Aug. 22, 2012 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:48:02
2201 The Mechanics of Death by Debt - Stefan Molyneux of Freedomain Radio Interviewed
Stefan Molyneux, host of Freedomain Radio, is interviewed on a variety of topics, including: - What is voluntarism? - What is the real difference between private versus public? - What is the philosophy of forgiveness? - How can we best identify evil? - How can we best escape political hierarchies? - What are the benefits of technological unemployment? - How does a free market deal with monopolies? - What would a society that really loved its children look like? - What are the ethics of eating meat?
Stefan Malony, welcome to Volunteer Responsibility.
Thank you very much.
It's great to be here.
It's great to have you on.
Welcome, Stefan.
Hi.
Yeah, we've been talking to you for a while, but I'm glad we could finally get you on here.
We're going to make this a really powerful hour, and I guess we can just jump right into it.
I guess I'll ask you a question first, and then Emily...
We can just go back and forth, I guess, drilling them all night long.
I've already kind of given an introduction for you, Steph, Bon.
You already kind of missed that part, which you don't need too many.
You've been introduced lots of different places many times and for the right reasons.
But I just wanted to...
How are you doing?
How's life been treating you?
Life's been great.
I've been doing quite a tour this summer.
I just spoke in Texas, in Brazil, in California, in Vancouver, and I'm going to head out to be the host of the three-day Libertopia.org festival.
It's a lot of travel, and I travel with my wife and my three-year-old daughter, who is actually a great traveler, so it's a real pleasure.
Travel is great, because I feel like a boomerang.
It's real exciting to be out there flapping my gums for the course, and then it's really, really great to get back home.
So it's really the best of both worlds.
That's very exciting, Stefan, that you're out there doing all kinds of speaking engagements, and the fact that you get to take your wife and daughter along with you is It's quite nice.
I do remember seeing a beautiful little girl who I assume was your daughter at the Ethical Anarchy panel.
Yes.
Yeah, that's right.
And she's a big fan of the microphone.
So when we were...
I debated a Marxist professor for a couple of hours in Brazil, and then she serenaded the crowd with Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and Brittany brought the house down.
Yeah, it's very nice.
I saw that.
It was beautiful.
She's a beautiful little girl.
Congratulations.
Oh, she is.
Thank you.
Well, you know, mostly my wife's doing, but I had a hand in it.
To both of you, congratulations.
Thank you.
So, hey, Stephon, you know, really what you're known for, I think, mostly is just speaking the truth.
You know, you're just a guy who goes around and you kind of shoot down myths, and you're a myth buster better than the people on the TV. And, you know, really, you do a great job of studying volunteerism.
Give people a chance who've never heard our radio show before, never heard your message before.
Just a real quick summary of how you define volunteerism.
Yeah, let me first of all say that voluntarism is an embarrassing word for the human race.
And the reason I say that is because there really shouldn't be a word for what we do.
There shouldn't be a separate word, it shouldn't be distinct, because really all it is is non-violent human interaction.
Trade, love, child-raising, associations, congress, not the...
Not the political kind, but the personal kind.
It's really just about not putting guns in people's faces to get things done.
And it really shouldn't be a whole separate word for that.
That just should be called civilized human interactions.
Like, in the ancient Greek world, there was no word called sexism.
Right?
And in the Middle Ages, there was no word called racism.
I mean, these things kind of have to be invented so that people can even begin to see that there's a problem with the existing way of doing things.
And so one of the things that happens is you sort of say, well, I think we should try and solve complex social problems without using violence.
And that's really tough for people to process.
It's sort of like until the end of slavery, it's like saying, I think we should have an agricultural system or a labor system that does not involve slavery.
And people are like, but it's always been here.
Slavery has always been around.
That's all that we've ever known.
How could we, you know, what you just want all of the fruit to stay on the trees and all the cotton to stay in the fields.
It's like, no, I just, I don't think we should be whipping and beating and enchaining people to get our fruit picked.
And I don't think that we should be initiating the use of violence to solve problems like poverty, to solve problems like drug addiction, to solve problems like medical care for those who can't afford it.
We should put down the guns, we should reason with each other, and we should recognize that with the advent of peaceful and voluntary human relationships...
Things or problems really get solved, and it's the only chance that they will ever have to get solved.
And we can't solve the problem of educating kids by putting guns in people's faces and demanding that they pay their property taxes, or we haul them off into a jail.
We can't solve the problem of old-age pensions by stealing from people at the point of a gun, blowing that money on a variety of political projects, and then stealing from their children to pay for the Ponzi scheme called retirement.
We can't deal with the problem of healthcare for the poor by creating a legal monopoly on doctors, by creating a legal monopoly on pharmaceuticals, by creating a legal monopoly and enforcing it at the point of the gun of government-provided healthcare.
These things may give us, you know, like any kind of drug, a short-term high, but in the long term, they're always catastrophic.
And I think that message is getting through to people now, only because, I've been doing this for like 30 years, the message is getting through to people only because we are neck deep in one of the worst economic hangovers in the history of recent economic memory.
The downside of violence, the hangover of the drug called violence is occurring for us now.
People can't find work, there's no economic future for many people, youth unemployment in some sections of the West is topping 50% and massive debts and deficits and fiat currency inflation all over and it's impossible to miss now.
So all we're saying is maybe the problem isn't this policy or that policy, but it's the basis of using violence to get what we want as a society.
No matter how well-intentioned we are, it's the use of force will always lead to disasters.
I think that's the essence of the voluntary argument.
But you said that you disagree with the term voluntariat.
So...
Well, no, sorry.
It's not that I disagree with it.
It's just that in the future, it would be weird that we have a word for just what will be considered natural, right?
So, like, in the past, like, we have a word called rape now, obviously, which is...
But in the past, you know, 10,000, 20,000 years ago, that was just the natural way that new human beings came into the planet, however unpleasant it may have been for everyone, for at least half the people involved.
And so the idea that we have to invent...
That rape is natural?
No, I'm not saying rape is natural.
I'm saying that rape was commonplace in a lot of societies, you know, the warlike societies.
I mean, Genghis Khan and his soldiers, and you see it, of course, all over the place in the Old Testament, the warrior right was unpleasant.
That society had a word for, you know, non-consensual sexual relationships.
I'm sure that the people at that time had a word for it, so...
Yes, but they wouldn't have a word.
I don't think that they would have had a word as yet for, you know, what we all want as a society, which is, you know, peaceful, harmonious, and equal gender relationships.
They wouldn't have a word for that, really, I mean, because women were property and so on.
And so, like, in the Middle Ages, there was no real concept of the rights of children, and so on.
So...
It's a word to be introduced, but it's kind of embarrassing, in a way, for me at least, that we have to have a word which means we're going to try and solve social problems peacefully rather than violently.
And that word is a word that people have almost never heard of.
I mean, it should just be the natural way that things are done, but we have to have a word for it because it's such a foreign concept for people.
Yeah.
Maybe I'm misconstruing what you're saying, but I feel like I'm hearing that Rape should not be a word, because that's the natural, war-like way of people?
So let's say that you're talking, I don't know, in Genghis Khan's, you know, rape and pillage society, and you wanted to say, you know, well maybe we should just not rape people, and maybe women should be equal, and maybe everyone should have the right of voluntary associations and divorce and all these kinds of things.
Well, you'd have to introduce a whole new concept, a whole new set of words to even describe that.
People wouldn't have the language for it.
And in the same way, we're sort of saying, or at least I'm sort of saying, let's have peaceful and voluntary social interactions.
And it's kind of embarrassing to have to invent a word for it because we're so steeped in a culture and in a history of using the force and the power of the state, of weaponry, of incarceration, of law, We're so used to using that to solve social problems that we kind of have to invent a word called, let's not use violence.
In the future, I think it'll be kind of remarkable when this is commonplace to not use violence to solve social problems.
Do you not think that words are important and attach a meaning to what we say and do in society today?
I understand what you're saying about the past, but the past does have relevance.
To today's society, but doesn't today's society have the words that we use have relevance for today?
They do.
They do, and I don't want to get hung up on this word or the way that I'm approaching it.
I mean, I'd rather move on to other topics.
I'm just saying that I wish it wasn't such a novel idea that we use peaceful.
And I think that, you know, maybe a lot of people who are tuning into this show may not be understanding exactly what you're saying, since I'm not.
I understand that you're saying that these words were invented as time passed, but don't they have relevance in today's society to denote the things that are actually happening?
And isn't the erosion of using words to define what's happening in the world going away?
And isn't that a detriment to today's society?
Yeah, I'm not sure what all that means, but all I'm trying to say is that, to me, saying that we should solve problems peacefully and having to introduce a word for it that people have never heard before is kind of ridiculous in a way.
I mean, I understand this is where society is at the moment.
I'm not saying that's where you are or where your listeners are.
But it just seems kind of sad in a way that we have to bring up a word that people have never heard before called, let's get together and solve problems peacefully.
Because, of course, that's...
How we should solve problems is voluntarily and peacefully.
But for there to have to be a word that people have never heard of called let's not use violence to get things done, it's just a sad state.
I think it's a sad commentary on where we are as a society.
I completely agree.
It is really sad.
We're kind of arguing semantics here, if anything.
I'm kind of curious.
Let's dive a little deeper into volunteerism here and help our listeners understand what it really is.
And before we can do that, I want to hear how you came to volunteerism itself.
When did this happen?
What were your greater influences?
Well, for me, it was kicking and screaming entirely unwillingly.
I spent more than 20 years really in the objectivist camp.
Ayn Rand was a huge influence for me, and I'd actually never heard of the great libertarian-slash- Anarchist or voluntarist thinkers such as Hoppe and Rothbard and the other, even Lysander Spooner in many ways.
I'd never even heard of them.
They'd never been discussed.
I'd never been part of my reading schedule.
And so I was just in a debate.
I was in the business world.
I was an entrepreneur for about 15 years.
And I was director of technology at a company.
And I was having a debate with a couple of people in the company.
And we were talking about...
pollution, you know, the usual problems, without a government, how are we going to have roads or how are we going to keep the air clean or the water clean or, you know, feed the hungry and clothe the ill-shod and take care of the sick?
And it just occurred to me that there was ways that you could do it without a state.
And I'd sort of had the magic wand that Ayn Rand gives you to wave away particular problems with society where, you know, Ayn Rand has the sort of holy trinity of what the state The police, the law courts, and the military.
And she was a big fan of that stuff.
And so you get to say, well, everything else should be private, but these things should be public.
But then if the non-initiation of force, right?
If not initiating force is a moral ideal, which I believe it is, and I think it's pretty provable that it is...
Then giving the government a legal monopoly on the police, the law courts, and the military is the initiation of force.
Because if you want to go and compete with these agencies, does the government have the right to initiate force against you for the simple act of peacefully competing with you?
And so I started to work on a theory, and I started to publish articles, I guess about seven years ago.
On how you could deal with problems of criminality, how you could deal with problems of dispute resolution and so on without involving a state.
And I call this sort of a DRO theory or dispute resolution organization.
I tried to show how it could work logically and economically and so on.
And from there, it just was like letting go of, you know, it's like going from a deist to an atheist.
You just kind of let go of the last contradictions, and there is a kind of purity and a kind of relaxation, I suppose, once you become fully consistent with the non-aggression principle.
I think that there's an old statement which says, what's the difference between a libertarian and a voluntarist?
A year or two, if you're honest.
And unfortunately, it took me a lot longer than that, and I can only claim that I... I didn't really have exposure to better literature.
I had to sort of invent the wheel by myself and then found out that other people had already used the Concorde to fly from A to Z. You know, real true free market privatized every service including protection services.
You've indicated these institutions such as dispute resolution organizations, DROs.
Can we go into a little detail about those?
Sure.
And I just, I hate to be Mr.
Semantic Quibble Guy, but I think the word privatize is a little tricky.
It has lots of negative connotations for people.
And of course, what we're basically saying is voluntary and peaceful.
Private versus public, I think, is a way of blurring the distinction.
When we're talking about private versus public, what we're talking about is voluntary versus violent, voluntary versus coerced.
So I believe that The initiation of force should be removed as far as possible from all human interactions.
And so, private is one of these things that I think if you say non-coercive, it's more accurate.
But a dispute resolution organization is the recognition of the fact that people are going to have disagreements, people are going to sign contracts and then not pay people, or they're going to not deliver what they want to deliver and so on.
And the idea behind a dispute resolution organization is that, you know, if you and I enter into a contract, we may pay a percentage point or two to have a third party adjudicated, right?
So you and I will both decide on who's our third party adjudicator and we will agree to abide by that third party's judgment if we get into some kind of conflict.
And we'll pay them a small percentage and so on.
And then if I welch out on my deal completely, don't give you anything that you've paid for, then this DRO, this dispute resolution organization, will sort of come in and pay you off.
And then downgrade me saying, look, this guy signed a contract, didn't deliver on it, didn't abide by the adjudication or anything.
And that makes it really expensive for me to get into my next deal because I just welched on my last deal.
So you have these sort of rating agencies and so on.
And these are not very abstract or futuristic organizations.
They already exist in the world.
I mean, eBay has hundreds of thousands of people who make their living off it full time.
There's no government involved.
It's multi-country, of course, and it relies on a reputation system and so on, as do other online auctions or selling places.
It's all very powerful.
In the past there were lots of these so-called friendly societies and so on that would get together and buy health insurance for people and life insurance for people and adjudicate disputes and so on.
There's lots of private mediation that goes on in the world.
And remember, of course, that the majority of protection in society is private or voluntary already, right?
If you go and get an alarm system put in your house, it's not the police who come and install it.
If you go and buy a car with a car alarm, it's not the police who've put it in there.
You know, those little annoying beep-beep-beep things that go on.
If you wander out of a store with something in your pocket you forgot to pay for, they don't come from the police or the government.
They came from the free market and private organizations and security guards, mall forces and all that.
These are all provided privately already, so it's not like it's a huge area that has never been explored.
It's just an area that people...
Have a little bit of discomfort pushing more of the envelope, if that makes any sense.
So it's just a way of allowing people to have dispute resolution without creating the incredibly dangerous monopoly called the state, which tends to eat their futures, sell off their kids, and get itself into all sorts of wars and predations against imaginary enemies, foreign and domestic.
Yeah, Evelyn, you wanted to ask a question next?
Well...
No, I do wonder why.
Some people tend to disagree with your education of challenging the family as you do.
I know that listening to your podcast and watching your videos and the fact that you had a very challenging childhood, as many of us have had, That you no longer speak to your family.
And, you know, with the show coming up, I've tried to promote it a lot with a bunch of people that I know, and I have had some people ask me to, you know, to ask you why you advocate for the dissolution of family, external family, just because they did not agree with you and how you lived your life.
So I'd like to examine that a little closely because I'm currently going through that problem right now and having some trouble with some family members.
So I'd like to get your opinion on how you feel about other people feeling that you're not, not that you're not, but that you don't speak to your family anymore.
Well, I don't know why that's particularly controversial.
I mean, many, many people get divorced from spouses and end up not speaking to them, so I'm not sure why that's particularly...
Why would there be a separate category for a family of origin?
Well, I think that a lot of people listen to your show, and I know a lot of people listen to your show.
It's the most popular radio show that I know of.
I've had some people tell me that they don't agree with...
Not everybody has, you know, difficult families, but I know that you have had difficult family problems in your past, and a lot of people have.
Now, I have had a very difficult childhood, but I still talk to my family, and I still love them very much, even though they disagree with me on almost every aspect of my life.
So do you think that I should not talk to my family anymore?
Sorry, just to interrupt.
I think one of the things that you brought me on the show for was because I tell the truth.
The truth is that adult relationships are voluntary.
And if you have problems with your family, if you have an abusive family, then you are free to not see them.
I mean, just as if you have an abusive marriage, you're free to leave that marriage.
You're free to leave abusive relationships.
I've never told people to leave abusive relationships.
I merely remind them of the legal, moral, and empirical fact that they are free to leave abusive relationships if they so choose.
That's a fact.
But to say, look, this is something that people...
I wouldn't even call it a mistake, because I don't think it's quite that innocent.
But if you say, look, if someone comes to you and says, look, I'm in this terrible marriage, my husband screams at me and beats me up and stuff like that, and you say, well, you know, you're legally allowed to leave the guy, and then that person does, that's not the same as saying every woman should leave her husband.
Do you understand?
Right.
But what about forgiveness?
What about what?
What about forgiveness?
Do you advocate for forgiving your family for certain things that they do or everything that they do?
Well, I don't think I can advocate forgiveness any more than I can advocate love.
I think that forgiveness has particular standards, I think, that are kind of rational and objective.
I think forgiveness, like love, like trust, it has to be earned.
I don't think people can will forgiveness any more than they can will falling in love or sexual desire or anything like that.
I think it's something that is elicited by the virtuous actions of another person.
But doesn't that heal that person?
Don't you feel like that brings some kind of peace?
To that particular person if they forgive others for the transgresses or the actions of others against them and not hold a grudge against that person or harbor hate in their heart for that person?
I mean, it's a great question, and I know that there's a kind of typical belief that's out there.
I'm not saying this is your particular belief or that your beliefs are typical, but there's a typical belief that says that the only two choices in life, if somebody's done you significant wrong, is, you know, you harbor bitterness and hatred and anger and resentment towards that person, and it poisons all of your other relationships, or there's a magic wand called forgiveness that you can will that gives you peace of mind and so on.
I don't find that to be true.
I mean, I'm not saying it's not true.
I just, I don't think it's true.
I think that what is true, I think what gives peace of mind to people is certainty.
You know, they say in relationships you need closure.
And I think closure is certainty.
And this is why in my particular advocation, if people are having difficulty in their relationships, whatever those relationships are, I mean there's two things that I think are necessary.
The first thing is you go and talk to the person that you are having problems with and you open your heart and you tell them everything that's going on in your mind and you, I've got a whole book about this called Real Time Relationships about how to be honest in the moment about your emotional experience of the relationship.
And through that process, I hope that people connect with each other.
Now, this doesn't always happen because, you know, the other person may act well or may act badly in those situations.
And I also think that professional therapy is very important if you're having trouble in any sort of primary relationship in your life, whether it's spousal or fraternal or, you know, I'm a huge fan of talk therapy.
So I think those two things are very important.
But I don't think you can will forgiveness.
And the reason that I don't think you can will it is that there are some people In my life, who've done me harm, who have apologized and have made restitution and so on, just as I have if I've harmed people.
And those people, I think, could do the right thing.
None of us are perfect.
We all make mistakes.
We all do things that either consciously or unconsciously cause other people distress or harm.
And so, those people who have harmed me, who have apologized and made restitution, we're even closer.
I mean, in a sense, you can almost be grateful for the problems because it's exposed some nobility on both sides, I think, that create closeness.
But there are other people who've done harm who have not apologized and have only heaped more harm upon the harm they've done before.
I don't think I can rationally or morally or justly have the same emotional reaction to the people who've taken responsibility for the runs they've done, who've apologized, who've made restitution, versus the people who've just doubled down and continued or escalated the abuse.
So I don't think that willing, I don't think I can justly have the same reaction to both people.
Like I can't have this, you know, someone gives me a hug and someone punches me in the face, I can't have the same emotional reaction.
So I think that forgiveness is something you need to be open to.
I think that it's something that other people need to earn, just as I need to earn it if I've wronged people.
But I don't think it's something we can will, and I don't think that if we don't manage to achieve forgiveness for someone that we're doomed to, you know, the sort of poisoned well kind of resentment, if that makes sense.
Well, thank you for that.
I appreciate it.
Yeah, good stuff.
Good stuff, guys.
We're on this tangent already.
I kind of want to stay on this with family.
I don't know if you've heard Stefan, but since Porkfest, I just found out I'm going to be a dad.
And so it's going to be my first child.
I'm really excited about it.
Congratulations.
Sorry, when is the baby due?
Yeah, February 25th.
And I find out the sex here in about three weeks.
So...
I think that's fantastic.
Congratulations.
Other than getting married, it's the most amazing thing that's ever occurred to me in my life, being a parent.
I'm a stay-at-home dad and I think it's the most amazing thing.
So I think you're in for a real treat and massive congratulations to you and your partner.
Yeah, I'm glad I just value it up front.
A lot of fathers don't find out until it's too late that it was something to value.
But when we're on this topic, I do have some questions and comments that some of my previous listeners and supporters wanted to ask you, and I think this is a perfect time to raise it.
This one comes from Scott Lazaroff, and he asks, what would you say to your daughter right now if she asked you, first of all, about statism, and second of all, Where do babies come from?
Do you tell them the truth outright?
I'm curious to how you're going to respond.
Yeah, I mean, she's still a little bit young to talk about statism as a concept.
She's three.
But, you know, we have seen police cars, and I've explained to her that, you know, if you go too fast, then they will ask you to stop, and they may, in fact, charge you a little bit of money if you've been going really fast and so on.
But I haven't really talked to her much about things.
Actually, I did...
You know what?
I did actually have a fair amount of luck explaining, believe it or not, explaining the European...
Debt crisis to her.
And no, seriously, I mean, I won't bore you with all of the imaginative ways in which I tried to explain this using monopoly money and a variety of plush toys representing the Greek public sector class.
But she did actually, you know, she really can understand it.
You know, if you keep adding water to juice, it's not going to taste much like juice anymore.
And of course, that's a good way to explain fiat currency.
Not much nutrition in mostly water with a few drops of juice in it.
But, you know, I've sort of mentioned this before on a different show.
I don't really want to talk about the state.
I'm embarrassed to talk about the state with her.
Like, you know, I'll occasionally watch the news because that's sort of part of my job as a podcaster.
But I'll make sure the news is never on when my daughter is in the room because I don't want to have to explain any of the images on TV of riots and wars.
I mean, I'm embarrassed to introduce the world in many ways to my daughter.
I really like the innocence and the positivity and the peace that she's living in.
I mean, she lives, you know, with my wife and I.
And, of course, we've never hit her.
We've never raised our voices at her.
We don't punish her.
And she's just, you know, wonderful and perfect as she is.
And I really don't want to go and explain the rest of the world to her.
I mean, it's tough enough if we're in public and she sees another kid being spanked or slapped or...
I mean, that's tough enough to explain.
So I think I'll hold off on the state for a little while.
And I think it's also not something that she can process much yet.
It's so far outside of her experience of sort of peace and a voluntary relationship.
As far as where babies come from, She's not particularly curious about that yet.
Of course, when you introduce the topic of birth to children, you are pretty close to introducing the topic of death, and I think that she's too young for that.
I am always honest with her, but that doesn't mean that I will tell her every gory detail about everything that she might ask, but I will certainly always answer everything that I say will be true, but it may not be the complete truth, if that helps.
Yeah, and one last thing before Emily asks her a question.
I wanted to kind of go off this a little bit.
You know, you continually focus and strongly, and I appreciate this, why children are really the future and how they're the answer to voluntarism.
You focus heavily on not spanking or, you know, just the topic of spanking itself.
You talk about how it's not even a debate.
That's actually a rational debate.
You talk about treating children with respect and love.
And you expound on, you know, why the youth are so important to basically the future of a field of freedom.
And I want you to kind of explain to people, once again, who've never heard this message before, why is it that, you know, raising our children right is so key, you know, 90% of the equation to spreading the message of freedom?
Oh, that's a...
Why don't you give me a challenging topic?
Okay, let me see if I distill this one down.
Well, first and foremost...
don't use aggression against our children because it's wrong.
Because it's wrong.
You know, I mean, there's lots of effects, right?
There's lots of effects.
Spanking lowers IQ, it increases aggression, it causes or is associated with increases in mental disorders like depression, anxiety, and so on later on in life.
So there's, I mean, there's lots of effects which are negative, right?
And, you know, boy, you get one atom of BPA in a baby bottle and everyone goes insane, and maybe rightly so.
But there are other much more challenging outcomes to child raising practices.
You 80% to 90% of parents are still hitting their children.
You can call it spanking, but there's such a power disparity between children.
Adults and children, right?
I mean, children don't choose their families.
You choose your spouse, and if you choose unwisely, you can divorce that spouse.
But children don't choose their parents, and they don't have the right of divorce.
They don't have the right of independence for natural biological reasons, that they're not economically independent and so on.
So, boy, if there's ever a group that we need to apply...
Sorry?
I just wanted to say that it's terrible that children do not have the right to divorce their parents or work or...
Well, but I don't think that can change.
...they should be allowed to do.
Yeah, but I mean, I think, I mean, that really doesn't, I mean, five-year-olds, you know, they may wander off if they're going to be really upset.
They may, like I did, try and sort of run away and so on, but it's not really very practical or very possible for children to have that kind of independence.
So, but the reality is that we don't take that argument anywhere else, right?
So, when women said, you know, wife-beating is really bad, which, and I mean, obviously, throughout history, there's been various...
beliefs about this.
And for the most part, it's been considered bad, but it's, you know, when feminism came along and said, no, this is completely unacceptable, they didn't say, well, let's wait for 20 years worth of psychology studies or psychological studies to sort of find out the long-term effects of wife-beating and whether...
No, it's just wrong.
It's wrong to hit people.
It's wrong to hit old people.
It's wrong to hit your spouse.
It's wrong to hit your sibling.
And it certainly is the most wrong To hit your children.
Because your children don't have a choice.
They don't have independence.
They can't say no.
And there's such a power disparity.
You know, wherever there's a power disparity, the person who has the most power needs the most moral sensitivity.
Like we all understand this in the workforce, right?
Like a boss can't really date his underling because there's a power disparity and there's not really that kind of independence.
And he, you know, controls her future and so on.
And so we, you know, adults can go date each other, but a boss can't really date his secretary or whatever.
Because there's a power disparity and so we have higher moral standards for the person who has the most power.
And the same thing with parents.
We must have the highest moral standards with relation to parents and their children because the parents have so much power, the children have so little choice and so little independence that we have to have those highest moral standards.
Now, the non-aggression principle as a principle is something that we all want to follow and we would love it if society as a whole would follow along and we would get rid of these horrible monopolies that the government has and in the long run the government itself replace it with peaceful and voluntary institutions to the flowering of all human potential genius and wealth to follow.
But we can't do that as individuals.
So I've always been most interested, you know, one of my central heroes is Socrates, and Socrates went into the marketplace and exhorted people to find virtue and to practice virtue in their own lives, in their own lives.
He didn't say to everyone, well, you know, once you've figured out what justice is, go run for the Senate and put your laws in place.
No, he said, bring justice to life in your own life, in your own activities.
The non-aggression principle is something so central and so foundational To a moral and good life, we have to find where we can put it into practice the most.
Now, very few of us are out there strangling hobos for their pocket change, so saying to people, thou shalt not murder, I mean, it's a great thing to say, but there's very few people who are out there doing it, and those people who are doing it aren't usually listening to morality lectures.
But where we can get real traction in bringing the value and the virtue of the non-aggression principle into life, into our lives, in a very powerful and positive way, is to abandon the use of intimidation, aggression, hitting, yelling, exercises of arbitrary power, Over children.
That's something that we can all do.
And even if we don't have kids, for sure, or almost for sure, we know people who have kids, we know of kids, we can bring this message.
You and I can't overturn the Federal Reserve.
We can't snap our fingers and wave away the national debt.
But we can reject, abandon, find replacements for the use of aggression within our own families.
And I think that is an essential message.
What that does, you know, I mean, obviously, it's the right thing to do.
So we should just do it for that reason.
The positive value of that in the long run is kids will grow up smarter, they will grow up without fear of authority, they will grow up without the habit of submitting to arbitrary authority, because that authority just happens to be bigger and more powerful than they are.
What is that going to do to people's perceptions of the state in the long run?
I mean, I believe that the state as a political structure, as a hierarchical structure, is fundamentally an effect of the family.
And And if we have peace and justice and voluntarism within the family, then it will spread as naturally as lava coming down the side of a volcano, although that's not the best metaphor, but, you know, it will spread naturally.
You know, what we want to do is race down and burn the villagers!
But that is how it's going to spread.
I have a question for you.
Sure.
I'm the parent of a teenage son.
And I have always raised him to be independent, and I have not been authoritarian in raising him.
So we are, like, going through this difficult phase of 16-year-old angst, and, you know, sometimes the things that he says to me, because I have raised him to be an independent thinker, and I have raised him to, you know, be his own person, and I don't raise a hand to him, and All of the things that you advocate.
I've tried to be a peaceful parent.
And, you know, now that he is a teenager, he's rebelling against me.
And, you know, how do you handle a rebellious teenager?
I know your daughter's only three, but do you have any insight into that kind of behavior?
Because you're going to be facing it, and Michael will be facing it in a few years as well.
No, I think that is a great challenge.
Do you mind if I ask a couple other questions?
Sure.
Was he raised with a dad in the house?
He was not.
His father left us before he was born.
Well, that's a challenge, obviously, right?
I mean, that's going to be a problem for his template.
So, you know, kudos to you and admiration to you for being a peaceful parent.
But there is going to be, and I was, you know, my father left when I was very young, just a few months old myself.
It does create a challenge for your definition of, I mean...
I'm sort of skeptical of masculinity and femininity as a whole, because they seem to me to be such social constructs.
And I had this great...
Mine as well.
Dr.
Cordelia Fine was on my show talking about how these studies of brain differences between the gender is pretty delusional.
But the reality is that children who are raised by single parents have challenges, particularly boys.
And so...
So that's one thing that is probably a little bit different from a regular parenting template, peaceful parenting with both parents and so on.
Did you use, when he was younger, how did you, oh, I even hate to say this term, how did you correct or discipline or, you know, when you wanted him to do something differently, what was your approach?
Well, mainly I tried to talk to him and I did employ, like, time out and Things of that nature when he was young, but obviously grounding and taking away things worked when he was, you know, up until he was about 12, but now those things don't work anymore.
Yeah, I mean, this is the great challenge.
Yeah, this is the great challenge.
Sorry to interrupt, but this is the great challenge with the exercise of parental power.
And, you know, please understand, I'm not sort of accusing you of being nasty to your son or anything like that, but, you know, certainly a timeout is an exercise of parental power.
You're bigger and you can make him go in the timeout.
Taking things away from him, that is an exercise of parental power.
You're bigger and you can take it away from him.
You have more authority and therefore you can take it away from him.
These aren't, of course, the same as reasonable arguments and negotiations with an equal.
And I mean, I get into all kinds of hot water here.
So, you know, I say this with all due caution and tentativeness, not knowing much about your history.
But if you've had a history where correction involves the exercise of parental power of size and strength, then when he gets bigger, my guess is, you know, my guess would be that he has internalized, well, when you get bigger, you get to get your way more often.
Just as when mom was bigger, you know, she got to get her way with me and correct me.
Now that I'm getting bigger, that balance of power is shifting towards me.
And that may be something to discuss.
I mean, maybe, I mean, I would sit down, again, I can't tell anyone else what to do about personal relationships.
I can only sort of say what I would do, is I would sit down and say, okay, well, so tell me what you think about this, you know, the timeouts and taking away stuff.
Did it make sense to you?
Did it work for you?
Was it the right thing to do?
In hindsight, could we have done it differently or better and so on?
And that would be my suggestion.
You know, when people fight you, I think that the most important thing to do is to open your heart to absorb as many of their complaints and problems about you as possible without fighting back, without justifying, without, you know, and that doesn't mean that you accept them all.
But I think rebelliousness is really deep down a cry to be heard.
A cry to be heard about discontents, a cry to be heard about problems.
And so, you know, the listening and to be open to, you know, even with all the best intentions and even, you know, even though I abandoned 70% of parental authority, you know, sort of standard discipline stuff like spanking or yelling or whatever.
But maybe I kept 30% and maybe that 30% is sort of a thorn in his paw and there's something to talk about and discuss with that.
I mean, off the top of my head, that would be my particular thought.
Because I think this is all, you know, if you exercise power as a parent, well, you always get weaker and they always get stronger.
You know, that's the backlash that can sometimes happen.
Again, I don't want to offend you, and I certainly don't.
I'm just speaking completely off the cuff here, but does that help at all?
Yeah, you're not offending me at all, and that is the tactic that I have tried to use, is just talking to him.
I think that it's worked in some ways, but we'll keep trying and see how it works.
Sorry, just two more little questions.
Number one, sorry, could you just tell me how he was educated?
Well, he was educated in the school system until seventh grade, and then I pulled him out of seventh grade, and I have unschooled him since.
Okay, and are you a religious family?
No, we're not religious.
Okay.
All right.
Sorry.
First of all, I think that's great.
I'd like to talk to you another time perhaps about the unschooling because I'm mulling that one over and I've got some friends who've recently yanked their kids and gone the unschooling route.
I'm quite fascinated by that.
But sorry, the other host had a question.
Yeah, I'm fascinated by that whole topic.
That's a part of libertarianism and voluntarism that still blows what's left of my hair off the top of my scalp.
So I'm always happy to hear more.
All right.
Well, great.
Thank you for your honesty.
I do appreciate it.
You're welcome.
And Stefan, you know, I think we see a big push today as far as people getting together, volunteers getting together.
You know, obviously, we're all talking about Porkfest.
That's just one of the events.
Obviously, you're talking about a list of events you've been at recently and future events you're going to be going to.
What do you think about this move to New Hampshire?
I'm still personally over in North Carolina.
I've been invited To a North Carolina-type pork fest deal that Chase Rachel's and, you know, a few other people, Justin Stout, are starting up over in, I think, close to Asheville.
But what do you think about volunteers getting together?
You know, I like kind of just staying where I'm at.
It's kind of like I feel like I'm spitting in the face of status.
I'm like, well, you want me to move out of your region?
That's what you guys always tell me, you know, whenever I get into a discussion with you guys.
And I talk about how you guys shouldn't be able to point guns at me.
And they say, well, move, you know.
Well, I kind of like one, Matt.
What do you think?
What are your ideas and feelings towards, you know, volunteers getting together?
Obviously, I understand the whole voluntarist versus, I mean, if you want to do it, do it.
If you don't want to do it, don't do it.
But do you think it's a good strategy for, you know, future growth for the voluntarist message?
Well, I mean, there's two aspects to the Free State Project, I think, is what you're talking about.
And, I mean, the one aspect is that they want to try and get some voting block that's going to bring more voluntary practices into their legal system and so on.
I... I don't accept that political action does anything other than feed the beast and waste your time.
So I'm not a big fan of political action, but I am a big fan of community.
I think community is very, very important.
And I have, of course, a different view of community now that I'm a dad than I did before I was a dad.
And so if you're going to be a dad soon, that may be something you want to think about.
You know, who's going to hang with your kid and who do you trust and all that kind of good stuff.
But I think moving...
To a place where there are people of like mind, you know, it kind of makes sense.
I think that you don't want to have to keep re-explaining everything from the ground up every time you meet someone or hiding your beliefs or, you know, libertarianism is kind of the new gay, right?
You can fake it in society, but you'd rather not have to.
So what I'm saying is move to a gay village.
That's really what I'm saying.
But no, I think that if you can move to a place where you can feel comfortable with the people and, you know, you have similar value sets, I think that's really great.
Moving to go and change the government, I think, is bleh.
You know, I mean, it's like trying to join the mafia and turn it into a charity.
It doesn't work.
That's not what it's for.
It's not the essence of the organization.
Well, if you get enough votes, you can change the mafia.
I'm telling you.
If you're calling from the inside, please let me know.
But I think the community aspect is important.
And, you know, the virtual communities that come about through the internet are great for the exchange of ideas and for chats and so on.
But to me, it's not quite the same as, you know, all going apple picking together or whatever you want to do.
Yeah, good stuff, good stuff.
As far as, you know...
Looking at it, you know, you obviously have built this great collection of videos, and you do have, you know, I work like 50 hours a week, you know.
At my job, I just feel like I don't have time to just continue to pump out stuff like you do.
You're amazing in what you do and the volume and quality.
The book that you put out there.
Talking to the other day, Jane and Joe out here, so many people come up to me and they say, Mike, what can I do to help you?
And really, I sometimes get caught up in your head, hand out these flyers, keep talking to friends.
I give the best advice I can, but I'm curious to what you say to people when the average Joe or Jane walks up to you and says, what can I do as a guy who works 40, 50 hours a week To help spread the message of freedom.
What do you think would be the most efficient means for that end?
Well, you know, what I generally say to people who, you know, when I meet them at conferences or wherever, when they say, how can I help?
Your particular message, I usually carry like a Ziploc bag and a rusty spoon and I say, I can get a fair amount for your second kidney on the black market.
So, if you could just bend over, this might sting a little.
And that, you know, that, you know, the organ market is really quite lucrative, particularly in the third world.
So, that's one.
Now, if people don't want to go that route, which, you know, some selfish people, obviously, oh, I want to hang on to both my kidneys.
Yeah.
You know, where's your commitment to the course, man?
I don't have any, I just have a clostomy bag.
But, no, I mean, seriously, there's two things.
Two things, I'll keep things.
Two things, so I can look like, you can't see the video, but I'll look like Richard Nixon.
Two things!
So, the first, of course, is...
Don't worry about changing the world.
Just change the world that you live in, right?
I mean, change the world.
We don't have the time, energy, or power to change the world.
Because changing the world is to say, I have some direct control over the belief systems of other people, and we don't have that control.
So, focus on bringing virtue to life in your own life.
You know, reject aggression, reject violence, you know, in parenting, in relationships, and so on.
Reject pettiness, immaturity.
You know, all the little things that snag us up and tend to accumulate the barnacles and encrusted resentments that slow down the ships of our, So, you know, that's one aspect.
Live virtuously yourself.
Now, the second thing I think that is important is, I mean, fundamentally, you know, we're superheroes.
I mean, you know, I grew up on a steady diet of superheroes, and what superheroes did was wore enormously tight pants and fought evil.
And I believe, unfortunately, the tight pants movement that I've regularly tried to start at the libertarian movement has not caught on, probably because I'm over 40.
And people don't want to know whether I'm circumcised or not.
So I've gone away from the tight pant things.
And so what I suggest is that we are evil fighters.
You know, we are mutant ninja turtles of reason and evidence.
And the problem with the world is not that there's evil.
That's not the problem with the world.
The problem with the world is that there's evil that people think is good.
Once we see evil for what it is, we reject it.
You know, they always have these...
This just popped into my head, so hopefully it'll work.
You know, they always have these horror movies where there's some guy who wakes from his slumber in bed, and there's some vampy vixen who is slithering all over him and nibbling at his neck or something like that, and he's like, oh, she's so...
Beautiful.
This is so sexy and so on, right?
And then, you know, some light shines on her face and she's some crypt keeper hag, you know, some Old Testament 12,000-year-old hag.
And then he's like, he throws her from him and they have this big fight or whatever.
And the problem, of course, with evil is that it portrays itself as good.
It's very seductive and so on.
And so the second thing I think that people can do, other than just bringing non-aggression and respect for property rights into their own life, is to show the evil that's in the world.
Because once people see it, they will reject it, right?
So people like the welfare state because they think it takes care of the poor.
And if there was no welfare state, the poor would not be taken care of.
So of course when you say, well, the welfare state is bad or wrong or shouldn't be there, people think that you want to dance on the shattered bones of homeless people or, you know, all this kind of stuff.
And so for me, it's kind of like...
Again, I love the movie references.
There's movies where they have these lasers that are guarding the jewels that the thief wants to steal.
He gets some mist in the air and then he sees the lasers and he steps all over them and so on.
To me, philosophy is simply putting the spray into the air so people can see the lasers that are all around them.
This is the matrix that we live in.
It's not that the welfare state takes care of the poor.
I mean, who would object to taking care of the poor?
Well, nobody.
I mean, it's a good thing to do.
It's a right thing to do.
What we object to is the use of violence to do that because that not only violates the moral rule called thou shalt not steal, which taxation does, as does counterfeiting with central banking and fiat currencies, but because it's immoral, it has Negative effects in the long run, and we can all see that now with this sort of permanent underclass and this increasing wealth disparity in America and the other Western countries.
So it's pointing out the gun in the room.
So what I say, point out the gun in the room.
People say, well, there's a welfare state that takes care of the poor.
And the welfare state is a very abstract metaphor, Social Security or Medicare or Medicaid or, you know, public schools.
But the problem is not with any of these institutions or with any of the desires that are supposedly behind them, like Helping the poor, the old, the sick, the uneducated, and so on.
The problem is that there's a gun in the room that people can't see.
There are lasers all around us that set off the tripwires called arrest and incarceration, kidnapping and encaging you.
If you disobey these commandments, there's a gun in the room, there are lasers all around you, the matrix that gets pulled away is the idea that this stuff is voluntary.
The idea that laws and governments and prisons, that this is all voluntary, that taxation is voluntary.
It's not.
Taxation is the initiation of force.
Legal monopolies are the initiation of force.
Fiat currency is the initiation of counterfeiting, which is theft through the grandest scale possible.
And once we point out to people that it is violent, there's a gun in the room that is hard to see.
Once you see it, it's really, really clear.
And we need to put down the gun in the room and we need to start talking to each other as civilized human beings who want to reason our way through problems rather than just waving around these endless guns of regulations, laws, incarceration and jails and all this sort of nonsense.
Once people can see the violence that is not in our system, it is our system, then we can begin to find better ways of doing things.
So just reminding people, taxation is theft.
Law is an opinion with a gun.
The government is a violent monopoly.
National debt is selling our children off to largely foreign bankers for the sake of political bribery in the here and now.
It's all wrong.
It's all immoral.
The first thing we have to do is remind people of the violence that's all around them.
Then they can start to engage their superhero types and deal with it.
But as long as they think it's virtue, you can't ever change people's minds about what they consider to be the good.
Does that make any sense?
Yeah, it does.
And you know, we actually have a question from Zach.
He is unable to call in.
There's so many people listening to it right now that I guess there's a busy signal.
But he wanted me to ask this question.
Zach is Emily and I's other co-host.
He's not able to call in right now.
This is, I think, the best time to ask this question.
Now that we know that we can take this message to the everyday Joe and Jane and help them understand it.
There comes a point where you just reach some people who just don't care, right?
And the question really comes down to how much time do you invest into one person?
In other words, how long does it take For this person to just not have a continued state of ignorance before you just give up on them and move on to the next person.
I'm curious, you know, you obviously don't just go for one person, you hit a major audience all at once, right?
But it just seems that there's obviously an opportunity cost that exists between wasting time on someone who won't learn and using that time to enjoy life on other projects and to make better life and go to educate somebody else.
Right.
Well, for me, it's after the fourth restraining order, I will generally tend to cool it a little bit.
Just kidding.
Well, let me ask you this, our two delightful hosts.
How long did it take for you to start down this path?
Did it take a long time, a long convincing, or was it more like a supernova in your head that has dragged you along ever since?
How did it work for you guys?
Yeah, it was kind of quick.
You know, I became kind of a libertarian party type guy.
I don't know if you knew, but I was in the North Carolina.
I was on the executive board for the LPNC, and I was the political director for the state.
And it didn't take long after going to one ad forum and seeing just, you know, the bribery happening right in front of my face and seeing clearly what government was.
It didn't take that long for me.
Emily, what about you?
Well, it took me a long time, actually.
I had a lot of I was a Republican for many, many years, and I went to college and got a degree in campaigns and elections.
About two years ago, a friend of mine just sat me down and said, don't you realize that all of this is a fallacy?
I kicked and screamed my way through it, but eventually came out to what I like to call the light side and have been a happier and freer person ever since.
I'm really glad that that person took the time and the effort to show me, sometimes against my will, sometimes with me yelling and screaming at him, you know, he took the time and he disregarded my, you know, sometimes violent outbursts of, this can't be true, and he took the time to help me through this, and I just owe a big thanks to him for doing that for me.
And how long did that take?
But it did take me a really long time.
Yeah, Stefan, I know we're running out of time here, but I've really got some serious questions for you, and I think these are questions we need to have.
I'm sorry, let me just answer that first one.
Sorry to interrupt.
Let me just answer that first one.
Hold on one second.
Nick's not going to be on the show.
He's not able to come on.
So, Stefan, you have the next hour.
So, hopefully you can stay.
I can do another hour.
I can certainly do another 20 minutes or so.
So the answer to me would be, it all depends.
I think that you keep going until your heart says stop.
I know that's really not objective.
I don't think that if you've got a friendship of 20 years, you know, you don't give the guy five minutes.
You change your mind or we're done.
I mean, obviously that, you know, it can take months or, you know, perhaps even longer.
If it's some guy on the subway, you know, you don't follow him home and keep barking through his letterbox, you know.
That's not...
That's not going to do you much good.
So it depends on the relationship.
And it also depends if the conversation is enjoyable.
You know, if the conversation is like dragging your forehead slowly across a brick wall, then yeah, it probably wouldn't be something fun to do for a long time.
But if it's stimulating and enjoyable, you're learning something, he's learning something, you know, keep on as long as it's fun.
I don't think that we should martyr ourselves for the course.
I think we should recognize that this is a massive collective effort.
We're not the only ones who've got to drag this cross across Calvary.
And it's important also to live a happy life, because if we are continually enslaved by our impotence in changing the unchangeable, then, you know, I'm a little bit like if you, you know, dress for success sort of thing, like you have to be a pretty happy person if you want people to be interested in your philosophy.
You know, like if everyone around you is overweight, you know, and you want people to lose weight, the first thing you should do is lose weight yourself.
And then do all these fun things you can do when you're not overweight.
And then other people might say, hey, I like the way you climb your stairs and climb that tree and lift your kid up and, you know, go swimming easily.
Maybe I can get me some of that.
So I think that we have to, you know, be happy, want to change the world.
But I don't think it's wise to invest to the point where, you know, come join me in my misery of libertarian futility is not the greatest ad for opening the gates to the future, I think.
Yeah, I mean, you're right on.
I do got a couple other things I wanted to ask you.
You know, I got quite a bit to cover here, actually.
One thing I've always, I guess I have a hard time grasping, is how government will actually, you know, come about to it.
And I think if people saw it, it would make it a little bit more realistic if they could actually visualize it.
I'm curious, there's only two perspectives I don't really see, right?
There's one where the government kind of just goes, And slowly dies off as it has less and less supporters, which I guess in both these scenarios, there's going to be a mixture.
In the other one, I just see huge global events happening where there's going to be overinflation and just, you know, economies going to wreck and havoc throughout the world.
And a lot of people, you know, at that point, once they realize You know, there's not a government to really turn to at that point, or they kind of see it for what it is more than see it.
Like, do you think it'll take that shock of an economic collapse?
And to me, you know, it just seems like what we're trying to do here is create life's, you know, idealistic ideals, voluntarism ideals at a young age, and helping people, you know, kind of build their lives on that.
I don't know if a big economic collapse is really enough to get them to care that much about thinking about voluntarism.
Usually it's a knee-jerk reaction into more statism.
How do you see the state coming to an end down the road?
Will it die off slowly, or do you think it's going to just take some huge economic crash?
I'm kind of curious to your response.
Yeah, I mean, this is obviously, you know, LSD-laced prognostication helmet time, so, I mean, nobody can guess the future in any particular detail, but I will tell you what my plan is, is that I think...
An institution will not last if the problems which it says it's addressing get solved, right?
So, like in the West, there was this, you know, huge, you know, we wanted to get rid of polio, right?
And so everyone got a polio vaccine and so on.
And that problem's kind of been dealt with, so you don't see a lot of campaigns against polio or smallpox anymore because that has kind of been solved.
Yeah.
And so I think that people accept or believe in the need for a government for two reasons.
Two reasons for this.
One is for protection from evil people, and the second is help for incompetent people.
Right?
So, because there are, you know, robbers, thieves, rapists, and murderers out there, I need the government from the thin blue line to protect me from the marauding hordes of motorcycle-driving mohawked Mel Gibsonites who are going to come and shatter my secular peace.
So, that's sort of number one.
And the second is, yeah, there are people out there who aren't going to save for their retirement, who are going to, you know, smoke and eat too much and get lung cancer and diabetes, and we need to help people who are not particularly good at making intelligent life decisions.
So, incompetent people and evil people.
Now, if we can solve the problems of incompetence and evil, then there really won't be much for the government to protect us from.
You know, I don't remember the last time anyone came to my house door-to-door, an insurance salesman, and says, you know, I've got a great policy that will protect you against dinosaurs.
I'm like, unless you're talking really old Republicans, I don't think that this is going to be too helpful for me.
And that's because dinosaurs aren't really a danger.
And so it's really hard to sell people protection from something that isn't really that dangerous.
And so that's why we don't, you know, we don't put cages, we don't go into cages when we swim in a guppy tank, you know, because they're not that dangerous.
So how do we solve the problem of evil and incompetence?
Well, solving the problem of evil is quite easy.
And I will refer yourself and your listeners to my series called The Bomb and the Brain, which people can get at fdurl.com forward slash bib, where I have an interview with Dr.
Vince Felitti of the ACE Project and go through all the statistics and blah-de-blah about all of this.
So don't take my word for it.
Look at the data.
But if people have happy, peaceful childhoods, the odds of them becoming criminals I mean, yeah, maybe they get a brain tumor, they have some brain injury or something like that, and that will change their personality, make them more aggressive, but it almost will completely eliminate criminality if people have happy and peaceful, connected, intimate childhoods.
So that's one thing.
The second thing, of course, is that if people have happy childhoods, their IQ is going to go up significantly and they will have stronger relationships with those around them, which will solve the problem of incompetence to a large degree.
So, this is why, again, I focus on building the foundation of the future on happy, peaceful childhoods.
Because if we can have happy, peaceful childhoods, there won't be criminals to scare us with and there won't be incompetent people that we feel we have to use the government to save from their own idiocies.
And so, that to me is foundational.
Now, that's a multi-generational project, of course, right?
I mean, we could do it in five years if everybody immediately stopped hitting their kids and reasoned with them and so on.
I'm not going to believe that's about to happen.
So it's a multi-generational project.
Unfortunately, in a true Malthusian fashion, you know, reason rises in a straight line.
The government catastrophes are going up incredibly fast.
And so, you know, the problem I have is I don't think we have time for a multi-generational project.
And so I think what we have to do as much as possible is to point out as emphatically, passionately, hopefully entertainingly as possible, that violence has failed.
in the West, that our addiction to violence, which has been growing for close to a century now, that our addiction to violence as the means of solving problems has failed.
And if people will understand that the catastrophes that are growing in the West, which are still looming, and as Doug Casey says, you know, we're kind of in the eye of the hurricane at the moment, because we have patched up these collapsing walls with the nonsensical house of cards crap called, you know, fiat currency bailouts and massive printing because we have patched up these collapsing walls with the nonsensical house of cards crap called, you know, fiat currency bailouts
If people understand that it's coercion that has failed, that it's violence that has failed, that it's authoritarianism and brutality that has failed, Then people will immediately know what the solution is.
But if people believe, and this is what the propagandists on the state side are continually pumping into people's brains, I mean, it's just horrible.
It's like a Chinese water drip of additional matrix instructions.
People are being constantly told, what do you hear?
Well, the problem you see is a lack of regulation.
The problem is the greed of the free market.
The problem is that we're just letting people run rampant.
You know, the problem is the financial industry doesn't have a thought or care for the average American or the average European or whatever.
And that all may be true, but so what?
I mean, greed has been a constant curse of humanity since the dawn of time.
As Tom Woods points out in one of his books, blaming an economic crisis on greed is like blaming a plane crash on gravity.
Gravity's always been there.
What changed if the plane crashed?
So, people are constantly being told that it is a lack of government power that is causing all of these problems.
Our story, which is the true and correct and moral story, is that it is an excess of government power, aka violence, that is causing all of these problems.
If people believe that an excess of freedom is causing problems, they will clamp down and diminish freedom and we're going to end up with some fascist nightmare.
If people accept the argument, and more and more people are doing that, if people accept the argument that it is coercion that is the problem, then the solution is quite easy.
Like, if you think it's a lack of chocolate cake that is causing you to gain weight, you're going to eat more chocolate cake.
And if you believe that too much chocolate cake is making you gain weight, you'll cut back on your chocolate cake.
And so we just have to keep putting the message out there that it is the escalation of violence that is causing all of these problems.
And then you don't even have to tell people what the solution is once they understand the problem, because it's so obvious.
Okay, so let's see, where did he leave off on questions?
I had just solved all of the problems in the known universe, but unfortunately the phone system crashed.
So that's a shame, but perhaps when you listen back to the show, you will see just exactly how many problems I solved.
It's mostly just saying, hello, can you hear me?
Hello, echo, test one, two, three.
Okay, so some of the questions that were on here, let's see.
Paul Drums asks...
How does no government stop companies from having a monopoly if they have a huge financial backing and access to materials at a much lower price?
Did we go over that one already?
We did not, but that's a fine and fair question.
Well, because the first thing that I would say is that if somebody is worried about a monopoly on power or a monopoly of power, suggesting that a government be instituted to solve a monopoly on power is like suggesting that you solve a migraine with a decapitation.
I mean, if you're concerned about an agency in society that has a monopoly of power, creating a government with a legal monopoly to initiate force to engage citizens virtually at will, usually to print whatever money it wants, is not solving the problem.
The second thing, of course, is that the check to...
A monopoly in the free market, I mean, there's so many checks and balances, it's crazy.
First of all, the monopoly in the free market, let's say that there is some company that has a significant monopoly, they can only maintain that monopoly by continuing to serve their customers in a way that makes their customers happy.
So if the customers are happy, who cares if it's a monopoly?
So that's sort of one thing.
If they start raising their prices, then other people come in and compete with them.
And then people say, well, they'll lower their prices and then drive out the competition and so on.
But the problem is when you lower your prices below what you need to charge, I was an entrepreneur for many years.
You end up with a lot of debt that's expensive, slows down your company, kills your R&D. And sort of that's one thing.
So other companies will just come in and compete.
And secondly, of course, if a company is just big and overbearing and is a huge problem, then...
Other alternatives will be created, right?
So up here in Canada, there was a government monopoly called Bell, which was a telephone company for many years.
And Bell is now largely being bypassed by cell phones and voice over IP and all this kind of stuff.
So there's some carriage manufacturer and then some jerk comes along and invents the car.
And oh my god, the carriage manufacturer is now toast because there's a car.
I mean, there's this creative destruction all the time.
In the free market, you know, a hundred years ago, there were a hundred companies that were the top companies of their time.
I think there are only four or five of them left in existence.
This kind of creative destruction always occurs.
You have to please your customers, and if your customers are happy, who cares how big a company it is?
If you're not pleasing your customers or if technology changes underfoot, then, you know, the problem of monopoly will be solved.
But monopolies can only occur in a free society because of the voluntary, happy, and uncoerced participation Of customers.
And if the customers are happy, who cares how big the company is?
Right.
I agree.
I don't really care how big a company, per se, gets just as long as they're not blocking other people from, you know, submerging into the market.
And as an anarchist, Catholic person, I believe that the free market would decide that.
So that's a great answer.
I appreciate that.
Yeah, and companies use governments to block other companies all the time.
They do that through tariffs, they do that through import duties, and they also do that through patents and through copyrights.
So these are all status systems.
To my knowledge, and I think that there's a lot of economists who would back me up on this, there's no recorded instance of a significant monopoly in a truly free market environment for any but the briefest periods of time.
And the moment you've got a monopoly, you want to start charging monopoly profits, you want to start rent-seeking, other people just come in and undercut you, or people will find an alternative to your services.
It's just not a good idea to do as a businessman or a businesswoman, so it's not a big problem.
Okay, so Ralph Smith asks you to comment on the effect of technological unemployment on the future of society as more jobs are automated or otherwise made redundant.
It seems there will be less opportunity for traditional employment.
This is an objection to market anarchism I've seen from proponents of both the Venus Project and state socialism.
What is your opinion on...
It's not technological unemployment, it's technological opportunity.
I mean, if we wanted to get rid of unemployment tomorrow, it would be dead simple.
All you have to do is outlaw all farm machinery.
Lo and behold, everybody has a job cropping wheat with a nail file.
And that would be easy.
And so the introduction of technology into farming has allowed us to go and do other things like be web designers and karaoke hosts and sing on American Idol and, you know, do whatever it is that people do.
So, you know, I mean, 100 years ago, 80% or 70% of Americans were involved in farming.
Now it's like 3%.
Because we have farm machinery, and that's a great thing.
And so, you know, the fact that email has put some courier companies out of business simply means that there's other things for those courier companies to do.
Now, people who've got a lot of skills and time and so on invested in their particular business, they don't like it when things change, and they have to adapt to a new skill set.
I mean, I understand that.
debt.
There's a lot of human capital that you've invested in building a carriage that goes behind a stinky horse, and then the car comes along, and you've lost all of that.
And so for individuals, it's a transition, and it's a challenge.
But overall, we want to put people out of work, because what that means is that then things are automated, and people can do other things, right?
So let's say it used to take 50 guys to build a car.
And then with robots, it takes five guys to Well, you've got a car, and you've got 45 guys who can go out and do other things.
So you've got all the value of the car, and now you've got 45 guys out doing other things to add value.
That's how an economy grows.
The reason that technology produces unemployment at the moment is, I mean, there's many and various reasons, and I won't pretend to know all of them, but the two that I think are the most important is, number one, One of the reasons that technology is introduced into manufacturing is because governments gave a monopoly on unions,
a huge amount of monopoly on unions, closed shops and all of this kind of stuff, gave a monopoly on union power in the manufacturing industry, which gave half a generation hugely high wages and then completely decimated the entire manufacturing industry.
I mean, it's a carnage what's happened to manufacturing, which is a real challenge.
For a lot of people of, you know, average skills, average ambition, average intelligence, that's where they should have gotten their climb to the middle class.
That whole ladder has been completely decimated.
And so the reason that people introduce automation is the government artificially raises the price of wages to the point where automation becomes profitable way sooner.
Then it should have.
And so that's a huge problem.
A minimum wage does that as well.
This is why you've got Walmart experimenting with no cashiers.
I mean, it's tragic.
This stuff should be happening a long time in the future when there's much more of a transition.
Because there's all of this government interference in the market, automation replacing workers becomes much more valuable.
But unfortunately, because wages have been driven so high that automation becomes valuable, there's not enough jobs to pick up where people have been laid off from.
And so, it's just, it's another example of how coercion gives you these short-term benefits, like a bunch of guys got a whole bunch of money from having union privileges and now they've just blown up the whole market.
And so, I think it's mistaking government interference with the free market, with the effects of the free market.
But, my God, it would be fantastic if we could throw more people out of work because that gives them the opportunity to create new things and add to the value and growth of the economy.
I agree.
Well, Mike says he's trying to call in, so I don't know if you can see that.
Do you really need him?
I think we're doing great.
I think we're doing good.
No, I'm just kidding.
I wish I could patch him in.
I just don't know how here.
Oh, you can't patch him in?
Do you want me to try?
I mean, if you can, that'd be fantastic.
If you can't, I understand.
I know that can be a little difficult at times.
Let me see what I can do.
Do you know what his number is?
I think he's probably calling in from Skype, too.
I know when it comes in on the Blog Talk studio that it is all ones.
So I don't know if you can see that on your end.
All right.
So I think we've pretty much dissected Mike's personality to the point where he's probably a quivering wreck.
Should we move on to him?
We sure can.
Oh, Mike, are you here?
Okay, we should stop talking about you.
Okay.
Hey guys, I'm back in.
How are you?
Sorry about that.
Sorry about that.
No problem.
No problem at all.
Alright, so we just did Monopoly, what a great game it is, and how the government should use that currency instead of the pretend currency they have, and I think we're going to move on to the next question.
Alrighty.
Yes, let me look here.
Alright, I do have one question.
I kind of want you in this one question just...
Blow away, you know, I guess in essence we're all conspiracy theorists in some essence because we're all, somebody's always conspiring against us, I understand that fact.
What do you say to the conspiracy theorists who, you know, they continue to just cling on to conspiracy versus really trying to find non-aggression?
It seems a lot of them just would rather ride the train of proving 9-11 instead of getting to the root of what Satanism is.
What do you say to conspiracy theorists?
Yeah, I mean, I wish the government was conspiring against me.
I wish they cared enough about me to conspire against me.
I, you know, I don't think that the, I mean, the cows may feel that the farmer is conspiring against them, but the farmer probably doesn't give much of a rat's ass about the cows and their feelings.
So I almost wish the government cared enough about me to conspire against me.
I just think that I'm a resource to them like a, you know, a toilet bowl cleaner or, you know, something like that.
But look to the conspiracy theorists.
Yeah, you may be right.
I mean, I think you can spend a lot of your time trying to convince people of all of this stuff.
But, you know, if you pull over, like, let's pretend you're a cop.
Okay, let's really blow people's minds who are in the libertarian camp.
Let's pretend you're a cop.
And you pull over a guy who's got a bunch of body parts in clear plastic bags in the backseat.
And he, you know, the speed limit is 55 and he was going 58.
Yeah.
And he argues with you about whether he was going 55 and you say he was going 58.
And let's say you get really concerned and perhaps even obsessed with this three mile an hour over the speed limit issue of this guy.
And, you know, you take your photos to your boss and your boss, the chief of police or whatever, and he says, and you're like, man, I'm really fighting this guy.
I've been fighting with him for months.
You know, I'm telling you, he was going three miles an hour over the speed limit.
And you throw down these pictures, you know, here's the guy and this is the car and so on.
And the chief of police, You know, stairs, his eyes, you know, doing that Roger Rabbit bug eye thing.
And he says, did you look in the backseat?
And you say, well, yeah, I mean, of course, there's some body parts in the backseat.
But man, the guy was going three miles an hour over the speed limit.
And this, to me, is where the 9-11 crew and so on are.
It's like, dude, we got them.
I mean, the American empire has caused 30 million deaths since the end of the Second World War, according to some reports.
Governments as a whole have killed, murdered, slaughtered, decimated a quarter of a billion people in the last hundred years, not even counting wars, just throwing them in camp, starving them to death, shooting them.
We got them!
There are body parts littering all over the road, all over the back of the car.
We don't have to get them on three miles an hour over the speed limit.
We don't have to get them on 9-11.
We don't have to get them on JFK. We don't have to get them on the Bilderberg Group.
We don't have to get them on the Illuminati.
We don't have to reveal that they're shape-shifting reptoids from the planet Uranus.
We got him!
I mean, the deaths are everywhere.
The murders are everywhere.
The incarceration is everywhere.
There are almost as many people per capita in U.S. prisons now than there were in the gulag that Solzhenitsyn wrote about under Stalin in the 1950s.
We got them.
We got a signed confession.
We got body parts.
We got DNA evidence.
We got smoke and guns.
We got mass graves.
We've got the whole deal.
That case against the state is sewn up empirically, rationally, logically, morally.
We got them!
So stop worrying about these things which are hard to prove because we got all this stuff which they even admit to.
So if you want people to get that the government is a bad thing, don't pick the weakest, most controversial case that grubs people with most the wrong way.
Forget it.
It doesn't matter.
We don't need it.
But I think some people emotionally need it, and I think that's because they want to stay in the area that's controversial, because the area that's not controversial, the amount of deaths caused by governments, the fact that they use force, that they are a legal monopoly on violence, you can make that case in about three minutes.
But you can fight about building five and whether steel melts at this temperature or what this video...
You can go on like that stuff for years back and forth and people...
But that's to avoid the basic, there's a gun in the room, there's body parts in the back seat.
Once you make that case, you're really in a confrontational relationship with people who are resisting the truth.
That is a much easier, much faster, much less controversial case to make.
And the fact that people don't make it means that they're more in it to avoid the topics that matter than to pursue them.
Yeah, and I will say this.
I have found a lot of people, you know, coming over from the conspiracy camp to voluntarism a lot easier for the sole reason, for the sole purpose that it is much, much easier to swallow truth when you're already kind of looking for it versus those who are just kind of wandering around just the apathetic statist out there.
So I completely agree with you, Stefan.
Great points.
This next question comes from Martin Van Dilderen.
He asks, I'd like to hear you guys comment on planned obsolescence.
For those of you guys who don't know what planned obsolescence is, it's basically when a company makes a product and they design it to fail on purpose, maybe after a certain period of time, after a certain amount of uses.
That way they have to come back to that company to buy it.
Obviously, we already live in stateism today, but he's asking if we could comment on planned obsolescence and explain how the free market will basically destroy this ability that companies are given today to exploit that, like given a guarantee for X amount of years when really Yeah, I think he brings up an example here.
It kind of runs on for a little while.
He says, like, the initial nylon was virtually indestructible, but today it's weak, crappy, and Apple with its times of use hours inside.
What do you think about planned obsolescence?
If there is anything like that, obviously, don't you agree that it would be much harder to do that in a free market where value and price are always a stronger factor?
I don't know.
I mean, to me, planned obsolescence is you and I. I mean, I see my daughter.
She's getting older.
I think I'm sort of destined for the recycle heap.
I'm going to be pushing up daisies at some point and worms are going to be feasting their way through my brain power.
So I think planned obsolescence is sort of a natural thing.
Look, I mean, you could make a cell phone that will last a million years.
But why would you?
I mean, why would you?
I mean, you could make a 286 computer that lasted 100 years, but who the hell is going to be using a 286 computer in 100 years?
Planned obsolescence is natural because there's a price quality point, and that price quality point changes for a lot of people, right?
There's the Lada all the way to the Ferrari or whatever.
I mean, why would you?
But there's a sweet spot for people in terms of price and quality that is important, right?
So some people like the iPad at $600 and some people like the Lenovo at $99 because it depends on, right?
The Lenovo is probably not going to last as long because it's not as high quality and so on, but it's what people can afford.
And so the idea that there's, you know, I don't know about the nylon thing.
The more I hear about these urban myths, you know, like Betamax was so much better than VCRs, and yet VCRs, it's all not true when you look into it.
Because if, I mean, people want nylons to last longer.
And so why is there not a company out there producing nylons that last longer?
Well, I guess it's because the nylons that last longer cost four times as much.
And maybe they, you know, if you put your toe in with your nail a little sharp, it ripped anyway.
So what was the point?
Maybe there's no nylon that can survive that.
So there's a sweet spot.
Now, of course, companies design stuff to break.
Of course they do.
No question, of course, because if they had stuff that never broke, it would cost you like a million dollars for a washing machine.
And so, yeah, people design stuff with a lifespan inherent in it, and that lifespan is dependent upon a wide variety of things, but the most essential thing that it's dependent upon is consumer demand.
Nobody wants a cell phone that's going to last 20 years, because who's going to be using that same cell phone in 20 years?
They want a level of quality that works with the technological life cycle or whatever.
Whereas people want a house that's going to last longer than 10 years because they're going to want to resell it or live there to their retirement and so on.
So it's all dependent upon what people want in the marketplace.
But the idea that, you know, we all feel this sometimes.
I mean, it's an emotional thing where you're like, the warranty expired yesterday.
Oh, and it broke.
Don't you know?
I bet you they make it.
We all have that kind of frustration, but to my mind, at least the quality of things just keeps going up and up and up.
And so I think that it does happen.
I don't think there's anything sinister about it.
People are just responding to...
Market demands for quality versus longevity versus price, and there's a sweet spot.
They do lots of research to find out what kind of materials people want and are willing to pay for what they want.
So, yeah, people design stuff to break, but it's nothing nefarious.
They're just responding to what the consumers want based on a variety of preferences.
Yeah, I completely agree with you.
Coming along with this, obviously, we're kind of moving into property, maybe even more of an economical discussion here.
I kind of want to go back to a little bit more philosophical discussion, such as maybe the whole context of property in itself.
You know, there's the battle between the anarcho-communists and anarcho-capitalists and all that other nonsense out there that basically, you know, does somebody have the right to claim something, right?
What gives you the right to claim something that's not like you and your body?
What do you say to people when it comes down to ownership and property?
Do you believe it's aggression or not, and why?
No, property is not aggression.
I mean, you know, I made a joke a little while back about taking people's kidneys.
That's a joke because people own their kidneys.
I mean, what's the big difference between my kidney and a garden and plants that I've planted and watered and nurtured and grown?
I mean, the fact that my kidney is inside my body, whereas the vegetables I've grown are outside my body, it doesn't matter.
I mean, I'm watering and growing my kidney.
I have to feed it.
You know, it gets hungry.
It really likes Big Macs.
And so I feed it.
I water it.
I drink things.
Things that go through it.
You know, it wakes up restless sometimes, wants a snack in the middle of the night, and I have to push Cheerios through my belly button.
I mean, the fact that I'm watering and growing my kidney, why is that any different from me watering and growing a fruit tree or something like that?
The essence of property is, you know, people think that there's a fixed amount of stuff in the world, and if I take it, you know...
But the essence of property is things that you create.
Things that you create.
Things that weren't there before.
If I go fish in a lake and I bring a fish up from the bottom of the lake and I put it in a net and I put it in a fry pan, I've created a meal.
I haven't taken someone else's meal because the fish was in the bottom of the lake.
You couldn't eat it.
There.
And so I've created the fish in a usable state.
And so if I plant a fruit tree, I've created the fruit.
The fruit wasn't there before.
I've created it through my own labor.
And so that which you create, yeah, of course it's yours.
I mean, you can't say to people, well, you should be punished for murder.
But you don't own anything.
It's like, wait a minute.
I own that which I create.
If what I create is a murder, I own it.
I'm responsible for it.
I've created that body.
That person is dead because of what I did.
I'm morally responsible for that dead guy because I strangled him or whatever.
And in the same way, if I create something, whether it's plants or a house or fruit or whatever, right?
I have created that.
I'm responsible for that.
I own that.
And the same thing is true for my kidney and my toes and all the other things that I take care of in my body, all that kind of stuff.
So the idea that we can somehow differentiate self-ownership and responsibility for the effects of our actions, so that we own our bodies and the contents of our bodies, but then somehow magically there's another rule that's the complete opposite out there, I mean, I just think is...
It's nonsense.
It's just, if you're going to have ownership, it's got to be universal.
And that means in the body, outside the body, and it's fundamentally about that which you create.
So people say, well, homestead the land and so on.
Nobody cares about homesteading a land.
You put a fence around a land, who cares?
If I say to you, hey, you know, I've got some great swamp land in Florida.
It's yours for $10,000.
I'm not going to tell you where it is.
You can never visit it, and you can never use it in any way, and you can never resell it.
Well, you're not going to give me anything for that.
Because you can't do anything with it.
So the ownership doesn't matter.
It's what you can do with it.
It's what you can create, what you can produce with it, whether it's a base for your house, a tree, or standing there and having a great view that you love.
Whatever you can create out of things is what you own.
So I just think that the anarcho-communists, I think it's fine.
If people want to get together, buy a plot of land, get together, and then...
share kidneys, body fluids, you know, you name it, they can do that.
But they, you know, that's their deal.
They can go and get that land and go have a commune and do all they want and they can, you know, spend time picking nits out of each other's backs like a bunch of primates.
I think that's, I think, what it'll descend to as it always has historically.
But for those of us who want to exercise property rights, there's no rational plan in the universe that makes any sense that can deny us that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I completely agree with you.
I do have a question.
I don't know if you guys already talked about this one earlier.
This one's from Cal Salsa.
They ask, I would like you to explore the issue of culpability regarding non-reporting of a crime being committed by a third party.
It seems Stefan and Walter Block have opposite opinions, and I'd like this topic to be discussed further.
basically, you know, if there is a crime and you watch a murder, right, and somebody comes up to you and says, hey, did you see this murder?
You just don't fess up to it even.
Or somebody even comes up to you and says, hey, did you see it?
And you lie to them and say no.
You know, what would I know it's hard to formulate the future, but what do you think is a reasonable or maybe what will happen in the future with DROs in this regards? - Yeah, that's a great question.
And clearly, you're not initiating force by lying.
I mean, I think that's fairly clear.
On the other hand, if this is a serial killer, then the fact that you did not report the crime makes you kind of complicit in the next death.
Because if you had reported the crime, then the chances for the next murder would go down considerably.
So this is a very challenging area.
I personally, you know, for me, when I start talking about We're
good and evil.
But, you know, there's a difference between criminal and civil, right?
So if the guy is a serial killer, and it turns out that someone found out that you witnessed it, and then he went on and killed someone else, could you be found materially responsible in some non-criminal way?
I think it's possible.
I think it's possible.
But of course, there's a couple of things we want to do to make this as encouraging as possible.
Right now, getting involved in the legal system is a complete nightmare, and I think we all understand that.
So what we want is for, you know, to encourage people to report crimes.
DROs are going to want to encourage people as much as possible to report crimes.
So they're going to want to make the process as easy as possible.
You know, we're going to take a video testimony.
We're going to pixel out your face.
We're going to anonymize your voice.
You sign this.
Here's your deal.
And then you're on your way.
And we won't bother you again.
And you've done your good deed, citizen.
It's taking 20 minutes of your time.
And here's $5,000.
Whatever it is, we want to make the incentives as great as possible, whereas now the incentive to report crimes is pretty negative, I think, in a lot of ways.
So I think that'll kind of change.
I don't think it's a good and evil issue, but I do think it's possible that you could be found culpable in some way in a rational system of arbitration.
Again, it's not a perfect answer, but does that make any sense?
Yeah, definitely.
Definitely.
I completely agree with you.
I'm kind of running out of questions for tonight.
Hopefully I can have you on the show sometime down the road.
But I do want you to expound on what national debt is.
A lot of people, they hear this.
You have a great video out there as well.
What's it called?
The Money That's Sold Abroad Is You.
I think that's the title of it.
What do you mean by that?
What is national debt?
Well, national debt is enslavement.
I mean, it's nothing fundamentally more complicated than that.
I mean, of the average American baby, you know, I hate to say this about your upcoming boy slash girl, but born about a half a million dollars in debt.
I mean, this is...
It's debt slavery.
It's debt serfdom of the most primitive medieval slash Egyptian pharaoh building pyramids model that you can imagine.
So, I mean, there's a fundamental, you know, you never hear this in the media.
I mean, the media is losing a lot of viewers because they don't have a business plan called, hey, let's think about telling the truth.
We don't even think about that in the media anymore.
So all the Western governments are in debt.
Why are they in debt?
Well, it's for a very simple reason.
The reason that Western governments are in debt is that democracy cannot work unless you can give people more than you tax them.
I mean, it can't work, right?
So there's almost no government programs that are ever funded by tax increases that cover the cost in the here and now.
They're funded through debt and through money printing.
That way people get benefits immediately while the costs of them are deferred through debt to the next generation or diffused largely among the poor and those on fixed incomes through inflation, through the printing of currency to pay for the government program.
In this way, People imagine that there's this magic money spigot called the government that pays for a bunch of stuff and their taxes don't go up to match.
So they get all these benefits and a lot of the wealth of the baby boomers came about because they got a lot of free stuff from the government and pushed the cost down to the next generation, those rat bastards.
So, debt is endemic to democracy.
I mean, if the government says, hey, I'm going to send you a $500 check if you vote for me, but I'm going to have to tax you $1,000 to send you your $500 check, well, he ain't going to get a lot of votes, is he?
Because that obviously doesn't work.
He's going to need more than he's going to send you because of the overhead, the tax collection, the evasion, and all this kind of stuff.
But if he says, I'm going to send you a $500 check if you elect me, And I'm not going to raise your taxes, or I'm going to raise them a little bit, or it's mostly debt, and I'm going to print a bunch of money, and the inflation's going to hit you a year and a half from now, and nobody's going to be able to trace it, at least not one person in a thousand is going to be able to trace it back to what I'm saying now.
Bribing the population with the money of the unborn is foundational to democracy.
It can't work any other way because you can't be bribed with less money than it's being stolen from you.
I mean, nobody who gets mugged, you got 50 bucks in your wallet, right?
And the mugger comes along and says, I'm going to take 50 bucks, but you know, you look like you got a cab ride home, so here's 10 bucks.
You don't say, woohoo, I'm up 10 bucks.
I've got it made.
I should do this every night.
I'll be rich beyond the dreams of Crocius.
I mean, that's not how people work in their heads.
It doesn't make any sense.
And so the reality is that debt, particularly debt that you can push off to the next generation, is foundational to democracy.
Because who the hell is going to be interested in a political race if they can't get stuff, if they can't get bribed, if they can't control other people, if they can't rob and steal and limit their competition?
Politicians get you obsessed with them because they can blow away your livelihood or make you rich.
I mean, fundamentally, it's why does anyone care about the king?
Because the king can get you killed and the king can give you gold.
The only reason people care about the political class is the favors and punishments they can bestow.
And so this is why everyone's in debt.
And the idea, you know, we say as a society, oh, we care about our children so much.
Oh, you know, children of the future, I believe.
There's all these songs that, oh, the children and all this and that.
I mean, what a load of nonsense.
You look at the empiricism of us as a society as a whole.
Children to us, I mean, they're worse than serfs.
We put them in these crappy schools.
We load them down with debt.
We throw them in daycares.
I mean, it's just terrible.
We use them as resources to avoid.
This is what Michelle Rhee said.
She's got a great book called The Bee Eater.
She was somebody who tried to take on government public sector educational unions in Washington.
She said, children are being sacrificed.
To keep peace among adults.
And this is what always happens in this kind of society.
And so, yeah, I mean, national debt is selling off your kids to largely foreign bankers for the sake of appeasing the politically dependent classes in the here and now.
And it's absolutely wretched.
It's absolutely immoral.
And, you know, I do wish there was a God sometimes who could bring a little hell and brimstone to this and wake people up to the moral evils that they're participating in by supporting these kinds of systems.
Right, and Michelle Reed, the D.C. public school...
Oh, I just lost the word.
My goodness.
She was the director, basically, of the public school system in Washington, D.C. And, yeah, she was the one that did the scathing report about the state of schools there.
I find her fascinating.
She's She's probably one of my favorite people.
She's fantastic.
This is somebody who practically and pragmatically actually cares about the children.
She fired bad teachers.
She promoted principals.
She turned around schools.
She got grades up, significant percentages.
She was really changing things for the better.
And then politics and bribery and corruption and democracy caught up and squelched her like a bug under a Mack truck.
And she's still doing, I think, great and interesting work.
And she's managed to maintain her optimism despite all of the trials that she's been through.
I mean, she's a real force of nature.
I think she's, you know...
I agree.
I don't care what people say.
I care what people do.
And I think she's...
Of all the public figures that I've seen over the last couple of decades, she's the one who really has cared the most about children in a truly practical way.
And, of course, she's the one who is...
You know what they say about pioneers?
You can tell them by the arrows in their back.
Right.
Right.
Okay, so the next question comes from Andy Voluntarius Matt, who asks, How do you justify getting married if you don't believe in the state nor in religion?
Well, I mean, marriage to me is a public declaration of, we're serious about this family.
You know, if you're just dating some woman for three dates and then you say, oh, I don't know, she, you know, she likes Justin Bieber, she chews with her mouth open and she had a piece of asparagus coming out of her hair, then your friends might say, okay, well, so if she's not for you, that's fine, right?
But if you say to your community as a whole, your friends, your family and so on, we are going to make a family, we are going to have kids.
So whether, you know, assuming it's mostly about kids when you're young.
So if we're going to have kids, we're going to be together.
And then if you say, you know, my wife chews with her mouth open, she has a piece of asparagus coming out of her hair, and you've made this public declaration that you're going to be a family and you're going to be together, then your community is going to say, well, you know, talk about it with her.
Work it out.
I mean, you don't just break up with someone because, you know, you're together.
That's your commitment.
And so I think that marriage to me is a communal declaration of, if I ever lose my mind and want to leave this woman, please try and talk me out of this.
You know, like this is, oh, what's that movie?
Goodfellas.
You know, where the guy's messing around with his mistress and then he wants to leave his wife and his hoodlum thug friends all come over and say, hey, you got a bit on the side, that's okay, but you can't believe in this mother of your children.
They push him back into the slot.
They push him back onto the wedding cake.
I think it's a very powerful part of marriage and I think fundamentally it doesn't have anything to do with the state and God.
It has to do with your commitment in front of the community To talk you out of doing something stupid if you lose interest for a while or you're not happy for a while, and I think that's really what it's about.
I don't think the state or God has much to do with that.
That's great.
You know, I believe that as well.
We have about five minutes left.
So there's one more question from Paul Drums, and this might be—I don't know if this is something that you want to talk about, but— He wants to know, if you ever came to an agreement with David Gordon from the Mises Institute, or are you still locked in a philosophical battle of words?
David Gordon.
Well, the agreement that we came to was I asked him to have a public debate, and he ran away.
So the agreement was that we weren't going to have...
Look, I mean, this sniping back and forth in blog posts to me is very grade 12.
It's not even grade 12.
It's very 12-year-old.
I think that philosophy is a Conversation, philosophy works when you get to do the back and forth.
It's a very kind of hysterical and over-controlled way to interact with people, to negotiate back and forth on blog posts and stuff like that.
I think you should have a robust conversation with people when you have disagreements.
And I've had lots of debates with people, so I invited him for a debate and he wouldn't do it.
Is it because he's afraid of public speaking?
No, he goes out and speaks and lectures all the time.
So I don't know why he wouldn't want to debate with me.
I don't bite hard.
And so, yeah, if somebody has a disagreement with me, fantastic.
You know, let's get together.
Let's let the sparks of contrary opinions generate the heat and light of new-tempered steel of truth.
You know, that's fantastic.
But if somebody, you know, snipes at me in a pretty insulting way and then won't even do me the courtesy of having a conversation with me, I move on, and I haven't thought about it in quite some time.
Okay, great.
So I have a question for you that might be a little off of what we've been talking about, but I've had this discussion with Dan D'Amico and, gosh, let me find the gentleman, the other gentleman's name that I've been talking with us about, which is fascinating to me because I'm a vegetarian and I disagree with speciality.
I'm sorry, did you say bestiality?
Yeah, as a whole.
Sorry, I'm just trying to think.
What on earth is the relationship between...
No, but I don't mind.
It seems like he's trying to make some relationship between vegetarianism and bestiality or rejection.
It's like, well, I don't want to eat this meat.
It's like, I don't want to eat this burger, but I will make slow, sweet love to it, as long as there's the right condiments on the side.
I mean, I just don't see how that really makes...
Here's where the conundrum lies.
I don't disagree with people who actually eat meat or kill animals for eating.
I don't disagree with them.
I think that everyone has their own way of eating and they get to choose how they want to live their life.
So I don't disagree with that, but I do disagree with Having sex with animals, because I don't believe that an animal can give consent to sex any more than they can give consent to being killed and eaten either.
So this discussion I've been having with several people has, I don't know, it's been interesting.
So what are your thoughts on that?
Well, I'm not often lost in words.
Okay, so first with the eating of meat, I think that I'm a vegetarian myself, my wife is a vegetarian, and my daughter will occasionally eat meat, but she doesn't really like it.
So we're mostly that way.
I would kind of like to not have a world where people eat a lot of animals.
That's my particular thing.
I don't think it's a moral issue.
I used to eat meat, but in doing research for my videos, I came across slaughterhouse footage.
I think people should just be aware of what's going on to produce the meat, blah, blah, blah.
That having been said, cruelty to animals is very much associated to beat the same drum with cruelty that people have experienced as children and so on.
So if we want people to treat animals better, we should treat children better, and I think that will just follow naturally.
I also think that meat is incredibly subsidized.
In fact, that's not what I think.
That's what I know.
Meat is incredibly subsidized relative to fruits and vegetables.
If meat reflected its true market costs, its consumption would go down enormously, but the government subsidizes it for a variety of political reasons, not the least of which is to keep the population dumb on red meat.
But anyway, so I think that there's a lot that could be said about that.
As far as speciality goes, I mean, it's such a, to me, it's such a psychological aberration that if somebody had, you know, significant sexual feelings towards barn animals, you know, I think I would just, I would cough up as much money as I could to help get them to a therapist to try and figure I would cough up as much money as I could to help get them to a therapist to try and figure out why their self-esteem was so in the toilet that they felt they had to go several rungs down the food chain to get sexual gratification
So, to me, that would just be such a cratered in and catastrophically low level of self-esteem that the bestiality would simply be an effect of that and you would have to try and figure out what happened to that person and how they could deal with it more productively than, you know, going out and, you know, shagging the livestock.
Yeah, good stuff.
All right.
All right.
Yeah, I'm also anti...
I personally don't consume meat.
I mean, obviously, we're all humans, and people have been bred and born into it as much as they have been, but I think over time, as people really see...
There's an old saying that there's a reason slaughterhouses don't have windows, because if most people really saw what was going on inside of them, You know, and I just say to people, you know, A&W has a great veggie burger.
I mean, you know, I don't want to proselytize too much.
Just give it a try.
You know, when I switched over, well, first of all, I mean, I found that my palate became much more sensitive.
You know, meat is like porn for the tongue, you know, because it's just such easy flavor.
You know, it's easy, it's stimulating, throw some marinade on, you've got instant flavor.
I became much more sensitive to other tastes once I got off the meat wagon.
And so just, you know, just give it a try.
Try, you know, salad with, you know, some really nice tofu.
It's really good.
And try a veggie burger.
You might be surprised at how little you're missing by switching over.
That's sort of my basic thing.
And much more healthier, too, you know?
Well, it is, yeah.
I mean, I know that there's a whole paleo diet thing, which occasionally erupts as, you know, pretty religious Mac versus Windows on my message board.
But, you know, I certainly, you know, I dropped about 25 pounds getting off meat.
Awesome.
I feel myself to be more alert, and I think it's great.
So, I just, you know, suggest people look into it.
Watch a couple of Slaughterhouse videos.
At least be aware of where your stuff's coming from.
I suggest Food Inc., which you can get on Netflix.
It's a great documentary about the horrors of the commercialized meat industry.
It can be very disgusting, but it shows the reality of what our current commercialized meat industry is like.
I just wanted to say, I just had to post that wonderful quote It's like porn for the tongue from you.
I just thought that was brilliant.
Not that I know anything about porn.
I've heard that it's easy gratification.
So I love that.
That is great.
Well, I'll tell you what, this has been a great show.
So glad that you came on Step On.
I mean, if you want to come on any time in the future, I mean, this was just fantastic.
The two hours flew by, I think.
I appreciate that, and I really want to compliment you on some really great questions.
I mean, not some.
I think all the questions were really great, and I appreciate the exciting challenges and the curveballs and all of that.
It was really, really enjoyable.
So thank you for being a great host.
Yes.
Thank you to our listeners for posting those questions.
Those were really quick questions.
You're right.
Thanks to Mike for asking people for their questions.
So Mike Shanklin did that for us.
Oh, and because this is going to go out on my...
You guys don't record, is that right?
Well, it was recording up until it cut off.
Okay, I've got the second part, but I just wanted to mention that I want you guys to be able to put your website out just to make sure my listeners can get a hold of you as well.
We will definitely do that.
No, like do that now because that'll be on the recording.
I'll go first.
My website is voluntaryvirtues.com and I'm also a co-editor over at Peacefreedomprosperity.com.
You can also find me on YouTube at Mike Shanklin.
That's my user handle.
So those are the top three sites.
I'm also on LiveLeak and Ustream.
I mean, everything.
I use what's called runeload.com.
And basically, it's like 18 different things on one fatal swoop.
So you can find me all over the internet, but those are my main channels.
And thanks again, Stefan, for all your hard work and time.
Thanks, Mike.
It was a real pleasure.
Thank you, sir.
Okay.
Well, my website is voluntaryvalues.com and I also write for freekeen.com, ladiesandkeen.com, several other websites.
And I'm the producer of Shire TV. And like I told you a little bit earlier, I'm actually going to be starting a new show on lrn.fm called Voluntary Values.
So you can find me there.
I'm on YouTube at Liberty Elm.
That's LibertyELM, which are my initials.
And, you know, this has just been fantastic.
And, of course, they can find me on Facebook, Emberlee McCullough, so I'm there.
