Oct. 5, 2012 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
17:37
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| You read that. | |
| It's not read. | |
| It's silver. | |
| Oh. | |
| So, is it... | |
| You ready? | |
| Am I in front of you? | |
| Well, the little function TV is... | |
| Oh, that's covering it, but is that... | |
| That's all just part of the... | |
| Hi, this is Alexander Meyer with thetrepanation.com and I'm honored to be sitting here about to interview the insightful and hilarious Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Name Radio. | |
| Don't pump me up too much, man. | |
| Otherwise I gotta feel like I gotta be funny and insightful. | |
| That's quite a challenge. | |
| I'll try. | |
| Well, we'll see how it turns out in the end. | |
| So, we're here at Freedom Fest, which is pretty much the libertarian mecca for the movement. | |
| This is the mothership of the movement. | |
| Yeah. | |
| And my goal here today, or this week, is to find out where the movement is heading, what the direction is. | |
| And so I guess let's start by asking you that question. | |
| Where is the movement heading? | |
| Ah, personal opinions, of course, right? | |
| That's the great thing about libertarianism is nobody can speak for the movement, but... | |
| I think there's sort of been these two trains running in parallel that have been designed to move liberty forward in the, I would say, since the 1960s, 1970s onwards. | |
| And it's a combination of education and politics, right? | |
| So if we can educate people about free market principles, then they will... | |
| Move more towards a free market centric society. | |
| And the other thing is that the way that we're going to achieve that is through involvement in politics. | |
| And so there's a lot of crossover, right, between academics and politics. | |
| And I think that those two trains are showing a little wear and tear. | |
| I think it's the nicest way that I can put it. | |
| I think that we've spent about 40 years really promoting education. | |
| I mean, how many books, how many blog articles, how many interviews and so on have been focusing on free market solutions. | |
| Which I think is great. | |
| I'm dissing education. | |
| It's fantastic and important. | |
| But it has not been enough to achieve what it is that we want. | |
| You know that whenever they release these job numbers, they say 80,000 new jobs. | |
| But remember, there are 150,000 new entrants into the job market every month as people come out of high school or college or whatever. | |
| Or they just stop looking for work again or whatever. | |
| And the same thing is true with libertarian education. | |
| You know, I don't know how many, it probably is around 150,000 freshly minted statists come out of the government schools every single month, you know, on average. | |
| And I don't think we're converting 150,000 or anywhere close to that to free market principles. | |
| So I think we recognize that, yes, we are having an effect on education, but it's been outstripped by what the state is able to achieve with its 12 years of coerced indoctrination camps, they're kind of outstripping us, as far as that goes. | |
| So education, I think, is not going to be enough. | |
| It's necessary, but certainly not sufficient. | |
| Politics? | |
| Well, political solutions have been tried, you could really argue, for about 350 years since Adam Smith. | |
| But certainly since the founding of the Libertarian Party in 1971, and if you go back to Barry Goldwater, who was very much a Libertarian in the early 1960s, I think 64, he took his big run. | |
| There have been a huge amount of, you know, if we can educate people through politics and we can have a political solution, and now the government is five to eight times bigger than it was when the Libertarian Party was founded, so that's not good. | |
| You know, I'm a business guy from back in the day, so I am, what are the results, what are the results, what are the results? | |
| And the results of a project called Education and Politics, I think, are not sufficient to justify the sole focus on those things, so I think there are other areas that are opening up. | |
| What do you think it is that's really holding the philosophy of liberty and volunteerism back from reaching the mainstream? | |
| I'm a big one for personal repercussions to philosophical beliefs. | |
| You know, atheism is sort of a growing movement, and in some places in Europe, I mean, 70-80% of people are atheists or agnostics, so it's very much the majority position. | |
| But why do people have difficulty giving up religion? | |
| For a lot of people, and this is not to argue the truth or falsehood of the religious principles, but for a lot of people it's because mom and dad will Freak out! | |
| Or, you know, I've got two cousins who are priests or whatever, right? | |
| They're afraid to upset the social norm. | |
| Yeah, I mean, we live in very socially embedded belief systems. | |
| You know, you could almost say that the matrix is our relationships, not even our ideas. | |
| And, you know, it's a bowling ball into a whole tier of chandeliers that happens when you bring particular principles. | |
| So, when people say, well, I'd really like a free market solution with a problem of education... | |
| Maybe mom's a teacher. | |
| Maybe dad's in graduate school wants to become a professor. | |
| Maybe their brother is the superintendent of the schools or something. | |
| That's really tough for people to make that. | |
| So I think that we've underestimated the degree to which being right It's not, it's uncomfortable for people. | |
| And so I think we haven't focused enough on how to help people to address the ramifications of libertarian philosophies within personal relationships. | |
| You know, being libertarian is like the new game. | |
| You know, it's like you can, you know, get away with it in a Sydney nightclub like this. | |
| You know, where half the people are wearing assless shams or whatever. | |
| But it's really tough to break out of that. | |
| And so there's a confessional aspect I think we've not dealt with enough and I'm certainly trying to deal with that in my show. | |
| So I think that's one aspect that is holding us back. | |
| The other, of course, is that there's just a huge financial incentive that is always growing. | |
| I mean, if we couldn't overturn the state when it was 10% of its current size doing it now, when I think 40-45% of Americans are directly dependent on the U.S. government for all or a significant portion of their income, That's pretty dicey to unplug people from that life support mechanism. | |
| I think that we face, and this is why I'm very glad that no libertarian is in power over the next, you know, significant power over the next couple of years. | |
| Because there is going to be a significant problem. | |
| They're running out of money, there's going to be, you know, the ruling class always turns on the dependent class when they run out of money. | |
| They'll bribe people like crazy, make them dependent on the state to buy their votes. | |
| But when the mass of those people is turning into a vampire, feeding on the body politic, they just cut those people out. | |
| We talked about, you see this in when Soviet Russia fell, when communism fell, they just stopped paying people attention. | |
| Or they paid them money in rubles that were worthless. | |
| And you've got these little old ladies selling pencils and tin cups on the street to stay alive. | |
| I think we are facing that kind of problem and I don't want libertarians in power when that occurs. | |
| Because then what are people going to remember? | |
| Hey, remember when we put that libertarian in power and the old ladies had to eat cat food? | |
| Oh yeah. | |
| So I think focusing more on the personal and focusing more on how we can implement the non-aggression principle and respect for property rights personally. | |
| There's lots of people who are a big fan of agorism. | |
| Which is the idea that you take free markets where you can. | |
| Maybe you work under the table. | |
| Maybe you work in a free market. | |
| Maybe you find ways to work without a license in a field. | |
| I'm not a big fan of disobeying the state because I think it just gets you into more trouble and consumes your resources in a way that is not beneficial to your life and, of course, the movement as a whole. | |
| But there are a lot of people who decide to do things that are legal, like trade in silver, like buy and sell services, or trade in kind, or swap, all that kind of stuff. | |
| And I think they say, their argument is, look, I don't need the state's permission to live free, I'm just going to go and live free and find ways to do it that are legal. | |
| I think that's a very interesting movement. | |
| You know, between a third and a half of the world's workers operate outside states. | |
| You know, they're either in the grey market, the black market, or the sort of criminal market, and so on. | |
| I mean, that's huge. | |
| I mean, what a proof for the fact that you don't need any of this stuff necessarily to have a functioning market. | |
| If they can survive, opposed to the state, you know, if they can operate in the free market, it would be that much more beneficial. | |
| So I think there's lots of things that are occurring that I think have some real traction for the movement. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Well, it appears that, you know, time is the one main thing that's... | |
| Eliminating that taboo to be either a libertarian or a voluntarist. | |
| But do you think that promoting smaller government in the short term is a good strategy to showing that it can work? | |
| Or do you think that you should stick more with philosophical ideas and try and work with people one-on-one to take it back into a different way? | |
| I'm very skeptical of a smaller government argument. | |
| And I come from a guy who I was very interested in politics. | |
| I started a political party in my youth, and I really ran the gamut of politics, and I have a great deal of sympathy for it. | |
| It's very tempting. | |
| To me, politics is this in Lord of the Rings. | |
| It's like, if we can get this on our finger, ah! | |
| But basically, the state has just gone. | |
| There's no final. | |
| So, I think that... | |
| I mean, some of the arguments I've come up with is, you know, when people support government policies, let's say that they support taxation for the solution of a particular problem, the moral, philosophical reality is that they're supporting the use of force against you if you disagree with them. | |
| Do I have the right to disagree with you without you wanting me to be thrown in a cage? | |
| There's a fundamental, civilizing argument to have with people, and I've used this a number of times. | |
| I did a whole speech in New Hampshire at the moment of the Liberty Force. | |
| The against me argument, right? | |
| Are you willing to have people kick in my door with guns, drag me away to a cage where I'm likely to get raped or beaten, just because I disagree with you about how we should solve the problem of poverty, or how we should solve the problem of the protection of property, or how we should solve the problem of drug addiction, and so on. | |
| I mean, I'm always willing to extend the courtesy of people that those differences in opinion. | |
| There's nobody who has a monopoly on the truth, of course. | |
| I don't want people thrown in jail for disagreeing with me, but I really do demand that right in return. | |
| And if people aren't willing to give me that right, I think we have the moral right, if not ethical obligation to condemn them in no uncertain times. | |
| So what do you see as the logical progression to achieving a voluntary society? | |
| And what kind of time frame do you think it could possibly happen? | |
| I think the shortest is multigenerational. | |
| The reality is, equal rights for women, multigenerational. | |
| End of slavery, multigenerational. | |
| I mean, even having a concept that the natives in America and Canada were harmed by white colonization took about 150 years, you know, 200 years if you cancel, 300 and 400 years. | |
| It's taken a long time for this kind of stuff to turn around. | |
| I mean, the way that I suggest that people start is, I mean, educate yourself about politics and economics and kind of reserve currency and history. | |
| I think these things are very important. | |
| You can't do anything about those things as an individual. | |
| I strongly urge people to enact the non-aggression principle in their own lives, which means obviously don't use personal intimidation and aggression in your own life. | |
| If you're a parent or you know parents or you know kids, I strongly advocate no spanking, no verbal abuse, no verbal aggression. | |
| This is going to have very powerful effects on how children grow, how their brains grow. | |
| You know, verbal aggression, physical aggression come for punishment against children. | |
| It harms their brain in very fundamental ways. | |
| It makes them more susceptible to aggressive authorities like status regulations and rules and the powers that be. | |
| It makes them more frightened to question and oppose authority. | |
| It actually shrinks their IQ points. | |
| And if that's one thing we need, it's a lot of people in the world to understand the majority of arguments. | |
| It makes them more aggressive. | |
| It produces a criminal class. | |
| It produces a drug-dependent class. | |
| So if we could raise children without aggression, we would have a free society in one generation. | |
| No doubt about that. | |
| That's an unrealistic justification because there's not a resistance from people who were raised aggressively to turning that around. | |
| But to promote non-aggression against children, in a world where still 80-90% of parents are still spanking or hitting their children, I think it's going to have a huge effect. | |
| I think if children are raised peacefully, we won't need to convince them that a peaceful society can work, because they grew up in one. | |
| But if we raise children with aggression and abuse and so on, then when they get older and the government is ordering around with a gun, it's like, this is what I've lived, so I don't really have any problem with it fundamentally. | |
| Really focusing on peaceful parenting, you know, education is great and all these things, but where we can actually put the rubber on the road as far as the non-aggression principle goes is within our arms and in the areas that we have influence with. | |
| I think that scientifically, empirically, and I think just from a basic humane standpoint, that's where the most thing can occur. | |
| Parenting is not much of a topic in libertarian communities. | |
| I'm really working on changing that in my show, but I think it's something we're going to need to talk about. | |
| Yeah, that's definitely something that I've been implementing. | |
| She's five years old and I've been implementing it with my relationship with her, non-aggression, and it actually came directly from you. | |
| And it works out very well. | |
| She's very intelligent, very polite, and A lot of people see her and they don't even realize she's five. | |
| She acts like she's, you know, sort of beyond for years. | |
| And I think that has a lot to do with how you raise your child. | |
| Yeah, I mean, the parents have this idea that children have obedience or respect their parents. | |
| It could be further from the truth. | |
| That's like saying we owe respect and obedience to the political masters. | |
| There's a direct translation from this idea. | |
| I try to parent... | |
| My daughter doesn't have a choice about me as a dad. | |
| My wife has a choice. | |
| She can leave me anytime. | |
| But my daughter does not have a choice about me as a dad. | |
| But I try to parent... | |
| With the idea that if she had the choice of all dads in the world, she would still choose me. | |
| That's how I sort of try and work with her. | |
| Yeah, it has been fantastic. | |
| She started negotiating in about 18 or 19 months, and now it's very efficient. | |
| Here's my starting position, here's her position. | |
| We come somewhere in the middle, we do a high-five deal. | |
| And then she keeps her word, and she's really great that way. | |
| I'm so glad that you implemented that. | |
| If you had less of a beard, I'd give you a wet sloppy kiss. | |
| The interview would faint to static in some horrible way, but I really admire and respect you for doing that. | |
| Not to sound incredibly, ridiculously grandiose, but I really think that the future is going to thank parents who take that role. | |
| Yeah, I agree. | |
| And so I only have one more question, and this is coming from what I do professionally as marketing and accounting. | |
| What do you think is the number one medium to reach the broadest The mainstream media has to serve a very large constituency, which means that they're always concerned about blowback. | |
| You know, like if you talk about some voluntary solutions to A lot of offense, a lot of blowback, a lot of problems. | |
| So they tend to keep that stuff really on the down low. | |
| But with the internet you can make very straightforward arguments without Fearing that you're going to inflict them on people who don't want to hear them. | |
| The great thing about the internet is you can totally cherry-pick. | |
| So if people don't like what I'm saying or what you're saying, they can just ignore it. | |
| But that's not the case if you're watching TV or the TV's on or whatever. | |
| So I think you can have much more focused and clear arguments with much less fear of blowback in the internet. | |
| And so I think that direct communication... | |
| Most people, I think, certainly most young people don't have much respect for mainstream media. | |
| I think it's less than 20%. | |
| The general population trusts the mainstream media. | |
| For me, that started with Monica Lewinsky, which we can perhaps talk about another time. | |
| That was just a mind-blowing, I shouldn't really use that in a particular expression, but that was an astounding process for the mainstream media. | |
| Maybe for earlier people, they kept their faith because of Watergate, but I think a lot of people lost it over Clinton. | |
| A lot of people lost over the Iraq war and the Afghani war a little bit less, but the Iraq war was more than better. | |
| A lot of people recognized that the mainstream media was clueless about Al-Qaeda until 1915, was clueless about problems in the financial industry, clueless about any kind of bubble in the housing market. | |
| So the fact that the mainstream media can't predict anything that's coming, they can't even see a train coming down the track 10 meters away. | |
| I think it's given people, like, why am I watching these people who can't tell me anything useful and get everything wrong? | |
| And so I think their credibility has gone down. | |
| People still need information. | |
| And I think they're going directly to the internet for that. | |
| So I have no interest in any kind of... | |
| Not that anyone's not. | |
| I have no interest in my mainstream media career. | |
| But I just really want to keep talking on the internet. | |
| I mean, I get a million showdown loads a month. | |
| For a philosophy show, I think that's pretty amazing. | |
| That's better than you can achieve in academics. | |
| That's better than you can achieve in books. | |
| That's better, I think, than you can achieve with all of the caveats and oppositions you face in mainstream media. | |
| Great. | |
| Well, thank you for taking this time. | |
| Thank you very much. | |
| Great questions. | |
| Yeah. | |
| And so, again, this is Stefan Molyne with Free Domain Radio, and I'm Alexander Meyer of Trepanation, and we'll see you soon. | |
| How was that? | |
| Sorry. | |
| Did it run out of battery? | |
| Neither did I. It's a shotgun. | |
| Thanks, man. |
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