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June 14, 2013 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
52:21
2406 Life in a Mental Zombie Apocalypse: A Day In The Life of Youtube Comments

Stefan Molyneux, host of Freedomain Radio, dips into an endless sea of YouTube comments in search of a reasoned argument.

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Hi everybody, it's Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio.
Time to crawl into the hive mind of YouTube comments.
And the reason I want to do this is I am critical of the state, I am critical of religion, and I'm critical of modern parenting.
And these are the three pillars that are supposed to raise the rational capacities of the species.
These are the people, the parents, the priests, and the teachers who claim to educate the species and help us to reason, to think clearly, to teach critical thinking, and so on.
I know that this is a little bit of a self-selecting group.
These are people who make comments on YouTube, but these are people who think they can think, and obviously they've reached the age where they can type.
At least semi-grammatically correctly and believe that they're making some sense.
So let's have a look at a pretty random sampling of comments from one single day on my YouTube channel.
From the video, there will be no economic recovery.
Stefan, your ridiculous comments about manufacturing restrictions are laughable, and I was considering subscribing, but until you outed yourself as a dipshit, I won't be wasting my time.
I'm not sure.
I guess it's a water closet you come out of when you out yourself as a dipshit.
If you're currently in China, stay there.
Breathe in the air, you dipshit.
When you get cancer, don't come crawling back here.
A little late for that.
There are restrictions for manufacturing and for the environment for a reason.
I wonder what that reason is?
Is he going to tell me?
No, but you sound too stupid to realize that.
Keep your propaganda to yourself.
So, well done, public school.
Well done, parents.
Well done, priests.
Well done, teachers.
I think that's one for the unreason.
There we go.
So, this is called argument by adjective, or at least I call it that, which is you just say, well, you're ridiculous comments.
Well...
Ridiculous is not an argument.
It's just a word.
It doesn't prove anything.
There are restrictions on manufacturing and for the environment for a reason.
See, saying for a reason doesn't make your argument rational.
Two and two make five for a reason, man.
Your ridiculous comment that two and two make four is ridiculous.
And stay in China.
I mean, this is tragic.
I live in a zombie movie when it comes to thinking.
So this is a video, responses to criticisms from Metafilter.com.
Anarchism leads to anarchy.
That is chaos and rule by the strongest gang.
Steph is great at pointing out the problems, which makes people figure if he can spot the problems, then he must have the right solution.
But his solution is irrational and dangerous, as explained by Ayn Rand.
So anarchism leads to anarchy.
No, anarchism does not lead to anarchy.
Anarchism is anarchy.
That's like saying red leads to red.
No.
And so anarchy is chaos and rule by the strongest gang.
You know, it's funny.
Statists project all the characteristics of statism onto voluntarism.
Naturally, right?
So, chaos and rule by the strongest gang, what's actually a description of democracy?
Democracy is complete chaos, right?
70,000 regulations passed last year by the US government, an average of three felonies committed unknowingly every day.
Tax law is so complicated, no one can figure them out.
Warrantless wiretapping of everyone all the time.
This is chaos.
And ruled by the strongest gang, well, the strongest gang of liars and sociopaths are the ones who gain the vote and buy the vote by selling off the unborn.
Now, it's interesting.
If I don't have a solution, that doesn't mean...
That I'm incorrect about identifying the problem.
And people will try to avoid the correct identification of a problem by saying, well, what's your solution?
And so if I look at you and I say, hey, you got a pimple on your nose, then the fact that you have a pimple on your nose or not is not changed by whether I can snap my fingers and make that pimple go away, right?
So if I, you have a pimple on your nose, oh yeah, can you make it go away?
That's neither here nor there.
The fact is you either do or don't have a pimple on your nose.
My ability to make it go away is not relevant.
But I do believe that if you identify problems correctly enough, you do actually have solutions.
Let's see here.
So from the video, Free Domain Radio debates the Venus Project and Zeitgeist moving forward.
People don't need monetary incentives to make major changes in the culture.
In fact, I would argue that sometimes monetary incentives promote the wrong choices in society.
Do scientists studying physics or medicine study these because of the money involved or because they enjoy studying them wish to be challenged or believe it has some benefit to others?
Do you think society would be better off automating most menial tasks and allowing people to use that time to do activities they enjoy?
Now, again, it's kind of tragic when people say, I would argue what you would rationally expect to follow is an argument.
And what follows here is not an argument, but a rhetorical question that has no evidence behind it.
Do scientists studying physics or medicine study these because of the money involved or because they enjoy studying them, wish to be challenged or believe it has some benefit to others?
How do I know?
How could I possibly know what the incentives are of scientists around the world?
People respond to incentives is foundational to economics.
There's two foundations to economics.
One, human desires are infinite and resources are limited.
And this is why economics exists.
And people respond to incentives.
So, do scientists study physics or medicine because of the money involved?
Well, there is money involved.
It costs money to study these things.
Particularly if you want a career, you get paid for doing them.
There's no doubt that scientists are, you know, that we have this idea that white code lab scientists are somehow above monetary considerations.
It's not true.
You study throughout history.
Scientists will regularly spout party lines, whether it's eugenics or global warming or whatever, not to equate the two.
But just you look throughout history, scientists follow the money just like everybody else does.
They're not immune from these kinds of incentives.
It doesn't mean all scientists are corrupt.
It just means that they respond to incentives.
Some scientists do enjoy studying them, but scientists themselves are usually people who don't have science as a hobby, but people who are getting paid to do it, which means that they are responding to financial incentives.
Do you think society would be better off automating most menial tasks and allowing people to use that time to do activities they enjoy?
Again, this is not an argument.
You know, do you think that society would be better off if rainbows gave birth to unicorns and we could use those to fly instead of airplanes?
I don't know.
I think it'd be pretty cool to fly on a unicorn.
I regularly do it with my daughter doing fantasy play.
But...
Do you think society would be better off automating most menial tasks?
I don't know.
I don't know whether menial tasks should be automated or not.
That's the whole point of economics.
I have no idea.
That depends on how efficiently they can be automated.
It depends how many resources it takes to automate them.
If it costs a billion dollars of automation to get rid of one waiter, it's not worth it.
What about people who are only mentally fit for menial tasks?
What are they going to do?
Anyway, so, I mean, do I, would society be, these are questions that can't be answered.
So, this is somebody who's got, you know, I guess at least his grammar is correct, but do we score one for reason or do we score one for propaganda?
Ah, yes, propaganda.
Two for zero.
Video.
The truth about voting.
Wait a second.
Are you saying my vote for Gary Johnson meant nothing?
Damn, my head has just exploded.
Well, I just hope you have some screen cleaner.
Again, not an argument, but dare I say it, an internet ejaculation.
I dare say it.
A video.
The story of your enslavement.
In Israel, we had a prime minister born into a poor family and was relatively poor to other prime ministers, even when she was a prime minister herself.
Does that not counter your claim that politicians are their puppets?
As she didn't bow to their needs and got elected without getting any money.
I don't know what that means.
Got elected without getting any money?
Elections cost money.
Elections cost a lot of money.
What was it?
More than a billion dollars per candidate spent on the 2012 election.
And the reason that Obama got elected was because the financial interests poured massive amounts of money into his re-election campaign.
And as a result, he paid them off with all of the juicy stuff that he's giving them again.
And again, I don't know who their puppets are.
I don't know whose needs and got elected without getting any money.
Again, I don't know what any of that means.
I think what she means is that a prime minister got born into a poor family and didn't get money and got elected without getting any money from special interest groups.
Again, you know, I'd like to see some proof of that.
So I don't, you know, it's not an argument, it's just a series of assertions.
You know, a link or two would be okay.
You can put them into YouTube if you code them.
Video selling yourself into slavery.
The only reason anyone would want a slave in this day and age would be just for the idea of it.
They would only want a slave for the powerful mental feeling that comes from the control possessed over the other party, even for the exchange of money.
A certain part of the population simply enjoys exerting their will over another human.
This would be the only beneficial situation inherent, I think he means inherent, in owning a slave.
The sadistic joy of controlling another human being.
Sure, absolutely.
That doesn't actually go against any of the arguments I put forward in the video.
So in the video I say, well, owning a slave means you've got to be responsible for healthcare, then you're legally responsible for whatever your slave does, and so on.
So that's not...
The fact that people want to own slaves, sure.
There's a certain section of the population, and these have been well-experimented on or well-tested, I suppose you could say, psychologically, that when they see people getting hurt intentionally on videos, the pleasure centers of their brain light up.
This is the sadists in society.
They're really not the same species as you and I. They have as much in common with us as a gazelle has with a lion.
And so the fact that there are motivations for people to own slaves is exactly why I made a video about selling yourself into slavery.
This is not an argument against the video.
This is a confirmation of the reason why the video was made, which is some people want to own people.
Yes, I think that we have one here for propaganda and an inability to think.
I have been leaning towards anarchy, anti-state, for some time now.
I've been watching videos on this channel and on Larkin' Rose's channel and others.
They have helped me to understand the true state of the state.
However, this video, True New Statism is Dead, Part 5, this video and others in this series has opened my eyes more and removed the last remains of my state indoctrination.
You must unlearn all the so-called common knowledge that is associated with statism and patriotism.
We must put away childish things to truly be free.
That's a great comment.
Again, it's not an argument, but it's a really nice comment.
Video.
This is the meaning of life, part one, meaninglessness.
This guy is a self-proclaimed philosopher, misspelled, economist, misspelled, etc.
That's E-C-T, dot, dot, dot.
All that stuff.
He's arrogant, douchebaggish.
How's the Finglish on that one?
I think he's speaking in tongues.
Either way, if you have half brain cell in working condition, you'd see through this bullshit.
Meaning was around long before any culture had built words to describe it.
Who says meaning needs to be assigned by humans?
That's not philosophy, that's bullshit.
Everything has meaning without human interaction.
Everything except that paragraph.
Again, meaning was around long before any culture had built words to describe it.
Everything has meaning without human interaction.
I think that would be a religious perspective, but again, this is...
It's tragic.
I was sort of making fun of it.
It's tragic to watch.
This is literally like somebody whose all their limbs have been broken trying to do gymnastics.
It's gruesome.
It's very sad.
I think that people are somewhat responsible for the intellectual content of whatever it is that they're arguing for.
But this is tragic.
What do you have here?
Arguments from insults, arguments from adjectives, assertions without proof, just the usual trash bag of brain excrement that comes out of propaganda.
So I'm afraid we have to send one up here for the propagandist machines.
Video.
Automation causes unemployment.
You talk about humans as consuming robots.
I think he means that I talk about humans not as eating robots, but as robots who consume.
What kind of drugs are you on?
This was the most terrible video I have ever seen or listened to on YouTube.
iPad workers at Foxconn actually committed suicide because of two long working hours, and Apple has now filed for tax evasion in the US. Now I know why I've been warned about programmers trying to analyze the world.
Why don't you talk about environmental issues?
Yes, I've had workers at Foxconn actually did commit suicide.
Not because of too long working hours.
They committed suicide because they are not allowed to form unions.
You get 12 years in jail in China for even thinking about talking a union because the government controls their wages, the government controls their opportunities, the government grants licenses to people to come and exploit their workers.
It is the government that is forcing this.
Now, should Apple be exploiting them in this way?
I don't think so.
But the cause is not Apple.
The cause is the government that is around them.
All right.
Automation causes unemployment.
Is that the same one?
Yeah, so there's a second comment on that.
There will be no money in the future, man.
Did you see money in Star Trek?
Oh no!
Oh no!
You know, Star Trek is fiction.
Anyway, as engineers know that we will have a spaceship, even though today we don't have even a glimpse at that technology.
Just as well, economists know that in the future there will be no more money.
The money incentive is for repetitive, meaningful, dirty labor.
For creativity labor, you need passion and talent, not money.
I don't know any economists who know in the future that there'll be no money.
Money is just a technology.
It's a tool of measuring disparate value.
That's all it is.
It's a way of saying, what is the worth of apples to oranges?
It's the way to convert the need for apples versus oranges by bidding and so on.
It's not bad.
It's not good.
It's just a tool like anything else.
So for creativity labor, you need passion and talent, not money.
I mean, do you see the budgets of Hollywood films?
I really think you need, I don't know, massive creativity, but you do need money.
And people, everyone, even the most creative, we have to eat and take craps in something that hopefully flushes.
So, again, score one for the propaganda machine.
Video.
Facts don't matter.
How can you say it doesn't matter whether 9-11 occurred the way official sources say it did or didn't when millions of people have died and are still dying and many civil liberties lost and are still being lost as the direct fallout from said event?
No, no, no, no, no.
No.
The fallout from 9-11 occurred because of the government.
It did not occur because of 9-11.
It did...
Nothing causes human responses.
And we know that because people have different responses to the same events, right?
In Palestine, they were cheering.
In New York, they were crying.
So, no.
And it doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter how 9-11 happened.
It doesn't matter.
The only thing that matters is we have a government that can exploit it.
And if the government, let's say that proof comes out tomorrow that the government started 9-11, well, so what?
Proof has come out that the government, through the Gulf of Tomkin incident, started Vietnam.
Vietnam cost many, many times, what, 30 times more lives, at least on the American side, and literally they don't know how many millions of lives got killed on the Vietnamese side.
So, it's well known.
It's not even questioned.
It's a historical fact that the government faked the Gulf of Tonkin incident to start the Vietnam War.
And what has that changed?
Nothing.
The government knew...
Sorry, the...
The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of the Second World War.
It's well known.
The Japanese had already offered to surrender.
The only thing they asked was to keep the emperor on the throne.
And America bombed anyway, and then decided to let them keep the emperor on the throne anyway.
So they nuked civilian populations who were held hostage by a tyrannical, fascistic-style government.
And this is all well known.
This is all documents.
And what does it change?
It doesn't change anything.
There's this fantasy, you see, that if we get the right facts, then people's minds are going to change about the state.
Well, if we can prove that they didn't...
Well, they did...
Vietnam was made up.
This is already well established.
False flag incidents are rife throughout history.
So what?
It doesn't change anything, because the government still has all the power.
Right?
It is not...
An action that is going to discredit the government in the eyes of the people.
It is the principle that the initiation of violence is evil, and therefore government, which rests on the initiation of violence, is an immoral institution.
You know?
It's like saying, well, we'll end slavery as soon as people understand that the slaves were captured against their will.
No.
End slavery when we understand that they're human beings.
Anyway, and it's immoral.
Video.
Freedom is tyranny.
Stefan Molyneux debates storm clouds gathering.
What a crybaby.
If you had watched the documentary like you should have, we wouldn't be having this long, drawn-out, boring discussion.
This sucks.
Fuck both of you.
Oh, God.
You know, it's...
These kinds of, you know, wild insults, it's tragic, because all people are doing is they're telling me about their own childhood.
All they're doing is saying, this is how I was dealt with as a child.
It's not processed, so my parental alter egos are now screaming from within my brain at everyone the same way I was screamed at or insulted.
You know, people think, you know, this gun is somehow going off against me.
No, the gun just...
Just blast history all over your face, which is visible to anyone to see.
When you are that aggressive and that irrational, you simply tell me that I as a child was treated aggressively and irrationally, and I'm too cowardly to deal with it, so I'm going to act it out against others.
That's all you're telling me.
Again, not much of an argument.
1-4.
Propaganda machine.
Ending violence forever.
Big Shampoo won't be making money off Steph.
Well, that is a great argument because there is empiricism behind it.
Somebody else wrote, I remember my childhood like it was yesterday, and I can tell you that kids are not rational.
You lack imagination if you actually think kids are nice and innocent.
If a parent could see how their kids actually socialized at school, they would see rude, ignorant, psycho...
I think he's meaning to say psychopathic little monsters with the ability to cause great harm to other kids.
Laugh out loud.
Back to reality for you.
Again, all somebody is telling me is that they were...
This is the parental view of how they were treated as children, which has now been internalized and is reflecting out.
And it's a way of justifying parents.
I mean, 95% of what people call ethics is simply justifying parental atrocities, right?
So you were treated terribly by your parents, I would assume, and you were told you were irrational, that you were Incompetent, whatever, right?
And so there's two possibilities.
Either your parents were right, and you are these things, or your parents were not right, in which case they were being abusive, right?
I mean, my mom said, oh, you're bald.
You're blonde when you were a kid, right?
I said, bald now.
Blonde when you were a kid.
Well, it's accurate, right?
It's true.
I was blonde, like a white blonde when I was a kid.
And if my mom says, well, you're irrational as a child.
Then if I'm not irrational, then my mother is kind of insulting me.
And if I am irrational, then my mother is correct.
So rather than question parental edicts, we normalize them by claiming that they're true, which we then must extrapolate to all other children.
And this is how abuse cycles itself.
Somebody else wrote this under...
Ending violence forever.
It was a great chat I had with James Corbett.
He said, no, you are the irrational one because you don't take culture and tradition into account, and you behave as if your views can't be shaken when science has proven the world to be full of many probability.
I think that's probabilities.
Spanking to a child in some culture is as normal as normal can be.
I never claimed excessive beaten were normal.
I am telling you that my experience being excessively beaten throughout my life has made me less violent and more rational than the average Joe.
Well, this is very true.
It's a very common thing.
When people have experienced physical aggression as children, most often they will normalize it and then make really bad arguments.
And, of course, we know that spanking reduces IQ points and reduces one's capacity to reason.
Spanking, and particularly child abuse, shrinks the neofrontal cortex.
It expands the fight or flight amygdala so people are more impulsive and less able to reason.
So this is the brain damage caused by child abuse.
And it's natural that if enough of your intelligence is taken away, you will no longer miss it.
That's just the reality of things.
And So, people who've been beaten, this guy says he was beaten, of course he's going to think he's making his less violent, think he's going to make him more rational on the average show.
One of the things that's very true is that people who are less intelligent have less capacity to evaluate their own intelligence.
And so, unfortunately, this is just one of the effects.
The people who defend spanking, who've been spanked, are just showing the negative effects on their cognitive development of spanking.
And it's not just, like, it doesn't just reduce IQ points because it's physically painful and dangerous and so on, but parents who spank are not reasoning and negotiating with their children, so the children learn less, they're less able to reason and to negotiate.
So, naturally, reasoning and negotiating promotes intelligence and so on.
Let's see here.
Leather straps, this is from the Ending Violence Revel, which is talking about the scientific evidence of the effects of child abuse.
Leather straps, tool handles, boots, the holy bible, knuckles, doors, open windows, the ground, urine, and mu favoritu, guilt by application of various commandments of ten.
Just a salad bar of, nay, a cornucopia of effective controls implemented by dear old dad, that swine-hearted boar.
So forget nothing, forgive nothing.
No quarter given, no quarter taken.
Well, this person, I'm so incredibly sorry for what happened.
It's just monstrous.
I mean, how much horrifying abuse did this child go through?
But the road to healing is anger.
Anger is the immune system of the mind, and if you're invaded by evil, anger is what pushes it back.
Sorry, Steph.
There will always be people whose only real asset is violence and intimidation.
And, you know, when somebody says, sorry, Steph, or as a teacher, I, you know, you just know that they're not going to make a good argument after that.
So, sorry, Steph, there will always be people whose only real asset is violence and intimidation.
For those people, giving up violent, aggressive behavior would be like a tiger giving up its teeth.
It's not always about parenting.
Sometimes it's simply a matter of pressing the only evolutionary advantage you have.
That's why it's called the non-aggression principle and not the pacifist principle because not everyone has principles.
But he's using principle.
Anyway, so yes, absolutely, there are people whose own real asset is violence and intimidation, and how is that their only human capital?
Because they were treated with violence and intimidation as children.
Personality is a language that's taught by parents, and if somebody grows up speaking English, we don't assume, well, they were just naturally born speaking English, you see, and they'd be speaking English if they'd been brought up in an Arabic-speaking country.
They're just naturally English speakers.
No.
We know that the language that the child speaks...
It's the language that is provided by the parents, is taught by the parents or the culture around them.
And so, where somebody grows up speaking the language of aggression and not of negotiation, it's no more a mystery where they learned that than if they grew up speaking English rather than Lithuania.
So, just saying that there are just these people who are naturally this way, despite all scientific evidence to the contrary, is, again, just making statements and we have another one for propaganda.
Everyone is striving for power.
The militarist dominates with weaponry.
The philosopher dominates with ideas, framing logic, and by proxy through their followers.
Is it surprising a philosopher would want everyone unarmed and never using violence?
A landscape where a thinker can dominate everything.
But he hasn't thought it through, and his reasoning is faulty, because he's too busy salivating at that utopia.
That's actually quite an intelligent comment, not an argument.
Maybe we have another one for propaganda.
Why would I want everyone unarmed and never using violence?
I have no issue.
I mean, I've written very strenuous philosophical defenses of the right to self-defense and so on.
So he's thinking that I want to create a world where a philosopher dominates with logic.
So, a man can dominate you with weapons, threaten you and shoot at you and so on, but I can make reasonable arguments, and therefore we are equivalent in our desire to dominate others.
Now, logic, of course, is something that people should learn for themselves.
Once you start listening to someone, it's an argument from authority.
Steph's right because that's what Steph said.
Well, that's an argument from authority.
Maybe I have some credibility and you're giving me the benefit of the doubt as a reasonably consistent thinker throughout the years.
But the whole point is that you have to think for yourself.
And I've always been trying to provide people the tools to do that.
And so the idea that I'm dominating by empowering you to think for yourself, again, is just ridiculous.
We will get rid of the majority of violence when it will pay better to be non-violent than to be violent.
It really is as simple as that.
And the best news is there's nothing stopping us making that happen right now.
And when people say, period, or it's really as simple as that, you know that they don't have any real arguments, but they really feel it important to get their ideas across.
When it will pay better to be non-violent than to be violent.
Well, I mean, there's some truth in that.
I mean, you get rid of the state as free evil, subsidized evil, and so on.
But again...
Violence will never go away because people are bad.
It's in the Bible, and all the atheists in the world can't beat the Bible.
Similarly, Jews and Muslims will always fight over Israel, whereas if atheism were true, a negotiated settlement and an end to the violence would be possible.
If you learn to understand there are non-scientific forces at work in the Middle East, then you understand the truth.
There is no peace possible there.
Poo-poo all you want.
Reality is reality.
Ah, the tautology.
Pah!
Because people are bad.
It's in the Bible.
And all the atheism in the world can't beat the Bible.
Again, that's not an argument.
I don't know what that is.
Just some sort of mental wretch point.
So I think if atheism were true, a negotiated settlement and an end to the violence would be possible.
But Jews and Muslims fight over Israel to a large degree about religion.
And I mean, he's saying Jews and Muslims, these are religious groups, for heaven's sakes.
And so saying that religious groups fight over land that has religious significance to them, and saying that this is a disproof of atheism, I actually rather think that that's a proof of the value of atheism.
What would they be fighting about if there were no countries and no religions?
Well, not much, really.
If spanking caused damage, then wouldn't evolution have filtered the spankers out of existence?
That's a good question, actually.
And the reality, of course, is that evolution has not filtered the spankers out of existence because when you have a spanking-based society, then those who are not spanked have a challenge.
If you have a really violent society, then those who are raised to be peaceful don't do so well.
So this is one reason why it's so hard to change it.
Alright, I feel it depends on one's goal.
Violence has benefits, and if you don't agree, ask the Indians that used to live in the U.S. if they think that they lost two or benefited or not.
So if domination and control are the goals, violence is genetically useful.
On the other hand, if empathy, ethics, and respect for both self and others is the goal, violence is the most damaging act of all.
I don't know.
There's this Rousseauian, noble, savage fantasy or vision of the Native Americans here.
I mean, they were Stone Age, tribal, irrational, destructive towards their children, abusive.
People say, well, they live without money.
And it's like, well, yeah, so do apes.
That doesn't mean that – I'm not going to say directly comparable.
Lots of animals live without money.
That doesn't mean that they're somehow hyper-advanced.
Propaganda to the contrary, this was a primitive and destructive society.
It doesn't mean that they should have been killed, of course not.
So if they had been more rational, then they would have had a free market, they would have had private property, they would have had all the moral trappings of a modern civilization, and they would have had more than enough weaponry to repel the whitey pants invaders.
Human nature always trumps idealistic visions, whether it's communism or this particular brand of non-aggression principle, absolutism.
People say the word absolutism like this somehow dismisses somebody's perspective.
Like, well, it's absolutist, and that's bad.
It's like, hey, you have cancer.
Would you like me to absolutely get rid of it?
Yes!
Well, not just...
Relativistically get rid of it and leave some behind?
No, no, get rid of it all.
Well, I can't.
That's absolutism.
That's really bad.
Do you want me to be absolutely faithful to you if we're married?
Yeah?
Some people are born with a high proclivity for aggression and low impulse control.
The only way to end violence forever – violent crime is about 50% genetic – is to eugenically select or breed for nonviolence.
Breeding gave us docile dog breeds, humans or animals, too.
Get biorealism.
Unfortunately, with the welfare state, we're breeding for violence at the moment, which is pretty tragic.
But anyway, violent crime is about 50% genetic.
Now, somebody who uses the word genetics without mentioning epigenetics is a propagandist.
Epigenetics is the reality that environment turns on and off genes.
And so there's no such thing as 50% genetic, like that's just the way you were born.
It doesn't happen that way.
That's not the reality of how human genes develop.
Human genes are dynamic through life and respond to a large degree due to environment.
This is idiotic.
Children need spanking.
Spanks only to the bottom so no damage is done.
You don't sit down and have a reasoned logical discussion with a two-year-old behaving like a meth addict coming down from a high.
You need to set boundaries and teach kids actions have consequences.
When little Johnny kicks little Susan and pulls her hair because he wants his toy back, you don't give him chocolate and kisses.
That's what's wrong with people these days.
So fucking soft and delusional.
Spank's only to the bottom, so no damage is done.
Well, how do you know no damage is done?
What about the psychological damage?
This is the cowardly thing about spankers.
I'm sorry, I'm going to call you out on this bullshit.
Spankers say, well, it's different from beating because you don't do any damage.
Well, no, the whole point of spanking is to use fear and shame and pain as a way of modifying behavior.
So, of course, you're trying to do damage.
You're trying to hurt the child by spanking.
I mean, don't bullshit me and tell me it's somehow wildly different from spanking.
It's different in degrees from a beating, for sure.
But you're still using pain, fear, shame, and humiliation to change a child's behavior.
Since you don't sit down and have a reason, logical discussion with a two-year-old who's behaving, you know, crazy and so on.
Well, why is the child behaving crazy?
Because you smacked him, right?
You need to set boundaries and teach kids actions have consequences.
So little Johnny kicks little Susan and pulls her hair because he wants his toy back.
Well, why is he doing that?
Why is he unable to share?
Why?
Because he's been taught that violence...
I mean, you spank a child, you're teaching him that violence is the best way to modify other people's behavior.
So then when some kid takes his toy and he uses violence to modify that child's behavior, don't blame him for learning your fucking lesson.
Sorry.
Don't blame him for learning the lesson that you've taught him, that violence is the way to modify other people's behavior.
You don't give him chocolate and kisses.
Who on earth talked about responding to a child's aggression with chocolate and kisses?
Again, straw man argument, blah blah blah blah blah.
This Stefan guy has no clue about human nature.
To look at unbridled human nature, look at a two-year-old.
This is our natural state.
To kick, punch, shout until we get what we want right now.
Then we learn that there are more powerful forces out there than us.
And if we keep doing that, shit, bad things will happen to us.
Then we become humanitarians.
We pretend it's our nature and it is our choice to be good citizens.
But the truth is we learned it by negative reinforcement.
I mean, this is childism, which is a form of elemental prejudice that remains unexamined within society, and tragically so.
I mean, if I just said, you know, if you want to look at what blacks are really like, you know, you just look at the average black guy who just, you know, kicks, punches, and screams until he gets what he wants.
And what we need to do is, you know, punch that guy back until he learns how to be a good citizen, because that's just how blacks really are.
You know, this would obviously be horribly racist, Even though there are blacks who do that, just there are people in every race who do that.
So this insult to two-year-olds, the two-year-olds are irrational and aggressive and violent and bad and this and all that.
I mean, it's so insulting.
Of course you can have rational debates with a two-year-old.
I know, I've done it.
It was not a hallucination.
Our natural state is to kick, punch, and shout until we get what we want right now.
My daughter has never had a temper tantrum.
She's never punched anyone.
She doesn't scream at people.
She doesn't kick people because she doesn't speak Arabic.
Because we haven't taught her Arabic, we've taught her English.
So we've taught her peaceful negotiation and that's what she speaks.
The human nature argument is just another way of getting parents off the hook for shitty behavior towards children.
So what happens is our parents treat us like crap, they hit us, they yell at us, they time out us, they treat us like criminals, and then we say, well, children are naturally bad, and that's why they taught me that way.
That's why they treated me that way.
Well, no.
You acted that way because that's how they treated you.
The cause and effect is not, you acted that way, and that was the only response that was rational, given how you acted.
No.
You acted that way because violence was inflicted against you as a child.
Sorry.
I'm sorry if that pisses you off, but these are the facts.
This is well documented.
So, score one for tragic propaganda.
So, if children would be raised like this, there would be almost no criminality left on Earth.
Violent behavior isn't genetic.
Oh, but infinite greed is?
That one cannot be unreined?
Unlearned, I assume.
I think it is time to admit it.
If children were raised peaceably, a resource-based economy would be possible, like proposed by the Venus Project, now that Stefan himself practically said it.
Will you still all disagree?
Oh, practically said it.
I like those ones.
Um...
So when people wildly misquote you, they'll say, well, you sort of said that, or you said something along those lines, or you practically said it, or they'll say, well, that was my impression of what you said.
You know, it avoids them actually having to quote me.
If, you know, resource-based economy, hey, if you all want to try a resource-based economy in a free society, go for it.
just don't force it on people infinite greed is infinite greed is You know, greed is one of these words that has some interesting, you know, we're greedy for health, right?
I mean, we're greedy for love.
We're greedy for, you know, if you're a philosopher, you're greedy for truth and virtue.
Greed is just one of these things.
Now, people who are greedy to the point of destroying their environments are self-destructive.
And where does that self-destruction come from?
You know, it's like, that's just sort of tangential.
It may not even be true, but I've sort of thought about the people who are obsessed with chemtrails and so on, like the air is bad, the air is poisonous.
I always wonder if they had smokers leaning over their crib as babies.
Anyway.
All right.
Violence has saved my life every day in America.
Genocidal ghettos and street smarts, and I don't need meds or councils programming.
Just survival from illegals, gangs, cops, and usury from churches.
Happiness is respected no matter how little on the sweet disposition we call Earth, a.k.a.
Dead Man's Wonderland.
It's almost like a beat poem, and I'm very, very sorry for the environment.
But the environment, the ghetto environment is a statist environment.
I mean, almost completely, the ghetto environment is a statist environment.
The families in ghettos are defined by welfare and other handouts and food stamps and free healthcare and so on.
So the families are defined by statist policies.
You have government housing, you have government streets, you have government parks, you have government schools.
These are all intensely statist environments, and you'll notice that when state power increases, the quality of life tends to deteriorate, because violence makes things bad.
It's embarrassing to have to say it, but that's the reality.
Alright, so I don't know.
One of my buddies, old man, ex-Marine, used to beat the crap out of him every day until he got big enough to hit back.
He's one of the more empathetic and good persons I know.
Conversely, what about the serial killer who grew up in a non-violent, quote, happy home?
I don't totally buy what Steph is selling here, including the alleged genetic factor in behavior.
But I'm not saying parents shouldn't hit their kids, give them some interesting responsibilities when they're very young.
Works wondrous.
Yeah, so again, you know, argument from I know someone is not an argument.
I know a guy who rubbed thyme on his forehead and cured himself of asthma.
No, you don't.
Because correlation is not causation.
So the serial killer who grew up in an unviolent happy home.
Oh, come on.
Let's at least be a little bit skeptical about what serial killers say about their own childhood and when the parents are interviewed, what the parents say.
About their own childhood.
You know, everyone in jail is innocent, and all parents with crappy kids say that they raised them perfectly.
I mean, what would you expect abusers to say?
Oh yeah, you know, we beat the crap out of him, we tortured him, and we killed his animals in front of him, and he turned into a serial killer.
That makes them liable for suing for child abuse.
People don't generally admit crimes which they otherwise would never be convicted of because they love going to jail.
So let's at least be skeptical about how serial killers come from some wonderful non-violent home.
And just look at the actual biographies of serial killers and the kind of childhood that they experienced when there's some truth in the matter.
And yeah, I mean, look, you can have the crap beaten out of you.
Then become empathetic and a good person.
I mean, I had the crap beaten out of me when I was a child.
Repeatedly, I had my head beaten against doors.
I mean, I had incredible violence in my childhood.
And then you deal with it.
You do the mature thing, right?
It's like the two brothers, right?
One says, well, I'm an alcoholic because my dad was an alcoholic and that's all I grew up and that's all I knew.
That's what I grew up with.
And the other guy, the other brother says, Oh man, I don't touch alcohol because my dad was an alcoholic and I saw what it did.
So you can make a choice about your environment.
A bad childhood is no excuse for anything.
You know, it's like somebody saying, well, they smoke and they don't exercise and all that.
They just live really badly, eat lots of junk food, and they say, well...
You know, my family has a history of heart disease and everybody dies by 40, so I'm just going to enjoy myself while I can.
And the other brother says, well, my family has a history of heart disease, so I'm going to exercise, I'm going to eat well, I'm going to, you know, watch my weight, I'm going to, you know, all this kind of stuff.
I'm not going to smoke and all the things that increase your risk factors.
And that's just, I mean, the fact that your family has a history of heart disease or history of violence in no way excuses or conditions how you're going to behave in the future.
Coming from a strict family background, I know excessive spanking is a receipt.
I think that means recipe for disaster.
Hell, it's not rocket science.
But sometimes spanking is necessary for discipline.
You just need to find that right balance.
Yeah, you know, discipline is one of these words that people use to justify hitting helpless, independent children.
And, you know...
So imagine, coming from a strict family background, I know that excessive wife-beating is a recipe for disaster.
Hell, it's not rocket science.
But sometimes...
Wife beating is necessary for discipline.
You just need to find that right balance.
We would never accept that argument when it comes to wives or husbands or friends.
Sometimes when a friend disagrees with me, I need to hit him a little bit, just to give him some discipline about what he needs to believe.
We never imagined that would be a moral argument.
But we apply this to children, right?
Because we're incredibly prejudiced against children.
Because children don't have rights.
Children aren't really human beings.
So we have all of these unbelievably shitty fucking standards about how we treat children.
Which we would never dream of applying to other people.
Why?
Because children can't leave so we can treat them like crap?
No.
Children can't leave so we treat them like the best we conceivably can.
Because if we want them to love us, then they have to overcome the involuntary.
Their love has to overcome The involuntary nature of our relationship with them.
Like, if your wife is assigned to you and forced to marry you, and you wanted to love you, you've got to treat her the very best you conceivably could.
A lot better, even, than if she'd chosen to marry you.
Because you have to overcome the negatives of her being forced to be there.
Children didn't choose you as parents.
They didn't choose to be there.
They can't leave.
So you have to treat them the very best.
We always end up treating them the worst.
Because of our prejudice.
And it's weird, you know, we can prejudice against blacks who have never been a black.
Or prejudice against children.
We've actually been children.
Anyway.
Discipline.
Why the hell do you have to discipline children?
Discipline is a code word, and discipline means that I believe some crazy shit, and my children aren't going to believe that crazy shit, which all my friends and family believe as well, so I'm going to have to beat them or threaten or intimidate them or neglect them or abuse them or manipulate them or bribe them until they spout the same crazy shit that I do so that my other crazy shit-believing friends won't condemn me.
If a child is so lacking in self-control and respect that physical violence is the only way to get their attention or impress upon them some important lessons, the parents have fundamentally failed in their duties.
Yeah, and of course, I mean, if you have violence in your toolbox as a parent, guess which tool you're going to reach for always?
Violence, of course.
If you take violence out of your toolbox, then you've got some creative ways.
So, I think, good point.
All right.
It's true.
Sometimes my wife just doesn't listen to me, so I have to spank her until she gets it.
The only problem is that I have to hit her really, really hard to get my point across because she's a grown-up.
The other day she wasn't listening, so I punched her in the face.
Well, that's an argument by analogy, which I think is definitely helpful.
Hey, look, we've got one for a reason.
There are different ways of spanking depending on age.
You seem to make an irrational conclusion that spanking equates to physical assault when it could be a mere pat on the arm, therefore making your argument invalid.
Have a nice day.
No.
Unfortunately, spanking is the use of pain and shame to alter a child's behavior.
A pat on the arm is not spanking because it does not create any shame or pain in the child.
Sorry, but that is just the reality.
If you're going to try and change someone's behavior through negative consequences, those negative consequences have to be significant enough to actually alter behavior to impress upon a distracted and short attention span child the need to alter behavior in a permanent way and therefore it has to be significant.
So it's not spanking if it doesn't create any shame or pain or humiliation on the part of the child.
First of all, children are not rational and just because they behave next to you doesn't mean that they are well behaved when you or their parents are not looking.
If you actually read my comment properly, I think it means, you will notice I advocated spanking as a last resort.
What are you going to do when your child decided to steal or swear at you, eh?
Why is your child stealing?
Why is your child swearing?
Why does your child grow up without empathy?
Because spanking is an action.
Verbal abuse is an action of erasing the other.
You cannot spank someone without erasing your compassion and empathy for them, of course.
So when a child who's been disciplined repeatedly, and most children who get spanked get spanked 150 times a year, or Yeah, 150 times a year.
And so when children are treated with no empathy whatsoever, with anti-empathy, right?
In other words, you know that the child doesn't want it to be spanked, you know that the child finds it painful and humiliating to be spanked, and therefore, you will spank that child.
So you're using your empathy to harm, right?
The same way that a torturer, in an extreme example, the same way a torturer uses his knowledge of human physiology to create the most pain possible, right?
And So when you 150 times are anti-empathetic towards a child, and then the child grows up lacking empathy, how is that possibly a shock?
I mean, how could that possibly be a shock?
And then you say, well, it's children's nature, they lack empathy.
It's just a way of forgiving yourself for the violence that you've done, and you need to be better than that.
I turned atheist a few years ago to get back at my mom.
Looks like the excessive spanking made me stronger.
How is a kid who has never been spanked going to cope with violent kids and college students?
I experienced just as much violence in primary schools.
Well, sure, I get that.
First of all...
Like, kids who've had violence acted against them are not going to be able to cope well with other violent kids because they've already had that violence acted against them.
You want them to avoid violence, kids, and if you can't avoid it in the school, then you homeschool them.
Just take care of your children.
Jesus.
So now you want me to turn to the state for answers.
Some anarchist you are.
Again, I never said beating a child severely or excessively is a good thing.
I said spanking should be a last resort.
Back in my school days, the macho kids I saw every day were spoiled kids who had never been hit a day in their life.
It wasn't the state's fault.
It was just their way of expression, their competitive nature.
I'm not a parent.
Stop trying to impose your views on me and learn to reason for once in your life.
Oh, that's astounding.
Stop trying to impose your views on me and learn to reason for once in your life.
And spanking should be a last resort.
Well, isn't spanking imposing your views and not reasoning?
How do people...
how do people get through the day?
Is government...
So, this is from the video.
Is government inherently immoral?
Stefan Molyneux debates.
Tom Wilkutz.
I'm with Steph on the dispute resolution organization, that sort of private insurance to keep your property and person protected and your pollution minimal and so on.
I'm with Steph on the DRO idea.
But let's analyze this.
Your debt to DRO. The DRO has insurance which is to be used in the event of non-payment.
So the DRO gets paid from the insurance which they pay into to guarantee payment.
Congrats.
The lender has secured payment without force.
Awesome.
Now what happens to the person who became in debt?
Did they get economic sanctions?
Loss of services for a certain time until that period ends or what happens without malice, we're assuming.
Well, they would obviously be in some negative standing until they paid their debt back.
You couldn't have no consequences, otherwise people would not pay their debts back, and you couldn't have consequences too harsh, otherwise nobody would sign up with that DRO. So, there would be some balance.
Who knows what the balance is going to be.
Um...
Let's see.
An introduction to peace.
Stefan Molyneux of Freedom Aid Radio interviewed on the Free Mind Report.
The problem with what Stefan says is that he very simplistically equates the ownership of personal belongings with the ownership of economic resources.
He does it so quickly and seamlessly that it is very easy to be seduced by his argument.
He really pulls a fast one on you.
The ownership of economic resources on a large scale can only be enforced by the state.
Also notice that property rights do not include the right to have property unless you are born into wealth.
Yeah, this is sort of a Marxist thing where somebody says, well, you can own your toothbrush, but you can't own the means of production.
But it's like saying gravity applies to asteroids, but not to planets.
Gravity applies to a table, but not a mountain.
Well, gravity is a universal claim, and therefore it applies to things small and large.
Property is a universal claim.
You can't own a toothbrush and then suddenly, magically, when property is something else, not have the right of ownership.
And of course, property is not created unless somebody has the right of control.
Even the Soviet Union, the government created factories so that they could have the right to control those factories.
So that is...
Okay, so what is his argument?
Very simplistically, that's usually a sign that somebody is not going to make a good argument.
It's like saying, I'm sorry, Steph, but it's that he very simplistically equates the ownership of personal belongings with the ownership of economic resources.
He does it so quickly that it's very easy to be seduced by his argument.
He really pulls a fast one on you.
The ownership of economic resources on a large scale can only be enforced by the state.
Assertion.
No argument.
Also notice that property rights do not include the right to have property unless you are born into wealth.
Being born gives you property because you own yourself.
The first property right is over things like your kidneys, your teeth, your eyes.
This is why somebody who is blind doesn't get to...
You know, Gloucester-style take-out your vial jelly with a spoon and put it in his own eye socket, right?
You own yourself and you own your...
That's why being born.
So the right to have property unless you're born into wealth, again, this is not an argument.
And again, it's not reference to any assertion that I make, so...
This is not...
I didn't choose the worst ones.
This is Mike...
My partner at FDR, he picked these out pretty randomly.
And there are no actual arguments in any of this.
There's one that was a decent argument by analogy.
That's not actually a full argument.
That's just a way of dislodging someone's prejudices.
So no actual arguments in hundreds and hundreds of YouTube comments every day.
And if you include comments in Facebook, comments coming through email and so on.
And I think people who listen to the show regularly are better at making arguments, but, you know, sadly, you and I live in a zombie film, and they're looking to eat brains, but that doesn't mean their brains are going to grow.
So this is why I say it's an intergenerational.
Program.
It's an intergenerational project to make the world a better and happier place.
You can't reason people out of beliefs that they weren't reasoned into.
And as you can see here, these are just emotional defenses, ex post facto justification to the prior abuse under the guise of pseudo rational and tragically badly spelled arguments.
This is the world we live in.
This is what we have to accept.
And we can't change that.
You can no more change the world through reason at its present state.
Then you can build a castle out of fog.
You may wave your hands around the air, but all you're doing is pretend clapping the incomprehensibility and impossibility of your imaginary mission.
And this is why.
Human beings have to grow into reason before reason is going to have a hold in them.
If you look at these numbers and look at the reality, then I hope that you will have the humility to turn to parenting instead of argumentation.
Thank you so much, as always.
Oh, please donate at freedominradio.com forward slash donate.
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