July 24, 2012 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
16:13
| 
| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| *Bell rings* *Bell rings* *Bell rings* *Bell rings* *Bell rings* Not sit like a lumberjack. | |
| *laughs* Hi guys, this is Michelle Lieberman from The Freedom Friend and we have Stefan Molyneux with us. | |
| He is the host of Freedom Maine Radio. | |
| Hi Stefan. | |
| Hi, very nice to meet you. | |
| Nice to meet you. | |
| Thanks for having this interview with us. | |
| My pleasure. | |
| So, The Freedom Friend is taking Women's issues and marrying them with government issues to kind of show the relationship. | |
| And a lot of mainstream women are really confused. | |
| Confused with what's going on in the economy, confused with what the government's doing. | |
| Really basic things are confusing to them. | |
| What do you think, number one, is the biggest problem right now facing mainstream women's understanding of what's going on? | |
| Well, I certainly appreciate you asking a man to define prompts for women, and I will certainly do. | |
| Probably men, no. | |
| I would say that I mean, I'm fascinated by, you know, family issues and women's issues. | |
| I'm married, I have a daughter, and so, you know, having a wife and a daughter makes you very interested, of course. | |
| Women's issues, I think, women, I mean, they face a challenge. | |
| I don't know if you read the Slaughter's article that came out recently, you can't have it all kind of thing, but she's making the case that, you know, if you want a career and you want a family, this is a significant problem in the modern world. | |
| I think that is a huge issue. | |
| I think most women do seem to want to settle down at some point and have kids and enjoy motherhood and all of the joys that go with it. | |
| And I'm a stay-at-home dad, so I can tell you that if you want to have kids, you should, because they are the best toys ever. | |
| I mean, they're the most fun things that you can have. | |
| But I think that the world is becoming increasingly unfriendly to I mean, I hate to say traditional because that sounds like barefoot and pregnant in a kitchen, but to having a parent stay home. | |
| I think having a parent stay home with kids is, at least for the first couple of years, essential. | |
| And I think science really backs up how important that is to the healthy development of children and so on. | |
| So I think that, and traditionally that's the women, and it comes out of the breastfeeding thing. | |
| I mean, my boobs weren't that helpful to my daughter, although she did like to mush them around when I was bathing her. | |
| So I think that It makes sense for women who are breastfeeding to stay home with kids for a while. | |
| I think that women want to do that. | |
| It's an incredibly rich and enjoyable experience having had the privilege of doing it myself. | |
| But we don't live in a society that's very friendly towards that. | |
| So we've got, I mean, a tax structure that penalizes marriage and stay-at-home moms. | |
| We have a school system that lets kids out at 3.15 in the afternoon. | |
| I mean, how insane is that? | |
| I mean, everybody works till 5, and you've got kids coming out at 3. | |
| You have health care costs that are very high for women in these areas. | |
| And the tax taxes are so high that it's really... | |
| We wanted there to be a choice, obviously. | |
| We want as many choices for as many people in the world. | |
| We wanted there to be this choice where we're going to go out and work fantastic. | |
| Now, with tax rates so high, it's become less of a choice and more of a necessity. | |
| And so I think it's really tragic that in order to maintain even a reasonable middle class lifestyle, you need two people, usually professionals, out there working. | |
| And then you end up in this ridiculous situation where you're going out to work, you're paying a huge amount in taxes, you're paying half the remainder in childcare costs, and so you don't even get the wealth of two people working, and you don't get the joy of being at home with your kids. | |
| I think it's really, you know, I don't want to speak for women as a whole, but I think this is really tragic, and I think this is a lot of where the angst is coming from. | |
| Well, and part of the reason we're not able to have a stay-at-home parent now is economically. | |
| There have been a lot of things going on in the government, what the Federal Reserve is doing with the monetary policy, and these are things I think most women don't understand, so they don't realize Obviously, we have a culture now where women feel pressured to work also, but not just economically because they feel like, oh, feminism has moved them to this place where they should work, so they feel like they shouldn't even stay home. | |
| There's this strange belief. | |
| I get it, because if you haven't had kids yet, and I hate to pull that card, because it's really annoying when people do that, but I apologize in advance. | |
| You know, there's this idea that staying home with kids, you know, exercises three brain cells, you know, because you're just changing diapers and you're cleaning up after them and you're putting food in their mouth. | |
| But if you go to work, you get to be this, you know, intellectual goddess, you know, rainbow disco lights of thought come off your head every time someone looks at you. | |
| And I mean, I've been, you know, an entrepreneur, I've been in academia, I've, like, as a graduate student, and I've, you know, traveled from all over the world for business and so on. | |
| Being a parent exercises more of your brain and your soul and your heart than a career does. | |
| And a career is great and I had a wonderful time in the business world, a wonderful time in graduate school. | |
| But raising kids is not dumb and going to work is not smart. | |
| To me, it's an incredible thing. | |
| There's a time when they're very young where they're mostly just puddles of goo that you have to clean up after, but that passes after a few months. | |
| Then when they start to smile at six weeks and they start to walk, they can start to do mathematical reasoning according to recent studies as early as eight or nine months of age. | |
| They can develop empathy and show empathy at 12 to 14 months of age. | |
| They can do moral reasoning at 18 months of age. | |
| And that's under the current conditions where we don't even know what the capacities of babies are. | |
| So I think that really working with a baby to develop their mind, their body, their spirit, their emotions, their passions, you know, to give them self-control without repression, to give them confidence and expression without talking over other people. | |
| I say this not letting me have a word, but these are really challenging things to do as a parent. | |
| So I think that there's a really great opportunity to live an incredibly rich intellectual and emotional life as a parent. | |
| There's a lot of women who do want this, but it's no longer an option. | |
| And I think there's things going on economically, which I'd like to turn the conversation economically, because I want women to kind of begin to understand that conversation. | |
| So, a lot of women, I think, do want to stay home with their babies and they actually don't have the option to now. | |
| And so, I know you're a free market guy, right? | |
| So, a lot of women are concerned about when you have a free market and you don't have government involved, right? | |
| Who is going to protect them from the big bad corporations who could put lead paint under children's toys or have little children in China making your clothes? | |
| Mainstream people believe that government protects us from these things. | |
| And if we have a limited government, a smaller government, and that's not their role, then who's protecting us? | |
| How does that look? | |
| I think the first thing to understand is people are raised in government schools. | |
| And I don't mean to be Mr. | |
| Conspiracy theorist, but I don't see a lot of ads for Coke that talk about tooth to cat. | |
| Even though it's an objective result of obesity. | |
| You don't see lots of McDonald's ads talking about the fat content of their food. | |
| They don't willingly... | |
| Of course. | |
| In government education, you're not going to get a lot of criticism of government. | |
| You're going to say, the government saved you from the Great Depression, and the government saved you from the Nazis, and the government's saving you from all the evil corporations. | |
| And I don't mean, that's not enough to dismiss the arguments, but it's important for people to understand that they have had a self-interested party educate them. | |
| And I would argue, how interested is government really in protecting children? | |
| First of all, educational standards are catastrophic and have been declining since, really, the 1960s. | |
| I mean, before then, yes, but people don't understand. | |
| Like, in the 19th century, before government public schools, there was a 95% literacy rate. | |
| In America. | |
| Now, it's not even close to that. | |
| And since the 1960s in particular, when public sector unions really took over the educational system, you can't fire teachers anymore. | |
| Educational standards. | |
| In Canada, where I come from, everyone's socialist paradise, the dropout rate is close to 50%. | |
| In America, it's close to that or exceeds that in some areas. | |
| And people like, I think, a great woman, Michelle Rhee, who was in Waiting for a Superman movie, I think she's Korean-American, and she took on the teachers' unions in Washington State, raised the student achievement levels, lowered dropout rates, was doing amazing things, and then got crateringly kicked out in the political union process. | |
| So if the government really cared about kids, would they really be focusing on improving the quality of education? | |
| And furthermore, if you want to save your kids from dangerous chemicals, Look at the amount of drugging that is going on for psychotropic drugging. | |
| Things like ADHD, ODD. I've got shows on this and this. | |
| I read Anatomy of an Epidemic by Robert Whitaker and other great books. | |
| These are made up medical ailments. | |
| No biological cause for them. | |
| The cures are incredibly destructive. | |
| It shrinks brain mass. | |
| It causes behavioral problems. | |
| So, you know, I'll take my chances with lead toys if I don't have a system where the government is funding the literally enforced drugging of children by the millions. | |
| I mean, this is Soviet. | |
| This is what Soviets did to dissidents. | |
| And these were adults. | |
| So... | |
| But for the typical American woman saying, I will take lead in my toys over that... | |
| I take the risk of that, right? | |
| Right. | |
| So... | |
| If you have lead in your toys in a free market, if you have lead in the toys, you get lawsuits. | |
| And you get incredibly bad publicity. | |
| But how do you know there's light in your toys until five years later? | |
| Because women are always talking about prevention. | |
| They want to be able to prevent. | |
| Obviously we can't prevent everything in life. | |
| Sometimes things have to happen before you have the punishment. | |
| Well, the way it used to work is that there were independent agencies who would test toys. | |
| And it would give the CSA, I don't know what it is, the Canadian Seal of Approval, there's probably one in the US. Consumer Safety has tested this toy and we certify that it is whatever, what is safe, is lead free or whatever. | |
| And so there would be third party agencies who have an economic interest because their entire reputation and their seal of approval allows companies to charge a little bit more for their toys. | |
| This is how it used to work. | |
| So a private organization instead of a public, instead of the government? | |
| What happens if the government fails in its regulatory duties? | |
| Nobody gets fired. | |
| Nobody loses any money. | |
| I mean, the FDA, what happens if they don't approve some drug that could have saved lives? | |
| Nothing bad happens to them. | |
| I mean, look at the SEC. In the recent financial crisis, they were repeatedly warned about incredible problems, or the Bernie Madoff thing. | |
| They had emails and letters going back years that this guy was a con man. | |
| Nobody did anything, and who lost their jobs? | |
| Whereas at least the private company that is putting seals of approval, if they say that some toy is safe when it's not, their whole business is done. | |
| People lose their entire careers, their entire capital investment, the whole value of the brand evaporates completely. | |
| I'd rather trust. | |
| Is it going to be perfect? | |
| There's no way to know for sure, but I will really trust to enlightened and economic self-interest more than the altruism of bureaucrats who face no negative repercussions if they make a bad call. | |
| Can you kind of enlighten us a little bit on what the Canadian healthcare really looks like? | |
| Look, if the guy next door quits his job and just starts racking everything up on his credit cards while sitting with his butt in a nice pool sipping margaritas, he kind of looks like it's a great life. | |
| You sort of wake up saying, why am I going to work every day? | |
| This guy's having a great life. | |
| Bankruptcy hits, the truth comes out. | |
| In Europe, they're facing unbelievable deficits, massive financial crisis. | |
| The whole house of cards is coming down. | |
| In Canada, we're a little bit behind that, but definitely we have almost as high a per capita debt to GDP as Greece does. | |
| This is what happens when you go into debt. | |
| You can pay for a lot of stuff if you go into debt, but you're just eating the future. | |
| This is all going to change. | |
| So right now, in Canada, it's better. | |
| But there are significant percentages of Canadians, I think it's 20 to 30 percent, cannot get a doctor. | |
| They cannot get a doctor. | |
| Also, if you have... | |
| What do you mean, cannot get a doctor? | |
| They cannot get a doctor. | |
| You mean just for a check-off? | |
| They can't get a... | |
| Well, I mean, you can all show up in emergency, just as you can here in the U.S. You can show up at a clinic, but you can't get a doctor who is going to say, you are now my patient, I am your primary care physician, I'm your family doctor, and I'm going to see you through the next 20 years. | |
| So it's always your, especially if you've got recurrent health problems, you've got to explain to the new guy every time all the history that you don't get the general time care. | |
| So you can't find a doctor. | |
| I've heard those really long waiting times. | |
| If you're diagnosed with something, for example with breast cancer, I've heard it can take up to six to eight weeks before you can get a mastectomy. | |
| Like my mother had breast cancer and had her mastectomy two days after being diagnosed. | |
| Oh, it's worse than that. | |
| I mean, because you have to go through a whole... | |
| You can't go to a specialist. | |
| You have to go to a generalist. | |
| So if you don't have a doctor, you've got to go to a clinic who then got to make an appointment for you. | |
| Then you have to go to a specialist, and then you may have to go to another specialist, and then you get put on a waiting list for even a scare. | |
| And, you know, it's... | |
| I interviewed a Canadian writer, William Gairdner, who basically was saying that you can get the next day... | |
| You can get a same-day MRI for your golden retriever. | |
| Because that's private. | |
| Yeah. | |
| But it will take you literally months sometimes to get a scan. | |
| People who've got cataract surgery on the West Coast, if they need cataract surgery, they're going blind, are waiting up to two years for these things. | |
| And, of course, the government said a couple of years ago, we're going to shorten these waiting times, we're going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars. | |
| Of course, the waiting times have only increased. | |
| Because you have to ration a fixed good in some way. | |
| You're either going to ration it through money, or you're going to ration it through time, or you're going to ration it through a waiting list, which is another form of time. | |
| So, there's no magical solution called the government will pass a law and everything will get better. | |
| Healthcare costs in Canada have been rising just as they have in the US. What people need to remember is that although they're dealing a lot with doctors who charge money and aren't socialized, and they're dealing a lot with insurance companies who charge money and aren't socialized, in the US, The entire healthcare industry operates in the more of the government. | |
| It operates in the cave of the state because there's so many regulations, so many controls. | |
| There are controls over how many doctors there are through licensing and registration. | |
| There are controls on how medical procedures, how much you can charge for them through Medicare and Medicaid and other sort of price-setting mechanisms. | |
| Insurance companies nowadays, of course, they're not allowed to deny people with pre-existing conditions. | |
| And now that sounds terribly cold-hearted. | |
| And I understand, you know, somebody's sick and they need healthcare. | |
| I am first in line to help that person. | |
| I want to give charity. | |
| I get it. | |
| It's a desperate situation. | |
| But if you say to people, you can't be denied for pre-existing conditions, a significant portion of the population will say, okay, well, I'll buy healthcare when I get sick. | |
| I'll buy healthcare insurance when I get sick. | |
| Right. | |
| Which is like buying fire insurance for your house after your house burns down. | |
| And insurance companies will go down because they have no money with which to feed the claim. | |
| Well then they have to start denying stuff because they simply can't afford it. | |
| Healthcare insurance in New York for a family of four is over $60,000 a year. | |
| I mean, that's insane, but if you look at areas where, like plastic surgery or laser guy surgery, where government control is much less, you've seen a steady decline in the prices relative to inflation. | |
| Healthcare costs, where the government has got its controls over things, have gone up at twice the rate of inflation for the past few decades, but where the government doesn't have control over things, the prices have been declining. | |
| I'm not saying that's a completely ironclad argument, but it opens up the possibility that we're paying so much because we're relying so much on government. | |
| So what does the perfect healthcare system look like to you? | |
| The perfect healthcare system to me, that's a great question, and I'll see if I can formulate something semi-intelligent because, you know, I'm used to diagnosing problems or solutions, but I would love to see a healthcare system. | |
| There's one in China that's very interesting, where you pay your doctor until you get sick. | |
| You pay him every month until you get sick, and then he's got to treat you for free. | |
| So what does your doctor want to do? |
Export Selection