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Dec. 11, 2013 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:19:46

2555 The Wisdom of Socrates - Peter Schiff Radio Show December 11th, 2013

Stefan Molyneux guest hosts the Peter Schiff radio show and speaks with Peter Boghossian on the basics of the Socratic Method. Stefan also discusses governmental responses to gold backed alternative currencies and the fundamentals of love.

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	Make no friends in the pits and you take no prisoners.
	One minute you're up half a million in soybeans and the next boom.
	Your kids don't go to college and they've repossessed your bent here.
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	I don't know when they decided that they wanted to make a virtue out of selfishness.
	Your money.
	Your stories.
	Your freedom.
	The Peter Schiff Show.
	Good morning, everybody.
	I hope you're doing well.
	This is Stefan Molyneux sitting in for Peter Schiff.
	Good morning, good morning, good morning.
	We have an interesting show today.
	I know you're all talking about politics and economics, and we're definitely going to dip into that.
	We're going to do a little bit of philosophy.
	The love of philosophy.
	of wisdom.
	Not wisdom itself, because you just got to love it and keep chasing it.
	Bring it down, often with your teeth, poison darts, bows and arrows, calling in airstrikes, whatever you can do to get wisdom and live a life of virtue.
	The old Socratic trinity, the holy trinity of philosophy.
	Reason equals virtue equals self-esteem.
	We're going to talk with Dr.
	Peter Boghossian, a professor of philosophy about the Socratic method and how it can help make your life better, easier, faster, meaner, and give you a six-pack.
	I think that's what he promised.
	I'm pretty sure it was.
	So, I've got some letters we got from my show yesterday, which I want to get to as well.
	Please, please, please feel free to call in.
	I am happy to take calls anytime you like, and we're going to have a great, great show.
	So, let's start with a story you may remember from, if you ever took a class in philosophy, You probably saw the professor through one bloodshot eye at 8 o'clock in the morning.
	You may remember this story because I think we're going to play a clip in a little bit from Matt Cartwright, the Democrat representative from Pennsylvania, about Obamacare.
	But I want you to think about that clip we're going to play in a sec and compare it to this story.
	This is the story of Socrates and the Oracle of Delphi.
	And it really is the foundation of the greatness of Western culture.
	I think this one story is the tip of the spear that broke the superstitions of the ancient world.
	So Socrates was known as a wise and curious and phenomenally ugly man.
	The busts of him look like the elephant man made in wax melted under a hot sun after having been kicked by an ass.
	So, but you know, inner beauty is what counts, right?
	That's why I'm on the radio and not television.
	But anyway, there was a guy named Sheriffon, and he visited the Oracle of Delphi.
	So the Oracle of Delphi was basically a guy who had a direct pipeline to the gods.
	And he could never lie, because the gods couldn't lie.
	So every time you ask the Oracle of Delphi something, he had to tell you the truth.
	There was just no way around it.
	So this guy goes to the Oracle of Delphi and he says, Man, there's this guy named Socrates.
	Everybody thinks he's a smart guy.
	I think he's a bit of a smartass, but they say he's a smart guy.
	Is there anyone in Athens who is wiser than Socrates?
	And the Oracle of Delphi said, No.
	Not really.
	I'm sure it said it just like that.
	No, no, not really.
	In a big booming voice.
	Oh, I should have answered some echo there.
	We'll do that in post-production, right?
	But the oracle said, no, there's no one wiser than Socrates, and Sheriffon went to go and told Socrates that.
	And Socrates said, well, that can't be right.
	I mean, that makes no sense whatsoever, because I am intensely aware of my own ignorance.
	I mean, and any wise person is intensely aware of their own ignorance.
	There are so many things.
	Look, I've done thousands of podcasts.
	I've interviewed probably 500 subject matter experts.
	I still feel fairly retarded in about 99.999% of human knowledge.
	I mean, human knowledge doubles every 18 months or every 12 months or some insane thing like that.
	There's just no way to keep up.
	So we have to be intensely aware of our own ignorance.
	Because one of the things that is a mark of low intelligence is a high estimation of your own knowledge.
	This has been repeatedly tested and found to be true, that the dumber you are, the smarter you think you are.
	And the smarter you are, the more you realize how little you know.
	Which is why we aim for principles, not facts, as philosophers, right?
	Like physicists, they don't aim for this rock falls, they aim for how do all rocks fall, how does everything fall, how does matter interact.
	If you aim for just things themselves, then you're like a dog who can catch a ball.
	It doesn't mean that you understand the equations behind it or can figure out how to launch a probe to go past Jupiter.
	It just means you can catch a ball and get astonishing amounts of drool on it.
	So Socrates said, I cannot possibly be the wisest because I know enormously little.
	I'm intensely aware of my own ignorance.
	So Socrates made it his life's work.
	He said, okay.
	I'm faced with a contradiction here.
	The oracle cannot lie.
	The oracle cannot lie.
	Yet the oracle has told Sheriffon that I am the wisest in Athens.
	So how am I going to resolve this contradiction?
	He had what he called the daemon, a conscience that sort of sat on his shoulder and bothered him when he did something wrong.
	And it was bothering him.
	Oracle can't lie, but I can't be the wisest.
	Let's resolve this.
	So he decided to go and question the most learned, the wisest, the greatest teachers in Athens.
	All the people who said, boy, we got knowledge tied up in a bow, and we can insert it anywhere you like so that you can be knowledgeable and walk like John Wayne.
	And he wouldn't go and ask them and he'd say, they'd say, I know what is justice, I know what is piety, I know what is virtue, I know what is wisdom, I know truth, goodness, you know, spin the wheel, I know it.
	And he would ask them and he would keep asking them and he would find out very quickly that they did not know what they claimed to know.
	One man said, the life of pleasure is the best life.
	The life of physical, sensual pleasure.
	Sex.
	Food.
	Back rubs.
	Geisha girls.
	Whatever.
	Actually, probably that may not be geographically correct.
	I'll have to look that up.
	See?
	I told you I didn't know much.
	And he said the life of pleasure is the best.
	And Socrates said, well, you know one thing that's intensely pleasurable to me?
	It's not what you think.
	When I have an itch and I can't quite get there, and then I finally get my fingertip on it and give it a good old scratch, it's like, oh, that's so good.
	And he said, if the life of pleasure is the best, then having a perpetual itch that you're perpetually scratching must be the very best possible life.
	Well, that really doesn't make much sense now, does it?
	He kept asking people, kept asking people who claimed to have all of this knowledge, and he found out, well, two things happened.
	One, he made an enormous number of enemies, as rational questioning tends to do in the world, because there's so many people who profit from lies and misdirections, falsehood, manipulations, and control.
	Propaganda, basically.
	So he found that people...
	Hated him for asking the questions, and he also found that they didn't know what they claimed to know.
	And then, oh man, then he got it.
	Like an epiphany, literally like the Sermon on the Mount, like a lightning bolt straight to the base of the brain.
	He got it.
	And he said, now I understand what the oracle meant.
	I am the wisest man in Athens because I know that I know almost nothing.
	Whereas other people think that they know something when they in fact don't know something I am wise because I accept the enormity of my ignorance, and these other people are foolish because they pretend to have knowledge that they don't have.
	Think of that in terms of us and the government.
	Barack Obama says, I can reduce your health care premiums $2,500 a year by the end of my first term.
	How does he know he can do that?
	How does he know?
	Are they overcharging people $2,500?
	He doesn't know.
	Guy doesn't know much about economics at all, wasn't trained in it at all.
	Can he figure out, well, you know, while being leader of the free world, I think I will also find a cure for cancer.
	And that's got to lower premiums.
	For sure.
	And, you know, while I'm at it, I'll knock some beaker open in the lab and also discover a cure for Alzheimer's and multiple sclerosis and all these kinds of things.
	That's going to reduce premiums.
	He doesn't know.
	He just promises things that he doesn't know.
	This is foundational.
	This is foundational to understanding why the world is not working.
	We forget what Socrates taught us 2,500 years ago, which is that we do not know so much and the government and the politicians will always claim To give you answers.
	We're going to cure poverty.
	We're going to cure ignorance.
	We're going to heal the sick.
	We're going to make the oceans cool and reverse global warming.
	I mean, they could do that just by turning off their teleprompters and trying to talk without having the speechwriter's hands up their butt.
	We're going to talk about the Socratic method.
	We're going to talk about the wisdom of philosophy, how it can help our dying society, how it can help our society committing a slow economic harikari through debt and imprisonment and enslavement.
	We have so much to learn that we have forgotten, which is why we're going to talk a little bit about philosophy today.
	We're of course going to welcome your calls about philosophical topics, about virtue, goodness, truth, ethics, all the tasty, juicy stuff that can make our lives better.
	If we are rational, we can be virtuous.
	Until we are rational, we cannot be virtuous.
	If we are virtuous, we can aim for the greatest good, which is happiness.
	As Aristotle pointed out, happiness is the one thing we don't get in order to get something else.
	So, stay with us.
	Don't worry.
	Be happy.
	So, we'll be right back after the break.
	We're going to talk a little bit about...
	What the politicians are saying, how it compares to Socrates' wisdom, and then we'll be talking to Dr.
	Peter Boghossian about philosophy in action.
	This is Stefan Molyneux for Peter Boghossian.
	Come here, girl.
	Let me hug you.
	I ain't gonna try no chicken moves. - Let's go. - You've heard of Karl Marx, right?
	Well now, meet his worst nightmare.
	This is The Peter Schiff Show.
	Alright, we are back.
	This is Stefan Malhue sitting in with the one and only Peter Schiff, who I believe has not been allowed to leave rehab as yet.
	So, we are talking about philosophy and we're talking about Socrates and the wisdom of knowing how little you know.
	I mean, you ever sit down and speak with an expert and they just blow your mind?
	This happens to me like literally every other day.
	I sit down with somebody And it just blows my mind how much they know and how ridiculously ignorant I am.
	We like the specialization of the modern free market and all that kind of stuff, but man, it makes you feel retarded sometimes.
	So, we've said that Socrates was considered the wisest because he knew that he didn't know a whole bunch of stuff about the world.
	Refusal to participate in what Thomas Sowell calls the wisdom of the anointed.
	You know, like I anoint myself as the savior of humanity and I am going to educate the children and make the illiterate literate and heal the sick and part the oceans and walk on water.
	I mean, this madness, this megalomania, this truly economically suicidal grandiosity that is the very nature of the powers that be.
	Let's have a listen to Matt Cartwright.
	Audio Wizards, this is Cut01.
	Matt Cartwright talking about how it's great that you lose your healthcare under Obamacare.
	I'm feeling in large part in semantics there, Thomas, because a lot of those people, they did have policies that didn't meet the minimum standards.
	That's just not a theoretical discussion.
	There's a reason you have minimum standards.
	There are people out there who have insurance.
	It's really an illusion of coverage.
	I mean, they have immense deductibles.
	They have annual and lifetime caps.
	There's so many people out there with what I call phony insurance policies, and the fact that they're going to lose those policies sooner or later, I think is a good thing.
	Because what we're up to here is we are strengthening the healthcare system in this country.
	Isn't that delightful?
	Isn't that just a tasty cheesecake of vanity stuffed straight up your nose?
	You see, you may like your insurance, you may like your doctor, but the problem you see is that Matt Cartwright doesn't like it.
	And remember, he's got the guns!
	What is it that happens when the government does stuff?
	Frankly, they point guns at people.
	All the government has is a gun.
	Most of what law is, is an opinion.
	With a gun.
	Do they reason with you?
	Do they sit you down and say, you know what?
	We've got some better healthcare options for you.
	Let us win you over through reason, through peace, through negotiation.
	No!
	They point guns at you basically and say, do it or die.
	Pay your fines or die.
	Sign up or die.
	And I say, or die, not lightly and not sophistically, but in reality, you don't obey the law Soon you get letters, you get complaints, you get guys coming to your door.
	You don't go with them.
	You could be shot.
	No one to call the cops on when the cops are at your door.
	So he doesn't think that you have the right health care.
	And he's not going to reason with you.
	He's not going to make the case.
	He's certainly not going to found a health care company and provide you better options.
	No, no, no.
	Why would you want to do any of that when you have a gun?
	Guy comes up to you in a dark alley, he's not going to try and talk you out of your wallet if he's perfectly willing to stab you in the side if you don't give it to him.
	He doesn't need a lot of eloquence when he's well armed.
	And the fact that this guy doesn't like your health care Should be entirely irrelevant.
	In a free society, Matt Cartwright's opinion about your healthcare coverage would be completely irrelevant.
	Don't like my healthcare.
	Don't like my car.
	Good thing you didn't get my healthcare.
	Good thing you didn't buy my car.
	Good thing you don't have to have sex with my wife.
	If you don't find her attractive, I think she's hot.
	But it's not satisfying to him.
	Now, first of all, this is complete nonsense.
	First of all, a lot of people who are getting the Obamacare are getting higher deductibles, massively higher, double, triple deductibles, so this is all nonsense.
	Why does somebody who's 60 want dental insurance for their children?
	You know, if you haven't dealt with your kids' dental problems by the time they're 40, I kind of think they're on their own.
	Why do young people want insurance against afflictions almost entirely associated with age?
	Why can you not choose?
	Well, you can't choose because this has nothing to do with feeling that there are no minimum standards.
	We all know how this works politically, right?
	It's all very clear.
	A bunch of people want other people to pay for their health care, and so they lobby the government to put minimum standards in so that everybody else has to subsidize their health care.
	Single moms don't have a dad to pay for the kids' dental work, so they gotta make everyone pay.
	Ninety percent of the rise in the welfare state is directly attributable to single moms.
	You kill the family, you feed the state.
	You strangle the bond between husband and wife through welfare, through lax divorce laws, you feed the power of the state.
	The requirements of the children remain constant.
	The welfare state is a single mom state.
	This is what happens when you break up the family.
	So why do we care what Matt Cartwright says about health care?
	Because he's got a gun, because he can write magic words on a magic piece of paper, which then gets sent to a bunch of guys in blue with guns who then say, well, I guess we're going to go and shoot people who disagree.
	How can we possibly call this a civilized society?
	We are in a murder-based society.
	We are in a society where you obey the law And the law is constantly changing and the law is manipulated and the law is mostly profit-seeking.
	You know, they don't need to pass a lot of new laws against murder or theft or rape or assault.
	That was handled by common law approximately 10,000 years ago.
	Now it's all rent-seeking, profiteering.
	The spoils of the state go to the politically connected.
	In return for votes, in return for support, in return for donations, we bribe the people in control of the guns to give us more back than we paid for.
	It is tragic.
	And the degree to which we believe that Matt Cartwright knows what is the best healthcare for everyone is the degree to which we will continue to slide into the slow fascism which is the inevitable death of Western culture, society, and freedoms unless we stand firm and fight back with the only thing that works philosophy,
	ethics, virtue, reason, argument appeals to the better nature and rational capacities Of our fellow citizens.
	We will be getting to that in the next Sevecum segment.
	Please feel free to call in 855-4SHIFT, 855-472-4433.
	We're talking to Dr.
	Peter Boghossian about philosophy next.
	This is Van Molyneux for Peter Schiff.
	The very next day, they got the money, hey, you know they got a way.
	We now return to the Peter Schiff Show.
	Call in now.
	855-4-SHIFT. That's 855-472-4433.
	The Peter Schiff Show.
	All right, this is Van Molyneux sitting in for Peter Schiff.
	We are going to do some philosophizing.
	And we have on the line Peter Boghossian, philosophy professor at Portland State University.
	He teaches critical thinking, science and pseudoscience.
	In other words, I think science versus science.
	Pseudoscience, and just for a note, you of course are welcome to call in and ask Peter questions about philosophy or virtues or values, 855-4SHIFT, 855-472-4433.
	One caveat that Peter has asked is that he would really like to be asked questions in ancient Greek, just to show off his knowledge of that.
	So I just wanted to mention that.
	Peter, are you on the line?
	I am.
	I'm recovering from the ancient Greek joke.
	Thanks for having me.
	I appreciate it.
	No, my pleasure.
	So, I wanted to talk a little bit about the Socratic method.
	I think it's something really, we kind of all intuitively get it, and if you get into arguments about politics or values, people kind of use it, but it's like, for most people who've been trained in it and really understand it, it's kind of like watching people blindfolded swinging at baseballs with a fish.
	So, I wonder if you could just step us through a bit of a definition of the Socratic method so we can use it a little bit more consciously, and more importantly, know when it's being used against us badly.
	Sure.
	I think it's an incredibly important topic, and I'm surprised, frankly, that it's not discussed more.
	Basically, the Socratic method is a way of asking questions so that you can come to the truth about answers.
	So it assumes, for example, that there is a truth to be known about things.
	So it would work very well in economics, for example, but it wouldn't work very well in terms of your own personal taste, like You know, what type of music you like, what type of food you like, things of that nature.
	So the Socratic method has five stages.
	And the first is it wonder.
	You begin to wonder, you wonder about some question.
	And the famous question from Plato's Republic is, what is justice?
	So we're wondering, you and I are having a conversation, what is justice?
	And then someone will posit an answer to that, like the second stage.
	They'll say, well, justice is paying your debts.
	And then this is the core of the Socratic method, stage three.
	We'll engage in a question and answer period, and what we'll try to do is exactly the same as the scientific method.
	We'll try to undermine the hypothesis that someone gives.
	So if someone says, well, justice is paying your debts, you try to think of or come up with an example when that's not the case.
	Right.
	So one example that I remember from the dialogues is something like this.
	If you borrow a knife from someone, then it's paying a debt to give the knife back to the guy.
	But if the guy comes in and says, I need my knife back so I can stab my dog or wife or whatever, right?
	Then clearly it's not a just action to give him his knife back.
	So there we have an example where not paying your debts is a just action.
	That's exactly correct.
	And it's so simple.
	It is truly just that simple.
	But you just need to train yourself to do this, to think in this way.
	And the consequence of training yourself in thinking this way is that you can come to truth about the world.
	You can figure stuff out for yourself.
	So if that, if it says, well, you know, I need the knife back because I want to stab my dog and then my wife and then my children, and you say, well, I'm not going to give you the knife back, then it's not, justice is not paying your debts.
	So we can rule that out as an alternative, as a definition.
	So people give, well, you know, Along the same lines, well, it's harming your enemies and helping your friends.
	And then the counterexample to that would be, what if your enemies, what if your friends have deceived you and they're actually bad people and your enemies are really not your enemies at all?
	So things like that, counterexamples, and then, again, it's just the same iterative process, and then ultimately people would act accordingly.
	So they'll act on the results of their inquiry.
	We're looking at one side of the equation, which I think is really important, right, obviously.
	So if you say justice is paying off your debts, if you can find examples where paying off your debts is not justice, that destroys the thesis.
	Also, if you can find examples of justice that have nothing to do with paying off debts, then the thesis is revealed as incomplete, right?
	It does not encompass everything that could be termed justice.
	That is correct, and the reason that that's just so essential, I was told repeatedly that this audience is incredibly intelligent and educated, so I'll kind of bump it up a level.
	The reason that that's so important is because that prevents us from slipping into relativism, where There's no standard to make a moral judgment about things, and it's a way to come to moral knowledge about things.
	So, the scientific method gives us a way to come to knowledge about the world, and the Socratic method gives us a way to come to knowledge about morality, to, at the very least, to be able to rule out alternatives that are immoral.
	And you can do it with anything.
	Yeah, and this process I think is so important because when we make decisions about values based on conclusions without knowing the reasoning behind them, We will be subject or prey to the emotional and language manipulation of Socrates' ancient enemy, the sophists, the people who could make the worst argument appear, the better.
	Like in teaching my daughter math, I don't just give her the answers, you know, what's three and four, seven.
	You know, what I do is, you know, here, use your fingers, like daddy does, and try and figure out what the answer is by reasoning it out yourself.
	Right, so there was this way of teaching language that was like the whole word.
	You just teach the whole word and have the kid memorize it.
	Now we're back to phonics, right, which is where you teach the components of word.
	Why do you think people are so resistant or why do you think power structures are so resistant to moral reasoning and just want to inject people with conclusions that lead them to subjugation?
	Boy, fantastic point.
	So you put your finger on it before and we have to think about, okay, so one of the ways, as you said in the intro, I teach critical thinking, this is my life's work.
	One of the problems with the way people think is they think in terms of conclusions.
	Oh, he has the same conclusion I do, or she has a different conclusion than I have, that I hold.
	So we need to get over thinking in conclusions and start thinking about processes.
	We need to think about premises.
	We need to think about what is the reasoning behind somebody's conclusion, and we need to look at the reasoning.
	So if you're not familiar with this way of thinking, it can be It can really put one off balance.
	Think about how is it that somebody got to that conclusion, and was that process legitimate?
	And if that's the case, only then can we really look at the conclusion.
	Most people start with their conclusions, and then they work backwards.
	Yeah, almost all reasoning is ex post facto justification for prior prejudices.
	I think that's certainly the case.
	What do you think is the best way?
	You know, one of the things that I noticed when I first began learning the Socratic method and when I first began annoying other people with the Socratic method, which I continue to do for the next 30 years, It's really emotionally difficult.
	It takes a lot of patience.
	And there is a kind of terrifying cliff-edge moment.
	At least there was for me and a number of people I've talked to.
	I'm sure you've experienced the same thing.
	There's kind of a weird cliff-edge moment where you realize that you've been trained by your society.
	Let's just say you have high school.
	Twelve years or whatever, your society trained you.
	And now, when you're actually asked, you have no idea.
	What virtue is.
	You have no real idea what justice is.
	You have no idea.
	Even the truth, even things which are just epistemological, which have no moral basis.
	You don't even know how the truth has arrived at, the validity of your senses, anything like that.
	It's really, I think, an emotionally difficult, break out of the matrix kind of moment.
	Have you had success in helping people to navigate that huge emotional challenge?
	Yeah, again, an excellent point.
	But part of that is that you have to teach people to do these things for themselves.
	Yes, there is certainly a level of the Socratic method in which you engage people and ask them questions.
	Ultimately, that comes back to yourself, if you can engage the method on yourself.
	And you're right, it is disconcerting, because we're all subject to ideologies, and we have a certain myopia with regard to our own culture, our own society, and we think that the things that we do are correct.
	Now, I can't speak for Canada, but I can say something that makes it worse in this country is that the self-esteem movement has been an absolute, unmitigated catastrophe.
	The self-esteem movement coupled with relativism, the idea that everybody is entitled to their own facts and their own truths, makes breaking out much more difficult.
	Yeah, I mean, one of the things that is tragically true about the self-esteem movement is that sociopaths tend to have the highest self-esteem.
	That's usually not a good sign for a virtuous movement.
	And so what are the best ways, you know, the end result of Socrates, the original, well, I guess there's some arguments that a few people originated before him, but let's just say Socrates, the originator of the Socratic method.
	Ended up with a belly full of hemlock and rigor mortis.
	So, you know, one of the things that we need to be aware is that it is highly volatile.
	I mean, people get killed over the Socratic method they have throughout history.
	I mean, if you look at Galileo was tortured for proposing the heliocentric model of the solar system and so on.
	So it is dangerous.
	It is tricky.
	One of the best ways that you found on disarming people's...
	You know, I don't know what the exact ancient Greek term is for freak out, but I'd like to sing it if you could give it to me.
	No, I won't do that.
	But what's the best way to disarm people's responses to this?
	That's a great question.
	It also happens with blasphemy laws all around the world when you engage people in a dialogue about things.
	I think that the best way, this may not be the answer you're looking for, but it really is the truth.
	I have learned to not do this with my wife.
	So that would be the most piece of advice that I would give you.
	There are certain times when your reasoning process ought to be kept to yourself.
	But in terms of other people, when you disengage, my advice is always to be sincere and willing to revise your beliefs.
	It could happen.
	In fact, it has happened to me on many occasions when I thought that I had the truth.
	In prisons, it happens when I teach in prisons.
	I've engaged people on subjects, and I've changed my mind as a result of those inquiries.
	I think if people know that you are sincere in your questions and genuinely willing to change your mind, that itself is kind of an attitudinal way to disarm any further flare-ups.
	Yeah, and be aware that you're walking into a minefield, that when you teach people a methodology, you are undoing what they perceive of as their personality.
	If your personality is based upon inflicted conclusions, threatened conclusions, bullied or bribed conclusions, and these can include both secular and religious ones, then what you experience as your personality, it may actually be correct, but because you don't have the methodology, even a correct opinion That does not have the right methodology is still a prejudice.
	So even though you may be correct because you haven't arrived at the reasoning yourself and you don't know how to reason, you have a significant challenge and people I think feel themselves almost disintegrating during this process.
	It lends itself to an interesting philosophical question.
	If you hold for whatever reasons, perhaps accidentally, the correct philosophical conclusions but you lack the methodology or the reasoning process By which you could arrive at those conclusions.
	I would argue that you can't really be said to know.
	No, I mean, look, I suck at golf.
	That doesn't mean I couldn't get a hole in one.
	And the fact that I might accidentally get a hole in one does not mean that I'm the next Tiger Woods by any way, shape or form.
	So when we want to clean up our thinking, We ought to attempt to impose the Socratic method on ourselves and really, really take a look at something.
	I did a talk at Intel on this.
	Sorry, sorry, Peter.
	We've got to take a quick break.
	We are beholden to the sponsors who are generously supporting the show.
	We will be right back after the break.
	break.
	Hold your thought and we'll take calls then.
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	Hi everybody, it's Stefan Molyneux sitting in for Peter Schiff.
	We are doing some philosophy today and I have Dr.
	Peter Boghossian, a professor of philosophy.
	We are going to talk a little bit about the Socratic method and About how we can apply it to current events.
	You know, what's really tragic to me, Peter, is whenever we see major decisions that need to be made as a society, I mean, they're fundamentally moral decisions.
	How should healthcare be provided?
	How should we deal with the sick?
	What is the acceptable and legitimate use of coercion in society?
	These are really, really, I would say, fundamentally ethical issues.
	And yet, when was the last time that you, as a professor of philosophy, was invited on a show to provide the moral, philosophical perspective on current events?
	Never.
	Other than today, I mean.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Never.
	Right, and isn't that tragic?
	It literally is like, it's like having healthcare questions and never having doctors involved.
	Oh wait, we're doing that.
	I think at the moment.
	So let's take an issue, because one of the things that's challenging about the Socratic method is its universalization, right?
	To me, when you're talking about ethics, you have to be talking about universal principles.
	A good universal principle is I cannot incur debts on your behalf without your permission.
	Would you agree with that as a reasonable moral proposition?
	Yeah, that whole debt is tentatively true.
	Okay, so if we take that as a universal, then it means it plows right through governments, it plows right through the law, and if we look at something like the national debt, given that it's not paid off in the lifetime of the taxpayers, how would we analyze this from a moral standpoint?
	Okay, so I'll throw a slight curveball at you.
	I'm 47 years old, and one of the things that I have realized is that my time is vital.
	So, before I start any kind of Socratic conversation, there has to be, and again, if you have an abundance of time, you don't have to do this, but you have to have some way of figuring out where the person with whom you're speaking is in the conversation.
	So, with that, I would throw out a very brief question, something just to give me an idea of where I should gauge the conversation.
	So, for the national debt, I would say, okay, what's the difference between the debt and the deficit?
	Now, if somebody doesn't know that, Then I know it's going to be a longer and more arduous discussion.
	If someone does know that, then I can...
	It basically is a way for me to figure out how to gauge the intellectual level and educational level so that I can take the conversation from there.
	Okay, so I say deficit is the deficiency in this year's spending and debt is the accumulation of that over time.
	Exactly.
	Okay, so now we know...
	I know exactly that you're the sort of person who's educated and intelligent.
	We can have this thoughtful discussion now.
	If not, it makes it more difficult.
	So then, we're wondering about something, and I would try to have you offer a hypothesis.
	Well, what do you think about government debt?
	Do you think it's too high?
	Now, just to clarify, I'm talking about the United States government debt.
	Yes, I think it's too high.
	Okay, so then...
	Alright, so now we have...
	So is the debt too high?
	It begins in wonder.
	Yes.
	So your conclusion is it is too high.
	Now we need to look at the process that led you to that conclusion.
	So that's stage three of the method.
	Why is it too high?
	And what do you think a reasonable debt would be?
	Well, a reasonable debt would be something that, according to the Keynesian theory, you would incur during times of a recession, and then you would pay off during times of a boom, right?
	So when there's a dip in the economy, government fills that in with money, and then pays off that debt during times of a boom, but we suddenly have got in this cycle, we just keep adding to it at all times.
	Okay, so why is adding to the debt a problem?
	What's wrong with that?
	Alright, let's pretend I'm a pragmatist.
	I'm just getting into that skinny, frozen suit of pragmatism.
	Let's just say, well, it's going to harm our exports, it's going to harm our sustainability as a society.
	Okay, so can you give a specific example of how...
	So basically, with these questions, here's what I'm doing.
	I'm trying to figure out the process of reasoning that you've used.
	How have you come to the conclusion when you said, yes, the debt is too high?
	So I'm going to ask you a series of questions, three or four questions, and then I'm going to find one that I think is weak, and then I'm going to pounce on it.
	It might be too strong, but then I'm going to try to undermine that.
	Okay, so I would say if we can't pay off our debts, we have to print money, we have to default, we have to borrow more.
	At some point, we can't borrow more, and it's going to crash.
	But isn't printing money good because that would cause inflation, which would normally be bad, but given that we are in a tremendous amount of debt, Won't that decrease the value of our money and make it easier to pay off our debt?
	Well, yes, but we have a lot of the population that's on a fixed income through government pensions or annuities and so on, and so their purchasing power would be reduced to below the poverty level or to true destitution level through inflation.
	Okay, so my argument didn't work, so now I need to hit another argument.
	Okay, so...
	Do you think it's possible that by incurring debt we could somehow be helping the economy or increasing the long-term prospects for economic growth?
	No, I would say that there's certainly advantages to some people when there's government debt, the people on the receiving end of the government debt, but overall, like if an individual household cannot borrow its way to wealth, you know, unless you borrow money and put it into something that's going to grow, like an investment, it's not what the government does generally.
	If the government doesn't invest, it spends, right?
	Alright, so I was hoping you'd make that argument.
	Okay, so why would one think that there's a parallel between an individual debt and a larger governmental debt?
	Yes.
	It could be that there's no parallel there, given that it's not a problem of scale.
	Right, I think there's a direct parallel.
	Well, see, it's not clear to me that it is a direct parallel.
	So individuals, for example, when individuals go into debt, that's very different from governments going into debt.
	It's different in scale, and it's not clear to me that that scales up.
	Right.
	Okay.
	So these are the kinds of questions that you are going to bring to bear to establish the knowledge level.
	And we often think of philosophy as a push process, but the Socratic method makes it more of a pull process.
	You're trying to map the land before you invade, so to speak, pierce the fog of war before you attack.
	So we'll come back after the break with more philosophy.
	Feel free to call in.
	We are looking forward to your calls.
	This is Stefan Molyneux for The Peter Schiff Show.
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	The Peter Schiff Show.
	Good morning, America.
	Good evening, England.
	Happy tomorrow to Hong Kong.
	I'm not that good with geography.
	Hope you're doing well.
	This is Stefan Molyneux sitting in for Peter Schiff.
	We are talking to Dr.
	Peter Boghossian.
	When was the last time you heard a professor of philosophy weigh in on the moral challenges of our societies?
	Well, I think it's high time, so we're talking about the national debt.
	And you could put forward a proposition, which is well enshrined in common law and in Anglo-Saxon law, which is you cannot morally enter into a debt on someone else's behalf without their permission.
	And you could even say, well, but democracy, we give permission and we vote and so on if you accept that.
	Still, we all know that the national debt is going to fall on the heads of the unborn, or at least the very young, who don't have any say in it at the moment.
	So, is there a way to transition what is often called private morality?
	You know, I can't go and buy a car and stick you with the bill without your permission.
	Is there a way to transition from private morality to public morality, or is that a bridge too far?
	Peter, what do you think?
	Well, I will argue the opposite side of the coin, but I want to be clear that I do not think that the...
	I do think that the debt is a tremendous problem that's crippling this country.
	But that being said, that's not necessary to employ the Socratic method.
	If the question is, is it ethical, or is it reasonable, or is it moral to incur debt, or for somebody else, for a tax scheme, for example, to help other people, again, it's very tricky due to the wording of the question, but I guess my answer would be it depends how much debt people incur.
	Without their knowledge.
	I mean, if you could save the lives of a bunch of children with, for example, kidney disease for only charging pennies to unsuspecting people, should you do it?
	Seems to me the answer would be yes if it comes at no cost to somebody else.
	Well, I think, though, that if people were to say it'll cost you pennies to save children dying of kidney disease, I can't imagine anyone who wouldn't reach under their couch cushions and hurl a few your way.
	So I do understand, you know, the scale, but of course the scale relative to the national debt.
	I think kids are now being born.
	Over $100,000 in debt, not even counting the unfunded liabilities, which go into the 70 to 80 to 90 trillion dollar range, many times the gross domestic product of the United States, which I think stands at about $15 trillion at the moment.
	So we could try and chisel away at the principal at the penny's end, but at the macro end, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars plus in debt for people who did not receive those services.
	The babies born now did not receive those, and statistically our It's impossible for kids born under that debt level to receive Social Security in 65 years or so.
	So I think at the macro level, I think we could chip away at the pennies level with the saving kids and so on.
	But at the macro level, I think we could make a pretty strong case that the ethics are suspect, to say the least.
	Yeah, I think you're right.
	I would say, again, defending something I don't believe, that it doesn't seem to bother most Americans one iota.
	And so the question is, why don't the...
	Look, if you want to know why we have, well, not we being Canadian, but why Americans have the system they do and the politicians they do, we need only to look in the mirrors.
	So it doesn't seem to bother the average taxpayer who couldn't possibly care less about the debt.
	So we're getting the system we deserve.
	Well, okay, okay.
	But see, this is where I think philosophy is so powerful and, frankly, enormously annoying to people.
	Which is kind of, we want to be that gadfly that just buzzes around people and can't be swatted.
	And there's no app to make us go away.
	There is actually an app for mosquitoes.
	I found that one day in the woods.
	It produces a high-pitched whine that sounds very similar to my radio voice.
	I think we would make the argument that it doesn't bother people because they're simply dealing with it at a pragmatic level.
	I mean, debt by its very nature is kind of hidden from people.
	Because you don't have to.
	You get all this stuff for free, so it's supposedly for free, and the debt is passed on.
	You may be dead when it's called due and that kind of stuff.
	So if people are looking at it from a mere pragmatic comfort of the moment sense, yeah, I mean, the debt, I guess it's bad in the abstract, but what does it really matter?
	But when you look at things from a moral standpoint, if we say there is a moral question around national debt, we would never allow an individual to do this.
	Why do we as a society endorse it collectively?
	Then the fact that people are comfortable with it Doesn't matter, because if you can get them to question the ethics of the whole system, then their discomfort will increase, right?
	So the fact that they don't bother by it, I think, is partly because we're not making a strong enough moral case for it.
	Yeah, you're right.
	If we can get people to question the ethics of the whole system...
	I said something similar to my dad, and he said, we can't even teach people to read.
	You think we're going to get them to question the ethics of the whole system?
	I think that the problem is that...
	We currently, the population in the United States on whole is just not suited to deal with these questions.
	Our educational infrastructure has failed us, and so we're getting the system, the system that we have is a consequence of valuing the wrong things.
	The debt that we've incurred is a consequence of people not having the tools to understand not just moral questions, but very, very fundamental pragmatic economic questions.
	Right.
	But if all we're doing is looking at pragmatic economic questions around the transfer of wealth, then we could really say that the mugger is perfectly justified in transferring wealth from his victim.
	If we don't bring moral considerations into play, we can say, well, the victim was rich, you see, and the mugger was not.
	And therefore, this income redistribution, you know, it's much more efficient than having a government bureaucracy that takes money and then gives it to people who have less money.
	It's much more efficient and entrepreneurial direct in order to get the mugger to just take the money directly.
	I mean, as soon as you take away the moral considerations, I think you really create a kind of the stereotypical Wild West of transfers that seem to have no particular end.
	No, that's exactly right.
	So the question for us, I would think on a very pragmatic level, again, bringing it back to pragmatics, how do we teach people basic tools of moral reasoning?
	How do we teach people to understand or to make these moral differentiations?
	And what we're doing now, I would argue, at least in the U.S. schools, is we're doing exactly the opposite of what we should be doing.
	We're teaching people to suspend judgments.
	We're teaching people not to make judgments about really, really important things.
	It's because of subjectivity.
	It's because of we don't want to hurt anybody's feelings.
	One culture is just as good as another culture.
	And what we should be doing is exactly the opposite, is teaching people how to make better, more discerning moral judgments.
	And I think we can't as individuals do much about the educational system other than to point out that it is a nightmare.
	We had a conversation just for the listeners.
	We had a chat last night about the show today, and Peter had a delightful conversation with my daughter who showed some, I think, moral reasoning.
	And there have been studies.
	I had this psychologist, Alison Gopnik, on the show who's done research to show that children are capable of moral reasoning at the age of 15 months.
	Of age, thus surpassing most postmodernist professors.
	And what is amazing is the amount of moral reasoning we can do.
	Like, I'm constantly hounding at people, like, don't yell at your kids, don't hit your kids.
	Why?
	Because when you don't do that, you have to reason with them.
	And if you teach kids how to morally reason from a very early age...
	They can do absolutely incredible things.
	I know you're a dad, too, to two delightful kids.
	So what can we do as parents?
	What can we do?
	Those of us who have access to children, that sounds kind of sinister.
	Those of us who have exposure, no, that sounds even more sinister.
	Those of us who enjoy the company of children, what can we do to help bring this kind of thinking about in the young?
	So that's a great question.
	I want to say that that question dovetails with your earlier question of How do we help people reason morally?
	And how do we help people think about these questions?
	It starts with the youth, and it starts in our homes, and it starts with our families.
	So one thing is, last night, if I may, with your daughter, you asked her a series of questions about the experiment, and the hair, and going up, and the electricity, and the science museum.
	You help people's reasoning process.
	You don't worry about what conclusions people have.
	And I know, again, it's That might strike people as a weird way to think about the problem, but moral reasoning is intrinsic to the properties that people use to get to moral reasoning.
	So you can ask your children questions.
	You can help your children.
	So if your child comes to you and he asks you a question, or she asks you a question, or she comes to the conclusion, how do you know that?
	How do you know that is one of the most powerful things you can ever say to anybody, including a child.
	So, how do you know that?
	Well, then you can employ some Socratic tools.
	Try to think of an example that would make the reasoning suspect.
	Try to lead the child to question the hypothesis that he or she has.
	That's the best way to do it.
	And that's also the best way to help people come to moral knowledge, to sharpen people's moral reasoning abilities, so that they can make better and more informed judgments about debt or their relationships or their lives.
	Exactly, yeah.
	Teach your children well, because it sure ain't going to happen in government schools.
	So thank you so much, Peter.
	We really appreciate it.
	You can check out Peter on the web.
	He's got shows coming up.
	He's got books coming out.
	He's a guy you want to get to read and to listen to.
	He's got lots of lectures on YouTube.
	So thank you so much for coming on board.
	Now, we're going to take a short break, but let me tell you, my friends, when we come back, I'm going to read a blistering letter.
	That informs me exactly how incorrect I am on so many levels.
	And I think we will both enjoy the process.
	So we'll be right back after the break.
	This is Stefan Molyneux sitting in for the one, the only Peter Schiff.
	Life is the more you're gonna get from life.
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	And the less you give to life is the less you're gonna get from life.
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	Schiff Radio continues right now.
	Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux sitting in for Peter Schiff.
	And how wrong am I? Let us together count the ways.
	So this is a letter that came in and I appreciate The letters that come in, it's great to get feedback on the show.
	And so somebody wrote and said, just heard the podcast of your guest today.
	I guess guest means guest.
	It's okay.
	Sometimes we let the spell check do our proofing for us.
	Not always the wisest idea.
	Just heard the podcast of your guest today.
	You guys are totally wrong about patents.
	We absolutely need patents and know that I'm yelling because he's using caps.
	And no, we would not have a better economy without them, as your guest pointed out.
	I am an entrepreneur myself, says the writer, and there is no way I would put the time and energy into my creations if I knew some multi-million dollar corporation could just say, oh wow, look, why didn't we think of that?
	Let's make one just like it.
	And presto, just like that, they would put the struggling and hardworking inventor out of business.
	Then your guest said, the answer to this is, just think of another invention.
	You guys are absolutely nuts, nuts, nuts.
	So that's all caps too.
	Then there's talk of monopoly.
	Well, I thought the market takes care of pricing, right?
	Come on, guys.
	I don't like big government either, but if you make it okay for big money to squash small money because they can steal your inventions, that's BS. Okay, so it goes on, but that's interesting and I appreciate the letter.
	I will give you my thoughts on it.
	Hopefully that will be...
	of some value.
	So, if your concern is that without patents, big companies can squash small inventors, I think you do not understand how the patent system works at the moment.
	How the patent system works at the moment is big companies buy up swaths of patents which they then use to crush competitors who try to enter the market.
	So, I had a friend who had a great idea Do you know you have an individual typing style?
	It's true.
	I mean, it's like a fingerprint.
	The keys you strike, the sequences, the speed, the rhythm.
	And so it was a way of finding out if somebody else was using your keyboard.
	It's impossible to duplicate.
	It's brilliant.
	It's like a secondary password kind of thing.
	So somebody breaks your...
	They start typing on your keyboard.
	It locks them out because it's like, dude, that's not the hand I'm familiar with.
	We all know body parts know that statement.
	But...
	It was a great idea.
	And he actually is very knowledgeable about patents, and so he went to go and look, and they said, well, it's pretty innovative.
	There's a couple of guys who've got patent holdings.
	They're not producing anything.
	And he looked them up, and yes, it turns out that they sued people and all that kind of stuff for patent infringement, even though they weren't producing anything.
	They're called patent trolls.
	And so he's like, well, you know, I guess I could try, but I don't know what's going to happen.
	And fighting patents...
	It's incredibly expensive.
	Great for lawyers.
	And I know that we all as a society look to the benefit of lawyers first because we are charitable and kind individuals.
	But sometimes it's not always the best for economic growth.
	So on the balance he said, you know what?
	I'm just, I'm not going to do it.
	It's a great idea.
	I'm not going to do it because it's just too risky.
	So it's not like one inventor, one patent, struggling guy fighting off big corporations.
	I mean, that may be how it starts, but you have to look at the practicality.
	Some guy has a patent On an online shopping cart, like using the metaphor of shopping carts, you know, stuff that makes Howard Rourke twitch in his literary grave, right?
	That we have a Kindle that pretends to be pages turning in a book to make it familiar to people over 300 years old.
	And so he's going around trying to ding everyone who's got a shopping cart on their website saying, give me money.
	It's a shakedown.
	Guy hasn't made anything.
	He's just got a patent.
	And I think Newegg or some website like that, which has a policy, we fight patent trolls.
	I don't care if we end up, you know, having to sell our kidneys or probably the kidneys of employees because they're management.
	I don't care if we have to do that.
	We are going to fight the patent trolls.
	And they go, and it costs hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars to do these fights.
	So I understand there's this theory, you know, like, well, this is the way it works.
	But forget about the way it works.
	Forget about what's talked about.
	So this guy, if he genuinely is an entrepreneur, and if he's an entrepreneur who's successful, he's probably had lots of people invest in him, and he probably would be a slightly better writer, you know, at least get the words right.
	So I don't mean to slag him on that.
	It's just I have some doubts, you know, people can claim whatever they want.
	What's that old cartoon?
	It's a dog typing on a computer and says, you know, on the Internet.
	Nobody knows you're a dog.
	So I don't know what the truth is, but he definitely is not in any software field, which is where a lot of the great innovations are occurring.
	Because if he's in a software field and he was doing anything truly innovative, he would have faced this problem.
	The investors would have said, how are you going to fight the patent trolls?
	How are you going to fight the big companies who might have patents on stuff like a garbage can on the screen?
	And again, we go to the facts, we go to history.
	Here's one of the greatest, in fact, I would argue the greatest period of innovation prior to the technological age of the late 20th century was the 19th century in the mechanical age.
	So about 9 out of 10 British patents during the Industrial Revolution were in industries that saw very little innovation because patents stifle innovation.
	They keep newcomers out of the field.
	And patenting was very loosely related to technological innovation.
	In other words, there was no correlation between them.
	So using information on inventions exhibited at the 1851 Crystal Palace World's Fair, one of the great sort of fairs of industrial innovation in the 19th century, found that only 11% of British inventions were patented.
	Only 11% of British inventions in the time of greatest innovations were patented.
	So we will Come back from the break.
	And if you'd like to call, we would be very happy.
	I would be very happy to chat with you.
	You can call 855-472-4433-8554-SHIFT. Let's chat.
	Although I have some other great topics after the break.
	So, we will be back after the break.
	Thank you so much for listening.
	This is Devan Molyneux.
	We'll see you next time.
	We now return to the Peter Schiff Show.
	Call in now.
	855-4-SHIFT. That's 855-472-4433.
	The Peter Schiff Show.
	Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio sitting in for Peter Schiff and Rand Paul, uncertain friend of libertarianism.
	Who may have better political instincts than his father, based upon his sustainability and rise, got into trouble for accidentally speaking some truth in reality.
	It's always a big problem to bring even the slightest shred of reality.
	So listen to what happened over the weekend and let's see if we can parse it out a little bit.
	I can't quite describe to you exactly what a Bitcoin looks like or what it's all about, but it's an interesting phenomenon and it's very attractive to the libertarians because it sort of fits this category of competing currencies.
	But, you know, if we have a replacement for the dollar, it'll be because somebody at the Federal Reserve destroyed the value of the dollar and therefore something has to take its place.
	And, you know, if you look at the last hundred years, the Fed's been working on it.
	About 98% of the value the dollar has gone.
	Yeah, so a little bit of truth there.
	That actually was Ron Paul, unless Rand Paul has a bad cult.
	But there's a little bit of truth.
	When governments get things really wrong, they tend to provoke alternatives.
	They tend to provoke things that are going to be a little bit more right.
	And I've had a good old debate with Peter about bitcoins.
	I'm not going to sort of go over that again here.
	But it is something that we need to be fundamentally aware of, the degree to which political power is money power.
	Political power is money power.
	Look, politics is a massive overhead to the world.
	Now, this is not an argument as to whether it's right or wrong.
	We can do that another time.
	But politics is a massive overhead.
	So if you want to help the poor, imagine you want to help the poor.
	You got a million dollars, you die, you hate your kids.
	If you want to help the poor, I don't know, there's some scenario.
	Are you going to write a check to, say, the United Way?
	Or are you going to write a check to the Department of Health and Human Services?
	In which scenario do you think that more money is going to get to the poor?
	I think most people would say, I'm not sure that I want to give my money to the Department of Welfare or whatever it is in your country that helps the poor.
	Why?
	Because every dollar that goes into there Spare change, the kind of stuff you dig around to buy your kid a popsicle, is what makes it to the poor.
	80% of the money that goes into the welfare system gets stuck, clogged up in the large-ass middle-class bureaucratic goo-fest known as the public sector.
	Doesn't help the poor.
	They farm the poor.
	They like having the poor.
	And there's lots of people out there.
	I listened to an interview on the radio the other day with a woman who said, well, you try and get out of the welfare, it's like the roach motel.
	You can check in, you just can't check out.
	Because if you try and work, they'll deduct and they'll harass you.
	And so they kind of want to...
	A farmer doesn't want his cows wandering all over the place, so they put these nice little fences up.
	And government bureaucracies...
	Make their money, justify their funding based on the poor.
	They have no more incentive to reduce the poor than the makers of hair gels have to make everyone bald.
	It's just not in the way it works.
	And it's the same thing is really fundamentally true of money.
	Political power is money power.
	If we could get things done without political overhead, things would be way more efficient.
	Now, how does it sustain itself?
	Because normally when things are less efficient versus more efficient, the more efficient thing is going to win out.
	Which is why we don't use smoke signals, carrier pigeons, the pony express to get our messages across.
	We email, or if we want people to come to our bar from the beach, we sky-write.
	How is it that ridiculously less efficient systems like politics Flourish over more efficient systems like charity, voluntarism, the free market, and so on.
	Well, because, my friends, as you all know, I'm sure, they have this wonderful drug called money.
	The government says, I'm going to give you $500.
	The government has no money.
	The government has no money.
	It's one of the fundamental things that should be just, you know, you shouldn't pledge the flage of, you shouldn't say the pledge Of allegiance every morning, you should put your hands over your heart and say, repeat after me, the government has no money.
	The government has no money.
	And that will help you understand how politics works.
	That would be my pledge of allegiance, which is why I don't run schools.
	Well, I guess kind of an online one, philosophy, whatever.
	But government has no money.
	So if they want to give you $500, what do they have to do?
	Well, let's say that they couldn't print money.
	Let's say they couldn't borrow money.
	They'd have to raise taxes.
	Simple, right?
	Have to raise taxes.
	Now, if they had to raise taxes fairly, if we didn't have this graduated income tax, right?
	The income tax is ridiculous on so many levels and immoral on so many levels and the proceeds of the income tax simply go to paying off the debt.
	People say, well, if you cut income tax, we'll lose government services.
	Actually, not true.
	Default, cut the income tax, you're exactly in the same place that you were before.
	If the government wants to give you $500 and they have to tax you, what are they going to do?
	They're going to have to tax you like $1,000.
	Why?
	Because you've got to hire all these people to go collect the taxes, to process the paperwork, to hire their cousins, to create massive pensions, to pay for the healthcare of people who get sick while they're processing your $500 check.
	What's the government going to have to do if they don't have the drug of money?
	What's the government going to have to do?
	They're going to have to say, I pledge My friends, I pledge to you.
	I don't know what accent that is, but I can go with it anyway.
	I pledge to you.
	I will send you $500 for only $1,000.
	Send me $1,000.
	You've got yourself five Shina C notes, all to your very own self.
	How would that play in Peoria, as Nixon used to say?
	Well, people would say, I think not.
	That is not a very good deal.
	Well, but you see, if they have a monopoly over the money supply, what can they do?
	What they do all this, right?
	They say, I'll send you $500.
	It's true I got no money where I'm going to get that money from.
	Well, your children are going to work someday, ain't they?
	Yes, they are, ladies and gentlemen.
	Your children, they're going to work, and we're going to tax them.
	And that is what we call collateral.
	Your children's future labor, my friends, is a wonderful collateral.
	Now, you can't borrow against it.
	As a citizen, because by God, that's illegal.
	But we can.
	Why?
	Because we make the laws, friends.
	So we will borrow against your children's collateral, or we send you that $500, and your children will only end up owing about $3,000.
	But it's okay.
	We take tiny kidneys too.
	Well, that's how it really works, as we all know.
	They either print the money or they borrow the money.
	Printing the money, of course, just drives inflation.
	So, by the time you get that 500 bucks, it's worth about a tenth of a bitcoin.
	Oh, see how I worked that in from the quote?
	That's what you call professional radios, ladies and gentlemen.
	But this is what they do.
	It's because they control the money.
	And I don't know if this is true or not.
	I get emails about this all the time.
	I don't know if it's true or not.
	But there are lots of theories out there that say there are a number of dangerous things that you can do in this world.
	You can get between Michael Moore and a donut.
	Well, actually, that's not even dangerous.
	That's just plain suicidal.
	Right?
	You can get between George Hamilton and a tanning salon.
	But I think, by far, one of the most dangerous things you can do It's to attempt to start a gold-backed currency in the world.
	Because all the paper currency monopolies, all the governments that are bribing people with monopoly money, with imagination, with their children's enslavement, if a gold-backed currency comes along, well, that's going to help to reveal the true value of a fiat currency, which is You know, maybe something to sneeze into.
	Maybe something as they did in the Weimar Republic in 1920s Germany to burn for fuel.
	Maybe wallpaper.
	Every now and then somebody, when I'm doing a speech at a conference, somebody will come up to me and hand me a million, no, a billion dollars, a trillion dollars I got, which is a Zimbabwe note from the hyperinflation that occurred in Zimbabwe a few years back.
	Government power is money power.
	If you cannot print, if you cannot borrow, then you can't bribe.
	You can't bribe people with their own money.
	Oh, let's say, well, we'll just tax the rich and give it to the poor.
	Well, the rich tend to employ the poor.
	You tax the rich, wages of the poor go down, job opportunities go down, the creation of new companies and new jobs goes down, so people end up poorer.
	And this is why You can track government growth with the decoupling of money from limitation.
	I said from limitation, not from hard assets.
	You know, it's the Bitcoin thing.
	Bitcoin is limited by technology.
	Money formerly was limited by its being tied to gold and silver.
	You can't just make that up.
	You can dilute it, as the Roman Empire did, right, where they basically ended up with like 2% precious metals in their coinage.
	Because they had to pay for the empire.
	Imagine, paying for an empire.
	Can you imagine, America, how expensive that might be, how that might corrupt your money?
	You can look at it and find out about that in two places, the history books and the newspaper, because it's the path.
	The military-industrial complex eats what remains of the free market in almost every society throughout history.
	History is without philosophy, without values, without principles.
	Nothing but a broken record.
	I just wish it got more annoying.
	I mean, for those over 40, you ever have a broken record, it gets stuck?
	It really gets annoying very quickly.
	People seem to find comfort in the repetition of history these days, but it really is annoying when you see the patterns.
	So, yeah, Bitcoin and other forms of alternative currencies.
	What they're basically threatening the government with is To break the monopoly of fiat currency, which is the source of political power.
	Why is Obamacare such a disaster in its rollout?
	Because they can't fund it through debt.
	Because they can't print money to fund it.
	Because the money is all being printed to buy up securities and assets and mortgages to the tune of $85 billion a month through the Fed.
	They got no drug for this current surgery called Obamacare, so people are actually feeling the knife go in and they're feeling how much it hurts without the drug of debt.
	Without the drug of money printing.
	So, it's good.
	We now have government without anesthetics, which means people are seeing a lot more about how it really works.
	Or, to be more precise, how it exactly does not work in any way, shape, or form.
	We will be back after the break.
	We've still got room for a caller or two.
	If you would like to join us on the Peter Schiff Show, this is Stefan Molyneux.
	And you will be right back.
	The Peter Schiff Show.
	The Peter Schiff Show.
	To President Obama, Madame Pelosi, and all of the socialist econ professors across America, we're sorry.
	We're sorry.
	Peter Schiff is back on the air.
	Hi everybody, it's Pam Molyneux.
	Oh my goodness, we've got to go really quick.
	We've got to go really quick now.
	Had a great intro, but we're not going to do it because, ladies and gentlemen, over the horizon coming through the mirage of the desert of Radioland, I see callers.
	Michelle, are you on the line?
	Can you hear me?
	I can.
	How are you doing?
	I am doing great.
	It's great to talk to you.
	I love your work.
	But I'm still rather new to philosophy, and so I hope this question doesn't sound too silly.
	But address it, I hope, in any way that you can dumb down.
	And my question is, when there's so much talk in philosophy about truth and happiness and ethics, why there's so little talk about love?
	And I do have a reason for asking that, but maybe you have an answer first.
	Well, I think because a lot of the early philosophers were gay, and remember, homosexuality in the ancient world was the love that dare not speak its name.
	Well, I think that there is love of wisdom, but of course, a lot of philosophers were not married and did not have children.
	You know, I mean, a whole bunch of them come to my mind, which you don't have to go through here.
	I mean, Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche.
	I mean, these guys have Spinoza.
	They were not married and did not have children.
	For them, love of abstractions, I think, overrode mere mortal concerns, love of people, and so on.
	I am married and am a father, so for me, I think your question is more important than a lot of the abstract questions that are dealt with in philosophy, which is, I think, does philosophy equate love with happiness, or where does love fit in philosophy?
	Right.
	I guess because it seems like there's so few women attracted to philosophy.
	And I noticed on your boards also, where I've become active lately, it seems like the gentlemen there have a hard time finding women in the same interests.
	That's why I was just thinking.
	Yeah, the technical term for philosophy is sausage fest.
	I've heard you use that one.
	I think that there is a deficiency in the examination of love.
	I mean, I've got a free book online that people can get at freedomainradio.com called Real-Time Relationships, The Logic of Love.
	I think love is an absolutely essential topic.
	I mean, isn't love that which nourishes us in the most fundamental way possible?
	And you can live without love to some degree when you're young, particularly if you have kids.
	And when you get older, you need that bond.
	You need that connection.
	You need that certainty.
	We are a pair-bonding kind of species.
	And I think love is a very underrated topic.
	And I think you're very wise to bring it up.
	And the thing is, too, I don't think philosophers should ever dumb down anything because if people can't understand it, it's not good philosophy.
	Like, if I make music above the frequency of human ears to hear, it just ain't music.
	And so I think it's a great question.
	The way that I work with love I believe that love is not something you can aim for directly, but you can perform actions and hold thoughts that will encourage love.
	Like, you can't aim for health directly.
	You can't say, well, I'm just going to go be healthy tomorrow.
	You can have healthy practices, you know, eat well, exercise, blah, blah, blah, and that is going to promote health as an effect of what it is you're doing.
	I think the same thing is true of love.
	I think that love is an emotional and involuntary response to virtue, if we're virtuous.
	So when we see nobility and virtue and goodness and courage and steadfastness and integrity and all the things which we cultivate as virtues within ourselves, honesty and so on, if we have those values and we see someone else who has those values, we have a positive response to those values.
	Now, if we're some Scrooge-fest, mustache-stroking evil guy, then when we come across virtue, we're going to view it as a threat, because the virtuous person is going to expose our evil to those around us, and so enemies combat and all the good stuff which I think philosophers should learn to like.
	So I think that love is our involuntary response to virtue if we're virtuous, and if you want love in your life, the first thing you have to do is be virtuous.
	And we often will try to aim at love through other ways, right?
	Men will try to...
	I mean, the traditional thing is men will try to become rich and women will try to be sexy, right?
	And then, by golly, we'll get love.
	And, you know, that given the divorce rate of 50% plus doesn't really seem very believable.
	So let me get your thoughts about it.
	I mean, when I say sort of love is a response to virtue, if we're virtuous, does that mean anything to you?
	Is that even remotely valuable?
	Oh, yes, definitely, and I did read that book.
	It was excellent, and I really enjoyed it.
	And I do, I would add, sometimes I feel like there can be love that is sparked, and I'm not just talking about this kind of love at first sight thing, but I think there can be this kind of attraction that goes maybe deeper than,
	like someone who is not virtuous, that you Could feel just this kind of animalistic attraction because of the kind of need or want, or I say desire, to...
	Now it sounds like we're trying to fix each other's problems through love, and that's not what I mean because it would be voluntary, but like you voluntarily want to help this person through their issues because you see that they can help you through your own.
	Yeah, look, support is not co-dependence, right?
	I mean, if your wife and your husband need something that you can provide, it's called the division of labor, and it's one of the great advantages of being in a pair-bond relationship is the division of labor, which means that you bring things the other person isn't that great at.
	But I think in terms of the speed, one of the great things about self-knowledge, I mean, Socrates said, first and foremost, know thyself.
	You have to know yourself so that you can be aware of your prejudices and your confirmation biases.
	Know yourself.
	I mean, I've been studying myself It sounds kind of narcissistic, but trying to understand myself for like 30 years.
	I did years of therapy.
	I mean, I think it's really, really important to understand yourself.
	Now, when you have a deep knowledge of yourself, bang, you recognize other people very quickly.
	Malcolm Gladwell has a great book called Blink about how amazingly quickly we can process the true nature of another human being.
	So he's got experiments or talks about experiments where...
	People who listen to 10 seconds of a muffled professor's voice have the same rating as people who've taken a full year course in trying to figure out how good that professor is.
	We get things incredibly quickly.
	When I met my wife, instant connection.
	You know, I mean, I dated around a lot when I was younger.
	Again, the technical Latin term is manwhore.
	And yet when I met my wife, it was like, bang, she's the one.
	And, you know, we went out for dinner coincidentally, and we then never spent a day apart, got married 10 months later, and have been I've been incredibly happily married ever since.
	But that's as a result of she knows herself very well, and I know myself very well, so we were able to recognize that in each other.
	She's the best and most noble person that I know.
	I hope that I fulfill some need in that for her as well.
	But I think we can recognize each other very quickly.
	You know, when you're looking for a needle in a haystack, you really need a metal detector.
	And self-knowledge and working on virtue in yourself makes it very easy for you to find virtue in other people, which is really what you most need for a sustained love, I would argue.
	What do you think?
	I think that sounds fabulous, and it leads actually to the next thing I wanted to say, if you still have a minute?
	Yeah, got to make it quick though, because I'm afraid other programs are charging in to corrupt the airwaves.
	I just noticed that this self-knowledge and how important that is, it feeds into what the New Age community is all about, especially in evolving consciousness.
	And I know that you're not a fan of them necessarily, but I see a lot of parallels, and I wonder sometimes if there wouldn't be a way I like you.
	Sorry to interrupt.
	I really do like the self-knowledge aspect of the self-help community and even to some degree the mystical community, but it really does have to follow rational values.

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