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Aug. 5, 2012 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:49:28

2185 Why the Government Does Not Own You! Freedomain Radio Call In Show, 5 August 2012

A variety of brilliant questions and comments from listeners to the Freedomain Radio philosophy show.

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	Hello everybody, it's Stefan Molyneux.
	I'm back!
	Hope you're doing well.
	It is the 5th of August 2012.
	Sorry for a couple of weeks of not being around, but we did, the family did Freedom Fest where I did a bunch of interviews and spoke and met a bunch of great people.
	David Thoreau from the Independent Institute, Jeffrey Tucker, of course, Bob Murphy, the ever great Bob Murphy.
	And did a TV interview, a couple of other interviews.
	So it was a really productive trip.
	And again, thank you so much to the supporters who have propelled me there.
	Yay!
	Like a very circus clown confetti cannon.
	And then we drove up the West Coast and I had dinner with Peter Boghossian, the professor of philosophy from Portland.
	And we discussed a variety of things, which is very productive, continued on my way.
	And we went to...
	The Capitalism and Morality Seminar, which was a full-day seminar, being held in Vancouver with some great speakers.
	Some great speakers.
	Me.
	Oh, let's throw aside the modesty.
	I think I did two great speeches.
	I had two hours.
	I did a history of ethics and I did UPB with audience participation and lots of fun stuff.
	Very good Speeches, I think.
	And thanks again for the invitation to speak.
	Yeah, so it's Doug Casey.
	I think David Gilland.
	Walter Block.
	Got to meet Walter Block.
	That was very interesting.
	We had a few back and forths, which were exciting.
	And it was actually nice to meet him.
	Nice to meet him.
	Disagreements to me are a healthy part of any intellectual movement.
	I think that we can try to stay away from some of the personal attacks.
	Not that I'm accusing dear Dr.
	Block of that, but I think disagreements are always healthy.
	Nobody, of course, has a monopoly on truth, except Jesus, and he's not answering.
	So, a bunch of other great speakers as well.
	Rick Rule spoke, and just great stuff.
	It was a really enjoyable day, and it'll be going on again next year.
	And, I mean, it was a real honor to be the keynote speaker, and I worked really hard on the speech, and when it's ready, we will post it, and I hope you like it.
	Other news?
	The first three minutes of the documentary are done, and it's in full-on mode now.
	I have hired two animators to work on it, and this is one animator, at least, of which I've worked with before, who's a real pleasure to work with.
	So everything's lined up now, and the bull is out of the gate, and it is ready to roll.
	So if you'd like to help out, not the cheapest thing in the world to make a documentary, if you'd like to help out, of course, freedomainradio.com forward slash donate.
	A plug for Lorette Lynn's great book.
	I'd like to mention that, Lorette Lynn's book, Don't Do Drugs, Stay Out of School, which is available at unpluggedmom.com.
	Check it out.
	It's a really good book.
	Well written, passionately argued, and worth your time.
	So anyway, that's it.
	Sorry that there was a couple of Sunday shows missed, but I was fairly incoherent.
	You know, if I don't get my You know, 16 and a half hours of beauty sleep.
	I am pretty much a squash turtle with a runaway truck.
	At least that's how my brain feels.
	So, thank you for your patience.
	I know we've got lots of callers today.
	Oh, and also, thanks again to The Peter Schiff Show for having me on.
	Obviously, they had run out of their list completely and went to their backup backup list, but I'm still honored and always pleased to do those.
	I did a couple of those shows while I was on the road, and it was a real pleasure.
	So, Let's get on to the callers.
	I am happy to be back, overjoyed to be chatting with you, and I am all ears.
	First up, we have somebody who calls himself Austrian Economics.
	I've read a lot about you.
	How are you?
	Hello.
	Can you hear me?
	I sure can.
	Okay, my question is, basically, I've already accepted that taxation is immoral, and, of course, government's immoral because it uses the initiation of force and attempts to solve social problems through violence.
	However, though, since property rights is valid, then if the government owns the land, then isn't taxation granted morally acceptable, and isn't all the initiation of force acceptable, and then how does being born on that property play into that part?
	Those are some seriously great questions, and I really respect you for bringing those up.
	So let's go back to the government owns the land.
	So what do you mean by the government?
	Because, you know, the government means lots of things to lots of people.
	Obviously, the government doesn't physically exist.
	It's just a term such as, as you already pointed out in some of your podcasts, a forest doesn't exist.
	It only exists in a sense that trees exist.
	So those individuals exist, I guess, is it?
	Sorry, it only exists in the sense that a forest exists, just to be annoyingly precise, because trees are actually bound together.
	People always ask me, like, well, you say that a forest doesn't exist, only the trees, but the tree isn't that a metaphor as well?
	Well, the difference also is that the tree is actually a living organism that's physically connected, that has physical integrity, whereas a forest is really a concept.
	Anyway, so yes, okay, so the government doesn't exist.
	So what you're saying then, so if we were to put this in more philosophical terms, when you say the government owns everything in a geographical area, what does that mean morally?
	I guess it would mean that...
	Oh, you thought you were going to get some answers, didn't you?
	No, it's question time.
	I've given enough answers now.
	I'm all out of answers.
	I only have questions now.
	But okay, so let's try that philosophically.
	Does it mean that just individuals own that land?
	Is that what you're trying to say?
	I'm not trying, I'm asking you questions!
	Okay, so if the government doesn't exist, then there's a group of individuals who are claiming ownership of all the land, right?
	Yes, yes.
	And how do they do that?
	How do they establish that claim morally?
	Well, I guess in...
	Because I could do that, right?
	I could say, I own your kidney, I have a rusty spoon and some chloroform, I'm going to get what's rightfully mine, right?
	True, but then how would you claim ownership?
	I mean, you talk about self-ownership, the effects of one's actions, but I guess since they conquered the...
	I guess the U.S. in that case doesn't have actual ownership or valid ownership, but how would you claim valid ownership?
	Hmm.
	Well, those are two questions, right?
	The first thing we're asking is, does the government own everything?
	Then it's a sort of related question, how do you establish ownership?
	But I think we can say, if we take a UPB, like universally preferable behavior, so if we say that all our rules have to be universal, clearly for one individual to arbitrarily claim ownership over everything...
	Doesn't conform to UPB. Like, it can't be universalized.
	Because whatever you say for one person, you have to say for everyone.
	And so if you say, well, me, I, Steph, I get to claim universal ownership of everything, then everyone gets to do that, right?
	So I say, well, I own Wyoming.
	And you say, well, I own Wyoming.
	And we both have, and every person in the world has a legitimate claim to Wyoming.
	But that doesn't work, right?
	Correct.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	And the reasons why it doesn't work sort of logically, the reason why it doesn't work empirically, anyway.
	So it's not moral or valid or true to say an individual can assert arbitrary ownership over a wide area of land.
	Yeah, yeah.
	But how do you define a wide area of land?
	That's basically, you know, where are the boundaries?
	Sorry, that's just within the country thing.
	It actually, UPB doesn't matter whether you say it's a square inch or 10,000 square miles.
	Okay.
	I don't get to just say, I own stuff.
	Ah.
	Right?
	Because if I get to say it, everyone gets to say it, and then everyone has ownership.
	And then you can say, Steph, I own your kidney, your brain.
	Right?
	There'd be no such thing as rape, because I could say to the woman, listen, I own your vagina.
	Yeah, exactly.
	So, I mean, we all understand that this arbitrary I-own stuff doesn't work, can't be valid, can't be moral.
	And so to say that one person can't arbitrarily Say I own stuff.
	Well, it doesn't matter if you have one person or ten people.
	You know, if you have one frog or ten frogs, they're all still frogs.
	It's not like if you add more frogs, they suddenly become mammals, right?
	Or some of them become mammals.
	They're all just frogs.
	And so if I don't have the right to arbitrarily own stuff, or claim ownership, then ten people, a thousand people, a million people, the majority, the majority, everyone minus one person, does not have that right.
	So the government cannot own everything and therefore charge rent.
	Because you can't universalize the arbitrary claim of valid ownership for everyone over everything.
	Does that make sense?
	That makes sense.
	Maybe I'm definitely not getting something.
	I feel like you're saying that that group of individuals can't own everything.
	And if they could, then that would have to be universally applicable, which it isn't.
	Well, so then the government would say, I own your house.
	I mean, that's what the government does say, right?
	Exactly.
	The government says, I own your house and you have to pay me property tax as a rent, right?
	In order for you to continue living in the house that you bought, you have to pay me off.
	That's ownership, right?
	Yes.
	Okay, first of all, how can a bunch of strangers and me legitimately own something?
	So ownership tends to accrue, I mean, unless you're talking about a corporation, it tends to accrue to, you know, an individual or to whoever's contractually.
	And of course, if I'm paying for it, how do you get to assert arbitrary stuff?
	Now, the other thing, of course, is that if everyone gets to say, I own your house, so you owe me rent, I'll call it property taxes, but you owe me rent because I own your house, baby.
	Well, I can then say, okay, well, you're charging me $3,000 a year in property taxes, so I own the houses of parliament, I own congress, and I own my congressman's house, and so he's got to pay me $3,000 back.
	It's rent for what I arbitrary claim ownership over.
	You see, once you universalize it, it cancels out.
	It's like taxation.
	If we all have the right to send bills to other people without any contractual obligation or without any contract on their part, then everyone can do it.
	The government comes and says, you owe me $20,000 in income tax.
	I say, okay, you owe me $20,000 in income tax because everyone gets the right to impose arbitrary contracts on everyone else.
	So it doesn't work, right?
	Government only works if the moral rules are universal and then broken.
	I mean, if they claim to be universal, in other words, they're moral rules, and then they're broken.
	So, like property taxes, sales taxes, and so on, you can't morally justify it.
	They cannot be morally sustained in any rational way.
	So is the difference, so say you have two different examples, one where you're buying a plot of land and it has people on it, and in the other example you're buying a plot of land without people on it, if you're buying a plot of land without people on it,
	that can be morally applicable because you're spending your money, say it's a valid agreement, so then you validly own that, but if there's, say you own a park and there's People on it, though, when you buy it, just as in the case of the government, say they bought a country, so that wouldn't be moral?
	Well, wait a sec, how could the government buy a country?
	Yeah, yeah, I guess.
	No, really, let's go back to this, right?
	Because remember, the government has no money.
	Oh, true.
	The only way the government can put a bid on anything is because it steals...
	Prints or borrows, but they're all three sides of the same theft, right?
	Because the government steals stuff, it can buy stuff.
	But that doesn't make that purchase morally legitimate, right?
	So if I steal $100 from you, and I go buy an MP3 player with it, that MP3 player is not mine, right?
	Oh, yeah.
	And also that works in the case of if they conquered a country and murder was involved, then that's not a valid ownership because they didn't claim it morally.
	Right.
	Well, that's true, but one step further, how did they pay the soldiers to go conquer this army?
	To go conquer this country, sorry.
	Oh, yeah.
	They paid the soldiers by stealing or borrowing or printing.
	Oh, yeah, true.
	Okay.
	That really answers my question now.
	Now I understand.
	I like that note of surprise in your voice.
	Hey, that really does.
	I like that.
	I just was expecting a long-winded rant about nothing in particular, but hey, you actually hit a bullseye.
	That's shocking.
	You know, if you shoot an arrow over a house every now and then, you hit a bullseye.
	And I like to think that I have, you know, maybe slightly better odds than that.
	So that helps?
	Yeah, yeah, that really helped because I was stumped and I was questioning everything in the realm of anarcho-capitalism and now it's all solved.
	Well, listen, here's the trick, right?
	This is the trick.
	I will give you a special intellectual philosophy circus trick.
	You know, one of the criticisms that atheists have of religious people is this issue called, you probably heard of this word, anthropomorphizing, right?
	Right, so anthropomorphizing is when you project your own characteristics onto something which doesn't have those characteristics.
	Right, so I live and die, and therefore the universe lives and dies.
	I was born of a father and mother, and therefore the universe was born of a father or a mother or both or whatever.
	I have a teddy bear that I really love, although it is, of course, just stuffing, but I project all of these things onto it.
	Anthropomorphizing is when you project human characteristics onto non-human objects.
	So you've probably heard the phrase, Mother Nature.
	Oh, yeah.
	Gaia.
	This is anthropomorphizing because nature is not a mother.
	She's not her mother.
	And so what happens is we ascribe human characteristics to non-human things.
	And it's constant.
	We do this all the time.
	And it's fine.
	You just have to be aware of it.
	And so in the realm of the universe, human beings exist and someone had to create us.
	I mean, we didn't just pop out of a test tube because lightning struck Marty McFly, right?
	And so we exist and someone had to have created us.
	And so what happens is we think, well, human beings as a whole exist and therefore someone had to have created us.
	A god breathed life into dust and he created us, right?
	But just because you and I were created by To individuals doesn't mean that all human beings were created by an individual or group of individuals who were gods.
	We evolved from whatever, but the idea that we take the way that we exist and then we project that onto the world.
	And it's a cause of many, many fundamental mistakes that people make.
	And they're very obvious mistakes once you understand this issue of anthropomorphizing.
	The reason I'm talking about all of this is because it is a grave error.
	It is a dangerous error to imagine that the government has the characteristics of an individual.
	The government does not have the characteristics of an individual.
	Because you said, well, if the government owns this or the government buys this, well, individuals can own and buy.
	True, yeah.
	Collectives can't.
	I mean, again, corporatism, blah blah blah, that's another state monstrosity, so let's just put that aside for the moment.
	But if we mistake the state for a human being, and we ascribe human characteristics to this concept, then we have made a fundamental error.
	And it's a dangerous error, because then what we do is we forget What the state is.
	We anthropomorphize the state.
	The state is here to help, to protect you, to charge you taxes in return for services.
	Well, that's kind of mistaking the state for a company or a private organization that's going to give you, you know, the government provides you all this stuff.
	This is Barack Obama's recent thing, right?
	The government provides you all of this stuff, and therefore you owe the government back.
	Well, that's treating the government like your parents.
	Your parents paid for you, and they raised you, and they invested in you, and so you owe them allegiance, respect, and so on, and care when they get old.
	Exactly, but it's not about a voluntary relationship, because you're forced to pay, even if you choose not to.
	Yeah, I mean, the issue of the essence of force is what is always removed.
	It's still present, you know.
	It's still present, yeah.
	In fact, it's even more present because it's not talked about, because it can only grow because it's not talked about.
	And so, I'm not picking on you, because I find myself doing this all the time, too.
	So, this is something I have to remind myself all the time.
	When you say the government buys a country or whatever, well, that's making it sound like there's someone on eBay, you know, bidding on a Britney Spears collection.
	Hmm.
	But the government doesn't have any money.
	The government stole all its money.
	The government can't buy another country because the other government can only sell the country because it pretends it has ownership over it, which it doesn't.
	And one government would only buy another government for the same reason that one farmer would buy another farm.
	It's because the tax cows will provide lots of money and therefore it's a decent investment.
	But it is not...
	A person.
	It is not an economic actor, fundamentally.
	And I can already hear the thousands of emails pouring into my inbox saying, what do you mean the government is an economic actor?
	It has huge effects on the economy.
	Well, yes, but a rapist is not a romantic actor.
	To me, economics is voluntary.
	It's only economics if it's voluntary.
	In the same way, it's only lovemaking if it's voluntary, if it's not rape.
	It's only charity if it's not stolen.
	Sorry?
	Rothbard talks about how an exchange isn't really an exchange.
	If it's for such as slavery, you're not benefiting from the exchange.
	But if it's voluntary, then you're benefiting from it.
	Yes.
	Yeah, that's right.
	So it's really important not to apply economic terms to what the government does.
	Because that's like applying romantic terms to a rapist or charitable terms to a thief.
	So if some mugger sticks a gun in my ribs and says, you know, give me your wallet and I give him my wallet, and then you would say, well, Steph was very nice.
	He donated.
	He donated his whole wallet.
	He gave his whole wallet.
	To a guy in an alley he'd never even met this guy before.
	I mean, and he was so excited to give this guy his wallet.
	His hands were shaking.
	He was sweating.
	He peed himself a little bit.
	That's how excited Steph was to give this poor young man his wallet.
	Well, you would be like, if you told that story and people knew what had actually happened, people would say, what?
	Are you crazy?
	That's kind of an insult.
	It's a huge insult to misrepresent the situation in that way.
	And again, I'm not accusing you or picking you, I'm just pointing this out, right?
	You want to make sure that you don't use economic terms...
	For what the government does.
	The government buys.
	The government rents.
	The government borrows.
	The government prints.
	And I use it too, right?
	The government counterfeits.
	The government steals.
	The government is violent.
	And we need to reserve the economic terms for economic actions.
	And actions are only economic if they're voluntary.
	Otherwise, it is in the realm of criminal behavior.
	And you can apply economics to criminal behavior.
	I understand that, right?
	You mean people have done entire economic analyses of Of the drug trade.
	I think it's in Freakonomics.
	Yeah, it's in Freakonomics.
	And you can do an economic analysis of, well, if the government does all the stimulus and so on.
	And I'm just working on this now, so this is not...
	People will quote me back where I've used tons of economic examples with the government.
	But I'm really working on my language set to make sure that I don't use economics terms with the government.
	Because it is to completely blur...
	The violence.
	And we have to have different words for rape and romance.
	If we don't, I think we're really missing something central.
	Sorry for that long rant.
	Does that sort of make sense?
	Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
	Yeah, the government doesn't borrow.
	The government forcibly sells off the profits of its lifestyle.
	Exactly.
	In your argument for morality, basically, when you use the term the government, people unconsciously think that the government isn't people, and that different moral actions apply to the government.
	But really, they're just people, and for it to be consistent, they have to have the same moral restrictions as human beings.
	Right.
	And if they have the same moral restrictions as human beings, they're not a government anymore.
	Exactly.
	It's like saying, well, if the mafia obeys the law, well, if the mafia obeys the law, it's not the mafia.
	It's not the mafia anymore.
	Anyway, does that help?
	I really want it to be not too annoyingly over-explanatory.
	Yeah, it helps a lot.
	What I got from that was that, you know, the government can't claim ownership when it's, because basically, I'm using the government again, but because they don't have money, they only steal to obtain money, so therefore the ownership isn't valid.
	Right.
	Yeah, sorry.
	Somebody whose opinion I respect says economics has a subset that is about the effects of compulsory action on voluntary interactions.
	Yeah, I mean, the issue that inflation is always and forever a monetary phenomenon is a study of the effects of violent government monopoly central bank Printing of currency and its effects on the economy.
	And to me, I would say that is the effects of the economy.
	That is the effects of crime on the economy.
	And I think we really need to distinguish between moral, voluntary, peaceful, free trade, free market interactions and compulsory, violent, destructive, win-lose interactions.
	It's certainly not trade.
	Paying taxes is not trade.
	I mean, you could say, I guess, you're trading your freedom, but that's not, I mean, it's not really valid to call it trade.
	And I would like, I mean, I would really like it, economists aren't going to care what I like, of course, right?
	But what I would really like is for economists to say, what we study, the only thing we can study, is voluntarism.
	And we can study the effects of violence, but let's not call that economics, right?
	Let's You know, it's like a doctor can study the effects of smoking, but he wouldn't call it health, right?
	So anyway, I just want to mention that, but that's obviously debatable.
	But yeah, make sure we don't mistake the government for a person and don't...
	Don't ever miss the reality of the coercion that's involved.
	Anyway, we move on to another caller, but thank you so much.
	You're welcome anytime.
	It's a great, great question.
	One second.
	Do you think if I stayed on until the end, do you think I'd be able to, if someone was, after everyone goes and you guys are waiting for another caller, could I ask another question?
	Well, I'll tell you what, let's try it now and we'll keep it real quick.
	Oh, hopefully.
	Okay.
	Basically, first, do you have the same theory of dispute resolution organizations as you did in your beginning podcast?
	You haven't changed it at all, have you?
	I don't think so.
	There have been a few adjustments.
	You know, I made the claim back in the day that no nuclear power had been threatened with invasion because of my...
	Waspy, Eurocentric bias.
	I completely missed Israel.
	So that's a completely valid correction.
	And as somebody else, I think I had pointed out that Switzerland had not been involved in a war for 800 years.
	And somebody pointed out that at the end of the 18th century, Switzerland had been invaded.
	And when I said had not been involved in them and had not initiated war, you're not involved in a crime if you're robbed.
	You know, you're a victim of a crime.
	Anyway, so...
	But in general, I think the theory holds and is sound.
	And again, just with the caveat that that's a possible way.
	I mean, there's no way any individual can substitute His or her judgment for the collective genius of everybody in a free market, but I think it would be a good approach.
	Did you have a question about the DRO? Basically, after listening to a couple of those podcasts, I had the idea, which maybe I just took it wrong, that DROs are quasi-insurance companies that would also provide security and other services,
	but now I realize that I think they should just be, I think they'd only be realistic if they were only courts instead of providing security because no one would want a DRO if it provided other services such as security.
	Possibly some people would, but it wouldn't be profitable because as a business they would want to hire, they wouldn't want to create their own, they wouldn't want to have their own workers.
	They would hire other different companies to do the job for them, outsource it, and then charge you more.
	Oh, sorry, let me just make sure.
	Let's say I hire a DRO to insure me from theft, and that DRO also runs a court system that if I get stolen from, I use, and therefore they have an incentive to have me be stolen from, because then I will use their court system.
	Is that right?
	Yes.
	Well, let's pretend that I'm a customer who's asking you that question.
	You're like, you know, Joe six-pack, you know, chiclet smile, and you're trying to sell me your DRO services.
	And I say, well, dude, I mean, come on.
	You're just going to have me get stolen from so that I'll end up using a court system.
	What would you say?
	If you were the CEO and the investors were asking this question, how are you going to solve this problem?
	What would you say?
	Honestly, honestly, I wouldn't be sure.
	Well, I'll tell you what I would say.
	I would say the court system is free.
	Because if you have to go to a court system, it's because we have failed to protect you from theft.
	And so if we failed, you shouldn't pay.
	So this is how you know we have no incentive to have you use our court system.
	In fact, we have every incentive to have you not use our court system because we have to pay for the cost of that court system and you don't pay a red penny.
	Does that make sense?
	Yeah, that makes sense.
	But in my theory of DROs, I think that instead of the DROs, because you said that if you don't choose to have a DRO, or if you drop your DRO, automatically or automatically you would get put into a database where you would be on a surveillance for being a threat.
	Sorry, we've just got somebody else in on the line.
	James, can you count that down?
	I don't know if that's coming from your end of the line.
	No, I got it.
	Yeah, I understand.
	So if you drop all forms of insurance, then that's probably a red flag that something not good is going to happen, right?
	Well, what I was trying to say is that you said, yeah, that'd be a red flag for someone to commit theft, you know, under the table, deal like that.
	But why would DROs have databases?
	Wouldn't it be better if just individual businesses such as the grocery store had its own database that it would share because that would be more profitable to share these and such instead of the DROs mandating that because I feel like it kind of imposes some sort of Some sort of infringement on my freedom if I have to get a DRO. But in my theory,
	you don't have to get a DRO. Businesses will protect themselves with their own databases that they'll share instead of DROs only mandating them.
	Okay, so tell me how the grocery store DRO would work?
	Oh, how the grocery store database would work?
	I mean, obviously, like in one of your speeches, you said you can't totally predict the future, but I would have it as if instead of, so you don't have to get a DRO because in, I believe, and correct me if I'm wrong, in that podcast, if you drop your DRO or don't get one, then you'll be socially ostracized because they can assume that you'll commit theft.
	So, you wouldn't have to get a DRO. You could choose to do that or not.
	And companies could choose to sell to thieves or murderers.
	Whether that would be profitable for them or not, probably not.
	But I would imagine that the grocery store would have its own database that it would share with other We'll share with other businesses because that's more profitable.
	If you're Walmart, and I think they have a lot against this, but if you're Walmart and you have fees coming in and stealing the things, you're going to want to share your list with Macy's to make your list more broad and therefore protect yourself more against these threats as a business.
	Well, yeah, you certainly could.
	You certainly could.
	And this, to me, fundamentally, would be an economic argument, though.
	So would it be profitable for every store to have their own database?
	Well, no.
	Because that's a lot of technical expertise, a lot of servers, a lot of security, someone gets hacked.
	I mean, that's just not good, right?
	So people would probably want to off-source this to the cheapest possible method.
	But who knows?
	You know, maybe it would be distributed, maybe it wouldn't.
	But the other thing, too, is that Remember, you can...
	Again, if I were competing in the DRO business provision market, what I would say is, I will make sure that after 15 years, I will cover you for free.
	And this is how life insurance works.
	So life insurance, they take your money, they invest it or they do whatever.
	And then after 15 or 20 years, you don't have to pay your premiums anymore, but you're still insured.
	And so if you didn't want to pay for a DRO, the best thing to do would be to live an honorable, decent life where you didn't cheat, steal, rob, whatever, right?
	And then you would end up with a DRO for free.
	And obviously that is not an incursion in your liberty to have someone who's willing to go to bat for you no matter what and resolve disputes for free.
	That's not an infringement on your liberty, right?
	And so if you wanted to, quote, get out of the DRO system, then you would just live a good, decent life, and then you would be It's insurable for the rest of your life for free.
	I mean, that's how I would sort of work it, you know, based on the predictor, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.
	And if someone's been honorable for 15 years or whatever, then they're not doing that just so they can go knock over a liquor store at 15 years in one day.
	So there's tons of ways to...
	And of course, people's concerns about infringements on their freedoms would be addressed, would have to be addressed by DROs.
	So DROs would want to be as invisible and as cheap and as effective as possible and to have way more prevention than cure and so on.
	And so they would be constantly striving to be less intrusive, less bothersome.
	And, you know, who knows where technology will be in 50 or 100 years.
	And so it would be to me that the market will drive.
	The other thing, too, you know, the other thing that's true, I've mentioned this in a couple of places, but I might as well centralize it here, is that when human society is populated by people who were raised peacefully as children, I mean, the question is, will you ever I mean, the question is, will you ever even really need a DRO in 200 years?
	I consider it quite unlikely.
	Because children who are raised peacefully and nonviolently in a non-aggressive environment don't become criminals, don't become cheaters, don't become rapists, don't become murderers, don't become politicians, don't become Don't become fraud artists, don't become drug addicts, don't become blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	And so the prevalence of these, in the 14th century, everybody had religious mania, right?
	I mean, they were all insane.
	You had entire villages in the Middle Ages that would become so crazed with religiosity, they would dance themselves to death.
	They would dance until they all died.
	I mean, so everybody in the 14th century had religious mania.
	And so you'd say, well, how would we deal with religious mania in the 21st century?
	Well, certainly in Europe, you don't really have to deal with religious mania anymore.
	I mean, there's a few there and so on, right?
	But it's not really that big a deal.
	And so...
	Will you need massive layers of bureaucracy to protect yourself from endless waves of violence when, scientifically, it is very well established that if you're raised peacefully and positively, you do not become violent?
	Well, I think that we won't need to solve this anymore.
	I think that people will probably be able to sail through lives.
	Maybe they won't need a DRO, or maybe a DRO will cost them a dollar a year, or something like that, just because there's so few of these kinds of incidents that recur.
	Yeah, yeah.
	If the URLs do offer other services, not just the court service where they would be able to dispute resolutions even though 0.01% would be in that realm, then if they provided other services and they outsourced to other jobs, they would charge people other money and it wouldn't be a profitable choice for them.
	So I don't see why people would have DRLs if, by definition, DRLs offer other services such as security, where they have to outsource for workers or, you know, if they have But you remember that the DRO will simply be a reflection of marketplace desires.
	That's why it's really hard to say what a DRO – first of all, we're talking about what's technically possible in 100 years.
	And imagine trying to picture what's technically possible before World War I, where you just wouldn't have a clue.
	So, you know, DROs aren't going to be around for probably 100 years.
	And so who knows what's going to be technically possible and designing the future is really difficult.
	But what we do know is that if a lot of people have concerns about bundled DRO services, those DRO services will magically become unbundled.
	Because DROs want to keep selling to people.
	And if people have concerns about DROs with conflicts of interest, then their DROs will have to prove that they don't have conflicts of interest in order to get people's business.
	And they will constantly be changing and adapting, right?
	So one of the things that has happened is that criminality has gone down quite significantly, violent crime.
	And so in order to maintain the need for the state, you have to invent a drug war to backfill all of the missing criminals that have vanished because a lot of – some kids are being raised a lot better.
	You don't get beaten up in schools as much by the teachers anymore.
	And so you have to invent a war on drugs in order to continue manufacturing the criminals to have people need the state and to keep the prison industrial complex going and so on.
	Whereas this is not the case in the free market.
	In the free market, if criminality goes down, the first thing that DROs will do is fire a bunch of enforcers and lower their rates, and they will, of course, encourage people to adopt best practices as parents so that there will be fewer criminals and so on.
	So that's...
	I mean, that's something that's important to understand.
	It's very, very different from what happens with the state.
	The state has a need to frighten people, to take their money, to keep us all fighting with each other rather than banding together.
	And so whenever the reasons that drive people's anxiety diminish, then the government will supply new ones, which is why you have, you know, the The Great Depression, followed by the Second World War, followed by the Cold War, followed by environmental scares, followed by the War on Terror, followed by now we've got debt crises, all these kinds of things.
	These are just continual panics, panogram situations.
	But that's the very opposite of what a DRO will be doing.
	The DRO will be trying to get rid of crime and will be diminishing itself thereby because any ones which don't do that will end up charging more than Exactly the same services provided by someone else.
	So they will, as violence shrinks, DROs will shrink.
	That's basically what I'm saying.
	But as violence shrinks, the state expands because it provokes more and more violence in its activities to keep people at the same level of fear and dependence.
	Yeah, yeah.
	That helps me.
	I mean, the big thing that basically I think I came to a self-realization through the discussion of that, because you helped me, but is that I'm thinking of it as a government where D.R.O. is voluntary and the free market is going to drive it.
	Whatever the consumer wants, the producer will make.
	So it basically depends on whatever the consumers want.
	It's not the set standard where people are forced to get it.
	Yeah, yeah, like, oh, these people now have to keep a database on you, too bad.
	It's like, well, no, because if there's significant problems with people being in a database, then somebody will find a way for people to not be in a database.
	Okay, thank you.
	Yeah, it was really helpful for me.
	I hope it was helpful for other people.
	Oh, I'm sure it was.
	Thanks, that was a great question.
	Okay, see you.
	All right.
	All right, sorry about that.
	Hope it'll be a little long, but thank you for your patience.
	Let's move on.
	All right, next up we'll have Jeremy.
	I was talking with somebody and we were trying to determine if it was aesthetically unpreferable or neutral or if it was a question of UPB for a person to inform authorities or Defense firms or something,
	take action to provide information that they have about a criminal.
	Let's say, for example, if you are an apartment complex owner and you're aware that one of your tenants is a thief and has stolen goods and is storing them on your property, if you fail to provide this information, have you committed a That's fascinating.
	Yeah, that's fascinating.
	What did you guys think about it?
	Well, the big thing that caused it to really get into an uproar was when I suggested that a rape victim who does have the information of who their rapist was and has the ability to convey that information, who does not do so, is committing, in my opinion, an act that is You know, potentially leading to the further rape of other people.
	So when we applied it to rapists, it really kind of got into a heated debate where I was suggesting, well, maybe we are looking at, you know...
	Their response was, you can't attack the victim.
	And I get that.
	You know, it's always a...
	It's a hard thing to imagine being critical of a rape victim.
	However, sometimes rape victims have done things that can be, you know, be criticized for.
	Right, okay, so if somebody is raped and they don't report it, then the guy obviously will continue.
	And unless it's the very first rape, which is probably not the case, that person only gets raped because the previous victim didn't report and so on, right?
	Let's just say, a woman gets raped and she does not report the rape, then the rapist obviously is not going to face repercussions and is going to go on and rape again.
	And assuming it's not the first rape that the man has ever committed, then it's reasonable to say that she only got raped because his previous victim didn't report the facts, right?
	Yeah.
	Right, right.
	Yeah, no, that's a very interesting question because if you do not report a crime, to what degree are you contributing to the repeat of that crime?
	Right, and are you basically, you know, culpable in some fashion is the question.
	Well, there's no doubt that you're culpable in some fashion because you are partially causal in the repetition of the crime.
	Yeah.
	For the simple reason that if you don't report a rape, let's just take the existing system.
	If you don't report a rape...
	Then the guy's not going to end up behind bars.
	Right.
	And therefore he's free to continue his raping thing, right?
	Correct.
	However, of course, you're not the rapist, right?
	Right.
	So you don't have the same responsibility.
	But, you know, the getaway car driver is not necessarily the person who robs the bank, but they are facilitating the escape of the criminal.
	Well, that's true, but it's a different situation because let's say that...
	The car driver is taken hostage, like he's a cabbie with a gun to his head.
	We would not hold him morally responsible, whereas a victim of rape is coerced, whereas a getaway driver is not coerced, right?
	I suppose that, let's say the rape victim has been threatened that, you know, if you tell anyone, I will come back and kill you.
	Is that...
	Well, yeah, that to me would be a very different situation.
	That would be a very different situation.
	And of course, that would be the most common thing to say if the man was fearful.
	So here's another example, right?
	So this Sandusky trial, right?
	I think he was just recently convicted of several counts of child rape.
	And there were people who had witnessed this and knew about these rapes for many years beforehand.
	Are they morally responsible for rapes?
	Well, yeah.
	Right, so we'll start with something easier, like a witness rather than a victim.
	Yeah, sure.
	Right, so if you witnessed this monster raping children and you didn't do anything about it, well, yes, you're damn well responsible.
	And so, I mean, you're not the only person responsible, and you're not the actual rapist, but it's pretty heinous.
	I have no idea how these people live with themselves, but that's a question for another time.
	You're guilty of something.
	It's not necessarily a rape, but you're guilty of something.
	Yeah, well, you're partly guilty.
	Look, obviously, a repeated rapist can't stop himself.
	If he could stop himself, he would confess, he would get treatment, he'd cut his balls off, he'd do something, right?
	So he can't stop himself.
	And that doesn't mean that he's not morally responsible.
	I mean, a drunk driver is a bad driver, but he's responsible for getting drunk.
	But clearly a repeat rapist can't stop himself.
	And so if you have witnessed this, these kinds of actions, then you are the only person in that equation with any real power to stop it.
	So reporting is essentially potentially a positive obligation that we would have as UPB. Well, look, clearly it's UPB. I mean, whether it's, you know, it is UPB insofar as, what if your child was next?
	Oh, yeah.
	Would you want that reported?
	Would you want everyone, like, what if somebody was preying on your child at school?
	What if somebody was raping your child at a daycare?
	Would you want somebody to report that?
	Well, of course you would.
	Absolutely.
	And if we are going to apply violent sanctions to this, in other words, if we would be comfortable punishing someone using force, Not comfortable, but if it could be justified to punish someone using force, then it's UPB, because UPB and ethics governs force.
	Go ahead.
	We would basically sanction the potential use of violence or force against the person who did not report.
	Right, so would we throw them in jail, would we fine them, would we apply some sanction to them that did not require their voluntary cooperation?
	Anything other than just ostracism?
	Ostracism and publicizing their name and so on.
	I mean, I'm a big one.
	I don't think that we're 1% of the way of testing the power of ostracism in society.
	So that's a whole other issue.
	On the other hand, ostracism or bad behavior doesn't seem to have much repercussions on the long run.
	Eliot Spitzer has a TV show, Bill Clinton is speaking, I think, at the next Democratic National Convention.
	Conrad Black has an article series again in the National Post.
	And these are all people who have, well, except for Bill Clinton, they've gone to jail for Now, I don't know the truth or falsehood of it, but I mean, just taking the general way of looking at things, It doesn't really seem to do any harm to have a very bad reputation.
	It doesn't seem to do any harm at all.
	One of the psychiatrists who participated in fraudulent claims about some of the drugs that have been used on kids, you know, just got a multi-million dollar grant from the government, has faced no repercussions.
	So it really doesn't matter if you do bad things, sadly, in the current society.
	But that's a whole different situation, which we can sort of get into another time.
	So I would really be happy to push the limits of ostracism, right?
	So if somebody wanted to come and buy a candy bar for me and it flashed up on my screen that this guy had failed to report repeated child rape that he'd witnessed, I might say...
	Put that candy bar down and back out of my store, you scumbag.
	Right.
	Right?
	Maybe.
	Or maybe, you know, maybe some people wouldn't have a problem with it.
	But the reality, I think ostracism can go a long way.
	And I would obviously like to see how far ostracism could go before we had to start pulling out the guns.
	But I think that if you witness, I mean, just to take an extreme example, if you witness child rape, From a man who has significant power over and access to children, then you damn well have to say something.
	Yeah.
	Because you are then complicit in the continuance of those crimes.
	And those crimes could not continue in an ideal world without you saying something.
	Sorry, they can't continue if you say something.
	If you don't say something, the extreme likelihood is that they will then continue.
	So, yeah, I think you become an accomplice.
	To the crime if you fail to report it.
	Now, that having been said, sorry to take up so much time, I'll make this really brief and then turn it back to you.
	But at the moment, it's horrible to report a crime.
	Right?
	I mean, rape victims go through, you know, horrible times, I think, in the statist court system.
	So clearly, in a free society, you want to encourage people to report by making it...
	Maybe cash positive, at least paying for their time by making the process as easy as possible and as cheap as possible and as encouraging and as positive as possible, which of course there's no incentive to add in the existing system.
	But if you were to make the reporting of a crime much less onerous, now, sorry, in the future relative to now, I think that that problem would largely go away.
	Yeah.
	I guess I'm just trying to come up with, you know, as far as a standard perspective.
	Now, obviously, if the thing goes away as not being an issue, then that's great.
	But we do kind of have to examine these types of things and, you know, give them...
	No, it's important.
	Look, there's no point having morality if people don't act on it.
	I mean, there's no point having morality if people don't act on it.
	And it doesn't, you know, like, it doesn't matter whether you're found out or not, or, you know, whether people discover whether you've acted badly.
	I mean, if you and I were walking along the shore, and we saw some kid out there who was drowning, and there was nobody else, we would just say, well, there's nobody else here, so nobody will ever know I was here, and just I'll keep walking.
	No, we would all...
	Yeah, I mean, if he was in the middle of, I don't know, eight great white sharks, we may hesitate or maybe not.
	I don't know.
	Yeah, but so I think that if it becomes, and look, if maybe the rape, I think the rape victim should get compensated for a successful prosecution.
	I mean, I'm not saying that then she would do it for money or whatever, but I mean, I think that would at least be something that would take some of the negative repercussions.
	But right now, You go through this process of years.
	You get cross-examined.
	You have your entire past pulled into.
	You get called all kinds of horrible names.
	You get re-traumatized over and over again in the existing legal system.
	At the end of it, you get the satisfaction of putting some guy away.
	That's not justice.
	If you don't try to make the victim whole, you're not trying to achieve justice.
	Yeah, and also, you know, it's not that the rapist gets better in prison, so then this guy's going to come out and, you know, eight years later or five years later or however long it's going to be, you've got to start looking over your shoulder again because now there's somebody out there with a grudge.
	I mean, there's just all of these problems that discourage this kind of stuff at the moment.
	This doesn't count the Sandusky people.
	I mean, that's just...
	I would spend the rest of the show spitting out teeth, sweat, and blood about the unbelievable Sandusky incident, so let's not make that show about this.
	But those people had faced almost no negative repercussions.
	All they would have had to do is sign an affidavit and testify, I think.
	Anyway, that's another issue about how children are not people.
	So then when we come back to the victim, then we could theoretically say that, yes, they are committing a crime by not testifying.
	However, they're mitigating circumstances such as trauma.
	They're not committing a crime.
	I would say that they're accomplices in a crime?
	Right.
	They're being accomplices and therefore have the potential of being punished through force.
	However, there are mitigating circumstances such as trauma, threats, and so on, right?
	Yes.
	Okay, great.
	Then on a similar UPB question, I don't know, it's not really similar.
	I'm trying to analyze just The unfortunate circumstances that occur in society that aren't exactly real easy like don't hit, don't steal.
	And another one comes up which is teasing or bad-mouthing people.
	Chiding.
	You mean like sort of slander or libel, that kind of stuff?
	Well, as far as I understand it, libel and slander are not Well, no, I don't actually agree with that.
	And there's some debate among libertarians about this question.
	But I think that if you say things that are false about people that cause them harm, I think that you are responsible for that.
	You would call that fraud?
	Yeah, I mean, it's fraud and there's significant, right?
	So let's say that you are a competitor in a restaurant.
	Some restaurant opens up across the street and then you write a bunch of fake reports about how you found dead rats and flies and mice in the food, which is not true, right?
	So you make that up.
	Well, that's theft.
	Yeah, there's a fairly long discussion about that, and I'm not sure I would agree with you on that, but I don't know if that's necessarily what I'm...
	Well, does it cause direct economic harm to another person?
	No, only indirectly.
	Oh, yes.
	Oh, yes, it does, because people will not go to that restaurant because they don't want to eat dead rats.
	Only because they...
	And if that restaurant closes, so if two people are in the same neighborhood, and they do a little look up on whatever restaurant review site they like, and they find out all about these dead rats, they're going to probably go to the restaurant across the street.
	So this is a transfer of wealth from the restaurant you're lying about to your restaurant.
	And if that restaurant goes out of business, then you gain some monopoly rent seeking, assuming that there aren't 10 restaurants around.
	So it is an economic attack on the other person.
	It is depriving them of income, and it is adding to your own.
	I know there's an argument against that.
	I'm not really going to make that one.
	I happen to believe it, but the question is...
	No, no, make the argument.
	I'm happy to hear it.
	That's not the subject that I'm really interested in.
	I mean, if people want to look into that, I think that there's a book called Defending the Indefensible.
	I think that's what it's called.
	Yeah, I think blockers make an argument that you don't own the contents of other people's minds, and so if somebody says, you know, you're a, whatever, a bad guy in Six Ways from Sunday, make that statement.
	But I think that, to me, I think that lies which have economic significance are wrong.
	But you would have a reputation for being a person who speaks the truth or a person who is anonymous.
	And if an anonymous person says they've got rats in that restaurant, no one's going to take it seriously because we've all heard that kind of stuff being uttered and we know it's bull.
	And then if you get a report from somebody who is a reliable resource who says that, then you've got this reputation built into that person and thus you can trust it, is the perspective.
	Alright, so let's say that I bribe a restaurant reviewer to say that.
	Then that's fraud.
	Okay, so the only difference is the credibility of the person?
	I'm not sure how that puts the U in the UPB thing.
	It's an oogie subject for me.
	I don't know it well enough to really discuss it on that level.
	That's not really what I wanted to go over, though.
	Okay, we can skip that then.
	Okay, so let's say that we've got Children who are, I don't know, teenagers who are saying things like, I don't know, you're a nerd, or fatty fatty, that kind of thing.
	Right.
	Things that may very well be true, but they are causing...
	The person has experienced feelings of self-doubt and angst and so on.
	Now, if we had, let's say, a new technology where there is an ability to measure a person's mental state and we have the Tracking that shows that this criticism and chiding and teasing and so on was empirically causing the person to change chemically to become suicidal.
	And that person then commits suicide.
	Are the people who were teasing and chiding now culpable?
	Well, to me, there's two situations there.
	And this is, again, it's hard to confuse the present world with the world that is to come.
	Right.
	So the first question would be, are they children or adults?
	We're assuming that there's going to be different standards for both, but, you know, let's explore both.
	Okay, so if there are a bunch of 10-year-olds...
	And one of them is being teased and is...
	I mean, verbal abuse has, I think, been fairly well established to be worse than physical abuse for the developing mind.
	And so that's something that is important.
	It is harmful to the developing mind.
	It's highly toxic.
	Words are highly toxic.
	You know that old thing, sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me?
	I mean, falser words were almost never spoken, right?
	I mean, this is not true.
	It's not true.
	But to solve this kind of problem is important.
	And to solve it, you would not look at the children, but you would look at the families.
	Well, yeah.
	We definitely know that children who are doing this, who are acting like this, in all likelihood, were abused as children.
	Yeah, I don't know if you've seen this grandmother on the school bus video.
	Oh, yeah.
	yeah i mean i i only watched about 10 or 15 seconds of that because it was it was absolutely unbearable where this grandmother who was a little tubby was you know being called fatty and and these to me just complete sociopaths around her i don't know how old they were they weren't little kids but they weren't adults um you know we're basically saying yeah if we if we cut you open and cut you open with a knife if i cut you open with a knife mcdonald's food is going to fall out and
	I mean, just complete, monstrous, monstrous statements.
	I mean, the likes of which...
	Oh, unbelievable.
	Unbelievable.
	And, of course, what happens is, naturally, everybody unplugs the environment and just focuses on the children, which is all...
	Right?
	So...
	So you would look into, if a child was being verbally abused, you would look into the families, right?
	Obviously the school would have, if it was a school, the school would have to say, look, we have no bullying policy.
	And if we find bullying, then we will attempt to work it out with the parents.
	If the parents aren't willing to go get therapy, if the parents aren't willing to get help, then the kids have to leave the school.
	Yeah.
	But then...
	I mean, how much can we hold the children themselves accountable?
	I mean, we really can't necessarily.
	But at some point, you have to take ownership of your own actions, even if there were...
	Yeah, it's a sliding scale, right?
	Infants, zero.
	20-year-olds, maybe 100%.
	It slides up.
	It's a delicate balance, and it's different for each kid, depending on intelligence and so on.
	But, I mean, obviously you would have to talk to the kids as well, but they would be an effect of the parenting.
	Yeah.
	So what do we do with, let's say, the adults, though?
	I mean, let's assume that we can't really go back in time and undo the bad parenting that created this negative person.
	But we do now have...
	The ability to see that, yes, it was the acts of verbal torment that caused the person to commit suicide.
	We know that that's the case.
	Well, adulthood is a little different now with the internet, right?
	Because before, if you had a negative group of friends, you could just go make new friends, right?
	Yeah.
	And the new friends would not really have any contact with the old friends.
	The old friends might still bitch about you, but so what, right?
	But, I mean, the difference with the internet, of course, is that the ostracism aspect for reputation doesn't work nearly as well over the internet, right?
	Because before the internet, you ditch your old friends, make some new friends, and you've moved on, right?
	But if you have a bunch of negative old friends, you ditch them and you get some new friends, your old friends can still keep posting horrible stuff about you on the internet that's not true and all that, right?
	So it doesn't just change in the way that it used to before the internet.
	I guess that's kind of dodging the question, though.
	I mean, let's take a potential situation.
	As far as the internet goes, we both know that there's not...
	Sorry, sorry.
	No, let me go back, because I don't think it's dodging the question.
	Because in the first situation, the children have less avoidability because they're in school, right?
	Right.
	So, sorry, let me just say, so with people posting stuff about you or me or whatever on the internet, there's less avoidability than there used to be because of the internet, right?
	But we do know the reason why that's the case is because there's not a free market on the internet exactly.
	And if there were, then you would have new Facebooks showing up all the time that would allow for ignoring in the right way.
	So the technology would certainly exist to...
	Exclude those people from your life and make friends and interact without having that problem.
	No, you cannot exclude those people from your life because if you go to a new job and somebody Googles you, right?
	Oh, I see, I see.
	Good point.
	You cannot, that's what I mean.
	The avoidability, you know, if worse came to worse, you live in some small town, everyone turns against you, you just move to a new town, right?
	But that's not the case in the digital universe, right?
	The avoidability issue has been circumvented by the universality of the medium.
	I agree.
	Okay, I get where you're coming from.
	So, as far as, let's say, we've got this, you know, berating negative, abusive people on the internet who, through a new technology that shows brainwave activity and we know that...
	Yeah, somebody's being harmed by slander or lies on the internet.
	Okay.
	Well, not necessarily lies, just negative...
	Well, no, sorry, but the lying aspect is important, right?
	Sorry, the lying aspect is important.
	Let's assume that they're not lying, though.
	No, but then telling the truth is never a problem.
	The ultimate defense against slander is, is it true?
	So if somebody's a murderer and I say they're a murderer and it's true, then I can't be sued for slandering.
	Right.
	Well, I got that.
	I'm not talking about slander.
	That's the point.
	I'm talking about, let's say somebody is obese.
	And somebody says they're really fat.
	And not just that, but what you saw with the woman on the bus.
	That kind of negative...
	Well, sorry, but the difference with the woman on the bus was they were making physical threats to end her life.
	Well...
	I mean, if they called her fatty...
	A lot of the comments weren't that, though.
	A lot of the comments were just, you know, she's so fat, blah, blah, blah.
	So they're not necessarily threats.
	And when you get to escalate to the point of threats, that's a different concept than what I'm talking about.
	Yeah, look, I personally, I think as an adult, I don't think that you can...
	If you're obese and somebody says...
	You know, you're so fat that when you sit around the house, you sit around the house.
	I don't think that you, I mean, I don't think that you can do much about that.
	It's a joke.
	It's a factual statement.
	It's a joke.
	I mean, comedians, of course, do this kind of stuff all the time.
	And so I don't think that you can, if somebody is saying a factual statement, then I think that's not too bad.
	And the other thing, too, is that it can be hurtful to be called fat if you're fat, but it may not necessarily be that that pain is bad.
	I mean, not everything that hurts is bad, right?
	Exercise sometimes hurts.
	Dieting can be very uncomfortable.
	That's not bad, right?
	Experiencing the pain and frustration that your competitor has taken your business, taking your customers from you, causes you to innovate and do better at your job.
	Oh, yeah.
	No question.
	And if somebody is mocking you for being fat, if you are in fact fat, that might be a good incentive for you to not be fat anymore, to work at losing weight or whatever, right?
	But the question then still exists, though.
	It is, if we do know that the person who has committed suicide did so as a direct result of the constant fat jokes that they were hearing in Online or at the office or whatever, is there a recourse for the family of that victim or that suicide person?
	Yeah, I mean, to me, that's a very tough...
	I mean, there would be a couple of questions I would have.
	You know, why...
	I mean, not every obese person gets massively marked online, right?
	So there's probably something...
	There's more to it than just being obese.
	I think that would be an important question.
	The other is, where was the support system for this person as they began to get more and more unhappy, right?
	I mean, the defense against hostility is the love of people who are close to you.
	Agreed.
	And so, if somebody is becoming very unhappy and suicidal or whatever, then friends and family should be Should be with that person, should be talking to that person, and so on.
	Should unplug their modem or their router or whatever, and should be taking care of that person.
	Yeah.
	So I don't think that...
	Yeah, I don't...
	I don't know.
	I don't think...
	And the other thing, too, of course, is that this kind of causality is not going to be very precise, right?
	Yeah.
	It could be.
	I don't know.
	Yeah, maybe at some point in the future.
	But of course, at some point in the future, if you're testing someone and you see that they're getting sadder and sadder or whatever, then you would take preventive action, right?
	That person, in order for the causality to be established, that person would have to be recognized as being in a high-risk category already?
	Yeah.
	In which case, the...
	The responsibility for helping them with their mental health problems or whatever you want to call them would fall to whoever's testing them, to the family, to the friends, you know, all these kinds of things.
	So, um...
	So, if I'm the doctor testing someone and they'll say, oh my god, you've got a big D in the middle of your brain, you're depressed.
	Whatever, I don't know what it would be.
	Well, then it's my job as the mental health professional to then get that person in to help, right?
	So we basically say that it would be just aesthetically negative to be a person who insults other people.
	That's all it is.
	Well, insult is kind of a loaded word, right?
	So if somebody is fat and I call them fat, that's not an insult.
	It's a statement of fact, right?
	Right, but, you know, when they're saying, you're so fat you have to throw a boomerang, you know, you have to put your belt on with a boomerang.
	That's actually kind of funny.
	Sorry, I shouldn't say that.
	It is a little funny.
	Well, I don't see how that statement would cause someone to commit suicide.
	Well, you know, it's a compilation of a lot of those things happening in a short enough period of time.
	But that cruel...
	Look, I think we've milked this topic to death.
	Either this is predictable, in which case whoever predicts it bears the responsibility, or it's not predictable, in which case we're not talking about anything that can be avoided anyway.
	But the actors themselves are not necessarily particularly culpable.
	All they are is just guilty of doing aesthetically negative things.
	Yeah, I think that making jokes about fat people is not that great.
	I think it's probably better to talk to them about There are childhoods, there are histories, there are experiences, there are whatever, right?
	Yeah.
	But at the same time, Don Rickles can be kind of funny.
	So I don't know.
	I mean, I don't think that this would fall into the realm of UPB. I think it certainly would be aesthetically preferable to avoid from this kind of mockery, but I don't see how there could be any moral culpability in that.
	Okay.
	Well, so as far as the two topics that we've...
	Gotten to the end of where they are.
	I think we've got a consensus about them.
	I appreciate your insights, and I appreciate you discussing them with me.
	All right.
	Thank you very much.
	Very interesting questions.
	All right.
	Let's move on.
	Oh, it's so good to be back.
	All right.
	Jeremy, can we hear you?
	Hey, can you guys hear me?
	Yes.
	Hey, this time.
	Well, I had a question just kind of on the general philosophy of gender roles.
	And just as a little background to the question, I come from like a divorced family.
	So I don't have...
	Kind of some of these stable ideas and I'm moving into a long-term relationship.
	And so these ideas, society now is really kind of crashing most gender roles, you know, and I understand on a deeper level that a lot of what's old-fashioned and most gender roles are kind of bullshit.
	So I just wanted to hear you talk on it a little bit.
	Well, I think that there are gender roles that are social.
	I mean, this is nothing particularly innovative, but there are gender roles that are social, and there are gender roles that are biological.
	There's not much we can do about the biological ones, but there's stuff that we can do about the social ones.
	So, biologically, women have babies, and when women have babies, they're kind of disabled for a while, and ideally, I believe the science is fairly clear on this, they should be breastfeeding for a year to two months.
	Or maybe more.
	I don't know where the final data is, but it's better for the children to be breastfeeding.
	And when they are breastfeeding, particularly in the early months, they're breastfeeding every couple of hours.
	So they are pretty dazed milk machines of infinite maternal love.
	And if so, if you want a couple of kids, it kind of knocks women out of the equation as far as, you know, working for, you know, three to five years, let's say.
	So that's a biological fact.
	It's not the fault of the patriarchy that women carry the fetus and have the milk ducts.
	That's not any man's fault, unless you count God as a man, in which case you can take it up with him.
	So, I think that gender roles, if you don't want to have kids, I don't think there's any fundamental difference.
	And the marketplace tends to agree with this opinion, in that college-educated women who have been in the workforce for the same amount of time as men...
	And I think 95% or 96% of what men do, so obviously still a couple of percentage points off, but you know, you always hear the statistic, women earn 60% or 70% of what men, this is all just made up nonsense.
	So if you don't want to have kids, then you can live like a man, because that having kids thing doesn't have that much effect.
	I guess this is where I have some questions, just because I understand that.
	And that is what the market shows, is that gender roles don't matter that much.
	But I know on a scientific That there's a lot of difference between the emotions and the way men and women generally prefer to be treated based on their natural differences.
	Now, I know everybody's, you know, epigenetically or they, you know, they differ.
	We're not all the same.
	So it's hard to just classify male behavior and female behavior.
	Yeah, look, I mean, I had Dr.
	Cordelia Fine, who wrote the book Delusions of Gender on the show about two years ago.
	And it's a great book to read.
	She really rips into this men and women's brains are so different kind of thing.
	There really doesn't seem to be much that stands up to any kind of close scrutiny.
	So look, I will certainly agree with you that men and women approach the world in some different ways, whether that's, you know, the whole genetic thing seems to be crumbling because of epigenetics and neuroplasticity.
	Epigenetics, of course, is That your genes are switched on and off by environments, so there's no such thing as a fixed gene pool that we come from.
	And neuroplasticity is the brain's capacity to rewire and readapt itself as you grow, as you grow older and as you age.
	So I think it's really tough to figure out what is innate and what is environmental.
	I just generally err on the side of environmentalism at all times.
	At all times!
	Just because we haven't found the significant limit to epigenetics.
	And if you sort of imagine a child born in some...
	Backhouse Cave Mountain in Afghanistan, you know, one of ten kids of a completely uneducated Islamic family who never ever sees anything that has electricity in it, never comes down from the mountain, spends his whole life herding sheep and praying five times a day, and then compare that to exactly the same boy raised in Afghanistan.
	In a Western, well-educated atheist family, you will end up with a completely different human being.
	Completely different human being.
	It would be far more different than any male-female differences.
	So I err on the side of environment at all times.
	What was the name of that book again?
	This is great.
	It's called Delusions...
	Sorry, go ahead.
	I was just going to say, I've had kind of the same observation, and I'm just in a flux in between, you know, I know that there is some behavior that females exhibit, or that males exhibit, that it's very unique to the gender, but at the same time, environment just is huge.
	Yeah, and it's called delusions of gender.
	And she basically...
	Went to all of the source data that you could find for the most famous studies of the differences between the genders and found that the science and the sample sizes and all of that were not, let's say, the highest quality imaginable, to say the least.
	So you might want to check that out.
	Now, I believe, you know, purely idiot, amateur internet speculation time, as always, but I believe that a woman who wants to have children It's going to have a different mindset to a man who wants to have children.
	And I think that this has evolved this way.
	I think the welfare state has preyed on this to some degree, but nonetheless.
	So a woman who wants to have children is going to be incapacitated, economically speaking, for quite some time.
	For quite some time.
	I mean, my daughter is three and a half now, and I've been a full-time dad since she was Born, I guess, before she was born.
	And I'm only now able to get maybe 15 or 20 minutes a day where I can do some work if she's up and around.
	Like, I can not concentrate.
	I can read a book or an article or, like, I can't record anything or whatever.
	And that's three and a half years.
	Now, of course, if we had more kids, that would only go further back.
	So, you know, I couldn't work at all when she was awake.
	And it's only started over the last maybe month or two.
	Of course, this has been at exactly the same time as she's lost her nap.
	She doesn't nap anymore during the day, and so the two hours I used to get, I don't get.
	So, I mean, I'm very aware of the degree to which having children is something that you cannot, if you're really going to take care of them, be home, take care of them, you really can't have a job at the same time.
	So, of course, a woman wants somebody who can bring her resources when she is providing resources to the children because she can't go out and get her own resources.
	You know, food, shelter, money, whatever you call it.
	And this is why a woman who is wise will pick a man who is some economic stability, some level of commitment, some emotional maturity, some capacity for attachment and love and all these kinds of good things.
	And that's what the woman needs to be a successful parent.
	Because she's breastfeeding.
	If it wasn't for the breastfeeding thing, you know, after the couple of months of recovery from Giving birth would pretty much even out, but the breastfeeding thing is different.
	So, that's from the woman's side.
	And because the woman needs other people, specifically the husband, but really it's a community thing.
	You need a lot of people to help you raise kids.
	She's going to be more interested in...
	less interested in looks, more interested in economic stability.
	She's going to be more interested in relationships and less ambitious.
	All these kinds of things.
	And this is not to say that, you know, as...
	Lorette Lim was saying the other day when we talked about her book, you can have kids in your 20s and you can go get your PhD when you're 40 or whatever.
	I mean, that's all fine.
	But during the time of having kids, that's...
	And you might want to...
	I just finished a book by Phyllis Schlafly.
	Phyllis Schlafly.
	Let me just get the spelling of that.
	I can never get that right.
	Yeah, I was going to say, if you don't mind typing that one.
	Yeah.
	It's Phyllis.
	P-H-Y-L-L-I-S. S-C-H-L-A-F-L-Y. I mean, she's just by the by.
	She's really quite an amazing woman.
	And it tells you a lot about society, not to mention feminism, that you've...
	Have you ever heard of her before?
	No.
	No, I haven't.
	Amazing.
	I mean, she's an amazing, amazing person.
	Gosh, where do you even start?
	She went to an Ivy League school, I think in the 40s.
	She was one of the first women allowed in.
	She wrote a book, A Choice Not an Echo, that sold millions of copies.
	She single-handedly spearheaded the movement to prevent the passage of the Equal Rights Act in the 1970s.
	She raised six children who've become very successful and She was also, she wrote a lot and was, she worked in political campaigns and she was criticized for having opinions on the legal side.
	On legal matters while not being a lawyer.
	So then in her 50s, she just went and became a lawyer.
	She just became a lawyer.
	I mean, she's really quite an amazing woman and has been quite influential and is very critical of a lot of modern feminism.
	And, you know, I've absorbed so much feminism through just college and culture that I find...
	Just as I really enjoy reading criticisms of...
	Evolution.
	I just love to see where people are coming from.
	I've learned a lot from people who've been highly critical of me.
	It's just fantastic.
	But yeah, she's written like 21 books, everything from childcare to phonics education.
	She's been writing a syndicated weekly newspaper column since, I think, the New Testament.
	So, she's really been quite a powerhouse in American politics and thought.
	And...
	She writes a lot about the sadness, of course, that's happened when women have tried to have everything and have ended up being discontented with just about everything.
	So, yeah, I mean, I think that there are some gender roles that come out of if you want to have kids, and I think those gender roles have some practical and evolutionary utility.
	And I also think that...
	The other stuff around innate brain differences seems to be very shaky at best, and I don't notice any particular difference.
	My daughter yesterday, we bought her a bucket of worms when we were down at a lake, and she spent half the day putting worms on her legs and being completely fascinated with that.
	I mean, she's never been into dolls particularly.
	She likes Trains and cars and dinosaurs, but she also really likes pretty dresses.
	I mean, it seems to me it's just a nice wide spectrum and sort of that's what I would hope.
	I've studiously avoided trying to give her any, well, that's what boys do and that's what girls do and so on.
	And so, you know, this is obviously completely unscientific, but it's an important sample of one for me.
	Well, that's why I kind of brought it up as I was raised in that traditional, this is what boys do, this is what girls do.
	And since I didn't have kind of that stable background, I'm not able to draw from experience what are the positive and what are the negative in that.
	So I thought a lot of what you said was very helpful.
	I'm going to look into those books.
	Yeah, thanks.
	You're very welcome.
	You're very welcome.
	Let me just see if I can dig up the book that I just finished from Phyllis Schlafly.
	Phyllis Schlafly I heard about some time back, but I was reminded Ann Coulter is a big fan of hers.
	Let me just see if I can find the book.
	And also being younger as well and kind of getting into a relationship and not being at the point where I'm thinking about children right now, I think this stuff is good to know that way, you know, I don't put any of this societal crap in where it doesn't need to go.
	Right.
	Okay, the book, I've only read one book of hers.
	It's called Feminist Fantasies.
	And she's also what I would consider a significant expert on military matters.
	And she has a blistering series of chapters on the shame of putting women in the front lines in the military.
	And anyway, I just think it's a fascinating perspective.
	I mean, I always love getting new perspectives.
	And so that's available.
	I'm a big fan, of course, of audible.com.
	I've been a member for like, I don't know, six or seven years.
	Maybe more, eight years.
	And it's available on audible.com.
	And I would really recommend it.
	I love a well-rounded perspective, for me at least.
	I'm not always able to achieve it.
	Global warming I'm still struggling with.
	But I would recommend it.
	Also, since I'm in pitch mode, I just wanted to mention, again, I get no financial consideration from these companies.
	They don't even know about me.
	But I'm telling you, If you do lots of work on a computer, a new version of Dragon has come out.
	Dragon, naturally speaking, is voice dictation software for PCs and Macs.
	They also have a version for the iPad as well.
	It's not as good, but yeah, I just...
	I mean, just go buy it.
	Just go buy it.
	It's unbelievable.
	I mean, I've written all my books using this.
	I compose just about everything using this.
	Once you get used to it and get it trained, it's almost completely accurate.
	It's incredibly good for your mental processes to think fast.
	People say, well, how can you speak so well?
	It's because I've been speaking my thoughts using Dragon for over 10 years.
	So I just wanted to recommend you can go to Nuance, N-U-A-N-C-E dot com.
	Go to Nuance dot com.
	Pick up a copy.
	I think it's 99 bucks.
	And it's probably one of the best investments you'll ever make if you work on a computer a lot.
	You can set up shortcuts.
	So you just say one little phrase and it will type a whole sentence for you if you do repetitive kind of work that way.
	Anyway, just wanted to mention it's an incredible productivity tool.
	It's the best I've seen.
	It certainly beats the ones I think that are built into Windows.
	But I just wanted to mention that because I like to share the goodness.
	Okay, so we're going to move on to the next corner.
	Alright, if we can do it, we have two more people, or two more newbies.
	We have another person that's also on the line.
	Jay, you're up next.
	Oh, we're down to initials.
	Jay, it's S. How are you?
	If you can find your microphone and unmute yourself.
	If not...
	Oh, hello?
	Heard a crackle.
	I think he just faxed us.
	Hmm.
	Seems that we're not hearing you.
	Well, maybe we can get that figured out.
	We can move on to the next caller.
	Joseph?
	Hello?
	Hello.
	Hello.
	Yeah, so I just had some questions really about universal friendly behavior.
	I haven't gotten to your book yet.
	I'm sure I'll get to it eventually, but I've been stuck with the fat head right now.
	Well, with that compliment, I'm all ears.
	I have to grout my bathroom.
	I have to do my nails.
	I have some old episodes of CSI to catch up on.
	But by the time I'm 70, I'm sure I'll grout you both.
	Anyway, sorry, go ahead.
	Just kidding, go ahead.
	It almost sounds similar to the catechorical imperative, Kant's whole thing.
	So I was just curious if you could elaborate a bit on it.
	I'm sorry, I just missed the first part of your question, if you could repeat it.
	I was just curious if you could elaborate a little bit more on what universally preferable behavior is.
	Which part of the three words do you want an explanation of?
	Universally we understand, right?
	Yes, yes.
	All people, all times, all places, and so on.
	Preferable means, obviously, the act of choosing one thing over another where the capacity for choice exists.
	And behavior is the argument that ethics...
	There's no thought crime that ethics can really only judge behavior, not an idea or a thought.
	Does that sort of make any sense?
	Um...
	I think so.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Okay, but...
	Let's see where I'm going with this.
	I'll give you another sentence or two.
	Would you agree with me that theories have to be rationally consistent to at least have a shot at being true?
	Yes.
	Okay, so if you're going to make a statement about ethics, which is universally preferable behavior, like so stuff which is, you know, I like ice cream, it's not, you know, it's not ethics and whatever, right?
	You should be on time is politeness, not good and evil and so on.
	And this is sort of all explained in the book.
	But so if theories have to be logically consistent, and we accept that ethics is universally preferable behavior, stuff which is not universally preferred, like people already prefer it, but they should prefer it.
	Then any statements about ethics have to be rationally consistent.
	They have to not contradict themselves right off the bat if they're going to have a chance.
	And hopefully, you know, I think that there would be some empirical evidence for particular ethical theories as well.
	So if you have a theory that says that...
	Human beings should respect property rights.
	It is universally preferable behavior to respect property rights.
	Then, generally, you would say that societies which respect property rights will do better materially and socially than societies that violate property rights.
	In other words, a free market would be more economically productive than communism.
	So, it's the same as science.
	You've got to have logical consistency within your theory and then If the logical consistency is there, it has the chance to be true, and if empirical evidence validates it, then it's in the realm of truth.
	And so that's the argument.
	And so the modern example would be if you have something which is evil for a private citizen called counterfeiting, but is virtuous for a government or a central bank called controlling the money supply or whatever it is, then you have a violation of universality and that some people for some people it's evil and for some people it's good and the more that is expressed the more that is in society the more that is enacted the worse you would expect society to get
	and so you could really see you know based on sort of current north american and european crises that allowing a monopoly of counterfeiting and banning it for the majority produces a very corrupt and destructive debt-ridden and deficit-laden and unfunded liabilities of the yin-yang kind of system.
	So, yeah, that's the basic argument that if you're going to make a rule...
	Now, it's a little different than the categorical imperative, because the categorical imperative...
	I don't know why I can't say that.
	There should be no reason why.
	I cannot.
	I can say lots of big words.
	The categorical imperative...
	Let me not try and say it too fast, and that will help.
	The categorical imperative has to do with personal preferences.
	In other words, you should act as if your act becomes a rule that is applied to everyone.
	Well, if I like to get hit because I'm a masochist, that is obviously not a rule that could be universalized for everyone.
	If I am the strongest man in the village and I say the strongest man should be the boss, I'm willing to have that universalized because it will benefit me.
	You know, if I say, the baldest guy in my house should be the boss, well, I'm the only guy and the only...
	So, there's an element to me of personal preference and subjectivity that doesn't pass an ethical test that I would consider valid.
	And UPB is not quite the same way that way.
	Okay.
	Sorry, the other thing, too, I mean, the objectivist thing, you know, that which is good, and Aquinas talks about this, too, that which is good and necessary for man is the good...
	Bleh, who cares?
	I mean, that's just all nonsense to me.
	And I have a huge amount of respect for Rand and to some degree for Aquinas.
	That which is good for man, I mean, what the hell does that mean?
	I mean, it's like we don't all have the same interests, right?
	I mean, political power is really good for Barack Obama.
	He wants to go back for more in November, right?
	So he loves it.
	He loves political power.
	I assume that the people who stay in the military love the military.
	And so that which is good for man's survival, I mean, jeez, do you think Barack Obama would be this wealthy in a free society or this powerful in a free society?
	Of course not.
	George Bush, come on.
	Right?
	So that which is good, I mean, this is a great system.
	For them.
	They love this system.
	They'll do anything to keep this system.
	So I just think that's, you know, anything which brings subjectivity into it.
	So you can analogize it to science, right?
	So in science, you know, or mathematics, you know, engineering, your propositions, your theories, your hypotheses, they have to be logically consistent, right?
	In the first page, two and two make four, but in the second page, they need to make five, and in the third page, they need to make a leprechaun riding a unicorn.
	People would just say, well, I don't care what's on the fourth page, because you kind of lost me on page two.
	This is all, right?
	It has to be logical and consistent, and then, of course, it needs to apply.
	It conforms to the evidence, and it's the same thing with ethical theories.
	They have to be logical and consistent, and when you run the requirement for logical consistency for ethical theories through UPB, lo and behold, you get Thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not commit rape, thou shalt not assault, and thou shalt not murder.
	And again, I won't go into all the proofs for this because they're all in the book, but it does validate our most commonly held ethical beliefs, which I think is good.
	We have good ethical instincts, like you can catch a ball even if you don't know the equations behind gravity and balls and frictions and so on.
	And so it does validate, but unfortunately it invalidates our social system almost completely because you can't have a government and you cannot have religiosity and all these kinds of things.
	That comes out of the UPB scenario.
	And so it validates our personal ethics, but it eviscerates our social ethics, which I think is actually conformed with evidence very well.
	So I hope that gives you a sort of quick overview.
	We'll tease you into perhaps taking the book for a spin.
	It's available free in audiobook and so on if you want to slap it on just when you're heading out somewhere.
	Okay.
	All right.
	Well, I think that should be it.
	So thank you very much.
	You're welcome.
	Now let's see if we have Jay back.
	We were getting static from him, so I had to drop him.
	But we do have time for Wayne, if you want to share a few thoughts.
	Hey, here we go.
	Okay, Steph, you had stated that the United States of America is basically trying to export its version of democracy, law and order, and government to other nations, but it should be taking care of what's going on in its own backyard first, like the murder rate in Washington, for example.
	Let me correct you, because I don't think the United States should be doing that, but that's what they claim, right?
	So the United States claims that it can make a much better society in Afghanistan and in Iraq, right?
	I mean, that's the basic claim.
	We're going to get rid of the regime, we're going to put something better in its place.
	I don't think the government, I don't think the United States should be doing that, but that's what their claim is.
	My argument is, well, if you all know how to build a great society, why don't you at least stop the Washington schools from producing a ridiculously high dropout rate, and why don't you stop drugs and crime and all of that in your own neighborhoods?
	Well, they can't, of course, right?
	And so if you can't solve the problem, if Congress can't solve the problems in Washington, D.C., where there's just unbelievable social problems, poverty, bad education, ghettos, and so on, Then what the hell makes them think that they can do it over in Afghanistan?
	That's sort of, I just want to mention that sort of.
	Yeah, to paraphrase, clean up your own backyard before you complain about mine.
	Yeah, or, you know, as Jesus would say, why do you worry about the beam in your brother's eye?
	Sorry, why do you worry about the moat in your brother's eye when you have a beam in your own, right?
	Because I was wondering why you're so worried about the U.S. when you're right here in Canada, we got enough problems of our own.
	Why am I worried about the U.S.? I know that living next to the US, like we are, is kind of like sleeping with an elephant.
	No matter how subtle the movements are there, you feel it, no matter what happens.
	Yeah, I mean, if you live on Mercury, you kind of care how hot the sun is, right?
	80% of Canada's trade is with the US. Now, that's a couple of years old, that statistic.
	I think we've shifted some to China, because it's important to go from one sinking ship to a nearly sinking ship.
	But, I mean, the reason, of course, is I have...
	Oh, yeah, no, I mean, that's...
	There's significant cracks in the wall.
	You know, when I was at Freedom Fest, it was very interesting.
	I mean, I've been going to libertarian conferences since I was in my teens.
	Obviously, there was a long time where I didn't, but certainly over the last couple of years.
	Pork Fest, yeah, right.
	I didn't see a barbecue anywhere.
	You were at Pork Fest?
	No.
	Oh, okay.
	And the pictures and everything from it.
	I haven't seen a barbecue anywhere.
	Some Pork Fest that is.
	All right.
	Sorry, but let me just sort of say, so when I was in Freedom Fest, a couple of things.
	First of all, like 20 people come up to me saying how this show and the experts and my arguments had convinced them to stop hitting their children.
	That makes me just walk on air.
	They were no longer hitting their children.
	They were negotiating with them.
	They were no longer punishing.
	Their children no longer yelling at their children.
	They'd really made that commitment.
	They'd apologized to their children.
	And they said things were going just fantastically.
	Like 20 people over the course of a couple of days literally came up.
	And I just wanted to say that's fantastic.
	And that means everything else.
	Someday when we've got more time, I should tell you about the...
	60 children between the ages of 9 and 14 that I played a large part in keeping them alive in Bosnia.
	We should certainly talk about that.
	We will digress about that.
	Yeah, like, I mean, I think this show, based on emails and conversations, sorry, let me just finish up my thought.
	This show has tens of thousands of families, I believe, have stopped hitting their children and stopped yelling at their children as a result of this show.
	At least that's according to some very rough calculations.
	So I just wanted to mention that because this is a huge effect in the world, a massive effect in the world.
	But the other thing that happened at Freedom Fest was people were coming up and, you know, chatting with them and saying, oh, have you been here before?
	Yes, sir.
	And I'm like, Would you come back next year?
	And so on.
	And probably about half the people I was talking to basically said, ooh, I don't know.
	Like, I don't really know where the U.S. is going to be next year.
	I'm not really making plans that far.
	And I've never heard that before at the Libertarian conferences.
	This sense of imminent doom was pretty hard to escape.
	I mean, I report that not because I have any claim to knowledge about it, but just as kind of an interesting tidbit to...
	To chew over that for the first time.
	I really did get a strong sense that people were not expecting things to continue, even for another year.
	So I just wanted to mention that.
	But sorry, you had a question or comment.
	The more important question I was thinking about, and it goes hand in hand with something another caller was talking about.
	When, and I was going to make it more pointed and actually make it almost personal for you, By saying, in 12 years, you come home one evening to find your daughter has been date raped.
	Now, of course, you obviously should report it, but with you not exactly favoring the, as you put it, men in blue costumes, who do you report it to?
	Well, I'm going to duck out of that one, because if my theories of parenting are correct, then she's not going to be in that situation.
	You know, there are some guys who get into fights every weekend.
	I have never been in a fistfight my entire life.
	It's not that hard to avoid them, pretty much.
	I've never been arrested.
	I've never been in jail.
	I've never, whatever, right?
	I've never even had a speeding ticket.
	So, it's not that hard to avoid these kinds of situations.
	So, I'm going to actually just have to kind of beg off that because, you know, I mean, it's not something that I anticipate is going to be occurring.
	I mean, the great thing about raising my daughter with this level of respect and equality is that she's just not going to engage with people or be a part of people's lives who don't treat her in this way.
	It's just not.
	Not going to be the case.
	Well, we can even remove that from being the personal matter.
	And, you know, a father comes home to find his daughter has been either date-raped or just plain raped.
	Now, finding fault with the people in the blue costumes, who do you call?
	Well, I would say you call the people in the blue costumes.
	I mean, this is what you've got.
	I mean, this is all that you have.
	Other solutions are not present.
	Okay, so you're kind of saying because we're stuck with the existing system for the moment, you're going to kind of have to play ball with them.
	Well, you don't have to.
	I mean, you can do whatever you want, but I do think that there's no other mechanism that I know of in society to help prevent further criminality on the part of a date raper.
	And you know what?
	I mean, the date thing is, I mean, a rapist.
	I don't think there's any massive or fundamental difference.
	Again, I'm no expert on it, but let's just say a rapist.
	Yeah, I mean, look, I mean, there's no other way to get somebody off the street who's a rapist.
	And as far as I understand it, rapists kind of tend to do it again.
	And so, yeah, you gotta work with what you gotta work with.
	Yeah, it's once they work through their first...
	The first stigma...
	You know, after the first one, the rest of them are easy.
	That kind of thing.
	Yeah, I mean, I don't know, but I think that you work with what you have.
	Okay, so I guess I was misunderstanding some of what you were saying about the men in the blue costumes.
	I thought you were...
	I was trying to wrap my head around the idea of how do you have a...
	Law-abiding society without some form of law enforcement.
	Right, right, right.
	Well, I mean, there is no such thing as law enforcement at the moment in any particular way, right?
	I mean, no bankers are going to jail, right?
	No central bankers are going to jail.
	There's also very little public protection happening as...
	One court in Toronto actually advised us that the police are in no way responsible to protect anyone from anything.
	No, that's true.
	The police have no legal responsibility to protect you from anything.
	And so this is why prevention is better than cure.
	And at the same time, you are also not permitted to defend yourself.
	Well, I don't know about that.
	I think there is some self-defense that's possible in Canada.
	Again, I'm no expert, but I don't think it's quite that bad.
	But yeah, the key thing is to not get into these kinds of situations.
	And Thomas, the fellow from Port Colborne, whose house was being firebombed, and he's still fighting in court because he defended himself.
	Right.
	Yeah, I don't know anything about that.
	Yeah, I don't.
	It's a real slippery slope they've got him on.
	Right, and the key thing is to just try and avoid those kinds of situations.
	Again, I don't know anything about that case, but philosophy is really about prevention, you know, not cure.
	You know, it's like a nutritionist.
	A nutritionist isn't going to help you when you're having a heart attack, but 20 years beforehand can probably say something useful to help you out as far as that goes.
	So, yeah, I mean, if you want your kids not to get into these kinds of situations, then if you race them as peacefully as possible, then they just won't.
	Yeah, we do have to deal with the situation we've got directly in front of us, though.
	I mean, it's hard to say we are going to...
	Look, don't do this because you might break a leg, you know, but you're just going to have to endure that bullet wound for the time being.
	That doesn't really work.
	Treat the situation that's right in front of you.
	No, sorry, if you don't have another question, I'm not sure if we have another caller.
	Might as well move on to the next day because I seem to have mental gapped and forgot what I was going to say.
	No problem.
	Thanks for your call.
	So, I thank you everybody so much.
	I just, you know, I know I thank you a lot, but boy, oh boy, is it heartfelt.
	I feel, I mean, very privileged, literally honored to be able to go and represent Philosophy, this community, you name it.
	That's because of the generosity of people who donate time, energy, and money to this show, to what it is that we're talking about here.
	So if you've sent in some bucks, if you've donated some time, if you've promoted the website, if you've sent some videos around, you name it.
	Well, I just really, really wanted to tell you how much I appreciate it.
	I have, of course, a lot more speaking to do.
	This year, it's been quite a lot of speaking, but there's going to be even more to go.
	And this is only possible because of the support that you all have given the show.
	So thank you a million fold so much to everyone for helping out and spreading this conversation.
	You know, one day last month, we had 150,000 downloads and views.
	That's really quite something.
	And that is really quite amazing if we keep this up.
	There really is no limit.
	Think of, you know, 40 to 50 million probably now downloads and views just of the books, the podcasts, and the videos.
	This would be counting all of the external sites that have embedded and shown things that I don't have control over.
	That's quite a supernova of reason and evidence in the Borg brain.
	And I think we can be incredibly proud with what we've achieved here as a community.
	I certainly am.
	Have yourself a wonderful, wonderful week, freedomainradio.com forward slash donate if you want to, and it's all massively appreciated.

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