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Dec. 2, 2012 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:30:21

2270 I Want to Make Love to Stefan Molyneux! Freedomain Radio Sunday Philosophy Show, Dec 2, 2012

Stefan Molyneux, host of Freedomain Radio, discusses the possibility of a Freedomain Radio Reality Show, Suite of Socialism, Justifications the Free Will, Killer Whale Dream, Childhood Communism and Planned Obsolescence.

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	Good morning, everybody.
	Hope you're doing well.
	Stefanovic von Molyneux Cakes on the 2nd of December.
	It's the most wonderful time of the year.
	Hope you're all doing well.
	And I really want to say thank you to the people who came through with donations this month for the documentary, or mockumentary, if you will.
	And thank you, thank you, thank you.
	I really, really appreciate it.
	Some very exciting news coming down the pipe as a whole for Freedom Aid Radio, and...
	Before it comes through, we can be, I think, seriously happy about what we've achieved.
	Gosh, what is it now?
	About a million downloads a month.
	A month!
	A million stars in the night sky of human ignorance opening up in the realm of philosophy.
	And, of course, I'm just one of many people working in this realm.
	You probably are one of them, too.
	And I really just think the future is going to thank us enormously for a job that should have been done Oh, I guess about 2,500 years ago.
	It's really been on humanity's to-do list to fix up ethics and promote volunteerism.
	It's been quite a while, but, oh, you know what happens.
	You get busy with the kids, you know, as a species as a whole.
	Then, you know, you got that new job.
	It takes a while.
	You've got about 850 wars to fight, a couple of genocides to get done.
	And, you know, ethics is on the list.
	You know, gonna get to it right after we quit smoking.
	And so it takes a while, but I think that we finally got down to it.
	And I really, really appreciate everybody's support.
	It's taken some of the financial edge off the documentary because it's not a profit-generating enterprise as a whole, right?
	It's going to go out for free.
	I'm sure there'll be a few DVD sales, but it really does help to have a few bits of cash to hurl at those working on it.
	So thank you everybody so much who stepped up and supported.
	More support is always welcome.
	I don't want to sound greedy, but quality depends on cash, and it is a fairly big project, as you can imagine.
	So thank you, everybody, so much.
	FDRURL.com forward slash donate or FreedomMadeRadio.com.
	Just click on the donate button if you'd like to help out some more.
	But thank you, thank you, thank you so much to everyone who has helped out over the last month or two.
	All right.
	We have listeners.
	As I promised James before the show, I am going to attempt to spend less than 97.8% of the two hours on the very first caller.
	So who do we have up first, my friends?
	We have a list of five today, so get ready.
	Count them.
	Five.
	Yes.
	Today, first up, we have Ryan.
	Yes.
	Hey, what's up, Steph?
	Not too much.
	How are you doing, my friend?
	Alright, so here's my question.
	Do you think you might be willing to star in a reality TV show so you can spend more time with your family and then show some of us what it looks like to have a good family relationship with your wife and daughter so you can spend more time with them and at the same time still teach philosophy?
	I think that's a very interesting idea.
	I must say that my desire for fame is not...
	Hi.
	Obviously, if I thought something could do some good, then that would be one thing.
	But I don't think that it would be...
	The problem is, of course, that a happy family life is not that exciting.
	There's no drama at all.
	My life this morning was...
	I got up and I did some...
	Checked some emails and wrote a few responses and of course I write a thank you note to everyone who donates and then Izzy woke up and came into the study and asked me to help her carry her stuff downstairs so I did.
	We talked about the dreams that she had last night and then I made some caterpillars which she applied some fantastic.
	We have this great glitter glue that She applied her glitter glue and we talked about how a centipede would dance if it could dance and she demonstrated how a centipede would dance and I declined to follow because my bones were 46.
	And we had some pancakes.
	I came down.
	I started the show.
	I don't really know that that would be gripping reality television.
	There's no screaming.
	I mean, reality television is generally about people looking down on others or looking at their abs, which is another way of looking down on them.
	And so I don't think it would be that gripping a TV in the model that reality show generally works in.
	But, I mean, of course, I do try to share, you know, at least where appropriate and where not too much an invasion of my future daughter's privacy.
	I do, of course, try and share the stuff that's going on.
	But I don't think it would be – I don't think anyone would pick up that kind of reality TV. But it's a very interesting idea.
	Huh, okay.
	I don't know, because sometimes listening to your podcast would help a lot, but sometimes you need to watch something and actually watch this show with things like Juliana and Billy, because Billy's a really good opportuner, and his marriage philosophy seems really cool, and I just thought that'd be even cooler to watch you.
	I mean, for some of us, it's not all about the vanity and stuff, it's just more about the philosophy, and you have that, and it's really interesting to me.
	If you were to pick a scene that you'd like to see, what do you think it would be?
	I don't know.
	Probably problem solving or how you interact with your daughter.
	It's a normal parent relationship, but I think if you get to see more of you, we can have a better standard, something to measure off.
	I mean, I certainly do get a lot of requests for interactions, but I mean, the great thing about philosophy is it's really about preventing problems rather than trying to solve them.
	So there's really not a lot of conflict in my household.
	I mean, my wife and I might have any kind of significant disagreement, maybe, I don't know, once every four or five or six months.
	It's once or twice a year.
	And there's no raised voices.
	But where we have a disagreement about something, we'll sit there for an hour or two and we'll talk it out very calmly, very positively with respect for each other and all that.
	And as far as my daughter goes, there's not a lot of conflict.
	So we were trying to get her to bed last night and she wasn't having...
	Much of it.
	She wanted to sort of, I was reading to her and she, you know, just gets squirming and asking questions and trying to find words she knows on the page and so on.
	And I did have some work to do.
	So after a while, I said, look, if you're not going to go to sleep, then I might, I mean, I have to get up and get some work done because I don't want to be up all night doing my work.
	And, you know, her mom was still there, so she would have taken that over.
	And my daughter's negotiating stance was simply to climb on top of me and sort of not have me leave.
	And so, of course, we have this running gag, which is, oh, look, Isabella, you're finally getting your way for the first time ever.
	How does that feel?
	No, I always get my way.
	And so, yeah, so, I mean, that's sort of the level of conflict.
	And then what I did, of course, was I just read slowly and in a monotone and she fell asleep fairly quickly.
	So, I mean, that's really the level of conflicts.
	In terms of any serious conflict with Isabella, I'm trying to think.
	Thank you.
	I don't...
	I mean, no, I don't really think so.
	I mean, I can't remember the last one.
	You know, as she's getting bigger and stronger, the stuff she used to be able to do, like jump on me like Inspector Clouseau's live-in attack mate, you know, I have to sort of remind her that she's getting bigger and stronger and all that.
	So I just have to continually remind her of all of that.
	But other than that, you know, it's all about making deals ahead of time.
	So...
	She really likes that song Last Night, the Glee version, because they really do white up the song about the Iraq War.
	But anyway, and so, you know, we say, well, it's late, but she wants, let's all dance to it as a family.
	So we put it on, we were dancing around, and we just say ahead of time, how many times?
	How many minutes?
	Ten minutes.
	Okay, ten minutes, that's, I don't know, four, three or four of the songs.
	So we do four of the songs, and we count them off, and then, so it's really, it's all about just the beforehand stuff.
	And because the conflicts are The resolution to the conflicts are negotiated ahead of time and agreed to by everyone ahead of time.
	The only conflict comes up when she wants to change the deal at the end, but that really doesn't happen that much because we say there's not much point making a deal if we then just change it at the end and so on.
	So there's really not, I mean there's a whole lot of fun, but there's really not conflict.
	I mean, I don't want to say it's not perfect, right?
	I mean, not that that would be perfect, but it's just I can't really remember.
	I don't have a good memory for bad things as a whole.
	As soon as I'm past a difficult time, I'm like, it's like it never was.
	I don't have a good memory for negative things as a whole.
	But...
	It would be – you'd see a whole lot of negotiation ahead of time, a whole lot of fun, and for the most part, the negotiations being fulfilled at the end or the terms of the deal being fulfilled at the end.
	And you'd see a lot of entrepreneurship on the part of young Isabella Rockefeller who is – I think it would be fun to watch, certainly fun to live.
	But yeah, I think most of the reality TV that I've...
	I really...
	I don't want to sound like a snob.
	I'm really not an expert on reality TV. I must admit to having watched A Jersey Shore or Two just out of horrified anthropological fascination.
	And I think that's it.
	Oh, somebody I know is going to be on a show, a reality show.
	So I'll watch that.
	But...
	It just, it seems to be pretty, you know, pretty base.
	And I just don't think it would be a good format for sort of what I do.
	Plus, you know, I mean, obviously I can't make the decisions for the privacy for other people in my family and all that kind of stuff.
	So I don't think I'd ever do it.
	In fact, I'm sure I wouldn't.
	But I don't think many people would watch it even if I did.
	I would, but okay.
	All right.
	I'm in college right now and I'm spending a ton of money on my college tuition and just living expense.
	I really feel like I should just quit school and just give that whole tuition to you and learn from you instead.
	Well, look, that's totally kind.
	Obviously, that's an incredibly generous thought and I really appreciate it.
	But I would strongly suggest, where are you in your college degree?
	How far along?
	Well, you actually added me a couple days ago, and we talked about this, but I'm a first quarter in college, freshman, and I'm not really sure what I'm looking for, but I'm just taking a business class, so it's just like weeding out, and I'm not really sure if that's really what I wanted, but I mean, yeah, I remember.
	I can't tell you, obviously, whether you should stay in college or not, but I will tell you this.
	Do not give your college tuition to me.
	I will tell you that for sure.
	But it's like I'm paying you because all my time instead of studying, I'm just listening to your podcast instead.
	So like...
	Like, this week actually...
	Sorry, let me just interrupt for a sec.
	So, look, if you're going to be in college, then you need to be in college, right?
	So, you need to give it a fair shake.
	So, don't spend your time listening to my shows.
	I mean, obviously, I'm glad that you like them, and that's great.
	But you need to do your studying, because when you make a big life decision, whether, you know, I want to stay in college or I don't want to stay in college, you want that to be your decision.
	You don't want it to come about because you haven't studied...
	Because then the decision kind of gets made for you.
	And I don't regret any positive decision that I've made in my life.
	Some of them haven't always worked out the way that I wanted.
	But I do have occasional regrets about decisions that I let happen to me.
	And so, just because I didn't do stuff and then it became necessary to change the situation or whatever.
	So my suggestion would be, while you're in college, Give it a fair shake.
	Give it 150%.
	Study and read and talk about ideas with people and so on.
	Don't always have to be these ideas or whatever.
	It could be any number of ideas.
	And if you end up deciding not to stay in college, then keep your money.
	I appreciate that.
	I really appreciate the thought.
	I mean, it means a lot to me that you would think of donating it, but don't.
	I wouldn't enjoy that.
	What I would enjoy is the idea that whatever you wanted to do next in your life that you had a nest egg to build from and a hedge against whatever economic uncertainty could be floating around.
	So I really appreciate that.
	I would say certainly give it a turn, maybe give it two, and really study, study, study, and then get as much You know, there's philosophical content in everything.
	Everything that you study has philosophical content.
	And so whatever you're studying has something to do with philosophy.
	So you can get philosophical value out of a college degree.
	But yeah, so I'd say if you're there and you're going to be there for a while, and I'd certainly suggest at least finish out the year or whatever.
	I mean that's just my thought.
	But yes, save your money for some entrepreneurial thing or at least for – so you have a bit of money so that you can choose without economic necessity what you need to do next.
	If you've got a couple of grand stashed away, then you can be a little bit more picky about what you want to do next.
	If you want to do something entrepreneurial, that's even better to have a little bit of a nest egg.
	But that would be my suggestion.
	I generally say to people – If you can afford to donate, obviously don't starve and don't harm your own economic interests in any way, shape, or form.
	I appreciate it, but my general preference, particularly for younger people, is save money to start your career.
	If, you know, when you're well-established or whatever you want to donate, that's fine, but definitely keep the money for yourself.
	The show will be here.
	The show is not going to live or die based upon one person's donations.
	And I certainly would not like the idea that, you know, I'm putting money into a documentary and you have to go get a job as a waiter or something because you're just broke.
	So that's my sort of general idea about it.
	Okay.
	Yeah, it's just really hard to focus.
	I'd be having an exam about something I don't believe in, like a statistic.
	They just gave me a bunch of formula and things to work through, but then They actually tell us in a lesson that here's a program you can use to determine this answer.
	But then they'd be telling us to do it by hand.
	And by the time I'd be getting out, I'd be using a really simple software to calculate all of that.
	And I just can't study and ace the test.
	Every test is just kind of bombed.
	Oh, is that because you feel that there's automated ways to do things?
	It's useless.
	It's not efficient like the free market because the academia people, they're just old or something.
	Right.
	Now, your professors have office hours, right?
	Yeah.
	Now, I would really, really, really strongly suggest, and I would suggest this to everyone in college, make use of those office hours.
	I mean, that's free tuition.
	That's, you know, like you pay for your tuition, but that's you sitting with a whole bunch of other people in a class.
	But, I mean, I have a friend who's a professor.
	He says, you know, I just sit there, you know.
	Every week, I go to my office hours for like two hours, and nobody comes by.
	And, I mean, obviously, he'd like it if they did.
	He's there to teach.
	But go and talk to your professors and say to them, I have trouble with my motivation because this seems very inefficient.
	Can you explain to me why we're doing it this way?
	And you can sit there for an hour and get a one-on-one private lesson.
	So really, take advantage of...
	A professor's office hours, you know, when they're there just sitting there waiting for people to come by.
	Go talk to them.
	I mean, the worst thing that can happen is you end up with some nonsense coming back from the professor, but at least you've established the precedent for yourself that you're going to go and talk to people in authority if you have issues with what they're doing.
	And I think that's a good thing to do overall.
	So I'd certainly strongly suggest that.
	Just be careful about pressivity.
	That's all I'm saying.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Yeah, I guess that's fine.
	I have another question, but I guess let other people go first and then come back to me.
	Okay, thanks, man.
	All right.
	Thanks.
	Next up, we have Sam.
	you Hello.
	Sam, like Samantha, are you our female caller of the month now?
	No, I'm not.
	But let me tell you something...
	Stefan, I would love to just start this off by saying, or asking you, can I make love to you by any chance?
	You can make love at me if you like.
	You can fap your way senseless if you want to any of my YouTube videos.
	That's absolutely your choice.
	But I'm afraid I am in a strictly monogamous relationship, so we don't have any Freaky Fridays that allow me to shoot my scene like a camera through the world, but I certainly appreciate the thought.
	Well, here's the thing.
	I think you've shaped my ideas in a pretty interesting way because I was born in Syria and I lived there for about 14 years.
	I moved to Sweden and lived there for about 10 years and now I've been here in the States for about, what, three years now?
	So I've been exposed to all these different systems and beliefs and whatever you want to call it.
	I've noticed, you know, I've compiled a list of questions because of all the, you know, stuff I debate with college students here in the U.S. and in Sweden that I'd like you to take a stab at some of them.
	I will.
	All right, so let's start with the first one, which is Sweden and socialism.
	I mean, if you look at it from a general perspective, it seems to be...
	It's working somehow.
	I mean, I lived there for 10 years and it is not what you, it's not a system that you want to live in, sure, if you're entrepreneurial and, you know, want to be the best you want to be, but it is somehow working.
	And I noticed that in one of your videos you said that Sweden is running on debt.
	But if you look at the actual public debt, it's about 33% of GDP, which is not that high, actually.
	So how would you explain the socialistic model working in Scandinavia?
	That's an excellent, excellent question.
	And I'm going to just look up something here.
	I've been meaning to do a show on this for a while.
	Please do, because I've looked for the answer all over the place, and no libertarian is willing to give a straight answer to that question, so I'd love for you to make a show about it.
	Alright, so this is by a guy with the unbelievably sexy name of Stefan, but his last name is Carlson.
	And it's called The Sweden Myth.
	And it says, the alleged recent success of the Swedish economy has allowed welfare status both inside and outside of Sweden to argue that high taxes and an extensive welfare state are good for the economy.
	And to understand this, we need to review Sweden's economic history.
	Ooh, this is some gripping stuff.
	Alright.
	Until the second half of the 19th century, Sweden was fairly poor, but far-reaching free market reforms in the 1860s allowed Sweden to benefit from the spreading Industrial Revolution.
	And so, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Sweden saw its economy rapidly industrializing, driven by the many Swedish inventors and entrepreneurs.
	During that time, Sweden produced extraordinarily many inventions given its small population, including dynamite, invented by Alfred Nobel.
	The self-aligning ball bearing, which I think probably relates to your first comment.
	The sun valve, the gas absorption refrigerator, and blah, blah, blah.
	Car manufacturers, Volvo.
	I would say, cursed be thy name, because my Volvo just died an ignominious death, but actually it was 15 years, so it's not too bad.
	Yeah, Saab, Ericsson, telecommunications company, blah, blah, blah.
	So they did a whole bunch of stuff.
	Now, you know, one of the things that's important with Sweden to understand is, you know, why are they not broke?
	Well, they did not do any of the world wars.
	So they didn't destroy their entire urban centers and half their population in world wars.
	And that's going to make you quite a little bit wealthy.
	In fact, Sweden has had just about the longest consecutive period of peace in the world.
	About 200 years.
	Yeah, since 1809.
	I guess 212 years.
	Even longer than Switzerland was.
	So that's important to understand.
	So if you stay out of wars, then it's a lot easier to not be broke.
	So in 1932, the Social Democrats rose to power in the Great Depression.
	The Great Depression was small socialism turning into big socialism.
	And they started to expand government power over the economy.
	Until 1932, government spending was below 10% of GDP, and these new social democrats, and they wanted to make it into Völkheim, people's home.
	Whenever you use the word Völk, you always have to sound like an angry, fairly constipated German sergeant.
	But even up to the early 1950s, Sweden was apparently one of the freest economies in the world.
	Government spending relative to GDP way below the American level because they've got no empire, right?
	They've got no empire and they weren't involved in any wars.
	So between 1950 and 1976, Sweden experienced the usual tumoresque expansion in government spending.
	It rose from about 20% in 1950 to more than 50% in 1975.
	Virtually every year the taxes were increased while the welfare state expanded relentlessly, sharp increase in the number of government employees and even more transfer payments.
	By the way, this is at mises.org forward slash daily forward slash 2259.
	Now, so during the first 20 years, government expansion seems to have no particular ill effect.
	And this is generally the case, right?
	Because it's a lot of deficits and it takes a while when you start...
	Bleeding someone, it takes a while for them to expire.
	So Sweden's growth already started to slip in relative terms from well above average to just average in the 1970s after Olaf Palme from the left wing of the Social Democrat became Prime Minister.
	He stepped up the socialist transformation in Sweden.
	He increased anti-business regulations and sharply increased payroll taxes.
	So the payroll taxes along with increased wage demands from unions Made Swedish businesses highly uncompetitive on the global market, which he then decided to solve by devaluing the Swedish krona.
	As a result, price inflation rose sharply leading to repeated devaluations.
	Popular discontent from the economic woes created by the global economic downturn, the massive tax increases, the increased regulation, and the increasing inflation It's very, very useful, and I would actually agree to most of it, because, as you mentioned, the wars.
	I mean, Sweden even aided, in some cases, Germany during the war.
	So you're quite right, and also free trade.
	Like you said, free trade generates wealth that later on is taxed and leads to expansion of commerce.
	I fully agree with all that.
	But just to elaborate, would you then say that it's just a matter of time for the state to grow so big that it becomes unmanageable?
	Well, let's just go a little bit further.
	I'm going to skip some of this stuff around the devaluations and all that kind of stuff.
	So the economy started slowing significantly in 1990, and consumer price inflation did slow down.
	But they had high nominal interest rates, reduced capital gains taxes and falling price inflation.
	So real interest rates started rising significantly which ended an asset price bubble and all of that.
	There was the oil shock of course after the invasion of Kuwait and so on.
	So Sweden slipped into recession in late 1990.
	As Sweden fell into recession and the highly cyclical government budget balance started to deteriorate rapidly.
	Investor confidence in the Swedish fixed exchange rate scheme started to deteriorate.
	Also, quite rapidly.
	And so the recession was huge, and it was the deepest recession by far since the Great Depression.
	GDP in 1993 was 5% lower than 1990.
	Employment fell more than 10%, the budget deficit rising to more than 10% of GDP. And, I mean, a couple of years, 5% doesn't sound that much lower, but this is usually with increased population and all that.
	It's a big problem.
	So they did the usual tricks of devaluing the corona and all that kind of trash.
	But the other thing too is that everybody focuses on the free market aspect of Sweden.
	But one of the reasons that Sweden is no longer quite as bad as the rest of Europe is that they've had a bunch of reforms that have made the Swedish economy relatively, relatively free.
	And that I think is...
	Yeah, I think that's quite important.
	And the stay-at-home mom...
	So, let's see.
	Social Democrats claim that Sweden has a comparatively high employment rate, but this claim is based on deceptive employment statistics that count as unemployed many who have been on long-term sick leave or in some other way on the receiving end of transfer payments, even though they don't actually work.
	And, of course, you'll always hear about...
	How they encourage moms to stay at home, but apparently the stay-at-home mom is very rare in Sweden.
	Because of the incentives created by the feminist construction of the Swedish welfare system, mothers mostly leave their children at government daycare centers.
	Even if you believe that mothers who stay home take care of their children are the victims of patriarchal oppression, you cannot deny that child care takes a lot of work, but only those who take care of other people's children count as employed.
	By shifting child care from the home to the public sector, the government further exaggerates Swedish employment figures.
	Let's see here.
	Among non-Western immigrants, real unemployment rate is higher than 50%.
	Sweden says it's only 5% unemployment.
	But that's not...
	Many unemployed are sent to so-called labor market political activities, activities whose only purpose is to reduce the official unemployment rate.
	If we ignore that nonsense, unemployment is 8%.
	And if you include the enormous number of early retirees and people who live off sickness benefits, the real unemployment rate in Sweden is about 25%.
	That's not good.
	The number of early retirees is 540,000, more than double the number of officially unemployed.
	And that's, of course...
	I mean...
	Wait, Natron.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	The numbers are pretty...
	Pretty astounding, Stefan.
	I think, I mean, I haven't looked up the stats, but I think you're quite right.
	It sounds like all of these are logical.
	My concern is that, given enough time, do you think that this model will collapse as a model, not as Sweden in particular?
	Because this model is roughly applied to all Scandinavian countries.
	So the Scandinavian socialistic model, do you think that one is just a matter of time before it collapses, or is it just that it could work if it's sustained the way it is right now, if it's sustainable the way it is right now?
	Yeah, okay.
	So the deficit is low.
	The debt is low relative to other countries.
	And I think that's great.
	But what they're doing is they're printing money.
	So this is articles from 06.
	So money supply rose almost 12% in five months.
	And so they can use that to pay off their debts and so on.
	Of course, that drives inflation and so on.
	There's lots of ways that you can pay off your debt and still have negative things occur to the economy, right?
	So I think that's important to understand.
	Now, let me just do one other thing, if I can just mention.
	Mises.org forward slash daily forward slash 2190.
	How the welfare state corrupted Sweden, I'm not going to get into all of that.
	Huge details, but you can go and read that.
	If you don't want to take a lot of time, you might want to do a podcast and we can leave some room for other questions.
	But yeah, whichever you want.
	The question is, will the quote system collapse?
	Well, yeah.
	I mean, all state systems collapse.
	I mean, as far as I know, I mean, I haven't studied every conceivable corner, but all state systems collapse.
	You know, aristocracy has collapsed, largely monarchy has collapsed, largely democracies are continually self-imploding.
	And the Swedish thing is pretty new, right?
	I mean, the huge expansion in the state was only a generation and a bit ago.
	Indeed.
	And so, yeah, you know, it's like it looks great.
	I mean, it's like the guy who is struggling through therapy and all of that, and there's another guy just taking heroin.
	It's like the guy taking heroin looks like he's having a blast.
	But what's the long-term prognosis for this kind of stuff?
	So the Swedish thing is relatively new in terms of the significant expansion.
	But they have had the advantage of not having...
	You know, statistically, almost all the wealth generated in the Industrial Revolution was destroyed in World War I. So all the other Western countries who have significant military obligations, so to speak, they have empires, they have big foreign policy messes and so on.
	Well, that's not the case in Sweden.
	Now, maybe, I mean, so it seems to me inevitable that it's going to collapse.
	And the way that modern economies tend to, I think the way that modern economies tend to collapse is that the domestic population stops breeding.
	And because, you know, intelligent human beings don't breed very well in captivity.
	And so you get a lot of immigrants coming in.
	And this, of course, is the European phenomenon.
	This is the way that Europe has, this is another artificial phenomenon.
	Government-driven way of hiding economic decline because if you have a high tax then you cannot attract entrepreneurs and so you can attract entrepreneurs but you still need a bunch of stuff done when you raise wages you create a vacuum at the low end of the economic spectrum which you need to fill because otherwise the price I've talked about in a recent podcast otherwise the prices of everything kind of goes through the roof and so you have to bring in a lot of immigrants and when you bring in a lot of immigrants You end up having to promote multiculturalism,
	right?
	I mean, so many of our intellectual phenomena are just covers up for ridiculously practical, from an economic ruler's standpoint, ridiculously practical need to cover up the effects of government policies.
	And so what happens is, well...
	The immigrants tend to breed a whole lot more than the native population.
	There's friction.
	There are problems.
	And, of course, in the long run, the immigrants don't assimilate in general.
	And assimilation is something that happens in the free market.
	When you have government-sponsored multiculturalism and you have that as an ethic, then you tend to create these cysts of culture that expand and grow.
	And, I mean, as far as I understand it, I mean, this is not, of course, all Muslims, but some of the Islamic leaders say that they They're going to take over Europe, but they're going to do it through breeding, not through, right, through breeding and democracy.
	And that's the same thing that, again, not to equate them, but this is the same thing that Hitler said once he had the beer hall putsch that failed and he went to jail for a couple of years.
	He said, okay, well, we're going to take over Germany, but we're going to do it through democracy.
	We're going to do it perfectly legally.
	And of course, that's what he did.
	So what is the, do you know what the birth rate is in Sweden these days?
	It's really, really low.
	I don't have the number.
	Right here.
	I could look it up probably.
	But, you know, I got what I wanted from that question.
	Sorry, it's important though.
	Let's see.
	Swedish, Sweden birth rate.
	I think it's less than one.
	It's probably about one.
	Yeah, something like that.
	Right.
	So that's a sustainable population, right?
	I mean, they have a major problem with immigration.
	I think that's a key thing.
	Such a model could maybe function in a homogeneous society where everyone is alike.
	But once you have the social divide between immigrants and non-immigrants, you get a lot of civil unrest.
	And the model starts collapsing on itself.
	But that's, I think, a question of time.
	And we just have to wait to see in case the model works or not.
	I just wanted to get your take on it.
	I want to leave some time for...
	Everyone else asks their questions.
	But I had one more thing that I wanted to have you comment on really quickly.
	You argue for free will, which I also do, and I used the same argument even before I saw your video about free will.
	But given that, let's assume that the possibility of determinism, let's assume determinism do exist, or that we do not have free will.
	How can we then justify property?
	Sorry, if we do have free will, how can we justify property?
	If we don't.
	Let's assume we don't have free will.
	How can we justify ownership or private property?
	But you see, that's the beauty of free will and determinism, is that if we don't have free will, then the concept of justification doesn't exist.
	It's like a fairy.
	It's like a dragon.
	It's a mythical beast, right?
	Yeah, I see your point.
	Because, I mean, you understand, there's no ideal standard to compare anything to, right?
	So it's like saying, well, what's the justification for that rock rolling down the hill and landing on my car?
	It's like, well, there's no, it's just what happened.
	There's no justification for it.
	I mean, to search for a justification, you know, I think of all the raindrops gathering together in a storm cloud over me when I'm having a walk, and I think how many of them Desperately, desperately want to land on my forehead.
	Oh, they're just, they're elbowing each other out the way and say, that's the target, that big pink bowling ball thing.
	I want that.
	I want to land on that thing.
	And, I mean, every raindrop who falls on my head, do I say, well, that was a good job.
	Well done.
	You clearly wanted that more than the other raindrops did, and good for you, right?
	No, that's just physics, right?
	So, if there's no free will, then the concept of justification is a delusion, right?
	It's like a soul.
	What would...
	What would free will be then?
	Is it a metaphysical property or is it just a property of aggregation that exists within the physical realm?
	I have had a lot of troubles when arguing with philosophy students, trying to get that free will concept across because some of them would ask, well, is free will physical?
	Is it subject to the laws of physics or is it metaphysical?
	In which case, how does it communicate with the physical?
	Yeah, I know.
	Yeah, I get it.
	This is a standard thing, right?
	So people say there's either a ghost in the machine, in which case you're superstitious, it's a supernatural thing, you have a soul which is excluded from the laws of physics, or our bodies are purely physical, in which case they're subjected to the laws of physics and you can't will your way out of the laws of physics and blah blah blah.
	Exactly.
	I get that, but that's just a complete nonsense.
	I don't mean to insult you, and I don't mean to insult the people that you're talking with, but a child of, I guarantee you, a child of two and a half, or even two, knows the difference between something that is alive and something that is not.
	They know the difference between a pet that they can play with and a simulated pet that sits there.
	So...
	A rock cannot of its own volition go walking around, take a dump, have sex with another rock and produce a bunch of pebbles.
	But life can do that.
	Life is an emergent property.
	No carbon atom is alive, but the carbon atoms in my body are part of a living organism.
	So there's an emergent property called life, which we all participate in, which we all, everyone who you're debating with, I hope, unless you have a really, really fucking powerful Ouija board, is alive.
	And so we have this emergent property called life.
	And they'd say, well, what is life?
	Is life physical or is life supernatural?
	Well, if life is physical, then no atom can choose to move of its own accord.
	But I can move my arm up and down and therefore, right?
	Therefore, I must have some ghost in the machine.
	No, it's just an emergent property.
	That's all it is.
	It's an emergent property from a complex enough brain system.
	And in general, free will, as far as I have sort of researched it, is more aptly characterized as free won't, which is...
	That we have the capacity to intercept and stop impulses from being enacted, right?
	So most animals, right, particularly lower class animals, they have these reflexes or these impulses and they'll just go and do it, I think, as...
	I can't remember if Siegfried or Roy found out when he put his head in a lion's mouth some years back that, well, there's still some instincts that the cat is going to act on.
	But we have the capacity to intercept and to block, right?
	So people say, oh, count to ten, go for a walk.
	Anger management is all about intercepting your thoughts, understanding your thoughts.
	Through self-knowledge, we gain the ability to know where our impulses are coming from and to compare our impulses to a higher standard of behavior, to universal standards of behavior.
	And through that, we gain the ability to suppress.
	I mean, this is not made up.
	You can clearly see this happening in the brain.
	You have, I think, about a quarter second when an impulse arises from your deep brain.
	To intercept it and change it through your neofrontal cortex.
	And you can train yourself to do this.
	Therapy helps you to do this.
	They can see the strengthening in the brain for people who are going through self-knowledge and therapy.
	So free will is just a muscle that you develop naturally.
	Obviously, I can't point to a part in the brain and say that's free will.
	But you can't point to a part of the body and say that's life.
	I mean it's the whole thing together.
	It produces the emergent property called life.
	So the people who are determinists in my view just have not – they're not processing that it's not an abstract topic.
	It's something that you're choosing to do.
	You're choosing to change someone's mind.
	You're operating on an emergent property called life.
	You're saying there's a higher standard we should compare our ideas to.
	All of that is free will.
	So again, it's just people yelling into my ear that there's no such thing as sound.
	That's the way I experience it, but that would be my approach to it.
	I understand.
	I just asked a question in order for me to know how I should argue best against these...
	Is there an emergent property called life?
	Of course they have to say yes, right?
	Are any of your individual atoms alive?
	No, of course not.
	Because they're interchangeable with all the other atoms in the universe.
	So no, none of your individual atoms are alive.
	But you are alive.
	Now, is life subject to the laws of physics?
	Well, of course it is.
	Everything is subject to the laws of physics.
	Yet, life is fundamentally different from non-life.
	Is there a ghost in you called a soul or something which is what makes you alive?
	Well, of course not.
	But there's an emergent property nonetheless.
	I mean, so people look at the atomic level...
	And think that the universe is merely atoms, as if there's no such thing as emergent properties.
	But we are, the very act of having language, of debating, of thinking, of conversing, is to operate on the principle of emergent properties.
	And so for people to say, well, a free will cannot be an emergent property, well, they just basically have killed themselves, metaphorically, right?
	Because they're saying that life is, you know, you can't have emergent properties different from the atoms.
	Well, then you're not alive, because that's what life is.
	So just start getting them to understand that life is in the same category.
	I try to do that all the time.
	I just have a problem stating it as well as you do.
	I guess you're way more, you know, you have...
	Well, you're just angrier.
	No, seriously.
	No, yeah, definitely.
	Angrier.
	I just get frustrated.
	You try to convey this idea, but it's just really difficult sometimes to be able to conceptualize it for others and make them understand what it is you mean.
	Choosing the right words is very, very important, and you seem to be good at it.
	That's why I wanted to ask you and see how you would do it.
	You gave me a pretty solid argument, I guess.
	Let me just say one other thing, which is important to understand from a psychological standpoint, which is why would people...
	Feel like things, right?
	I mean, because determinism, it says you're a machine, you're a thing.
	No different from a robot, no different from a table tennis board, no different from concrete or a tree.
	You are a thing.
	Well, a tree's not a thing, but you're an object, a thing, right?
	That there's no magic about you in a sense.
	There's no wonder or sublime beauty or human perfectibility or higher standards or whatever.
	So the question is why would people feel so drawn to thinking of themselves as a thing, as a machine?
	Why would that seem like such a compelling argument that they were willing to overlook the basic fact that they're alive in the first place?
	And that that is the best argument and best analogy for free will.
	Well, it's because they've been treated like a thing.
	I mean, we're treated like things in public schools, right?
	A lot of families will treat children as things.
	Children are there to be seen and not heard.
	Children are just supposed to shut up and provide whatever resources the adults need or be the proxy for whatever resources, whether it's the public sector unions on the teacher's side or whether it's the Whether it's the salary of the priest or whether it's the culture comforts of the parents, children are treated as things in society, not as individuals, not as society ideas, thoughts should wrap around children.
	This is the first people we should ask whenever we're considering anything in general in society.
	The first people we should ask should be the children.
	The first people we should ask, and their word should be law.
	So we should say to children.
	Yeah.
	So the very first thing that should be done is the consultation with the children, and if the children are too young to be consulted with, to consult with the science about the children.
	So, people think of spanking.
	First thing they should do, ask the child if that's a good thing for them and if they're too young, look at the science of spanking and see if it's a good thing to do or not.
	That's the very first thing.
	When it comes to public school, the first thing we should be doing is asking children, hey, is this working for you?
	Do you like this?
	Is there anything else that we could do to make this better for you?
	Children should be at the very center and the heart and the core of everything that we decide as a society.
	Now, of course, in a free society, we would never decide anything as a society.
	We would decide things as individuals.
	But when it comes to religion, how do you feel about going to church?
	What do you think about the devil standing over your bed with a pitchfork ready to stab you through your little heart if you have bad dreams about sex with whoever, right?
	We should ask children all the time.
	We should consult with children all the time.
	They should be first in our thoughts.
	Of course.
	And the reason is obviously for six million reasons of compassion and empathy and the reality of helplessness.
	But this is all the stuff we say anyway, right?
	Michelle Obama said, the first thing I think of when I wake up in the morning is my children and they're the last thing I think of when every decision I make is centered around my children and so on.
	We say all this shit all the time, right?
	But that's just what we say, right?
	I mean, we know what the right thing to do is that we should, right?
	So would there be such a thing as a national debt if the first thing we thought about is our children?
	Of course not.
	Oh, right.
	Would there be such a thing as Sunday school if the first thing we thought of was our children?
	No.
	Would there be such a thing as government-run schools if the first thing we thought of was our children?
	Would we go back to work at six weeks or six months if the first thing we thought of was our children?
	No.
	And our infants, do they want mommy to go back to work and have a fulfilled career?
	Or do they want mommy to stay home and play and be their human bridge to the real world?
	And so, I think it's really important to understand that when you're talking about philosophy with people, you are almost always talking about their early childhood experiences.
	And I think I've done enough listener convos where this has been firmly established that this at least can be considered A very strongly supportive thesis.
	So when people are talking about determinism and they're saying, I am a thing, they're not talking about some reasoned scientific approach to anything.
	They're not talking about something that they've started from first principles and worked through with no emotional baggage whatsoever.
	What they're saying to you is, when I was a child, I was treated like a thing and I have developed a philosophy called determinism to cover up that scar tissue so I don't have to deal with the pain of having been treated like a thing, like a machine, like an object for the satisfaction and profit of the adults.
	I was never consulted.
	I never had a choice as a child so I'm going to make a lack of free choice something that is philosophically positive.
	So I don't have to deal with the pain of having been ordered around and shuffled around on cultural, religious and familial conveyor belts towards the satisfaction of the immediate greed of adults.
	It's got nothing to do with a philosophical position because it's so obviously ridiculous That it has to come from early childhood trauma.
	You know, I deal with the early...
	I talk about the early childhood trauma.
	I mean, partly because it's true.
	I mean, this is very well established that the science is getting stronger and stronger every day.
	But I deal with it so that I don't end up with an unbelievably bottomless contempt for the majority of humanity.
	Because if humanity is so...
	Ridiculously retarded.
	That they can't conceive of emergent properties, but deal with things at the atomic level, which is like saying there's no such thing as a computer because there's no computer atom.
	I mean, this is all, it's ridiculous.
	It's ridiculous.
	It doesn't take half a moment's thought.
	So either people are completely retarded, which doesn't explain science and doesn't explain all the wonders of the free market, doesn't explain how people can tie their goddamn shoes in the morning.
	Either people are completely retarded or they're being defensive and they're traumatized.
	But there's no other choice because this is such obvious stuff.
	I mean, it's like the UPB stuff, at least the stuff to do with the two guys in the room.
	I mean, it's so obvious and people just avoid it though.
	Because, I mean, I just did this bit on sociopathy.
	Sociopathy is the ultimate UPB violation, right?
	Because my needs are important, your needs don't exist.
	Yet we are the same species.
	Anyway, so people are harmed by UPB violations all the time.
	UPB violations are incredibly traumatic for children.
	You know, like when the mom hits the kid saying, don't hit people, fundamental UPB violation.
	When the parents say to the child, you're responsible for what you did and I'm going to punish you.
	When the child grows up and says, hey, you did some bad stuff as parents, they say, we're not to blame.
	We did the best we could.
	Complete UPB violation.
	Incredibly traumatic, incredibly painful.
	That's why people have such trouble with UPB. So I just wanted to point out that the reason it gets so frustrating is you're not talking about what's really being talked about.
	What's really being talked about is if I am not a machine but I was treated like a machine, If my choices are valuable but I was never consulted, if the system in society that says that children are everything and wonderful and great and juicy tidbits of future potential which we should worship and praise and nurture and design society for,
	but actually they're just a kind of crop to be harvested for the immediate profit and emotional defenses of the adults around them.
	That's incredibly painful.
	I mean, what a fundamental break that is with the cult of culture.
	What a fundamental break that is with the society that you live in.
	I mean, I've talked a lot about relationships to families and so on.
	The relationship to culture I've touched on, but I mean, it's very, very important.
	You have a fundamentally different view of your culture if not just it treats you like a thing, but...
	When it claims that you are precious and then treats you like a thing, that's the worst.
	Hypocrisy is more painful than evil.
	I think we can all vouch for that.
	Yeah, and look, from very personal experience, and my childhood was not in the mainstream, even as far as this goes.
	It was a worse childhood than most.
	But I was certainly never consulted.
	Really, in any fundamental thing.
	And, I mean, very few people that I know of, their parents sit down and say, okay, well, let's have a discussion.
	There's choices ahead of us and this and that and the other, right?
	Because it's actually, if you're kind of selfish, it's kind of inconvenient to consult with your children.
	Right?
	So, yesterday, we wanted to go and pick up a Christmas tree and some Christmas treats and so on.
	And Isabella didn't want to go.
	She wanted to stay home.
	Now, what do you do?
	Well, if you're going to consult with your children, then you have to negotiate.
	You have to figure out how you're going to make it work for everyone.
	And it took about 45 minutes to figure that out.
	But if you treat your children as things, well, I'm sorry, we have to go.
	We have to get this tree.
	We can't do it tomorrow because of X, Y, and Z. I'm sorry.
	Okay, well, then you're going to end up with a determinist on your hands, most likely, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, it's the harsh reality that we're both scarred and morally retarded.
	I guess we're both.
	I don't know, Stefan, but I guess it's the harsh truth at 8 a.m., Yeah, well, sorry.
	Okay.
	Look, the reason I'm saying this is if you're trying a key in a lock and the key doesn't fit, you have to change what you're doing, right?
	And if arguing abstractions constantly frustrates you and other people, you need to change what you're doing.
	Otherwise, you are kind of being a machine, right?
	And they will win!
	If you keep behaving like a machine, you will eventually come to be a determinist, of course, right?
	I mean, our ideas follow the empiricism of our actions.
	And so, talk to people about their childhoods.
	I mean, just do that anyway.
	Find out what their history was like.
	You know, oh, you're really interested in free will versus determinism.
	Well, that's very interesting.
	Can you tell me a little bit about what choices you had as a kid and how they were exercised and so on, and how were you punished?
	If you don't know this about someone, it's really hard to have any kind of progressive conversation with them.
	Because they may, in fact, they probably have zero idea about the degree to which their early experiences are not just informing, creating and conditioning their beliefs and if they lack self-knowledge and they don't know that their intellectual perspectives are mere products and scar tissue and defenses from their childhood then they are right that they are machines because without self-knowledge everything we do is determined by history,
	by momentum, by the coincidences of the moment, by the influences Then our life trajectory has the same path as an asteroid, subject to gravity wells and whatever, right?
	But not chosen.
	Without self-knowledge, we are machines.
	We are machines.
	Again, this is something which is not just a catchy philosophical fortune cookie, but it's fairly well established scientifically.
	The people who do not practice the free won't, the interception of impulses with higher cognitive functions, the examination of the source of those impulses Then the impulses which are generated in the lower brain dictate behavior in the upper brain.
	And you are a machine.
	If you will not intercept, if you will not pursue self-knowledge, you do become a machine and then determinism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
	I am a machine.
	Introspection is useless.
	And because introspection is useless and I am a machine, guess what?
	I actually am a machine.
	And this is one of the reasons why it's got such tenacious hold over us, this idea, because it becomes true if you believe it.
	I mean, it's like, I am a horrible, unlovable person.
	Well, believe that long enough, even if it ain't true, it becomes true.
	It will be.
	Yeah, no, I should, you know, good advice.
	Thank you for everything.
	I should actually yield the balance of my time to my fellow citizens here.
	I'll ask you a few questions, but thank you so much for your answers, and I'll make sure to do that video.
	I'll call you next Sunday and probably shoot a few more questions at you.
	Please do.
	I really appreciate your time and thoughts, and thank you for getting up at this godforsaken hour on a Sunday.
	Thank you.
	Enjoy the rest of your day.
	Thanks, you too.
	Alright, next up we have Cain.
	Alright, hey Steph.
	Hey Sexy, you're back.
	It's going alright.
	I had a dream that I'd like to discuss, if that's okay.
	Yeah.
	Alright, cool.
	So, the dream starts, I'm sleeping on a bed in the woods, and I guess I had been living out there for You know how dreams just jump right into the story.
	So I'm living on a bed in the woods, and right next to my bed is a river.
	And on the bed I'm exposed to all kinds of weather and stuff like that, but I seem to be fine with it.
	And in the river, I can see...
	The river's pretty wide.
	I can see killer whales in the river.
	It kind of freaks me out because I'm kind of afraid of being eaten by sharks.
	I'm on the shore of the river and for some reason I can see through the water to the other side of the river.
	And on the other side of the river, from what I can see, it enhances my vision.
	And I can see wolves on the other side of the river, wolves that are in a graveyard, and on the neighboring street of that graveyard.
	So I'm approached by another person that's in the woods, a guy who drives up, and we have a conversation.
	Out of the bushes, a cougar jumps out.
	I run and I grab a shotgun.
	I start to aim.
	The man looks at me like I'm crazy.
	What are you doing?
	Why are you trying to shoot that animal?
	I fire off the first shot because the cougar jumps at me.
	The cougar changes shape.
	It changes into a wolf.
	I'm really freaked out now and I shoot again.
	The cougar changes back into a cougar and pounces off.
	I re-engage with the man that drove up.
	He has no clue why I was even panicking.
	He didn't even recognize the danger of the situation.
	The next part of the dream, I walk up to the river and for some reason, I jump in.
	And when I jump in, the water's warm and I can actually breathe underwater.
	So I'm swimming down and I'm looking around and it's just beautiful.
	It's kind of like The walls of the river are laced with crystals and I'm surrounded by dolphins and that same killer whale that I saw earlier in the dream swims next to me and the killer whale has a baby killer whale with her.
	So we start swimming together and I realized I'm surrounded and greeted by dolphins that are in the river.
	And in my head, I felt really safe.
	And because I'm under the understanding that if any predator decided to come into that part of the river, they would be torn to pieces by dolphins and killer whales.
	For some reason, I'm called back to the surface, and I meet up with this family that lives in a building, for some reason, that's right next to the woods that I was living in.
	And, you know, the family is pretty much, you know, all the signs of, like, dysfunction are there.
	When I mean signs of dysfunction, I mean kids, unkept, running around in diapers and socks.
	All the adult family members are sitting around smoking and drinking.
	Typical stuff.
	One of the women asked me to go to the store for them.
	After that, I kind of just wake up.
	Okay.
	Great dream.
	Great dream.
	And what happened the day, the day of the dream?
	Let's see.
	The day of the dream.
	It was, well, right before the day of the dream.
	It was pretty much a typical day.
	I think, what day was it?
	It was on the 25th.
	So yeah, I pretty much went to work, had class, and came home.
	But for some reason that day, something was really bothering me, and I couldn't figure it out.
	So I had like a small I had a conversation with myself.
	For me, it was just like trying to find what my motivation was for just doing what I was doing.
	Because I'm currently in grad school and I was just trying to figure out why I was doing this.
	Was I just passing the time or I needed some kind of goal?
	I was just kind of going over that with myself right before bed.
	And I decided, maybe my goal isn't to have a career and things like that.
	Maybe a good goal to shoot for would be to work hard and prepare for those first five years when I have my kids.
	And after I kind of made that statement, I felt a lot better.
	And then I went to sleep, and that's when I had that dream.
	Well, okay, so some stuff did happen ahead of time.
	All right.
	So, okay, so living in a bed in the woods by a river, alone, right?
	Yeah.
	And you said that you were afraid of sharks, but it's actually killer whales that you see, right?
	Yeah.
	Now, killer whales, I don't think, attack people.
	I mean, maybe if you're in a wetsuit, they think you're a seal or whatever, but I don't think that killer whales attack people.
	I've actually, just by the by, when I was 16, I went to stay with a friend of my father's for a summer in Newfoundland.
	He's a marine biologist.
	And I went swimming off the coast of Newfoundland, and I was actually in the water with killer whales.
	Not for long.
	I pretty much wind sprinted back to the shore.
	But they're not attacky.
	I mean, obviously, you can train a killer whale to play with people.
	You can't do that with a great white shark.
	In fact, they don't even stay in captivity.
	So your emotional anxiety around sharks, do you have any of the same amount around killer whales?
	No, not necessarily.
	I've never really been around killer whales.
	But I like how at the beginning there's almost no negative imagery other than, you know, it's raining the blood of the savior or something from the sky.
	There's almost no negative imagery that you could stuff in a dream that's not in a dream.
	Right?
	So you see killer whales and you see through the water to the other side.
	On the other side there are wolves in a graveyard.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	And I think that's, I mean, that's interesting.
	All the negative stuff is mammalian.
	I think that's an important thing to understand.
	I'm not sure exactly why, but they're not sharks, they're whales.
	And whales, of course, are mammals, and it's wolves, not scorpions or whatever, right?
	And a graveyard, of course, is where people go to die or whatever, right?
	So a guy drives up, and then you're chatting with him, and a cougar jumps out, and you grab a shotgun, and the guy says, you're crazy, why shoot that animal?
	Now, so he sees that there's an animal But he must think it's something other than a cougar, right?
	Yeah.
	Like maybe he sees a bunny rabbit.
	And not one of those Monty Python beheading Vorpal bunnies, but like a bunny rabbit.
	And you're like, shit, a bunny!
	Get me my shotgun!
	And he's like, what?
	What are you doing?
	What are you, Elma Fudd?
	Why shoot that animal, right?
	So he sees that there is an animal...
	But he thinks that it's harmless, and you recognize it as lethal, right?
	Yeah.
	Is that right?
	Okay.
	Yep.
	And then as you shoot it, it changes into a wolf, you shoot it, it changes back into a cougar, and then it runs off, right?
	Yeah.
	And the man still doesn't recognize that there's a danger, right?
	Yeah.
	Now, interestingly enough, you also go through something similar.
	Because at the beginning of the dream, you're like, Shit, there's killer whales out there, right?
	Yeah.
	They're dangerous.
	But then when you go into the water, they're not dangerous, right?
	In fact, you feel safe.
	You feel that they're going to protect you.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, there are dolphins and killer whales and so on, right?
	What is the time of year?
	Because you mentioned that the water is warm.
	Is that something that was surprising to you?
	Yeah, because the time of year when I was sleeping outside was fall.
	Okay, yeah, so it's unusually warm, right?
	The water.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	Now, did you listen to, have you listened to any of my recent podcasts?
	Yeah, some of them.
	Did you listen to the one of the fascists around you, either part one or part two?
	Oh, yeah, I listened to both.
	Okay, and do you remember, did you listen to the second one before the stream or after?
	After.
	I listened to both of those after the stream.
	I'd written the stream down, and then I listened to those two casts.
	Okay, so I'll tell you what I think it might be about.
	I mean, this is all theory, right?
	But I'll take a shot at it.
	Now, the man doesn't recognize the danger of the cougar, but you trust your own instincts.
	And you shoot it, and it shapeshifts, and then it runs away, right?
	Yeah.
	Now, after that, you enter into a realm of unreality.
	I mean, before that, there's a little whiff of unreality that you can see all the way through the river and stuff.
	But after the cougar runs away and the man doesn't wreck you, like the man says, why were you shooting at that poor, friendly little animal, right?
	You enter into a realm of unreality because you walk up to the river and you jump in the river.
	Like, there are killer whales in there!
	Why are you doing that, right?
	It doesn't make any sense.
	And the water is warm, although the air is cold.
	And I don't think killer whales spend a lot of time in rivers.
	I think they're pretty much ocean creatures.
	But you can breathe underwater.
	And so there's unreality in the dream.
	The dream is pointing out that something is not real in your reaction to the man around you, right?
	And then you felt called back to the surface after you feel safe.
	And you meet up with this Very dysfunctional family.
	The kids are on camp, they've got diapers and socks, the adults are smoking and drinking, and a woman says, go to the store for us, and that's where the dream ends, right?
	Yeah.
	Right.
	So, it's not a good place at the end of the dream, right?
	Yeah.
	And so, the dream becomes unreal...
	When you don't stop and process the fact that the man can't see, won't see, or is lying to you about the danger.
	And his lying or his unreality, if you had accepted it, would have gotten you killed, right?
	Yeah.
	Like if he says, don't take out that gun, that's a friendly animal.
	If it is a cougar and it's jumping at your throat and you don't defend yourself, you're going to die.
	Yeah.
	So, is there someone around you who minimizes danger?
	Who pretends that things are fine when they're not?
	I mean, that's the reason I asked about the podcast, right?
	It's in the sociopathy one in particular.
	I talk about our inability or society's inability is our unwillingness as a whole to see these predators, right?
	Yeah.
	I didn't use cougar, but I used lion, which is pretty typical.
	But they also say a wolf in sheep's clothing, right?
	And so he can't see, or won't see, or is lying about the danger that you're in, and then you act on it, and you're right.
	You do drive off the predator who's going to kill you, but the man then says, there was no danger, what the hell were you doing?
	You're crazy, right?
	Or something like that.
	Yeah.
	But it's important to process that.
	And the dream is saying, I think, in your life, you are not processing the minimization of danger, of danger that you're in, from those around you.
	And if you don't stop and process...
	The fact that other people are not supporting your genuine perceptions of danger and of threat to your very life.
	If you don't process that and figure out what's going on, you enter into an unreal world.
	You put yourself in danger, which turns out to not be danger, and you also end up with this incredibly dysfunctional family or community, right?
	So...
	I mean, you don't have to answer this, of course, right?
	I mean, but what I would ponder if I were in your shoes is I would say, I am perceiving a danger around me that is very, very dangerous.
	It's not like, you know, hey, that bunny might give you a rash, right?
	I mean, this is like this cougar could tear out your throat.
	And...
	Of course, the man in the car or the truck, he could have saved you.
	I mean, a cougar cannot claw its way through a metal door, right?
	So he could have just said, shit, cougar, get in my van, get in my truck.
	But instead, he's trying to disarm you from protecting yourself, from protecting your very life.
	He is attempting to disarm you.
	And you enter into an unreal world because you're not challenging his unreal world.
	Does that make sense?
	That makes a lot of sense.
	And then you go, after defending yourself from predators, you go and voluntarily expose yourself to predators.
	Both animal predators in the form of killer whales and human predators in the form of abusive parents.
	And the danger of the wolf cougar jumping at your throat is ignored by the man.
	And the family just says, hey, can you go to the store for me, ignoring the danger that they're creating in the environment for the children that they have.
	right?
	As if that's not real.
	Those two are parallel, right?
	So the man says...
	This dangerous situation is not real, you should ignore it.
	You say about the killer whales after the mans, you say, well this dangerous situation with the killer whales is not dangerous and I should ignore it.
	And then you and the parents of these abused children, these neglected children, are all pretending that this dangerous situation with the children is not real and can be ignored and doesn't matter, right?
	Yeah.
	Wow.
	Processing other people's unreality is a fundamental act of self-protection in the world.
	When other people have unreality, have dissociation, have defenses, have avoidance, one of the reasons we stay slaves is we are continually being disarmed by our fellow slaves.
	The government is here to help.
	The cops are the good guys.
	Oh, your mom's not so bad.
	Oh, your brother's just going through a tough time.
	Oh, they did the best they could.
	With the tools that they had.
	Oh, you know, parents, they try to do the best by their...
	Well, he's just a real believer in God, and that's the way he wants to raise his children.
	Who are you to interfere?
	We are constantly disarming each other.
	We are trained to.
	The moment anybody shows a spine, we want to pour acid on it and dissolve them back into the general goo of sheeple complacency.
	It's just an instinct.
	I almost don't blame people for it.
	That's just what we're trained to do.
	Continually disarm each other.
	Continually pretend that evil does not exist.
	Continually pretend that we are not ruled but served by our masters.
	Continually pretend that sociopathy does not exist.
	Continually pretend that liars, cheats, scumbags, and assholes are not all around us.
	And so, processing other people's moral unreality is fundamental to our self-protection as thinkers.
	And if we don't process other people's unreality, it infects us.
	I mean, to use a harsh metaphor, dissociation and avoidance is the aids of our philosophical immune system.
	It disarms our defenses.
	The call is coming from inside the house!
	So if other people are unreal about the danger of the world or the evils that we face this is the fundamental of the against me argument by the way but if other people are unreal about it and we don't process that unreality that unreality will pass into us you understand emotional defenses are more contagious than the common cold and more common than the common cold and with far more disastrous effects people are constantly trying to and
	it's not consciously but they're constantly trying To infect you with blindness to evil, with impotence in the face of hierarchy, with subjugation to power, with the praise of violence, with the respect for immorality.
	This is how slaves survive.
	Now, unfortunately, this is how evil flourishes.
	But I would argue that there would be people in your life...
	I mean, if you're into this conversation, which I think is the most important true and real conversation...
	Then you get that we are ruled by coercion and we are sold like cattle.
	And when you talk about this with other people, they say, the government is not a cougar, the government is a bunny.
	Why would you be upset?
	Why would you be tense?
	This is the way things are.
	This is good.
	They'll take care of you in an old age.
	They'll give you free health care.
	They'll give you a phone.
	And so they're all like, well, there's no bunny.
	There's Sorry, there's no cougar, there's only bunnies.
	And processing that is very important.
	Because if you don't process it, it will infect you.
	And cause you to split against yourself.
	And set you at war against yourself.
	And once you're warring with yourself, you're no danger to anyone.
	You're just sitting in a corner biting your nails.
	Going back and forth like a pendulum and never getting anywhere.
	Walking in an ever-decreasing circle until you vanish.
	Anyway, that's my thoughts about it.
	Tell me what you think.
	I think you're right on.
	When I originally tried to analyze it myself, I originally thought that the dream had something to do with With me kind of jumping into my own unconscious and kind of going with my instincts, if that makes any sense.
	And I agree.
	So there's something nice because there's the Jungian shadow idea, right?
	Which says that you get in touch with your dark side and, you know, it's good.
	You can write blah, blah, blah.
	And – but the dream is – and that's why I was sort of waiting.
	I didn't expect the dream to end in a good place because you could breathe underwater and there was unreality and unreality does not lead to good things in general.
	But – so there was this idea that, oh, I've made friends with the predators.
	They're going to protect and defend me, right?
	But then you can – the dream will tell you whether that's true or not because you look for the next part of the dream.
	And if the next part of the dream is, I walk out from the stream with the killer whales and the dolphins, I find a wonderful woman, we settle down, life is wonderful and great, then that's one thing, right?
	But that's not where you end up.
	So the dream is saying that the unreality of making friends with your predators will lead you to a bad place, to a dysfunctional family.
	Because that's what the dream does.
	It puts you right there in a dysfunctional family where you see children being neglected and abused, parents sitting around drinking and smoking, and you can't bring that reality anymore to them because you've let the other guy take away your reality.
	It's almost like you listened to the guy, you didn't pull the trigger, you were killed by the cougar?
	Yeah.
	And then everything after that is after death.
	Because it's so unreal.
	Wow.
	Wow.
	Thank you.
	That makes a lot of sense.
	You know, a lot of light bulbs are going off in my head right now.
	And the way I would suggest combating this, my guess is because you're living alone in the woods at the beginning of the dream, that you're feeling perhaps just a tad isolated.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I am.
	I guess you could say I do a lot of hiding.
	Sure.
	Don't we all?
	Right?
	Reason is the new gay.
	And we don't even have the medieval monasteries where we could collect with our gay brethren and wear no underpants and not get married, right?
	So, yeah, reason definitely is the eyes wide shut, hide in plain sight kind of thing.
	But I strongly urge, and I strongly urge this of everyone, I mean, reality...
	It's very hard to process in solitude.
	We are community-based lifeforms.
	And do what you can.
	Reach out to people through the message board, through the chat room.
	Just try and get – and there will be lots of swings and misses and maybe one out of ten people you'll want.
	But at least have people that you can talk to about your experience with philosophy.
	Find your experience of self-knowledge.
	Find people that you can talk to, even if it's over email or over Skype or whatever, right?
	But find people that you can talk with.
	It's very hard, I would say almost impossible, to process reality versus culture on your own.
	Because in the dream, you are on your own.
	and the only other person around is somebody dismantling your defenses and your reality.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Wow.
	But get into communication with people.
	Stay in communication with people.
	And, I mean, come to where I'm speaking or come to where other libertarians are speaking.
	And talk to people.
	Get their cards.
	Get their numbers.
	But stay in conversation with people.
	You know, there's this idea that philosophy is like a guy with a long beard and a white robe sitting on top of a mountain staring at the sunset.
	No.
	That's what the leaders want, is for philosophers to go live in the woods, for philosophers to hide, for philosophers to go up the mountain and not come back.
	Or kiss horses and go mad like Nietzsche.
	But...
	I mean, the essence of an abusive relationship is isolation.
	And that's what culture wants from us, is to seal us off and to isolate us.
	And that way...
	Like, I don't believe in the Nietzschean superhero or the Randian superhero, the man who is so rooted in reality, he's like a rail race bike driven into wet concrete that dries.
	We get our language from society.
	We get so many of our images from society.
	If you consume art, we get a lot of messages from society about society.
	If you see advertisements, you get a lot of messages about society from society.
	There is a constant erosion factor going on.
	in the world and if it's going on in our social world and our artistic world and our academic world and our business world and our friend world and our community world and our family world it is impossible I believe to move through all of that without being eroded if what is coming from your relationships and your culture is the opposite of what is true I mean you can sail against the wind cold tacking but I just don't think it's possible to sustain
	without at least one connection that can help you to process the unreality that is so slippery and so elusive.
	It's like a ghost bone marrow stealer that disarms us continually and undermines us and whispers sweet nothings, literally sweet nothings into our ears.
	The undertow of unreality in our culture is so powerful and it's so fundamental and it's so disarming and it's so corrosive that I could not do it alone.
	And look, I don't mean to say, well, if I can't do it, nobody can.
	I can't figure out a way.
	I couldn't have figured out a way to do it alone.
	It would be too hard.
	And the interesting thing is, of course, that when you slip into unreality in your dream, you gain relief.
	Because you're in unreality and suddenly the predators have become your friends and you're swimming with the dolphins and the baby killer whales and you feel safe and protected.
	Of course, when you slip into unreality, culture becomes your friend.
	When you slip into unreality, hierarchy becomes your fortress.
	When you slip into unreality, violence vanishes.
	Laws become just.
	National debts become a technical problem to be overcome.
	Public school teachers become heroes, as do policemen.
	The social contract comes out of its grave like a zombie at the end of a horror film.
	Comes back, puts on a tux and some makeup, takes you dancing.
	And everybody around you breathes a huge sigh of relief that you have given up reality, taken the other pill, gone back into the matrix, and that little hole, that little hole that is in the corner of people's eyes, which opens up and shows them the reality outside the programming,
	which shows them the violence outside the social order, that little hole that opens up Through which people genuinely believe that the demons of truth will come pouring through and chew their delusions away, leaving almost nothing left, not even the husk of a corn.
	That little hole, pop, closes up.
	And the party of delusion can really crank up.
	So I would not try and do it alone.
	So the fact that the killer whales become your friends and your defenders when you accept unreality, human unreality, totally.
	Absolutely.
	Totally.
	That makes sense to me, but it leads you to a bad place.
	The relief of dissolving back into collective delusions is profound.
	It is a quasi-religious experience.
	The relief of letting go of truth.
	I mean, truth is a...
	Wet, deep log and shark-infested waters in a stormy sea these days.
	Well, always, I think.
	And right coming down the lane, coming down the sea lane, is a fantastic cruise ship with bikini-clad supermodels of both genders and platters of scintillating disco sushi and great music and comfortable beds.
	And you're like, fuck, I really want to go up there, man.
	Okay, it's a ghost ship.
	Okay, I'll have to give up my soul.
	Okay, I will not have truth.
	But I will have companions.
	And I will have praise.
	And I will have support.
	And I will no longer be any trouble to anyone.
	And...
	Everybody will be hugely relieved and clap me on the back.
	Like an atheist who converted to Christianity, I will have speaking engagements for life.
	People will buy my books by the millions.
	People will praise me.
	I just have to step into unreality.
	The deal with the devil is mine, and I can have all that I see.
	Because that's the bribe that you get for unreality.
	Social approval, social acceptance.
	Reproductive rights, right?
	Women will breed with you if you're deluded.
	Yeah.
	And you won't have really any problems with anyone if you stay in the paradigm, if you climb back into the programming, if you dissolve yourself into the high ether stream of atomized culture, if you blend back into and become another blade of grass, the general lawn, the manicured lawn of those who are owned, Well, the slaves are relieved.
	The masters are relieved.
	Everything can go back to how it should be for them.
	That's very tempting, right?
	I can breathe underwater, right?
	I can turn culture into truth.
	I can breathe underwater.
	I can turn unreason into reason.
	I can turn fantasy into empiricism.
	I can breathe underwater and now the predators are my friends and will protect me, of course.
	If you join in the general chorus of lies called culture, then the liars will start to protect you as a valuable asset rather than a threat.
	So, it's tempting.
	Oh, I get it.
	Do you know how many speaking engagements I would have gotten if I'd been for political action?
	You'd probably have like your own show.
	Yeah, I would imagine if...
	Yeah, or if I was just a plain old libertarian or if I relaxed the hard atheism.
	I mean, my goodness.
	My goodness.
	It's tempting as hell.
	Given my...
	Language abilities, given my charisma, I mean, the sky would be the limit.
	The deal with the devil would be mine.
	I would have all that I saw.
	Ah, that deal's been done before.
	And I suffered as a child because that deal had been done before, and I will not re-inflict that suffering on anyone if I can help it.
	Thank you.
	Is there anything else that you wanted to talk about with that?
	Well, yeah...
	In a lot of ways, what you said, really parallels to what's actually been going on in my life.
	So that's why, as you were explaining, I was just connecting the dots.
	It's pretty insane.
	I guess my next question would be, how do you go about processing something like this?
	And, you know, I've always kind of been...
	I feel like I've always kind of been at war with my instincts.
	You know...
	And, you know, I always go back to the drawing board and kind of second guess or, you know, or I can't make a decision so I don't make any decisions because, you know, I can't...
	You know, I don't trust my instincts for some reason.
	Well, I would be careful to not mistake your instincts for your programming.
	We were all...
	Philosophers before we were philosophers, right?
	We all went to public school.
	A lot of us went to religious education.
	So we were all against philosophy before we were for philosophy.
	But we weren't naturally against philosophy.
	We had to be taught to be against philosophy because we're incredibly empirical as children.
	We're incredibly rational as children.
	So don't confuse your instincts with your programming.
	There's stuff that's in you that's denated.
	There's stuff that's in you that's inflicted.
	And do not identify your personality with your propaganda.
	It's there, right?
	I get it.
	It's there.
	But it's inflicted.
	It's foreign.
	It's not innate to you.
	So when you say you're in a war with yourself, no.
	No.
	I would not accept that as a standard.
	What I would say is, I'm fighting for truth.
	And fighting for a way out of the lies that were inflicted on me against my will.
	And the lies in me are enemies.
	I have sympathy for myself when I was young and I had to believe these lies.
	I had to.
	You can't fight lies when you're a kid.
	You can't.
	I mean, people don't do well when they fight lies as children.
	I mean, historically.
	They don't do so.
	It's like public speaking.
	People are terrified of people speaking.
	It probably meant that you were going to try and make it for political power.
	So, people are always terrified of public speaking.
	Because that exposes you to retaliations from the political and religious classes.
	People, you know, there's an old scientific joke, they...
	Most people are more afraid of public speaking than they are of dying, which means that if you're at a funeral, you'd rather be in the coffin than giving the eulogy.
	But there's a practical reality.
	Speaking of the past, which meant that you were probably going to be targeted and killed, so we should be afraid of it, of course, right?
	But I think it's important, and it's all tangled up, so it's not like a clear line.
	There is the truth of our experiences and the lies that were inflicted upon us.
	The lies of country, the lies of religion, the lies of culture, the lies sometimes of race, all of this stuff.
	And I just really strongly urge you to try and differentiate.
	There's the original selves we had.
	You can't propagandize a baby a whole lot, right?
	So we had a year or two when we were kids of true and original experiences.
	You know, except for circumcision or whatever other religious rituals may have been performed.
	But we had a slice of time at the very beginning where we weren't propagandized because we couldn't be propagandized.
	I think actually language was developed in order to propagandize, which is why language is so compatible with propaganda.
	And philosophy was invented to propagandize, not to find the truth, but to create mental chains so that the real ones weren't so expensive and difficult to maintain.
	To create the inner Praetorian Guard in the minds of the slaves is a lot cheaper than having a real Praetorian Guard that has to chase them down and scare them and reveal the violence in the system.
	So there's you and then there's all the propaganda that was inflicted upon you.
	So just really differentiate those aspects of where you are and who you are.
	That would be my suggestion because we don't want to pretend that we are at war with ourselves.
	There's our immune system and there are viruses and the propaganda is the virus.
	If I have a cold and my immune system is fighting to kill off the cold virus, I don't say my body is at war with itself.
	I say my body is fighting a virus.
	And I think that's the way we should look at it mentally in my opinion.
	Now, how to do that, I think that should be a great topic for a podcaster.
	I will make a note of that, and I will sort of share my thoughts on that, but if you don't mind, I'll get on to the next caller.
	Sure.
	Thanks, Steph.
	Great dream.
	Next up, we have Kevin.
	Hello, hello.
	First of all, bravo.
	That was amazing.
	I don't even know how you can diagnose something and give a You know, I have a synopsis on something so quickly.
	That's, I don't know, good brain power right there.
	Mostly caffeine.
	We'll take credit for it.
	And a bit outside the night would be me, so thank you.
	But I have more on my troubles with anarcho-communism.
	All right.
	I have...
	A question or a statement that I would like your view on.
	Have you heard of people saying that or other anarchists that anarcho-capitalists aren't real anarchists?
	Yes.
	And what I've heard is the reason why they're not real anarchists is because they're not willing to Take the property of, you know, the people that have a lot of property or whatever, and leaving people with a lot of property or money is basically setting up a plutocracy waiting to happen.
	And I want to know what your thoughts on that are.
	So, sorry, let me just make sure I understand.
	So the argument is that if my dad or my mom was some business magnate and leaves me two million dollars, Then I'm much more likely to succeed and I'm much more likely to send, to give my kids $20 million, $50 million, and we're going to end up ruling the universe while the poor kids fall further behind.
	Is that right?
	Yeah, but mainly it's, you know, it's going to be a plutocracy, basically.
	It's not going to be a real reform.
	It's just going to be people that are rich are just going to be rich indefinitely, all the time, forever, perpetually.
	Right.
	Well, of course, the first thing that I would ask someone like that is...
	I mean, if I didn't want to do the childhood thing, but if I was just sort of starting with the facts to see if they were open, I would say, well, where is the evidence that in a free market, people who become rich stay permanently rich?
	Right.
	Well, the evidence is quite the contrary.
	You know, this is a phenomenon called...
	Shirt sleeves to shirts to shirt sleeves in three generations, which is, you know, the first generation works hard, the second generation makes a whole bunch of money, gets rich, then the third generation are a bunch of playboy wastrels who blow all the family money and this and that and the other, right?
	Also, the arc of MC Hammer, who made, you know...
	And then ended up declaring bankruptcy because his posse of 1,500 people or 150 people or whatever it was turned out to be a tad on the pricey side for Mr.
	Parachute Pence.
	Yeah, moochers.
	And of course, you know, I would say to this person, I would say, well, of the Fortune 500 companies around 100 years ago, how many of them are still around today?
	I don't mean like still in the Fortune 500.
	I mean exist at all.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	If they didn't know the answer to that, and they didn't know the answer as to the degree of social mobility or economic mobility in the more free market countries, then I would understand that they were not coming from an empirical basis.
	Does that make sense?
	Mm-hmm.
	And if they're not coming from an empirical basis, then something feels true to them for some other reason than empiricism, and that just means it feels true to them for the empiricism of their childhoods, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	So why would somebody believe that those who have more power will continually escalate in their power while those who have less power will not, will continually diminish in their power?
	Why would they feel that from their childhoods?
	Okay.
	I'm asking you that.
	That's a real question.
	Oh, okay.
	Sorry about that.
	What did you say?
	Sorry, but why do you think that would happen?
	I have no idea.
	Alright, well, the rich would be the parents, right?
	In this emotional scenario, right?
	And the poor would be the children, right?
	Right.
	So, why would there be this idea that the rich are going to get richer and the poor are going to get poorer?
	Well, maybe because the parents always have power and will always seem to have power for the rest of their lives.
	Yeah, I mean, the purpose of parenting is to diminish your power and control over your children, right?
	But that's the purpose.
	Because you have to become self-actualized, self-responsible, independent human beings.
	That's the point of having a kid, right?
	I mean, we don't want to be wiping their asses when they're 20, right?
	You'll do it when they're young.
	You help them to do it themselves, right?
	Does that make sense?
	So the purpose of parenting...
	Wait, what part of that doesn't make sense?
	Do you think it's good to be wiping your glasses with it?
	No, I'm just trying to formulate it to what the ultimate point would be.
	So I guess I just need more elaboration.
	Try not to jump ahead of the argument.
	I'm not trying to...
	So just stay with me for this.
	If you agree to every single point, that's just, hey, two and two make four, right?
	Yes, I do.
	You're not surrendering to me.
	You're just surrendering to reality, which is kind of what we want to do, right?
	So do you agree that in the ideal, the purpose of parenting is to diminish your control and your power over your children?
	Yeah, make your child independent, yeah.
	When my daughter is 3, I don't want her near the stove.
	When my daughter is 15, I want her near the stove.
	Because she's going to learn how to cook because she's going to be independent at some point, right?
	So I keep her exercising control to keep her away from the stove when she's young.
	And then I'm going to encourage her to get closer to the stove and hopefully make a meal or two when she gets older, right?
	Right.
	I do not let my daughter handle money, other than as a toy, when she is 3.
	I do want my daughter to be handling money when she's 12, right?
	Right.
	I don't want her to have a job now, when she's 15, maybe, or whatever, right?
	But the reality is that I exercise a huge amount of control over her environment when she's young, and then the purpose, of course, is for me to transfer the knowledge and the purpose of that control to her so that she gains independence.
	Right?
	You sound very skeptical.
	No, no.
	I'm just agreeing.
	I'm sorry.
	Alright.
	Now, what if you have really controlling parents who are so anxious about you making a mistake that they're continually controlling your life into your teenage years?
	So you're saying what if you have that?
	Is that what you said?
	Well, then what happens is the amount of control that your parents exercise over you becomes more, not less.
	Yeah, it doesn't diminish.
	Right?
	I mean, I have to exercise more strength to win an arm wrestling contest with a 15-year-old man than I do...
	With a five-year-old boy, right?
	So if I want to continue to control my children into their teenage years, I actually have to exercise more control over them rather than less.
	More effort?
	Yeah, more effort, more motivation.
	I have to really focus on them, right?
	So for instance, when I tell my daughter not to do something, like I'm opening the stove, don't go near it.
	She can do anything else, right?
	It's just a couple of thou shalt nots when they're very young, right?
	But if I want my daughter to make good choices when she's a teenager, then it's not a thou shalt not, it becomes a thou shalt, right?
	And thou shalts require almost infinitely more control than thou shalt not, right?
	You can do anything but this is like saying you can go anywhere in the world except for this one Square foot of space in the forest, right?
	Well, you can probably live with that, right?
	But if I say, you have to stand on this one square foot in the forest, the amount of control I have to exercise to get you to achieve that is prodigious, right?
	So, one possibility, and this is, you understand, this is not exactly science.
	It isn't psychology, because I'm not a psychologist, but...
	Way of looking at it that might make some sense as to why somebody would believe something without any empirical, objective, universal evidence.
	Because our childhoods give us a huge amount of empirical evidence about our childhoods and we tend to universalize that, especially if things were dysfunctional.
	So if somebody says, well, those who have power will end up becoming more powerful and those who have no power or little power will end up becoming less powerful, Then I would ask about that person's relationship with his parents or authority figures as a teenager.
	And if it was like, oh yeah, my parents were in my case.
	They kept wanting me to do this.
	They kept telling me to do sports.
	They kept telling me to do this and that.
	And I was constantly, oh, I've got to go clean my room.
	I've got to join the glee club or whatever it is.
	So they're constantly telling me what to do.
	I'd say, well, this may have something to do with your political beliefs.
	Because, oh, your beliefs about economics.
	Because it's not true that in a free market, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
	If that were true, then the rich would be fighting tooth and nail to minimize the government.
	But that's not what the rich do.
	The rich fight tooth and nail at the government to control the poor because the poor are a grave threat to the rich.
	There are so many reasons for this, but a basic and obvious one is that the poor need less money.
	Therefore, they can underbid the rich.
	I mean, this is why, as I made the case in Why You Were Unemployed Part 2, this is why everybody likes, like everybody who's older, likes to keep teenage kids in government schools because the teenage kids aren't out there competing with the plumbers and the electricians because the teenage kids have no requirements.
	They can charge almost nothing, whereas some plumber who's got two kids in college and a $400,000 house, he's got to charge a lot.
	So it's true that the free market makes the rich richer and the rich donate to political campaigns all the time and we assume that the rich know something about their own economic self-interest because they're rich.
	Then why don't the rich try and get rid of as many government controls as possible?
	Well, they don't.
	They try and use government controls all the time.
	There's almost no greater foe of the free market than A business person, especially a large business person.
	So, since it's not true empirically, it's not true rationally, but it feels true, there must be some other reason, and that reason must come out of childhood, particularly if the person is young.
	I can definitely understand that now.
	I'm sorry for my inability to get things quick.
	I've been staying for a pretty long time.
	It's 9am right now, so...
	Oh, don't apologize.
	I thought that you were – look, if somebody is not accepting what I'm saying, that's not a problem.
	I mean, you might be right.
	I might be talking entirely out of my ass.
	But I always want to recognize that that is happening.
	And if you sound skeptical, it may be because I've skipped some essential step of reasoning or my evidence is false or something like that.
	So I don't stop and say – You sound skeptical because that's a bad thing.
	It may be a perfectly good thing, but I just point out that I'm noticing it, and if there's something we need to go back and hash over again, that we should.
	That's all I mean by that.
	Okay.
	Everything looks perfect, as usual.
	Sorry, the other thing I would say as well, that in religion, of course, the degree of control that gets exercised tends to increase over time as well.
	I mean, religion doesn't exercise much control over a one-year-old, and Usually, as a kid, you're introduced to biblical stories with cute little animal plays and fuzzy little pictures in pop-up books and stuff like that.
	I remember I had a Bible that had nice little paintings of Jesus doing all these lovely things, just so I would look at those and not actually read the rather horrifying text that was sandwiched between these pictures.
	We had a preacher who came into my boarding school who, I remember this very vividly, and God took Satan and threw him into a big pond and put up a sign saying, no fishing!
	What a cute thing, right?
	Not, of course, any particular truth in it.
	I mean, even metaphorically, it's a pretty bad story because we actually need fish to eat and a lot of people, right?
	And fish are actually quite good for you.
	Again, to quote Seinfeld, why fish so thin?
	They eat fish.
	But that's the way you were introduced.
	Now, the real, and also when you're sort of young, there's a little bit of latitude, but religion really comes back and clamps on your nuts when you get to be in reproductive age, right?
	Because they want to make sure they get the kids, right?
	Because the kids are the crop for the next generation of priests on so many levels.
	And so the idea that control increases You know, that those who are rich and powerful get more rich and powerful.
	If you're raised in particular religious contexts, that's quite true.
	Right, so I mean, I've known a bunch of people who, when they were younger, they were allowed, sort of quote, allowed to date outside their faith or whatever, but when it came time to settle down, it was like, okay, playtime's over.
	Now you go choose a Jew.
	Now you go choose a Catholic.
	Now you go choose whatever, right?
	So these things may feel true, although the economic empiricism doesn't support it at all, but it feels true if that kind of stuff is what people's life experience is, if that makes any sense.
	Yeah, that makes sense.
	To maybe switch gears because I don't know if you have any more to say on that subject or Yes, sorry, go ahead.
	Hello?
	Do you have any...
	I would say I want to get...
	Excuse me?
	No, go ahead.
	Sorry.
	Oh, okay.
	That keeps on cutting out after like a little while, so I don't know.
	Since you were an executive level and as a software entrepreneur, I want to get an insight on if you think a business run by a democratic...
	Staff, people just being able to vote on everything, would you see that being able to work rather well, or do you see problems with that?
	I know there's some businesses that actually do that, but I want to know what your thoughts on that would be.
	Yeah, I think involving employees in the business aspect of the business is great.
	I read a very influential, at least for me, a very influential article I read an article in Harvard Business Review when I worked as a pretty low-rent guy in the business world.
	I used to read Harvard Business Review and they had an article about a factory in South America.
	This would be over 20 years ago, maybe even more.
	And they published everyone's salaries and they published all of the information about supplier costs and orders coming in and they'd regularly have meetings.
	And if there was a production need for something to change, they would just say, here's what we need, here's why.
	Do you agree?
	Okay, go find a way to do it.
	And they would really allow and encourage the workers to make their own strategic decisions about the allocations of resources.
	They set up their own little profit centers and all of that and made everyone an entrepreneur as much as they could within the framework of the larger organization and so on.
	And, I mean, that hugely influenced me.
	And that influenced my decision-making as a manager in the companies that I was involved in, that I would always try and get those interests.
	I mean, some people either just want to come to work and type and go home, but for those who were interested, I think it's a great thing to do.
	Yeah, it's a great thing to do.
	I remember one company I worked at, the executives were on another floor.
	You couldn't get To that floor, if you were an employee.
	Like, you literally...
	Like, your key would not work to get to that floor.
	And when you got to that floor, there were two metal doors with no window.
	And there was punch cards and you'd...
	Sorry, punch keys.
	You'd have to have a code or you could try and phone someone or whatever.
	They weren't listed in the company.
	Like, the executives were, like, from another planet.
	And they were, like, interdimensional, intelligent species of mice or something.
	Thanks, Douglas Adams.
	But...
	They really were removed from that.
	And I don't know.
	This one woman wanted to get some business cards because she was going out meeting with clients.
	It would cost like $10 to get business cards.
	And she said, I'd really like some business cards.
	And the manager said, well, you know, there are things in this business that are have-to-have and there are things that are nice to have.
	And I'm really going to focus on the have-to-have, right?
	This guy was wearing a Rolex watch.
	So his argument that there's nice-to-have and have-to-have.
	How upset was she because the company wouldn't spring 10 bucks for her goddamn business cards?
	How much did that make her feel undervalued as an employee?
	And how dysfunctional was that particular organization?
	So that to me is very much old school.
	Although, of course, in the 19th century there were lots of experiments with worker-owned and run factories.
	And Dana Martin's husband runs a manufacturing concern where everybody has an equal...
	I met a wonderful anarchist when I was in Odessa, Texas giving some speeches earlier this year who runs a collective, right?
	So a worker owned and operated and decided.
	Yeah, I think it's fantastically economically valuable.
	Again, it takes a little bit of patience and some consensus building.
	But see, I mean, the reason that...
	I don't know.
	I'll just make this very brief.
	But the reason that...
	People don't negotiate and they end up with a hierarchy is because they don't have the skills to negotiate.
	They don't know how to do it.
	They lack emotional maturity.
	They lack empathy.
	They lack respect for others.
	They're primitive in their personalities.
	They don't negotiate with themselves in particular.
	They tend to be very sort of will it kind of people and the way that organizations work in society is that they grow out of and they are the shadow cast by The traumas and inabilities of the people who inhabit them.
	Why do we have a government?
	We have a government because people will not intervene in situations of child abuse.
	That's why we have a government.
	That's why I talk about this stuff.
	So because people won't intervene in situations of child abuse because of their own traumas and because of their own, frankly, cowardice, children end up growing up in these top-down hierarchies because there's this It's complete hypocrisy in society that if you're in an abusive relationship with a spouse, you should leave.
	But if you're in an abusive relationship with a parent, you have to forgive them and find a way to make it work and never, ever, ever, ever make the choice to leave an abusive relationship in that context.
	People end up continuing to expose their next generation to toxic elements and to be worse parents than they would have been if they weren't in those toxic relationships and so on.
	And so people lack negotiation skills.
	They lack empathy.
	Skills.
	They lack mirror neurons in the brain.
	And so because of that, they end up having to reach for the gun, for the law, for the state.
	They can't reason with each other.
	They don't have empathy.
	They lack emotional maturity.
	They lack emotional intelligence.
	But shit still needs to get done.
	So when shit needs to get done and you can't reason with people, then you'll force them.
	I mean, I would say that for a lot of parents who hit, it is simply because they don't have or have never explored the better ways of doing it.
	Not all, but, you know, a lot of them if exposed to better, I know this from the show, a lot of them exposed to better information will change their behavior.
	And thank you to those parents so much who do that.
	You definitely changed my outlook on the way I will raise my future children, definitely.
	Yeah, I get so many emails from people, and those are the emails that, you know, that's fantastic, right?
	Because that's actually reducing the amount of aggression and violence in the world and having, of course, cumulative effects over the long term.
	But, so why is it that there are these top-down management styles in Nandiga?
	Because people, it's the same reason that if you go to China and you don't speak Mandarin, you have to hire an interpreter because you don't speak that language, so you can't do it.
	And if you don't speak the language of negotiation and empathy and respect for others, then you have to have a top-down hierarchy and tell people what to do because you don't actually know, right?
	It's not like people positively choose these hierarchies.
	These hierarchies form because of deficiencies.
	It's like saying, well, somebody just chooses to go sit in a wheelchair.
	No, they go to choose to sit in a wheelchair because they can't walk.
	The wheelchair is there because they can't walk.
	It's not a choice.
	They just, hey, I think I'll just go sit around in a wheelchair for the rest of my life.
	And the hierarchies that we see, the structures that we see, arise out of people's deficiencies.
	And people's deficiencies arise out of how they were treated as children.
	That's why if you want to change the world, you change childhood.
	There's no other way.
	No other way.
	Change the world, change childhood, that's it.
	Everything else is frankly bullshit.
	And exploitive bullshit too.
	Because it's holding out the lie of change and taking people's resources when that change cannot occur.
	So I think it's great to have participatory organizations in economics.
	I think it's wonderful.
	I hope that these shows are part of that for me and for this show, for this conversation.
	But it requires that there's some maturity and some self-knowledge on the part of the executives, which is often lacking.
	Well, I have another couple questions.
	This mainly deals with more personal to you.
	I'm sorry.
	I'm going to have to.
	We can do this perhaps next week, but I want to make sure we get to the last caller.
	Oh, that's fine.
	I agree.
	But thank you.
	I appreciate you bringing those topics up.
	All right.
	Thank you.
	See you next time.
	All right.
	Last up, we have Asker.
	Ah, calling from Ragnarok.
	Hello, how are you doing?
	Oh, I'm okay.
	Thank you, thank you.
	Can you hear me all right?
	Hello?
	Yes, go ahead.
	Okay.
	Yeah, I first have to call to Kane, who called with the Dream.
	I just wanted to let him know that if he needs someone to talk to, he can contact me.
	I'm a ponus maximus on the boards.
	And then I would like to just have a brief comment on the deal with the devil thing you talked about.
	I was raised as a Jehovah's Witness, much like that.
	Remember that caller who was an active Jehovah's Witness?
	And he was all like, Defending Noah's Ark and all of that, the flood.
	So I have left the faith now, but I often think that I could have become a very great man in that organization if I were willing to sort of sell out.
	Because I think I could have presented some much better sophistry than he could certainly.
	So that was just a brief comment.
	It's been a very good show today and then I also have a brief comment on the welfare state.
	I live in Denmark of course so much of what was said about Sweden sort of applies to Denmark too.
	We got through the First World War and Second World War without too much trouble, despite the occupation in the Second World War.
	There wasn't a lot of destruction of property.
	And the situation now in Denmark is that every little girl who was born will, on average, with the current level of welfare, she will take about $300,000 More than she pays in taxes.
	And every little boy will contribute only $150,000 in taxes over his lifetime.
	So this is extremely unsustainable.
	And there is going to be some changes, I sort of sense, and it is going to hit those people on fixed incomes.
	So I just had those two comments.
	My main thing I would like to just briefly talk about, I know we're at the end of the show.
	Yeah, my question is sort of Well, it's not really a question.
	It was just a brief comment I wanted to make because I think this sort of planned obsolescence thing is an argument that is often made against the free market because people will say, well, see if there was in a free market, people will make these planned obsolescence and we would get all this consumerism and it will destroy the environment and all blah, blah, blah, blah.
	But I think that these things are actually a result of Of the patent system, certainly the planned obsolescence is because you don't have an interest fundamentally in making a bad product unless somehow shielded from the negative consequences of deliberately making a bad product.
	And so I just...
	I know it's not really a question, it's just a comment I wanted to get in there.
	Well, let me just make one additional point as well, which is that If people are very interested in planned obsolescence and think it's a big problem then they must be against democracy because democracy is fundamentally about planned obsolescence because you're in power for four years or two years or whatever and then you're not.
	And so that's a product that is specifically by design only going to last for two or four years and it's a more important product than your vacuum cleaner.
	So they must be against democracy because democracy is about pre-planned specific with a time situation.
	But you don't find that to be the case.
	People are very pro-planned obsolescence in democracy, but then somehow imagine...
	You know, the planned obsolescence thing, too, is very prejudiced towards the poor, because the poor generally cannot afford high-quality items.
	I mean, the wise poor know that it's cheaper to buy something that's going to last.
	You know, I'm not rich enough to afford anything but stuff that lasts long, because you don't want to replace it.
	But the poor are going to buy stuff that is...
	It's lower quality generally because quality costs money.
	And there is a market to that kind of stuff.
	I mean, do you want the toys that your kids get from McDonald's to last for a hundred years?
	Of course not.
	Do you want your laptop to last for a hundred years?
	You could build it so it would last for a hundred years.
	But of course you don't want it to last for a hundred years.
	You don't want your car to last for a hundred years.
	So there's lots of stuff that it would be pointless and stupid.
	To make it last for a hundred years?
	Do you want your shoes to last for five generations?
	Well, of course not.
	I mean, I guess you could build some space titanium moon boots that would do that, but who wants to put their feet in somebody else's grandfather's stinky old shoes?
	So this idea of planned obsolescence, you know, my daughter, of course, growing like a jackrabbit, do you want your...
	Daughter's 18-month-old clothes, like for when she's 18 months, do you want them to last for 100 years?
	Well, of course not.
	She's going to wear them for six months.
	And then, you know, you watch them donate them or whatever.
	If you have other kids, you can use that.
	But this idea that somehow we should have quality no matter what is immature thinking.
	All quality comes with the cost and you weigh the cost benefits like you would anything else.
	I mean you can get a refrigerator, you can probably buy a refrigerator that lasts for 50 years and maybe some people do.
	But poor people cannot afford those refrigerators and so...
	Or there's other things where you will buy a lower quality carpet for less trafficked areas.
	So anyway, quality is something that costs money, and to just say we should have more quality without understanding that it's all a trade-off, it's just immature.
	I mean, it's just ridiculous.
	It's just like basically saying, well, I'm a doctor because I say that people should be healthier.
	Well, yeah, okay, but so what?
	I mean, yes, things should have more quality, but you have to balance that with price.
	So anyway, I just wanted to mention that this planned obsolescent stuff, it's just silly.
	Yeah, and you're totally right about that.
	That's, of course, the main thing.
	Some things, there's no point in having them, as you say, last longer than some specific time.
	My comment was merely, especially towards this documentary made, where they showed a bunch of instances of the planned obsolescence thing.
	They did actually get a printer in where they found a chip on the printer that would automatically cause it to malfunction after a certain number of prints.
	And then this computer guy, he made a piece of software so you can go in and set the counter back to zero and the printer just could keep on printing.
	And when you took it to the store, they said it was beyond repair.
	And so this is sort of a small sort of thing, but yeah.
	Oh, sure.
	Sorry.
	Let me...
	Yeah, they're assholes.
	Absolutely.
	That's a jerky thing to do.
	The people who make those decisions and a free society would obviously be liable.
	If you build in something to fail and you don't tell your customers, then you're going to get a lawsuit.
	Absolutely.
	At the very best, people are never going to buy from you again.
	And you've just destroyed the credit.
	But, of course, in the short run, and they do this in sales sometimes too, right?
	So it's called stuffing the pipe, right?
	So you go out and you close a whole bunch of sales to drive up that quarter's number.
	And then all the ignorant analysts in the world say, wow, their sales went up 20% this quarter.
	That's great.
	But usually what you've done is you have stolen sales from the next quarter.
	Because you gave people, if you buy this quarter, you get 50% off.
	It's like, woohoo, a lot more sales.
	But then what happens is the next quarter, there's no one to buy because they all bought because of this promotion or whatever.
	And so you can make short-term gains in business at long-term costs.
	And they were obviously able to sell more of those printers because they expected future revenue from people replacing them.
	And so they got more sales moments and they then screwed up the future of the company.
	Now, if people have a problem with that, which they should, I mean that's dishonest, it's fraudulent.
	If people have a problem with that and they should, then what they're saying is that human beings have a tendency or there is a drive or a risk that they will go for short-term gains at the expense of the long-term, right?
	Now, if they have a concern about that, then they should be anarchists.
	Because there's no entity in the universe more subject to that principle than the state.
	I will say whatever it takes to get elected.
	I will take money from the devil himself in order to have enough money to run my campaign to get elected.
	I will make all the promises under the table just to get elected.
	I will bribe people With, quote, free stuff now and pay for it through debt and printing money.
	So if people are concerned that those with authority will sell off the future to bribe the present, then they should forget about fucking printer manufacturer and worry about people who can enslave entire generations, kill hundreds of millions of people, start wars, and rob the poor through printing money.
	Because that's a little bit more important than whether the inkjet sprays on my paper or not.
	But they always focus on that and somehow they think that maybe more centralized political authority is the solution.
	It's just a silly game, right?
	Exactly, exactly.
	So yeah, just to completely shift topic real quick here before the end.
	I'm sure you're familiar with a site called Khan Academy, yes?
	Oh yeah.
	Yeah, I think that's just awesome.
	And in fact, I'm in college too, civil and structural engineering.
	And earlier this year, we had a math class and very late the previous evening, he canceled the teacher because he was ill or whatever.
	And so a lot of people showed up because they didn't find out in time.
	A bunch of us, we remained, and I put up some videos from Khan Academy, and some people even preferred that to the teacher.
	I think there's really room for making stuff like Khan Academy.
	This just shows how cheap education can become.
	Now, personally, when I get the time, I'm going to See if I can make some contributions to that, because Salman Kahn, the founder, he's an electrical engineer or something.
	So I figure there's no videos on Kahn Academy about civil engineering.
	There's no beam theory or any of that.
	And I think I could certainly contribute some.
	So when I have time...
	So yeah, I think that this...
	I just think that things like Kahn Academy...
	Well, I mean, to consume knowledge is very helpful and very important.
	Of course, other people want to know whether you've actually absorbed and understood that knowledge.
	And I remember when I was applying for a programming job once, what they did was they simply...
	They didn't ask for any credentials.
	What they did was they sent me to an online test about my knowledge of whatever it was, technical...
	And, based upon the results of that test, I was either accepted or not accepted as that.
	So, that to me is interesting.
	They didn't care about whether I got a computer science degree five years ago or ten years ago.
	They cared about my level of current technical knowledge of that particular technology.
	And, I mean, it seems to me that that is going to be the way that things move forward.
	As college becomes progressively less economically viable, particularly in the U.S., there is going to be other ways of trying to figure out whether people know stuff.
	And I think it's going to be very exciting to see how that goes.
	Thank you.
	Yeah.
	So, yeah.
	And in general, I think that there's a common misconception that it has to be extremely expensive to go to school.
	I think that, like, I go to college here in Denmark, and I happen to know that the school I go to now get between...
	$16,000 and $20,000 per year per student.
	And that's just outrageous.
	We're like 50 people in my class and that's so much money and I can't even begin to fathom where all that money goes.
	And it could be so much cheaper and when then the teacher don't show up and we just put up a video that people may even prefer to listen to the teacher.
	I mean, Yeah, I think that also a lot of the tuition prices, whether you pay for them yourself or they're paid through by government, it's just insane.
	Insane!
	Yeah, I mean, it's all nonsense, the academic stuff.
	I mean, it's ridiculous to...
	I mean, schools haven't changed fundamentally in about 150 years.
	They've not changed, and that's because intelligent people...
	are a problem for the state and so the first thing that the state does is create benefits for intelligent people so that they're hooked into the system and so they can't and won't criticize.
	It's a form of self-censorship through hypocrisy that I think is really important.
	And so, I mean, why is it so expensive?
	Well, you have a bunch of professors there who teach three or four or five hours a week, who take sabbaticals, who have summers off So, you've got to hook people into that cushy lifestyle so that those people won't criticize the state.
	You can't criticize the welfare state if you're one of the major beneficiaries of the welfare state and almost nobody...
	It's a greater beneficiary of the welfare state than college professors.
	I mean, the amount of subsidies and protectionism, I mean, they can't be fired.
	The summer's off.
	They barely have to work.
	And they get these sabbaticals every couple of years.
	They could take a year off to fart around and write books nobody's going to read.
	They go to conferences in exotic and sunny locations.
	I mean, they are...
	An incredibly privileged parasitical class.
	And so therefore, how strongly can they come out against the welfare state?
	Well, they can't.
	This is how smart the rulers are.
	Yeah, and that's not even the worst part of it.
	There's no quality check on them.
	Their value as teachers are based on seniority and not How well they actually teach, right?
	And that's just even more crazy, right?
	You have an entire industry, if you can call it that, where those who deliver the stuff are never, ever checked if they are actually doing a good job.
	And they're never selected based on how well they actually teach, which is just ridiculous, man.
	Right, and that's because the students don't pay.
	You don't want the students paying all the price of the teacher because then the students will demand quality.
	The other thing, of course, is that the technical abilities of any particular job are only a small part of competence in that job.
	So if you want to be an engineer, to be a very successful engineer, you want to obviously know the principles of engineering, but you also want to know how to negotiate.
	You also want to know how to find clients.
	You also want to know how to deal with scope creep, project changes, project management.
	You also want to know how to manage.
	All these things, right?
	Now you won't learn any of that in school.
	Any of that.
	But you will learn it in on-the-job training.
	And so the way that I think in a free society it would work is you'd say, well...
	If you want to be a very successful engineer, you don't want to be doing the same engineering at the end of your career that you do at the beginning.
	That would suck.
	And so you want to learn all the soft emotional business skills that go along with being very successful in your field.
	And you would learn that through on-the-job training.
	Learn how to make pitches to clients.
	Learn how to write an RFP. Learn the whatever, right?
	And you do all of that.
	And I know that because I've mentored people in the software industry in these very areas.
	And you would learn while being paid, and you would learn while contributing economic value rather than hoovering up economic value.
	I mean, it's a big problem here in Canada.
	I mean, 70, 80, 90% of the med students are women.
	And most of those women are going to have kids.
	And they're going to be off work for a couple of years, and then when they go back to work, they'll be working far fewer hours than if they didn't have kids or if they were men or whatever.
	And whether that's fair or not, the reality is that It's going to be a...
	It's going to be a shortage.
	It's going to be a problem.
	But so, yeah, the way that you would learn is you would...
	It would be something that you were passionate about to begin with.
	Right?
	So, I mean, this is my own experience.
	I loved computers from the first time I saw them.
	A professor brought...
	Oh, teacher, sorry.
	Brought an Atari 400 to the math class, showed us Star Raiders, and I was like, oh, dear God.
	This is the most...
	And I would take that computer home on weekends.
	I would learn how to program, and I... I programmed a missile commander on ASCII on the PET. I would go on Saturdays.
	It was a passion of mine.
	I loved to learn how to code.
	And then I learned on the job.
	And I never had to go to school.
	I was, I think, a very good programmer.
	And so my software sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and it was very good software, very customizable, very high quality, and produced a web interface way back in the day when it was hard to do, produced one automatically based upon data structures and all that.
	So it was very sophisticated, and I never paid a dime to learn how to code.
	And that's, I think, how things would work.
	But what that means is that the professors don't have a job or they actually have to get real jobs.
	And who would want to do that?
	I mean, who would want to go from a job where you work a couple of hours a week, make $150,000 plus scintillating array of benefits, get, you know, a couple of months off in the summer, all the stuff, right?
	Who would want to go from that to actually having a real job And you can't get fired.
	Where you can get fired, where you can fail, where you need emotional maturity in order to manage.
	I mean, people don't want to do that.
	And so, and of course, the people who've gone through that system, they don't want apprenticeship to replace credentials.
	Because that means that they are at a competitive disadvantage.
	Because they spent a lot of time and money, deferred income, maybe got into debt.
	to get where they are and then if people can just start learning on the job then their entire businesses are going to be undercut by the new businesses because the new businesses will be able to provide things at like two-thirds the price So, I mean, there's a whole illusion that goes on, always for the privilege of the elders at the expense of the opportunities and wealth of the young.
	Always and forever.
	It is an upward vacuuming intergenerational transfer.
	It used to be that the older generation would make sacrifices to advance the interests of the young.
	Well, that changed in the post-war period.
	And now it's all about screwing the young for the sake of the middle-class, middle-aged material comforts.
	And that's going to change.
	Yeah, exactly.
	In my field, progression is much slower than in the software industry because it's not very expensive to make one piece of software, I imagine, compared to building one bridge.
	And so the learning curve is much slower for civil engineers.
	And most of the things that are different from what I do compared to those engineers who were working 15 years ago is that today we use computers.
	We use software now to calculate stresses in beams and all of that and to see if things can hold and all of that.
	And actually when I'm a year from now After I've been to school for two years, I will go have a six-month internship at an engineer's company and sort of get some learning on the job.
	I think this is also why I chose this particular degree, because it's not much different than what I would imagine it being in a free market.
	It's certainly, I think, probably the things that are the closest to sort of a real free market education.
	Because if we don't learn anything that is not something we're going to need, We don't learn anything that is just to entertain some teacher.
	Everything we learn has a very specific purpose.
	And all of our teachers, almost, they come from industry.
	They took big pay cuts to come here compared to how much they would make in the private sector.
	Well, not as an hourly level, right?
	Yeah, that's of course true.
	They also do it for the few hours.
	But I do know the guy who taught us road construction, he was also working at a private company.
	And he took a pay cut to come teach us road construction.
	So this also means that we sometimes get guys who come to us and take a pay cut to come teach us.
	And of course, this means that They actually would like to teach.
	They actually like to be there, which is nice.
	That's good.
	Alright, was there anything else that you wanted to mention?
	My stomach is growling like a she-tiger in heat.
	Yeah, that's the advantage of being the last caller.
	You're sort of a bit out of breath.
	Yeah.
	Well, Steph, I'm very much looking forward to your documentary, and I hope that the money I send you every month has at least contributed in some small way.
	Oh, it has.
	You can expect...
	Yeah, it has.
	I really appreciate that.
	I mean, as I said at the beginning of the show, a massive thanks.
	I mean, people really did listen, and we have cash to pay people through to completion, so I really, really appreciate that, and thank you so much.
	I hope that, of course, that's not dipping into your ramen noodle fund, but thank you so much, and listen, everyone, have a wonderful...
	Wonderful week.
	I have, I guess, a new page on the website.
	It's not pretty yet, but it's got a list of past speaking engagements in case you've missed them, upcoming speaking engagements that I hope you will check out.
	And I guess I've got a bunch of listener convos that I need to process and upload.
	But if you want listener convos, just shoot me an email.
	I love, love, love to chat with the listeners.
	They don't always have to be published, but it's always great for me to know what's going on with people and if there's any way that Philosophy can help.
	Just shoot me an email host at freedomainradio.com.
	Happy to chat when I can.
	Thank you, James, as always.
	Have yourself a super fragilistic, expialidocious kind of week, and I will talk to you in about a week.
	Have a great week, everyone.

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