I don't know.
	I mean, people who've been divorced can let me know in the chatroom, but I think that people who have been divorced can be with somebody who hasn't been divorced, and I think it can be successful.
	I mean, I don't think you need quite that exact same experience.
	Yeah, I can see what you mean.
	Is there anything else that you wanted to ask?
	I'm not sure that we're racing on in a productive direction.
	Yeah, I'm still a little bit unsure about it, but I think I've kind of asked everything that I wanted to.
	Okay.
	All right.
	Well, thanks very much, and I hope that it works out and you get what works for you.
	All right.
	Thanks for your time, Steph.
	You're very welcome.
	You're very welcome.
	And I think we have other callers awaiting and chomping at the bit.
	Indeed we do.
	Rick, you're up next.
	Hello, can you hear me alright?
	Can, can.
	I just want to ask what I think might be a quick question.
	I've got a young boy and he is two years, seven months old and he's really, really into dinosaurs and has been for the last six months or so and I'd like to hear your thoughts on that please.
	Why he's into dinosaurs?
	Yeah, because I've heard some podcasts and some hints drop that it might be a very bad thing.
	A bad thing?
	I don't think it's a bad thing.
	I mean, if it is, then my daughter's in the same boat because she's into dinosaurs as well.
	I mean, I think there's a number of reasons that make sense and, you know, maybe it will make sense to you.
	But, of course, childhood is a game of extremes, right?
	Early childhood in particular is an experience of extremes.
	You know, you'll notice that, you know, kids' clothes have vivid colors and children's shows are not like Woody Allen movies, right?
	They're not talky-talky.
	There's lots of motion and brightness and so on.
	And so kids, I think, in general respond to stronger stimuli and kids also are smaller than everyone else.
	And imagine if everybody in the world was 30 feet tall or 40 feet tall.
	I mean, it would be kind of freaky.
	And so I think that there's a balancing that goes on in a child's mind where their smallness seeks to compensate itself and it does so by a focus on things that are large and powerful and extreme and so you know giant trucks and and dinosaurs and sharks and you know all of the things that are very large and powerful transformers and giant robots of other kinds
	and so on I think they're just trying to Balance out the smallness and the vulnerability that they feel.
	And so for a kid to pretend to be a dinosaur is a way of overcoming the smallness.
	And I think it's a fine and healthy thing and can certainly lead to some great, you know, scientific interest.
	I mean, Isabelle and I have had great chats about dinosaurs, you know, and their relationship to birds and frogs and all that kind of stuff.
	And so I think it can be a great avenue.
	To figure things out.
	And of course, you can also start to talk about things that aren't around anymore.
	Of course, the first thing that kids are concerned about when they learn about dinosaurs is, is one going to pluck me from my bedroom window, perhaps?
	I don't think Isabella's felt that, but I've sort of reassured her that they're not around anymore.
	But no, I mean, I remember as a very little kid going to the British Museum of Natural History in London and being awed by this absolutely Massive, life-size giant blue whale.
	I still remember all of the blue specks underneath its jaws going down into its belly.
	I mean, it was awesome.
	And I took Isabella to the museum here, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, where they have massive amounts of dinosaur bones and all that, and dinosaur fossils all standing erect and glued together.
	And she just thought it was wonderful and fascinating and exciting.
	So, you know, I mean, there's a newness.
	But I think the size and power is kind of a healthy thing, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, sure thing.
	You know, the angle I'm coming from is, like, people, even later in life, or especially, they get into cars in a crazy kind of way, or an obsessive way, or young people, they're interested in the Transformers movie, as you say, and great big things, and it seems like I think, as you've mentioned, it could be daddy issues or it could be the absent father and they're looking for power in the wrong places.
	Maybe they look at watching the Incredible Hulk and identifying with him and it makes them feel powerful, like a revenge fantasy.
	I was just a bit concerned that it could be going that way or that I might be missing something.
	What's the difference between that and a healthy kind of looking to bigness to compensate?
	Well, the first question I would ask is, does he have issues with daddy absence?
	No, I don't believe so, not a bit of it.
	Good.
	Although, this all did begin when I was absent for a few weeks, so that's part of the reason perhaps, but it's continued and I haven't been absent for a long time.
	Yeah, I mean, look, I was reading a study...
	Recently, that was talking that the average child has a grand total of 30 minutes one-on-one conversation time with his or her father per week.
	I mean, that's just astounding.
	I mean, they spend more time crapping than they do chatting with their dad.
	I mean, it's just horrible.
	So, yeah, I mean, if that's not going on...
	But the other thing, too, I mean, if your son's, I guess, what you said, two and sort of three quarters or two and two thirds age...
	I think this is a good time, in my opinion, to start asking your son why he feels what he feels.
	You know, why do you like dinosaurs?
	What do you like about dinosaurs so much?
	Why do you like dinosaurs?
	I mean, these are conversations that you can have that really build the habit Of self-knowledge and being curious about one's own motivations.
	I mean, I have lots of chats with Izzy during the day about this, you know, why did you want to do this?
	Or why did you get upset about that?
	Oh, you had a dream.
	Tell me all about it, you know, and all that kind of stuff.
	Or why didn't you like this?
	Or, you know, what was your favorite part of the day?
	And why do you think it was your favorite?
	What was the part you didn't like?
	Why didn't you like it?
	What would you have preferred to do?
	And all of that.
	You know, when did you first feel sad, and did you want to tell me about it, or why didn't you, and that kind of stuff.
	I think that developing the habit of looking for self-knowledge can start really early.
	I mean, I remember being four or five years old, I remember very vividly, I was sort of in my room, Priory Crescent in London, and I had a little red train that I played with, a little metal red train, and I remember I was thinking about a red fire engine.
	And I thought, why am I thinking about a red fire engine?
	And I traced my thoughts back.
	I can't remember the sequence now, but I remember very clearly saying, well, I'm thinking about a red fire engine because I was looking at a picture of fire and then there was a house.
	And the house reminded me of a train station, and the train station reminded me of my red train, and then the red train reminded me of a red fire engine.
	Like, I can't remember why, but I remember stepping back, retracing my mental steps to figure out why I was thinking about a particular thing.
	And that started with me very early.
	And I don't, in any way, shape, or form, consider myself mentally gifted or unusual in any way, shape, or form.
	I mean, it's a, well, you know, Steph, but you're Mr.
	Chatty forehead, and so, you know, that's different.
	But I don't think that's the case.
	At all.
	And so I think, you know, as I've said, talent is overrated and it really is a matter of just applied and consistent focus on a topic.
	But I would ask him.
	I guess that's the short answer.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	We're having better and better conversations, of course, and introspection isn't something that we've really explored so far, but his words just keep coming up, so I think I can have a crack at that.
	But before I go, I'd like to understand better When people or children do get interested in kind of crazy sports, like they want to take up boxing or they want to learn kung fu or they get engrossed, when it becomes unhealthy, how can you pick that?
	So if your son wants to get into, I don't know, like extreme motocross, dirt bike, flipping, riding kind of stuff?
	Yes, or boxing or kung fu or some sort of martial arts or obsessed with more of the violent or cultish Sports that there are around.
	Right, right.
	Well, I mean, you know, some of the things that you can look into is, you know, media exposure.
	I mean, it's really hard to find engaging and energetic children's media that doesn't have fighting in it.
	So I've heard studies, and I haven't confirmed this, but I've heard studies that say that the relationship between exposure to media violence and children's aggression is stronger than the relationship between smoking and lung cancer.
	So, you know, media limiting, I think, is really important.
	I have a...
	Okay, so, you know, Isabella is going through a phase, which she's going through pretty much ever since she could walk, where she's constantly testing limits of what she can do.
	You know, can she jump from this couch to this couch?
	Can she jump up in the air, spin around, and land down?
	And all of this is completely heart-stopping for me, of course, because, you know, as a parent, the temptation is always to live in the past.
	But for a kid...
	Their drive is always to live in the future, right?
	So I'm thinking back about the times when she couldn't do this, and she's thinking forward to the times when she can do this.
	And this is a disparity that is natural and healthy, but there's a tension involved in that, I think.
	And so I explained this to her, you know, I'm used to you being smaller, I'm used to you not being able to do these things, and I encourage her to do them, but it's just a little heart-stopping, so I really wanted to Understand that she should try and do these things.
	It's just a little hard for me.
	The irony, of course, is that the only time she's jumped and hurt herself is when I was concerned about it and told her to stop, and then she stalled halfway through the jump and then fell down with a bang.
	So the irony is that it's my fears that create the danger, not she's really good at that.
	So, I mean, I think there's a natural desire for physical competence, just as there is a natural desire for competence in language and Thought and all of these kinds of things.
	You know, Isabella's quite convinced that if I put my head close enough to her forehead, then I can hear her thinking in the same way that I can hear her heart when I put my head right to her chest.
	Because she can hear her thinking, right?
	She thinks of a balloon going pop.
	She hears the bang in her head.
	So she's quite convinced that I can hear the bang in her head when she thinks of a balloon popping.
	You know, I don't know.
	It's just kind of a funny thing that's going on.
	But...
	So I think that the physical competence and the mastery of that is very natural and healthy.
	Where it becomes, I think, problematic is when it becomes competitive with peers.
	I think that's a very dangerous area to get into or an area where parents need to exercise great caution because, of course, the majority of children in this world, they socialize horizontally, right?
	So children are kind of designed to grow up in a tribe Where there's a huge ratio of adults to children, right?
	So there are, you know, a couple of kids in the family and there are parents, there are grandparents, there are aunts, there are uncles, there are older cousins and all this.
	So there's supposed to be a lot of parents relative to, a lot of adults relative to children and that's, you know, children are supposed to socialize vertically because we're supposed to help them climb up this cliff to adulthood.
	So they're supposed to socialize, you know, supposed to play horizontally and socialize vertically, like up the ladder of years.
	This is not how society runs at all anymore.
	At all.
	I mean, you know, kids go into daycare where the ratio of adults to children is biologically incomprehensible to them.
	You know, I mean, I worked in a daycare and, you know, there were two teachers.
	I was, well, I was one assistant teacher or whatever, but no, just an aide.
	There were two adults for like 25 kids or 30 kids, ages 5 to 10.
	It was, you know, kind of mayhem.
	And so what happens is, you know, children will bond proximally.
	They will bond, you know, like ducklings with a balloon or something.
	They'll just bond proximally.
	And what is most proximate?
	I'm sorry?
	Yep, yep, I understand that, sorry.
	Yeah, so most kids will bond with whoever's around, and the way that parenting and childhood is going these days, what's around that they're bond with are other children, and not adults.
	And so this is where a lot of the shallowness and emptiness, I think, of childhood comes from, that, you know, kids can't teach each other how to be adults, but they can attempt to gain a primitive kind of dominance through You know, stupid human tricks, basically.
	Right, right.
	You know, if you watch these, you know, watch Fail Blog, you know, watch Fail Blog for, you know, 20 minutes and all you're basically seeing is stupid human tricks gone wrong.
	And why, oh, why are people jumping off escalators in malls?
	And why are people trying to do flips onto sand at a beach?
	And why are they attempting to ride rails on skateboards?
	I mean, what a ridiculous way to spend your time.
	But this is what happens when kids bond horizontally rather than vertically.
	They're not interested in wisdom or virtue or integrity or the excellence of the soul.
	They're interested in artificial dominance through stupid human tricks.
	Gotcha.
	Hadn't thought about that.
	So skateboarding and all these skate parks that we see about the place, that's going to largely be a symptom of that sort of result, is it?
	Well, I think so.
	And I brace myself, as I always do, for six million skateboarders to tell me that I'm completely wrong.
	But I always look at the rise of these things.
	What is it coincident with?
	Well, the rise of skateboarding and the rise of stupid human tricks for young people culture rose with the rise of fatherlessness.
	Right.
	I mean, now, of course, people are going to tell me, man, don't you ever listen?
	In the 50s, they had drag racing, man.
	They used to race for pink slips, man.
	And don't you think it's just new?
	And what about war?
	Well, yeah, I mean, I understand all of that.
	But the reality is that the skateboarding, sorry, the drag racing and all of that, Generally came from the wrong side of tracks.
	I mean, this was the fatherless, right?
	Fatherlessness has...
	It didn't just start to appear in the 60s and early 70s, right?
	I mean, it's been around in various guises for a long time.
	But if you look at the rise of, you know, arrogant, empty, cool, you can really see that it comes from peer bonding.
	So if you look at the number one thing that kids want to be is not virtuous or good or Or wise or even rich.
	They want to be famous.
	Because to be famous is to have the ultimate one-upmanship on your peers.
	And they don't want to be good parents.
	They don't want to be hard workers.
	They don't want to be discovering the cure for cancer.
	They want to be famous.
	Because that's the kind of values that you get out of empty peer bonding rather than a society that has got Cascades of wisdom coming down the volcano of age.
	Right, absolutely.
	That all makes very good sense to me.
	I think that answers my questions and helps me, gives me a bit of a relationship.
	Yeah, and so somebody has said, I could totally out-skateboard Steph, and he's just jealous.
	I absolutely agree that you could no doubt totally out-skateboard me.
	And some people have said, I don't see anything stupid in making flips on the sand.
	You can't pursue virtue 100% of the time.
	Of course.
	Absolutely.
	Absolutely.
	But why do you need to do it publicly?
	Why do you need to do it in a dangerous environment?
	That's the key.
	And I think that's just something to think about.
	Yeah, and perhaps, are they doing it for an audience or for a potential audience?
	Are they practicing so that they can show off?
	Or, you know, maybe that's what you have in mind, what the motive is to show what the activity is guided by, yeah?
	Yeah, yeah, and look, it's not my observation in particular that there's a dispirited and often violent kind of nihilism involved in skateboarding culture.
	That's not anything I think that's particularly new.
	See, don't get me wrong.
	I love to rollerblade.
	I love to ski.
	I love to get better at playing squash and so on.
	That's not a bad thing.
	I took Isabella rock climbing.
	I think all of that stuff, exercise is wonderful and great, and I think improving your skills is wonderful and great as well.
	Don't set up this artificial dichotomy.
	That's just a cheap-ass defense mechanism, right?
	This artificial dichotomy where I say...
	Well, because there's this general trend, anyone who skateboards is now bad, and therefore you can't ever skateboard if you want to be virtuous.
	I mean, that's an art dichotomy, right?
	That's just what people set up when they want to dismiss an idea without really absorbing it.
	Not you, other people.
	Yeah, of course, every time.
	All right, well, thank you very much.
	I'll let you move on.
	Appreciate it.
	You're very welcome.
	All right.
	What do we got?
	Next up, we have Chris.
	Chris, I like this.
	Continuing the monosyllabic name trend.
	Go.
	Alright, so I've recently come across a lot of people trying to tell me to extend the non-aggression principle to animals, right?
	And I've been told that eating a hamburger is tantamount to, you know, killing my loved one, cooking them, and then eating them.
	And I've come across a lot of people trying to talk to me, but they have a lot of logical inconsistencies with other aspects that sort of dissuades me from their arguments.
	I want to run a few past you.
	I want you to give the thumbs up if I'm being sort of logical or a thumbs down if I'm just being a nitpicky little meat eater.
	All right.
	Alright, so the first nitpicky one, the real one, would be the fact that I start out asking, why should I extend the non-aggression principle?
	What would be the simplest way of the why?
	Well, because they're alive.
	I hate this one.
	I mean, my God, how many things are alive?
	Plants, insects, microorganisms, animals.
	You've got to narrow it down for me here.
	I'm going to eat carrots.
	By God, I don't care what you think.
	Well, are you going to take an antibiotic if you get an infection?
	Those bacteria are alive as well.
	Every time you take a dump, you're killing millions of bacteria, right?
	You're just supposed to squeeze it in until they develop faster than light travel?
	Anyway, sorry, go ahead.
	Yeah, yeah.
	So, yeah, I hate that.
	But, I mean, it doesn't stop the debate.
	I'll just say, okay, well, let's narrow it down.
	Let's really chop it out.
	I also, if they support PETA, I don't support them at all because PETA, as some people know and some people don't, euthanized 96% of the dogs and cats they supposedly rescued.
	I mean, my God, if we're saying that animals are people, then PETA is basically the Hitler of our generation.
	I mean, concentration camps, mass murder, or Stalin death capades.
	Alright, so if you're saying that I have to do the non-aggression principle to animals, you cannot also be supporting PETA. I'm sorry, I also wanted to just reinforce and mention that Stalin Deathcapades is about the best name for a punk band that you could come up with, but I just copyrighted it.
	So, anyway, go ahead.
	Or you go for it.
	You know, I'm an anarchist.
	I don't believe in copyrighting, Stefan.
	So yeah, that one bugs me.
	Oh, also...
	Owning pets, zoos, these types of things.
	I mean, if you're going to say that animals are not property, you cannot say I can pick them up, transport them to a location against their will, put them in a cage, and that's happy-go-lucky because I think I'm helping them.
	I mean, I can't go out homeless people hunting or waiting outside ERs and saying, hey, that person has a broken arm.
	They totally need to be in my locked cage in my basement.
	So no, that's, again, a logical inconsistency for me.
	And the biggest one that I deal with when people try to convince me is the fact that they try to say, well, we need to make legislation against eating meat.
	And then I pause like, my God, you don't like me owning a cow, but you think some random dude by mob rule should be able to be my human farmer.
	Again, big logic inconsistency.
	And so this is not a criticism of, you know, being vegan.
	I mean, I'm not.
	But it's sort of like in Portland, right?
	These self-declared anarchists did some vandalism trying to promote anarchy.
	Now, I'm an anarchist, but their message is horrible.
	Absolutely awful way to do it, and that's what I'm basically criticizing here.
	So what do you think, Stephan?
	Give me your power.
	Give me your power.
	I've got the power.
	All right.
	Look, I think that animals should be treated well.
	And my daughter is currently taking care of some tadpoles and, you know, she likes to go catch frogs in the neighboring park and so on.
	So, you know, teach her to be gentle, to, you know, give them a break if they keep swimming away and all that kind of stuff.
	And she is.
	She's wonderfully gentle with animals and she's great.
	She also doesn't like meat because we don't really eat meat in the household and so on.
	So, I think that...
	When people start to talk to me, this is my personal thoughts and experience on this, when people start to talk to me about the world and when they get very intense about a particular moral topic, I always, you know, scientifically, philosophically, psychologically, I just go to their childhood.
	And, you know, animals are children and people are parents and the state is Is some fairy godmother who's going to come in and make everything better.
	The fantasy of salvation comes from, in my opinion, comes from a traumatized childhood where salvation did not occur.
	So someone's being yelled at or beaten up or ignored or God knows what, even worse, by their parents.
	You know, there's a salvation fantasy.
	And UFOs are sort of like that as well, in a way.
	There's a salvation fantasy that there's me, there's some abusers, but somewhere out there, there's this agency that can make all the bad stuff stop.
	And what that does, of course, is it, sadly, it continues, because it's not based on self-knowledge or reality, and all delusions tend to repeat and repeat and repeat until people get sick of the repetition, because addiction is repetition, destructive repetition.
	And so, people, if they're being harmed by their caregivers, they can't handle it, they can't deal with it.
	And what they can't deal with as well is they look at their parents and they forget that their parents are embedded in a larger adult culture that is also not helping them, that is also not helping them.
	So, you know, if they're being yelled at and beaten up by parents, well, those parents have siblings, those parents have parents, those parents have friends, there are teachers, there are priests, there are other adults around, none of whom are doing anything about this situation.
	And that's a pretty unbearable situation for a child to go through.
	I mean, I speak from personal experience in this, which may mean that I'm not objective, but, you know, sort of putting that out there.
	And so, this is the typical constellation of how people approach the state, how they approach society, is there are victims, these are the children.
	There are perpetrators, these are whoever was harming them as children, if this was what was happening.
	And then there's the fairy godmother of salvation, whether it's Jesus or the state or UFOs who are going to save us from nuclear destruction or, you know, Ethan Hawke, the heart-bitten Mission Impossible CIA guy who's going to save the world from nuclear winter or whatever it is.
	There's some salvation fantasy out there.
	And what that salvation fantasy does is it, sadly, eases the transition from abusive parents to an abusive state.
	Because the salvation fantasy does not allow you to look at the world clearly.
	And the salvation fantasy can be any number of things.
	If I pray hard enough, Jesus will save me.
	If I go and vote, I can make the government make everything better, or make the government smaller, which will make things better.
	There is a salvation fantasy that perpetuates the abuse.
	So when I look at the animal rights activists, then either they've gone through a significant process I suggest therapy for everyone, frankly.
	I mean, just everyone.
	If you want to know how traumatized the world is, it's very simple.
	You get a piece of paper and a pencil.
	And you go to 100 people and you say, hey, taxation is force.
	And everyone who reacts emotionally rather than is curious intellectually is traumatized.
	Now, what percentage is that of people?
	Well, it's quite a lot.
	You know, I wouldn't need, we can all, we all have our own numbers, but they're pretty high.
	And so the vast majority of people need self-knowledge, they need therapy, a good therapist, they need to process their histories and they need to not just process their histories in terms of what happened to me as a child but process what happened to them as a child who was embedded not just in a family structure but in a larger socio-economic political cultural structure which they still are in and which really hasn't changed since they were kids and so it's not like the bad stuff has gone away just
	because you've grown up because the very system that supported or enabled or ignored the wrong son to you as children is still fully operational and in fact expanding in power so if people have done that work then I am really willing to listen to their theories and you can tell very quickly when people haven't done that work and so if people haven't done that work and they get very intense about a particular topic you know whether it's animal rights or you know you name it then my firm conviction
	Which has yet to be contradicted by empirical evidence.
	My firm conviction is that they're not doing anything other than finding emotional diversions for their original trauma, which means that they're not being rational.
	Does that make any sense?
	Absolutely.
	It made total sense all the way through.
	Things were clicking in my mind.
	And it's not that I'm against the idea of, you know, not eating meat.
	I did not become an anarchist because I was against a well-reasoned argument based on evidence, you know?
	Right, right, right.
	But, I mean, it's just there's a lot of things I would personally need explained to me.
	Like, okay, we need to give rights to not, like, I don't know, eat animals because they're alive and they don't, like...
	They don't want to be killed.
	Fair enough, I get that.
	But what do we do about lions eating gazelles?
	Am I supposed to get them a security force?
	How do we do financial austerity to a lion?
	I'm not criticizing its instinct, but things like that.
	And yeah, there's just a lot of...
	Because I can't negotiate with a lion, right?
	I can't explain to a lion, hey, if you're hungry, there's a grocery store, there's a Burger King.
	For God's sake, please don't eat me.
	Yeah, and you put a lion in jail for eating a gazelle, right?
	Blah, blah, blah, right?
	Yeah, and then you have to rationalize, well, I don't support kidnapping, so we're back at a brick wall.
	So yeah, it's just, if someone can make this reasoned, you know, explanation to me, by God, I will go out and I will buy the produce section of the nearest shopping center slash not Walmart.
	I will do it for you.
	But it will have to be a well-reasoned argument, not an emotional gush.
	Right.
	Yeah, look, now, but this is one thing that I will say about the animal rights, which is...
	This is not a philosophical argument.
	This is sort of just an argument from empirical experience.
	So this is not at the highest tier of rational bulletproof-itness.
	But the majority of people would not want to kill a cow or gut a pig or strangle a chicken or anything like that.
	And so...
	They feel much more comfortable if they don't see that.
	So when you go buy meat in the store, it doesn't even look like anything.
	I mean, the chicken breasts don't look like chicken.
	They don't look like chickens.
	The meat has all been ground up and doesn't look like any part of an animal.
	There's no skin.
	There's no hoof sticking out.
	There's no eye staring at you resentfully from your T-bone.
	And so I always wonder the degree to which people...
	Would be as avid about eating their meat if they actually saw the process by which it occurred.
	And again, this is not a moral argument, but it is, I think, an argument that if you are a meat-eater, I invite you, as I have done, I invite you to look at some slaughterhouse videos and to see where this food comes from and what happens to the animals,
	how they're bred and How they are raised, how they are killed, how they are processed.
	It's not a moral argument, but have a look.
	If you like cheap electronics, have a look at some of the working positions of the people who produce them.
	I think that's an important thing.
	It's not a clincher of an argument.
	I don't want to watch Root Canals on YouTube.
	But I think it's important if you like your meat to at least be aware of where it's coming from.
	I mean, I sort of say this with the state.
	It's not the same argument exactly, but people want other people's money, but they don't want to steal it themselves.
	They just like the government to do it and hand them an anonymous, unbloody-looking check.
	I mean, there was a great article recently I read basically asking...
	How the hell can a Twinkie be cheaper than carrots?
	And if you stop poking your head into the way that food is created and subsidized and processed and shipped, the amount of state involvement in our food supply is just horrific.
	It's just horrific.
	The amount of subsidies, the amount of market distortions, the amount of bribery, the amount of debt, the amount of harm towards Local and smaller farms is just horrendous.
	It's absolutely horrendous.
	Plus the harm that is done to people's diets based upon heavily lobbied U.S. government guidelines.
	It's just, it's completely astounding.
	So the subsidies that go to, say, fruits and vegetables in the U.S. market is about 1% or less.
	I don't think it can, it doesn't even show up on the pie chart.
	Less than 1% of the money is subsidizing fruits and vegetables.
	I mean, the vast majority of it goes to subsidize meat and carbs and milk and dairy.
	And what do people have a problem with?
	Well, look, I'm not even going to go into the diet thing because that's just a whole other thing.
	I have barely any expertise in this show to talk about anything other than a few first principles.
	That's sort of my invitation to people is just look a little bit into, you know, don't just look at this food that arrives on your table like it's, you know, just magically put there by free market fairies.
	Have a look at the gruesome status path that all of this stuff takes and ask yourself if it takes seven times the amount of grain to produce a pound of meat than a pound of grain.
	Why is the meat not seven times more expensive?
	That's all I'm asking for.
	I think if there are market forces and children treated well, I think that meat would be a lot less ubiquitous than it is today.
	But I don't think there are a lot of people who really like getting into root cause, market forces, statism, violence and corruption.
	They just think that the same agency or institution that is causing all these problems, i.e.
	the state, Is somehow going to solve them.
	And it's, you know, it's crazy.
	Anyway, sorry, that's just a bit of a ramble, but I hope that sort of vaguely fits in terms of utility.
	Oh, absolutely.
	I'm glad you touched on it, because I completely agree, and I've said that.
	And I said, look, you want people to stop eating meat and the steak.
	I mean, when meat's expensive, people will go vegan just when you hit their wallets.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Totally.
	I mean, hey, I would turn vegan right now if a hamburger was 10 bucks.
	I'd say, no, don't like the cow that much.
	I will eat an apple a day.
	The doctor will stay down the street accordingly.
	This is what will happen.
	Yeah, I don't want to take any more of your time.
	You've been fantastic the whole way through.
	Have a good one.
	Well, I'm very glad to have been of help.
	I appreciate your call.
	It's always a very interesting topic.
	And I have...
	I think it's important to be aware of the arguments and on the pro-animal rights side I think it's important to be aware of where your food comes from and it takes a stronger stomach than I have to continue to eat meat when you see where it comes from but anyway.
	Yeah, it took me forever to find a slaughterhouse video that wasn't edited.
	You know, it took forever.
	But I finally found one that did like the whole straight-through, no, this is what happens, fur is murder, little segments in between.
	But it is absolutely horrifying.
	But if we can work on the NAP between people and people, then I think ending the state, working on us, it will drift over.
	If you want it to go to animals and it is the moral right, it will happen, right?
	We will get there.
	Yeah, peace among people results in peace among animals, and there's no shortcut, I think.
	The non-aggression principle, if we can't apply it to human beings who can reason, then we'll never be able to apply it to animals, because human beings won't be reasonable.
	And so the only way to raise the capacity for rationality in the human species is to raise children peacefully.
	And so, yeah, I mean, I think that's where it all...
	You know, anybody who says I've got a really good argument as to why we should have animal rights still has to go to peaceful parenting because a really good argument means nothing to most people.
	It means nothing to most people.
	They can just will it away through emotional defenses that arise out of traumatic childhoods.
	And that's a scientific fact.
	I saw this study recently.
	It was very interesting.
	It said that...
	People who were against climate change, no matter what data they were given, they ended up more firmly against climate change.
	Yes, yes, yes.
	I know.
	Maybe I'm in this camp as well, but this is just really, really important.
	Whereas people who were for anthropogenic climate change, no matter what information they were given, whether they were given anti or pro or neutral, they ended up more So, it doesn't matter what information you give to people, it is only going to reinforce their existing belief systems.
	And so, reason and evidence don't matter.
	You know, we're not in a situation where reason and evidence matter.
	Reason and evidence is like, you know, we're all in the Shire among the Hobbits and we only speak Elvish, and they don't speak Elvish.
	Well, if we really want to change people's minds about reason and evidence, We have to have them start to speak the language of reason and evidence, and you simply can't do that with the vast majority of adults, which is why it's a multi-generational process.
	And so I really wanted to point that out.
	I mean, where I give myself some slack is that I've gone through probably half a dozen major revolutions in my thinking since I was a kid, right?
	A Christian nationalist to atheist and, you know, objectivist to To anarchists and, you know, having ambivalence about copyright to being against copyright and so on.
	So, I mean, I've gone through a number of these revolutions that have been kind of wrenching for me, being, you know, incredibly and mindlessly pro-family no matter what the situation, to being a little bit more balanced and nuanced in my moral evaluation of family and so on.
	And not thinking that child abuse was at all important to now understanding its central importance.
	So I've gone through a huge number of revolutions in my thinking, and I'm sure there are going to be more to come.
	I'm glad that I got the majority of them out of the way before I started podcasting.
	But yeah, the reality is that most people are simply confirmation bias seeking out.
	And no matter what information you expose them to, gosh, don't you know, it just ends up...
	You know, it's like that old thing, not to pick on Christians, because, you know, there are lots of libertarians and even anarchists who are rational this way as well.
	But it's the old thing about, you know, the world is 6,000 years old.
	Well, wait a minute.
	Through carbon dating, we've established that dinosaur bones are around from hundreds of millions of years ago.
	Aha!
	That was put there to test our faith, right?
	So, I mean, that just doesn't matter.
	New information simply reinforces the original prejudice.
	And this is why reasoning with most people is...
	It's like trying to get reasonable, decent behavior out of a French waiter.
	All right.
	I will lastly say one thing.
	Calling something climate change as if it's some new fancy thing.
	Isn't that an oxymoron?
	That's like saying, well, there was a violent murder here today.
	Yes, it was a murder.
	We get it.
	Violence.
	It's part of it.
	But yes.
	Absolutely.
	Solid point.
	Reaffirming beliefs against evidence.
	Absolutely.
	It's why there is still a government today.
	It's why there was slavery for so long.
	It's why institutionalized rape was not called institutionalized rape.
	But let's end it.
	You got some callers here who are way cooler than me.
	Let's get to them.
	It's unthinkable.
	It's unthinkable.
	All right.
	Well, thanks, man.
	I appreciate that.
	And a great, great call.
	Great questions.
	Up next we have Tim.
	Oh!
	You keep those single syllable names coming.
	Can you hear me, Steph?
	Yes.
	Awesome.
	Okay, this is my first time using Skype, so I wasn't too sure.
	First of all, it's a great pleasure to talk to you.
	I've been following you since the days when you were driving down the highway, talking into the microphone.
	So it's my first time calling and I can honestly say your ideas and your show has changed my life for the better.
	So I first want to say a huge amount of appreciation to you for that.
	Thank you.
	My question is about my son.
	I have a 15-year-old son and we've been having issues with him.
	I mean, it's only been in recent years that I was turned on to philosophical parenting and peaceful parenting and So I'm afraid that I've messed my son up in a lot of ways.
	And I'm kind of now trying to play catch up and trying to repair a lot of the damage I've done.
	And I have to have a conversation with him today.
	So, sorry, you're saying that you were going to have an intervention with your son and a conversation.
	If you can just tell me a little bit more what that's about.
	We just dropped some audio there.
	Yeah, no, he's been using marijuana on a regular basis, pretty much a daily basis, and he's getting into violating others' property rights, stealing stuff, shoplifting stuff, different things like that.
	I've talked with him in the past about this and tried to explain to him the idea of property rights, tried to get him to empathize with the victims and stuff like that.
	He never comes right out and says that he's stolen stuff, but the evidence is mounting that him and his friends are escalating it.
	So...
	Do you mean sort of shoplifting or people's homes?
	Well, yeah.
	I mean, originally I heard...
	Through the grapevine that he grabs bags of chips and throws them in his bags and different things like that from the grocery store.
	I talked to him about, and he's talked to me before about his friends that commit bank fraud by pretending to deposit money into an ATM and then withdrawing it immediately.
	And different things like that.
	So I, you know, he doesn't see a problem with it because it's a crime against banks and corporations.
	And now he's getting into, we noticed on Kijiji that he had a iPhone for sale and it turns out he has a MacBook Pro, him and his friends have, and they claim to have found it.
	If you find something, your job is to return it to its proper owners, not sell it on Kijiji.
	I have my suspicions that he hangs out with criminals.
	Can you tell me a little bit about his first couple of years in the family?
	Sure.
	Well, first of all, my wife and I, or my ex-wife and I, divorced when my son was about six.
	Prior to that, It was a very traumatic experience for him.
	I'm sorry, what was it?
	The divorce at the age of six.
	Prior to that, I was raised in a religious household and I married my wife at the age of 19 because she was the first woman I had sex with and I had to make an honest woman out of her.
	Shortly after that, we had kids.
	Sorry, are you still there?
	I am.
	Okay.
	Shortly after that, we had kids, and it was...
	I mean, spanking wasn't out of our repertoire of ways of disciplining, but it happened very rarely, maybe two or three times that I can think of that I knew spanking.
	Right.
	But certainly my experience of my ex-wife was very, she's very, to me, dominating and very angry a lot.
	And I felt very small around her quite often.
	And so I imagine his experience was similar.
	Of her and I was largely absent.
	You know, I was listening to you earlier talking about absentee father and how it's related to all sorts of problems and that pretty much describes his life because I would bury myself in work, work two or three jobs and was rarely, you know, home.
	And when I did get home...
	Oh, do you think that was, sorry, was that to avoid your wife?
	A lot of it was, yeah.
	It was unpleasant, and I didn't know how to deal with it.
	And it was also, you know, I felt like...
	I say this from my own entrepreneurial experience.
	I was the most successful in business when I was at least happy at home.
	Right, yeah, and that would probably definitely describe me as well.
	So, yeah, that would describe me as well.
	And...
	So yeah, I mean, I wasn't home a lot.
	And when I was home, I was disengaged from the kids.
	And eventually, you know, I came...
	I mean, to me, divorce was equivalent to I would go to hell.
	And so at the same time I was going through the divorce, I was struggling, having a crisis of faith and going through questioning my faith.
	And at that point, the floodgates opened up and all this...
	I learned about self-awareness, self-inquiry.
	I started questioning where all my beliefs came from, which led me to question my belief in government and statism and everything else.
	But for the first two years, I'd say after the divorce, I was a guilt-ridden, shameful man who was hiding out from myself and definitely wasn't there for my children.
	Their experience at home during that time definitely wasn't pleasant.
	My ex-wife had primary custody of them.
	What did that mean in terms of the time distribution?
	It meant that she got them almost all the time and I saw them every now and then like maybe occasionally for a few hours on every other weekend kind of thing because I was paying her my whole paycheck at that time and having Sorry, let me just back up for a second.
	I really appreciate the honesty that you're bringing to this up.
	This is not a fun conversation, but I really, really appreciate it.
	I really respect you for talking about this stuff.
	But you said that you would only see your kids for a couple of hours every other weekend, and you said because you were giving your whole paycheck to your wife, was that causal?
	That was largely causal, yeah, because I mean, I think the main causal thing was just my shame because that caused me to give her my whole paycheck because I felt a complete amount of guilt and responsibility for leaving.
	I felt like I had to, you know, to me the paradigm was you look after your family by putting food on the table and providing for them.
	And so that's what I did.
	That's the only thing I could do to hold on to any shred of dignity for what I had done.
	I'm still trying to understand the causality here.
	So, you said that you would only see your kids every other weekend for a couple of hours, and the causality seemed to be because you were giving a lot of money to your wife, but I'm just not following that, and I apologize for being dense.
	Well, it just meant that I had to work every day, and so...
	But you were doing that before, you got divorced, right?
	Yeah, that's true.
	Right?
	That's true, yeah.
	Yeah, I guess...
	I don't know.
	I felt in a lot of ways I couldn't face my kids.
	I let them down.
	I mean, the day that I left, that I separated, I sat down with them to look them in the eyes and tell them what was going to happen and try to be gentle with them.
	And my son started welling up.
	Sorry.
	Sorry.
	It's okay.
	He looked at a picture of my wife and I on our wedding day, smiling and looking at each other.
	And when I told him, I just wasn't happy anymore.
	And he said, you were happy then.
	Why can't you be happy again?
	And I couldn't answer him.
	It's an amazing question from the 60-year-olds, right?
	Yeah.
	Right.
	And so now, you know, I still feel all this guilt and shame and it's kind of, in a lot of ways, paralyzing.
	Yeah.
	Because I don't want to be a heavy-handed father.
	I want to be engaged.
	I want to be loving.
	And I don't want my son to go down this path.
	I don't know what to do about it.
	Right.
	When your kids were young, I know this is going back like a decade and a half, but when your kids were young, do you think that, did you experience them missing you when you were away so much?
	My memory's really foggy at that time.
	They were certainly happy to see me when I came home.
	And how were they when you said I'm going or I'll be back later or I'm sorry I didn't see you yesterday or when you when you were going what was their what was your experience of their experience?
	I guess I I'd have to say that I didn't notice that they missed me all that much Maybe.
	I mean, it's a little foggy.
	I have a hard time remembering, but, you know, their mom was home with them.
	I was a breadwinner, and so they were attached to her.
	Not so much to me, you know?
	And when you had your son, were there significant problems in the marriage at that time, six years before the divorce?
	I remember, yeah, I mean, it's...
	We didn't fight that much, but there was problems from the get-go with the relationship because it was based on religious culture.
	But I do remember having a conversation with my wife at the time about...
	Before we had gotten married, I was away at school and was flirting dangerously with cheating on her.
	And I remember her asking about that and I was kind of being circumspect about it and avoiding the question.
	And I kind of remember a turning point almost where she avoided the subject altogether like she didn't want to know the truth.
	You mean she just stopped asking?
	She stopped asking about it, didn't want to know the truth, and a month later she was pregnant despite, you know, and she said it was because she forgot to take the birth control pill one day.
	But I kind of had a suspicion that she was afraid of you strained and therefore got pregnant?
	I think she was afraid of me leaving her.
	And so she...
	Yeah, so that's my impression now.
	I don't know.
	I think she would deny that, but I think it's possible because after that happened, I definitely was committed to, you know, now I have a family and responsibility, and that's what my focus in life was.
	You know, it was...
	No longer.
	Let me ask you another question, Tim.
	And again, I really appreciate your honesty in this.
	I think I have best to put this.
	Is it your son...
	What is driving this desire for knowledge, for intimacy, for better parenting?
	Is it your son who's driving this or your son's problems that are driving this?
	In other words, if he was doing straight A's and not doing drugs and the captain of the varsity team or I don't know what it passes for high status where you are, but if he was doing all of that, where do you think he would be in terms of examining the past?
	I mean, that's a great question because I could compare him directly to my daughter who is that person you just described and who's a year younger than him.
	She gets straight A's, she's an honor student and she's captain of her ringette team and she's Standards of those around her.
	Very successful, well-adjusted child.
	And part of the reason for that is probably because she had her mom, but your son didn't so much have his dad, right?
	Right, right.
	Anyway, so go ahead.
	Yeah, no, absolutely.
	And I mean, part of me almost worries about her more because I feel like there's a lot under the surface that just isn't That I can't access.
	I know she must have suffered terribly too, but she's very introverted and I can't connect with it either, you know.
	Is it your son's person, his soul, so to speak, that is drawing this, or is it his problems that is drawing this examination or this reflection from him?
	That's a really tough question.
	If I'm completely honest, it would probably be the problem somewhat, although I feel that paradigm is shifting a little bit.
	Yeah, I'm not saying it's 100% and 0%, right?
	I'll just say my pattern has been that I've been the guy that steps in when there's a problem, not the engaged guy that's there when things are going great.
	So his problems are drawing you closer.
	Hmm, that's interesting.
	Yeah.
	His problems are getting your attention.
	Definitely.
	His problems are excavating the history.
	Yeah.
	I see what you're saying, absolutely.
	I mean, that's who I have been to him, is the guy that comes in when there's a problem.
	Okay, so, if you were to pretend to be your son, could you describe to me, if I were to say to you, son of Tim, son of Tim, what was your experience of Tim as a father, what would he say?
	He was absent, and I was angry all the time.
	And I don't know why he couldn't have stayed in my life.
	And what did his absence mean to you?
	What did that translate to you in your heart of hearts?
	What did his absence mean about you?
	It meant that I had no hero.
	I had no role model.
	I was left on my own to face an angry mom.
	Well, I think that's kind of an abstract answer.
	I'm just going to take another pass at this.
	What did it mean about your father's love for you if he was able to be gone so much?
	Thank you.
	Man, he didn't really care all that much about me.
	Well, relative to the other things that had high priority, I think that's empirically true, right?
	That would be empirically true, right?
	Again, I'm not saying you didn't care, right?
	But just, you know, sort of me to you, dad to dad.
	I'm not saying you didn't care.
	But the child can only experience the family and the house.
	They can't experience the big world, right?
	Right.
	And so, if you're gone a lot, if you're busy a lot, and then particularly after the divorce, The child only knows that there's some priority or priorities that are infinitely higher than him.
	Right.
	Does that make sense?
	Absolutely.
	So, I mean, I'll sort of give you...
	It's a weird example of that.
	I was a year older than your son.
	This just popped into my head.
	I hope it'll be useful.
	Let's find out.
	I sucked my thumb throughout my childhood.
	And, you know, it was to the point where I required braces and I had to really hide it and so on.
	I couldn't fall asleep without sucking my thumb.
	And I eventually got braces that were so big I couldn't suck my thumb and I couldn't sleep.
	And this went on and on.
	I couldn't find a way to break it.
	I couldn't find a way to diminish it.
	Couldn't find a way to manage it.
	And then when I was 16, I flew to Africa to spend the summer with my father.
	And the very first night, in my father's house, once more, I fell asleep.
	And I never, ever felt the urge to do it again.
	Hmm.
	I mean, I've never had a habit.
	I still bite my nails.
	I have a hell of a time getting rid of that habit.
	But that is the only habit that I've ever had that was eliminated by simply being under the same roof as my father.
	It just vanished.
	Something that I felt was going to be worth me my whole life.
	Yeah.
	And many years later, I've mentioned this story before, you've probably heard it, but many years later, when my brother was getting married, my father and I took a bus ride from Toronto to Montreal where I was going to school and he stayed with me for a couple of days.
	And he, you know, told me all about his life and his choices and he talked about that somewhere that I came that he was so terribly depressed that he couldn't respond to me and so on.
	And I just burst into tears and what was interesting, chilling of course, was that he didn't actually notice that I was crying because he was busy telling his story, which was obviously not great, but I'm still very glad that he told me because When you're a child, you can only interpret, I think, you can only interpret your parents' actions as responding to you because you don't get the outside world.
	You don't understand the outside world.
	You don't understand that your parents have childhoods, had childhoods, that your parents have their own parents, that your parents have their own issues, that your parents have their own problems.
	The child judges everything through the filter of the self.
	It's You and your dad.
	It's you and your mom.
	And all of their decisions are based on you.
	So I would guess that your son didn't know the difference between bowling and working.
	But something had higher priority than he did.
	Sure.
	And also, if he had problems with his mom and you got out...
	Because you couldn't handle his mother, and then you left him alone with her, that's kind of problematic, right?
	Like, I can't handle this woman.
	Good luck, right?
	You're six.
	You know, I'm 30 or whatever.
	I can't handle her.
	You're six.
	You'll be fine.
	Exactly, yeah.
	Right?
	That's problematic, right?
	For sure.
	And it's, you know, the tragic thing, of course, I mean, I'm sure you've thought of this, right?
	But the tragic thing, of course, is, you know, didn't have time for our kids when they're younger.
	But you've got time now, right?
	But they don't have time for me.
	Well, that's the challenge, right?
	You say, well, I didn't have time because everything seems so important.
	When you're younger.
	I don't have time for my kids right now, but that just creates huge time demands right now.
	I mean, right now, your son should be requiring less and less time and investment, right?
	But instead, quite the opposite is occurring, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	So, look, I'm no expert, as you know, I'm just giving idiot opinions over the web, but I'll tell you what I would do in your shoes, and then you can obviously do whatever you want, but I'll just tell you what I would do.
	It's that I think you need to grit your teeth, you need to screw your courage to the sticking place, you need to harden your heart and soften your skin and stand before your son and truly empathize with his experience.
	Of you as a father and of his mother.
	I think that it's complaints that aren't listened to that transform into pathology, into addiction.
	I mean, I know there's a biological reason and all that.
	I'm just talking about my particular opinion about it and my experience.
	And he's got some complaints and he's got some good reason to have some complaints.
	And of course, you know, I mean, if we had time to talk about your relationship with you and your father, which I'm sure was not intimate and so on.
	Yeah, I had, no, exactly.
	I had a single mom until I was five and then a stepdad that was basically like, you know, a working man who had no Yeah, he was similar to me.
	He was a fixer.
	He was there to put food on the table and fix problems when mom had a problem.
	Yeah, it's interesting this time stuff.
	I always find it interesting that you probably made the decision to leave your wife when your son was the same age as the new man came into your life.
	Yeah.
	I had a long-term relationship that ended the same when I was the same age as my father was when he left my mom.
	Anyway, so to sort of point this out, these things do tend to reverberate and echo back around.
	But your son has complaints and legitimate grievances, which are not at all his fault.
	Obviously, he gave you some very good advice and showed you The purity, beauty, and perceptiveness of his heart when he was six, when he looked at that picture and said, why can't you be that happy now?
	Absolutely.
	And I would ask him, you know, tell me everything I did wrong.
	And, of course, the temptation is to minimize, justify to talk about your own experience, which all has to be put aside, in my opinion.
	Right.
	And if he has trouble starting, tell him what you think his experience was.
	At least that will start.
	You know, people are afraid.
	If they have a history of less than great empathy with people, they're afraid of opening their hearts, right?
	Yeah.
	And you also have to be honest about, you know, that a lot of this is driven by your, you know, your drug use, your theft, and all of that.
	And that's a really shitty way for me to begin to care more.
	This should have happened because of you, not because of your problems.
	Yeah.
	Right, so you've got to be upfront about all the limitations that are going into this conversation and all the ways that it could have been started and should have been started without the approximate cause of these issues.
	Right.
	I mean, a lot of this he has heard.
	I have talked to him, had heart-to-hearts with him about and tried to draw out his experience and really get into his shoes.
	It's tough.
	I can't seem to...
	It will take months, I would imagine.
	I've read studies where altering any kind of basic parent-child paradigm takes about six months.
	Right.
	I mean, there's no particular geister that just, you know, up it comes and heal our problems.
	You know, major headway.
	It takes a long time to rebuild those bridges.
	And so, you know, patience is kind of the key, I think.
	Yeah.
	And what are your thoughts?
	I mean, I'm looking for some...
	Practical advice this afternoon.
	Part of me feels like he's like a toddler stepping in front of an oncoming vehicle, and I have to grab him and pull him out of the way with this drug use and the stealing things.
	I almost feel like I need an immediate...
	An immediate change right now.
	I feel like I need to lay down some rules.
	We've been very...
	I've convinced my ex-wife, to her credit, she's matured a lot over the past few years.
	I've given her a lot of this idea.
	It's been a hard-fought battle, but she's come around to my way of thinking with parenting, peaceful parenting, and so now...
	It's...
	I mean I've tried to convince him to drop out of school and let you know let me homeschool him because for the past year he hasn't really been showing up to class so just in the past few months we had a meeting with his principal we you know he he said yeah i'm not i'm cutting class so let's do the homeschool thing i offered all sorts of options and support to him with that he decided he wanted to do the the provincial curriculum And he
	hasn't been doing it.
	And so he's getting behind, like he's now His chosen path is to go through the traditional government curriculum.
	I kind of offered him to do something like a learning portfolio.
	I feel like we're getting into sort of functional things that I can't really comment on.
	The first thing I would remember is that the symptom is less important than the cause.
	So, in my opinion, focusing on The drug use, which I don't think is good, and the thieving, of course, which is not good.
	But if you're going to focus on problems within the family, this is a symptom.
	The cause is feelings of abandonment and rejection and negative parental experiences as a child, right?
	And if you're going to put your moral scale on things, then that's worse, right?
	For sure.
	Again, not trying to be a bad guy or anything, but in terms of the moral scale, the cause is always more morally significant than the symptom.
	Which is not to say the symptom shouldn't change.
	Of course it should.
	Absolutely.
	Yeah, I mean, I completely agree with you, and I'm worried that I also need to do something about the symptoms simultaneously because it could get him into serious, it puts him in serious danger, you know, if he's walking a stolen wares.
	Oh yeah, no, it just takes one deal gone wrong.
	Absolutely, it's scary stuff.
	And of course, I'm sure you're aware of this, getting professionals involved is probably the wisest thing to do.
	They may have more experience.
	I'm sure they would have more experience than this.
	It's really important as a parent to know when you're out of your depth.
	And so, you know, obviously, I'm sure you've talked about this or thought about this, you know, family therapy, professional intervention, this kind of stuff can be really helpful.
	But, you know, I think in terms of the things that you yourself can do in terms of interpersonal stuff, I think that...
	You know, really attempting to get your son's experience of the family, and it may be useful to have both siblings there.
	You know, as you say, you know, the conformaholics that your daughter may not do her much good in the long run either, so this may be, you know, sort of a sort of honest and open Bad things were done.
	More than mistakes were made.
	Really negative things occurred.
	I think that can be really helpful.
	Just keep listening and keep hearing about his experience and what it meant.
	The experiences don't dictate our futures.
	It's our interpretations of our experiences that dictate those futures.
	To change the interpretation is to change your future.
	And so, if he's stuck in an interpretation from the unconscious, then I don't think he's going to have much of a chance to alter his future.
	Yeah, that's absolutely right.
	And, you know, I mean, I know his interpretation.
	He understands that what's been done to him is from his parents.
	And I also worry about that narrative because I know that the victim mentality can't It's just a self-fulfilling prophecy.
	Well, yeah, but I mean, if there is legitimate loss, right, then that's not the same as victimhood.
	And the other thing, of course, is that I don't think there's much that can be achieved while he's still on the drugs, because growth requires the ability to handle pain, and if you're self-medicating, then it's really hard to process that, right?
	So, I mean, I think these conversations are helpful, but, I mean, this is why, you know, some sort of intervention specialist would probably be the way to go in terms of to get him off the drugs to the point where he can actually process his feelings rather than I wish I could give you some magical solution,
	but I really do want to compliment you and praise you for stepping up in a very powerful way.
	There's lots of people who wouldn't do what you're doing.
	It's way too many people who wouldn't do what you're doing.
	So, you know, I really want to express my admiration for that.
	I mean, the past is the past.
	You know, mistakes were made.
	And the past is the past.
	And we have to deal with what is going on in the here and now, which means, you know, obviously dealing with the past.
	But, you know, I get what an enormous amount of courage it takes to attempt to make restitution amends and healing.
	In these kinds of circumstances.
	I really wanted to give you props for that because that is a hell of a thing to take on and it's incredibly admirable.
	Thanks.
	I mean, I don't feel like a very admirable guy.
	I mean, like I say, I'm still dealing with paralysis, guilt, shame, all sorts of things.
	Yes, yes.
	And the challenge, of course, is that that's still all about you.
	Yeah, exactly.
	I mean, that's the challenge.
	It's fine as an elevator, but you have to find a way to go beyond that with regards to your son.
	Because, you know, if you're trying to change his behavior to alleviate your guilt, it's not going to work, right?
	Because he's going to sense that.
	Exactly.
	It's not about him.
	It needs to be about him.
	And that's going to be painful because it's going to come to you in a rush.
	Everything that you have missed out on, everything that he's missed out on, is going to come to you and it's going to be agonizing.
	I just don't think there's any other way.
	There isn't.
	No, you're right.
	I just know from experience of having these conversations with him, he knows the buttons to push, to trigger the guilt in me, and then it kind of goes downhill from there.
	It's only when I can put that aside and really focus on him that we get anywhere.
	Anyways, listen, I really appreciate your time, and you've certainly cleared the fog a bit in my head here.
	Well, I hope so, and again, do drop me a line if you can, let me know how it's going, and congratulations again.
	I know it's hell and a half to do, but it's so important, and good for you for doing it.
	Thanks, Seth.
	All right, take care.
	Okay, bye.
	All right, well.
	Good for the dad.
	Good for the dad.
	So, I think we have two other callers, which we have!
	21 minutes!
	Because we can never, ever go over!
	No, we can go over if we need to, but do we have another caller?
	Yes, we have Robert.
	I'm sorry, Robert.
	Single-syllable names, we have to call you Bob.
	I hope that that is not going to be a huge problem for you.
	Rob would be preferable.
	Yeah, alright, there we go.
	Alright, well, it's about my fourth time calling, so if the subject matter is something that you think you need to go on to another caller, we can certainly take it up some other time.
	And you can go on to them.
	But assuming that we want to go with this, it's certainly a little more light and philosophical rather than...
	Emotional and substantive.
	So I'm going to ask that you play the role of a statist.
	Very well.
	All right.
	I'm just taking a spoon and gouging it out of my near frontal cortex.
	Oh, that leaves a pinch.
	Up through the nose.
	Don't squish the eyeball.
	Okay.
	Oh, good.
	Alright, well now that you've got yourself entrenched in that mode, I'd like to propose a new system of government.
	And it's going to be based upon the theory of...
	So it's going to be a meritocracy.
	And what we're going to do is we're going to allow anyone that would like to compete to do whatever task it is that the government is to provide to compete, because we certainly want to find the best person to do the job, not just pick somebody out of the hat.
	So you would agree with me that it's best that we have...
	Anyone that has a good idea to be able to present that idea to us.
	We would want to base our decision on the merit, really, as the starting point.
	Would you agree with that?
	I like spam.
	Things that are shiny make me happy.
	Ow!
	I accidentally put a banana in my ear.
	I'm sorry, what was the question?
	Would you agree that we should base our decision as to who should be in charge of whatever activity it is that this government is going to do?
	It should be based off of merit, that the person who comes up with the best solution for it should get the job.
	Let's say if it's, you know, providing roads, that we would want to have those roads provided by the person who comes up with the best method of providing those roads.
	Yes, that sounds good to me.
	All right, and, you know, in order to have the best, we obviously can't disallow any competition between different people who might provide that, so we've got to make it wide open.
	Ah!
	No, I kind of agree with you on that.
	Because there are times when competition creates enormous waste.
	You don't want two companies to build a highway side by side.
	And so you need a monopoly on certain services.
	You don't want a whole bunch of police force running around colliding with each other.
	And you don't want a whole bunch of different court systems, some of which favor the criminals.
	And so, of course, the criminals will all choose to go into those systems.
	So you don't want a wide variety of competition where competition produces corruption and or massive inefficiency.
	I'm not necessarily talking about the provision of the service.
	I'm talking about the best idea, just to start.
	If we were to have elections and have everybody be able to come in and provide their offer, their position, then we would be able to pick the best out of the group, right?
	Is that Italian?
	If we were to allow You know, a diverse selection of options that were given to us, we're going to get a better one to pick from.
	I'm not saying actually in the provision of the service yet.
	I'm just talking about if we can accept that it's better to have there not be a list of only these two people or only those six people can possibly be our choices because then we're limiting our choices artificially, right?
	Well yeah, unless it's a bad idea.
	Let's have lots of people provide roads.
	That would be a really bad idea.
	So having that in the mix is not good.
	Like if you and I say, you know, well, one of our options should be to crawl inside an elephant and see where it goes.
	We don't get a lot of value at having that on the table, right?
	So if it's a really bad idea, then it shouldn't be on the table.
	The multiplicity of ideas, you know, if I say two and two make one, it's not like we need a whole bunch of different ideas.
	Spam, an egg, a horse, a concept, a cloud, right?
	I mean, so more ideas doesn't necessarily mean better ideas.
	Oh, you know what?
	Then I've got a really good idea about how to help prevent that type of thing from happening.
	Let's have people select the idea that they want by...
	Contributing money to it.
	Because obviously these silly ideas that you're talking about, they're not going to get any funding because they're ridiculous.
	And the ones that are the better ones will tend to get better funding.
	Ridiculous ideas don't get any funding?
	Well, not as much as others.
	You have heard of very strange religions, people who believe lizard men rule the world, people who believe people donate to the Flat Earth Society, there are lots of cults around the world.
	I mean, I'm not sure where you would get the argument that bad ideas don't get funded.
	I mean, and the majority, like three-quarters of businesses fail, and 80% of restaurants fail in the first five years, and they get lots of funding.
	Because they didn't get enough funding.
	No, no, no.
	Even if they get lots of funding, they still fail.
	It wasn't like MySpace was short on money.
	So it's not the case that bad ideas don't get funding.
	In fact, lots of really bad ideas get funding.
	An American Nazi party gets donations.
	That is true.
	They just won't get the The prevalence of money in comparison with the other ideas that are better.
	They'll just fall by the wayside as the ones that are better tend to get more money.
	It's a tendency.
	It's not necessarily a guarantee.
	But it is certainly going to be a lot better than...
	So do you think that the world is more sensible today than it was, say, 100 years ago, politically and economically?
	I don't believe that that...
	I mean, you're a small government guy, right?
	You're a small government guy.
	Government is way bigger than it used to be, so clearly ideas are going in the wrong direction for you, right?
	Doesn't that sort of go against your thesis?
	Let me clarify what the attempt is, and maybe you can help me come up with the dialogue that is necessary to achieve the result.
	I'm just being a jerk, right?
	You asked me to be a statist, so I'm just being a jerk about my debate.
	I just wanted to let you know that.
	Alright, well, basically, the effort is to...
	You know how we've come up with the idea that, alright, well, there's utilitarianism, and when we're talking to a statist, we can't get them to accept the utilitarian position because of whatever reason, because they just won't see or whatever.
	And then we come up with the moral argument, which is...
	Certainly been very powerful, you know, the against me positioning.
	So I'm attempting to come up with another method of persuasion, which is to tinker with what they know in ways that they obviously have to agree in By expressing the idea of a meritocracy and then the method by which you implement that meritocracy, the net result is free market.
	I'm having a difficult time addressing all the different points on it, but can you see that as being a viable strategy for persuasion?
	Yeah, I mean, if I understand it rightly, what you're saying is that the short version of the argument I think you were trying to make, correct me if I'm wrong, is the more ideas we have, the better.
	Government is really only one idea, and therefore we are cutting ourselves off from the source of good ideas.
	And in a free market or a stateless society, there will be tons of ideas at a marketplace of ideas, and thus The cream will rise to the top.
	Expecting evolution from the state is like expecting evolution from a zoo.
	It's such a controlled and static environment that you don't get the free play of competition.
	Is that the argument?
	It's basically it.
	I mean, you would establish, let's say, let's talk about one particular service that the government is providing.
	Let's say the mail, for example.
	And you'd say, well, obviously we would like to not necessarily restrict provision of mail-carrying services to any specific group that's already entrenched because that just creates bad incentives.
	So we want to make it open to new You bring out the idea that we definitely want to have the ability for new people to come in and then we also want to bring in the idea of consequences for failure to achieve the result, being that you get replaced by somebody who does the job better.
	How would you sell this to a public school teacher who wants summers off?
	Because they know, in a free market situation, there's two things that would immediately happen to schools.
	First of all, it would have to be 8 to 6.
	Not 9 to 3 or whatever it is, right?
	Because people work, right?
	People work and they don't get off till 5, so this is, you know, this ridiculous couple of hours of latchkey kids, it's really bad for them and all that, right?
	So that's the first thing.
	And the second thing would be, I'm pretty sure that you wouldn't get all of the professional development days and you wouldn't get a couple of months off in the summer to work a new novel, right?
	So how would you sell that to A statist, you know, a teacher, I know that teachers work more than blah blah blah, I get this, but I'm just talking about this, you know, it's a pretty sweet gig, which is why there are so many more teachers applying for jobs than there are jobs.
	And so, how would you sell that to a teacher?
	Because that system works really well for him.
	He doesn't want a competition of efficiency, because a competition of efficiency is going to reduce his benefits in the short run.
	Yes, for the person who's the teacher, and my answer to that is I'm not here to convince the people who abuse other people.
	To change their position.
	I'm here to overthrow them.
	And in my opinion, all public school teachers are abusive leeches that are subjugating the rest of society for their benefit.
	And so they can all just, you know, rot as far as I'm concerned.
	I don't care about them.
	I'm going to be talking to the parents of the children who, you know, I'm going to be talking about, well, is it better for you to have a selection of teachers that you could send your child to so that you could determine which one you thought was best?
	And they would say yes and so forth.
	And you go forward.
	Well, no, see, I think a lot of parents would say no.
	Right, so let's say that you're a public school teacher who's a socialist.
	Right.
	Well, you want to send your kids to a government school, right?
	Again, I wouldn't address the public school teacher, because...
	Well, let's say you're a socialist.
	Let's say you're a nationalist.
	Let's say that you think that your particular culture is the best.
	Let's say you're a Christian.
	Well, you want to send your kids to a Christian school.
	You don't want there to be an atheist school around.
	Does that make sense?
	Then you provide them the alternative thing that, say, so obviously you would be completely behind it if we had Sharia law in the Muslim schools, because it would all be the same and it would all be religious, right?
	Well, except that the Christians, certainly in America, know that they're in the vast majority and that's not going to happen, so that's not a real possibility.
	Again, I'm just trying to be as annoying as possible.
	This is what I do with all my ideas.
	Let's put them through this kind of grinder.
	But that's only going to last for a very limited period of time.
	Muslims are one of the fastest growing groups in the United States, and as you can see what's going on in France, they've almost entirely taken over that country as it stands now.
	Christians like you and I just aren't producing enough children so we only have a certain amount of time before it's game over and unless we establish a precedent and agree upon that parents should choose for their own children they're eventually going to take over and force us to have their education whereas if we establish the principle that parents should choose for their own children then they can't do that Yeah,
	but I mean, if Muslims are going to get that prevalent, then they're just going to have so many more kids, so many more schools, they're going to end up outvoting me anyway, so how does this solve that?
	Oh, but we're not going to have voting.
	We're going to have it based on how much you spend for, you know, you can pay to send your child to whichever school that it is you want.
	Voting is out of the mix, right?
	Yeah, but people are going to vote with their dollars, and as there are more Muslims, they're going to be more Muslim schools, and I'm going to end up being a stranger in my own country.
	But you can still go to the same school that you want, because you've still got your own money.
	There will still be a market for you until there's a...
	until there's really just...
	you're a market of one, I guess.
	But, yeah, it's...
	It's an interesting perspective, I think, to take this angle and use it to persuade them to go that way.
	It's just I'm able to flesh it out.
	Look, I agree with you in many ways.
	I certainly agree with you that we need the creative destruction of the free market to consistently refine ideas.
	Violent crime has dropped.
	25% of the U.S. over the past decade or whatever, and yet there are some more cops on the streets, right?
	I mean, in a free market, that would change, obviously.
	Oh, but violent crime isn't the only crime, obviously.
	We have to keep people from...
	That's why they're inventing all this new crime.
	Yeah.
	We've got to stop people from putting vegetation in their pockets.
	Right, right.
	So I agree with you.
	That a consequence of morality is efficiency, but it's just so damn efficient for entitled people for there to be an immoral system.
	I mean, how many people would listen to Barack Obama if he wasn't President of the United States?
	Well, you know, obviously his kids would listen to him.
	His wife would probably listen to him, or at least pretend to.
	And, you know, maybe he'd have a couple of students, although what he'd be teaching in three societies beyond me.
	And maybe he'd, you know, become a radio show host, or I don't know what, right?
	So maybe he would have some kind of influence that way.
	But he wouldn't be, you know, 12 times in the New York Times every day.
	Right, obviously.
	And so for him the state works really well and for people who want something for nothing or who want you know in the average remuneration the total compensation package for a public sector worker is about double that of a private sector worker which means it's half again as high and reduces the other one by half as a result of taxation changes and of course mostly stealing from the unborn in the form of pension benefits for which there is no money but will have to be stolen from the young.
	And so for those people, it's a really good deal.
	Yeah, and we can't really convince those people, and that's fine by me.
	I'm not going to be able to convince those people.
	Yes, but those people are not separate from society.
	There's not a big line down the middle of society, and on the one side, there are people in the free market, and then completely unrelated, that's this other demographic.
	They're woven in.
	It's like pouring food coloring into a cup.
	It doesn't just go to one half, right?
	It mixes in.
	And so you have, you know, people who work for the state are married to people who are private sector.
	And you have brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and so on, right?
	So there's not a clear line where you can say, well, I'm only going to talk to people who are on the private sector.
	Like Adam Kokesh was mentioning that we need to talk to people who are victims of the abuse of the state through police incarceration and things like that.
	They're the easiest people to convince of there being wrongness to the system.
	And then you move outwards from there.
	Yes, but that, I mean, so what happens is, so some kid got unjustly imprisoned by the state, and he's going to go to his dad and say, Dad, I was unjustly imprisoned by the state.
	And his dad's going to say, you break the law, you take the consequences.
	You knew what you were doing was against the law, and so, you know, you can blame the state all you want, but you brought this on yourself.
	Then what happens to that conversation?
	Well, that conversation pretty much ends there.
	First, obviously, we talk to the kid and give him the community that he will foster that resentment and support him in his understanding of his subjugation.
	But then when we also deal with other people, like at one point yourself, you were an individual who had your own business.
	You know, making software and so on.
	That these people, they don't necessarily, you know, live their lives as, you know, workers for the state.
	That they are also potentially people that can be converted.
	With the father situation, I guess, in that case, you could...
	Provide analogies and also just ask the question about the against me thing.
	And he's obviously answered in the against me to the affirmative, yes, I would point a gun at you and force you to not have that marijuana on you at the time.
	In that case, you walk away.
	I mean, you've already said yourself that you can't have a conversation with someone who believes in the use of aggression against you to force their opinions upon you.
	So the question then, you know, When you're dealing with a person who believes in government and they understand the language of government, can we not use that language and use the method of making government the most efficient thing that it could possibly be?
	And we can prove which methods are going to be the most efficient to them, logically.
	Yes, but sorry, I mean, look, I agree with you in the abstract, but the practicalities just, they self-detonate, right?
	So, as I've said before, any libertarian who is going to currently get into power and attempt to reform the government better damn well be ready to use a significant amount of force to liberalize things.
	Because the farmers you cut subsidies for are going to jam up the streets with the tractors.
	The teachers that you attempt to reform their pay, they're going to go on strike.
	And then what?
	Are you going to force them to go back to work?
	Are you going to bring in strike breakers?
	If you do that, are you going to be willing to have them go through the mob?
	And are you going to push the other people back with whatever force is necessary?
	When people clog up the streets, are you going to use force to...
	To move them aside.
	I mean, $175 a year is the proposed tuition increase for students in Quebec.
	By the time this increase is done, students in Quebec will be at the horrifically high educational cost levels that were occurring in 1964 in constant dollars.
	It's really bringing them back up.
	It's got progressively cheaper.
	And they're rioting, they're taking to the streets, they're burning things, they're, you know, and the government isn't doing a damn thing.
	Because who wants to be the guy who's going to start pushing the protesters back with water cannons and rubber bullets and Lord knows what, right?
	And what's that going to do in terms of PR? It doesn't have to go that way, though.
	There's an alternative.
	You can offer severance packages and things of that nature.
	I know that that would mean printing more fiat money and indebting future children and so on.
	Sorry, what do you mean severance packages?
	You mean...
	You basically say to the farmers with the subsidies, for example, you say to them, all right, well, we're going to buy out your contract, so to speak, and we're going to give you this amount of money now, and you're not going to get a dime later.
	Well, but how does that help you?
	Because then you end up with much more debt.
	The debt drives up the inflation, the inflation drives up the interest rates, and you're only doing this because you're already broke.
	I mean, you don't have the money.
	Right.
	But I'm explaining that there is an alternative instead of, you know, sending them the, we're going to stop giving you subsidies entirely, period.
	You can, you know, propose alternatives that they would be more amenable to.
	Now, obviously, with the economic situation that we're in now, it's not viable.
	But let's say back in the end of Clinton's reign, before we had You know, George, then we theoretically could have abolished all the different subsidies that we had just by basically saying, well, here's some money.
	Shut up.
	We're done.
	But see, why would they take the money?
	I mean, they already have a contract.
	Why wouldn't they just go on strike?
	They believe that this is what they signed up for.
	They put up with crappy work environments and a pointless career in order to get all this money and retirement benefits and healthcare and so on.
	Why would they take a payout?
	Because the payout is immediate gratification and of a substantial enough sum.
	No, but...
	See, they tried that in New York, right?
	They tried saying, look, we're going to, in return for the right to fire teachers, we're going to raise the salaries of teachers who do well.
	You know, they could end up making double what they could make before.
	And the union wouldn't even allow them to vote on it.
	I mean, how would, this doesn't, see, understand, this doesn't benefit the union for people to get a lump sum payment, because that doesn't come out to them in perpetual union dues.
	So the union simply won't allow a vote on it.
	That's true, but again, that's kind of a very, very weak implementation of what I would be talking about.
	Instead, it would be more along the lines of, here's X dollars given to union leaders to get them to basically screw their constituents, and then you railroad it through.
	The union leaders keep their people in check, keep them from saying anything, and once you've got the system in place, well, then the media finally breaks news about it, and there's a bunch of people who are all pissed off about it, but it's already done.
	Yeah, I mean, look, I guess what you're saying is all theoretically possible.
	It's just that Governments don't tend to do that until they're completely out of money and can't borrow or print anymore.
	So the idea that there's going to be a huge cash cow that you can use to bribe your way out of massive debt, I mean, they'd be doing that in Greece right now if they could, but they can't because nobody's going to lend Greece a penny.
	And all the money that they're getting from the EU is just going to cover their existing public sector pension and pay.
	So anyway, listen, I want to make sure we get to the last caller.
	And look, I appreciate the problem-solving you're bringing.
	And you may be right.
	This may be the exact right thing to do.
	These are sort of the objections that pop up into my head.
	But I appreciate the thought exercise.
	And, you know, maybe you're right.
	If you have significant degrees of success, please let me know and we'll go over it again.
	Will do.
	Thanks.
	All right.
	Thanks.
	I think we've got time for one more caller, but it may have to be a little bit on the rapid side.
	All right.
	It's going to be a phone caller, so I'm adding him now.
	Hello.
	Hello, hello.
	Hello.
	Sorry, I was just pausing the stream.
	Okay, I have a call in relation to one of the shows that was done a couple weeks ago.
	Someone brought up Derek Jensen, who's an environmentalist, an activist, an author.
	And it was in relation to environmentalists who use, I don't know if you call it violence, but who destroy property to gain something, whether it's burning down someone's logging fort, you know, their base of operations, or Making dents in a dam with a sledgehammer over time or whatever it may be.
	And you responded in regards to the environmentalists who destroyed property, quote, violence is not the way to solve the problem.
	And later on you said, the way to solve social problems is to promote volunteerism.
	And in regards to when people blow stuff up, you said, all that reveals is their inability to reason or the cowardliness of that reasoning.
	Now, I guess I'm operating under the premise that the land base is our life, and my question would be,
	how much more degradation of the land base of natural water systems, the depletion of salmon, of deforestation, How much more do you allow that before you take action if not hurting people directly but taking down these systems or structures that impede self
	-sustainability?
	Because let me just say one thing that Derek Jensen says, just taking this from his book, the health of our land base is the gauge by which those who come after will measure us.
	It is the gauge by which every one of our actions must be measured.
	I'm just trying to think, for the future, for our kids, the land, the earth, how we leave it, that's ultimately what's important.
	You know, the needs of the earth, since it's our needs, healthy earth means healthy us, the needs of the earth is more important than any economy, any government, Yeah, I got it.
	So if somebody is poisoning your air, they're initiating force against you.
	I got it.
	But look at the national debt in the United States, just to pick on the United States.
	The national debt is, what, $15 trillion.
	What that is, fundamentally, is $15 trillion of excessively used resources.
	Right?
	Because that $15 trillion has been used to pay people, to give money to people, and they have then used that money to go out and buy stuff.
	Look at the housing crash that came after the housing boom, where now 10% of U.S. housing is empty.
	Look at the depopulation of cities like Detroit, where entire neighborhoods are going to tumbleweeds in some post-apocalyptic, end-of-Atlas shrugged scenario that's real.
	So think of the amount of resources that has been Wasted by state action in the economy, just in economic terms.
	Think of the amount of crazy conspicuous consumption, the excess generation of wealth for the 1% has ended up.
	The amount of airplane flights they can take, the size of the houses that they consume, and so on.
	I mean, it's nutty.
	Last century, of course, the government's murdered 250 million people.
	Now, I mean, that's all people who were born, some of whom could have come up with incredible ideas on how to save the environment, and all of those resources were wasted because they were dead, right?
	All the resources that were used into nurturing them in their mother's womb and breastfeeding them and raising them and so on, just dead and gone.
	And this is not even to talk about things like war and the incredible pollution that goes on in wartime and in the army And Navy and Air Force in general.
	So I completely agree with you that we need to be very careful about resources.
	But there is no individual who can ever have the power to control resources.
	There is no individual, there is no group who can ever be given the power to control resources.
	Because the moment that that group is given the power to control resources, to have laws, In conservation, the moment that those people have the power to control resources, they automatically do not have a financial stake in the continuance of those resources.
	The only people who have a financial stake in the continuation of resources is people who own them.
	And once people are given control without ownership, which is what politics really is, politics is control of resources and people without ownership, Then you get exploitation.
	Whatever you control but you don't own, you will exploit.
	The only way to counter exploitation is through ownership.
	And if you doubt me, just ask how many people change the oil in a car that they're renting.
	Or decide to substantially upgrade an apartment that they're renting.
	They don't, because they don't own it.
	And so, ownership is the only way to solve excess Destruction and consumption of resources.
	And yet the solution that most, if not the vast majority of environmental activists are all about, let's decrease ownership and increase political control.
	That is a recipe for the incredible waste of resources.
	I agree.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	I was going to say, I'm not coming from a statist angle.
	I'm just looking at, and I totally agree, I'm just looking at the reality, right?
	And I know the way that we progress right now from what you say is information.
	We teach people and we gather with like-minded people.
	We try to spread the message of liberty and volunteerism and morality, as hard as that may be.
	And eventually, in time, we will progress.
	I think the question would be, which comes first?
	Society being more in tune with the volunteerism and non-aggression principle?
	Or the destruction of the earth we live in?
	And right now, the culture really, because it's not just oil companies, it's not just the government, it's the culture itself that either it's blind to the realities of its overconsumption and The political problems.
	It's the culture itself that keeps this cycle going of destruction.
	And I don't think people are going to understand how destructive their mindset is, really, until, you know, things get to a critical point.
	So, you know, we can try to educate as many people as possible, you know.
	We can be as full of love as we want, you know, we could be the best energy efficient, we can recycle, we can write books.
	The fact is, the earth is still being destroyed more than being protected at an alarming rate, and I would say probably increasing.
	And the culture is not going to change in any time soon.
	So, I'm trying to think, what are my children?
	I'm 24, what are my children?
	Oh yeah, look, I get it too, right?
	So there's an urgency.
	We're in a race against the clock and there's this massive urgency and so on.
	But urgency is a way to justify bad decisions.
	Because you hear the same thing from political people as well.
	You know, we don't have time for this multi-generational thing.
	We've got to act now.
	We don't have time for this multi-generational thing because the environment is being destroyed.
	We've got to act now.
	But this has been the argument that has been used for hundreds of years.
	We don't have time to improve parenting because we need progress in the here and now.
	We don't have time to focus on applying the non-aggression principle in our own lives where we actually have some effect.
	Because the world is going to hell in a handbasket and we're doomed.
	I bet you they were saying the same thing in the Roman Empire.
	We don't have time because the currency is being debased.
	They're mixing all this copper in with the You know, with the bronze and the, oh, mixing all of this nickel in with the silver or whatever the hell they did, right?
	So we don't have time.
	We've got to have a political solution.
	We've got to have an aggressive solution.
	We've got to have an action, action, action, protest.
	We've got to protest because we don't have time for these long-term solutions.
	Well, after 2,500 years of hearing, I think, people saying that we have to act now and we don't have time for this long-term multi-generational solution, I think that I don't believe it anymore.
	I think that it's the tortoise and the hare, right?
	The tortoise, slow and steady wins the race.
	Slow and steady wins the race.
	The great temptation is to spend all of your hare energy sprinting, leaving footprints on the ceiling and getting nowhere because you have this urgency and you're in this rush and you're in this panic.
	And I don't believe that anymore.
	I mean, you understand, I've been told probably 30 or 40 times ways in which I was going to be Blown up, irradiated, incinerated, starved to death, run out of oil, run out of water, you know, blown up, buried under meteors, you know, you name it.
	These threats have, and they're always imminent and always disastrous, and we always have to act now because the threat and disaster is so imminent.
	And, I mean, none of this stuff has come to pass.
	All that's happened is that we haven't done the slow and steady wins the race.
	You know, we've got to get Ron Paul in now because we're coming to a head.
	There's a crisis and so on.
	It's like, well, you know, in the past it was, you know, Barry Goldwater we had to get in now.
	We couldn't focus on the parenting because we've got to get someone in to solve these political problems.
	They're imminent.
	It's a disaster and we've got to do it now.
	Well, I think that trying to do it now and being in a big hurry has been tried for quite a long time and it's not working.
	So I think, for me, it's just important to cooler jets, put one little tortoise foot in front of the other And recognize that slow and steady is going to win this race.
	I agree.
	I see the mindset.
	And it's kind of like I bounce around like, man, this is urgent.
	And then I just think, you know, like, you know, the earth is so resilient.
	And I just not, you know, the other dilemma is, right, you know, For pacifism...
	Okay, give me one more minute.
	I can give you one minute because I... Okay, okay, yeah.
	I guess the dilemma is that if you go full out using force, you have an apparatus that is ready there to meet you with full force, if not greater than anything you can bring.
	And I don't know.
	I feel like we're at a critical point.
	I know what you're saying, that we've heard this before, but I'm not sure how much more the Earth can handle.
	But then again...
	You know, it's had a couple of billion years.
	It's had its dinosaurs.
	It's had its dodos.
	They've all come and gone.
	Carrier pigeons.
	And, you know, a point that a guest of mine on the Peter Schiff show recently made was that the world does not...
	Any system that has been around for a long time is not prone to amplification.
	In other words, it has dampeners.
	It's like a pendulum with a heavy weight in the middle.
	Swings too far to one side, it's going to swing back to the middle.
	It doesn't tend to go all the way around, right?
	And so systems that have been around for a long time, and the Earth as a life-bearing system has been around for billions of years, it tends not to suddenly burst into flames.
	It tends not to suddenly be encased in ice.
	It tends to have compensatory mechanisms in place.
	And so I will not, and I won't let my, because I've gone down this road, you know, I'm an old fart probably.
	I've gone down this road a number of times of panic and catastrophe and despair and What's happened?
	Well, none of it's come true.
	It just ruined a whole bunch of my days.
	None of it came true.
	It just ruined a whole bunch of my days.
	And of course, all of the catastrophes that are real, you know, like currency inflation, like national debt, like increased statism and so on, people have always tried to scare me with all of the things that have never come true.
	But the things that I've actually talked about them that are dangerous That have come true, nobody wants to listen or care about it.
	And so, I mean, few, few.
	So, for me, it's like, I'm not going to let my days get ruined by panic about things I can't control.
	I am going to focus on being a peaceful father, being a peaceful spouse, producing as high quality, entertaining, enjoyable, and informative a show as I possibly can.
	And that is my contribution to the planet.
	I am not going to condone The use of violence to solve social problems.
	I am going to condone the avoidance of violence to solve social problems.
	And that's what ostracism is.
	It's the avoidance of violence and violent people.
	And to me, a violent person is like a person currently hacking up a lung, currently covered in the bubonic plague.
	I'm sorry, I can't help you with that, but I can make sure that I don't get infected.
	And that is the...
	I mean, that's the reality.
	So, I mean, if you want to freak out about the planet being on its last legs and so on, you know, I don't think you're right.
	You can only hear wolf so many times before you get that it's just a manipulative tactic.
	I don't mean on your part.
	I just sort of mean on the media's part.
	You can read Bjorn Lomberg, the skeptical environmentalist, and cool at his approach to global warming and so on, if you want.
	And, you know, things are, in general, getting better.
	But the degree to which we can promote voluntarism in the world is the degree to which Resources will be minimized.
	I mean, imagine if human beings were wise, happy with themselves, content in their relationships, filled with love.
	Would they really need all the shiny shit and consumerist nonsense that currently strips the planet bare of resources?
	You know, what dickless wanderer needs a Maserati?
	What dickless wanderer needs a private jet?
	People whose souls are dead, and in the absence of souls, they erect shiny baubles over the gravestones of their own non-existence.
	You know, when people are happy and content and in love and loved, they just won't need all this crap.
	And so wisdom and virtue and peace is the way to grow human beings out of excessive resource consumption, but I'm not going to panic.
	Thank you.
	You're very welcome.
	And thank you, everybody.
	I know we've had a long show, but some great callers.
	Thank you so much for the callers.
	And thank you so much, of course, to the donators.
	Only had one subscription cancellation during the show.
	That, to me, is high marks for quality.
	So if you would like to help out with the show, freedomaderadio.com forward slash donate is more than helpful.
	I'm actually going to be speaking, not live, but over the radio in India.
	Of course, a fantastic capitalist haven in many ways at the moment.
	And all of this, you know, all the speeches I'm doing, all of the hosting I'm doing, all of the great interviews that I get to do, these are all really only possible because of your support.
	So thank you everybody so much.
	Have yourselves a wonderful week.
	I will talk to you soon.
	Oh yeah, no show next weekend.
	And I'm not sure about the weekend after.
	No show next weekend.
	I will be en route to overseas.
	So we'll keep you posted about the weekend after.
	But Have yourself a great weekend, everyone.
	Don't forget to tune in to Peter Schiff tomorrow morning.
	And I guess I should post this now so this makes sense to people.
	Thanks, everyone.

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