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Nov. 14, 2012 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
20:42
2257 Freedomain Radio Sunday Show 11 November 2012 - Addendum

An interesting conversation about the use of mother and father, 3-D faxing and economic productivity.

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Yes, we have at the moment just one in the queue today.
Max, that's you.
Hi, Steph.
Hello, Max.
How are you doing?
Hey, good, yeah.
I wanted to talk to you about two things today.
One is something that really bothers me about you.
It's like, you know, when you use the expression, moms and dads, When you refer, like, to bad parents, like, you know, like, you have colors and you tell all your dad is and all your mom is.
I mean, to me, mom and dad is, like, it's an expression that kids use to express, like, their love or their affection for their parents.
I don't know, I just don't like it when you use that to describe bad parents.
Do you have any thoughts on that?
What should I use, do you think?
Well, whatever is more appropriate.
I mean, like, you know, like, do you refer to yourself as mom and dad in front of your kids?
Like, do you call yourself...
Refer to myself as mom and dad?
Yeah, do you say to your, like, to your daughter, like, daddy is going to do that, or...
Because to me, that's just weird.
Yes, we can praise daddy, although she will sometimes call me by my first name.
Because you're...
You do realize, though, that it's a word.
It's like, would you call yourself, like, honey or, I don't know, like, I'm French, I don't know the expression, but, you know, like, how would your spouse call you, like, or your, like, you would say, like, you know, like, when you say honey to your husband or whatever, like, would you refer to yourself as honey?
I mean, it's like, it's just, it's just like, uh, It's an expression like your affection to someone, so I don't know why you use it.
Do you have any thoughts?
Do you have a problem with mommy and daddy as a whole?
No, no, no.
I don't have a problem.
I don't have a problem when it's like the kids using it to call their dad or their mom, because that's great.
I mean, that's what it's used for.
It's like if you're a kid and you love your parents and you want to show it to them, you call them mom and dad.
It's like when you call your husband honey or your girlfriend like sweetie or whatever.
I'm trying to fathom why this would be an important enough issue to bring up, so let me just see if I can understand that.
Do you have a good relationship with your parents?
No, I don't.
I will describe to you why it's bad, because if you have parents who hits on you, and in your head you call them mom or dad, that's fucked up.
It's like calling someone who's like a boo-hoo.
How do you say that in English?
Sorry, this may be a difference in the languages, so maybe in French, mama is more affectionate, but in English, again, to my knowledge, I've been doing it for about 46 years.
But in English, there's no association with mommy or daddy.
There's no association with any particular affection.
And those, of course, in English, mother and father are hard to pronounce for kids.
And of course, lots of parents' names.
My name is Theodonius Monk.
That's going to be very hard for children to identify.
And so, in English, you say mommy or mama and dada just because they're very easy for children to pronounce.
And that's also, of course, important.
If your children get lost or separated from you, the first thing that the stranger is going to ask who wants to help is, you know, where's your mama?
Where's your dada?
And, of course, they can't do that if they don't know your name, which they probably wouldn't.
So, there's some very practical...
Reasons for saying mama and dada so pronunciation the difficulty of the parents name and also So strangers can help reunite kids with it with their parents if they're separated so I think there's lots of good Issues of that I mean either I've taught my daughter my name and she will occasionally Call me that if she if she can't get my attention for whatever reason if I'm working or something and she actually she mimics my wife and So my wife
will say, Stephanie.
And so if my daughter is saying, Dada, and for whatever reason I'm not responding, again, that's pretty rare, but if it's happening, then she'll switch to my wife's phrase and say, Stephanie, which is kind of interesting.
And I think it's actually quite funny.
But yeah, I think maybe there's a difference in language thing, but I think you're wrong.
When I was young, my father forced me to call him Dad.
Ah, so this is why it's important to you, right?
No, it is important because, you know, we had someone here in Quebec, which is called Doc Mayhew, and he did just about the same thing as you do, but he's a psychiatrist or whatever.
Anyway, he said he had a show on and he was talking about that, not to force your kid to call.
To call you dad or mom or whatever.
So I tried that with my father.
And he fucking yelled at me like crazy.
Like, you're never going to call me by my name.
You're going to use...
But I think there's something in there.
I think it's...
Maybe when the kids are very young, maybe that's something...
You're going to call your mother, mom and dad, whatever happens.
But when you grow older...
I think there has to be an understanding, a differentiation, like a mother or like Stéphane.
You can't just force your kid to call him dad.
If you refer to someone who beats his kid all his life and he thinks that it's their mom or their dad, I mean, it's a bit fucked up, you know?
You have to grow up a bit and just realize that mom and dad, I think, It's a word to show your affection.
And when kids are very young, it's really easy for them to use it.
But when you grow up, you can say, like, hey, my mom is good or she's bad with me, so I'm going to call them mom or mother or Steph or I don't know, whatever it is.
Anyways, so that was my point.
Sorry, let me just say you don't have any...
So your issue is should adults...
Who've had abusive parents call their parents mother and father?
Oh, yeah.
That's my...
Yeah.
Yeah, that's it.
And I mean, like, even if you're a kid, like, if you don't want to call your parents mom or dad, you shouldn't be forced to do it, you know?
Yeah, I mean, certainly...
I mean, they have to start off calling you mom and dad, because that's what's easier to pronounce, but...
Yeah, that's it.
If my daughter wants to start calling me by my first name, I mean...
I have no problem with that.
Yeah, but that would be a form of protest on her part, right?
Because if a child changes something, then there's a reason for that, right?
So she used to call me – she actually is – she's becoming very efficient.
She doesn't even – she doesn't say father or Stone Age patriarch or guy who plays.
She actually – she doesn't even call me data anymore.
She just says, da!
Because, you know, da!
Da!
And so that's about as easy a way of referring to me as she can come up with.
And it's what we're used to and it's what's convenient and all that.
And so if she were to change that, it would be a sign that she was unhappy about something and wished to register it.
But of course, if she's unhappy about something and wishes to register it, then she doesn't have to do anything as obscure as...
Not calling me da.
She can just sit down and say, I'm not happy when you do this, or I wasn't happy today when this happened, or whatever.
And we'll talk about it, which we do at least every day or two.
There's something that she wants changed or something that is not to her liking, and we discuss it and negotiate it.
And so you wanted not to call your father father or dada because you were unhappy with him and you couldn't express it Directly and openly, is that fair to say?
Yeah, exactly.
Right, okay.
So I think that it's important to recognize that switching the name used to describe your parent is a form of protest when other forms, like a hunger strike, is when other forms of protest or negotiation or complaints are blocked.
So again, I mean, I have no problem if my daughter wants to start calling me Theodonius Monk.
That's fine with me too.
But I would recommend that it is as a result of a protest.
I mean, if you're just used to calling something...
No, it's not just a protest.
It's more than that.
It's because Dad and Mom show affection.
It shows intimacy.
It shows closeness.
It shows something important.
It's not just a word like that you throw out.
It's something very important.
You have to be like...
Tell you what, let's move on to the next topic.
And if you want to send me a link, I'm not aware of that.
But I mean, obviously, I don't know everything there is to know about the word.
So if you send me a link to that...
That would be good.
But let's move on to another topic because I think we've...
Oh, this was Adam versus the man.
You know, he started to talk to you about if 3D printers could change the economy or whatever.
I don't think...
It's not your strongest topic or whatever.
But anyways, I just thought that you discarded What he was saying very quickly, and I was wondering if you really have given thoughts into 3D printers and stuff like that, because I think it could really do what he said, like change the world.
I think the economy is going to get a lot better because of that.
You had a video and you were saying that women got into the workforce and it improved productivity and this is how government grew and it kept it growing without booming up or whatever.
Well, 3D printers could really increase our productivity too.
So, I don't know, like, if we keep on, like, being more productive and productive, could we support, like, a bigger and bigger government without it, like, booming up?
I don't know.
I was wondering if you had given it any real thoughts or...
Because it was, like, bringing it up, you know?
Well, I haven't given a huge amount of thought.
I've certainly heard about the 3D printers, and I think it's pretty cool.
But...
Can you tell me how this productivity is going to occur?
Because I can see it for certain things.
I can see it for sending prototypes and that kind of stuff.
But perhaps you can tell me more about how it's going to increase productivity.
I can't quite see it.
Okay, it's like, you know, like you talk a lot about universality of ideas and stuff like that.
Well, you know, like in the physical world, you can have like universal stuff to, you know, like a universal communication system, which is the internet.
And you can have like a universal currency, like a physical one would be like gold and silver.
And Like a universal virtual currency like bitcoins or stuff like that.
And then you can have a universal manufacturing process which would be 3D printers because ultimately this is what it is.
It's a manufacturing process which we could use to make anything like from houses to To spacecraft, to airplanes, to like just computers or processors or you could just make anything out of it just because it's a manufacturing process.
It's just like a way of making things and like if they get more efficient like computer did like for 30 years or so.
Well, it could end up being something that, you know, you could just say, oh, I'm going to print a computer, you print it, and it comes out.
I mean, it's like, yeah, it's futuristic, it's not going to happen tomorrow, but in the long run, it's going to happen.
Okay, so what you're saying is that if we have a Star Trek replicator, or something where you can just say, you know, Earl Grey tea, and boom, out it comes.
Then that would be a huge impact on the economy.
Yeah, but it doesn't have to be up to that point to increase productivity.
I've seen a TED talk and some guy was working on huge 3D printers that could print houses.
That's just awesome.
You could do really neat stuff with that.
Yeah, my understanding is that The 3D printing, it can produce things of a single material.
Is that right?
For now, yeah.
What I've seen is like you can 3D print or fax over the prototype for a car and you'll sort of build the little model up and so on.
I mean, that's a long way from bricks and windows and electrical and plumbing and all that kind of stuff, right?
Yeah, it's a long way, but everything's going so fast right now.
Anyways, I just wanted to share that with you.
Well, I mean, but of course you understand that the technical challenge, you can't print a house.
I mean, it's not possible.
You can certainly print a model, you can print some jewelry, if it's all made from the same stuff.
Because you would have to have a way of having all possible material...
Inside the printer, which it would then assemble.
Now, is that possible at some point?
I don't know.
I mean, you can't have all possible materials inside a printer.
But the materials can just be ready, and, you know, it's going to be picked up by an arm, and places are the right place.
So you just bring, like, a pile of stuff, and, like, the...
It's like...
It's not like a 3D printer.
I mean, the 3D printer is more like a process.
It's a way of making things.
It's a manufacturing process that I think in the future, everything will be done that way.
You're just going to bring the big box or whatever.
You're going to put it there, and you're going to put the stockpile of whatever next to it, and it's going to build your house, and then it's going to be ready.
Well, okay.
Let me make this.
Sorry.
I'm going to pretend that I'm a venture capitalist, and you're proposing to me this stuff, right?
So the first question that I would ask is, so you have to have all the materials that the house needs at the 3D printer, right?
Or next to it, like in a truck or something.
Just bring the truck loaded with whatever it needs.
Right, or whatever it is that you're building.
It's going to need all the materials, the raw materials are going to need to be brought to where the 3D printer is, right?
Yeah, for sure.
Right.
Now, that takes a lot of energy, and that's going to cost a lot of money, right?
We're doing it right now, anyways.
When you're building...
Well, I understand that.
So let's say that you want to 3D print a car, right?
Well, right now, you bring all the materials, the raw materials for the car, you bring them to a factory.
Right.
And you bring them in massive bulk, right?
In cargo ships and huge trucks and whatever.
I don't know how they get that stuff there.
But you bring everything in bulk to a factory.
And then you build the car in the factory.
So you have a big pile of raw materials.
Now, if you want people to sort of, I don't know, 3D print their cars in their garage, then you have to bring just the right amount of raw materials to everybody's garage.
garage.
So you have to drive every piece of thousands of pieces of raw material to everybody's garage.
And it has to be just the right amount.
See, if you have just a little bit too much paint or whatever it is going to be at the factory, you just use it on the next car.
You don't waste it.
But you'd have to have just the right amount of raw materials.
Because there's no transport, there's no teleportation here.
So you'd have to drive all of just the right amount of raw materials out to everyone's house.
And I don't see how that would be cheaper than taking a huge amount of raw materials to a factory and producing it that way.
Because you have all that additional cost of getting all the raw materials in some central place, measuring out just the right amount, packaging them up, driving them out to everyone's house so they can replicate their car.
It seems to me that that process would be more expensive than it would be like so for groceries you could obviously drive Are you sure it's the price of gas or the price of labor?
No, it's...
Well, at least according to the people who I used to order online groceries from, a wide variety of them all said that it was the price of gas.
Yeah, but if you had, like, Google cars and stuff, they could deliver your groceries on prom.
Like, you'd just go out and there'd be no drivers to pay, and you'd just pick up your groceries from the car.
No, it's the gas cost.
I mean, the...
Because the cost to drive to my car is constant.
Sorry, to drive to my house is fairly constant or whatever around, but the cost of the driver for the 10 minutes he's doing my groceries is, you know, what, 50 cents or a buck or whatever, so that's not a big deal.
Anyway, I'm just pointing out that there are going to be limits to that kind of productivity growth, which wouldn't be the case in something like email, right?
It's like, well, there's no additional labor that is involved in particular.
In fact, it reduces the labor massively, but there's no Automatic transfer of materials that would be required for 3D printing.
Look, I'm not saying it can't work, and obviously once they teleport, then that would all be solved.
But I can see that they're kind of limit to the economic growth.
I'm not saying either that cars are going to be the first things that we're going to manufacture in your own.
But, you know, like, I think that there's technology out there that could really, like, improve our productivity, and I wonder if that could just, like, Keep on, like, the system going on.
Like, I'm an anarcho-capitalist and everything, but I'm just saying, like, I don't know, maybe there's something that's going to keep it going, and I mean, that's too bad for us, or for me at least, but whatever, you know.
I'm just, like, the crash, like we're talking about, and all in 10 years, or it could be tomorrow, or...
Well, I'm just wondering, like, if, you know, they just, like, bring out some new technology and everything just improves, and...
It's certainly possible.
It's certainly possible.
I mean, the speculation is, you know, who knows, right?
Certainly, innovations are getting tougher and tougher as government regulations pile up and as the megacorporation to use the government to protect themselves continue to get bigger and bigger.
So, anyway, I'm going to move on to the next caller, if you don't mind, but thank you very much for calling in.
All right, man.
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