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Nov. 2, 2013 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
35:07
2521 Questions for Free-Market Moralists - Answered!

Questions for Free-Market Moralists by Amia Srinivasan answered by Stefan Molyneux.

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Hi, everybody.
It's Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
Hope you're doing...
Do you smell that?
I'm hungry.
Yes.
And you know what philosophers like to feed on?
Oh, the tasty buffet of rank-state-worshipping irrationality.
Oh.
Oh, here's one.
Oh, yes.
Oh.
All right, this is from Amir Srinivasan.
I'm sorry if I butchered your name, but you're butchering my philosophy, so that's fair enough.
Questions for free market moralists.
This was published October 20th, 2013 on the New York Times blog.
She starts in 1971.
John Rawls published A Theory of Justice, The Most Significant Articulation and Defense of Political Liberalism in the 20th Century.
Rawls proposed that the structure...
Of a just society was the one that a group of rational actors would come up with if they were operating behind a veil of ignorance.
That is, provided they had no prior knowledge of what their gender, age, wealth, talents, ethnicity, and education would be in the imagined society.
Since no one would know in advance where in society they would end up, rational agents would select a society in which everyone was guaranteed basic rights, including equality of opportunity.
Since genuine, rather than on paper, equality of opportunity requires substantial access to resources, shelter, medical care, education, Rawls' rational actors would also make their society a redistributive one, ensuring a decent standard of life for everyone.
In 1974, Robert Nozick countered with anarchy, state, and utopia.
He argued that a just society was simply one that results from an unfettered free market.
And that the only legitimate function of the state was to ensure the workings of the free market by enforcing contracts and protecting citizens against violence, theft, and fraud.
So there's more to it.
I just wanted to mention this.
I've got a whole podcast on this, which you can check out at freedomandradio.com on Rawls' theory of justice.
I studied it many years ago.
Even an undergraduate, we studied it in the philosophy of law.
It is...
A nonsense argument.
The only way that you can justify these kinds of things is if you think that money is somehow different from all other human ownerships, right?
So, a woman owns her vagina, and therefore, nobody may use that vagina without her permission, otherwise it's rape.
I own my kidneys, therefore, even if you need one, you cannot come and take one of my kidneys without my permission.
Now, vaginas and kidneys and children and so on, these can't be easily redistributed because we have a moral repugnance to them.
But people put money into a separate category.
I earn money.
It is mine to choose to do with as I see fit.
I choose to donate some to charity.
I choose to keep some.
I choose to invest some.
I choose to give some to my daughter in terms of food and shelter and so on.
And when we separate money from all other forms of property, then we feel much more comfortable I'm redistributing it, but somebody who takes my money against my will has simply made me a retroactive slave for a certain period of time.
If it takes me a week to earn $1,000, somebody takes $1,000 from me by force after the fact, then they have simply made me a slave after the fact for one week.
So let me sort of explain why it's important that we don't have arbitrary distinctions in terms of property for money as opposed to just about everything else.
We don't say that everyone deserves housing, therefore you have to put up two families in your house in addition to your own.
I mean, they did that after the Russian Revolution in 1917, but houses are sort of different from money, because you can take people's money And it is much less repugnant to us morally than if we simply force people to go live in their house or you say to this woman, listen, there are lots of ugly and unpleasant guys who want to have sex and it's selfish of you to keep that vagina all to yourself, so I'm afraid we're going to have to redistribute it on your behalf.
This would be morally repugnant to us in the same way that we would say to a couple, listen, there are some couples who can't have children but really want them.
You have six children, they have none.
We need to take two of your children and give it to the other couple because it's not fair that you just happen to be fertile and they happen to not be fertile.
This is stuff that we would find repugnant.
We're fine with it with money for a variety of reasons.
The money is the root of all evil and we're told to demonize money and so on, but we put this in a separate category.
So let's take the Rawlsian argument for operating from behind the veil of ignorance.
What kind of society would we want?
And so her argument is, or Rawls's argument that she's repeating here is, We'd want a welfare state in case we were really broke and poor.
We'd want public education in case we didn't have access to education.
But we'd want some aspects of the free market in case we were really ambitious and wanted to go, you know, start some big company or something.
Now, it's only because we put money in a separate moral category That we're able to countenance these kinds of things.
So, if I replace money with something else, like genitals, then we would say, what kind of society would we want in the distribution of sex?
Well, you wouldn't want sex to always be coercive.
Like, you wouldn't want rape to be the standard.
Because if you were some super sexy man, then if you were Brad Pitt or whatever, then you could just go and have sex.
No problem.
Just go out and, you know, you'd be able to have lots of women probably want to sleep with you and so on.
So you wouldn't want sex to be coercive because you could earn much more sex just simply by being attractive.
Now, if you were really unattractive or unappealing, if you didn't like washing, if you were unpleasant or really bad breath or whatever...
Then you would still want to have access to sex.
So you'd want a minimum of sex to be enforced by the state for everyone.
In other words, a woman would be delivered to you.
So on average, I think people have sex if you're married a couple of times a week kind of thing.
If you're single, it's a little less.
Let's just say it's twice a week.
So you'd want a minimum of twice a week sex.
You'd want the government to deliver women to you at gunpoint for sex twice a week, but you wouldn't want to be only limited to sex twice a week.
You would then want to be able to go out and get more sex at a bar or whatever, but at a minimum, you would want twice a week to have sex and the government to enforce that on your behalf, just in case you were...
Ugly or unappealing or whatever.
Now, this is a morally repulsive argument.
Of course it is, right?
I mean, because there's no amount of coerced sex that is moral.
No matter how much people need it, no matter how people want it or whatever, well, there you go.
So it's only by creating this artificial division where money is not subject to the moral law that we can countenance this stuff.
So let's get to This young lady's questions, and I'll put a link to the article below.
So here I have four questions.
One, is any exchange between two people in the absence of direct physical compulsion by one party against the other, or the threat thereof, necessarily free?
If you say yes, then you think that people can never be coerced into action by circumstances that do not involve the direct physical compulsion of another person.
What?
What?
Oh, sorry, the doorbell just rang.
I think structural violence is over.
Oh, we're having structural violence for dinner.
Later.
Such a messy eater.
So, but I think they've come by.
Suppose a woman and her children are starving, and the only way she can feed her family apart from theft is to prostitute herself or to sell her organs.
Since she undertakes these acts of exchange not because of direct physical coercion by another, but only because she's compelled by hunger and a lack of alternatives, they are free.
Well, I think it's a terrible thing for a woman to be in a situation where the only thing that she can do is to prostitute herself or to sell her organs, which I guess is two ways of saying the same thing.
I mean, it's terrible.
The only thing that gives me some relief is that it's In a free society, this would not be possible.
This would not happen.
So, if she's going to go and prostitute herself, then she has somebody to watch her children.
If she's going to go and sell her organs, she has somebody to watch her children while she recuperates, right?
So, if she has someone to watch her children, then she's part of a community.
If she's part of a community, then she can ask for charity.
I say this with some, hopefully, credibility insofar as I ask for charity quite regularly.
I don't sell advertising.
I experimented with it just out of curiosity on a recent video, but I don't use advertising in my videos, don't put advertising in my shows, don't have sponsorships or anything like that, and so I rely on charity.
I'm not even a charitable donation.
I can't give tax receipts, so I don't give tax receipts or refunds.
So, because I believe in the power and virtue of charity, I have decided to throw myself on the kindness of strangers and receive my income for doing this show in terms of charity.
And these are people almost all of the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of listeners I've probably only met 50 or 60 or 70 Maybe a hundred.
And so the vast majority of people I've never even met and who I never will meet.
So charity will solve that problem.
I'm sort of living proof of that.
And this is, I mean, I started doing this show because I have not particularly great timing.
I started doing this show just as the financial collapse in the West began.
And I'm Able to survive on this show, even when people are really hurting financially because people really believe in what it is that we're doing here.
So fortunately, since she has people to watch her children, then she has a community around her.
She has access to charity.
She has access to food banks.
She has access to churches and friendly societies and the shriners and so on.
And so people will help her and she won't.
Now, of course, if she has people to watch her children to the point where she can go and be operated on and be incapacitated for weeks to sell her organs or whatever, then...
She can have a job, right?
Because she has someone to watch her children, so she can have a job.
So I don't see why there would be any need for her to prostitute herself or sell her organs.
Now, prostitution certainly does occur, but that's not structural violence, that's state violence.
Prostitution occurs because the government has taken upon itself to protect children from abusive parents and doesn't do so.
It also is because government educates children for 12 years and puts them out into the workforce with almost no marketable skills whatsoever, thus depressing their wages.
And also because prostitution is illegal, which drives it underground, and also because drugs are illegal, which turns a lot of women into prostitutes because they need to get drugs.
They're already in an illegal environment.
So this is all state violence that drives prostitution.
It's nothing to do with structural violence.
So, I mean, this is a terrible scenario for sure, but I comfort myself with the fact that it could never conceivably occur.
Now, if some woman decided to sell her organs rather than get a job or rely on charity or friends or anything like that, then she clearly is insane and can't be a mother, right?
If you've made choices in your life where you've decided to have children with a guy who's unreliable, who's not going to stick around, you have no community, no friends, no family, I mean, this makes no sense at all.
Then you're clearly not competent to be a mother.
The children should be taken away from you, and you should be put in a place where you will get some sort of help, some sort of charity.
Maybe if you can restore yourself to some sort of level of sanity or economic competency, or at least social competency, then you can have your children back.
I think that would be great.
But clearly this is a desperate situation with a woman who's crazy if she does pursue any of these actions, because there's always other alternatives, right?
Working and charity and so on.
And she, of course, has made a series of life decisions that have ended up with her and her children starving, which is just terrible.
And the other thing, too, is that the solution to this is supposed to be the welfare state.
We have a welfare state and we take care of women like this so they don't have to sell their organs.
This is all nonsense, and it doesn't take more than a moment's thought.
To show you that it's nonsense.
And it is simply just an appeal to state power.
And this woman is, I think, a graduate in a government-funded university, so she is, of course, going to be quite partial to state power because she is...
Like most graduate students, she's preying on the incomes of the poor in order to live this lovely privileged life of bourgeois education because people who get a good education end up making more money, people who don't, don't.
So it's a transfer in general of the taxpaying poor to the privileged middle class.
But you see she's very concerned about the exploitation of the poor.
Well, it's natural.
Hypocrisy and projection go hand in hand.
But if the answer to this problem of the starving woman is for there to be a government, I assume a democratic government, which has a welfare state, well, you don't need the government then.
The only way a welfare state is going to be implemented is if the majority of voters support and accept it.
Right?
We understand that.
If only 1% of people care about this woman, a democratic state will never solve the problem at all.
Now, if 75% or 85% or 65% of people care enough about this woman to vote for these programs and have the money taken from them and transferred to this woman, then you don't need the state because the vast majority of people within a society care about this woman enough to give their money over.
So, the state doesn't solve this, even if we were to accept this completely artificial situation.
The state, statism as a philosophy, in no way solves the problem.
All it does is create a massive overhead and a bureaucracy of people who are fundamentally financially incentivized to keep this woman poor and to create more poor people and thus to maintain and increase their funding.
Question two.
Is any free, i.e.
not physically compelled exchange, morally permissible?
If you say yes, says this lady, then you think that any free exchange can't be exploitative and thus immoral.
Suppose that I inherited from my rich parents a large plot of vacant land and that you are my poor landless neighbor.
I offer you the following deal.
You can work the land doing all the hard labor of tilling, sowing, irrigating and harvesting.
I'll pay you one dollar a day for a year.
After that, I'll sell the crop for $50,000.
You decide that this is your best available option and so take the deal.
Since you consent to this exchange, there's nothing morally problematic about it.
Propaganda is so much the opposite of thoughts.
This is like watching a woman slowly inhale...
A helium balloon through her nose, completely displacing her brain to some other dimension where insanity equals thought.
First of all, if you can sell a crop for $50,000, then you will pay wage laborers to till it and you will be able to afford to pay them more.
This is an isolated situation.
It's a lifeboat scenario.
Why is this person willing to work a dollar a day for a year?
Why?
I mean, because if you can sell the crop for $50,000, then you can afford more to pay that.
And if you're a jerk and don't want to pay the person more, then the person will simply go somewhere else.
He's not bound to the land.
He can go into town and get a job at Pizza Hut.
He can go and start selling stuff online.
He can go to some other guy and say, a dollar a day, what will you offer me?
The guy's like, oh man, I can pay you like $50 a day and still make money.
Right?
So...
This is not the free market.
This is like some weird little biodome where there's only two people.
And the other thing, too, is that if there are people who have lots of power who then exploit and abuse people, which is kind of what this free market non-scenario is set up to supposedly show, if there is a tendency for people to want to underpay people, exploit, control, bully them, and extract as much value from them as possible while giving them less value in return.
We can't have a government!
Because that's exactly the kinds of people who will be drawn to government and who will attempt to exploit people and take stuff from them and give them less and keep them dependent and so on.
So how are you going to solve this?
Well, in the free market, this person's services will be bid up.
Where's his family?
Where's his friends?
See, all these examples, people are never part of any community.
I mean, it's weird.
People are never part of any community.
Why is this guy hanging around, maybe taking a job for a dollar a day?
But Where were his parents?
Where are his parents?
Where are his friends?
Where are his aunts?
His uncles?
His neighbors?
His grandparents?
His childhood friends?
Can he not go crash on someone's couch and get a job somewhere else?
Of course he can.
So these are entirely artificial situations.
But that's okay, honey, because academia is an artificial little bubble that you are currently exploiting the poor by inhabiting, so I think that's okay.
You obviously think it's okay and believe it's okay because that's where you are.
Do people deserve all they are able and only what they are able to get through free exchange?
Deserve.
Just before we dive into the explanation of the question, deserve is one of these trap questions.
Human beings are not pawns on a chessboard.
They're not little toy soldiers.
They're not Dungeons& Dragons figurines.
So what do people deserve or what do they not deserve?
This, in a sense, presupposes emotionally the idea that there's someone out there doling out fates to people.
You know, do I deserve to have blue eyes?
Do I deserve to have a forehead that goes about as long as a Daytona freeway?
Do I deserve to be bald?
Do I deserve to have a mole on my chin?
Did I deserve to get cancer this time?
What does deserve mean?
I don't know.
If I smoke my whole life like a chimney, do I deserve to get lung cancer?
Well, I don't know.
If I jump off a cliff, do I deserve to fall?
Well, actions have consequences.
There's nobody moving things around and pushing things here and there and trying to say whether stuff is right or wrong or good or bad.
You do stuff and stuff happens as a result of it.
Some of it's good and some of it's bad.
But there's no one there saying, you deserve or don't deserve.
I mean, this is insane.
Okay, so she says, so the question is, do people deserve what they're able to get and only what they're able to get through free exchange?
If you say yes, you think that what people deserve is largely a matter of luck.
Why?
First, because only a tiny minority of the population is lucky enough to inherit wealth from their parents.
Since giving money to your kids is just another example of free exchange, there's nothing wrong with the accumulation of wealth and privilege in the hands of the few.
Oh, I wish I had ten hands.
Do you know why?
Because I needed ten-handed forehead palming.
Okay.
Are you really concerned with the accumulation of wealth and privilege in the hands of the few?
Really?
Well, you don't solve this with the government.
I mean, do you not think that people use the government, inhabit the government, and use the power of the government to accumulate wealth and privilege for themselves?
One of the main reasons why rich people like the government is that rich people are usually shitty at raising children.
And you can just read Malcolm Gladwell's book, David and Goliath, for more on this.
So people who make a lot of money in the free market, they have a lot of energy, dedication, and they usually come from a rough background or they have some significant problems like the death of a parent or some childhood illness that makes them ambitious and makes them want to work hard.
And then you raise your kids in the luxurious biodome of wealth and they don't have the same level of ambition and drive and this and that.
There's a saying for it, it's called, shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations, right?
Rags to riches to rags in three generations.
And it's quite a common phenomenon that the children of the wealthy don't really make much money at all and tend to blow a lot of the money that their parents have accumulated.
So this idea that somehow the free market just keeps making people wealthier and more privileged, that's actually what happens when you have a government and people can use the power of the government to accumulate and maintain wealth for themselves.
So the other thing is that lots of people inherit wealth from their parents.
They inherit houses.
They inherit cars.
Do they inherit $100 million?
No.
But you don't need $100 million to get your start in life.
So, since people's capacities to produce goods and services in demand on the market is largely a function of the lottery of their birth, second, she says, their genetic predispositions, their parents' education, the amount of race and sex-based discrimination to which they're subjected, their access to health care and good education, and so on.
Well, that's interesting.
So let's say that this is true.
I don't believe that it's true.
I think that we have a lot more choices than circumstances allowed.
But let's say that it's true.
Well, let's say that people make a lot of money because of their genetics.
Well, you can't punish them for that, right?
I mean, you can't take away their money for that, which is genetically accidental.
That would be like cutting someone's feet off because they're tall, and they're taller than average, and that's not fair to the short people.
I mean, we wouldn't punish someone for the accidents and genetics of their birth, right?
Secondly, when you talk about What people can produce within society, again, you're not talking from some sort of external situation where it's right or wrong that people are born rich or poor.
I think that it's tragic that some people are born sick, and I personally would help out with that, and I think that would be great.
And we know the majority of people would, because every time you put out these kinds of arguments, young lady, you put these arguments out to emotionally manipulate people.
In other words, it's horrifying to think of a mother selling her own organs to feed her children.
And the very fact that it's horrifying and the fact that you're using this horrifying moral argument is because you know people are going to respond to it and therefore you know that they're going to respond to it in a practical way in a free society.
Only if people said, oh, that'd be great.
Oh, I'd pay to watch that.
In fact, I would pay extra if I could take out that mom's kidney with a rusty spoon of my own devising.
Or maybe I'll just put some anchovies on her side and get my cormorant friend to peck through and get out that kidney.
Oh, that'd be great.
Oh, lovely.
Well, if people responded in that way, then obviously we'd never be able to solve the problem because the world would be full of sadists.
But you're only bringing these arguments because you know they're kind of morally problematic for people, which means that people will work to alleviate those problems in a free society.
Do people deserve all they're able and only what they're able to get through free exchange?
This is another thing that is so retarded.
It's so retarded it's embarrassing.
I can only assume that this woman doesn't have children.
Because we're only alive, we only exist, we only draw breath, because our parents were willing to give us stuff which we weren't able to exchange, right?
I mean, you don't charge a baby for a diaper change.
I mean, you can, I've certainly tried it, but you really don't want what they're able to pay you with.
It's super gross, shaped like a hockey puck and something you just want to flush.
So, our whole basis of existence as a species is that our parents give us stuff, For free and don't charge us.
It's not an exchange situation.
So tons of people do.
I mean, the whole reason we have a human race, the whole reason we're alive, the whole reason we're having a conversation is because moms don't charge for breast milk.
So, anyway.
So she says it's also a function of what the market happens to value at a particular time.
William Blake, Edgar Allan Poe.
I dated a Dutch woman once and she told me it's pronounced that way.
Vermeer, Melville, and Schubert all died broke.
But if you're a good free marketer, you think that's what they deserved.
Again, this idea of deserving or not deserving.
There are six billion people in the world.
Who on earth can figure out what people deserve or don't deserve?
Van Gogh was like a monster.
I mean, he cut off his own ear and sent it to a woman, I think because she rejected him sexually.
I don't know a lot of the histories of all these other guys, but Herman Melville decided to stop writing and get a job as a customs official, as an agent of the state.
And was that a good idea or a bad idea?
I don't know.
I don't know.
Do they get what they deserve?
I mean, again, there's nobody punishing people.
People make choices and there are certain results.
So if some guy takes his life savings, goes to Vegas and blows it all on a roulette wheel, does he get the poverty he deserves?
I mean, I don't know.
There's nobody making him do that, nobody forcing him to do that.
He's made a choice to go and blow his money.
And of course, if he'd made a whole bunch of money extra, would that be wealth he deserved?
I don't know.
He risked his money.
He just went to go and do it.
There's nobody who's judging that.
I may have sympathy for the guy.
If he's really broke, I might give him some money, but I don't know.
If you go and start a company and you make a million dollars, do you deserve that?
Well, what if market forces just happen to change and you lose all your money?
Do you deserve that?
You ask a woman out and she goes out with you.
Do you deserve to have her go out with you?
If she says no, do you not deserve her to?
I mean, again, I don't know what deserve even means in that situation.
Number four, are people under no obligation to do anything they don't freely want to or freely commit themselves to doing?
If you say yes, then you think the only moral requirements are the ones we freely bring on ourselves, say by making promises or contracts.
You know, like politicians in charge of the state do.
Suppose I'm walking to the library and I see a man drowning in a river.
I decide that the pleasure I would get from saving his life wouldn't exceed the cost of getting wet and the delay.
So I walk on by.
Since I've made no contract with the man, I am under no obligation to save him.
I mean, you can make up all these artificial situations.
It's just called being a professional dickhead.
I'm sorry to be so blunt.
I know you don't have a dick, but you can still be a dick.
And what I mean by that is, if you go to a medical student and you say, well, there are ten guys in the operating room, and nine of them have life-threatening injuries, but you can save them, and one guy you might be able to save, but it's going to cost the lives of those nine guys, what do you do?
We say, well, I try and save the lives.
Ah, then you want the tenth guy to die!
Is that what you're saying?
It's like, you're just being a dick.
We have to make tough choices in life sometimes.
If you don't want to make tough choices, that's fine.
If you want to just yammer on with these artificial situations while people are actually out there trying to reduce the amount of violence in the world and produce situations where people get wealthier, richer, and have more opportunities, if you don't want to be part of that process, that's fine.
But if you're in the ER yammering at people about entirely artificial situations while we're actually trying to save people's lives, then you need to get the fuck out of the ER. Go to the library and go talk to your fucking hand.
Because what you're doing is you're actually interfering with people trying to make the world better.
Oh, you just want that tenth guy to die, don't you?
Because you're going to go save those nine guys.
You might as well just go and strangle that tenth guy.
It's like, I'm really trying to save some lives here.
Can you just get out and stop being in my face with these nonsense questions?
You know, pick up a sponge and pass something useful to me, help out, or get out of the way.
But coming up with these kinds of questions, it's ridiculous.
Look, Don't come up with theoretical situations.
Be an empiricist.
I know you're in academia.
I know you're studying philosophy in academia, God help you, which is an abstraction on top of an abstraction, on top of parasitism, on top of an exploitive uselessness, because you're not actually out here with me in the free market actually providing philosophical value to people.
You're just spinning stupid-ass, sticky-brained webs in your little fortress of solitude and exploitation in academia.
But the reality is The reality is you need to be an empiricist.
If you don't think people will help a man drowning in the river, don't come up with these made-up examples.
Go to the mall and pretend to faint.
Well, get out of the library.
Put down the books.
Step away from the highlighters.
Put down the iPad.
Step away from the bookshelves and go out into the real world.
And pretend to faint in a mall and see what happens.
How many people do you think are going to step over you or kick you or go through your purse and take your money?
And how many people are going to be like, oh my goodness, are you all right?
Go to the mall.
Try this.
Be an empiricist.
I'm telling you.
People will stop and help almost exclusively.
You know, there's these stories where, oh, I think it was years ago and some, oh, this woman got strangled to death in New York and nobody did a thing.
I mean, they're all lies.
I mean, they're all just lies promoted to make us believe that we need a central coercive agency like the state to protect us from an indifferent population.
It's not true.
You just look, it's all an urban myth.
Nobody could hear it.
It was the middle of the night.
It was in a lobby that was far away from everything.
I mean, nobody heard.
So the reality, of course, is that just go faint at them all and see what happens.
The vast majority of people will stop you and ask you if you're okay.
So, just stop with all this nonsense.
And the other thing, too, is let's say that there is a majority of people who will simply walk by and not save this guy.
Well, then you can't solve the problem with the government, because the majority of those people will never, ever vote for any welfare state whatsoever.
Now, the other thing, too, is that we live in a public society.
All societies are fundamentally public once you're outside your house.
So let's say I am walking to the library and I don't want to go and save the guy.
Let's say I look over and I just walk on to the library.
Do you know what risk I'm taking by not helping the guy?
Maybe I'm not a swimmer, but I'm not getting someone else.
Do you know what a huge risk I'm taking?
I mean, I guess not, because you're still in the library reading and writing rather than actually out there living philosophy and bringing it to people in a productive way.
I mean, if you want to not serve the rulers but serve the people with philosophy, go talk to the people and ask for donations like I do.
Get out of academia.
Go into the marketplace like Socrates.
I know you're probably a postmodern philosophy student, but you may have heard of this Socrates fellow.
Go out into the marketplace and talk to people about what matters to them.
I mean, I do like six hours of call-in shows every week where people can bring whatever topic they want to a philosophical perspective, and I will try and give them some useful feedback.
Don't write these made-up solutions designed to justify The power and the coercion of the state.
Right?
You're just a state-serving toady at the moment by writing these scare scenarios designed to have people run back into the bloody and vicious arms of the state.
Go out into the marketplace.
Quit academia.
Go and set up a podcast.
Go and set up a YouTube channel.
It's really cheap.
And start talking about philosophy with people.
Go into the market.
If you want to talk about the market, stop spending your time in all these government-run institutions and actually go out into the market.
Because otherwise, honey...
You just sound like someone, like you're talking to me, and I'm a black guy, and you're telling me all about the black experience, and you've never actually met a black person.
If you want to talk about the market, please, go into the market.
If you want to talk about the black experience, have at least one black friend.
Otherwise, you're just serving racists, and in this case, you're serving the state.
So if you want to talk about the market, Get out of academia, set up a podcast, take some donations or sell ads if you want.
Go actually into the market.
I've spent 15 years as an entrepreneur, and now I have spent six or seven years as an entrepreneur in this, so I've got two decades of customer-facing market experience.
So for some philosophy academic student who's never set foot in the free market to tell me all about the market, you don't know how ridiculous and idiotic you sound.
It is an embarrassment.
It is the Donnick-Kruger effect.
You have to actually be reasonably good at something to know whether somebody else is good at something.
You don't know anything about the market.
You've never spent any time in the market.
You don't have any customer-facing stuff because you're in academia.
So just go out into the market and don't talk about stuff you've never experienced.
I mean, I don't go to a blind man for his perspectives on paintings.
And I would never come to someone like you to tell me about the market.
I know that you're going to serve the state because you're taking money in protection from the state.
You're going to serve the state.
But think of the risk that I'm taking when I go out and just sneer at somebody drowning and continue to walk past.
First of all, if there's nobody around whatsoever and the man drowns, then nobody will ever know.
This is why I'm saying this is a completely theoretical example.
If there's nobody around and the man drowns, Then he's dead and I'm not telling anyone.
So it is functionally the same as not existing in the social world, right?
So I'm not saying it's not a problem, but you'll never know about it.
So who cares, right?
I mean, it'll never be anything that anyone can know anything about or do anything about or whatever.
And if there are other people around to see me do this sneery thing, Then they will go and save him.
And they also, one person might be going to save him.
Another one might take a picture with their cell phone of me sneering.
Or they might take a video of me sneering at this person and continuing to walk.
There may be security cameras.
There may be traffic cameras.
There may be any number of cameras that will catch me that might be put on YouTube that will go viral.
And then people will say, oh my gosh, I know that person.
That's that Steph guy.
Talks a lot about philosophy.
Here he is sneering at some guy drowning because he's late to go to the library.
What's going to happen?
My name is going to get published.
People are going to write about it.
I'm going to be known as the asshole who walked by and didn't save anyone.
What a massive risk I'm taking in not doing that.
There's so many ways to enforce best behavior without the power of the state.
But since you're deeply embedded in the power of the state and licking the boots of the state and gaining all of the gold of the poor that's falling from the table of the state, I can't imagine that you're that interested in voluntarism because then you'd actually have to get out and do philosophy rather than serve the powers of those who oppose philosophy.
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