Stefan Molyneux, Host of Freedomain Radio, makes an announcment regarding the show and discusses Going Gult, Morality While Under Coercion and How To Avoid Reproducing Abuse.
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| Good morning, everybody. | |
| Stefan Molyneux. | |
| Oh, it's a beautiful March now. | |
| It's almost time to go to the sun. | |
| So, I hope you're doing well. | |
| I decided not to through-sing the whole Sunday show. | |
| I'm really afraid. | |
| I'm only afraid of the gods of musical vengeance. | |
| Other than that, I feel I'm pretty much safe. | |
| So I guess we have an announcement. | |
| And the announcement is that I am no longer the sole employee of the bitch goddess we call philosophy. | |
| What I mean by that is that formerly, of course, you would have looked at Free Domain Radio as a giant nest. | |
| With a huge, bald, squawking baby bird constantly begging for your donations. | |
| Well now, I would invite you to expand that view to recognize the reality that there are now two, one formerly bald, one now quite hidden, squawking birds trying to get a hold of your coin to spread the good word of philosophy. | |
| In short, in a word, We have a number two. | |
| Actually, he's number one. | |
| I'm now number two. | |
| Obviously, we had a cage match, and he's a biter. | |
| So, that's the way it's gone. | |
| So, Michael, welcome to the wonderful world of Eat What You Kill philosophy shows. | |
| How are you? | |
| I am doing fantastic stuff. | |
| Thanks for having me on, and I'm really excited to talk about The work that we're doing together and the work that we're going to do. | |
| What are you doing anyway? | |
| You're all like, hey man, I'd like to take some money from you. | |
| I'm like, okay, well that seems only fair to flow through situations. | |
| So what are you doing? | |
| Well, the goal is pretty much to take everything off your plate that we can possibly take off your plate so you can focus on creating content and doing the cool things that only you can do. | |
| So scheduling, all the detail type stuff, all that's going to hopefully fall on me in the near future. | |
| And it's a bit of a transition right now, but yeah, everything that I can take off your plate, that's the goal. | |
| That's the plan. | |
| And anything that the listeners have feedback-wise, suggestions-wise, I mean, Operations at Free Domain Radio is my email account. | |
| Shoot me a message, and I will definitely try and make any suggestions or ideas that the listeners have happen. | |
| Operations at freedomainradio.com for those who are literalists. | |
| And we have a couple of other websites. | |
| Sorry, email addies sprouting up. | |
| Perhaps we could mention those. | |
| Sure. | |
| If you're interested in a listener conversation, convos at freedomainradio.com. | |
| If you have a guest suggestion for the show, guest suggestions at freedomainradio.com. | |
| If you have an article or story for true news or a video request, true news at freedomainradio.com. | |
| If you have a skill, a talent, ability, you want to volunteer that skill, volunteer at freedomainradio.com. | |
| And also, we're currently running a quote and meme contest. | |
| Any quotes or memes that you've created or you've mined from the show, quotes at freedomainradio.com. | |
| And we're offering tickets to Anarchy in the New York City, which is being held on 4-20-13. | |
| It's got Steph going to be there, Adam Kokesh going to be there, Robert Murphy's going to be there, Larkin Rose, Jeff Berwick. | |
| Then sold out, so the only way to get your tickets right now is to win them from us. | |
| So submit a quote or meme to quotes at freedomainradio.com. | |
| Fantastic. | |
| And if you would like a green chicken curry with rice, it's combo at freedomainradio.com. | |
| Just make sure you don't switch the B with the V, otherwise you will be very hungry, if not for wisdom, at least for food. | |
| And so how has it been? | |
| It's been, what, a month now? | |
| Yeah, just about. | |
| Working away and it's been great for me because I wasn't getting enough nap time. | |
| And so now that Mike is handling a lot of this stuff, obviously I get to do my internally motivated research astral journeys on my couch. | |
| That's been fantastic for me. | |
| But how's it been for you overall? | |
| It's quite a transition. | |
| Oh, it's definitely a transition. | |
| Over the last two months for me, I've had a lot of transitions. | |
| I left my job of 10 years. | |
| And I got married, had a long extended honeymoon in Mexico, and now starting with Freedom Main Radio, getting to work with you, Steph. | |
| It's been fantastic. | |
| It's a lot of change, but it's all exciting change, and I'm feeling really good about it. | |
| I'm excited for the future. | |
| I think that's great. | |
| Now, your wife and you... | |
| Matt, through a podcast. | |
| Damn, what was it called? | |
| I'm not sure. | |
| It had the initials of some disgraced US president, or at least one that would be disgraced in a real world. | |
| But I remember the first time I met your wife was at a barbecue some years back. | |
| She drove for quite a long time to come and meet everyone. | |
| And she's not the most socially comfortable person, at least she wasn't back then. | |
| And I thought it was magnificently courageous and we had great conversations. | |
| And was it the next year that you met her? | |
| Yeah. | |
| At the barbecue? | |
| It was the year after that. | |
| It was her second barbecue. | |
| Where I met her, and it was my first. | |
| And I do want to tell a little bit about my story, just so people know a little bit about who I am and how I wound up here. | |
| I found the show about three and a half years ago, I think? | |
| Maybe four? | |
| Time kind of flies. | |
| But I already accepted anarcho-capitalism and atheism as valid positions, and I was interested in psychology, but I was more interested in psychology from a standpoint of how I could use it to manipulate people to get what I wanted, because The idea of win-win negotiations to me was just not even in my headspace. | |
| I didn't even know that that was an idea. | |
| And, you know, I found Freedom Main Radio and, I mean, the show, it's hard to put into words to the degree that the show really changed my life for the better. | |
| I mean, it motivated me. | |
| I would have never done this if it wasn't for the show and your continuous prompt stuff throughout the show. | |
| It motivated me and inspired me to actually go to therapy, which I was dead set against and resistant to because, you know, I could solve all my own problems. | |
| I don't need any help. | |
| So it motivated me to go to therapy and, you know, I ended up going to the barbecue a couple years back and I met some people that, you know, today are amongst my closest friends. | |
| I met some amazing, empathetic, kind, generous people, including yourself, Steph. | |
| At that barbecue. | |
| And, you know, like we were saying, one of the people that I met is my current wife. | |
| And I mean, the last thing I expected when I went to the barbecue was that I would meet someone that I want to spend the rest of my life with. | |
| And it happened. | |
| And I mean, I wholeheartedly encourage anyone out there, whenever there's a get-together where, you know, like-minded people are going to get together, sit down, have a drink, have some food. | |
| I mean, you want to be there because you never know what's going to happen. | |
| For me, it was a total shock. | |
| I went there and we just ended up sitting next to each other at a restaurant and just started talking. | |
| We spent the whole weekend pretty much glued to each other's hip. | |
| She's absolutely amazing. | |
| It wound up being a long-distance relationship because we lived eight hours away. | |
| We put a lot of miles on the car to make this thing work, but eventually we moved closer to each other. | |
| Yeah, now fast forward a couple years and we are married. | |
| And I couldn't be happier with my relationship. | |
| I couldn't be happier with my friendships. | |
| And, you know, I couldn't be happier now that I get to work to bring that kind of progress and change to other people's lives. | |
| I mean, this show has given me more than I can ever put into words. | |
| Steph, the work that you've done has totally changed my life. | |
| And I am happier now than I've ever been in my life, than I ever thought possible. | |
| And, you know, this show is a very, very, well, this show has a lot to do with it. | |
| And a good therapist, but this show has a ton to do about it. | |
| So, yeah, I am very, very happy to be here. | |
| And I just, I really want to thank not only yourself, Steph, obviously, for all the work that you've done, but Everyone, you know, in the past and present that supports the show. | |
| Because if it wasn't for you guys, you know, there wouldn't have been a barbecue. | |
| You know, there wouldn't have been an opportunity for me to get together and end up meeting, you know, my best friends and, you know, my wife, the person I'm spending the rest of my life with. | |
| And I'm incredibly happy. | |
| And it wouldn't have happened without the generosity of, you know, the people that have supported Free Domain Radio over the years. | |
| And obviously, you know, you with your time stuff. | |
| So I just... | |
| Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone that supported the show because it completely and totally changed my life. | |
| I can't say enough positive things about what the show and the supporters have done for me. | |
| Thank you. | |
| That's beautiful. | |
| And I was at the wedding, and the wedding was, you know, it's good to weep my way through an entire wedding. | |
| I obviously needed lots of hydration during the actual wedding, and it was just beautiful. | |
| And seeing you guys as a couple is fantastic. | |
| I just wanted to mention that one thing you said might confuse people. | |
| You said that when you were at the barbecue... | |
| With your wife that you were, you know, glued at the hip. | |
| Most people would think that's a metaphor. | |
| But at the barbecues, we collectively decide whoever is the most fertile potential couple. | |
| We glue them, actually literally glue them to the hip. | |
| And so, I just wanted to mention to people, that's not a metaphor. | |
| That's exactly how people pair up in this show. | |
| So, now that you're married, of course, I will send you the bond agent to reduce that stickiness. | |
| But no, it's a complete thrill. | |
| We can use handcuffs. | |
| Might be a little... | |
| I mean, you guys are a beautiful couple, and I mean, I'm enormously thrilled at where you guys are at, and the happiness that you have, you know, literally I can get a tan from it, so please come north. | |
| It's cold up here. | |
| So yeah, so a huge welcome to Mike, a huge thank you to all of the people who've donated to make this possible, with the documentary, with... | |
| We're doing the research for speaking. | |
| We're doing the research for talking to the people who guest on the show, the interview partners. | |
| It's just a huge amount of work. | |
| And I was really starting to run out of sort of fragments of the day that I could get things done. | |
| So Mike is a... | |
| It's an enormous shredder. | |
| I just throw massive amounts of paperwork at him and he chews through it like Chuck E. Cheese munching game tickets. | |
| So it's a huge benefit for me. | |
| Of course, Mike is a dear friend, so getting to work with a friend is fantastic as well. | |
| And so I think it's just a wonderful opportunity all around, and I really do want to thank everyone who's made that possible. | |
| I guess we'll, if there's anything else you want to add, fantastic. | |
| If you'd like to welcome Mike, you can write him at operationsatfreedomainradio.com. | |
| And I guess if you don't have anything to add, we can move on with the show? | |
| No, that's pretty much it. | |
| I mean, any feedback, any suggestions people have, things they'd like to see done with the show, operationsatfreedomainradio.com. | |
| We'll talk about it and we'll try and make stuff happen. | |
| So feel free to shoot me a message. | |
| Don't be a stranger, everybody. | |
| Yes, please. | |
| And to those who are going to be in Mike's capable hands, we say welcome. | |
| To those who were not in Mike's capable hands before he came on board, I am very sorry if you fell through the cracks. | |
| I am very sorry. | |
| Everybody who writes me, of course, takes time and takes some courage usually to disclose what people disclose. | |
| And if I did not get back to you in time, or heaven forbid at all, I really, really apologize. | |
| For that, that is not a respectful way to treat people who write in to me, and I've done my best, but I have not done as well as I could have in returning, and this is another reason why I wanted to make sure that Mike was able to wrangle some of these requests and make sure that they get followed up. | |
| So, thank you to everyone who wrote in, and if you did write in and didn't get the feedback you wanted, or any at all, I don't think it's too many people, but certainly it's some, and I'm really, really sorry for that, and please Forgive me if you can, and if you can give it another shot, you will mention that you didn't get a response before. | |
| We promise to move you to the top of the list of getting feedback, and I'm really, really sorry for anyone who fell through the cracks prior to my coming on board. | |
| So, sorry for that. | |
| Hope you'll give us another chance, and thank you again for your very kind attention. | |
| All right, Mr. | |
| James, let's move on with the brains of the outfit. | |
| Let's shovel them to the front of the queue. | |
| Hello? | |
| Hello. | |
| How's my voice level? | |
| I'm turned on. | |
| Sorry? | |
| I'm turned on. | |
| Okay, so you can hear me fine. | |
| Okay, good. | |
| I had a question. | |
| First off, hi, thanks for having me. | |
| I wanted to ask a question about going Galt, or rather, I wanted to open up a dialogue. | |
| And I know that you're a fan of Ayn Rand's works, and I read Atlas Shrugged about two and a half years ago, and there's a lot to digest. | |
| That book is a behemoth. | |
| So, well, in the book, for the listeners that are unfamiliar, there's a theme of inventors, thinkers, movers, and shakers going on strike, and why would they do that, and what would that mean, since that's, I mean, there's not really a thinkers' union, like a United Auto Workers Union thinkers or something. | |
| So I wanted to open up a discussion on the pros and cons of specifically people like me or even myself just kind of taking it easy or moving away or not trying as hard and not trying as hard to make the world a better place kind of or rather in Ayn Rand's philosophy I guess you could just say re-evaluate one's self-interest and my initial feeling is that It's | |
| a bad thing just simply not to try, even if there is an effective tax rate of nearly 50% after income tax, withholdings, gas tax, state and local tax, inflation. | |
| And so half my stuff goes to things I really don't want. | |
| So if we can, I'd love to work through first principles and play the find the contradiction game and Figure out about going Galt. | |
| Well, I've gone Galt, of course. | |
| In that you kind of work online? | |
| No, I mean, I've left the business world. | |
| You know, it's not for me. | |
| First of all, our effective taxation rate is over 100%. | |
| Because the unfunded liabilities and the debts and all that, I mean, just because some of our taxes are deferred into the future doesn't fundamentally matter. | |
| It means you can grab some assets now if you can, but our effective taxation rate is very likely over, certainly in the US, over 100%. | |
| And when I say that I've gone galt, what I mean is that I have withdrawn my productive capacities, which were fairly considerable from the world of economic productivity. | |
| I've left the business world. | |
| I have no intention whatsoever of returning. | |
| And I speak the truth as best I can on a continual basis, but I am not part of the Economic efficiency matrix of society anymore. | |
| And so, I have withdrawn from most of my early relationships, and I have developed new relationships. | |
| And so, I have, I mean, I've certainly gone galt as far as that goes, and I consider that to be a wonderful thing. | |
| Well, I can definitely see both sides of the argument. | |
| I mean, I really don't want to be the host to a parasite that I don't like, and paying taxes is tantamount to... | |
| Funding wars in an entire system that I disagree with. | |
| But, you know, I think I have a chance at least to make a decent life for myself and maybe, just maybe make the world a better place. | |
| But I know for certain that I will be ending up paying for all these things that I don't like. | |
| Well, you pay for them. | |
| I mean, you pay for them either way unless you just become a complete government dependent. | |
| I don't think it's better or worse. | |
| And certainly there's, in a system of coercion, There's no moral choice. | |
| In a system of coercion, there's no moral choice. | |
| People make this mistake. | |
| I'm not saying you do, but people make this mistake all the time. | |
| They'll put you in a system of coercion and they'll say, what's the moral choice? | |
| It's like the old thing, you're in a lifeboat and two people are dying, who do you eat first? | |
| Well, this is a system of coercion. | |
| This is a system of no choice. | |
| So don't pretend, like, don't give me moral choice. | |
| Or they say, your guy is coming to kill your friend, and they say, where's your friend? | |
| Do you lie? | |
| Can lying sometimes be good? | |
| It's like, well, no, the guy's got a gun, so there's no moral choice there. | |
| And you mix this, I'm sure, just by habit, right? | |
| You mix this, say, paying taxes. | |
| Well, you can't use the same word for paying for a bill as you do for paying for taxes, right? | |
| Because that's like confusing love and rape. | |
| You can't make love to your rapist, and you can't have morality in a system of coercion. | |
| So whatever choice you make in that system of coercion is not a moral choice. | |
| So does that mean that I would just abstain from, I guess, making any choice whatsoever? | |
| No, you can make choices, they just won't be moral choices. | |
| So if a guy comes up to you in an alley and pulls out a gun and says, give me your wallet, is it moral to give him your wallet or is it moral to withhold your wallet? | |
| Well, you've got a point where there really isn't a moral choice there because it's a system of coercion. | |
| Exactly. | |
| So there's no right answer to that. | |
| It's a trick question because there's no moral choice. | |
| It is neither moral nor immoral to give or to withhold your wallet. | |
| It is not moral to fight the guy. | |
| It is not moral to lie down and cry and let him ruffle through your pockets. | |
| There is no moral choice in a system or an interaction of coercion. | |
| And the reason for that is that the immoral choice of the guy using the violence is the only moral factor in the situation. | |
| Because people will try to shift the moral responsibility to the victims as a way of avoiding Yeah, | |
| and there... | |
| I can understand the wanting to just focus on the government. | |
| And I understand that it would probably be more advantageous simply not to feed the beast and rather just live a good life as best you can away from the government. | |
| No, no, no. | |
| Sorry, you're trying to bring a value consideration in in terms of advantageous? | |
| It doesn't matter whether you feed the beast or not. | |
| It doesn't matter, honestly. | |
| And people say, well, I'm not going to pay my taxes and that's going to do something to shrink the government. | |
| It's like, well, that's nonsense. | |
| I mean, it's not going to happen. | |
| If you owe $5,000 in taxes and you don't pay it, which I suggest you do, but if you don't pay it, I mean, does the government say, oh, I have $5,000 less. | |
| I guess I will cut my spending by $5,000, right? | |
| That's not what the government does. | |
| What the government does is it borrows or it prints. | |
| So basically you say, well, I'm not going to pay my $5,000, and the net result is if the government prints $5,000, then the poorest people get hit the hardest by you're not paying your taxes, or the unborn in the future get hit the hardest with your $5,000 plus 20 or 30 years of accumulated interest. | |
| And so you're either robbing from the poor, so to speak, or you're robbing from the unborn. | |
| So the idea that not paying your taxes is doing something to shrink the size of the government is a delusion. | |
| I mean, and it only takes a moment's thought. | |
| But what everyone is trying to do is they're trying to manufacture a way to be moral in a coercive environment. | |
| And it's not possible. | |
| It's not possible. | |
| The loss we have to take is that the vast majority of the moral choices that we want to make to be good in this life are taken away by the coercion of the system we are forced to endure. | |
| We are forced to live under. | |
| I would love to make moral decisions about how best to help the poor, other than give them free podcasts of philosophy. | |
| I would love to make moral decisions about how best To help people who are addicted to drugs, other than spread the message of peaceful parenting, which will reduce drug addicts in the future. | |
| I would love to make better decisions about moral decisions about how best to handle criminality in the world. | |
| I would love to make better decisions, moral decisions, about how to educate people. | |
| I would love to make moral decisions about how best to defend ourselves against evildoers who might do us harm. | |
| But you understand, all of this moral possibility has been stripped from me by the state. | |
| I no longer have the opportunity to exercise my conscience and my moral choice in areas that are unbelievably essential to me and important to me as a thinker, as a humanitarian, as a moralist. | |
| This all taken away from me. | |
| I can't make moral choices about these essential areas of criminality, of education, of addiction, of defense, of punishment. | |
| I can't make any moral decisions because the state owns it and forces me to pay for that which I despise. | |
| And one of the things that I hate the most about the state is the degree to which it strips me of moral agency. | |
| Because I accept that there is no moral choice in the face of state power. | |
| Because people say to me, I say, well, should I take this government subsidy? | |
| Should I get a job here? | |
| Should I do this? | |
| It doesn't matter. | |
| It doesn't matter. | |
| Because there's no... | |
| I can't help you. | |
| I can't help you because I can only give you moral options, moral reasoning, in a system of voluntarism. | |
| People write to me all the time and say, what should I do in this system? | |
| How can I be moral? | |
| What's the most moral choice? | |
| No! | |
| There's none! | |
| We recognize that. | |
| You can't make a single moral choice. | |
| It's literally like somebody writing to me and says, how can I learn to love my rapist? | |
| You can't! | |
| So if you want to get involved in business, if you want to become rich, you can get involved in business and can become rich. | |
| That's fine. | |
| If you want to go galt, you can go galt. | |
| If you want to go live off the grid, well, you can all make your own choices about that. | |
| But there's nothing I can add from an ethical standpoint because all of these choices are made in the face of coercion. | |
| Sorry, that's a little rant, but I hope that's helpful. | |
| No, that's fine. | |
| And I understand that morality goes out the window when There's a gun in the room. | |
| But to borrow from the enemy, I suppose, and quote from John Maynard Keynes, in the long run, we're all dead. | |
| So, I mean, there has to be a kind of pragmatic approach, a way of, I guess, at least dealing with the worst situation, because you have to go on living at the very least. | |
| I would prefer to go on living at the very least. | |
| And I'd like to have a fruitful life, but... | |
| Well, sure, but that's... | |
| I'm sorry, and people are asking me sort of, well, what about the areas where the state doesn't have sway? | |
| Well, yeah, of course. | |
| So in my relationship with my wife, in my relationship with my friends, in my relationship with you, the listeners, in my relationship with my daughter, well, the state is not forcing me to do or not do stuff, right? | |
| I mean, the state doesn't say, you have to hit your kids. | |
| The state doesn't say, we're going to throw you in jail if you hit your... | |
| I mean, here in Canada, it's legal to hit children from the ages of 2 to 12, as long as you don't smack them in the face. | |
| Because remember, Canada is such a wonderful, kind, humanitarian country. | |
| And so, the state has no particular involvement in these areas. | |
| And, I mean, in terms of schooling, I'm forced to pay for the government schools, whether I use them or not, and I sure as hell aren't going to use them. | |
| So in the areas where I have the greatest capacity for joy and connection and intimacy and love and happiness, I can make moral decisions. | |
| And so, yeah, I mean, to me, if you want to be an engineer, go be an engineer. | |
| You can pay your taxes. | |
| It's not a moral choice. | |
| If it makes you happy, go do it. | |
| I would make a case that there are certain areas... | |
| Where it probably ain't going to be all kinds of good for you. | |
| I wouldn't suggest, you know, becoming a prison guard. | |
| Sorry, my friends from the cruise. | |
| I wouldn't suggest becoming a, you know, a narc or joining the DEA. I wouldn't suggest becoming a soldier. | |
| Because it's one thing to... | |
| Actually, I kind of wanted to become a teacher, but the best way to do that nowadays is to go to public school, which is just a horrible, involuntary system. | |
| I'll tell you, look, if you like philosophy, public school is going to be really tough for you. | |
| I've talked to enough teachers by now, it's going to be really tough for you. | |
| Because you're going to want to tell children the truth, right? | |
| Right. | |
| And are you going to be able to tell children the truth? | |
| Not the way that they would deserve, no. | |
| I don't think so. | |
| Which is unfortunate. | |
| And, you know, I would really love to be a science teacher. | |
| I'd love to teach, like, high school equivalent science. | |
| But look, if you go join a private school, right? | |
| Go join a private school. | |
| That may have some more options. | |
| Certainly a more voluntary environment, right? | |
| True, true. | |
| They have a much smaller market share, though, which is unfortunate. | |
| Yeah, or, you know, just do a Khan Academy or a free domain radio and start teaching people online. | |
| That is a good idea and I've been toying around with that. | |
| I'm in the process of trying to work something like that. | |
| Getting back to the main point, if I may. | |
| So it's safe to assume that you can make moral choices as long as you're outside the realm of coercion, outside the realm of the state, because the state is inherently coercive. | |
| So I grant that, and that's very important, but if you do something productive that's taxable, It just seems to me like that inherently, that is tantamount to helping the system along, helping the coercion to subsist. | |
| Yeah, look, man, look, look, look, it's not that simple, right? | |
| Of course, right? | |
| I know you know that, right? | |
| But you and I could not be having this conversation if people did not... | |
| productive things for profit and pay taxes, right? | |
| I mean, we wouldn't have any computers or microphones or internet service providers or cabling or routers, right? - So, I mean, I'm not gonna say that's a bad thing when that's the only reason that we're having this conversation, right? - One sec, you correct people a lot of times. | |
| You said, be productive and pay taxes. | |
| I would say that they were just productive for profit, not for tax. | |
| So, just throwing that out there. | |
| No, no, but I mean, all the people who make the equipment that we talk on pay huge amounts of taxes. | |
| I know they do, but I don't think that was their original intent. | |
| At all. | |
| Well, I don't know what, I mean, I can't fathom their original intent, but I do know that we are only able to have this conversation because organizations have paid billions of dollars in taxes to, you know, as a side effect of producing the equipment that we use to chat, right? | |
| This is true. | |
| And as a consequence, I mean, the IRS now has computers, which the free market invented, that Help them collect taxes, which is kind of a feedback loop, which is unfortunate. | |
| And I don't know how I'm supposed to approach that in my everyday life. | |
| Like, do I be productive? | |
| Do I feed the beast or do I go gold? | |
| Well, and again, that's your choice. | |
| That's an aesthetic choice, which you can make in the recognition that all the choices you make are conditioned by the gun in the room. | |
| But I certainly, you know, if you want to go found a company and make a billion dollars, yeah, you'll pay some portion of that in taxes, for sure. | |
| Absolutely. | |
| But you will also be contributing to the living standards of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people. | |
| And yes, as a result of those increased living standards, those people will be paying more in taxes. | |
| And as a result of the capital value that you're accumulating, the government will consider that as an asset, as well as the salaries that you're paying, the government will consider that as an asset, which it can use as collateral to borrow more money. | |
| I get that. | |
| But when you are in a system of coercion, The actions of the coercers are immaterial to your decisions. | |
| So if the guy who's going to rob you, if he says, I'm going to take your wallet and I'm going to use it to buy crack cocaine and snort it. | |
| Well, maybe that's bad, right? | |
| Or he says, I'm going to go and use it to get a meal. | |
| I mean, does it really matter? | |
| It doesn't matter what the actions are of the person who takes your money. | |
| The fact that he's using violence is the immorality. | |
| His stated claims of what he's going to do Immaterial. | |
| And of course, some of what the government does, this can take the sting out of paying for taxes, right? | |
| We think that taxes are just this big net negative, but they're not completely, right? | |
| I mean, there are sewer systems, right? | |
| There are roads. | |
| There is, you know, various, you know, helpful things that the government does, which kind of make things... | |
| More pleasant. | |
| I mean, I think they'd be even more pleasant if the government doesn't do them. | |
| But it's not like if you didn't have a government and didn't pay taxes, you'd have 100% left of your income. | |
| No, you would have to pay private agencies to do some portion of what the government does. | |
| Okay, ineffectively and inefficiently, but still does, right? | |
| So, I mean, this is what I say. | |
| It's okay. | |
| So I live in a socialist healthcare system, so I pay taxes for that socialist healthcare system. | |
| And that's not 100% loss, because if I didn't live in a socialist healthcare system, I would have to pay some portion of my money for health insurance or healthcare costs. | |
| And yes, it would be faster, efficient, and cheaper, and better, and blah, blah, blah. | |
| But it's still not 100% loss. | |
| So... | |
| The guy who, I don't know, he's driving, he's in the back of an ambulance being driven to a hospital, you know, okay, so the government built the roads and that guy's got, you know, because the road is there, and of course I know it would be there in the free market and all that, but nonetheless, the money that's going is, it's not all going to dropping drones on children, right? | |
| Some of it is going to actually do things that are vaguely productive and useful in the world, so it's, again, this is why it's just impossible to You did just complicate my cost-benefit analysis right there. | |
| Excellent. | |
| Well, and look, it is that complication that is one of the reasons why it's, you know... | |
| It's both very simple and ridiculously complicated, right? | |
| It's very simple because there's a gun in the room, and it's ridiculously complicated because what are the cost-benefits... | |
| Of paying taxes from a moral standpoint. | |
| Yeah, there's lots of negatives. | |
| There are some positives. | |
| There are some neutrals. | |
| There are whatever, right? | |
| The water is quite muddy. | |
| I'll give you that. | |
| May I run by something with you? | |
| It's kind of tangential to this. | |
| Yes, but let me just give you one other example of how complicated it can become. | |
| You may have heard the statistics I was citing earlier about how Two-thirds of moms admit to hitting their children under six, three or more times a week. | |
| So, let me tell you something about public school, which is quite interesting. | |
| In most public schools, now there's some states for which there is an exception to this, but in most public schools, and certainly in daycares that I've worked in, obviously you can't hit children. | |
| And so, are the children better off by being in an environment where they can't be hit for eight hours a day, away from the smacking hands of their ever-loving mothers? | |
| Are they better off? | |
| Is public school a net benefit in reducing violence against children? | |
| Interesting question. | |
| Statistically, why, yes, they're getting hit less in public school than they would if they were at home with their moms. | |
| I mean, that's just a fact. | |
| Children don't get hit three times a week. | |
| Two-thirds of children in public schools don't get hit three times a week in school, even in the states where it's allowed. | |
| And, of course, I think it's the majority of U.S. states, certainly not those in the South. | |
| It's banned. | |
| In Canada, you can't hit children. | |
| You could when I was a kid, I got caned, but you can't hit children anymore in Canadian schools. | |
| So it's complicated. | |
| So you're paying taxes for a public school system, but you are in fact reducing some of the violence that children are being exposed to by taking them away from their moms and putting them in a system where the teachers are not allowed to hit them. | |
| Complicated, yes it is. | |
| Why do you have to go and make things so complicated? | |
| Yeah, and to complicate it even further, there's also the causality question with your example. | |
| I mean, how many of those mothers are hitting their children because they're in a public school and don't have time to connect with them in the first place so that they would have the empathy and the bond that would make it more difficult? | |
| So there's even more... | |
| No, I wouldn't go that particular distance. | |
| I mean, moms are home. | |
| I mean, moms get up to a year of paid maternity leave up here in Canada, so they certainly have that option. | |
| And I don't think that your kid goes to public school and you fundamentally change your capacity for empathy. | |
| And in England, at least, I think 70-80% of moms are hitting their children before the child is even one year old. | |
| So I wouldn't say that, you know, the kids are gone for six, seven hours a day, and that's why the moms are hitting them. | |
| And again, school really only tends to kick in around five or six, and these are moms who are hitting their kids under the age of six. | |
| So I would have to push back a little bit against that causality. | |
| Oh, that's new information to me, and that is despicable. | |
| Oh yeah, no, it's unbelievable. | |
| It's just, it's staggering. | |
| I mean, I was horrified by child abuse before I became a parent. | |
| I gotta tell you, I mean, my outrage against child abuse before I was a parent is like a distant star compared to the white-hot Arizona eyeball-baking sun of my outrage towards child abuse now. | |
| It's just the very idea of striking my daughter, of threatening my daughter. | |
| Is absolutely incomprehensible to me. | |
| I can't express to you just how foreign a species the majority of humanity is to me in this regard. | |
| I can't fathom how that brain might work or could possibly work. | |
| And so, yeah, I feel definitely a stranger in a strange land as far as that goes. | |
| I think I speak for most of your listeners when I say I appreciate that your mind exists, especially being so foreign to the system that we all grew up in. | |
| Well, most of us grew up in. | |
| But is there time to go off on the slight tangent back on the main road? | |
| I'd like to chat to the last listener for a few minutes, so I'm afraid you'll have to call back in. | |
| But listen, I just want to, before you go, express my intense admiration for your moral intelligence, curiosity, and sensitivity in these issues. | |
| The fact that I went on a rant about... | |
| The amorality of submitting to coercion doesn't mean that I don't hugely respect you for asking the question. | |
| It is an essential question. | |
| I could be talking about my armpit. | |
| I might be completely wrong. | |
| This is the reasoning that I have. | |
| But I really applaud you for your moral sensitivity in asking these questions. | |
| And as you consider them, and of course if you find flaws in my argument, I certainly would be happy to have you back and be corrected. | |
| So I just wanted to point out that these are incredibly important questions. | |
| You are You are being very protective towards your future conscience, which is one of the wisest things you can ever do in life, which is to act in a way that your future self will approve of. | |
| And so your sensitivity about these choices is incredibly admirable and noble, and I just wanted to mention that. | |
| Thank you. | |
| And I think it's resolved itself because I've come to the realization that the complications and the cost-benefit analysis are just too onerous, and so I'd I might as well just go and do what I think is moral on my own terms rather than try and peg all it into some other system. | |
| But thank you for taking my call and enjoy the show. | |
| You're welcome. | |
| And thanks for bringing it up. | |
| Next up we have Brady. | |
| Hello. | |
| Brady, what's up, man? | |
| Yes, can you hear me? | |
| Yeah. | |
| Good. | |
| You speak a lot about Not hitting children. | |
| And you're actually the first person that I've ever heard say something like that in my entire life. | |
| And I'm not a parent, but I have a dog. | |
| And I see the dog as a reflection of what happened to me when I was a child. | |
| And I see it as a, almost like a jumping off point of how I could possibly treat my children. | |
| And of course dogs are punishment punishment. | |
| And reward-driven, it's a little bit different. | |
| I've studied a little bit about dog psychology, obviously. | |
| It's nowhere near human and intellect level, but I've got a bird dog, and they're really, really smart. | |
| I mean, I've gotten him trained to the point where he doesn't jump on the furniture, chew on my stuff. | |
| He chews on his stuff and things like that, but I read a lot of books before we got here, but he's still just about five months old. | |
| And I decided I wasn't going to strike my dog. | |
| I was going to use very mild punishment, if necessary at all. | |
| And at some point, I lost that. | |
| And I found myself, smacked the dog in the butt, bite his face, things like that. | |
| I'm sorry, what was that bit? | |
| Did you say bite his face? | |
| Yeah, with these dogs, if you bite their jowls, it shows a dominant position. | |
| And It's worked, but I don't like it. | |
| So just a little bit of background. | |
| When I was a child, I was spanked. | |
| When I was an adult, my father had a stroke, and we had to live with one of his relatives, and I was abused. | |
| His sister is psychotic, and I can see these tendencies coming out in my own personality and And I'm reflecting it towards the dog. | |
| So I was just curious what your opinion might be on that because I love animals. | |
| I've got a farmist for dogs now that I've never had before. | |
| But this could go forward into the future and the more knowledge you empower yourself with, the less likely it is. | |
| But I don't want to ever strike my children or anyone else's. | |
| My sister and I are very close and she's... | |
| You know, wanting children, and I fear that if I ever help her care for her children, that I may act inappropriately. | |
| So, I don't know if you have an opinion on that at all. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Just before we down, and you don't have to share anything you're not comfortable with, but just to clarify, in what way were you abused when you went to live with these relatives? | |
| Well, I was constantly told that I was stupid. | |
| That I was breaking things. | |
| That I didn't give a shit because it wasn't mine. | |
| That I was exploiting them for money. | |
| Lots of yelling and screaming at me. | |
| Forcing me to do chores. | |
| Threatening to tell my employer that I was a bad person and a thief. | |
| In fact, there's still an article online that I've tried to get negated through various... | |
| Legal means, but unfortunately I've just only had the option of having letters signed by witnesses stating that the opposite of whatever was said was true. | |
| So it's gone even to the point where if I didn't have the job I have now, I might not be able to get a job because of some of that type of stuff. | |
| It's just very... | |
| I broke down one time and I didn't know why. | |
| And the other person that was pushing this on me actually stood there and laughed at me and told me I was acting like a four-year-old having a temper tantrum and just very negative. | |
| I got kicked out of the house. | |
| And I try not to dwell on it. | |
| I understand that it wasn't my fault as much as it was that person's behavior. | |
| And I've removed myself from the situation. | |
| I like what you say that adult relationships are voluntary, and it's helped me out quite a bit. | |
| But I just – I fear that – I fear for the rest of society having to deal with these people because they're not educated about that type of behavior, but then also how – and I don't know if you've ever talked about this before. | |
| You've got a lot of information, and I'm just starting to dive into it, but – You know, I don't want to ever strike someone else's child or their dog. | |
| And having a young dog is, uh, I would call it practice or like a test for me to learn a lot about my own background in psychology. | |
| And, uh, we, we got him for a reason. | |
| I mean, we're looking at the economy and things aren't all that good. | |
| And I got the dog as an investment and, uh, You know, he can find food for us and things like that. | |
| So having a good relationship is very important as well. | |
| Right. | |
| Well, I mean, there's a lot to talk about. | |
| I'll just touch on a few topics. | |
| A listener is putting together the parenting podcast, so there's, of course, a feed on the webpage, Philosophical Parenting, which has a few of the key ones. | |
| So we'll put that out when it's ready, but... | |
| We don't have to reinvent the wheel here. | |
| The studies are very clear and have been for many years, which is that the best way to avoid reproducing abuse is to get angry about the abuse. | |
| I've mentioned this before, but anger is one of these difficult things for people who've been abused. | |
| Because we mistake sadism for anger. | |
| We mistake abusive rage for anger. | |
| They're opposites. | |
| Abuse is fundamentally an act of extreme cowardice, not anger, not health, not dominance. | |
| It is an act of extreme cowardice, particularly, of course, against children. | |
| I mean, how cowardly and pathetic can you be as a human being where you get all kinds of up in your toughness by yelling at, hitting, putting down helpless, dependent little children? | |
| Oh, my God. | |
| Oh my god. | |
| It talks about bullying, you know, bullying in schools. | |
| What a... | |
| Bullying in schools is... | |
| It's just a reflection of the bullying, the real bullying, that goes on at home. | |
| I mean, if you're hitting your three-year-old, you are a fucking coward. | |
| Not you, right? | |
| People are just cowards. | |
| Well, that's why I called the ass, because this is a reflection of a child to me. | |
| I mean, he's helpless. | |
| If I put him outside, he runs away and probably gets hit by a truck or starts to death or something like that. | |
| Yeah, and he's obviously domesticated and dependent on you, and But at least he grows into an adult, right? | |
| I mean, the kids, of course, I mean, it takes a lot longer. | |
| So the question, of course, is why does getting angry about abuse is the greatest single predictor of not repeating the abuse? | |
| Well, because you denormalize it. | |
| Because if you get angry about having been abused, then you get angry at a moral level. | |
| And whatever our fundamental moral ideas are, that is how our life will go. | |
| I mean, there's nothing that steers us more fundamentally than our fundamental moral ideas. | |
| As I've said for many years, the world runs on the argument for morality. | |
| And if we make a good argument for morality, the world becomes good. | |
| And if we make a bad argument for morality, the world becomes evil. | |
| It is the hidden physics of morality. | |
| Our world. | |
| And so when you get angry at having been abused, which is a difficult and painful thing to go through, it's wrenching, it's teeth grittingly, like Everest ascendingly difficult, then you reorient your moral compass. | |
| If, on the other hand, you justify the abuse that you went through, In other words, you say, well, I was a difficult kid. | |
| I had to get spanked. | |
| I wouldn't listen to anything else. | |
| Or, well, my mom was a single mom and she got tense and she got frustrated. | |
| If you legitimize it in any way, in any way at all, then what you are doing is you are creating for yourself the global evil escape hatch called excuses for the future. | |
| Because if you're saying, well, okay, so my mom or my dad is stressed or tense or, you know, they didn't have a good childhood and blah, blah, blah. | |
| So if you're saying, well, you can abuse people because you had a bad childhood and it's sort of okay or it's sort of understandable, then what you're saying is since you were abused and you had a bad childhood, you're giving your future self permission to do just that because it's okay. | |
| Because it's okay. | |
| So whatever you excuse in others, you give yourself permission to do, right? | |
| Right. | |
| And so people who say, okay, so let's just say your dad beat you up throughout your childhood and so on, but you still have to see him or you don't have to confront him on this or whatever it is, right? | |
| Well, then basically you're saying, so I can treat people like shit and I still get all the benefits of seeing them and getting their resources just as if I treated them well. | |
| Well, if you get paid for doing a really hard job, or you get paid for doing a really easy job, and the pay is the same, who the fuck would do the hard job? | |
| I mean, there's this basic economics, right? | |
| Yeah. | |
| And so, this idea that you have to forgive unrepentant abusers... | |
| I mean, it's bad economics, it's bad morality, it's bad philosophy, and it sure as hell is bad for the future. | |
| Because it means that you can abuse people and then demand forgiveness, and they must comply, which is only going to raise your odds or your chances of abusing. | |
| So why did I come from such a ridiculously and violently abusive household and have become, I don't know, hopefully in the top 10 peaceful parents in the world, maybe the top 50? | |
| Well, because I am entirely clear about the moral evil of what happened to me as a child. | |
| And I have confirmed the moral evil of what happened to me as a child by having very adult conversations with my abusers. | |
| And getting that they understood and getting that they knew, but they indulged in their immorality. | |
| And I have been angry about it. | |
| I have yelled about it, I have written about it, I have done therapy about it, I have wept about it, and I have cleansed myself of any ambiguity about the ethics of the situation, that it was an unforgivable evil, and unforgivable because, A, no forgiveness has been sought through acknowledgement, and B, because restitution is impossible. | |
| That which you cannot provide restitution for cannot be forgiven. | |
| Which is why we try not to do the kind of evils for which we cannot provide restitution, right? | |
| I mean, accidents, you know, can be forgiven and minor things can be forgiven because you can make restitution. | |
| But, you know, if I hit someone's car and fix their car and give them a little bit of money for their time in trouble, it's like, okay, fine, move on, right? | |
| But if I hit someone's car and kill their wife, I can't bring her back from the dead, right? | |
| So, I am entirely clear on the ethics of my history. | |
| On the immorality of what was chosen and acted upon by those who had care over me. | |
| And I'm not just talking about my parents, but those who had care over me. | |
| As a result, I mean, what people will knowingly choose an evil that they have clearly defined. | |
| And that's the whole point of evil, is once you've defined it, you ain't going to choose it. | |
| People do not knowingly choose an evil they define, which is why you have to, I mean, if you want to do evil, you have to constantly screw around with language all the time. | |
| You have to call theft taxation. | |
| You have to call selling off the unborn national debt. | |
| You have to call criminality government. | |
| You have to screw up the language all the time. | |
| To obscure the fact that people are choosing evil, you have to redefine evil as the good. | |
| I won't go into this more. | |
| The documentary is coming out soon, which is all about this. | |
| And so I simply define things as what they are, right? | |
| As Confucius said, the beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper names. | |
| So I call evil evil, and I don't attempt to reinvent it as something else. | |
| And I encourage other people to recognize the evils that they were subjected to, Not because I want to punish parents, but because I want to protect children. | |
| And this is the only scientifically validated way to protect children from the cycle of abuse is to provide moral clarity and the emotional justification for anger that the moral clarity provides to people who've had a history of child abuse. | |
| Which is why I don't counsel people to forgive unrepentant abusers. | |
| I don't counsel people to forgive things for which there cannot be restitution. | |
| Because it's not logical, and it's not scientifically validated as a way of preventing the cycle of abuse. | |
| I am only concerned about the future, not in absolving the past, but in protecting the future, and fundamentally my major concern in all of this is for the next generation. | |
| Because if you spend enough time in this line of work, you get that there's not a whole lot you can do with the current generation They're too broken, they're too defensive, they're too immature, and they're too supported by an irrational culture to challenge their way of thinking or their way of avoiding thinking and avoiding feeling. | |
| So, moral clarity about the reality of child abuse, promotion of voluntarism, which is a rational reality, that is the best way. | |
| But unfortunately, there are a huge amount of people in the world, some of whom call themselves healers, who seem to be incredibly invested in disrupting this whole very process of moral clarity, of anger, which protects the next generation of children from the cycle of abuse. | |
| And they will talk about forgiveness, and they will talk about understanding, they will talk about not judging, and they will talk about being value-neutral, and they will talk about all this kind of stuff. | |
| And it's toxic. | |
| And it's not just my opinion that it's toxic. | |
| Anything which diffuses legitimate anger makes the next generation the unconscious target of the delegitimized anger. | |
| So, bring the injustice to the surface, recognize the ethics of the situation, get as angry as you feel, and that is the shield for the future. | |
| So that's the only scientific way and validated way that I know of to protect that. | |
| Well, thank you very much. | |
| I'm sorry if you repeated yourself on that a whole bunch. | |
| It's a very personal thing that someone has to go through, process that type of information and understand that, you know, like I forgave my mom for leaving us. | |
| All that does is lessen the pain that she caused herself, I think. | |
| It doesn't really, it can't fix anything. | |
| Looking at it from that perspective is very, very helpful. | |
| Yeah, we can either protect the feelings of people in the past, or we can protect the bodies of people in the future, and I choose the latter. | |
| Well, this is why, sorry, this is why I mean, I think... | |
| I know you have to go, but I just wanted to tell you that the story of your enslavement and your gun control videos are... | |
| The two that I send everybody, and it tends to break them into your literature and change their way of thinking. | |
| So I want to thank you for those, and thanks for everything you do and your Sunday shows. | |
| I took a lot of this to heart, and we'll continue to try to implement it in our own lives here. | |
| Thanks so much. | |
| Well, thank you so much. | |
| I appreciate that, and hopefully the upcoming documentary will be... | |
| Along those lines, let's hope so. | |
| It certainly has been a ways coming. | |
| Now, I hope that you will remember that the glorious, magnificent parenting goddess Dana Martin will be guest hosting this very show next week, since I will be not so much with the availability. | |
| So, I will look forward to having her on the line. | |
| Bring your questions of all things parenting. | |
| I am... | |
| I'm extraordinarily happy and pleased that she's able to come in and guest host. | |
| She's going to do a fantastic job, and she is a great, great person to talk to. | |
| And so, talk to her next week. | |
| That's sort of what I want to mention. | |
| And for those who are listening to this on YouTube, on Lord knows where it ends up going through the feed, please remember that if you're listening to this high a number and you've been listening for a while, I think it's important to do the right thing and throw some cash towards everything that is going on here I think it's important to do the right thing and throw some cash If you've gotten every single benefit that you can possibly get out of the show, you might still want to donate so that other people can reap the benefits that you have reaped. | |
| And so you can go to FDRURL.com forward slash donate or just go to FDRURL.com and click it on the donation button. | |
| If you want to sign up for a subscription, that's hugely valuable. | |
| And I do suggest I request 50 cents a podcast, which when you think about it, for a two-hour show, 50 cents, it's 20 times, 25 times cheaper than a movie. | |
| And I think... | |
| Some much more useful stuff in there. | |
| So if you can help out the show, that would be fantastic. | |
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| And that might interfere with show productivity. | |
| So thank you so much, everyone. | |
| Have yourselves a wonderful, wonderful week. |