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Oct. 10, 2013 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

03:27:35

2504 Resource Based Economy Non-Answers - Wednesday Call In Show October 9th, 2013

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	Good evening, everybody!
	Stefan Wallady, Free Domain Radio.
	Yes, Java powered as usual.
	This fine Wednesday night, 9th of October 2013.
	I hope you're doing very well.
	I'm excited.
	I'm excited because the magnificent bastard Joe Rogan tweeted his fandom of Free Domain Radio to over a million people.
	And what's resulted, of course, is I've got a whole bunch of MMA fights scheduled for my front lawn.
	Should be quite a lot of fun.
	We'll be selling tickets, naturally.
	We have snagged some seriously big-time celebrities to come up on the show, which I'm very excited about.
	We'll give you more details as they go forward.
	So if you really want to keep up with all the great stuff that is going on, We are on iTunes.
	Just give a search of Free Domain Radio.
	If you could give us five stars or as many stars as you feel we deserve and write a review of what you think of the show, that will really help entice new people to step into the quicksand of reason known as Free Domain Radio.
	I hope that you will do that.
	As always, of course, I am on the...
	As Madonna is saying, I'm on my knees.
	I'm going to take you there.
	If you would like to donate, I'm in the begging position at FDRURL.com forward slash donate.
	So, Mike, let's get to the brains of the outfit.
	Who do we have in the rotating phalanx of rational questions?
	Hey, Steph, how's it going?
	I'm good.
	I feel glossy.
	How are you doing?
	Pretty good.
	Also a little Java field myself, so I think maybe we'll be on the same wavelength.
	Beautiful.
	Yeah, so first I want to say I'm a huge fan as an activist, a web developer, and entrepreneur myself, so you're a huge inspiration.
	Thank you very much.
	Yeah, for sure.
	And more recently, I've actually become really involved with Bitcoin.
	And I know you and your listeners are pretty much on the Bitcoin train and know what it's all about.
	I also, at the same time, I'm also a supporter of a resource-based economy.
	So I know that maybe seems a little contradictory, but if you'd be so kind...
	No, to be honest, sorry, just to be very clear.
	People who are supporters of resource-based economies I think are fantastic.
	I have no problem with it whatsoever.
	You know, I'm a supporter of Queen, the band.
	That doesn't mean that I'm going to enforce them.
	Oh, it's the only thing that tempts me to violate the non-aggression principle was to make everyone sit down and listen to the falsetto genius of Cool Cat.
	But no, if you're a supporter of a resource-based economy, I think that's fantastic.
	I'm open to and encouraging of and enthusiastic towards all forms of social and economic I just want to point out, if you're a supporter, now if you're an enforcer of a resource-based economy, then we are not going to have friendly words.
	But if you're a supporter of it and think it's a great idea, well, who am I to say no?
	I mean, good Lord.
	I mean, we're all busy.
	I don't want to dictate what people can and can't do as long as they respect the same privilege.
	I just want to sort of be clear about that to people who don't know my position on that.
	Okay, yeah, because I think watching some of the videos that might be unclear because I think you and Peter kind of have a, like you said, it's a debating, it's kind of a head-to-head, and I think really we all want the same, you know, we want a peaceful society that we can all live in.
	So what I would like to do is kind of present a different perspective on how technically it might be feasible, which I don't think you guys have really touched on.
	So if you'd be so kind, I'd like to kind of go over that.
	So basically it falls along the lines with Bitcoin.
	So Bitcoin is a decentralized planned network.
	So every node or every person that's involved with Bitcoin simultaneously agrees on the rules of the Bitcoin protocol.
	And just like no one person can all of a sudden decide that they're going to print themselves a million Bitcoin, They have to operate within those rules, but at the same time there's a rule decided that you can't prevent me from giving money to so-and-so.
	So what's kind of evolving out of the Bitcoin idea is something called an autonomous decentralized corporation, essentially.
	So it's a set of rules that operates decentrally with mutually agreed-upon Basically a protocol.
	So, in a non-violent society, which I think is required to reach an RBE, I think we could all agree to set up an autonomous corporation that would be in charge of managing resources that would be voluntarily given, I guess, to the power of the corporation.
	And then by accessing resources that you need, you'd be able to query, I guess, the network and have access to the necessities or the things that you needed.
	So does that make sense?
	Okay, so there's a central depository of resources and you say, you know, I would like a new phone and then a new phone is delivered?
	Yeah, essentially.
	I think that's wonderful.
	I have no desire to participate in such a system, but that may be due to my truncated and narrow-minded perspective.
	But the problem is that all resources are finite and human desires are infinite.
	And so, what is it that puts the limit on human desires?
	Well, one of the things that puts the limit on human desires is price, and price reflects the scarcity and complexity of a good that's being produced, and of course, it reflects the demand.
	So, one of the beautiful things about a price system is that the more demand there is, the higher the price goes, which of course, as you know, signals entrepreneurs to provide more of that good and or service, which then brings the price back down, and all of that.
	And the lack of the price system is one of the fundamental problems That we have in a centrally planned society.
	Because this is a centrally planned society.
	This is not entrepreneurs in a freewheeling, non-central system attempting to satisfy goods and service requirements based on price and demand.
	You have a central repository of goods and services which people then demand at no cost to themselves, if I understand you correctly.
	Yeah, but I think in a free society, we would have a level of education much higher than today.
	For me, for example, I'm not going to say, I want this phone delivered to my house.
	I'm going to say, I want this supply of silicone.
	I want these resistors, these circuits, and I want to build the phone that I see would fit my needs the best.
	And at the same time- You want to build your own phone?
	Sorry, wait, wait.
	People will be building their own phones?
	I don't see why not.
	Why?
	Well, because of the division of labor and specialization.
	I mean, why would I want to learn how to build a phone?
	Some people do.
	Some people build their own computers.
	I'm sorry?
	No one would be requiring you to build your own phone.
	But I'm saying if I had the access to the raw materials to do so, I would be able to share in an open source format, just like Bitcoin.
	I would be able to share that formula to build the phone with X, Y, and Z features.
	Let me just make sure I understand something, Matt.
	Why is it important to try and figure out which system is best?
	I mean, y'all sounds like an us versus them, but if you want to build this kind of environment, if you want to set up a company or you want to set up any kind of organization in a free market that is going to give people stuff for free or whatever, then why not just do that?
	Because you'd have to pay for the materials.
	There's a price in the current market system, so you'd have to charge them a price to give it away.
	Sorry, Matt.
	My question was, why not set up whatever it is that you want to set up in a free society?
	Why do you need any kind of monopoly?
	Well, I think it emerges out of the free market.
	Essentially you're creating this corporation of open source materials that does allow for give and take freely.
	It's not possible in a price market system because those raw materials would require prices to begin with.
	So when you say it's not possible in a free market system, what does that mean?
	So we have no state, we have, you know, freely trading people, we have charity, we have massive multiples of our existing income, and that's not enough, right?
	You feel that there should be something better than that, and so what is it that you would then try and convince people to switch over to a priceless system?
	Well, I mean, obviously I can't plan for every advantage that it would have, but I think being able to have access to the resources is just another method of transferring goods and services.
	Sorry, sorry.
	You've got to be precise.
	This is what always bugs me about this stuff, and not you.
	It's just like, don't get access to the resources.
	What does that mean?
	Right?
	So, what does it mean when you say that you can't exist in a price system?
	Does that mean the price system is banned?
	I mean, what happens?
	Well, no, it's not banned.
	I think having access to resources is like having access to the Bitcoin network.
	You send money through it...
	No, you only have access to the Bitcoin network because you already have private property.
	You only have access to the Bitcoin network because you have a computer, because you have a house, because you have electricity, because all these things, right?
	The Bitcoin network doesn't exist in some socialist paradise, right, or any sort of Venus Project paradise.
	You need private property in order for there to be Bitcoins, and Bitcoins only have value because you can buy and sell things with them.
	So comparing Bitcoin to some RV is invalid.
	So if someone gave you your computer for free, you wouldn't be able to access the Bitcoin network?
	No, of course not.
	Why is that?
	I mean, I would need electricity.
	I need food.
	I need shelter.
	I need heat in the winter.
	I need lots of things.
	If I just send you a computer in the middle of the desert, you're not going to be able to do much with your bitcoins, right?
	We're talking about starting a new city where people are voluntarily trading the city by submitting their resources and time and energy.
	It's basically like a charity.
	I'm not charging you for this conversation, but if people find it valuable, they're free to donate, right?
	Yes, yes.
	Okay.
	So, I mean, I'm not going to argue against a model of resource allocation and all that, which I'm following, right?
	I mean, I sort of give away everything for free and hope for donations, so that seems like a final plan to me.
	So there's no problem with that.
	So it's basically what you're doing on a bigger scale, basically, is that we're...
	We're sharing resources and a set of predetermined decentralized rules that are overseen by an autonomous corporation.
	Is that not...
	Well, except that the way that my show works or I guess the degree to which it doesn't work is not a very big plus for the Venus Project approach or the Zeitgeist approach because the vast majority of people to my show consume significant resources and expensive resources like we just dropped almost $5,000 on server bandwidth.
	And they don't donate, right?
	So my donation base is maybe a percentage, maybe a percentage and a half of total listenership.
	So most people will consume without providing anything of value in return, and they're a net cost, and they're actually supported by the few people who do actually donate.
	So I'm not sure how that...
	And you're still able to do it, only by having a very small percentage.
	So it would be the same thing.
	I mean, with the automation technology that's available, it would really only require a very small percentage to actually be inputting anything.
	If we spend more resources trying to stop the freeloaders and the problems like that, that you don't actively try to stop people from listening that don't donate, In the same way that in a resource-based economy, people are free to choose if they want to be a freeloader and that's just part of the way it is.
	Okay, so what if somebody in your city wants to start buying and selling stuff for a price?
	That's fine.
	They don't have to, but they can.
	Okay.
	Then I don't have any disagreement.
	I mean, if there's no initiation of force and no violation of property rights, then I don't see any...
	I think it would be a disaster because of the price calculation problem outlined by Mises like almost 100 years ago.
	But, you know, I mean, sometimes people have to learn by experience who don't want to learn by theory.
	But I have no issues with people starting whatever social experiments they want.
	Sure.
	I think the main takeaway is that with your example of printing your own phone, with 3D printing and open source technology and the decentralized computer network, you literally could, in your home, print the phone with your features that you wanted.
	So yes, needs and wants are infinite, but so is customization when given access to the raw materials.
	But you know what's kind of funny, Matt?
	It's like...
	All the technology which...
	What the resource-based economy movement says is the solution has all come from the free market, right?
	None of it has come from central planning at all.
	There have been no cell phone innovations, to my knowledge, that have come out of Cuba or North Korea.
	And I'm not trying to say that it's exactly the same.
	What I'm saying is that you say, well, we have this great technology now, so we don't need the free market.
	But it is the free market that is providing All of this technology that you say makes the free market unnecessary.
	It just seems kind of odd if you sort of understand that perspective.
	Well, I understand the perspective.
	I mean, the caterpillar is beautiful in and of itself too, but the butterfly is even greater.
	You know, the free market is a necessary step to creating the technology.
	And yes, I think we can do better.
	And I think...
	For me, I listened to your diagnosis of the underlying drive for the resource-based economy for people.
	But for me, it's a matter of efficiency.
	I don't think everyone on my street needs to own a lawnmower.
	If we could all have access to the lawnmower when we needed it.
	It's kind of a neat example because I don't know if people will be cutting grass.
	Have you ever tried setting something like that up?
	In your neighborhood?
	I actually have.
	I'm actually working on a project right now that's a sharing system for Wi-Fi.
	So yes, I have.
	Okay, but I mean, Wi-Fi is not quite the consumable resource in the way that a lawnmower is.
	Have you ever tried setting it up in a fixed...
	I mean, I'm a big one for experiment on your theories before you proclaim them as the solution to the world's ills.
	So have you tried setting up This share and share alike, because you're going to be dealing with the same kind of human beings in the future, hopefully, I mean, that we are now.
	Now, I mean, I know that I say, well, in the future, we'll have fewer sociopaths, have fewer violent people, but that's because, of course, there is a significant amount of science that shows that the right treatment of children and childhood reduces the prevalence of evil to something of almost insignificance.
	So if you feel that people can share lawnmowers, have you ever tried doing that with a fixed good, like a lawnmower or a car or a bicycle or something like that?
	I have not, no.
	Why do you think that is?
	Does that mean it's not possible?
	I mean...
	No, it means that you haven't done it yet.
	You think that it's going to solve the world's problems, but you haven't tried to solve any of your problems.
	I think we both agree we don't live in a free society, so we can't really say, since I haven't tried X in this society, it's not possible in Y society.
	No, no, no.
	I have tried the non-aggression principle and property rights in my own life considerably.
	So everything that I, you know, I say go to therapy, I've gone to therapy.
	I say treat your children gently, I treat my child gently.
	I say don't have aggression in your relationships, I don't have aggression in my relationships.
	I have assertiveness, but I don't have aggression.
	So I'm not talking, when I advocate certain things, I'm not talking about things that I have not tried to, like for decades, myself.
	So I guess my question is...
	The problem I see is that someone would have to buy the lawnmower to start with because we're operating...
	No, everyone can chip in.
	Alright, should I test this for you?
	Not for me.
	It's not my system.
	It's not my system.
	The resource-based economy is not my system.
	But for you, if you want to have the confidence to say that your ideas work, then you should put them into practice in your own life.
	Is that not a reasonable request?
	I mean, you wouldn't want to be the fat guy with the diet book, right?
	I understand your point, but I don't think we live in the society.
	Because we don't live in the correct society to set up the test properly, is basically my point.
	So if you had a different kind of human being, your society would work?
	No.
	No.
	Not at all.
	Wait, no, not at all?
	For what?
	I don't think there's any quote-unquote different human being.
	I don't think that's...
	Wait, wait, wait.
	So you're saying that with society as it is, it won't work.
	And society is nothing but human beings, composed of human beings.
	And if human beings aren't going to change, then it will never work.
	I guess my point is that with the existing government coercion, then I guess, with the existing lack of a free market, Oh, okay.
	So you would be behind a transition to a stateless society where we would be free from the coercion of the government and then you would make the case for the resource-based economy to people in a state of freedom.
	I think it's necessary, actually.
	I don't think we can go from this society to the resource-based economy.
	I think the free market is a necessary step.
	Well, fantastic.
	Then I think we are on the same side.
	We're both saying, you know, let's get the gun away from the children's heads and then figure out if they want peanut butter or ice cream.
	Let them decide for themselves with us making the case or whatever.
	So, I think that we're on the same page then if we're both dedicated towards the elimination of the existing status paradigm and then in a free society we can make a case for whatever we think is beneficial after that, then I think that it's fantastic.
	I think that we're exactly on the same page and I think that's great.
	Big hug!
	You can't see the video, but big hug!
	Can I ask you a question?
	Yeah, sure.
	What was your infancy and toddlerhood like?
	I grew up in a very good household.
	I was Catholic, but very peaceful and very loving.
	And your mother was home when you were her baby?
	Yeah.
	And your father obviously was and is still around?
	Yes.
	And you have a great relationship with both of them?
	Yes, I do.
	And you are religious?
	No.
	So you are an atheist?
	Yeah.
	And how are they with your atheism?
	They've accepted it.
	What do you mean?
	But they're still religious, so that they think you're going to hell?
	No.
	They don't think you're going to hell?
	No.
	So, I'm sorry, I'm no theologian, but I thought that was kind of a Catholic thing, that you had to embrace Jesus and accept him as your Lord and Savior, or you go to hell?
	No, I think actually the Pope just came out and said that people that aren't religious will still get into heaven.
	Well, but that's not how they were raised, right?
	I assume you came out as an atheist before.
	I'm not trying to pick holes, I'm just really trying to understand.
	So did you come out as an atheist before the Pope made his proclamation?
	Yes.
	And did they believe you were going to hell when the Pope said you were going to hell?
	No.
	So they put their judgment above the Pope and above the Bible, actually.
	I think they put their own rational thought above that.
	Well, but not to the point where they would reject a deity, right?
	Correct.
	Okay.
	So it must be my belief that the Pope said that you get to go to heaven too, right?
	For them.
	I guess so, yeah.
	That was nice.
	And how would you discipline as a child?
	I was spanked here and there.
	And how often were you spanked?
	3.7 times a week.
	No, I don't know.
	Rarely.
	Few and far between.
	Maybe once a month, twice a month.
	So you would get between 25 and 50 spankings a year?
	That seems a little high, actually.
	That's what you told me.
	Yeah, I know, but when you scale it out like that, I think maybe 15 to 20 a year.
	Okay, so 15 to 20 spankings a year.
	And how long did that occur for?
	Maybe until four or five years old.
	Oh, so until you were four or five?
	Yeah.
	And when did it start?
	I'm not sure exactly, but...
	Two or three?
	Yeah, I mean, I can only remember.
	I can't remember too clearly.
	What happened to your parents?
	I mean, it's kind of an important question.
	When did you first start hitting me, right?
	No, I haven't asked them that.
	I mean, I think it's kind of important just in terms of your own development as a human being to know when your parents started hitting you, right?
	I mean, if it was two or one or six months or three or whatever, that may have...
	I know for a lot of people I understand that for you it's a big point.
	I don't think for me it's not a huge part of my development.
	It's not for me it's a big point, like it's just some personal thing, right?
	You understand that there's a lot of science behind this, right?
	Yeah, I do, for sure.
	So it's not just me, right?
	For sure.
	It's not an easy thing to bring up, but maybe I'll bring that up for sure.
	That's a good point.
	And if your parents stopped hitting you when you were four or five years old, what was the discipline replaced by?
	Mostly just grounding and cutting me off from friends and stuff.
	But they didn't hit you after you were four or five?
	No.
	And they brought you to church I would assume they brought you to church at least once a week?
	I mean, this isn't too pertinent to what I wanted to talk about, but we can get into it.
	No, it's extremely pertinent.
	And the reason I'm asking, look, you don't have to answer any of this, of course, right?
	But of course, if you've probably heard, I have a theory about why people are drawn towards a resource-based economy.
	And I don't know if you've heard the theory, it doesn't really matter if you have or not, but it's important for me to get the information.
	You certainly don't have to provide any of it, but there's a reason why I'm asking, which is not to try and poke holes in your family history, but just to try and understand why somebody might be drawn to a resource-based economy.
	Okay, so yeah, I mean, I was raised in a Catholic school, so yeah, I went to church weekly.
	And when did you first learn about hell?
	Four or five.
	And was the story, of course, that if you don't obey God or the priest or your parents or Jesus, then you go to hell and burn for eternity?
	Yeah.
	I never really believed it, though, to be honest with you.
	You never believed it?
	What do you mean?
	No.
	Well, I mean, I could tell, you know, I was actually, my parents had told me that I never really even believed in Santa.
	I could just tell there wasn't something rational about it, so I could just, you know, I can kind of tell that that didn't make sense to me.
	So at the age of five, I think you said, or so, at the age of five, your parents told you or supported the idea that if you disobeyed these invisible entities that you would go to hell, and you didn't believe that, so did you think they were lying to you?
	Um...
	I think...
	I... I'm not sure if I thought they were lying.
	I think they just thought the wrong thing.
	Well, if they told you something that you didn't think was true, then clearly you thought they would be lying to you, right?
	Well, people can be wrong without lying.
	They just don't know that they're wrong.
	So you thought that they were in error, and they didn't have the reasoning capacities that you had as a five-year-old.
	Right.
	Right.
	And were you able to talk to them about your doubts at that time, or not even doubts, but your outright rejection of this central tenet of the faith?
	No, I didn't.
	Why not?
	Because it was a very important part of their life, and it didn't hurt me.
	It wasn't my position to tell them everything they thought their whole life was wrong.
	And did you continue to go to church after this time?
	For how long?
	Through high school.
	Were you an atheist when you were a child, or did you reject certain aspects of the faith?
	Just reject certain aspects.
	I mean, I agree with, you know, do unto others as you want done to you.
	I mean, I agree with a lot of the clients.
	No, but I mean the deity aspect, right?
	Right, right, yeah.
	When did you become an atheist?
	The day I was born?
	No.
	Well, we're all born atheists, of course.
	Yeah, quite right.
	Maybe five, six years ago, maybe.
	Maybe more like ten years ago.
	And when did you tell your parents that you were an atheist?
	About the same time.
	Oh, about ten years ago?
	Yeah.
	And how old were you then?
	Eighteen.
	Oh, you were 18 then?
	Right.
	So, for 15 years or so, you had to keep secret your rejection of the central religious tenets that your parents were pushing on you.
	And did you have to keep that secret from your friends as well, or were you like a secret cabal of Hogwarts-dwelling atheist worshippers?
	No, it wasn't anything I kept you secret, no.
	From your friends, you mean?
	Right, right.
	Do you think that having to keep a very important secret from your parents might have had a negative impact on the relationship?
	I don't think so, no.
	All right.
	Well, I won't push that then.
	I think everyone can judge for themselves the quality of a relationship like that.
	It involves hitting and deception and avoidance and so on.
	Not to say that your parents are bad people or anything like that, but if I were keeping a very central secret from my parents and going along with their wishes, though I found them to be irrational and frankly quite destructive in terms of telling children of I would not necessarily characterize that as ideal or optimal.
	And how does that relate to the resource-based family?
	Well, look, I think you need to delve deeper into self-knowledge.
	Okay, go on.
	Well, I mean, I think that you need to delve more deeply into self-knowledge.
	This is just the old Socratic commandment, know thyself.
	You need to delve more deeply into self-knowledge before prescribing a universal end or solution to the world's ills.
	And so, that's just a thought, right?
	I mean, you can say to me that you have perfect self-knowledge, and, you know, I'm certainly not going to...
	Argue that point with you.
	That's something which is up to you to decide.
	But I think there are some conversations to have with your parents.
	I think it must have been quite difficult to keep that secret from your parents while being put in a Catholic school and being an atheist from a fairly young age or at least a significant skeptic towards the religion.
	That's not a particularly good solution.
	I also think that if you can't talk to your parents about things that are very important to you, Until you're 18, that indicates a lack of openness and a lack of honesty and a lack of mutual respect in the relationship.
	I think that's a problem.
	I do think it's important to talk about the hitting.
	If your parents were hitting you when you were, I don't know what the starting age was, but if they were hitting you 20 times a year up to the age of 4 or 5, if they started when you were 2 or 3, that's 40 to 60 hits.
	Hitting sequences from parents, that's kind of scary, particularly when you're that age.
	So these are just some things to work on and to talk about with your parents and to figure out yourself.
	But when you say you have a great relationship with your parents, but there's a lot that would indicate that there's things that might need to be worked out in terms of openness and connectivity, that's where I would focus on.
	If I were you, again, you know, whatever you want to do is whatever you want to do.
	But I think before saying, here's how we should design a city of the future in 200 years, I think these kinds of conversations would be more essential just to make sure that I have this belief that a desire for a society or a city where things are provided to you in ways that we really don't understand, that this is hearkening back to toddlerhood and to early childhood.
	I listened to the video.
	Why were you asking me then why it was important to talk about this sort of history?
	Well, no, I mentioned that I had listened to your video and I know that you have an underlying premise about where these needs, where these unmet needs are arising, this you call fantasy.
	I understand that, but I don't, I mean, in my particular case, how does that transcribe to my desire for more efficiency and sharing and peace in the world?
	Well, it is the idea, of course, that unmet needs in childhood that are unprocessed emotionally leave us for a yearning Leave us with a yearning for some external situation or state that is going to finally give us what we needed when we needed it in the past.
	I think it's a method of resource distribution just like the market system.
	It's a method of distributing resources just like the market system.
	Yes, but it's a parental method of distributing resources.
	Fundamentally.
	This is what central planning is.
	It's a parental method.
	And look, there's got to be a reason why the terms are so vague.
	The implementation concepts are so vague.
	There's got to be a reason why you can't get straight answers about stuff where you say, well, you can't have this in a price system.
	Or what if somebody wants to use a price system in this?
	Well, that's fine.
	It's okay.
	You know, there's got to be a reason why it's so vague and so hard to talk about.
	Like, I've written books and done hundreds of podcasts on how things could conceivably work in a stateless society, using historical examples, using my business experience, using free market examples.
	I've had experts on the system which can talk about How healthcare can be provided in the absence of a state in a free market, how charity can work, the friendly societies, how national defense could be achieved in the absence of a state, how roads could work.
	I mean, we've gone into exquisite and explicit detail, or at least I have, and I know lots of other thinkers long before me have.
	You can read David Friedman's The Machinery of Freedom.
	You can read stuff by Murray Rothbard.
	You can read stuff.
	I mean, you name it.
	You can find very detailed examinations of exactly how this stuff could practically work.
	And yet, when we talk to the resource-based economy people, we get a whole bunch of hippy-dippy, wouldn't it be great if we could all have stuff for free?
	And then we say, well, how could this possibly work?
	How do you overcome that price-competitive problem?
	And we basically say, well, here is, well, there's going to be push buttons in an algorithm.
	I mean, that's a complete fantasy.
	Let's talk about the Bitcoin.
	My whole point of calling in was not to talk about my childhood, etc.
	It was talking about the technical nature of a decentralized autonomous corporation, like Bitcoin, which is agreed upon, decentralized...
	Which you said, you push a button and you get what you want.
	That's magic.
	If you want to hyperbolize it, yeah.
	Well, you know, a lot of people would have thought the internet was magic too.
	I mean, there's things that we don't comprehend and I don't have all the answers to how everything would work.
	But yes, you press a button and you can 3D print the boards to assemble your own cell phone.
	Yes, it seems like magic today, just like a car would seem like magic to someone a thousand years ago.
	No, no, no.
	But the methodology of producing a car was understood a thousand years ago.
	Right, because basically you say, well we'll have a chariot of fire which will burn an engine inside itself and we will put it together exactly the same way pretty much that you assemble a carriage.
	I outlined for you the decentralized, open-source way that it works.
	No, these are just buzzwords.
	No, they're not.
	No, they're not.
	They're really not.
	Okay, so let's say 10,000 people want a new cell phone but you only have Parts for 2,000.
	So what happens?
	Someone, somewhere can figure out a new material that could be used to make the excess need.
	You understand that's not an answer, right?
	Because in the price system, what happens is if there's more demand than there is supply, then the price for whatever goods and services are required to satisfy that demand, the price for that goes up, which draws resources in to produce the extra phones as quickly as humanly possible because people really want to make a profit.
	So that's the real answer about how things will work.
	Just saying someone's going to invent something that's going to solve the problem is actually not an answer, right?
	You know that.
	What if 3 billion people want a cell phone today and there's not enough resources?
	What happens then?
	But if there's not enough plastic or not enough silicone in the world to meet the demand, then what?
	That's the same question.
	Well, but the mechanism is the price mechanism.
	You're just saying someone's going to do it, why?
	Out of the goodness of their heart, because they feel like doing it, because they don't have anything better to do that day, because they finished Candy Crush.
	In the price mechanism, the motivation, of course, is that price, which is really the most important thing in a market economy, price is something that's kind of dismissed like a little price tag or whatever, but price is absolutely essential.
	Price contains within it such a staggering amount of information, That it's something that cannot be replicated in any central planning system.
	This is one of the many reasons why central planning systems always fail, is that price contains such a staggering amount...
	It's decentralized planning, not central planning.
	What is decentralized planning?
	A resource-based economy.
	No, now you're just substituting one buzzword for another.
	What is it?
	Decentral...
	Just like the Bitcoin network.
	I've been trying to harp on this.
	It's decentralized, so there's no one authority...
	Everything is agreed upon by all the nodes or people, whatever you want to call them.
	Okay, so if it's a decentralized economy, then if 10,000 people want cell phones and there are only 2,000 cell phones, what happens?
	I don't know.
	Because nobody's responsible for meeting that need, right?
	You're right.
	I mean, I don't know the answers to every question.
	No, no, no.
	This is my first question.
	This is not every question.
	This is my first question about practical implementation.
	And look, I'm not trying to be annoying and I'm not trying to be a prick to you.
	I'm really not.
	I know there's no answer.
	I know.
	I've been doing this for 30 years.
	I know that there's no answer.
	But it's important for you to know that there's no answer.
	And it's important for you not to retreat into the magical thinking of, wouldn't it be great if?
	And yeah, it would be great if we could snap our fingers and have everybody's needs met in the world.
	Of course it would be fantastic.
	It'd be like saying, well, snap our fingers and have everyone cured of every horrible disease in the world.
	Absolutely.
	That's a wonderful desire.
	And how you go about it is the key, right?
	You can actually go and get your PhD in molecular biology and actually start sweating and using petri dishes or whatever it is that you do to cure these diseases.
	It is important that you know what happens when 10,000 people want a cell phone and there are only materials for 2,000 cell phones.
	Because if that condition never arose, there would be no such thing as economics.
	There would be no such thing as a market, right?
	That condition will arise everywhere, all the time, under all conditions, no matter what.
	Can you see a possibility that there's such a wide variety of types of cell phones and materials that are used to create a cell phone that with all the resources on the planet being accessible that there would be some way to make a cell phone.
	Scarcity, look, look, scarcity is a fact of nature.
	It cannot be wished away.
	What you're basically saying is I'm going to apply the infinity engine to this problem of scarcity.
	In other words, I want to envision a situation wherein there is no such thing as scarcity.
	But the problem is, Matt, scarcity is a fact of life.
	It is a fact of nature.
	Resources are finite.
	Life is finite.
	Can't we recycle and reuse all other resources that are being thrown away in landfills right now?
	Well, maybe.
	But the question is, recycling is not magic either, because recycling requires energy.
	Someone's got to go pick that stuff up.
	They've got to drive it somewhere.
	They've got to apply energy to break it back down into its component parts.
	They've got to apply energy to reassemble it.
	Is recycling more cost-efficient than making something new?
	Well, only the free market will tell you that.
	Well, not necessarily.
	I don't think that's true.
	I think it can be all automated.
	I mean, we can have solar panels that generate electricity.
	Solar panels are incredibly expensive, and solar panels are very inefficient.
	Expensive isn't the paradigm We're talking beyond the price.
	No, no, no.
	Because price is not arbitrary.
	I'm sorry to be interrupting.
	Price is not, well, we'll just make them free.
	They're expensive for a reason.
	They're expensive because they consume a huge amount of resources to build and return a very small amount of energy.
	I understand that.
	The price tells you that if you gave everyone solar panels, we'd all starve to death because it would require more energy than the world has at the moment.
	And there'd be nothing left to grow crops with or to harvest crops.
	So price tells you something very important.
	Now, of course, I hope, like you do, that we can drive solar panels down.
	I'd love to drape something on the roof and have my power set.
	The problem is, of course, storage, cloudy days, extended periods of darkness, night time where you get less daylight and more night time, and so lots of problems with this kind of stuff.
	And I've looked into all of this stuff, right, to try and find some other way to get energy to my house and all of that, kind of working on some stuff.
	But it's really complicated, and you can't just create a situation where you can wish scarcity away.
	Through the magic of technology, technology is not magical.
	Technology, as you know, is very prosaic, is very engineering-based.
	So I think it's—look, I applaud your desire.
	I really do applaud your desire to make the world a better place.
	I think we all want that.
	But you have to really resist.
	Like you say, you didn't like Santa Claus, and you rejected hell, and you rejected the Pope, and you rejected Catholicism when you were five.
	So I'm saying go back to that five-year-old and reject the magical thinking that there's any way to snap your fingers and eliminate scarcity.
	Scarcity is always going to be a fact of nature.
	Even if we were able to live forever in a situation where there were infinite resources, it would still be a problem because we still could only do one thing at a time pretty much.
	So scarcity is always going to be part of human nature and part of our environment at least for the foreseeable future.
	Now, you could say in the future we'll transcend our bodies and we'll be able to do everything at once.
	But this, again, is another kind of magical thinking.
	In order to get there, we have to make sure we allocate our resources as intelligently and competently as possible.
	And that means sticking with the price system, which gives you information about how many resources there are, how much energy it takes to produce stuff, how much energy it takes to gather stuff and to deliver stuff.
	I mean, this is all what the price is going to tell you.
	I'll give you the last one, then I'll move on to the next caller.
	No, that's all right.
	I think we did a pretty thorough analysis, so I appreciate your time.
	Thank you very much.
	I appreciate that.
	All right, bye.
	Bye.
	All right, Tracy, go ahead.
	You're up next.
	Wow, I thought I was last.
	We shuffled the deck at times.
	Okay.
	Well, first of all, I guess I'd like to say, Steph, that I really like your show.
	I think you've said some really amazing things, and you've really given me a lot to think about.
	And I guess I wanted to ask a question about, there was a show you did a little while ago, and you were talking about Something about technology and how people are afraid of technology causing unemployment or raising unemployment?
	Does this sound familiar?
	Sure does.
	Well, I think your point of view was that that wouldn't happen because technology always leads to more jobs and more kinds of opportunities.
	Is that true?
	Sure.
	I mean, look, if you and I didn't have the internet and wanted to have this conversation and there was no telephone, then we would have to send mail back and forth, right?
	Which would create work for people.
	So right now, just in having this conversation, we've rendered dozens of people unemployed, not to mention a few horses of the Pony Express.
	And so, yes, I think that you and I are having this conversation has rendered a whole bunch of people unemployed.
	You know, when automatic phone exchanges were invented, all of the telephone operators They lost their jobs and now that we have Outlook and other time management and information management and contact management systems and so on, almost nobody needs a secretary anymore and so those people have been released to do something else and blah blah blah.
	So yes, that's the general idea.
	Okay, I would like to propose another theory.
	So I'd like to say that the reason that has historically been true It's because there's always been some other sort of productive labor that people could do better than machines, right?
	Do you agree that that would be sort of a logical sort of premise if you're going to assume that there will always be new jobs that are available to people or new ways for them to, you know, trade labor for money or other resources, then you would need people to be able to do Things better or more economically than machines in order to be hireable.
	I think that's a reasonable premise, yeah.
	Okay.
	Well, I think that...
	Sorry, just to break that down into something a bit clearer for people who are not versed in the theories.
	If the only job that I'm good for is pushing a broom, if that's the only job that I can do is push a broom for whatever reason, then if somebody invents a robot broom pusher, And I'm out of a job, I'm not going to become a mime or something like this.
	The only thing I can do is push a room.
	Is that what you mean?
	It's not quite that.
	What I would mean in that particular instance is that, yes, you could try to be a mime, but machines would also be able to be mimes better than you.
	In other words, I think That there's a reasonable possibility that we'll reach a point where machines can do pretty much anything that a human could possibly do more effectively and cheaper.
	So you think that the StephBot 2000 is going to do a philosophy show?
	I think that is possible.
	I know, for example, now there are machines and computer programs that are doing mathematical proofs.
	and I know that there are machines that basically are composing music and you know they're not as good as humans are at that but you know in terms of sort of you could say perhaps the evolution of machines and technology you know this is all relatively new stuff and it's been accelerating pretty quickly so I think there I think that even before you reach a time like so for example There's probably not a lot of
	huge demand in the world for philosophy, even though I really enjoy what you do.
	There's probably, you know, sort of a finite, you know, what is it called?
	A demand for that, right?
	And so, you know, if there were a number of machines...
	No, sorry, go ahead, go ahead.
	I don't want to interrupt you for a lot of thought.
	Go ahead.
	I mean, if they're, you know, so you'd be competing with machines that might be as good as you, and maybe, I don't know, maybe the world can only, you know, another sort of part of this, I would say, is that, you know, really in terms of like the internet and stuff, like kind of only the best of the best are going to be what people are interested in paying attention to, right?
	Okay, can you get to the point?
	Sure.
	So I think that basically, even before you reach the point where, you know, machines can do every single thing better than human beings, which I do think will happen, there will be fewer and fewer opportunities.
	Okay.
	No, that kind of happens.
	Sorry to be late.
	So let me sort of give you an example.
	So in Japan, they have, I was showing this to my daughter on YouTube the other day.
	So in Japan, they have these robots that are just astounding.
	I'm sure they're not just in Japan, but the robots can assemble cars.
	Oh my god, it's amazing, right?
	Now, of course, one of the reasons why those robots are there is because of government-controlled and protected unions, right?
	Like, as you know, the big three car makers in the US are primarily in the business of delivering healthcare Yes, overpriced, that creates a huge incentive, a non-market incentive to invest in labor saving devices.
	Right?
	Like if, if, if, right.
	So if every waiter has If you had to pay every waiter $1,000 an hour, automated waiters would show up in about two weeks, right?
	Do you understand?
	It would not be a market-driven thing.
	If the government said all waiters have to be paid $1,000 an hour, they would just get replaced by robots or by counters where you'd go up and get your own food or whatever, because nobody was going to pay $10,000 for a meal, right?
	So that's sort of one thing to understand, that a lot of the automation is being driven by state power and is being driven artificially.
	Now, when you're a capitalist...
	Sorry to be asked that annoying question, but have you run a capital-intensive business ever?
	No, I mean, I have not.
	Okay, and I'm not trying to catch you out.
	I just wanted to understand where I needed to speak in terms of language.
	So with a capital-intensive business, the question is, are you going to spend $10 million to upgrade your machinery?
	Right?
	That's your question.
	And now the only reason that you would...
	Spend $10 million to upgrade your machinery is if you expected more than $10 million return in investments in some reasonable period of time, right?
	Yes, so what I think is that...
	So, sorry, let me just finish this.
	Okay, go ahead.
	So imagine you're in a town and you employ 100 people in your car factory.
	And let's say you're in one of those Stephen King domes or something.
	You're a self-sufficient economy.
	I know it all doesn't make sense, but let's just go with me for a sec.
	Sure.
	Now, if you have a hundred employees in your car factory and that's the only money that comes in and they can't leave or can't come back, you would not invest in robots to throw those hundred people out of work because then they would have no money with which to buy whatever you're producing.
	And so it would make no sense.
	To automate that.
	Does that make sense?
	Because they have no jobs.
	They have no income.
	They can't buy what it is that you're producing.
	So it would not be a productive investment.
	The way that we invest in machines to automate things is to increase our profit.
	Now, to increase our profit, people have to have money In order to buy whatever it is we're making more efficient.
	If you wiped out all purchasing demand in the world, you would never do that because then nobody would be able to buy whatever it is that you're producing.
	So, there's no way that, in a free market, there's no way that a significant portion of people would be unemployed as a result of automation because the dollar you would be investing in that automation would be to drive down purchasing demand for the very products that you're producing and it would not be efficient.
	Does that make sense?
	Yes, I agree with everything that you've just said there and I think that I might have to puzzle over some of those components a little bit.
	But so, alright, so for example, now we're not in a free market, right?
	And so, you know, you could, I think that the price of automation is coming down and down and down.
	And, you know, for example...
	They have artificially stimulated demand through things like welfare and unemployment insurance and so on, which gives them money to buy things even though they're out of work, which raises the desire to automate your machinery.
	Because if you threw everyone out of work and they didn't have any money to buy your stuff, you'd never invest in something like that because you'd go out of business too.
	But now you have artificial demand being created by the government giving unemployment insurance and so on.
	And that's not the same as savings, right?
	If people have savings, that's great.
	Because that actually is what's used to invest in, you know, if people believe their savings while they're unemployed, that's fine because they've saved money, which is driven down the cost of borrowing, which means it's easier to invest in and cheaper to invest in capital goods and so on.
	So there's a lot of things that have kind of messed up the kind and amount of automation that is occurring at the moment that would not be the case in the free market.
	But there's just no way you could drive everyone out of work.
	With the caveat that if you had a magic switch like Matt, our first caller, was talking about, that everything could be produced for free and it was infinite, then you wouldn't care.
	Then you would only work for pleasure.
	You'd only work for fun.
	I'd love to get to a society like that.
	I think it would be great.
	I think the only way we're going to get there is through a free market.
	In fact, I know that the only way we're going to get there is through a free market.
	But there couldn't possibly be an investment that would reduce demand more than the profit you would make from that investment.
	That would be basically investing in machinery to fire your customers or to reduce their purchasing power below what they would be able to afford.
	So, for instance, if you were to say to a worker in a factory that made cars, if you were to say to him, you make $30 an hour right now, but if we automate this process, you will be able to buy a car for a dollar, but you'll lose your job.
	But everyone would be able to buy a car for a dollar.
	I mean, just making something up, right?
	Then, I mean, he would actually save quite a bit of money, as would everyone else.
	Because instead of spending $20,000 or $15,000 or $30,000 or $10,000 for a car, you buy one for a dollar and there'd be all this other stuff you could then buy, which would stimulate demand in other industries.
	Or you'd put it in the bank.
	Which would stimulate demand in capital investment and product improvements or whatever, like big-term, long-term investments.
	So if you reduce the price of something through automation, it saves everyone a lot of money and they then will either save that money or spend that money, both of which creates opportunities in other fields.
	I agree with everything you said.
	So perhaps I should make this a little more concrete and see what's your opinion of what the outcome is.
	So I think that there's a very high probability in the next 10 to 15 years, McDonald's and all the other fast food restaurants will be able to automate the restaurants to the point where they only need one manager in each store, which will basically get rid of hundreds of thousands of jobs, right?
	Yeah.
	Good.
	Sure, okay, I'm good with that.
	I think also what's going to happen in probably that same time frame is we're going to have self-driving cars, which will basically get rid of taxis, public transportation, and all kinds of other stuff.
	Right?
	That is hundreds of thousands of jobs.
	Well, it wouldn't get rid of public transportation.
	I think it would.
	It wouldn't get rid of either of those things.
	It would get rid of taxi drivers and bus drivers, but not taxis and public transportation.
	Right.
	Oh, right.
	It wouldn't get rid of taxis.
	Okay, so look, I accept all of that.
	And so what?
	I mean, so the fact that we don't pick crops by hand has released a whole bunch of people to not pick crops by hand, but instead do other stuff, right?
	I mean, we could get rid of unemployment tomorrow if we banned farm machinery.
	We would just, half of us would starve to death.
	That's the problem, right?
	I'm totally with you on that.
	So there are all these people who are now going to be looking for jobs, and I guess I'm not completely convinced that the people who are working at these jobs are going to be able to be robotics programmers and, you know, all that, right?
	Not everyone might be able to do that.
	But so what?
	Well, what are they going to do?
	Because all of the low-skilled jobs are gone, right?
	I mean, we don't even know what the stock price of Apple is going to be in 10 minutes from now.
	I mean, if we did, I'd be making a whole bunch of different phone calls right now, right?
	Fair enough.
	We don't know.
	The point is nobody knows.
	Nobody knows.
	But I'll tell you this, that McDonald's is only going to be investing We're good to go.
	Then that's 50 cents you have to spend somewhere else, which is going to create demand somewhere else, right?
	So right now, a lot of really stupid jobs have been automated.
	And people are generally still employed.
	You know, I mean, I don't think there's many people who you could say that the summit of their intellectual ability is to push buttons at a McDonald's cashier or at a Walmart.
	I mean, God, don't you want to release people if you ever had one of those jobs?
	It might just make you want to swallow a shotgun half the day.
	It's so ridiculously boring and such a terrible misuse of the incredible potential of what a human being can do.
	So yeah, God, let's just get people out of this brain-dead stuff.
	They don't then have to become neurosurgeons.
	There's tons of other things.
	And who knows what industries are going to be created when automation replaces this stupid stuff.
	I mean, maybe there's going to be teleportation devices that people are going to need to manage or to fix or to install or who knows what.
	I mean, who knows?
	There's no way to know.
	But the idea that automation is not our friend, it's always – I mean, I don't really know what the point of it is.
	It has been so beneficial to us so far.
	It's the whole reason that you and I are having this conversation is that we don't need gatekeepers.
	We don't need big studios.
	We don't need satellite feeds.
	We can just do this without anybody managing the flow of information between us.
	And we're really happy about that.
	So I don't understand why people who have conversations over the internet, which hire no one, have a problem with automation, which is the only reason why they can have those conversations to begin with.
	I don't have any problem whatsoever with automation.
	I think it's a fantastic thing.
	I do think in the long run, there will be negative repercussions of that.
	Well, like I said, in the long run, so I agree.
	I love automation.
	I think it's a fantastic thing.
	I think it makes the world better.
	But like almost everything, it has a cost.
	And I think the long range cost of that is going to be, it's going to make it such that we actually can't have a capitalist society because there will be a lot of people who can't produce enough value eventually You're not listening to what I'm saying though.
	Automation will have stopped long before that part.
	Because if you're firing your customers by automating your machinery or automating your production, you won't do that.
	Because if you drive down demand to the point where no one's going to be able to afford your goods, you're not going to invest that.
	You understand?
	It's a self-limiting system.
	I agree with that, but that would only be in a free society, right?
	In a society where the government is going to subsidize people in order to buy things, then there will be people to buy these very cheap goods.
	No, now you're changing your story.
	That's not what you said.
	You said, in the future, with automation, we won't be able to have a capitalist society.
	Well, I mean, will it be capitalist?
	Now you're talking about the government, which, as you know, is not part of a capitalist society.
	I'm totally with you on that.
	You're right.
	You're right.
	I'm sorry.
	I mixed those things up.
	That's an accurate assessment.
	So, but I guess what I'm saying is the point that you're making that automation won't reduce the price of goods below, you know, what people, how are you putting that?
	I understand the concept.
	Basically, you will not invest in automation to the point where you destroy the capacity of customers to buy stuff.
	But in the current system, you won't do that because the government will always pay people, give people money to buy stuff.
	Then your problem is not with automation.
	You've got to be precise here.
	Your problem is not with automation.
	Then your problem is the government.
	And I think we're completely in the same camp as far as that goes.
	You've just got to be precise about what it is that you're fighting.
	Your problem is not automation and neither is mine.
	My problem is not unions.
	My problem is not a resource-based economy.
	My problem is the initiation of force in whatever form and flavor It shows up, and I think we're the same way then.
	Yes, the initiation of force is causing a lot of problems where people are being thrown out of work prematurely, where there is the capacity to rely on artificially stimulated demand, which makes the investment in these capital goods more efficient and so on.
	Sorry, we got like four other callers, so I think that we're on the same page.
	Just really focus on what your issue is.
	Automation and throwing people out of work, that's not the problem.
	The problem is The government managing the economy, the government managing the money, the government regulating, hyper-regulating, controlling everything, protecting unions, protecting corporate interests, having the military-industrial complex.
	This is the beast that we're fighting.
	You know, the symptom, which is, you know, maybe too much automation, throwing too many people out of work, that's a symptom, right?
	You want to start to deal with the cause, not the symptoms.
	So, Mike, if we can move on to the next caller, and thank you for bringing that topic up.
	It's something that comes up a lot, so I'm glad that you brought it up.
	I appreciate you explaining that.
	All right, Joel, go ahead.
	You're up next.
	Hey, Steph.
	How's it going?
	It's going well.
	How are you doing, Joel?
	Hey, pretty good.
	I just wanted to talk about something that I was experiencing as I was listening to two podcasts.
	They were recent Sunday Calling shows.
	They were entitled, Your Girlfriend May Be Insane and Moving Towards Something Real.
	As I was listening to these conversations, I was experiencing some degree of unease.
	Did it happen this show?
	Yes, it did actually.
	Oh good, but when did it happen this show?
	I think as you were talking to the first caller.
	When I was talking to him about his family?
	Yeah, yeah, I think so.
	Well, I'm with you there.
	I felt that unease as well.
	Yeah, yeah, so...
	Yeah, I don't know.
	I was just feeling...
	A bit of anxiety and anger and...
	As I was listening to these Sunday shows, and I was just wanting to figure out where that might have been coming from.
	I was sort of thinking like it might have been your tone or something.
	Or that's just a thought that I was having, but I realized that's kind of...
	No, I appreciate you bringing this up.
	The problem with something like tone is that it's a really subjective term.
	I think I could maybe help you out.
	I don't want to certainly put words in your mouth, but you can tell me if I'm right or wrong.
	But I think that you may be feeling unease when I don't believe what people are saying.
	Right, so with the caller that my girlfriend might be insane caller.
	Which is my words, not his.
	He said that, you know, he loved this woman and so on, and I was asking him, what do you love about her?
	And we were talking about her history, and he was very resistant to the idea that he may be dating a woman who is so damaged that she's not really a good candidate for a long-term loving family-style marriage, romance, kids, or whatever.
	He was very resistant to that, and the previous caller, Matt, sorry to talk about you like you're not here, Matt, but the previous caller was telling me That he had a good relationship, a great relationship in fact with his parents, right?
	And then we find out that he was hit quite regularly as a toddler and that he had to hide his Atheism, for want of a better word, while being put through Sunday school and Catholic school all the way through high school.
	So for like more than a decade, he had to hide his true thoughts about reality and his true thoughts about religion from his parents who were very religious.
	This does not strike me even remotely as a great relationship.
	I'm not saying it's terrible.
	I'm not saying it's abusive.
	I'm not saying it's horrible.
	Although I certainly would say that telling a five-year-old child about hell and burning and damnation and all that kind of stuff is downright abusive because If I were to do that to an adult, if I were to say to an adult, you have to do what I say or I'm going to, you know, burn your kids in an oven forever, I mean, I'd be considered, that's a verbal threat, right?
	That is a, you would go to jail for that.
	That's not even verbal abuse.
	That's an outright verbal threat.
	So I did not believe what he said about his parents.
	Not that there can't be great relationships between children and parents.
	I mean, I hope that I have one with my own children.
	But I didn't believe him.
	And so that doesn't mean that I'm right.
	I could be completely wrong.
	But I didn't believe what the person was saying.
	And so what I do is I continue to ask questions, which is sort of the Socratic method, right?
	Because I'm an empiricist.
	I look for evidence as to whether things are true or not.
	And if this guy said, you know, well, I have a great relationship with my dad.
	You know, my dad never spanked.
	He never yelled.
	He was home a lot.
	He's great fun.
	He's a clear thinker.
	He taught me critical thinking, unlike religious doctrine, which I know is dangerous.
	And, you know, he's a great friend.
	Then that would be fantastic.
	That would be a blow against the theory that unmet childhood needs result in an interest in a resource-based economy.
	But since it is so essential, it is so essential, Joel, for parents to teach their children critical thinking.
	It's more important than street-proofing them.
	It's more important than teaching them road safety.
	It's so important to teach children critical thinking that when I talk to someone as an adult Who lacks fundamental critical thinking skills and doesn't even know it?
	I know that there were significant problems with how they were raised.
	In the same way, if you met a child who's 15 and 250 pounds, you know there's significant problems with their diet at home.
	You don't need to be a nutritionist to know that.
	You look at that and you say, well, that kid is lethally obese, so there's got to be some problems at home.
	And so, when people tell me stuff, and it doesn't make sense to me, then I will ask questions to confirm or deny their position.
	And now, either people will say, well, you know what, guess, I guess I did say, like I was hoping with Matt, again, sorry to talk about you like you're not here, I was hoping with Matt that he would say, gosh, you know, I did say that I had a great relationship with my parents, but come to think of it, I was hit a lot when I was a toddler.
	And I'm not sure exactly that it would stop when the kid is four or five.
	Spanking usually continues.
	It doesn't mean always, but usually.
	And I asked him, I said, does having to keep a big secret about reality from your parents for over a decade have caused any problems in the relationship?
	And what did he say?
	I don't really remember.
	He said no.
	Yeah, yeah, something like that.
	He didn't seem to say, and he also tried to say, well, Steph, I know that you're not a big fan of spanking, right, which is a very defensive position.
	And again, I understand that.
	I mean, he wants to defend his parents.
	He wants to feel that everything they did was right, because isn't that great?
	But the problem is, is that if you have had negative experiences with your parents, or anyone for that matter, and you don't acknowledge and process them, they show up somewhere else.
	The craziness, the dysfunction shows up somewhere else.
	And my argument of course is that the people who are into resource-based economies are attempting to recreate a good childhood they didn't have.
	And they're hoping that some future robot city is going to provide to them what mommy and daddy didn't when they were babies and toddlers.
	I think that my And it's not that they had a bad experience as children that produces that.
	It's that they don't acknowledge or even know that they had a bad experience as children.
	Now, I would say that the argument is not proven, but it's certainly not denied by my conversation with Matt.
	And it is important.
	There's nothing I won't answer about myself, and I've talked a lot about my own personal thoughts and feelings, and if people have questions about me, I will try to answer them as honestly as possible.
	Everybody's gotta know that that's the standard of this show.
	And people, as I said to him, I said, you're free to answer or to not answer, but I needed to know why he had this magical belief where he couldn't answer things but had this yearning for some sort of perfect world that he had no knowledge of or understanding of or comprehension of or anything like that.
	That's gotta come from childhood.
	And so I needed to ask him that question because I wanted to ask him that question to find out if it was valid or not.
	Now, he's obviously not comfortable with that question.
	And the guy who had the very damaged girlfriend was not comfortable with that question either.
	But it's not, you know, it's not my job to make people comfortable.
	You've got politicians for that.
	You have lots of people who do that.
	Game show hosts and talk show hosts and all that who will do that.
	My job is to try and get to the truth and to give people a conversational experience that is not common.
	I mean, why would you listen if we were just talking about the weather?
	We're trying to have a conversation about something that's important.
	And a lot of the important stuff is associated with discomfort in people, and they can choose to participate in the conversation or not.
	But the important thing for me is to get to the truth as best as I can.
	And I hope that makes some sense.
	And I do have to be not aggressive.
	I don't call people names, and I was sympathetic, I think, towards the guy.
	But I also can't take things that aren't true and pretend that they are.
	Oh, absolutely.
	That makes complete and total sense.
	I definitely think that getting to the truth is far more important than your tone.
	Well, what tone...
	I mean, if the tone is an issue, is it that I don't sound more affectionate?
	Well, I don't really think...
	It had anything to do with your tone.
	That's just sort of my first reaction thought that I was having.
	What I was sort of curious about was why did I jump to that?
	Why did I feel, as I was listening to that, And then I thought, man, I really don't like Steph's tone.
	Well, but you know what I'm going to ask next, right?
	But in a nice way.
	Oh yeah, childhood stuff.
	Yeah, how were verbal conflicts solved or not solved when you were a child?
	Oh, horribly.
	There was a lot of fighting and yelling.
	I'm sorry about that.
	That's very damaging for children, for you.
	Do you mind if I ask you another question?
	I don't want to bypass your childhood stuff, but what popped into my head was when I'm having, I guess you could call it a confrontation.
	It's not yelling or abusive or anything, but I try to be pretty firm in getting to the truth.
	But when I'm having one of these conversations that produce anxiety in you, is it that you feel something bad is about to happen, Joel, or do you feel that something bad is already happening?
	Like something's bad in the moment that's happening, I think.
	Perhaps.
	I'm not really sure, though.
	I do feel really emotional at the moment, like really sad and a bit tearful when you asked me that.
	When did that start to happen in you?
	When you asked how conflicts were resolved,
	because the way they were resolved has always really It really bothered me and I've never really been able to talk about it.
	Well, you've come to the right place for that because I'm really eager to hear what it was like for you and what the environment was that was so harmful.
	And I can ask questions or you can talk, whichever is easiest for you.
	I'll talk a little bit.
	Yeah.
	There was either yelling or withdrawal.
	My mom would quite often interrupt her.
	I actually wrote an example.
	My dad had bought me a GPS once.
	This is a bit when I was older.
	Shortly after he bought me this GPS, my mom had scheduled a dentist appointment for me.
	I thought that was kind of cool because I had a chance to use the GPS.
	I went to my mom and I was like, hey mom, can I get the address to that dentist?
	And she didn't really...
	And say she had the address or not, she just started rambling, right?
	And said something like, oh, it's really easy to get there.
	You know how to get to your aunt's house?
	Well, all you have to do is drive straight down this road and make a left here and just go through all these unnecessary details and just talk in this really condescending, aged and appropriate tone.
	You know, I'm 20 years old, right?
	Sorry, did she know you had a GPS that your father gave you?
	Yes, she did.
	She...
	My dad was working in...
	Yeah, my dad wasn't even present.
	He mailed it, so she's the one who handed it to me.
	So yeah, she did know.
	When was your father?
	I think Afghanistan.
	He's a contractor.
	Oh, military contractor.
	Right, right.
	Yeah.
	And so, yeah, so when she lectures me in this way, it's just so humiliating and so... so when she lectures me in this way, it's just It really sucks.
	It puts me in a sort of no-win situation because I either listen to her, which is really frustrating because she's not listening and she's talking down to me and it's just really annoying, or I interrupt her Which will make her upset and pouty and she'll just walk away.
	Or if I interrupt her enough or show any anger, yeah, I really couldn't show anger, but if I showed anger, then she'd probably rage or something.
	So there would be an escalation.
	So if you would say, Mom, I feel frustrated and humiliated at the moment.
	I'm not sure why, but I need the address for the GPS. Would it be then, oh, you never listen to anything, or I can't tell you anything, or what, I'm just trying to talk to you, and you're so rude.
	I don't know where it would go, but does it kind of escalate from there?
	Yeah, yeah.
	She would say something like...
	You don't need a GPS, but I guess I'll look for the address and she'll pretend to look around for the address and take a really long time for it or something.
	Joel, I appreciate that.
	I mean, I think I get a sense of that.
	But how were you disciplined when...
	Well, let's start with your parents first.
	Okay, so...
	Would your parents, when verbally they would fight, would it be like yelling?
	Yes, yes.
	And how yelly would it get?
	I mean, would it be like hide in the basement, waiting for them to throw plates?
	Or was it just a kind of snipped, waspy kind of tense?
	Or how big would the, like, was it full-on screaming?
	Were there, like, insults with no shame or verbal barriers?
	Oh, it was full-on screaming and cursing.
	I remember one time I was really scared in my room and I think my dad was getting physical or something.
	I don't think he hit her, but my mom yelled and said, Joel, come here quick!
	Come look at your dad!
	And so I go in there and she's like, look at your dad, he's crazy!
	And then I just remember...
	Running back to my room and crying because it was just scary.
	That's just the kind of person she was.
	And what was your dad doing that your mom thought was crazy?
	I'm not sure.
	I think he was holding her wrist or getting up in her face or something.
	Or screaming out at her.
	I think she wanted me to witness him being violent, like physically violent, but he didn't...
	I don't recall him being...
	I didn't see that, but...
	And how often would this happen?
	Very often.
	It would...
	There was a time where just about every day it would happen.
	I mean, it pours like a bucket full of static into your brain, living around that kind of verbal abuse and verbal tension, right?
	Oh yeah, absolutely.
	Were there signs that it was coming or did it kind of erupt out of nowhere?
	Oh, that's a really good question.
	There were signs that it was coming.
	there were some times where my mom would say something that I just knew was irritating my dad and but a lot of the times I had a room outside outside of my house
	Eventually, I just sort of moved out in this building in my backyard.
	But a lot of the times, I still needed to get inside the house.
	But I think most of the time, they were already fighting when I was around.
	So this could happen daily at certain times, then I guess maybe weekly at other times.
	And what about when somebody, when your parents had an issue with you and wanted to communicate something to you that they had a problem with, what would happen then?
	Man, I think my dad yelled at me once.
	You know, for some reason I'm having trouble remembering because I didn't really talk to them very much.
	I guess not.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I don't yell at the office so much either.
	Yeah, if there's any way to describe my childhood, it's just really...
	Really lonely.
	I was just around and trying to walk around them.
	They were a little too busy fighting.
	Was there ever a time where...
	They sat you down and said, like, we're sorry.
	This is not good.
	This is not healthy.
	This is not right.
	we're going to try and you know even if it didn't take was there ever any time where they even remotely acknowledged that what they were doing was negative towards to you or negative for you in any way um i think my dad uh came in the room
	uh after this this uh exam in the example that i mentioned after um they yelled my mom got in the car and and uh drove away but but my dad came in the room and hugged me and said, you know, I'm sorry about that.
	And did anything change after that?
	No.
	Right.
	No, and...
	Well, he may have been doing that because he thought she was going to go get the police or a lawyer and that he needed you on his side.
	Who knows, right?
	Oh, yeah.
	That's a good point.
	Probably.
	Joel, I'm so incredibly sorry.
	You know, it is always...
	It's shocking to me to just hear how parents can go so far off the rails and be so destructive towards each other, and particularly towards their children.
	I mean, your goddamn parents, at least they chose each other, and man, however sick a relationship it might have been, your mom could get into a car and drive away, and she never had to come back, and they got to choose each other, they got to date each other, they got to get engaged, they got to get married, they could leave any time.
	But you're just fucking stuck there, right?
	You didn't choose it.
	I assume you didn't want to be there a whole lot.
	You didn't choose to be there, and there was no place you could go as a kid.
	I mean, I guess you got a place outside the house, but, you know, that's not exactly a far enough orbit to not hear the yelling, right?
	Oh, absolutely.
	It was...
	Yeah, I mean, I could hear them yell from outside.
	I mean...
	I'm so incredibly sorry.
	That is so much the opposite of what should have been happening.
	I mean, you should have been in a gentle, positive, funny, warm, loving, curious environment where people wanted to know what you thought and what you felt, where people could have fun, where there was no tension.
	It's nothing that you should have ever been exposed to.
	It's a kind of brain toxicity that shoots in like shrapnel through the eardrums and stays in your brain and festers.
	And I'm so incredibly sorry that you had any exposure to that at all, let alone the near-concert exposure that you did have.
	I'm so sorry.
	Okay.
	Thank you, Seth.
	It really means a lot to hear that.
	I don't think I've ever heard that in my life other than my roommate.
	Yeah, it really was stressful and Difficult to deal with.
	I did eventually confront them about it.
	I sort of visited them one day and asked if they wanted to go to IHOP because I knew they liked to yell and escalate and I figured if we went to a...
	I figured if we went to a public place, they couldn't get away with that.
	So I sort of sat them down and sort of told them, you know, I'm still really disturbed and bothered by, you know, the yelling and the fighting, you know.
	And, you know, it was kind of a...
	I don't know, kind of useless.
	My dad said, I'm sorry, just don't dwell on it.
	Oh, so the people who scream at each other, sorry to interrupt, but the people who scream at each other are telling you not to dwell on things?
	I mean, why did they take their own goddamn advice and stop screaming at each other if they're so good at understanding how not to dwell on things?
	Christ.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	What a mealy-mouthed pile of bullshit.
	You know, it's like saying to them, well, don't get upset.
	It's like, you guys spent your whole childhood getting upset with each other.
	Don't dwell on things.
	You guys spent my whole childhood dwelling on things.
	Are you really going to give me the advice called don't dwell on things?
	Sorry.
	I shouldn't feel your outrage for you, but I should.
	Oh, no.
	Oh, no.
	It is outrageous.
	It really is.
	And I think he also said...
	But we did have some good times, didn't we?
	And my mom just...
	Oh, no!
	Yeah, they really weren't helping themselves.
	And my mom, she's just a master at manipulation.
	She'll just sort of tell...
	Say what I want to hear, right?
	She'll say, yeah, it's just, you know, we all make mistakes.
	And sometimes, you know, we don't...
	Follow our own advice, you know, and I'm sorry, you know.
	Oh, so your mom is very good at understanding that people make mistakes and should be forgiven, and that's how she lived with your dad?
	You know, your dad would make mistakes and your mom would just forgive them because, you know, people make mistakes and you forgive them because that's what she did with your dad, right?
	He made a mistake and she would just forgive him.
	Oh, yeah.
	Wow.
	That's a good point.
	Yeah.
	It means that they were responsible, right?
	Like, if they openly said, yeah, screaming at each other is great.
	You know, you should scream at us.
	I'm going to scream at the fucking waitress to bring my goddamn pancake.
	You're going to turn over the table if I don't think it's warm enough?
	Yeah, you scream and you yell, and you do it in front of cops, and you do it in front of the teachers, and you scream and yell at people all the time, and that's how you get things in life, so fuck that, fuck you, and they stormed out, right?
	At least there'd be some consistency, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	But it's like now they know what all the virtues are.
	People make mistakes.
	Forgive.
	It means they're responsible.
	100%.
	Sorry, you got yelled at a lot.
	They're responsible 100% because they know the virtues.
	Yeah, no, absolutely.
	I listen to a podcast where you're talking about some of the worst form of abusive parents are the kinds who act really loving and then really The inconsistent kind.
	Sorry to interrupt.
	Just to be more precise, it's not exactly inconsistent.
	What it is is that when they have power, they abuse it.
	And when they don't have power, they sing a different tune.
	So if a guy comes up to you in an alley and sticks a knife in your ribs and says, give me your wallet, And then you grab the knife away from him, because you're like a ninja, Pink Panther or something, you grab the knife away from him, suddenly he's like, hey, whoa, whoa, we can work this out, man, hey, no need to get aggressive.
	But nothing has changed.
	He's just adapting to the new situation where you have the knife and not him.
	Nothing would have changed if he'd kept the knife, right?
	And so when you become an adult, and you can confront your parents, suddenly they discover all these wonderful virtues.
	Why?
	Because they don't have power over you anymore.
	Right?
	Oh, yeah.
	That kind of makes me sick.
	That really is sickening.
	It's a strategy.
	Right, right.
	When your parents criticize each other, they have power over each other because they're married and I guess they're locked into this dysfunctional shit fest, right?
	So they have power over each other because they're basically getting and giving what each other needs in this sort of masochistic, sadistic kind of way.
	Yeah, yes.
	But you as an adult, you have choices, right?
	You're not locked in.
	I mean, you just happen to be born into this rat's nest, right?
	You have choices.
	And so they'll scream at each other because they have power over each other.
	They don't care about your opinion because they have power over you.
	But then when you bring it up as an adult in a public place, they're all sweetness and roses and Zen reasonableness and blah, blah, blah, right?
	Which means they can do it, right?
	It means they can do it.
	You know, I've asked dozens of times people to talk about abusive parents.
	Say, well, did they do it in front of a cop?
	Were they ever caught?
	Did they do it in front of a preacher or a teacher?
	Did they do this abuse in any place where they could have suffered negative repercussions?
	What do people always say?
	Could you say that again?
	I'm sorry.
	So I ask, did your parents do this terrible behavior in any place where they could have suffered negative repercussions?
	Right, so people say, well, my dad hit me with a belt.
	He said, well, you know, did he ever do that in public?
	Did he ever do that in front of a policeman?
	Did he ever do that in any situation where he could have suffered negative repercussions?
	Oh yeah, they never do that.
	Right, which means that they have the capacity to restrain their behavior.
	Your parents have the capacity to not yell at when challenged because they did that in the IHOP with you.
	Right, right.
	Which means they're not biochemical robots.
	Like you push a button and they scream and they have no choice about it.
	They have a choice because they were able to, when confronted by you, not scream.
	Yeah, yeah.
	You just weren't worth it to them as a child to restrain their behavior.
	And I'm sorry to say that, but it seems to be indubitably true.
	Your feelings, the integrity of your development, the happiness of your existence...
	The light of your soul, the joy of your mind, the curiosity of your reason, protecting that was simply not important enough for them to restrain their behavior.
	They self-indulgently abused each other and harmed you because you weren't worth it for them to stop.
	And I'm sorry because you were worth it objectively.
	No child should have to suffer through that kind of primitive soap opera shit process.
	Screamfest.
	It was worth it for them to stop, to not do it in the IHOP, maybe because they were worried about the waiters or what people would think.
	So strangers, they won't do it in front of.
	But you, you're just a kid, right?
	Right, right.
	What do you matter?
	It's like, I don't understand that thinking.
	Of all the people in the known universe, That we should be good to, it is our children, because they're not there by choice, they're helpless, they're dependent, they've got no place to go.
	But so often, people just have the lowest conceivable standards around their own children.
	Did they ever stop and say, my God, the harm that we're doing to our child must override whatever screwed up cyclone of dysfunction we've got ourselves wrapped up in.
	But it's like, well, you don't count, you don't matter.
	That's terrible.
	And that's part of what is communicated.
	It's not just the direct terrifying stimulation of this verbal abuse, tirade, petty, ridiculous, embarrassing, juvenile and insult to juvenile scream fest.
	It is the feeling of being completely invisible to someone's capacity for self-restraint.
	Does that make any sense at all?
	No, absolutely.
	That does make sense.
	My mom would be screaming at me, and the phone would ring, and she'd think it was some guy she was trying to bang.
	She'd pick up the phone and she'd be like, Hi!
	How are you?
	Oh, I'm good.
	Yes, good day.
	Do you know how fucking humiliating that is?
	Some goddamn stranger.
	She's all sweetness and light, too.
	While she's screaming at me like this bulging-eyed, fly-faced hydra from hell.
	It's so human.
	Did you have a doorbell ever ringing your parents to stop and go and answer it?
	Yeah, the phone would ring.
	Yeah, there were times where I remember getting my mom a fishing rod because she would always talk about, oh, I used to fish a lot, but now I don't get to, and that really sucks.
	So on Mother's Day, I was like, oh, here you go.
	And when I gave her the fishing rod, she was like...
	Oh, you're just trying to get me out of the house, you know?
	I shouldn't laugh because it's not funny, but oh my god.
	Yeah, no, I understand.
	And then she was on the phone with somebody outside and I walked by and she just yelled at me.
	I guess so the person on the phone could hear.
	She said, I love my rod and reel, you know?
	Wow.
	What a rotating hellfire hall of mirrors you lived in, right?
	Yeah, well, that's very well put.
	Now, do you want me to be very, very honest with you?
	I've been honest with you, I'm not holding anything back, but do you want me to be very, very honest with you?
	Yes, yes.
	Joel, I would really like for your voice to come alive.
	Really?
	I'd like to do a Jesus Lazarus on your voice, because your voice is very monotone.
	It's like you've gone to the other extreme, like your parents were these flared Italian insane opera singers of dysfunction, and you've become very monotone.
	Huh.
	That's interesting.
	You'll hear it when you, I mean, except when you get emotional, but you'll hear it when you listen back to the show.
	I hope you will.
	But your voice is...
	It sounds without energy.
	It sounds flaccid.
	It sounds almost depressed.
	Now, I can't see you, so I don't...
	I got no eye contact.
	I'm just going by what I hear.
	And I would like for you to have a little more freedom to...
	Because you've got a lot in you that hasn't been expressed, right?
	A lot of pain, a lot of fear, a lot of anger.
	And so what happens is, you know, we tamp down very strongly when we feel that we can't express anything, we end up expressing nothing, right?
	Right, right.
	And I'm not saying you're not expressing anything.
	I mean, I think you're being admirably brave and courageous and honest.
	And it's not something you can just snap your fingers, but what I'm saying is that People have made this sort of joke.
	I get this cut regularly.
	People will do a freeze frame of my video when I'm doing a show.
	And every single frame looks like I'm simultaneously shitting myself and having an orgasm at the same time.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	I mean, I am.
	But that's just the kind of longevity that I have in those areas.
	But the sense of self-expression that I get from you is quite...
	Restrained.
	Very restrained.
	Does that make any sense?
	Oh, that makes perfect sense.
	Can you do me a silly favor?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Okay, try this.
	Let me see if you have more than one note.
	Come on.
	Oh, you know what?
	Do you sing at all?
	Yes, I was in choir for a few years.
	Yeah, that's a nice range.
	See, you got this range!
	So why are you living down here in the bowels and the shoe footprints of the vocal sphere?
	This is a good question.
	Do you hear it in yourself at all?
	I do now, now that you've pointed it out.
	I find myself wanting to talk a little differently now.
	Well, I'm just, yeah, I'm suggesting that I think we're supposed to kind of sing like dolphins.
	I mean, language is a sung thing.
	It's not, you know, that's why the Microsoft Sam voice is not that great.
	But I think that you probably have obviously not been listened to when you were a child.
	And when you're not listened to, you don't get used to Changing the tone of your voice, I just mean the note, changing the note of your voice to be impactful towards others because you're not listened to.
	The guy warming up his voice doesn't put a lot of soul into his scales.
	He saves that for the actual performance when he's got an audience.
	If you've not been listened to a lot, then you don't know how to modulate your voice to maintain and provoke interest in others.
	And so that's one thing.
	And of course the other thing is that if you've had all these, you know, hellfire, bunker buster available pyrotechnics from your parents, then you may associate vocal flexibility, so to speak, with going nuts.
	And so you kind of keep it at a very sane slash monotonous level?
	No, yeah, that makes sense.
	What I'm saying is you would give great phone sex to accountants.
	Gay accountants, call 1-800-JOEL and balance your ledger that way.
	I just want to point that out because how we present ourselves vocally is quite important, right?
	Do you have trouble with eye contact with people?
	I used to.
	Now I don't.
	Now I'm pretty good at staring, but it does sort of feel like I disassociate or something when I look at people in the eyes.
	I tend to feel like I'm floating when I look at people.
	It's kind of weird.
	That's probably because if you had very aggressive parents, eye contact is something which would provoke them, right?
	Yeah, yeah, probably.
	Right.
	So you've got that, you know, prisoner shuffle stare at your feet kind of thing, right?
	And eye contact can be very provocative.
	To people who have hair-triggered tempers, eye contact is like a gauntlet thrown down.
	It's like somebody unsheathing a sword.
	They tend to get very aggressive quite quickly.
	So...
	So, and I'm just aware of this as a, you know, as a father, you know, I want to make sure that I maintain eye contact with my daughter, right?
	She used to tell stories looking all around the room and I'd kind of have to say, hey, I'm here and, you know, remind her that eye contact is how she should tell me her story.
	And since she started to do that, her tone has become much more engaged because I want her to not tell the story with me in the room, but tell the story to me.
	So that I can really understand.
	Because otherwise I found myself unable to listen very well without any eye contact and without much modulation.
	Now, that hasn't been the case here because, I mean, I'm very focused on what it is that you're saying.
	But these are all the kinds of things that I would imagine did not happen to you as a child.
	And for that, again, I'm incredibly sorry.
	But I would really, you know, it can be if you got an iPhone, just put...
	Put it on a recording mode.
	There's a PCM recorder, I think, for the Android.
	I think it's also their Note to Self or something you can get for the iPod or the Apple devices.
	And just record yourself in a conversation.
	Just play it back and hear how you sound.
	Because I don't think you've had that kind of feedback from some, let's say, somewhat self-involved parents.
	No, not at all.
	And yes, they were very self-involved, very narcissistic.
	And again, I'm incredibly sorry for that.
	Now, I know I've got some other callers.
	Is there anything else that you wanted to talk about?
	How was the conversation for you?
	I know we touched on some pretty sensitive stuff.
	The conversation was fantastic.
	And thank you so much for your help and your honest feedback.
	That's very helpful.
	And I look forward to talking to you in the future sometime.
	Oh, listen, man, call back in any time.
	And, you know, if I were in your shoes, I wouldn't, I mean, if you're still in contact with your parents, I would definitely talk to them more, and not necessarily in a public place, because I think you want to get their more honest reactions and less tamped down.
	So, again, it's my thought.
	If it wouldn't put you in any danger, I think it would be a good thing to keep talking about with them.
	Yeah, yeah, okay.
	Yeah, I'll definitely do that for sure.
	And in return, I will try and stop screaming at my guests.
	How's that?
	I will think about what you said.
	I will really think about what you said.
	Maybe there's a better way to...
	You know, I want to be like water going down a hill, or if there's a better way to get to the truth, then I will definitely try and get there.
	Sometimes I do sort of give up on getting the truth with the person, and what I think of is a way to at least communicate that the person is not getting to the truth to everyone else who's listening, but maybe that's not the right approach.
	So I appreciate you bringing that up, and I will certainly think about it and ask my friends and family.
	Yeah, yeah, and more than likely you're doing it right.
	You're the philosopher expert, but...
	Oh, look, I can always improve.
	I mean, I can always improve.
	So I appreciate you bringing that up.
	And, you know, let me know how it goes.
	I really care about what happens.
	And again, I'm so incredibly sorry that you were in this kind of environment.
	Thank you, Steph.
	I really appreciate that.
	You're very welcome, Joel.
	All right.
	Bye.
	Bye.
	All right, Hunter.
	You're up next.
	Hey, Steph.
	How's it going?
	Can you hear me?
	It's going well.
	Hunter, how are you doing?
	Good.
	Thank you so much for your show.
	I can't tell you how much you've helped me as far as clarity is concerned.
	I came from an interesting background.
	I was kind of a communist at a really young age, studied Marx, and looked at the Venus Project.
	At 13 I did a report on Marx and really liked it.
	I think I was very religious at an early age, and when I read Marx's view on religion, I think it struck so true to me that I pursued his line of thinking as far as I could, if that makes sense.
	So it sent me on a wild ride, and I went all the way now, full circle, went all the way now full circle, which, you know, went through the Venus Project stage and was introduced to Milton Friedman and then eventually followed it to its rational conclusion and now believe that anarcho-capitalism and a free society is absolutely the best way to go.
	Good for you.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	And with the help of my girlfriend who, of course, is listening and is super excited that we're having this discussion as well.
	Do you have a girlfriend who's into...
	Economics, philosophy, libertarianism, all that kind of good stuff?
	I'm the luckiest guy in the world.
	Certainly do.
	Now, I just would like to say to your girlfriend that if he should ever be hit by a bus, there are about 10,000 people High-quality free-domain radio listeners who would be very happy to take you out for a nice latte.
	I'm not suggesting that the listeners should have you hit with a bus.
	I'm just saying, should it happen, which I hope it doesn't, she would not be short of quality people.
	Just because I always get this question, like, where do I find women like this?
	Well, I know of some, of course.
	I'm married to one.
	So, good for you.
	Congratulations.
	Hang on like grim death.
	Be the best boyfriend ever.
	Go ahead.
	I'm trying.
	Yeah, so you and I are the luckiest ones.
	One of the questions I had is...
	So in discussing this ideology and talking about, if I'm coming from an argument from morality, when I explain how immoral I think it is, some of the things that the state uses tax dollars for, I'm getting pushback with people saying if you really think it's that immoral, that you should leave.
	So basically, the more immoral you think something is, the more likely you should leave.
	You should leave the country.
	And go where?
	Well, I think generally speaking, it's either go to a state that doesn't so avidly tax, doesn't so avidly support the war on drugs, isn't such a massive—I'm in America, USA—isn't such a massive, overwhelmingly-sized government.
	If you think that what you're paying for is so immoral, then you should go to a state or a country that doesn't so avidly support those causes.
	And would they support, if a woman wanted to get divorced from an abusive husband, would they support her having to leave the country as well?
	If you're in a marriage where your husband beats you up and you want to get divorced, is it okay to say, well, you have to leave the whole country?
	Well, see, I don't think it's that they're saying that I have to leave.
	I think it's that they're saying the argument isn't as compelling if I don't.
	But wait, wait, wait.
	Okay, so forget the marriage thing.
	Forget the marriage thing.
	My question to them, you play your friends, all right?
	I'll play you.
	So my question would be, how does whether I stay or leave in the country have any bearing on the Reason and evidence behind my arguments.
	I guess it's not really about the reason and relevance that's compelling the argument.
	It's what is compelling them to believe that I actually believe this.
	So let's say that the state...
	No, no, no, no, but let's say, look, let's say you don't believe it.
	Does that have any bearing on the reason and evidence behind the argument?
	Well, I don't think that it's a matter of reason and evidence that's making the argument compelling.
	It's a matter of reason and evidence!
	Sorry.
	It is a matter of reason and evidence.
	What you are being put through, we could colloquially call the hoop fallacy.
	In other words, if you jump through this impossible hoop, maybe I'll believe you.
	It's like, but I don't need to jump through any hoops.
	I can be in the KKK. If I say that the KKK is a racist organization, do you say, well, I can't believe you because you're in the KKK? Does you being in the KKK or not have any bearing on whether it is a racist organization or not?
	It doesn't have any bearing on whether it's a racist organization, but if you're speaking out against the KKK and you are in the KKK, I think it would be reasonable to say he must not really dislike the KKK. Look, you're not speaking out like, I just don't like the government, right?
	You have recent arguments as to the morality of a state-based society, right?
	That it relies upon the initiation of force, right?
	So the question is, to your friends, does it rely on the initiation of force or not?
	You being in the country or out of the country has no bearing on it.
	It's not like if you move to Morocco, two and two make five, right?
	If you move to Morocco, two and two still make four.
	I know, I've been there.
	They have buildings that stand up just like everywhere else.
	I don't think that they, when I discuss this with people, the ones that understand the principles of small government especially, they understand that the state is backed by force and that it is violence that's keeping it in place.
	But let's say, for instance, that the state did pick your husband and, you know, someone came to me and said, my husband is really abusive and in order to leave I'll have to give him half my income.
	Eventually, there would be a line in which if they were beating them that bad, they would leave, right?
	No, no, but see, in the analogy, you can't be single.
	If you leave this guy, you have to go to another guy.
	You can't be single.
	You can't be stateless in the world.
	It's actually illegal.
	I definitely want to talk about that too, but let's say that there's better options out there.
	There's other ideas.
	There's this situation in Chile.
	The Free State Project in New Hampshire or something like that.
	That's not out of reach.
	And to think that I can only...
	I mean, I live in California.
	And so, in all the states, you know, I have to have a license to buy a toothbrush, you know, and have hours of state-authorized training to brush my teeth and stuff like that, right?
	And the truth is, I can work anywhere in the country or anywhere in the world as long as they have the internet.
	Oh, okay.
	So, I think I understand.
	So, what they're saying is that England...
	Like, the British should have run away from the Nazis.
	They shouldn't have stayed to fight them, right?
	Because there were lots of places on the world where there were not many Nazis, right?
	I mean, the British could all have left and gone to America.
	The British could have gone to Brazil.
	They could have gone to Iceland.
	They could have gone to lots of places.
	So they should not have stayed and fought the Nazis.
	They should have run away.
	To where there were less Nazis.
	Well, I understand the analogy, and I actually have used that.
	But the truth is, it's not like the state is chasing you around in that kind of a sense.
	Like, if we were to, say, move to Chile, I don't know that it would be similar to the Nazis chasing us.
	If you try to leave the United States and if you renounce your citizenship, if they even suspect that it is because you don't want to pay your taxes, they will go after you.
	Well, let's say that I had to pay the taxes.
	I mean, let's say that that was part of the exit.
	I mean, the exit tax, let's say that that exists.
	I mean, it's still a scale of avoidability, as you say in UPB. It's still a scale of avoidability.
	So, you know, back to the husband and wife analogy, like, eventually, I think I, at least, if I was being beaten, would eventually give up half of my net worth to be away from me.
	Sorry.
	Into a husband that doesn't beat me as much.
	But you're not being beaten.
	I mean, you're not being beaten by the state, are you?
	I mean, they're not physically hitting you.
	Well, I think the argument is that they're threatening me with violence.
	Yes, and if you go to Chile, the same thing will happen.
	It is true that there is a tax in Chile, but the level of...
	I mean, to understand, I don't know enough about this topic, but from what I stand, the economic freedom in Chile has dramatically swayed the other direction.
	So it's just a matter of choice so that...
	If you want to go, you will.
	That kind of thing.
	This is what I'm running into.
	Okay, so then the argument is that you have friends, loved ones, family in the United States, and you should leave them to go to Chile knowing what awaits them.
	You shouldn't stay and fight.
	You should abandon them and save yourself and leave everyone behind.
	Now understand, maybe you should go to Chile.
	I'm not arguing whether you should or shouldn't.
	I don't know, right?
	But what I'm saying is that from the status perspective, what they're saying is you should get out and you should leave everyone behind to a pretty grim fate.
	I mean, I've never seen any action movie where that is heroic.
	Leave the women and children behind!
	I'm going to save myself!
	Actually, if we could nail them down into the lower decks of the Titanic while we get to the lifeboats, yay!
	Steph, I thought you would have learned this.
	Please don't give examples that are counter to my point, okay?
	Yeah, I'm playing devil's advocate from a state of, you know, how I would argue the position.
	Look, maybe you should go to Chile, right?
	I mean, I don't think that it's right that you should be driven out of where you were born, leave friends, family, contacts, connections, language, culture, all of that behind.
	I mean, if people think that's some kind of solution, then what they're doing is they're Avoiding the argument.
	Right, come on.
	You and I both know that people will do a hell of a lot of ridiculous jelly-based gymnastics in order to avoid some very simple and basic truths in their life, right?
	So the idea that, well, maybe I'll listen to your argument if you're not in the country, it's like, well, if I'm not in the country, why the hell would I be talking to you?
	It's just a way of putting the onus on you to somehow prove Your argument by doing something that is really tough.
	I mean, going to get to it, you can do it, right?
	I mean, you can go talk to Bobby Casey or to Doug Casey or to the Dollar Vigilante, Jeff Berwick.
	You would talk to all of these people.
	They're all great to talk to if you're interested in that kind of stuff.
	And you can.
	You can uproot yourself.
	You can go buy property elsewhere.
	You can get used to a new culture, a new climate, a new language, whatever, right?
	Absolutely.
	And That has zero bearing on the argument as to whether statism is forced or not.
	It definitely has zero bearing as far as whether the argument is sound or not.
	But I think that there's some validity to say that setting an example might be stronger than the argument itself.
	So, I mean, I don't know.
	What percentage of the people would you say needed to accept the non-aggression principle in order for a stateless society to be successful?
	Well, it's not the number of people, it's the dedication of the people, right?
	There's that old quote, never doubt that a small group of committed individuals can change the world.
	Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.
	You know, the vast majority of people are empty-headed ballast floating on society like a cork on an ocean.
	You know, they've done studies where they ask people, they say, Do you support the repeal of the 1975 Family Emergency Act?
	And almost half of the population will give big detailed reasons about why they support or don't support the repeal of the 1975 Family Emergency Act.
	The only problem, of course, is that there is no such thing as the 1975 Family Emergency Act.
	Most people will make up astounding amounts of bullshit with a completely straight face.
	To prove or disprove things that they have absolutely no idea about whatsoever.
	You go to people who are Democrats and you say the Republicans support the repeal of the 1975 Family Emergency Act and all of the Republicans say, well, we should keep it.
	It's terrible.
	Just because they hear that the Republicans support its repeal.
	It's terrible what the Republicans wanted to do.
	They have no weight in the world.
	They have no existence in the future.
	They are literally like ghosts in the physics of the world.
	I mean, they'll pass through, they'll reproduce, they'll talk about the weather with some people and they'll mow their lawn and they'll consume resources.
	But in any foundational or cultural way, they simply do not exist.
	Now, that's about half the population as a whole, based on a wide variety of studies.
	Now, other people have convictions, but will bow to the slightest pressure.
	In other words, somebody who is direct, somebody who is confident, somebody who is assertive or forceful without being abusive, will drag them along Like a net after a fishing boat.
	They'll just get caught up and they'll be dragged along.
	This is why it's really damn important because we never know when some completely evil demagogue is going to arise and drag both the completely ghost-like and the soap bubbles in the wind of general opinion.
	It's just going to come along and with the force of his vitriolic or her vitriolic personality, it's just going to sweep everyone over the cliff of evil.
	I mean, we're not more than a Hitler and a half away from that kind of, right, which is why it's really important for good people to stand the hell up and say what is right as forcefully, as clearly, as engagingly as possible because you never know when that demon is going to arise.
	You know, he could be in his diapers right now.
	He could be, you know, he could be getting everyone's lunch money through verbal abuse in middle school.
	He could be 18.
	He could be 22.
	He could be getting his first job in politics.
	You don't know.
	Where this satanic periscope is going to come up with this big ass nuclear submarine coming in to turn the future into ashes.
	We don't know where that person is or when he's coming or whether he's coming.
	He's coming for sure, sooner or later, because there's such a power vacuum.
	There's so much power at the top of society that it's going to draw someone like that in.
	Like a vacuum draws in an asteroid.
	Or a gravity well.
	Sorry, gravity well draws in an asteroid's already vacuum out there anyway.
	Don't want to get my space metaphors wrong.
	Anyway, but...
	Sorry, go ahead.
	This is kind of exactly my point, right?
	If our goal is to teach the non-aggression principle is correct, and I don't know if you have to teach a majority of the people that's correct, a great amount of them.
	We're surrounded by status that accept No, we're not surrounded by status.
	That's what I'm saying.
	We're surrounded by inertia.
	We're surrounded by anything.
	Nothing.
	Okay.
	The vast majority of people will simply do what a confident person tells them to.
	I'm not making this up.
	You've seen the Stanley Milgram experiments.
	You've probably read about those where the majority of people will kill someone because someone in a lab coat tells them to.
	This has been reproduced all throughout the world.
	The majority of people will apply lethal electricity to a simulated victim because somebody in a lab coat tells them to.
	We are not surrounded by status.
	We're surrounded by people who find it more convenient to be status than to not be status.
	And reasoning isn't going to change their mind very much because they have no capacity to reason.
	And so, the way that you simply make it more uncomfortable to be a statist than not be a statist.
	Sorry, this is what the against me argument has always been about.
	You can say to your friends, yo, you think I should move?
	You think I should leave the country?
	Do you support me being thrown in jail for following my conscience if I stay within the country?
	It makes it uncomfortable for them to be a statist.
	Most people will have no adherence to reason and evidence whatsoever.
	They simply go off social convention.
	This is why I say to people, sorry, you've got to make people uncomfortable if you want to change the world.
	Because most people will only change their minds and their ethics because it's uncomfortable for them to stay where they are.
	Do you think everyone just woke up one day after 100,000 years of virulent racism and said, ah, I've listened to the arguments and I guess I accept that racism is bad?
	No.
	Not at all.
	Why are most people not racist?
	Or at least don't pretend to be racist or aren't openly racist?
	Because it's uncomfortable for them to be racist because they're going to be criticized and put down and attacked.
	And I'm sorry, but this is the way that society has to change.
	In the future, people will listen to reason and evidence.
	But right now, push the fuck back and make them uncomfortable for being statists.
	You gotta leave the goddamn country.
	How about they stop wanting you thrown in jail for not wanting to be aggressed against?
	How about they want you not being thrown into the fucking rape rooms of government prisons because you want to be able to follow your conscience in a peaceful manner?
	You gotta leave the country, my ass.
	If you want to leave the country, fine.
	But don't leave it to prove a point.
	They're the ones who have to be made uncomfortable because the reality is they are supporting wars and aggression.
	I think that They don't say, you know, you need to leave the country if you want to make this a compelling argument.
	I'm saying that there might be some validity to the fact—well, like, if you look at slavery, for instance, okay, slavery was abolished globally in a time frame of about 100 years, and that happened in a time in which communication was extremely slow.
	I mean— 10, 20 times, I don't even know, slower than it is today.
	And the way it happened was one society abolished it, the other fell, and the other fell, and the other fell.
	to think that we have this idea, this mechanism, this stateless society that we want, and that we don't create it and cripple the states globally in a short amount of time span because of how quickly communication exists today.
	I mean, to think that we couldn't create a stateless society within 15 years, every global state would crumble because of how inefficient it was and how much better and how we would have all the biggest and brightest people on our side.
	You know, it's similar to the zeitgeisters, right?
	They claim to have this mechanism that they can have an algorithm that can distribute things and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	We're claiming that we have something better.
	We should just do it.
	I feel like that is where our focus should be, is creating a state.
	No, no, listen, listen.
	I mean, I know I've used the slavery metaphor before, but as I've talked about a number of times, not that you would have heard it necessarily, but The shift to a stateless society is infinitely different than a shift from slaves to taxpayers.
	Why did slavery end so quickly?
	Because the advent of industrialization made it more profitable to have workers than slaves.
	It was an upgrade of the livestock to go from slavery to taxed employees.
	It wasn't because there was this wonderful sense of human equality and everyone's equal and by gosh, we should respect the property rights and self-ownership of everyone.
	If that was the revolution, they would have gotten rid of slavery and the state.
	It was an upgrade to make the livestock more profitable for the farmer.
	It was not the end of being a farmer, it was an upgrade of the farmer's living conditions.
	Oh, look, if I set my slaves free, they'll invent cell phones and antibiotics for me.
	I'll take that.
	But the shift to a stateless society is the elimination of human ownership.
	Slavery to employees was simply an upgrade, and a huge upgrade.
	I mean, the tax farmers are way better off with self-directed livestock than with slave livestock.
	And so the end of slavery was a massive improvement for their condition.
	The end of the state, though, well, that is a very, very different matter.
	I kind of understand your point.
	I guess my...
	Let me think.
	I guess what I'm saying is I feel like Like you said, the new Hitler may have been born already, and if we have to spend the next 300 years convincing and combating all the nuclear weapons,
	the ability to print money, the monopoly of force, the biggest tax burdens in the world, if that is what we're up against, then perhaps there's some validity to Just setting the example, funding one of these Seastead programs or something,
	I don't know how realistic those are, but something or moving a big piece of the movement to a specific location and overwhelming them in some sort of economic fashion, it doesn't seem far-fetched to me.
	Yeah, look, I mean, you can do those things.
	I'm not saying, you know, do X or Y. I mean, look, Doug Casey's got something going on in Argentina.
	Mike, just remember, we'll put the links to these below because they're well worth examining.
	I think it's called in Argentina.
	Jeff Berwick has got his gulch going in Chile, which is well worth looking at.
	And again, we'll put all the links in.
	Mike, actually, if you can get the links, we'll speak them for those who are listening to the podcast.
	You can look into these.
	There is the Free State Project, as you mentioned, in New Hampshire.
	They're trying to get, and I think those things are great.
	You will be around like-minded people.
	You won't have to be the gay guy in the small town in Tennessee in 1920.
	So you will be around like-minded people.
	Whether you end up achieving a free society there or not, you will live more free being surrounded by people who are reasonable, rational.
	And virtuous.
	So I think it's well worth looking into those things.
	If you want to leave the country, great, fantastic.
	But don't leave the country in order to gain credibility.
	Don't leave the country in order to reinforce your arguments.
	That is allowing other people's ignorance and resistance to dictate your movements.
	If you want to go to these places, go.
	But don't go to gain credibility.
	That's letting other people's idiotic, anti-rational, anti-empirical mindset drive you out of the country.
	I think that's something that is not the mark of the courage that we need.
	Yeah, I understand that.
	Good.
	All right.
	Do you mind if I move to the next caller?
	No, that's fine.
	Steph, thank you so much.
	I can't thank you enough.
	Thank you.
	Great, great questions.
	I really appreciate that.
	Thank you.
	All right.
	Oh, sorry.
	Yeah.
	FDRURL.com forward slash Berwick Chile.
	B-E-R-W-I-C-K-C-H-I-L-E. FDRURL.com forward slash Berwick Chile.
	That's for the Galtz Gulch website.
	In Chile, and they actually have a purchase program that is significantly reduced at the moment.
	So if you want to look into that, I think that's great.
	FDRURL.com forward slash Casey.
	C-A-S-E-Y. Casey, Argentina.
	You can get to both of those from there.
	Of course, Free State Project, you can just Google that.
	So go through those links and have a look at what they've got to offer.
	A lot of interesting stuff.
	And you have a team there, of course, that will help you transition if you want to.
	Move assets all through legal means and all that.
	If you want to give up citizenship and someone, you've got lots of very intelligent people.
	Of course, Bobby Casey is someone I've done a bit of work with, C-A-S-E-Y as well.
	And you can look into, he's very good at helping people to diversify assets outside of a single geographical area.
	I don't have any stake in these things, but these are all people I think are very helpful in helping people to explore their options.
	All right, let's move on to the next caller.
	Alright, Phil, go ahead.
	You're up next.
	Oh, Stefan, you are a charitable and kind man with your time.
	I really appreciate this.
	Thank you for your patience.
	I'm sorry it took so long.
	No, no, it's not that.
	My computer crapped out for the three minutes right when I was about to be at...
	I'm sorry about that.
	I'm not proud of my reaction.
	It was arms up to the heavens cursing the gods I no longer believe in.
	Anyway, sorry, I will...
	Damn you, empty skies!
	Stupid...
	I can't even think of anything clever right now.
	I'm still shaking with a tiny bit of anger about that.
	I guess it reveals my true character.
	That's not good.
	Anyway, okay.
	So, my initial idea was the other day, you showed up in one of my dreams.
	You, your wife, daughter, and your mother and brother.
	So, I came to visit your house...
	You were there and you were crying and you said, I finally realized...
	You mean my current family and my family of origin, we were all living together?
	No.
	Well, at the beginning of the dream, you were not yet living together.
	Somehow, I don't know what your actual house looks like.
	I don't know what any of it is.
	It was just at the end of this cul-de-sac, but you were in it.
	So you have become one of my archetypes, so hooray.
	My...
	So I show up at your house, you are crying and you, you tell me that you have realized you need to forgive your mother and brother.
	And so the next thing in the dream is that they show up and you are all interacting.
	I have no idea what they look like.
	Um, my brain was just kind of adding that all together.
	And, uh, but your house was like a hoarder's paradise.
	You were incredibly messy and disorganized.
	Like, there was piles of everything.
	I don't even think you had a front wall on your house.
	Okay, right, right.
	So we were all really surprised that you were forgiving them after, you know, I've been listening to your show for several years.
	I've been wanting to call.
	I never knew what to call about.
	And this dream was kind of a kick in the butt.
	Because, you know, one of my questions I've always wanted to ask is, like, I'm 29 years old.
	I'm married.
	I have two children and one on the way.
	But I am very disorganized and cleanliness and organization has always been a struggle for me.
	So that is the situation in my real life that I feel this dream was kind of being the last boot in the groin to get me to actually call in.
	I appreciate that.
	That's a fascinating dream.
	Now, of course, the reality is that obviously I may have had some influence over you, but we don't know each other, and so the most likely thing is that this is about you.
	So I guess my first question, which could be right, could be wrong, my first question is, what is the status in your life of people who may or may not involve your forgiveness?
	Ah, okay.
	So, okay, as far as forgiveness, I have, my mother lives locally.
	I live in Utah and my father lives all the way back in New Jersey.
	So my mother is like two blocks away and my father's back east.
	I think it, oh gosh, it's just a cascade of, you know, their divorce and me living with my mom while she was married to other folks.
	Sorry, now my brain is starting to...
	Fudge up a little bit.
	How old were you?
	I don't if you want to take take a moment to gather that's fine or I can keep asking questions whatever yeah yeah sorry when the call got dropped I was like it's three minutes out of two hours how is that timing working out okay yeah just let it go sorry let it go all right we're chatting now live in the moment man live in the moment um so how old were you when your um uh when your parents divorced Well, my parents kind of had a divorces interruptus when I was like 12.
	So they got separated.
	They were going to get divorced, but then they got back together.
	But then they finally got divorced when I was 16.
	And what was their relationship like when you were younger than 12?
	They weren't big friends.
	Fighters, I don't remember any knock-down drag-out fights between them.
	They were never abusive to each other, but it was kind of this dull thing, because I think they had a shotgun wedding.
	They haven't quite come out and said it, but I did the calculations on my brother's birthday and their wedding day, and basically, yeah, my brother wasn't a preemie, so they got married because they My mom got pregnant, you know, and she was 20 when she got married.
	My dad was 22.
	They were young, but they stayed together for 18 years.
	But I think they just kind of got to a point where they realized they just didn't love each other and decided to move on.
	It really sucked.
	It was really shitty.
	Why didn't they love each other?
	They had nothing in common.
	Simple questions.
	Yeah, they had nothing in common.
	My mom comes from an upper middle class family.
	They don't match at all.
	My dad's from this blue collar worker perspective or family.
	I'd go to my dad's mom's house and it was a trailer and I'd go to my mom's mom's house and it was this Three-story house with an acre of land and all this beautiful development.
	They just never matched.
	They tried to make it work because of my brother, I guess.
	But I'm not trying to make any defense for their actions.
	I'm kind of past the point of trying to justify the sins of my parents.
	Okay, so you've talked about some kind of incompatibility, but...
	What...
	That doesn't explain why they didn't love each other.
	Oh, okay.
	Alright.
	Something just popped into my head.
	My mother has a mental illness.
	She has a bipolar.
	She's been diagnosed with epilepsy in the past, which I don't...
	Okay.
	You get medicated for that.
	So, bipolar, epilepsy...
	Currently, her doctor is telling her she has ADHD... Um, and because she had those symptoms, she actually kind of put me through the ringer throughout elementary school and middle and high school, uh, taking me to various doctors, uh, you know, diagnosed with a bunch of different things over the years.
	So what do you mean?
	Uh, she took you to like, are we talking, uh, Munchausen by proxy?
	I mean, what are we talking about?
	That's where, you know, yes.
	I called it a projectile hypochondriac, but then I found out...
	For those who don't know, this is a syndrome wherein women seek attention and sympathy by manufacturing illness in their children and taking their children to doctors.
	I guess it was dramatized in a movie called The Sixth Sense in a way that's, I think, a bit more extreme.
	Did she...
	Did she believe that you had mental health issues?
	And is that what she took you to doctors for?
	And did the doctors say, well of course you've got some stress.
	You grew up with a woman who's being diagnosed bipolar.
	So yes, that's obviously right.
	No, that's the exact opposite of what they said.
	They just went right along.
	You know, first it was hypoglycemia when I was in 4th through 6th grade.
	Then I got diagnosed with epilepsy somehow.
	Um...
	And I was medicated for that, and some of those medications are also used for bipolar, and so I started exhibiting symptoms of bipolar, and so they medicated me for that, and one of those medicines caused problems with my thyroid, so I got, oh gosh.
	Oh, now you're making me talk about it, Steph.
	You're making me confront my stuff.
	I just wanted to talk about how I'm messy.
	This is completely horrifying, right?
	You know that, right?
	I mean, you're taking kind of a light tone with it, which I understand.
	But this is unbelievably horrifying.
	I think humor is my coping mechanism.
	Yes.
	Oh, Jesus Christ.
	Yeah.
	This is what's crazy.
	I was in...
	It's such a piddly thing, and I find public schools abhorrent right now.
	But...
	Like I was in gifted and talented programs, you know, I had a high IQ from which I derived a false sense of pride for most of my life.
	Um, but I ended up dropping out of high school because I like the, all of these combinations, like the divorce, my grandfather's death.
	Um, my first girlfriend that broke up with me all happened within like nine months of each other combined with switching medications every couple of months.
	Ooh.
	Maybe that's why I'm messy, Steph.
	Oh God.
	Yeah, I shouldn't take a late tone.
	You're right.
	I can't laugh this off.
	I mean, you experience some significant physical risk and outright harm.
	From illnesses that you don't believe were real but that your mother dragged you to doctors and this of course is not just your mother's doing but the doctors doing as well that they put you on drugs for an illness that you did not complain about that your teachers did not complain about and for which they had no medical evidence, right?
	Right.
	Yeah.
	Oh yeah.
	And, and this was in the, uh, you know, like 96 through 2002 when all of this was going on.
	So I don't know how much progress has been made in that industry, but it was really just kind of like, let's try this.
	Oh no, that didn't work.
	Let's try this.
	Oh no, it's still the same.
	It's still the, cause they're not treating anything that can be identified so they can just put whatever bullshit they want into people.
	Oh.
	Oof.
	So yeah, I wanted the call to...
	This is really what I wanted to talk about, but you had been so charitable with your time, I didn't want to go further with that.
	I don't give late callers short shrift, right?
	I mean, I don't give less time to late callers unless my bladder is completely exploding, which is fine.
	So, no, take your time.
	I got all night.
	Ugh.
	So, yeah.
	And, you know, and I've gone through that whole timeline in my head since I was about 18 or 19 when I first moved out of the house and went away to college.
	And, um...
	And I've had conversations with my mother about it.
	And she has been good in her response.
	There was no denial.
	And she has sincerely apologized.
	Apologized for what?
	What is she not denying?
	She's not denying that her taking me to all those doctors was the wrong decision.
	And that...
	Was it immoral?
	And she also offers...
	Wait, sorry, go ahead.
	I'm sorry.
	Was it immoral?
	Wrong decision is, you know, I shouldn't have bought that camera.
	That's a very innocuous way of putting it, right?
	Yeah.
	Does she get that it was immoral?
	I don't remember exact words about it.
	What she has done.
	I feel like her apology is more in her actions, that she realizes the challenge that that caused me.
	You know, the self-loathing, and you go from defining yourself by being, you know, I get straight A's and I get all these good grades, to now I'm a high school dropout?
	I hate myself.
	Who am I? I'm sorry, maybe I missed that part.
	So you ended up dropping out of high school?
	Yeah, so get on medication at 11 for, I'm pretty sure it was 11, for epilepsy.
	And some of those, from what I was told by the doctor, some of those medicines also treat bipolar.
	So it went through a series of, sorry, I'll make this quick.
	So first it was epilepsy from like 12, 11 to 13.
	And then it went to bipolar.
	And I'm sorry, am I understanding that you didn't have any seizures or petty mouths or anything like that that might indicate that?
	The closest thing to it, I would go into my parents' bedroom when I was a kid and I'd kind of get these strange feelings like, I don't feel like myself.
	That's how I would describe it as a child.
	It was kind of this detachment.
	Like sometimes it would happen in the mornings when I woke up.
	Sometimes it would happen in the middle of the night.
	So I look at that as kind of the thing that might have triggered it.
	I don't blame myself for it.
	But there was that.
	That could have been my mom's.
	Did your father know that your mother had mental health problems, to put it as nicely as possible, when all of this stuff was going on?
	Like when you were being diagnosed with potential epilepsy?
	Uh, yeah.
	Oh, God.
	If, yeah.
	I just...
	For a long time, I didn't let myself be angry at my dad for his involvement in all of this.
	Like, as I got older, he told me that he was completely opposed to all of this.
	But I've yet to confront him and just be like, Dad, why didn't you fucking...
	Sorry, pardon.
	Why didn't you stand up?
	Like, why didn't you say...
	Look, if you imagine for a moment that the only thing that would upset me about this story is your use of the word fucking...
	Don't worry about that.
	That is the least offensive part of what you're saying, by far.
	I just want to be clear about that.
	So, why didn't you fucking stand up for me, Dad?
	Is that what you were saying?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Oh, and can I give you one more ingredient to this delightful slurry of childhood trauma?
	Yeah, just don't call it delightful slurry even as a joke.
	Yeah, I'm sorry.
	So, after...
	Oh, thank you.
	After my parents had their first divorce, almost divorce, and then they got back together, within that year, my mom joined the Mormon Church.
	My mom was in...
	Am I allowed to say this?
	She was in the program.
	She was in Alcoholics Anonymous.
	So she found Mormonism appealing because they didn't drink or smoke.
	So she started engaging in that.
	And then the missionaries started teaching me And I didn't want to get baptized, didn't want to join the church.
	And how old were you at this time?
	Thirteen.
	Thirteen.
	And I was into Marilyn Manson at the time.
	Of course you were.
	And so is it my understanding that your mother found it very important to free herself of mind-altering substances?
	Yes.
	Yes.
	When I was three years old...
	At the same time as she was dragging you around from doctor to doctor to get your brain screwed up on meds.
	Oh.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	I always prided myself because I never drank and I never smoked.
	Straight edge.
	But dude, the variety of drugs that was given to me as a teenager.
	Holy shit.
	Wow.
	This is like a whole new perspective.
	I so appreciate you.
	You have to stop laughing at this.
	I'm sorry.
	I hate to be blunt.
	And I've let a whole bunch of them go.
	You have to stop laughing.
	It's very disturbing for others, right?
	Yeah.
	Oh my god.
	Then I was raped.
	Can you believe it?
	You realize that's not how you want to present yourself.
	Healthy people are going to be like, what?
	And I'll cry at diaper commercials.
	You know, a dad holding a baby.
	I understand, right?
	Because that's what you needed.
	Diaper commercials.
	I mean, those long-distance commercials.
	I don't think they probably have them anymore now.
	We've got Skype, but...
	Yeah, I mean, the sentimentality, but you're talking about, like, extremely brutal child abuse.
	And there was never any spanking, but this is, yeah.
	Why didn't someone just talk to me?
	Why didn't someone just see what was going on in my head and ask me what I wanted?
	Well, for that to occur, society would have to respect that children are people.
	And we're a generation or two at least away from that.
	Hmm.
	Oof.
	You telling me not to laugh at it?
	Yeah.
	That feels really important.
	Yeah, you've got to.
	This is not like, you know, and can you believe it?
	I lost my keys.
	This is like, and can you believe it?
	My childhood was stolen.
	Hmm.
	Yeah, man.
	Sometimes, yeah, there are times when I sit, I really think about it.
	And I just, if I knew a kid going through that, I would be like, what do you want to do?
	Do you want to go to a restaurant?
	Do you want to go do something fun?
	Do you like, what do you need, buddy?
	What are you interested in?
	Please let me help you.
	Let me help you get through this.
	Yeah, it sucks, but just know that someone's here for you.
	I actually worked at a youth crisis center with kids who were going through a lot of the similar stuff that I went through.
	And you wouldn't laugh at them, right?
	No.
	So don't laugh at you.
	I'm not laughing right now, by the way.
	No, but what I mean is you wouldn't laugh at somebody who told you this story.
	So I'm saying give the same respect to yourself that you would for some stranger, right?
	And don't laugh at your own history in the same way that you wouldn't laugh at somebody telling you this story, right?
	Because when you laugh like that, what you're inviting people to do is to view it as a joke.
	And that is abusive towards yourself.
	Yeah, oh, can you believe my daddy mother, blah, blah, blah, right?
	That is inviting people to come into your life in an abusive way.
	Because anybody who will find that, will go along with that amusing aspect that you're trying to present, is not healthy.
	And, you know, people who care about you would push back, right?
	Obviously would say, no, no, no, no, this is not comedy, right?
	And then you would have a chance to be more serious about it, right?
	Because it's a serious subject.
	You know, you don't see clowns giving tours at Auschwitz, right?
	That would be deeply offensive.
	Oh, gosh.
	No.
	Yeah.
	I wonder if that...
	Yes.
	And I find...
	And just a side note, I find myself drawn to the most, you know, abrasive, you know, comedy that is out there.
	You know, Doug Stanhope...
	That's because you embody that abrasive comedy.
	Yeah.
	Oh, God.
	Okay.
	Sorry.
	Not to laugh, but that's the laughter of acceptance.
	No.
	Okay.
	No more laughter.
	Dude.
	Wow.
	Wow.
	Ugh, so, alright, where do I go?
	Do you want to know what the dream is about?
	Yes.
	Oh yeah.
	That, yes, please.
	I claim to have forgiven my family of origin, right?
	In the dream.
	Thank you.
	Right, yes.
	And I'm crying...
	In the dream, I'm a hoarder, and my house has no wall, right?
	Yeah.
	It means I have no protection, no defense, no shield against the elements, right?
	Right, right.
	And I'm crying and I claim to have forgiven.
	And you don't see my family of origin earning that forgiveness, right?
	Bye.
	No, not at all.
	Right, so that means something in the dream.
	It's saying, I am going to pretend to forgive them for their needs.
	Can't be for my needs, because to forgive people who've not earned forgiveness is a denial.
	Of your true experience.
	It is a conformity to the selfish needs of abusers to forgive people who have not earned your forgiveness.
	It's what they need.
	They want you to forgive them and they don't want to lift a goddamn finger to earn it.
	They want the solve, the drug, the narcotic of your forgiveness without actually the work of earning that forgiveness.
	It's another conformity to the selfish needs of abusive, narcissistic, destroyed people.
	Forgiveness can be earned, but to grant forgiveness in the absence of people earning forgiveness is simply to comply once more with their selfish demands at your emotional expense.
	What is a hoarder?
	A hoarder is driven by two things, in my opinion.
	A hoarder is driven by an incredible fear of being criticized.
	Because a hoarder keeps everything, and what do they say why they keep things?
	They say, I might need it someday.
	Right?
	Right.
	We've all had these things, like we had some friends come over and they were kind enough to help us clean out our garage.
	And in that garage, I mean, my place is clean and tidy.
	I mean, you'd be shocked.
	My study is, you know, very clean and neat, and I don't have papers out, I don't have stuff out, you know, you can set, it's very nice.
	When I was in the garage, you know, literally for a decade, I've had a piece of plastic that is the cover or the lid or something.
	I don't know what.
	I've always kept it.
	Why have I always kept it?
	Because I'm like, I know I'm going to one day find whatever the hell this attaches to, and if I don't have it, I'll be like, oh man, why did I throw that thing out?
	And you always have this fear, like the next day, you're going to find whatever that thing is attached to, and you'll need it.
	And I just, I tossed it.
	It's like, okay, well, if I need the lid, I'll find a way to get one or I'll live without it.
	Or if I live without it for 10 years, I can live without it for the rest of my life, right?
	People hoard partly because they're terrified of self-attacking for not having something that they need.
	That's one thing.
	And the second thing that's true about hoarders, in my opinion, is that they cannot differentiate between what is important and what is not important.
	Have you ever had that book lying around or that magazine lying around?
	You're like, I'll get to that someday.
	And then at some point you're like, you know what?
	I am never going to read this.
	I'm going to donate it.
	You have to accept it.
	I'm never going to read it.
	Oh, I'd like to read that book again.
	Nope.
	You know what?
	I'm 47 years old.
	I'm never going to get to read that thing again.
	It's just an acceptance.
	It's learning how to prioritize.
	Hoarders keep everything because they can't prioritize.
	And hoarders keep things because they're terrified of the self-attack that will happen if they need something and they don't have it.
	Now, people who are unable to differentiate between the important and the unimportant and people who fear self-attack are people who are not attached.
	In my opinion, it's all my opinion, right?
	It's an amateur opinion, too.
	But it's what's called an attachment disorder.
	They did not bond with a caregiver as a child.
	And as a result, they're kind of spinning in space.
	Don't know what's important, don't know what's unimportant, have to hang on to everything, terrified of self-attack, and all that kind of stuff.
	Because of the lack of bond.
	If you have a bond with someone who loves you, who is never going to attack you, how could you possibly end up self-attacking?
	It would be like my daughter speaking Mandarin, having never been exposed to Mandarin.
	It's impossible.
	Whereas if you have someone who's not attached to you, who's distant, who's manipulative, and who attacks you, then you're going to end up defensive.
	You're going to end up serving their needs rather than having needs of your own.
	It's what I want, but it still amazes with my daughter.
	She just expresses her needs.
	And she's interested in my needs, but she has zero desire to conform to my needs because they're my needs.
	I mean, that's what I want, but it still feels kind of weird, you know?
	And so with forgiveness, you have to be really careful when you have the urge or impulse to forgive people who've done you great harm, that you are not continuing to serve their selfish needs at your own emotional expense.
	That it is something that has actually been earned by the other people.
	You know, people who are narcissistic really hate the idea that they have to earn things because they're entitled.
	They believe that everything should just be given to them.
	Why the hell should they have to work?
	Work is for others.
	Work is for idiots.
	I want things to be just given to me.
	I damn well resent the idea that I should ever have to earn them.
	And the same thing is true with forgiveness.
	The people who are entitled, people who are selfish, people who are narcissistic, loathe, with the very bottom of the empty chasms they call the soul, they loathe the very idea that they would have to earn forgiveness from those that they've wronged.
	They just are damn well entitled to it, and if you don't pay it, they will just rage or neglect you until you give them what they damn well deserve.
	You know, collection companies have no problem sending repo men over to get your car if you haven't paid for it.
	Because if you haven't paid for it, the ownership reverts to them.
	And if you get in their way, well, sorry, they'll get a cop and they'll, you know, if you don't pay for your house, eventually they'll just kick you out of your house.
	Have they got to bring a cop with a gun?
	That's how entitled people feel about everything.
	Everything is owed to them and if you don't damn well give them what is owed to them, which is whatever the fuck they want, You've got to be punished because you're just not paying the legitimate debt of give everything to me when I want it, how I want it, and the way and tone and the way that I want it.
	And fuck you if you don't give me what I want.
	I will make you pay because you owe me because I am who I am and you are who you are.
	And that means it always rolls one way down the hill, all your resources to me when I want them, how I want them.
	And if you don't give me What I want in the way that I want it, when I want it, you must be punished until you provide it to me.
	You are like a television set, the old-style television sets.
	You'd have to, you know, they'd get this flick, you'd bang them on the top of you, adjust the aerial.
	Well, you owe me a picture, I'd bang you on the top, right?
	And what was your experience when your computer didn't give you what you wanted earlier in the call, my friend?
	Screaming.
	Okay, not laughing, sorry.
	Screaming.
	You owe me this conversation.
	You owe me working.
	I put in antivirus software and I defract the hard drive.
	I've got all the latest updates.
	Work for me, damn it!
	Give me what I want.
	So I would imagine that's what the dream is about.
	I really hope this is all recorded because I really want to be able to listen to this and absorb it.
	You have no shield from the elements.
	My house, when I forgive without my parents having earned my forgiveness, my house has no front, no wall.
	And it's full of junk.
	Is that why I weep so easily at the slightest bit of sentimentality?
	Could that be what it is?
	Why a baby commercial I'm suddenly...
	There's an old quote by Jung that says that sentimentality is the superstructure of brutality.
	And people who've experienced a lot of brutality are often quite sentimental.
	You know, Hitler loved his dogs and so it may be that aspect of it.
	It may be a way of...
	Whenever you talk about things being sentimental, It's not a particular person, right?
	It's more of a safe object like a commercial or something like that.
	And so it may be a way of allowing for those feelings to exist without the risk of attaching them to an actual person who can let you down, if that makes sense.
	Oh, absolutely.
	Yes.
	Yeah.
	But, you know, when we're kids, our parents' moods, they're our weather when we're camping.
	You know, I mean, and so the idea that you have no protection against the weather, if you forgive without them earned, you're open and you can't differentiate and you're afraid of self-attack and so on.
	We forgive, see, it's not a virtue to forgive someone because you're scared of them, to pretend to forgive, because like if I don't forgive that person, what are they going to do?
	Or if they're going to rage at me, I say, well, I forgive and I'll call it a virtue.
	It's not a virtue to act out of fear.
	It's not a virtue to pretend to forgive someone because you're afraid of what will happen if you don't or if you ask them to earn your forgiveness.
	Okay, you've admitted you've done me this wrong.
	Now what?
	And people are like, well, I've said I'm sorry.
	Shouldn't that be enough?
	It's like, no.
	Not even remotely close.
	This is the beginning of a multi-year process where you attempt to make restitution.
	You know, I picked up a diet book.
	Why am I not 100 pounds lighter?
	No, no, you pick up the diet book.
	That's the very beginning of a multi-year process, of a lifelong process of changing your habits.
	You know, while I bought a pair of running shoes, I guess I can go win the Boston Marathon.
	No!
	You bought a pair of running shoes.
	In other words, you apologized.
	It's the beginning of a multi-year process of changing behavior, of a full-on, full-time commitment to doing things differently, to going out and training in the wet and in the rain and in the hail, and to putting down the cheesecake and not eating it day after day after day.
	So people think that the apology Is the end.
	The apology is the potential beginning of a multi-year process, a multi-year process of somebody attempting to gain restitution and recover trust from someone that they've harmed, particularly when that person you've harmed has been a child.
	So when somebody says, well, my parent apologized or my spouse apologized or whoever wronged me apologized, I'm like, well, okay, so that is possibly the beginning of a multi-year process wherein that person attempts to earn back your forgiveness and your genuine trust and all of that.
	But then it's always that's the beginning and the end.
	It's like, okay, well, so somebody threw a diet book at you, you left it behind, and now you're doing the same thing, and then you say, well, I guess I'm losing weight now.
	It's like, no, you're not.
	Because if somebody who apologizes to you without then embarking on a multi-year process of regaining your trust, it's just manipulating you.
	It's just manipulating you.
	What they're doing is they're setting this thing up where you can no longer fucking complain about how they treated you because, by God, they've apologized.
	I've already apologized.
	Why are you bringing this up again?
	How many times do I have to apologize for the same thing?
	Let it go.
	I apologize.
	You brought it up.
	We talked about it.
	I apologize.
	Let it go.
	Isn't that what people say?
	It's just a great way to tell you to shut the fuck up about things that went wrong.
	As I wrote many many years ago long before I started the show at a novel a Seeming apology can be a very elegant way of telling someone to shut the fuck up This well oh Well, it's Stefan, thank you so much.
	Sincerely.
	The fact that you've put other things aside to pursue all of this and the work you've put in to make sure that, you know, me here, that I can have this dramatic increase in self-knowledge just from a conversation with you.
	I can't thank you enough.
	That's why I donate and I'll donate more as I begin to earn more.
	But seriously, I know it wasn't easy for you, so thank you for what you've done to be able to give me this chance right now.
	This is exactly what I wanted to get out of the call, is fire and determination to start moving in that direction, so thank you, thank you, thank you.
	You're very welcome, and I compliment you on the Seriousness of your tone at the end versus the beginning and middle, which I'm not criticizing you for at all.
	I completely understand it.
	I get it.
	And you've had to tell this story to a world that wants you to laugh at it, and you're used to conforming to other people's needs.
	So I really get that, and I really compliment you on the great journey you've made even in the space of this call in terms of the seriousness in which you've talked about this stuff at the end versus the beginning.
	And you'll notice that when you listen, but thank you for that.
	I appreciate that.
	I appreciate that trust.
	Man.
	All right.
	Thank you a million times.
	You're very welcome and congratulations on, I'm sure, your great parenting.
	I love to hear listeners who are having children and lots of them.
	So breed, breed, my minions.
	Your message has saved them.
	Thank you.
	Bye.
	All right, Daniel, thank you for patiently waiting.
	You're up.
	Oh, wow.
	I didn't think I was going to get a chance.
	It is your chance.
	How are you doing, Steph?
	I'm well.
	How are you doing?
	I'm very good.
	Honestly, I'm honored to speak with you.
	I stumbled upon your stuff maybe six, eight months ago and went from a libertarian to an anarchist.
	I had campaigned for Ron Paul and got disillusioned by that.
	Getting into some of the other stuff that you talk about is just brilliant.
	The fact that you can Take the time, like you are right now, to talk with me and other people and share that completely openly.
	I really appreciate.
	And right before I got on this call, I made sure to donate to you for all the time that I've spent listening and learning from you.
	I appreciate that, and here's hoping I don't suck.
	And look, I appreciate that people call and say, it's great to chat with you.
	You know, Daniel, it is great to chat with you.
	Really, I feel this about every caller, almost without exception.
	It is great.
	It is my privilege to be able to talk with you, to be part of a venue where you can bring up stuff that's important to you, whatever it is.
	So I hugely appreciate that you're calling in.
	And it is literally my privilege and pleasure and honor to chat with you.
	Well, thank you.
	And that's why you succeed, because you are so earnest in it all.
	So I guess we'll get right into it, although I have a lot of topics that I would love to talk to you about.
	I guess I'll talk to you about the topic that I have prepared for, at least prepared to talk about somewhat intelligently.
	So have you ever heard of the Indian philosopher Osho?
	No.
	Okay, well, he's a big guy in meditation.
	That was a question I wanted to ask you on a different topic, if you ever meditate.
	But he has a lot of books, and I wouldn't say he's like a rigorous He's a rational person, but he has a lot of good thoughts that come together, and you read them and you're like, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
	Do you know what I mean?
	I wouldn't say that if you read a whole book of his, you would agree with everything, although that's probably true for anybody.
	No, if I can understand, he's sort of like an aphorist.
	In other words, there are things, I don't want to say they're like fortune cookie things, because that's sort of to denigrate them, but...
	There are things that are very thought-provoking that enrich your way of looking at the world.
	They're not necessarily syllogistical arguments with mountains of data, but like Nietzsche is a great, one of the great aphorists where you can just pick up just about any book of Nietzsche's aphorisms, read through them, and just like spend half the day forgetting that you already finished your dump on the toilet because they're just so thought-provoking.
	Yeah, I actually have never picked up Nietzsche, but I hear him mentioned all the time, so I better go out and get some.
	So, I was going to read you this quote from Osho about marriage, and I wanted to ask you a question about marriage as an institution and its place in, I guess, an ideal society, because that's often what we're talking about, at least a society built on principles.
	So here, he talks about the origins of marriage.
	Do you mind if I read half a page here?
	No, please do.
	Okay.
	Man lived for thousands of years without marriage, but those were the days when there was no private property.
	Those were the days of hunting.
	Those people had no cold storage system, no technology.
	Whatever food they got, they had to finish as quickly as possible.
	They could only hope that tomorrow they would get some food again.
	Because there was nothing to accumulate, there was no question of marriage.
	People lived in communities and tribes.
	People loved.
	People reproduced.
	But in the beginning, there was no word for father.
	The word mother is far more ancient and far more natural.
	So here's the key part, and I didn't get to look this up, so I'm just going to say this is conjecture or a theory.
	You will be surprised to know that the word uncle is older than the word father, because there were many men who were the age of your father, you didn't know who your father was.
	Men and women were mixing joyously, without any compulsion, without any legal bondage, out of their free will.
	If they wanted to meet and be together, there was no question of domination.
	The children never knew who their father was.
	They only knew their mother.
	And they knew the many men in the tribe.
	Someone amongst these men must have been their father.
	Hence, they were all uncles.
	Then the women started experimenting to find what was edible and what was not edible.
	Soon, as hunting was becoming more and more difficult, men had to agree with women.
	We have to shift our whole economic focus.
	We have to go for cultivation, for fruits, for vegetables.
	And these are in our hands.
	We can produce as much as we want, as we need it, and there is tremendous variety.
	But a problem was felt.
	After a person dies, who is going to inherit his property?
	Nobody wanted their property to be inherited by any XYZ. They wanted their property to belong to their own blood.
	Thus, it is out of economics, not out of the understanding of love, that marriage came into existence.
	Sacrificing human happiness for maintaining order in society.
	That's the end of his quote.
	Okay.
	Do you have a question about that?
	Yeah, so here's my question that I wanted to pose.
	Is it possible that marriage, while currently pragmatic, is ultimately an unrealistic, restraining, and even coercive institution that reduces human potential and happiness in the long run?
	Well, I mean, marriage...
	In terms of its social and biological function is relatively clear, I think, and you can go to Girl Writes What for more on this, but a man has, like for a man who doesn't have a family, The amount that he has to work is very little.
	If he just wants to eat for himself, he could just go and get his food and he really doesn't have to provide much nutrition.
	He can get his food in an hour or two a day and the rest of the time he can sit around and masturbate and tell stories and whatever, right?
	And so a man has much more capacity for labor Than he needs.
	Now, a woman, but the man can't have children.
	He can't pass on his genes, you know, which we all have the desire to do, biologically, at least in terms of the sex drive and bonding with infants and so on.
	Now, a woman has an excess of fertility, right?
	Because she can have children and the man can't.
	And so the man has an excess of labor and the woman has an excess of fertility.
	And so what happens is the man trades his excess of labor for the woman's excess of fertility.
	In other words, the man takes on the very onerous task of getting food and water and shelter for a family, which is far more than he needs to survive himself.
	And so he takes on that massive burden.
	And that's one of the reasons why men have significantly stronger bodies It's because men have to work a huge amount harder than women do to get food and shelter and water and all that kind of heat and all that kind of stuff.
	And because the woman is largely disabled for most of her adult life, you know, between the ages of sort of historically, you know, 18 and 40 or, you know, 16 and 35 or whatever it's going to be for whatever local sort of situation there is and sometimes much earlier than that.
	But the woman is disabled through pregnancy and breastfeeding.
	There is, of course, some food production that women can do in ancient societies, but at least in an agricultural sense, there's a lot of babies hanging on and there's a lot of taking care of babies and protecting babies from animals and so on, right?
	I mean, they're so ridiculously helpless there.
	What does Glenn Beckham call them?
	Like death magnets or something like injury magnets.
	So...
	And this is why the woman claims ownership of the man's resources and the man claims ownership of the woman's reproductive system because that's the trade that is occurring.
	The woman says, okay, I am going to just stay with you and these children are going to be your children.
	Now, if these children are your children, then I demand all of the excess work and ownership and provisions, the providing of all the goods that I want.
	And you owe me that because they're your children.
	And in return, the man says, well, I will give you all this stuff, but they better damn well be my children, right?
	Because nobody wants to do that cuckoo's nest thing, not the Jack Nicholson, but the biological one, where he ends up taking care of someone else's children because then he's expending all of his labor, not for his own genes, which is not what nature kind of wants us to do, right?
	Or any animal or any species to do.
	Excuse me.
	So, I don't know about, you know, this idea that there was this wonderful paradise in the past where, you know, the Garden of Eden, the fruit fell from the trees and the rivers ran with milk and honey and so on.
	I think it's all nonsense.
	I mean, the bones that they find of ancient people are riddled with disease and skulls are broken from blows and, I mean, it's just stunted from malnutrition.
	I mean, it was a I mean, it was a complete shit path to live a long time ago.
	There is, of course, this fantasy, this Garden of Eden and so on, which, again, I think is unresolved needs from early childhood, right?
	If you didn't get what you needed as a child, that fantasy that it was somewhere or somehow it was or will be provided is a way that you avoid dealing with the pain.
	So I think the people who have this noble savage idea or this idea that things were really great and then we got property and we got marriage and we got, you know, Agriculture and then things were terrible.
	I mean, primitive tribes are indescribably brutal towards their own children.
	They're incredibly superstitious.
	They live in terror of the elements.
	They, you know, they have continual war, half starvation, so dependent upon things.
	Other than, you know, in certain areas, this is some degree why some people explain the appearance, though I don't know if entirely proven disparity of IQ between the races, they say, well, In the harsher environments, you've got to postpone your gratification if you're a farmer in France where there's a long cold winter rather than a hunter-gatherer in Africa or something like that.
	But there is no Garden of Eden that I know of.
	Just look at how chimpanzees live.
	I mean, it's pretty wretched.
	And so I don't know that there was this happy time when everything was great and then this property thing came along.
	The idea that It was much more efficient for women to become monogamous with a man, more guaranteed resources from the man.
	But in return for that, the man is going to claim ownership over the woman's uterus in the same way that she claims ownership over all of his productive, his arms, his chest, his legs, his productive capacities.
	There may not be much of love involved in that, but I mean, if love was the primary motivator for reproduction, no animals would have sex drives.
	And of course, sex drives are really the foundation of this.
	So I think that you needed, because human infants are so ridiculously helpless for so long.
	You know, horses can be born walking.
	It takes children about 10 to 12 months to learn how to walk.
	It's crazy just how long our development takes.
	And because of that long development, And because of the perpetual disabling of women, because of these ridiculously underdeveloped babies that are born, you just needed to find a long-term commitment to have the species.
	The longer-term commitment for the species means that children can be born smarter.
	One of the reasons, as far as I understand it, that babies are born so prematurely is that if their heads were any bigger, they'd split the woman open.
	Like a Thanksgiving turkey wishbone.
	Hang on, let me just finish the thought and then I'll let you finish the show.
	The more commitment the woman can get from the man, the more helpless her children can be.
	Which means the more development of the brain can be postponed till after the woman gives birth.
	The tribes which get more commitment from the man can Have children that develop more outside the womb because they're protected.
	And so more commitment from the man means smarter children.
	So if we like this big neofrontal cortex, which allows us to have this conversation, monogamy is kind of what brought it about.
	Because if there's not as much commitment towards children, children simply can't be born as undeveloped, which means that they have to do more development inside the womb, which means that they're not going to be as smart.
	Right?
	So monogamy drives the development of the neofrontal cortex and all of the stuff that makes our brains so wonderful because the babies can be more helpless because the woman has a real commitment from a man.
	In return, the man demands monogamy from the woman.
	Right?
	And so that's why in the marital institution, the man is supposed to provide and the woman is supposed to be faithful.
	And that's why for a man to not provide is as bad as a woman not being faithful, right?
	So you hear all about deadbeat dads.
	You don't hear a lot about the, by some estimates, one in ten fathers who are raising a child not his own, right?
	But that's just because we've got a kind of gynocentric media and so on, right?
	I mean, if you can imagine, if one in ten moms went home with a baby who wasn't her own because there was some callous mix-up at the hospital, everyone would go insane, right?
	But the idea that One in ten dads would be raising a child, not his own.
	Well, that's just, you know, something we don't really talk about.
	And so this idea that patriarchy and, you know, that you've got to be my woman and you've got to only have my children, that this was somehow control over or a degradation of women, it's just nonsense.
	I mean, it was part of the development of the species.
	That monogamy allowed us to produce these great brains.
	These great brains made us Win in war and trade, which means that the great brains get to dominate more and more and more.
	And now we're trying to outgrow the war, the violence that It was part of our success as a species.
	It's not all just philosophy and child abuse.
	I mean, there is that, you know, domination part of our environment, which we're trying to overcome, which is entirely right.
	I mean, you know, we have rapey impulses, I guess, sometimes too, but we're supposed to overcome those as sort of thinking and moral human beings, and so we're just trying to overcome that kind of stuff as well, but it was not oppressive towards women at all.
	It was just part of the development of the species.
	I mean, As Gilwright's Watt points out, when the woman is sitting at home with the igloo breastfeeding her baby and the guy is out there trying to spear a fucking narwhal with a stick to get food, it's hard really to think of the woman being overtly oppressed and so on.
	So I think it's an interesting take on it, but I don't think it's particularly supported by a lot of anthropology or biology.
	Anyway, that's my thoughts on it, but this is certainly by no means the end of what's true about that.
	What speaks to you in that?
	Well, yeah.
	I mean, I've listened to your stuff about it.
	I've heard you say a lot of those things about the roles of men and women, and I've studied this stuff for a long time, personally.
	I studied evolutionary biology, and something that I wanted to speak on, because I know you briefly mentioned in one of your shows the idea of the pick-up artist, or the single guy who sleeps with a lot of different women.
	I remember you said it's like throwing your dick at something Just a bowl of dumb or something.
	So basically implying that those women who are involved are...
	It's like, sorry, what I said was it's like throwing your dick into a deep chasm of dumb.
	There you go.
	So anyways, to get back to what we're talking about, I'm not rejecting men and women working together, obviously, and I believe that people who want to get married should absolutely be allowed to get married.
	I just feel that the institution of marriage is almost, I don't want to say obsolete, but it's inflexible regarding… What do you mean inflexible?
	Do you mean because of the monogamy requirement?
	Well, I mean, okay, so monogamy is one thing, but monogamy for the rest of your life.
	And then, you know, all these things in sickness and health and, you know, all the stipulations until death to us part, right?
	So, I mean, that's about as powerful a contract as anything could ever be.
	Sure, but I mean, certainly the longevity of marriage is to the benefit of women.
	I'm not arguing.
	Actually, I would say I'm coming from the position that marriage at this day and age doesn't take into account men's needs, or, you know, I mean, half of the species' development mentally and physically.
	Like, you know, talking about when you said, you know, it's like throwing at a chasm of dumb, I think there's a large population of men who would like to live that lifestyle, but they don't do it because they believe that it's wrong and because they would be ostracized for a lot of reasons.
	Ostracized?
	Are you kidding me?
	I mean, how is George Clooney ostracized?
	Isn't that kind of the life he's living?
	Well, I mean, look at Tiger Woods, right?
	He's back on top, right?
	Yeah, but...
	Do you know what I mean?
	Like, people get smeared for these things.
	People get smeared?
	I mean, good lord, Bill Clinton, for Christ's sake, is a hero at the Democratic National Conventions.
	How is he being smeared?
	I mean, tell me somebody who has been professionally destroyed through sexual indiscretion.
	Well, professionally is one thing.
	Personally is the other side of it, right?
	So if someone, if their personal life...
	So if all the women in our society, especially the intelligent ones, expect you to marry them, it's really hard to have a long-term relationship with a girl unless you marry her, right?
	Right.
	What's wrong with that?
	I mean, an intelligent woman should want to get married, and I don't mean the state institution, I mean sort of the personal commitment from the man.
	Because it's the best environment to raise children in, statistically and psychologically and physical, mental health, you name it.
	It is by far the best environment to raise a child in.
	And so that's the first reason.
	And the second reason is that even if you don't want to have children, it is by far the safest environment for women.
	A stable, committed marriage has the least amount of abuse and violence and dysfunctional behavior towards the wife.
	It is by far the safest environment for a woman to be in.
	So I think a smart woman, of course, you'd want what's best for your kids and you'd want what's healthiest for you.
	Right, but these reasons are, you know, they somewhat come from a place of fear.
	Now, I'm not saying that I have a better solution, but, you know...
	Well, no, but the man, sorry, the man comes from a place of fear as well.
	Which is that the man does not want to invest resources raising a child who's not his own.
	And it doesn't work very well.
	I mean, child abuse from a non-biological parent is literally 10 to 20 to 30 times more prevalent.
	You have to bond with your child from birth In order to not abuse your child.
	I mean, the massive rise in child abuse in certain areas is because of the decline of marriage.
	If you go and try and parent someone else's kids, particularly after the age of four or five, They're not going to respect you.
	You're not my dad.
	You're going to end up with lots of fights and you get the most inexperienced parents going into the greatest possible parenting challenge.
	Which is, I've never been a parent.
	I'm not growing into being a parent.
	I'm just suddenly a step-parent to some resentful kid who thinks I'm replacing daddy who's destroyed the chance of their parents getting back together and who doesn't want to listen to anything I say.
	And so this is one of the reasons why non-biological caregivers or just boyfriends drifting through some single mom's house Abuse children vastly, it's not two or three hundred percent, it's ten, twenty, thirty times the amount of abuse.
	So by far the safest place for children is within a stable, committed marriage with their biological parents.
	I mean, maybe we won't change that at the end of different kinds of people, but those are the facts as it stands.
	That, you know, people worry about BPA and stuff like that and, you know, ALR and apples and razor blades and candy in Halloween, which has never happened to my knowledge.
	They don't point out the fact that when the parents break up, the risk of child abuse just skyrockets.
	That is, divorce is by far the biggest risk factor for children.
	It's not priests, it's not asteroid strikes, it's not whatever nonsense they're coming up with.
	It is divorce that is the biggest risk factor for children.
	Yeah, a woman who's intelligent and a man who's intelligent will want a long-term commitment, at least for the length of the child's raising.
	And, of course, the woman whose value goes down considerably after she's fertile, because the man remains fertile, can trade her in for a younger woman.
	The woman whose value goes down over time is going to want that long-term commitment for that, so the man's not going to trade her in for a younger woman.
	Well, I guess, you know, you were talking about, you know, single Women, you know, boyfriends drifting in and out.
	I'm talking about more of a reasoned approach of, you know, people who have their food, shelter.
	You know, a lot of these things that modern technology and abundance takes care of for someone who's in the upper middle class, middle class.
	Would those people benefit from being more of a community of people who help each other Deal with problems and we're more familial.
	Now, I know that...
	But sorry, but you're skirting the issue, right?
	The issue is not a community of people who help each other.
	I mean, I have a community of people who help me and who I help.
	I just, I don't bang them.
	No, we're talking about, you know, cocks and vaginas, right?
	I mean, don't talk to me about a community of people.
	That doesn't require that you lube each other up and go for a ride on the sex trapeze, right?
	Well, I think this is the other side of the coin, right?
	So a lot of these things that we're discussing come from, you know, I don't want this to happen, I don't want this to happen, I don't want this to happen, so I'm going to make this agreement so that we avoid these things instead of, you know, what kind of life could we lead If we didn't have these fears, do you understand where I'm coming from?
	Sure.
	Sure.
	Yeah, I mean, I don't sit there and say, well, I really want to have sex with this woman I just met, but damn those vows.
	Oh, man, I can't believe I've hemmed it.
	That's not the way it works for me.
	The vows were not something that I made to my wife.
	Well, I don't want to criticize your marriage.
	No, no, no.
	Let me explain.
	It's like this idea that we all just go kill each other if it wasn't for the government.
	It's the only thing that prevents some guy from raping a woman, the law.
	Well then, geez, he's pretty much a psycho, right?
	I don't sort of say, well, I just wish I could go and have all this great sex with all these other women.
	But I've got this horrible vow that's entrapping me.
	No, the vow was an expression of what I wanted anyway.
	I don't want to go have sex with other women.
	I love my wife.
	She's all I want, all I need.
	Couldn't get better.
	So I don't feel trapped by any of this stuff at all.
	I mean, my desire for that is why I made those vows.
	It wasn't made grudgingly, and I don't regret making them.
	I believe them more strongly now, 11 years later, than I did when I made them.
	So, Steph, you're saying that at no point in your life you had that thought of, oh, I could go out and meet a lot of women and have a lot of amazing sex.
	I've never had that desire since I got married.
	Absolutely not.
	Do I ever find other women connected?
	Of course I'm married.
	I'm not dead.
	You made a commitment and I respect that.
	No, I have never ever thought, boy, my life would be better if I could go out and have a lot more sex with women I didn't know, I don't know.
	Okay, well I'm not saying that like, in your particular case, it would have been better to not get married.
	That's not what I'm trying to argue.
	What I am arguing is the, I guess, the rational basis for marriage, right?
	So is marriage rationally a good thing for men?
	And in a lot of ways it's not when you think about some of these other desires.
	But I'm very ambivalent about this.
	It's something I deal with in my personal life.
	I do want to have all the good things that come from marriage and having a family, but I think there is this other part of my persona that rejects the loss of freedom.
	And I wonder if No, but come on.
	If you want to stay healthy, you need to eat right and exercise.
	And that means you're not as free to eat cheesecake and sit on the couch, right?
	But you're more free to do other things, like live, right?
	And so the idea that, of course, there's things that you limit yourself with when you get married.
	Of course.
	Absolutely.
	No question.
	No question at all.
	And there's things that you limit yourself with when you decide to lose weight if you're overweight.
	And there's things that you limit yourself with if you decide to exercise.
	But you gain more freedom through those things than through the rejection of them.
	I gain more freedom through marriage than I lose.
	Much more.
	I don't even want the freedom that I would have if I were not married.
	It doesn't appeal to me.
	Well, I understand that.
	I just don't know that that's true for everyone.
	It's not a philosophical argument.
	I'm just telling you sort of what I experience.
	And I would say don't get married to someone unless that's how you feel.
	But if you do feel that way, then it won't be a sacrifice.
	You know, there's always that old cliche, like the man wakes up in the morning if he's going to get married and he freaks out because he's like, oh my god, I'm only going to sleep with one person for the rest of my life!
	Yay!
	You know?
	I don't wake up every morning with this show and say, my god, I'm going to have one occupation for the rest of my life.
	No, because this is the best occupation a human being could imagine.
	I have the best job in the whole world.
	You haven't signed an agreement that you will do this for the rest of your life.
	You wouldn't want to do that, right?
	No, but if somebody said, sign the agreement, I would sign it.
	Because there's nothing better that I could do with my time.
	There's no more privileged position that I could be than having these kinds of conversations.
	So, I mean, I would sign that.
	And I don't think that in a free society you necessarily would need to sign documents, so I don't know how it would work because it's hard to know how things are going to shape out in the absence of a state.
	In a generally healthy society, I don't know that you'd need really much contracts or legalities at all.
	I mean, I only do business on a handshake.
	I don't make people sign contracts with me and stuff like that.
	So I don't know.
	I don't know how it would work at all.
	And certainly if somebody's miserable in a marriage and they can't fix it, then yeah, obviously look at your options.
	But I wouldn't view it as a limitation on your freedom.
	If you do view it as a limitation on your freedom, then you're thinking about getting married to the wrong person.
	Well, but I feel like, you know, I've...
	I've dated a few girls, and I've dated a few awesome, amazing girls.
	But I still always have this ambivalence, you know, and I think that it comes from...
	Well, then you need more awesome and amazing.
	Until you can't picture a better person to be with, don't get married.
	You know, like, when my wife and I, you know, we first started talking about getting married, I mean, it felt so completely right.
	I had no doubt, no hesitation.
	I never have looked back.
	I never, I mean, she is like the most amazing, best, fantastic person I could imagine being married to.
	And if you're, you know, but as if I was like, well, yeah, but, you know, what if she were taller or what if she was, you know, I don't know what, right?
	I mean, so if you, you know, if they're not amazing enough for you to want to stay with, then just keep looking for more amazing until you get someone that you can't imagine improving upon.
	But I don't think that that's ever going to happen, you know, unless I found, like, the best woman on the earth, and then even then it would be like, well, maybe there's some way to improve on it.
	And there's also something about, it's not like the best, it's not a different perspective, right?
	You have to have some modesty as well, right?
	Which is, are there things that I wish were different about my wife?
	Well, yeah, maybe sometimes, but for the most part, she's fantastic.
	And how am I supposed to know...
	That what I would like changed would actually be an improvement, right?
	Maybe some of the things are absolutely great the way they are.
	And I'm going to stand in front of her and say, you have to be perfect to meet and match my standard.
	Dear God, I am not a perfect person at all.
	And so to demand perfection, you know, is like the 300-pound guy.
	Saying I won't date a woman who's not physically perfect.
	Like, dude, there's a thing called the mirror.
	So to demand absolute perfection is to live in a state of narcissistic self-idealization that is unsustainable.
	I'm not saying that's you.
	I'm just saying that logically you can't demand perfection unless you're perfect.
	And if you think you're perfect, you have the imperfection called vanity.
	So I just point that out.
	Yeah, well, I definitely am not perfect.
	There's no doubt about that.
	I guess what I'm saying is it seems like in a rational discussion, you know, I mean, I really respect you, Steph, and I know that you put marriage at the end of the dating road.
	And I just wonder if, you know, we aren't setting some people up for disappointment when we say that, you know, marriage is what you should end up.
	It's like, you know, maybe the person you're with isn't good enough, and that's why you don't feel that way.
	That's like the common answer.
	I feel like maybe we should also be able to say, you know, it's okay to do XYZ and experiment about how we might raise a family or, you know, have relationships.
	You know, I think that a lot of marriages end in divorce and a lot of marriages are painful and they stay together.
	And that creates a lot of problems as well, where A lot of your call-in People talk about their traumatic childhood that comes from probably two people who shouldn't have gotten or maybe shouldn't have stayed married.
	And maybe those children or those listeners wouldn't have been so scarred if they didn't have these expectations that their parents would stay together for all of eternity.
	I don't know how to argue any of that.
	I don't disagree that if people are in abusive, horrible marriages that they can't fix, yeah.
	Certainly look at your options for sure.
	But I think, unfortunately, I mean, I have personal experience on my side.
	I have a huge amount of facts and data and empirical evidence on my side.
	I have biological evolutionary arguments on my side.
	I have the weight of evolved And we assume somewhat productive human development and evolution on my side.
	That doesn't mean that marriage is for everyone.
	Of course not.
	And it doesn't mean that everybody should get married or ought to get married or must get married or anything like that.
	And it doesn't mean that what I call marriage is a government document.
	It can be just a commitment, right?
	But what is important is honesty, right?
	Now, when I said to my wife, I will stay with you forever, I was honest and I remain honest.
	And if you are going to say to someone, well, I'm going to give it a shot, you know, but I reserve the right to leave at any time, well, that person should not have children with you until you've got that kind of commitment, because otherwise...
	They're just taking a very silly risk with other people's lives, their children's lives, and that's not even remotely responsible.
	In order to have children, you need to be there for the long haul.
	You need to be committed to the relationship for at least the next 18 years in order to be a good parent.
	And if you are not in a relationship where you are going to be committed to the other person for the next 18 years, then you shouldn't be having children, in my opinion.
	And it's not just an opinion.
	There's a lot of facts behind it.
	So whether you call that marriage or not, but to raise children productively together, you need that commitment.
	That is what is best for the children.
	And if you don't want that, that's fine.
	But then you're going to be knowingly going into something that is not best for the children.
	So if two parents are best for a child, what if there was some love hexagon out there where these people are, as Osho said, men and women were mixing joyously, and they're all raising the result?
	Well, I mean, I would really like to see, you know, the fact that he uses the word joyous doesn't prove to me anything.
	You know, what he would need to do to make that case is to find, you know, very successful, happy, peaceful, productive societies which were not stagnant, right?
	Because a stagnant society is always a sign of child abuse, right?
	The more children are abused, the more stagnant the society remains.
	And I don't know of any examples whatsoever of societies that advance morally, technologically, economically through polygamy.
	So, you know, if he can make the case, he can make the case.
	You know, I'd be fascinated to read something like that.
	But otherwise, it's just an argument by adjective and doesn't have any weight at all in any discussion about reality.
	Well, I guess that's besides the point.
	Like I said, if two people are best for a child, would it be theoretically possible that having more heads in the family household, especially adult heads, would be even better for the children?
	Well, sure, absolutely.
	I mean, if extended families live together and so on, but that doesn't mean cock and vagina time, right?
	I mean, having more people around to care for children is fantastic, but that doesn't mean they have to be having sex with each other.
	Anyway, I think we've reached the end of this, and literally I don't even remember the last time I sat down for like three and a half hours straight, so I've got to get up and move around, but I really do appreciate your call.
	I'm sorry that we went long.
	Thank you for everyone's patience for continuing to listen to the show, to donate.
	Remember, youtube.com forward slash freedomainradio.
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	Thanks again to Mike for staying up late.
	Thanks again to all the callers, and I guess I will talk to you Sunday morning.
	Alright, thanks Steph.
	Hey, before you go, can I mention, you should talk about the governance shutdown being an opportunity to show that anarchy works.
	We don't need the bastards.
	Yeah, it's been quite revealing for people to see how much can function with the non-essential workers gone.
	That's a bit of a clue there, ladies and gentlemen.
	So have a great week, everyone.

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