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April 4, 2013 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
29:26
2355 Freedomain Radio Listener Emails, 4 April 2013

Stefan Molyneux, host of Freedomain Radio, answers questions about bitcoin, sibling age gaps, the supernatural, funding prisons, calling CPS, wage stagnation and much more.

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Hi there, Stephen Mollaney from Free Domain Radio.
Hope you're doing well.
Here are a quick buckshot of listener questions.
Remember, operations at freedomainradio.com is the best way to stay in touch.
First question, are bitcoins a Ponzi scheme?
Absolutely not.
Ponzi schemes are where people are paid on an investment by the new people who come into that investment, right?
So, I say, hey, I'll double your money, and then I get you to give me a thousand bucks, and then I give you two thousand bucks, but the extra thousand I'm getting from someone else who says, who I say to, hey, I'll double your money, that kind of stuff.
So, no, it's not a Ponzi scheme.
Something which rises in value quickly...
is not a Ponzi scheme.
A Ponzi scheme is a pretty technical way of describing a fraud, a scam, wherein you think that you're investing, but what is actually happening is you're ripping off the new people who are being lied to.
There's nothing like that whatsoever in any way, shape, or form in Bitcoin.
So it's important not to confuse something which rises in value quickly with something that is fraudulent and deceptive.
There is no way To lie to and take money from people with regards to bitcoins.
It's simply a way of storing value.
That's all it is.
It's a limited way of storing value and it's a fantastic thing to explore, I would say.
Second question, what do you recommend the age gap between the siblings should be?
Because I have an experience that the young ones always have an age problem with the elder ones as they may think parents love the other one.
Okay, so some other questions about brain development, which I'm certainly not qualified to answer.
But as far as siblings go, you know, one thing, the birth order is a pretty important thing.
Personality matrix developer, right?
So, elder siblings often feel superior based on a mere accident.
Oh, that's so annoying.
I mean, I'm a younger sibling.
My wife is a younger sibling.
And it is something that does occur.
I mean, you happen to be born first.
My brother is two and a half years older than I am.
And you happen to be born first, so...
You know, you get to stay up a little later.
You get a little bit more pocket money.
At least that was how it was back in the day for me.
And, you know, you're faster, stronger, and all that.
And it's very easy for elder siblings to take that accidental birth order and feel superior and feel stronger and better and so on.
It's all very silly and it's a terrible, terrible thing to hang your personality on.
You know, if there's one thing to avoid, like the absolute mental plague that it is, it is to avoid hanging your self-esteem upon accidents of birth.
To avoid hanging your self-esteem on accidents of birth.
Whether you're good-looking, whether you're tall, whether you have exposure to athletics, whether you're older than your other siblings, whether you have great hair, whether you have great skin, like whatever it is, whatever your accidents of birth, whether you happen to be born in a Western country where you have some opportunities, these are all accidents of birth and we really, really want to avoid, like the plague, hanging our self-esteem off accidents of birth.
Sexual desirability is something that is not the result of virtue, but it's the result of physical attractiveness and the built-in drive to reproduce.
So you want to make sure that you do not hang your self-esteem on the fact that you're sexually desirable, on the fact that you're good-looking, or the fact that you happen to have been born into a happy family, or a rich family, or whatever, you know, whatever it is.
It's a huge problem in society.
And of course, fundamentally, it is religious as well.
So, the people who believe that Jesus saves, you know, were just born into a society where that's where they were taught.
It's not something that they've earned, and you want to avoid this.
I mean, even in basic things, in terms of, you know, patriotism, well, you just happen to be born here.
Or, you know, I was talking to a cabbie the other day who was into sports, and I said, yeah, but if you live two streets over, you'd be cheering for the other jerseys.
You're a fan of outfits, not people.
And we had a good discussion about that.
Do you really want to avoid accidents of birth?
I think if parents continually remind the children that, you know, there's accidents of birth, you know, you happen to be born first, if you'd have been born second, you'd be in that position and so on.
I don't think that there's a huge problem.
I mean, I don't think that there's a perfect answer or a true answer as to the sort of gap between siblings.
I think that if the family is happy, I don't think that the gap between siblings matters too, too much.
I mean, I think it's nice if they can sort of play together.
If there's a gap apart, then they'll grow up in a sense like two single kids.
If it's sort of four or five or six or seven years, then they may not have quite as much.
In common, an 8-year-old is going to have some fun playing with a 4-year-old, but not as much fun as she's going to have playing with a 6- or 7-year-old.
So, something to think about.
Just focus on making sure you push back on the virtue by accident's birth matrix, and you'll be doing a huge value to the world as a whole.
Somebody else writes, a neighbor of mine regularly beats his two children in plain view, usually on the way to and from his car, which I can see from my window.
They are maybe 7 and 10 years old.
I have oftentimes considered calling child protection services on him.
They would likely separate the family.
I hate deferring to authority on these kinds of matters, but this is getting to be too much.
My question is, do you think...
It is better for children to grow up without their father or with a physically abusive father.
Also, would I be justified in using the violent arm of the state, aka CPS or the police, in order to prevent violence to the children if it is being perpetrated by their father?
Well, I don't know where you are, and again, I'm certainly no expert on all of this.
I'm as loathe to use the state as you are, but I think in this situation, my understanding with CPS is not just that they're going to go in and take away the father and so on.
I mean, that's not their first goal.
Their first goal, at least their mandate, is to try and protect the children, and they don't just automatically put the father away.
He may be forced to take anger management classes, he may be forced to take parenting classes, and all of these things could be quite valuable.
So, you know, with reluctance, I would certainly say that it's something to look into.
You might want to call CPS anonymously and find out what the steps are that they would take.
But I do think that something needs to be done because otherwise what's going to happen is the children are going to grow up in a world which condones what's happening to them because nobody's moving to interfere or to change anything.
So I think if you witness, like if you see a woman, you know, being beaten up, call the cops.
You know, they'll do something.
And this is not wildly different than it would be in a free society.
You know, if your neighbors, I don't know, forget it.
So yeah, the important thing is...
You know, find out what's going to happen, but yes, I think it is important to do something, and I do think that you can look into what the authorities can do in these kinds of situations, but it's really, of course, incredibly destructive, as you can imagine, for these children to be undergoing this wretched kind of treatment, so I'm sorry that you're in this situation, but I certainly do respect and admire your sensitivity in trying to deal with this stuff.
Somebody has asked me, could I do a video on how the corporations are fictional constructs that protect the elite from the consequences of risk?
Yes, there is a video on my YouTube channel, youtube.com forward slash free domain radio.
Just do a search for corporations.
I have done a video.
It's not very popular because...
It goes against the narrative that people have about my belief structures, about my belief systems, right?
I mean, the number of times people see a little bit of what it is that I say, and then assume that they know everything that I'm going to say is, I mean, it's depressingly common, and it comes from an inability to think, I mean, it's just natural.
It's pretty terrifying for people to think originally from first principles because it blows away almost everything that they're taught or indoctrinated.
And so, yeah, because it doesn't fit into the narrative of being anti-corporate and pro-free market kind of shorts out people's brains so they don't really go for that kind of stuff.
But I have done a video and you can certainly have a look at it if you like and please to share.
Okay, life in prison for rapists and murderers means keeping them fed.
I think they can be put to work to provide their own sustenance to a large extent with incentives such as more food or creature comforts if they achieve greater productivity.
Nevertheless, there will need to be a non-coercive way to fund prisons, and this is where I'm looking for input from freethinkers.
I searched for your channel for prison but didn't find anything on prisons in a free society.
I think this is an area that needs to be thought about carefully due to the reality of psychopathic predators in our midst.
Any input you can have, you can give us greatly appreciated.
Well, if everyone disapproves of what you do, and everything is privately owned, you're automatically in a prison.
Right?
So, if everything is privately owned in a society, you know, the roads, the parks, the houses, the malls, and nobody wants you around, then you've got no place to go.
Like, you're automatically out of society in that sense, right?
So, I think that's important.
If nobody wants to economically transact with you, Then you're automatically out of society.
So I do understand that there does sort of all these psychopathic predators and so on.
Now, of course, the challenge that you face is that most psychopaths and sociopaths are, you know, charming, high-skilled, high-functioning.
And so on.
And so if you set up any kind of prison system, it's going to attract a lot of psychopaths to run it.
And therefore, you know, wherever you create power, particularly the power of coercion, you are going to draw as flies go to caca, you are going to draw these people in to run it.
So, as I've argued before, arguing how we're going to deal with criminals in a free society is like arguing how we're going to deal with the polio epidemic in 2013.
Well, there isn't any because we figured out how to prevent it through inoculation.
We know pretty much how to prevent criminality.
It's simply to raise children peacefully and well.
And the best way to do that is to horizontally promote the respectful treatment of children and to condemn those who act against it.
It's the same with just about anything.
I mean, how do you...
Do you pass laws against racism or do you just make it socially unacceptable to be a racist?
Well, you just make it socially unacceptable to harm and aggress against children and things will change.
There'll still be little pockets of it here and there, but of course in a free society, If parents had to actually pay the costs of releasing predators into the human society, then people respond to incentives.
If it was ten times more expensive to send your child to a school, if you spanked him or her, would parents suddenly find that blessed are the peacemakers when it comes to disciplining their children?
Of course.
Of course they would.
If parents were responsible for the brain damage that child abuse Inflicts upon children, would they find a way to find things more peaceful?
Of course they would.
Of course they would.
So, this is of course how things would work in a free society.
If you wanted to insure your children, which you would have to really do in a free society, unless you wanted to face some enormously dangerous and negative consequences, you know, I imagine schools would not allow children in, or very few schools would allow children in who weren't insured.
And remember, you can choose from any wide variety of insurance options, but The insurance option is a stamp that you've received good training as a parent and that you know the right things to do as a parent that are sort of scientifically tested and validated and morally correct.
You know what to do as a parent to raise your children well.
That's all that the insurance means.
And right now of course You can be a parent at the age of 15 and just do a terrible job and there's no certification process.
Well, of course we need that kind of thing.
But we don't want it imposed by the state.
We want it imposed voluntarily by a variety of competing agencies to make it as efficient.
And user-friendly and positive as possible.
So in a free society, your children are going to need insurance to, you know, to go to schools or whatever ends up being the education to be protected so that you're protected against any damage they may cause in society.
And just as Insurance companies offer you, like life insurance companies, will offer you lower insurance rates if you don't smoke and do other dangerous things.
Then the insurance for your children will be much, much cheaper if you attend some parenting classes and if your children, through their regular health checkups, have their brains scanned to make sure that they're not being damaged through child abuse and so on.
All of these things will be occurring.
Oh, I know.
Oh, doesn't it sound so intrusive?
Good heavens!
Well, no, it's not at all intrusive.
It's not at all intrusive.
I mean, you want your children to be scanned if it's, you know, a pain-free and not dangerous at all kind of scan.
You want your children to be scanned for dangerous things.
Of course you do as a parent.
You want your children to be healthy.
And so it's not at all intrusive in a free society to say, hey, look, if you want really cheap insurance, then we're going to put your kids through a scan every couple of years and make sure that their brains are developing in a healthy and positive way, that their amygdala is not growing too fast, which indicates too much trauma, that their neofrontal cortex, seed of reasoning, and appetite suppressant, like impulse suppressant, That that's not shrinking and so on.
So we'd find this out.
Of course, the only people who'd be scared of those kinds of scans are the people who are abusing their children.
And so it would be a very positive way to protect the children, because really, there's nothing else that's more important.
Can you explain natural and supernatural from your point of view?
Well, supernatural is fiction, right?
I mean, there's two classifications of thought, fiction and nonfiction.
And nonfiction is philosophy and fiction is creativity.
And I think that some supernatural stuff can be a lot of fun.
I really enjoy, I think there was an Nicole Kidman film called The Others.
It was one of the best ghost stories I'd ever seen.
I'd really recommend it.
The Sixth Sense, of course, is a wonderful allegory that I talked about quite a bit with my therapist when I was in therapy.
When it came out.
So I think that fiction can be very powerful.
The idea that, I mean, we have this problem in that our brains can encompass the universe and yet it's a couple of pounds of meat inside a skull.
I mean, that's kind of weird.
I mean, simply thinking about the universe feels almost supernatural in a way.
Like we can travel through time and across the galaxies and back to the beginning of the universe 14.8 billion years ago or something like that.
So, in order to encompass what we're able to do, it's almost like we need to think of things larger than ourselves.
And when I think of the outpouring of ideas and insights that I have, it's just kind of a strange thing.
I feel a lot smaller than my show, sort of in my day-to-day life, but when I'm doing these shows, I feel like a colossus astride the world, as Shakespeare writes in Julius Caesar.
So, I think that the supernatural can be a very fertile area of allegory and exploration.
None of it's real, or anything like that.
So, somebody asks, what is real for you?
Well, if it's for me, then it's not real.
This is the kind of, they're called deepities.
It sounds deep, but they really don't mean anything.
I think Peter Boghossian writes about this in his new book on atheism, which I would recommend.
It should be coming out soon.
So, what is real for me?
Well, again, if it's for me, then it's a subjective experience, right?
Like, my dream is real for me while I'm having it, but it's not real in any kind of way, in my dream at night, and so on.
Why can't the universe be God?
Again, this is sort of a deepity...
To use the word God is to make a very specific knowledge claim.
You know, people say, well, God might exist outside the universe, and I've written about this and against the gods.
But when people say God, they're making a very delineated knowledge claim, right?
It's consciousness without matter.
It's life without beginning.
It's complexity without evolution.
It's all-powerful, all-knowing.
For the most part, that's what people mean.
And so they're making very, very specific things, specific claims to knowledge.
They're not saying X, they're saying God.
And God has, you know, because of our history, it has kind of an emotional power.
It has a resonance within us.
And so people are making very specific knowledge claims.
Why can't the universe be God?
Well, if it's the universe, then it's the universe.
A is A. It's like saying, why can't a ball be a ghost?
Because it's a ball.
I mean, the universe is the universe.
And to say that the universe is God is to say that a ball is a ghost.
In other words, you're tacking on something completely unsubstantiated and contradictory onto something that already has all of its physical properties defined.
And so you're not adding anything.
You're simply throwing confusion into a fairly simplistic or simple reality.
All right.
Why does having a god mean enslavement?
Why does having a god mean enslavement?
I'm sorry about this.
The questions are a little confusing, but I think I sort of get the sense of it.
Well...
I'm still waiting for God to introduce himself.
If God introduces himself to me, then, you know, I can test his existence or her existence in some empirical fashion, that would be completely fascinating to me.
Now, it wouldn't be God.
You understand that, right?
God are specific claims that are usually made thousands and thousands of years ago.
So let's say that in some distant universe, or sorry, some distant solar system or another universe, some distant solar system or galaxy, We find a bearded, waspy-looking dude with, you know, hippie hair who can turn water into wine, it seems, and walk on water or whatever.
And people would say, aha, you see, the Christians were right.
He wasn't.
No.
No, that would be coincidence.
Right?
That would be coincidence.
And so, the claims that people made thousands of years ago about the existence of a deity are judged not relative to every possibility in the future, but relative to Their knowledge at the time, right?
This is an important point.
The knowledge claims made about gods in the past will never be true.
Even if we find some being who has some characteristics of a deity, you know, like that old Star Trek thing where they find the Greek gods on some distant planet or whatever.
I mean, that would just be coincidence, right?
I mean, I guess you could say, well, they visited in the past and Jesus' halo was a helmet and all that kind of stuff.
But they still wouldn't be right in saying they're gods.
They would say they're aliens, right?
Not of this world, but still organic and still of this universe.
And so, no claims that are in the past made about any deities will ever be true in the future.
Because you can coincidentally say something that turns out to be correct, but So I'm sure that some kid somewhere in history prior to the early 20th century scribbled E equals MC squared somewhere in a notebook, or you could find that scribble somewhere in a baby's crayon, you know, fat-fisted crayon scribbles.
But that would not make that baby a physicist.
That would mean that something that the baby wrote down would coincidentally turn out to be validated, but that would say nothing about the baby's state of knowledge at the time.
So some science fiction writer could write about the life on Alpha Centauri, and if we ever get to Alpha Centauri, it might turn out that there are life forms which have some characteristics similar to it.
We would not say that this person made an accurate prediction.
We'd say, what a delightful coincidence.
It's like when people say, well, this dream I had came true, and they forget all the dreams they have that didn't come true, because that's just the way consciousness works and so on.
So, I think that's an important thing to understand.
The reason that there's an enslavement aspect to a deity is because the deity never talks to you.
Nobody has voices in their head who's sane.
And so the deity doesn't talk to you, and so you are then obeying a narrative, stories, things written down, things that people tell you, without critical thought, without skepticism.
And so you're enslaved to a kind of language, to a kind of word game, and so on.
In your recent video you mentioned how wages have stagnated since the 60s.
I'm curious as to why this is.
I know you promote libertarianism and individual rights.
I was curious as to what sort of social stances you take.
Are you for or against social safety nets, military spending, or are you for or against abortion, for or against gay marriage, civil unions, whatever?
Well, wages haven't stagnated since the 60s but the 70s, and it's simply because there has been so much growth in coercion, right?
Every growth in coercion that is not The initiation of force is not direct self-defense of property.
Every growth and coercion shrinks wealth.
Wealth is not primarily money.
Wealth is primarily win-win negotiations.
This is the old thing, I have a dollar, you have an apple, you want my dollar, I want your apple, so we trade.
We're both better off.
Have we increased wealth?
No.
We haven't increased wealth because there's still a dollar and apple, they're just in different places, but we've increased our well-being, we've increased our happiness, we've increased our preferences.
And so everything that you spend on that's voluntary Regardless of whether it adds any more wealth to society at all, adds happiness to society, adds well-being, adds the successful achievement of preference.
So, wherever you see wealth stagnating or declining, it's because coercion is interfering with people.
And they do it in two ways.
One is just simply not allowed to buy things or whatever.
And the other is that there are just financial incentives put in place that distort people's purchasing and so on.
So...
Some people would like to buy more healthcare, but healthcare is so artificially expensive in the US and in other places.
Promote libertarianism and individual rights.
See, this is, I mean, it's natural.
I get it.
But it really is annoying.
You know, from the side of 35,000 hours of studying philosophy, it is annoying when people say, well, you promote this or you promote that.
You know, like I'm sort of a barker at a carnival.
Step right up.
Actually, I did have that job way back in the day when I was in my mid-teens.
I was a barker at a carnival.
But life has come full circle, I suppose.
So, no, I make arguments that are true, or at least that aim towards truth.
And so, it's like saying, well, you see, Richard Dawkins, he just goes around promoting evolution.
It's like, no, he makes arguments for the validity of evolution, and you can reject those arguments if you find that they're inconsistent or at odds with the evidence and so on.
So promotion is a...
I understand it.
It's a way of cheapening somebody's arguments and making it sort of an emotionally driven thing.
Am I for or against social safety nets or military spending?
Well...
Again, it's a really tough question to answer because it's sort of a trick question.
I'm not saying the person is consciously trying to trick me, but that's pretty much the effect, right?
Because if you say, well, I'm for social safety nets, then somehow you're for the violence that funds them.
And if you're against social safety nets, then somehow you want the poor to suffer.
And that's a false dichotomy.
I am against the initiation of violence.
I mean, it's immoral and destructive and corrupts all who come in contact with it over the long run.
And it is so enormously beneficial to specific individuals that violence is the only and the most dangerous drug that human beings are susceptible to.
Everything else flows from that.
So am I for or against charity?
Well, It's like if I say, well, I'm against rape, and then people say, well, are you for or against lovemaking?
It's like, well, that's not the category that I'm talking about.
So, there's no way to be for or against charity, right?
That's like saying, are you for or against going to movies?
I mean, why would anyone have an opinion, in particular, for or against going to movies?
So, if people want to be charitable, I mean, I am very charitable.
I give away everything that I create and all my books for free, and I donate to charities and so on.
I think it's good.
I don't think it's the only good, and I think that there are other people who do...
Much more and better good for a society by creating jobs, by investing in capital improvements.
All the technology that I'm currently using to deliver this message was created and developed by people who weren't being charitable but were for profit-seeking.
So I think profit-seeking is a wonderful thing.
I think charity is a fine thing as well, but being for or against it is sort of immaterial.
It's like saying, do you prefer saving or spending?
Well, I don't know.
I mean, they're all voluntary interactions.
There are benefits and costs to either of them.
Are you for or against abortion?
I think that abortion is pretty terrible, and it's something that we should work as hard as possible to reduce the incidence of, but I do not believe that initiating the use of force against a pregnant woman is the way to solve the problem.
For or against gay marriage?
Well, again, this is a voluntary transaction.
There's no violence involved in gay marriage, so there it is.
Have you ever considered how population growth affects economic inequality?
In any system, the population will almost increase exponentially, barring areas with cultural exceptions, Korea, Japan, which means that not even the fastest-growing economy would be able to produce a sufficient number of jobs to cater to said population.
Now, this is an old Malthusian argument that comes from the 18th century.
Thomas Malthus argued that food production increases linearly, but population increases exponentially and therefore we're always going to starve.
No, no, of course not.
What happens when an economy develops...
Is that it takes a lot more capital investment for a child to become successful in that environment, right?
So if all your kids need to do is plow the back 40, you can have 10 of them and they'll do that.
But if your kids, to be successful, need to have a master's degree, I'm not saying they do, but let's just say that was the level of investment that was needed, then you don't, like, they'll produce a lot, like two kids with master's degrees will produce a lot more than 10 kids who are just plowing the back 40, like you're just working on a farm.
And so, as the investment requirements for children increase as a result of an increase in sophistication in the economy, people's birth rates will decline.
I mean, the best contraception is industrialization.
So, no.
As the free market advances, then you will not see a corresponding growth in the birth rate.
Dear Steph, I'm currently serving in the U.S. Army, trying to identify as a conscientious objector.
I have a question I'd like to ask.
I've set your videos for a direct answer to this question, but I have limited time on your hands, as I'm sure you do as well.
Do you believe there is any instance in which a person can use physical force if it's in his own defense or the defense of a loved one?
one?
Yes, I do.
"P.S.
You're one of the few people who've spread the message that has saved me from a life of status a thousand times.
Thank you." Yes, I've got lots of articles on the philosophy of self-defense, so you can check those out.
But of course, you can use violence to defend yourself.
That's perfectly fine.
Let's see.
I think that I had probably better stop because I have something else that needs to get done today.
But I really do appreciate these questions.
You know, please keep them coming in and I will continue to try to answer them as best I can.
So thank you everyone so much for your interest and support in freedomainradio.com.
You can donate at fdurl.com forward slash donate.
I will talk to you soon.
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