July 14, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:39:53
2748 Winning the Time Lottery - Saturday Call In Show July 12th, 2014
Self-ownership to property ownership, not letting people waste your time, living in a world with evil people, proxy risk as cowardice, winning the time lottery, republican defense budgets, the military industrial complex and the fall of mass murdering states.
Nothing but news announcements of an indifferent kind.
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So, Mike, let's get straight to the brain of the outfit.
Listener me up.
Yes, Mike is in the same room with me.
I got tired of him.
He once did not answer Skype at 2 o'clock in the morning.
A person with a bladder.
And so I was like, well, that's it.
You're in the dungeon now.
Or we may be going to a Queen show tomorrow.
Those heterophobes.
George Michael, Freddie Mercury, Adam Lambert.
Where are the straight singers?
You heterophobic bastards.
I can't wait to see you play.
All right, up next is Mike.
And Mike wrote in and said, I still get hung up on the leap.
Mike wrote in and said, I'm trapped in my employer's basement.
Please help me.
Send some food.
I don't care.
Drop a cabasso sausage down the air vent.
Anything.
OK, so yeah.
Love you.
I still get hung up on the loop from self-ownership to property ownership.
I'm not sure the logic holds that because I own my heart, my penis, and my actions, thus must follow that I can own land, trees, and oxygen.
Can you waltz me through it one more time, please?
All right.
I'm sorry.
What was your name again?
Mike.
Oh, Mike.
Right.
Sorry.
Okay.
Yeah.
No, I don't meant you.
I meant the guy in the room.
Okay.
So have you heard my argument?
I believe so.
Yeah, I read through UPB and the feeling I got from that was self-ownership.
I get it.
It totally makes sense.
I don't have qualms.
I believe I own, you know, myself.
And then out from there, I also believe that I'm...
No.
You know, no, seriously.
Like, I mean, we can make this as long as you want.
But you've already answered the question.
And do you know what my trick question was at the beginning?
Ooh, I'm such a sneaky debater.
And it's not a debate necessarily, but do you know what I asked at the beginning?
I asked, have you heard my argument?
Yes, you did.
Why is that so sneaky?
I think it gives you...
Well, it gives you ownership certainly to your action.
No, no, no.
I didn't say, have you heard my action?
No, no.
I didn't say, did you hear the sound of me typing UPB or typing my argument?
I asked, have you heard my argument?
So there's something in the world that I created that is now detached from me that you recognized as mine.
Yes.
Correct.
So, how is that possible?
Yes.
That is possible because I would agree that it's your word, so it's your idea, right?
So you own those things and you own that thought.
Well, own I don't know, but I am responsible for them.
They are an effect of my body, right?
Yeah, correct.
But I guess I get hung up then when there's something like land outside of me, right?
It was there before I was.
So I don't understand how I can...
Who cares about the land, right?
No, seriously.
I mean, okay, I own one-third of the moon.
So what, right?
Nobody cares about the land, right?
If I build a house on the land, do we understand that the house was not there before me, right?
Yeah.
If I build a fence around the land...
No, listen, listen.
How much would you pay for a piece of land in a location I would not divulge to you?
Probably nothing.
Well, if not, please tell me and we'll make a deal, right?
Because I actually never have to provide you anything if I won't even tell you where the land is, right?
Yeah.
It's a coupon to a restaurant at the end of the universe.
I think they give you land in Belize.
I was just down there.
All I have to do is say, I'll do something to this land and they'll give you land, which is kind of interesting.
But you still have to know where it is and you have to go.
And I assume that if you don't do anything with it after a while, it reverts back to unowned or whatever, right?
Or government.
Yes, correct.
Correct.
So it's because that I acted on land, is kind of what you're arguing then.
Because I... Did something to the land that makes it mine?
Or no?
Land that you cannot visit or act upon has no economic value, right?
Yes.
If you can't sell it, you can't visit it, you can't act upon it, it has no economic value.
So land, in and of itself, has no economic value.
Now, land that you can go and visit, maybe you just like looking at the land, right?
Well, that's economic value in a view, right?
Which is why penthouse apartments with a good view are worth more than lower level apartments and why in a hotel the exact same room facing the ocean is more expensive than the one facing the parking lot, right?
So views have economic value.
So even if you can't own something, sorry, even if you can't build something on or don't want to, you could find economic value in Buying stuff to look at.
Before the government got involved, there were private parks.
People bought up huge amounts of land and just built paths through it and maybe would charge people to go hike on that.
I mean, that's just walking on stuff, right?
You can't even take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints.
The whole point was to not disturb nature.
And so land has no value in and of itself.
Land that you can look at, land that you can build on, land that you can develop, land that you can whatever, right?
Land you can build a pipeline over, I don't know, right?
Land that you do something with.
Now, whatever you do with that land, that is yours.
And so it's really important when you look at land ownership.
Sorry, go ahead.
I was going to say, so that makes sense to me, but is that all that philosophy is answering then?
Whether or not we can own it?
I guess when it comes down to it, it's like, how is that ownership determined?
Is all UPB saying that it is ownable?
I guess the question is, if two people approach this land, how does that work out in the practical world?
I don't know.
Have you ever been to a tailgate party?
At a football stadium?
I have in the past.
I try to avoid sporting events, but yes.
Yes.
No, I get it.
I get it.
But you know that they don't just park their cars on top of each other, right?
Yes, of course.
Of course not.
Or when I was in Amsterdam, there was a street fair where you could set up your stall and stuff.
I didn't know what the hell was going on because people had put a bunch of tape around various places on the ground.
And the tape was, well, if you've taped it off, it's yours.
And then you've got to come and use it.
And maybe people put their name on it or whatever, right?
So, you know, tailgate parties.
And Jeff Tucker's got a great chapter on this in one of his books.
It's a Jetsons world.
That stuff all works.
You see kids trading their candy after going out Halloween to get the candy they want, right?
It all works fine.
People have no particular problems with property.
You know, you go to the beach and some people have put their towels down on the public beach chairs, right?
And people just respect it.
They just, you know, most part, you know, very few people are going to throw this in the ocean, right?
I mean, a few idiots maybe, one in a million people.
It's all over the towels, yeah.
Yeah, but property is not hugely complicated to feel.
Usually there's just a, hey, I did something here to mark that I'm gonna use this, right?
And then people are like, okay, well, I'm not going to use that, so I'll go next door, right?
Now, there will occasionally be conflicts, but that's not that big a deal.
Most of property works out...
I mean, have you ever had a property dispute with someone?
I don't know.
Maybe when I was a kid in the playground.
It's probably been a while, though.
Or with the city of Austin, actually.
A little bit.
Yeah, I said person, not child or city, right?
No, but I mean, have you ever had, personally...
Yeah, but what I'm asking is, you know, are we trying to solve for a very rare problem?
Right, so what I'm asking is, have you ever had a conflict over property with another adult human being who wasn't involved with the state?
I guess not.
So, is it really that big a problem?
When I put it that way, it seems silly that I asked the question.
Yeah, I guess it is determined culturally.
So, let me double back for a second just to make sure I got this.
So, UPB is telling us that we have self-ownership, we own our actions, and UPD is not an entity, right?
No, no, no.
It is a valid argument.
It is impossible to argue against self-ownership without exercising self-ownership.
So anybody who does it, Is either possessed, in which case the least of your worries is theoretical property rights because you just want to hang on to your Jesus-blessed soul before he drags it down to hell, and I have to reverse a huge amount of my theological positions.
So if the person is currently possessed, then they do not have self-ownership because Satan's got his hand jammed up their ass and is making their hands...
Do unholy things to Barbie dolls or something.
So run, right?
Don't worry about it.
But if the person is not possessed, then they are using or exercising self-ownership to make an argument.
And if you make a counter-argument and they respond to you, then they're recognizing that argument is created by you and is generated by you and exists in their mind because of you and they refer to your argument.
So we own...
Ourselves is so fundamental.
It's an axiomatic fundamental.
You can't argue against it, but it's not an artificial axiom like, well, I guess we'll just plant out.
You can't argue against it.
You just can't.
See, I used you just can't, which is one of the rare logical moves.
Anyway, I think I made the case, right?
That's a good one.
Yeah, for sure.
But again, let's say...
It's not UPB says.
No, UPB says sounds a lot like in Deuteronomy it says, you know, this, right?
I mean, no, it's either a good argument or it's a valid argument or it's not.
And there's simply no way to argue against self-ownership and owning the effects of our actions.
Yeah, I agree with you, and I probably didn't phrase that right.
So I agree with you there, and— No, you're clarifying, I hope.
So let's say I'm trying to think of a real-life application where the state isn't this middleman getting in the way.
I still feel like if I went to—yeah, I don't know if it's happened in my adult life.
Like, if I'm at a bus stop, let's say, and some gentleman is taking up, you know, laying across all three seats, right?
There's a homeless guy, and it's raining.
Let's say it's pouring rain, and this homeless guy's taking up all the spots that are underneath a little bus stop, and I'm getting soaking wet.
I guess my question is, philosophically, how do I approach that?
Like, how do I approach him from a kind of first principle, like if he was there first, It's his.
Does it really just come down to that?
Wait, are you trying to figure out how to argue property rights with a homeless guy?
Argue property with a homeless guy.
Yeah, in this example I am.
The fact that he has no home might be an indication that he's not real good on property rights.
Yeah, for sure.
Plus, he doesn't own the bus shelter.
Clearly, if it's his bus shelter, he made it in a field, then you can't kick him out, right?
But he doesn't own the bus shelter.
It's public use, right?
Yes.
So I don't see why there's any property.
I mean, maybe he's being kind of rude, but he's not violating your property rights.
You don't own that seat.
He doesn't own the seat, right?
Public use.
Yeah.
Yes.
I guess you could take a photo of him and send it to the bus people and say, this guy was taking up my seat.
And they'd be like, you own a fucking camera.
He's homeless.
Don't be a dick.
Yeah.
Well, I'm trying to think of another example.
Homeless guy, maybe not the best one.
No, I'm happy.
If this is how you want to spend your time, I'll indulge you for another question.
Because I'm sure this is the biggest issue you have going on in your life, is what to deal with the homeless guy taking up three seats when it's raining at some point in your life.
But okay, let's go with that.
It's certainly not.
I guess it's just a matter of how things come about.
If I can build everything upon first principle or how much of it is cultural, like culture deciding it, you know, the way property is determined, like you said, people putting down red tape or people tailgating, like, I mean, is that any sort of first principle or that's just, I feel like it evolves culturally, like how much does philosophy have to do with that and that having, I feel like it has more to do with just how People determine it in different areas and different regions.
Look, but property is not a philosophical issue unless there's the question of force, right?
So, hang on, hang on.
So, in Amsterdam, when everyone taped off the areas that they wanted to use for their little sidewalk sale booths, I mean, I walked for Amsterdam for hours and hours and I saw no people bringing out flamethrowers and nunchucks to fight over these spaces.
So because nobody initiated force and everyone accepted it, it's fine.
It's no problem whatsoever, right?
The question is if some guy says, that's my spot and he doesn't have any tape down and some other guy does, right?
And he starts initiating force, then you have an issue.
But the reality is very, very, very, very rarely do human beings end up initiating force over property disputes because the human practice of homesteading is so foundational and fundamental to our species that almost every human being very rarely do human beings end up initiating force over property disputes because the human And those who don't only disrespect it in order to pick a fight and beat someone up.
Yeah, I mean, that's a very good point.
It's amazing how easy it is to get kind of caught up.
It's very hard to think outside of the box, which is living in a Well, I mean, people who are concerned about property rights should be concerned about the state, not about homeless guys in shelters, right?
Yeah.
Oh, for sure.
Because the state is by far the biggest violator of property rights the world has ever seen.
The very existence of the state is predicated upon a massive widespread violations, violent violations of property rights, right?
Through taxation, through subjugation to irrational and immoral laws and debts and...
So counterfeiting and massive violations of property rights is required for a state to come into existence.
So people who are all concerned about property rights, it's like, okay, so what are your thoughts about the state?
Well, I don't know.
I'm really interested in homeless shelters and whatever.
And it's like, no, well, then you're missing the point, right?
Yes.
I mean, if the state stops taking half my goddamn income, I will take my chances with the guy who wants to pull nunchucks out from my sidewalk sale.
I'm okay.
I can walk away from that.
I can just say, okay, hey, man, you know, if this space means that much to you, it's all yours, right?
And then nobody will ever want to deal with that person again, right?
Yeah.
Or maybe, and the great thing with social media now is you can film the guy being a complete douchebag, you can upload it to YouTube, and it's like he joins the infinite tribe of non-anonymized douchebags on the planet, and he can deal with all the social consequences of that if he wants, right?
So I'm, you know, I'm, just get the government from stealing my daughter's future and taking half my money and robbing me of my savings through inflation, right?
I'll take my chances with people and whether we can homestead things effectively.
Homesteading peacefully has been going on for thousands of years.
And this government stuff...
Mike Tyson is currently sitting on my chest and pounding the shit out of my face, right?
Now, whether I stub my toe six years from now, kind of less important to me than getting Mike Tyson off my face, right?
Yeah, you always point out how libertarians always talk about the Federal Reserve when they should be talking about not hitting kids.
And yeah, I think kind of maybe in my own way I am getting caught up on something that's pretty insignificant in relation to what's actually going on.
No, because people will pepper you with these questions, right?
Oh, for sure.
I guess the whole reason I'm bringing it up...
You tell me exactly how property rights is going to work in a free society.
How are they going to deal with serial killer rapists who could walk through walls and turn themselves into bats in a free society?
And if you can't answer that, Mike Tyson's going to continue to pound your face for eternity.
And I'd be like, okay, well...
I did go to college at the University of San Francisco, so I'm very indoctrinated in that regard.
Oh, God help you for that, right?
Okay, so you can get credits in gay porn, but not in sort of libertarian philosophy.
Green heroin needles, too.
Yeah.
So, I mean, people come and say, you know, if you get trolled for, like, what are property rights in a free society and this and that and the other, right?
You show me the DRO contract.
But I'd say, Kabbalah, are you concerned about just the initiation of force?
Now, if people aren't concerned about the initiation of force, then I don't really care to talk about them because they're just idiots, right?
Or smart, which is even worse.
So if they are concerned about the initiation of force, then I would ask them and say, okay, well, what is, in your view, the biggest initiator of force in the world, right?
What is the agency that is the biggest initiator of force in the world, right?
And if they don't say government, then they really haven't thought about things with any clarity or objectivity or rationality whatsoever, right?
Now, you can say to them, well, if they say, corporations, man, right?
It's like, oh, do corporations have the capacity to start war?
No, but they profit from war.
It's like, yes, but they don't have the...
Blackwater cannot declare war.
Anyway, so you can give them some sort of clues as to the state being the biggest violator of the non-aggression principle, and that's in the public sphere.
And then you can say, well, in the private sphere, like in the citizen sphere, what is the biggest violation of the non-aggression principle?
Rape culture!
No, that is not correct.
Bad matriarch.
But you would say, well, it would be spanking, right?
Spanking is the biggest violation of the non-aggression principle the world over.
So it's just asking, you can just try and figure out if people, like before we get into all of the needy, needy, greedy little details about who gives a shit in ButtFuck3000, right?
Just ask people about, do you even know the scope and the content of what you're talking about, right?
Yeah.
Like if people are like, I just want everyone to be healthy.
I'm so concerned with human health.
I want to dedicate my life to bringing maximum health to the maximum amount of people.
And you say, do you know what the biggest killer is of people?
No!
AIDS-ridden tetsi fly bites in Iceland?
That is not correct!
Right?
And so you just ask them, do you have any clue what you're talking about?
And it's really important to gauge people's Level of vague competence.
So if people are coming up and saying, you know, well, how do you know you have the right to own land?
It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
You're asking me to join you in your graduate lecture.
I don't even know if you know how to spell yet.
Right?
It's really important.
People will always try to drag you into the most complicated, who gives a shit, spiderwebs in the brain bullshit.
And they haven't even proven to you that they...
Know what two and two make.
So, resist the complicated, graduate-level, advanced, who-cares-never-happens topics, right?
Ask people.
Do you know anything about what you're talking about?
Do you know what the non-aggression principle is?
Do you know what property rights are?
Do you know how they develop?
Do you know what is the biggest violator of property rights?
I mean, if we're going to be ethicists and talk about virtue and good and bad and property rights and violence and peace and all that, well, let's have some perspective and make sure.
I mean, my big thing in life is, are you wasting my time?
Right?
Which is why after this conversation I'm giving you this lecture.
Because you need this, right?
Are you wasting my time?
I am interested in bringing maximum peace to the maximum number of people in whatever time I have left on this planet, right?
And after getting cancer last year, it's not quite as blurry a future as I want it to be, right?
So I want to bring maximum peace to the maximum number of people in who knows how much time.
Could I have an aneurysm before the end of the show?
I don't know, right?
And so the important question to ask people, Mike and I were just talking about this today, are you wasting my time?
Are you a person from Porlock?
That means nothing to you, right?
Okay, so Samuel Coleridge was a famous 19th century British poet.
So he was a famous 19th century British poet, and he smoked some really good opiate shit one day, right?
Lay down on the couch and had the most amazing vision for a poem of an exotic Shahzad-style land, and he got up and he wrote a poem called Kubla Khan.
An amazing, wonderful, beautiful, sensual, delicious poem that's not finished!
Not finished!
Do you know why it's not finished?
Because he lived near a village called Porlock, and a pompous, officious little bastard from Porlock came and went, ding, ding, ding, ding, knocked on his door and said, Hey, Sammy, I need to talk to you about some totally boring shit!
Now, he was British, so he's like, okay, well, I guess we ought to come in.
I won't be impolite, right?
I'm sure I'll finish this poem later, right?
The person from Pollock comes in and says, well, you know, the council is thinking of expanding some of the park issues, and this may have some impact on the shadows of the oak trees to the right of your garden, and we're just sort of wondering if you wanted to get involved in a council meeting, perhaps to talk about...
And so he sat there with this pompous douchebag for half an hour, drives the guy out of his house finally, with that icy British mace of, oh, I think I'm busy in some undefined way, if you can move on.
And then he went back to finish his poem, and it was gone.
It was gone from his brain, and the end of this poem will never, ever be known.
Ever!
Oh, so tragic.
I thought you were going to say couldn't finish it because he OD'd on the opium.
No, he didn't OD on the opium.
Opium made a great poem for the guy, right?
Hey, cocaine gave us Bohemian Rhapsody.
I'm ambivalent about drugs.
But anyway, the person from Porlock killed this guy's beautiful poem.
Ah, Mike, get me the beginning of that poem.
People have to hear it.
It's just beautiful.
Kubla Khan.
K-U-B-L-A-K-A-N, I think.
And, oh, God!
I mean, interrupt-y shit.
Are you wasting my time?
I mean, I wish he'd just...
I mean, frankly, he shot the guy.
The poem is worth killing someone over.
I wish he'd just shot the guy, done the time, and finished the poem.
Okay, that's the non-aggression principle.
But really, it's a nice poem.
And this, are you wasting my time, is really, really important.
Kublai, sorry, Kublai-can?
Kublai.
I know you're making me feel like I've got to end the call right now.
K-A-B-L-A-I. I'm sorry?
I said, now you're making me feel like we should end the call right now.
Maybe I am wasting everyone's time.
Okay, good.
No, no.
Listen, you're not wasting my time because you're allowing me to do a rant on don't waste my time.
So with people, it's like, is my conversation with you going to add to maximum world peace in whatever time I have left, right?
Yeah.
It's a good way to frame it.
It's not Kublai.
I was right.
I even got the spelling right.
All right.
Are you ready?
We're ready.
I'm ready.
Are you ready?
I'll just read you a little bit.
He says, is Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge or a vision in a dream a fragment?
Why is it a fragment?
Because people wasted his time and killed his inspiration.
Okay, are you ready?
This is beautiful stuff.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree, where Alf the sacred river ran through caverns measureless to man down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground with walls and towers were girdled around, and there were gardens bright with sinuous rills where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree.
And here were forests ancient as the hills, enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh, that deep romantic chasm which slanted down the green hill athwart a cedar and cover, a savage place as holy and enchanted as air beneath a waning moon was haunted by a woman wailing for her demon lover!
And from this chasm with ceaseless turmoil seething, as if this earth in fast, thick pants were breathing.
A mighty fountain momently was forced amid whose swift, half-intermitted burst huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail.
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail, and mid these dancing rocks at once and ever it flung up, momentarily, the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion through wood and dale the sacred river ran, then reached the caverns, measureless to man, and sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean.
And mid this tumult Kubla heard from far ancestral voices prophesying war.
The shadow of the dome of pleasure floated midway on the waves, where was heard the mingled measure from the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device, a sunny pleasure dome with caves of ice.
Oh, it's delicious.
Delicious.
Beautiful reading.
Gone.
Gone.
Gone, baby!
Killed by an officious, pompous little nobody who wanted to talk to him about absolutely nothing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, maybe that's what I'm doing.
All right.
Well, thank you for your call.
I appreciate it.
Yeah.
I appreciate it.
Ask people.
Find out if people are wasting your time.
And if they are, send them to waste somebody else's, right?
Okay.
Who's up next, Mike?
Appreciate it, man.
All right.
Up next is Kevin.
Kevin wrote in and said, I'm having difficulty living in a society that's full of manipulators and brutes.
How do you deal with the irrationality in the world and the knowledge of your enslavement?
Wait, what?
Irrationality in the world.
Mike, have you seen this?
Irrationality in the world?
Which world?
Boy, this guy sounds...
What world are you living in?
Just kidding.
Go on.
How do you want me to go on?
Hello?
I'm here.
Oh, okay.
So what aspect of people's irrationality is bothersome to you the most?
Bothersome to me?
It would be the aspect that...
I mean, I feel like they want to control...
You know, everything that I can do.
I mean, I'm just tired of having to ask permission to do anything.
So do you mean the state for the most part?
Yeah, I mean the state, but I mean the people that support the state as well.
The people that say there ought to be a law or, you know, people that advocate, you know, taking my money for this or taking my money for that or tell me I have to send my kids to school or Or, you know, just wanting to control what everyone does and not just let people be adults.
Right.
Well, I mean, there's no way to eliminate it bothering you, I think.
Like, there's two kinds of tax, right?
So there's a tax which they take your money from you by force, and then there's the tax where it bothers you, right?
Yeah.
Now, one tax we have to pay, one tax we don't, right?
That's true.
Now, I do my best.
Like, you just get shit from the government.
Hey, by the way, you owe me this.
And you call them up and they say, well, apparently this and this and this is like, you know what, take the money.
And then I do my best to put it out of my mind.
One tax I have to pay, one tax I don't have to pay, right?
Yes.
And at the same time, though, I don't want to pretend that I'm completely indifferent to it.
You know, this zen, oh, kumbaya, I have risen above all petty disputes among the world, and I float above the world like a cumulus cloud of romantic indifference and view the little petty ant people with their squabbles from a high-up mountain of Nietzschean indifference.
I can't do that.
To me, I can't rip my brain stem out and send it spiraling way above my spine, which gets seriously fucking pissed off at things quite a bit.
So it's sort of a balancing act that I perform with all the grace of a hippo shot with a blow dart in the balls.
So I can't make that go away.
And of course, I would love to live in a world where I didn't care about idiots.
I mean, I might care about them like I'll do a show or whatever, not you, right?
But I might care about them or I'll sort of try and educate them or whatever.
I'd love to live in a world where people could be stupid without pissing me off.
But that world is not a world with a government, right?
Right.
Because in a government, stupid people rule your life.
And when stupid people rule your life...
Plato said that the price of not getting involved in politics is to be ruled by your inferiors, right?
Whereas the price of getting involved in politics is to become a morally compromised sociopath, right?
So it's like, I mean, he tried to get involved in politics, and Syracuse got sold into slavery and almost killed.
Oops!
Maybe I'll just go back to geometry.
And boys!
But...
So, you know, the price of the state is to be ruled by bribed idiots claiming virtue.
Right?
People who don't have a clue about ethics or politics, who don't know anything about history, who couldn't even define to you what a government is, they rule.
It's the vast majority of people.
Ask them, what is the government?
Dome building.
Okay.
Okay.
You're cute.
And really dangerous.
Right?
I mean, asking the government to solve your problems is like asking a blind sharpshooter to perform your appendectomy from about three miles away.
I mean, he might hit you.
But you won't be happy.
The best you can hope for is it doesn't even get close to you.
The bullet, their power, right?
So, I can't make that go away.
But I can tell you this.
That people, one of the reasons people love having a government...
Is they don't have to have any brains at all for people to be interested in them.
I'm a voter.
You must pander to me.
I don't got to learn nothing.
I can make an X. So, pander, bastard.
That sure beat reading a book.
They don't have to learn shit, and everyone panders to them.
Silken-voiced Obama will come out and monotone his baffled way through a teleprompter or two and pander to every single one of their prejudices and fears and stoke their resentments and, you know, well, I just want to get things done!
Stop that!
Please!
So...
Without the state, idiots would sink into the well-disturbed obscurity that they have earned.
Either they're idiots biologically, in which case we have sympathy, or they're idiots by choice, which is the majority, in which case we have rational contempt for them, for refusing to use the greatest gift the universe has ever bestowed upon organic matter, which is the few pounds of human brain.
So...
Without the state, who would care about the opinions of idiots, right?
Right.
And so idiots love the state because then non-idiots have to pay attention to them, have to pander them, have to try and change their minds.
Why the fuck would I want to bother taking your average IQ 98 mouth breather and try and tell him about the free market?
Like what a completely ridiculous thing that is to do.
That's literally trying to pump an ape full of lattes and teach them how to do the ballet.
Why?
Well, because we kind of have to try, because these mouth-breathing monsters control our destiny with their idiot ex, right?
Right.
But, Steph, I don't draw a distinction between people and the state, because people, as far as I understand it, are the state.
Right.
And an intelligent person...
Say, like, it's well-established that people of lower IQ are more likely to get on and stay on welfare.
Why?
Because an intelligent guy understands a sticky Venus flytrap when he sees one, right?
It's like, okay, well, I might solve my problems in the short run by going on welfare, but it's just going to make my life worse in the long run, right?
So smart people don't go on it, and dumb people do.
It's not, obviously, corporate welfare is a whole difference.
We're just talking general welfare, right?
So, I agree with you, but you take the state away, and the idiot's inconsequentiality will be revealed.
Because no politician is going to come into their auto body shop and say, Hi!
I'd like to talk to you.
I have an IQ about twice yours and an ethics about one quarter yours.
I'd love to talk to you.
Tell me about your day.
What do you think about foreign policy?
Do you think we should have done X? What do you think about the minimum wage?
Tell me, tell me, tell me.
I'd love to get your vote.
That looks like a cute baby.
Right?
I mean, nobody would be doing that if it wasn't for the state, right?
Nobody would be interviewing them, right?
There would be no man on the street interviews in a stateless society.
Any more than it's like, well, Dr.
House, we seem to have a very difficult problem here.
This person seems to be infected by bat wings that stretch the length of their nipples and we can't figure out where they came from.
Well, I don't know.
Let's get some non-doctors in here and let's all vote on it.
Experts hate and have contempt for most normal people because most normal people think they're experts on things they don't have the first clue about.
Right?
Average people are an insult to experts because they think they're superior to experts.
And this is nature of the beast.
You take the state away, that becomes pretty stark, pretty clear, pretty obvious, right?
I recognize expertise because I'm actually an expert in something.
I'm an expert in philosophy.
So I recognize expertise in others because I know how fucking hard it was to become an expert in philosophy.
Because it was so ridiculously hard and took like 40 or 30,000 hours to become an expert in philosophy, when other people know stuff and know it well, I'm like, whoa.
Okay, I defer to you.
You know your shit.
Because I know how difficult it is to know some shit.
So if you know some shit, I may be a tall mountain, but I get that there's a huge valley between me and another tall mountain, right?
Someone's really good at physics.
It's like, whoa, you put your 30,000 hours into physics?
I am not telling you anything about physics, right?
Mathematics, whatever, right?
You've been studying Latin.
Like, I remember when I was in graduate school, a professor was telling us about a guy...
Who knew ancient languages so well, like he could just look and he could just read and he would actually be writing ancient Greek, ancient Latin, just reading and just crazy.
I mean, that takes a serious amount.
I'm an expert at that because I can make squiggles.
This is the average person.
So most people never get competent enough at anything to have any respect for competence at all.
Because it's a lot easier to be incompetent and think you're competent than to become competent.
Because when you become competent at something, you become humble.
Because you know, I will never be competent at other languages.
I know like 10 computer languages.
I will never ever in my life, I'm not going to have a six-pack and I'm not going to have competence in another language.
Because I know it will take me about 10,000 hours to become competent in another language.
And I get that that's not really going to help the cause of philosophy very much relative to continuing to work on what I'm doing.
And the people who are really good at that kind of stuff, fantastic.
Amazing.
I'm not going to make random noises and think I'm speaking some other language fantastically well.
So the reason I'm saying all of this is that people have adapted to thinking that they're important because they have a vote.
My vote is the same as yours is a fundamental delusion of democracy.
Idiots, mouth breathers, incompetent, uneducated, TV addicted, candy crush playing idiots have exactly the same votes as people who are deeply knowledgeable, well educated, who know what they're talking about.
Now this, of course, is completely ridiculous and in no other situation would this occur.
But one of the reasons why this system works, obviously it works for dumb people because it makes them feel like they're competent.
And by dumb, I don't just mean like they've got a low IQ. I mean, you can be hugely smart in one field.
One of the delusions of competence is thinking it makes you competent in other fields, you know?
It doesn't, right?
I mean, I'm competent in one, maybe two fields.
It does not make me competent.
In fact, it makes me recognize how incompetent I am at other fields.
So there can be very smart people who think that because they're very good at physics or very good at comedy or whatever, that they're very good at everything else and so on.
And it's all nonsense.
So...
Recognizing that the current system is a massive psychological subsidy to ignorance...
And if that system is removed, then people's ignorance will be revealed, and people's inconsequentiality will be revealed.
That's what I want.
If you don't learn something deeply...
That's what I want.
Of course, but I'm telling you why you're not going to have it.
Right, I understand.
No, no, I want it too, but I'm telling you why you're not going to have it.
You cannot take the illusion of competence away from people.
They won't give it up, because they know deep down that they're Inconsequential.
Like if you don't become deeply good at something, you will disappear from this life without leaving a trace.
I mean and that something could be being a husband, being a wife, being a parent.
Become deeply good at something and you will disappear from this or you will disappear from this life without leaving a trace.
And most people they want heaven and they want to vote because they're not important.
Because they don't connect with other people.
I mean, think of the first caller's mom.
She's obviously left huge craters in people's lives, huge smoking craters where her families were, including her own.
And what's she going to leave behind?
How many people do you know about from the 14th century?
Anyway, it doesn't hugely matter.
What I'm telling you is that it's more than just telling people about the free market and the non-aggression.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
But fundamentally, people have adapted to a society where they matter because they vote.
I'm a citizen.
I matter, right?
I mean, you can't even get people to recognize that their sports team choice is completely arbitrary and doesn't matter at all.
As the first guy says about the tailgating, I try and stay away from sports events.
Yeah.
You can't even get people to recognize that the sports team is completely ridiculous bullshit, right?
Because people aren't taking risks in their lives, the risks that lead to virtue, the risks that lead to knowledge.
Because every time you try to acquire a new piece of knowledge, there's a significant possibility you're going to completely fail.
And even as you try to master new things, you will fail.
And even after you've mastered new things, you still need to keep failing, which is why I try to make new arguments, why every time I do a speech, it's a new speech.
Because you need to have the capacity for failure in order to be doing anything new or noteworthy or important.
And most people don't want to take the risks.
And so what they need to do is they need to have risks by proxy.
Right?
I hope my sports team wins.
I hope my candidate gets in.
I hope my favorite band reaches number one.
I hope the numbers come up, red 22.
I hope I win this poker hand.
I hope this girl will go out.
This is all proxy risk.
They won't take the real risks of learning and becoming virtuous and taking on the fight of good against evil.
They just take on these proxy risks.
And Dungeons& Dragons is a form of gambling.
Roll the dice and see if I win.
It's another kind of proxy risk.
So, what I'm sort of trying to point out is that the reason people fight so strongly for the state, even though the state sends them to war, even though the state sends them to prison, even though the state sends them to shitty schools,
even though the state strips them of their money through inflation and debt, the reason they fight so hard for it is that Like the old Sarah Bernhard show, she says, without you, I'm nothing.
The state, the country, the nation, the collective, the Borg, is who they are.
And if you try to take the state away from them, They will have no idea who they are.
And they will fight to retain this system because the system tells them who they are.
It gives them an identity.
It gives them a circle.
It gives them something to talk about.
I mean, take the government out of the news.
The fuck would they be talking about?
This is why reporters are so pro-state.
Part of it is left-wing and they don't know how to handle things, so they manipulate people and social metaphysicians end up in there.
But The whole news cycle is about the government.
Open up the New York Times.
Open up the Drudge Report.
Open up Fox.
Open up the Huffington Post.
It's all about either the government or entertainment or health or whatever.
The stuff, it's politics.
The opinion stuff is all about politics.
All these people do is talk about politics.
That's not a conversational topic.
That's who they are as human beings.
Political junkies, political animals, people with political contacts, people whose value as employees, as reporters, is their inside many years cultivated political contacts.
So, of course, I mean, they're going to slander anyone who threatens their many decades developed livelihood.
What would they write about if they weren't writing about the government?
Most mainstream reporters will respond to questions of the government's value and efficacy, like sports reporters saying, let's shut down sports.
What are they going to write about?
Chickens?
I don't know.
What are they going to talk about if they don't have sports, the weather, Government, voting, the news cycle, what are they going to talk about?
They actually have to talk about something they think and feel rather than something they read about stuff other people are doing.
Nobody wants that.
Very few people do.
So that's why I'm saying it's so deeply embedded.
It's a multi-generational process.
If you accept that, and if you accept that people aren't going to get what they deserve...
Economically, but they are going to get what they deserve psychologically.
Because all virtuous people who've got any kind of balls and or spine, all virtuous people want to see bad people suffer.
There I said it.
No, it's not a shock.
I've said it before.
We all want bad people to get theirs.
And I'll tell you, they won't get it economically.
Clinton's...
They make a fortune.
Like, Bill Clinton gets like, what, a quarter million dollars for a speech?
And then he gives half of that back so he can grope the front row?
Because, you know, he's all about the charity.
Economically speaking, these people will make a fortune.
There are two ways in which they'll suffer.
The first way is that they just...
Have no connection with people.
They're power junkies, right?
So there's this wholeness, this emptiness, this fundamental discontent, which is why they always want more power.
Now, the second way they'll suffer, which they have no clue about yet, is that in the future, they will be listed among the grand criminals of history.
They don't know that yet, and it'll take a while, but Genghis Khan was a hero to his compatriots and now he's just this semen and blood spraying monster, right?
Hitler got his votes and everyone cheered him and now he's the primo monster of history.
I mean, again, I'm not saying these people are exactly the same as Hitler or Genghis Khan, but what I am saying is that now they're praised.
But when a profoundly sick and immoral culture praises someone in the future when people have woken up to more compassion, more sanity, more empathy, more principles, They will not land in the same pages in the same position of the history books of the future than they do of the present.
So what I'm saying is that It's not going away anytime soon.
Pay the tax they make you pay.
Don't pay the tax that's optional.
And expecting something to change when people are so deeply embedded in the matrix that, as the movie says, they will fight to the death to defend it is important.
Irrational expectations are at the root of most human suffering.
That is not sort of directly physical.
You stub your toe or whatever.
But irrational expectations.
We want people to be empirical.
We must be empirical about people.
We must accept and reference and continually process the information that people are continually providing back to us.
Everybody is completely honest about who they are.
Nobody can hide anything from anyone whose eyes are even a little bit open.
And people are being continual.
How many times do you have a successful conversation about freedom and peace with people?
Not often.
I have a few people.
But not often at all.
I'm aware of that and I appreciate everything you just said.
The thing that gets me so angry is this is my one shot at life.
I mean, this is it.
And I got to live it in this kind of world.
And it is frustrating.
And, you know, they can take my damn money.
I don't care.
But, you know, I have three kids.
And that's what really has been bothering me lately is, you know, everyone's asking me when you send them to school, when you send them to school.
And I don't trust a lot of these people to not push the issue or call CPS. And I'll be damned if these people get a hold of my children.
Right.
Are you in a place where you have to send your kids to school?
No.
No, I'm in a state that's very homeschool friendly, but most of the time...
Okay, okay.
Right.
Well, let me ask you this.
Okay, so we live mentally in the future, which makes the present more difficult.
People who live in the present have a much easier time, but conformity to the present is invisibility to the future, as I've said before.
But if you look back through history, can you think of a time when you would rather be alive and be a father?
Every day.
Okay, so which century would you rather be alive and be a father in?
Sorry, I misunderstood your question.
Would you mind repeating that?
Okay, now you understand, and maybe you can answer it.
No, no.
Okay, which decade or century would you rather be a father in?
No, I'd rather be a father today.
Right.
I mean, infant mortality, typhus, cholera, diphtheria.
I mean, it was war, right?
I mean, I sure as hell wouldn't want to be a father in the late 19th century with World War I about to draft kids, right?
Right.
Or World War II, or Vietnam, or you name it, right?
So, I will make...
I don't think I need to make a very strong case, but...
I think that the strongest case to be made is that this is, out of all the times in human history, the very best time to be alive.
Now, 500 years from now, okay, yeah, fine, but that's not really a choice we have at the moment, right?
Neither is there, of course, a choice to live in the past, but there is no better time to be alive.
Statistically, factually, there is no better time to be alive.
And it's hard to feel hard done by when you have won the time lottery of the last 4 billion years.
We have won the time lottery of the last 4 billion years.
20 years ago I probably would have been dead last year.
We have won the time lottery of the past 4 billion years.
Of course there's work to be done.
Of course there's things that need to be improved.
But we do not live in a theocracy.
We do not live in a dictatorship.
We do not live in a time of famine or plague or pestilence or war.
There are not bombs dropping on us.
My mother was born in Germany, in Dresden.
Oh, in Berlin, but she then grew up in Dresden.
In 1937, with a Jewish background, that is not winning the lottery of the last 4 billion years.
But we in the West, we in the free world, we with all of these tools and these capacities and the ability to bypass the gatekeepers and bring a message to mankind that has literally been suppressed for a hundred thousand years.
The message of peace and reason and freedom and cooperation and voluntarism.
We have an unprecedented capacity to bring our message to humanity.
Finally, finally, after a hundred thousand years, we have an even playing field between reason and illusion.
Because the gatekeepers always keep reason at bay and direct communication is where reason connects to people.
And you and I can have this conversation and there's no one in the way.
And people can listen to this conversation for free, virtually, throughout the world, with no one in the way.
If I can't be happy for that opportunity, then I have a standard for happiness that will render me permanently miserable.
What do you think?
I think I agree with you.
Joy to the world.
Thank you.
Joy in combat!
Listen, you sound like a mildly ornery person.
Am I... Way off the mark.
I'm not exactly sure what you mean by that.
Mildly combative, a little frustrated.
I am a very angry person.
Okay, I didn't want to be the first one to say it, but if you say it, there we go.
So you're a very angry person, right?
And I'm sorry for the anger, but if you are an angry person, this is a pretty good time to be alive.
Because you can be angry without being killed.
Hey, try being angry at the Nazis or Stalin, right?
I mean, your ass is dumped in an open grave, right?
Try being angry at the Catholic Church in the 13th century.
I mean, you're up in flames, right?
So we can be angry and we can express our anger without actually getting killed and in a way which can help the world.
Our anger, this is the best time to be angry in the history of the world.
Doesn't get us killed and it's not futile.
It can change the world, right?
Embrace the dark side.
It's what I'm trying to say.
I guess I still feel like there's...
No, go ahead.
The only thing that's...
Sorry, go ahead.
No, that's fine.
You go ahead.
Well, the only thing that's bad about the modern world is it's a really, really, really shitty time to be a coward.
It's a really shitty time to be ignorant.
Because with this sum total of human knowledge available at any free computer in a library, it's a really shitty time to be ignorant.
12th century, yeah, books cost the price of a house.
I get it, right?
It's tough to learn.
You know, you got rabies and the plague and war.
Okay, I get it, right?
You got 19 kids.
The priest won't let you put on a sheep's bladder condom or whatever the hell they used.
So, I get it.
In the past, yeah, it was okay to be ignorant.
It was okay to be a coward because so much faced you, right?
Now, what faces people who do good?
Do That guy, he's sockpuppeting his own YouTube account.
That's my moral mission today.
Because all of the other ills of the world has been dealt with.
I'm going to type about Stephen Mullen, you sockpuppeting his own YouTube account.
Ha!
Got him!
Victory for virtue!
Right?
So, it's a really bad time to be an inconsequential coward in the modern world, right?
Because We really don't face that many negative consequences for passionately speaking the truth to the world, right?
But people might type things.
I mean, good!
Good!
I don't care what you write about me.
Just spell my name right.
So it's a bad time to be a coward and it's a bad time to be ignorant.
But for everything else, virtue, courage, taking on the bad guys, giving a boost to the good guys, helping people steal up their spine, it's a glorious time.
This time will never come again.
Because the first opportunity for courage, the first time that the gates of culture open wide and allow the courageous, blue-painted, Britannic assholes to come swarming through, screaming their barbaric yorps of truth...
To a shocked and occasionally uncomprehending world, those gates will never, ever, ever open again from the tomb-like silence of reason that history has littered itself with.
These gates which allow us to speak, these gates which allow us to reason, these gates that allow us to speak to the world, they have opened once in human history and it will never happen again.
Because everything that comes after this comes after those gates have opened.
And so everyone who comes after this comes after the first people through the gates have had the courage to speak the truth.
And everyone who comes after us will stand on our shoulders.
So I think even if I could choose any time in history to be alive, even the paradise of the future, I might still choose today.
So can I give you an example of something I saw today that will tie back with something you said earlier?
Maybe it can help me.
Sure.
Yeah, so I saw a bumper sticker, right, that said, don't tread on my Obamacare.
And just I got such a visceral, you know, anger at just seeing, you know, and just seeing those words like that.
Is that because I have unrealistic expectations of people?
And that's why I get...
So viscerally angry at something like that?
Well, I mean, obviously, it's a completely irrational statement, right?
I mean, I just did the Peter Schiff show talking about how women consider birth control to be a health care.
The rationality of it that gets me so angry, but it's also I feel it's an attack on me because I'm being taxed to pay for their Obamacare.
And then it's also a slam on the don't tread on me, which No, no, no, no.
Right.
No, no.
Listen.
No, no, no.
No.
If a sadist tortures you, it's not personal.
You know, you're just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
They don't sit there and say, I'm getting that guy.
You know?
They're just like, free shit!
Yay!
Right?
And they've been taught their whole lives that free shit is their birthright as idiots and voters.
Well, I repeat myself.
Right?
But...
They've been told their whole life that they're entitled to it, that they deserve it, that the system is broken, that Obama is fixing it, that they have a right to health care, that other people, other countries in the world, all have free health care, and the American system is broken, and blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
So, what would you expect?
Again, just to, the propaganda works, you know?
Twelve years of government indoctrination, it kind of works.
Endless amounts of media indoctrination, it works.
Movies, television shows, they all work.
That's why they do it, because it works.
And so the fact that there's a sticker, it's sort of like getting really angry at someone for being a communist in Russia in 1952.
What else do they know?
What else have they heard?
And haven't they had the living shit and brain matter propagandized right out of their body?
So my expectations would be irrational then.
Well, do you think propaganda works?
Yeah, definitely.
Right.
Is that sticker the result of propaganda?
Now, again, I said it's not a great time to be ignorant.
They could know more.
They could learn more, right?
But maybe they've never been exposed to a single counter-argument.
Maybe they have no idea.
Maybe, right?
And maybe this is coming from a compassionate place in their heart that they want sick people to get health care, right?
And that's how they think it happens, because that's all everyone's ever told them, is got a problem, pass a law, right?
And I agree with you about everything you feel, Of course it's aggressive, of course it's violent, of course you're going to suffer and pay.
And it's going to wreck the healthcare system even more.
Yeah, I get all of that.
But forgive them, Father, they know not what they do.
Now, you can educate them into what they do, for sure, and I do that too.
But propaganda works.
And if it doesn't work, then they're spending a whole lot of time and money and energy applying it to people who accidentally end up with the positions they exactly want, right?
So yeah, look, that is the sign that propaganda works.
And the only reason you'd get really angry at it is because you think the propaganda will always win and reason and virtue will always fail.
And I believe in the long run, and sometimes you need to take a pretty long view of it, but in the long run, truth and virtue, they will win out.
If we act.
If we don't have the self-fulfilling prophecy I talked about at the beginning where, can't win, don't try.
hey look we failed right and even the shitty health care we get is infinitely better than the health care from the past right Thank you.
Thank you.
I think that helps quite a bit yeah make a joyful noise you We have freedom to speak.
We have a world to win.
We have the tools and the communications network to win.
Truth, reason, peace, virtue have never ever had it so good throughout any time in human history.
And even looking across the world, most of the world is plunged into a semi-medieval darkness of theocracy and tribalism.
Shit, tell me where in the world and where in history you'd rather be than right where you are.
And if it can't get better than where you are, getting pissed off at where you are is irrational, right?
Right.
There will always be an irrational person in the world, right?
Now, there's quite a lot.
There's quite a lot of them around right now.
I get it.
I get it.
But we have everything at our disposal necessary to turn the tide.
Now, I know you haven't decided what you're going to do about your daughter in school completely, I believe.
But I mean, do I just...
You know, just find where I can go to prevent my kids from being forced into school.
I mean, that's really...
I think that...
No, hang on.
I think that...
Look, where your kids end up being educated, I don't think is even remotely your biggest issue, Kevin, right now.
If I were to guess, and I think you say you're very angry, your biggest issue is you're going to drive your kids away from your position through your anger and your bitterness.
Because you are educating your children that the pursuit of truth makes someone angry and raging at bumper stickers, right?
By definition, anyone with a bumper sticker is an idiot.
because any thought worth having can't be put on a bumper sticker.
Unless your bumper sticker is free domain radio.
Good job!
Because that's not an argument, that's a website.
That's a gateway to an argument, right?
But, you know, don't tread on me!
That's great.
Why didn't Socrates do that instead of...
Anyway.
But your children are going to be pushed away from your position because very few people who are not masochistic ever want to pursue a belief system that leads to Hatred of the species and frustration with the life, right?
Right.
So my concern is not where your children are going to be educated, but how they're being imprinted with your education.
Join me in the dark well of bitterness that comes from knowing the truth about the world, kids!
Who's in?
That just will come through.
I mean, I don't think I'm bitter to my kids at all.
I treat them very well.
Oh, dude, dude, dude.
Unless you actually have multiple personality disorder, this is going to spill over, right?
Right.
You can't.
I mean, nobody can hide anything from their kids.
That's a good bumper sticker, somebody says.
Any thought worth having cannot be put on a bumper sticker.
If you're reading this and expecting a solution, you're part of the problem.
No, and the memes on Facebook I kind of like.
But those are gateways to go and think and consume the podcast and all that.
But no, I mean, I think your challenge is to try and find joy in the fight for virtue.
Otherwise, drop it.
Leave it to the people who take pleasure in it, right?
Because if you're bitter and angry about it, you're actually driving people away from the pursuit of virtue, right?
So if you can't find joy in the fight for freedom, step out of the ring.
Go.
Leave the ring.
We'll take care of it.
We'll deal with it.
Because right now, your bitterness and your anger is about you, not about bringing freedom to the world.
If you can't lose the weight, don't put yourself on the diet book cover.
If you're bitter and angry and you can't find a way to enjoy the fight for freedom, the fight for virtue, the fight for peace in the world, if you can't find a way to make that joyful, and I don't mean, you know, permanent crazy-ass joker grin on your face, you know, like the Christians who just can't have an unhappy thought because that's somehow blasphemy!
I mean, but if you can't fundamentally take joy, In the opportunity and the capacity that we have to fight for freedom and virtue, step back.
Go and have a happy life.
It is far more important to me, just from my personal opinion, it's far more important for me that you are happy as a father.
That you bring happiness and a sense of a positive and benevolent world to your children than it is that you fight Obamacare and get angry and get frustrated and get tense and get miserable.
If you can't find joy in the fight you've got to get out of the ring.
I love the fight.
I mean, I'm like, great call-in show tonight, you know?
Ah, let's go see this movie.
Let's have fun with it.
You know, we're working on a presentation about immigration.
It's going to be killer!
I love the fight.
It's joyful for me.
That's why it works.
But if it's making you miserable, do not be a martyr, the cause.
The cause is entirely about not being a martyr.
And you are driving people away.
I would guess.
And the people you're not driving away, I'm not sure we want.
You're going to pay enough for a life of critical thinking and reasoning.
You're gonna pay enough for that anyway.
Don't pay with your happiness as well as all the other things it's going to cost you just by thinking for yourself.
Like sports teams and salutes and flag waving and easy conversations with like-minded fools.
I mean, you're going to lose all that.
Don't give that up and happiness too.
Does it make any sense what I'm saying?
It does.
Yeah, it does.
I've lost my train of thought there.
I just never thought of it like that.
But my problem is I'm not going to be able to unlearn what I've learned.
I'm not going to be able to change the way my mind works.
I've got to figure out, like you said, how to be happy with the knowledge.
Well, you just got to meditate on you would trade today for what?
The 19th century?
Somebody sneezes on you, your head explodes.
Right?
I mean, what do you want to trade for?
Do you want to trade for being some Kid in Ghana?
You want to trade for being someone living in a shantytown in Haiti?
You want to trade for being some woman in Saudi Arabia?
You want to trade for being some crazy-ass, dyed-up mystic in Pakistan?
I mean, who do you want to trade for?
I don't.
Okay.
That's important.
You won the lottery of time.
You won the lottery of geography.
You won the lottery of political freedom.
If you criticized the war in America in 1917, you went to jail for 10 years.
If you were a naturalized Japanese citizen in America in 1943, you went into a concentration camp and they took everything you had and never gave it back.
They weren't even criticizing the war.
They just had eye folds adapted to bright light.
So, we got it pretty easy.
And we've got antibiotics.
You know, in the 1930s, You go to one public swimming pool where there's a polio virus, you spend the next 70 years inside an iron lung or paralyzed like FDR. Smallpox.
I was still getting vaccinated for smallpox when I was a kid.
Smallpox carried off more human beings than war.
In the 14th century, during the Black Death, in some places between a third and two-thirds of the population, up and died.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Now, those people had some pretty good reasons to be pissed off.
You've got Obamacare.
And I'm not saying don't be upset.
Yeah, it's something to fight, right?
Yeah, James pointing out malaria.
Because, you know, all the idiots who listen to Joni Mitchell songs and read Rachel Carson's bullshit work, The Silent Spring, end up banning DDT caused the death of 60 million people around the world.
We've got taxes.
They have fatal mosquitoes.
So, I'm just saying...
I know we can get dragged into the negativity.
It happens to me sometimes too.
But I can't imagine where I would rather be than doing what I'm doing right now, today, in this area, for this cause.
It's like the drummer for U2 in Rattle and Hum.
He's like, yeah, this is what I do.
This is what I'm meant to do.
This is all I want to do.
And you can let the actions of malevolent, ignorant, stupid, and malicious people ruin your life, but you'll never run out of those people.
the only thing you'll ever run out of is life itself.
I guess I don't know.
I was looking for toads with my daughter.
Sorry, just one last thing.
I was looking for toads with my daughter, baby toads in the grass.
And normally I just walk and there's grass, right?
But then when you look down and you look for the little tiny movement of the baby toads in the grass, suddenly you realize...
The grass is incredibly alive.
There's so much stuff in there.
You know, like crickets and bugs and the baby toads and the baby frogs.
There's just so much stuff in the grass.
Whereas you look at the lawn, it's like, hey, that's a peaceful lawn.
You look down, it's like seething with squirmy, jumpy, wormy life.
Insects and everything, right?
It's like the beginning of Blue Velvet, you know?
If you've ever seen the film, the camera sort of pans in and the suburban lawn goes right down to the bottom to all the bugs fighting and battling underneath.
Terrifying film.
Paps with a ribbon!
Fuck that shit!
Anyway, but...
What I'm saying is that whatever you look for, you will generally see.
You want to stand up high, look at the peaceful lawn, you will see the peaceful lawn.
If you want to look down and see all the squirming insects, you will see all the squirming insects.
You have to make your eyes look at shit.
Because everything you look at, you will see.
You can't open your eyes and not see.
So you've got to, when your eyes are open, you have to look at stuff that is positive as much as you can.
You want to look at the warring insects?
You can look at the warring insects.
You want to look at the peaceful lawn?
You can look at the peaceful lawn.
That's why it's so important who you surround yourself with.
Who is your support group?
Who are your friends?
Do they understand?
Do they get it?
Can they talk you out of the natural funk of the striving and virtuous soul?
But keep an eye, keep a huge eye on what you're looking at.
Because if all you're looking at is bad ignorant people plowing you under with the tsunami idiocy of democracy, then you will see that and that is true.
That's not the whole story, but that's all you look at, that's all you will see.
And it's like looking at stupidity and looking at malevolence is exactly the same as looking at the sun.
What happens when you look at the sun too long and then you look away?
You get light spots.
You can't see.
You can't see anything else.
Yeah, you've got those light spots.
You can't see a goddamn thing, right?
Somebody put a quote in here.
It says, malaria may have killed half of all the people's That ever lived.
And more people are now infected than any point in history.
There are up to half a billion cases every year and about two million deaths.
Half of those are children in sub-Saharan Africa.
but it's okay because we've got the self-righteousness of having banned DDT, which was bad for the environment.
Yeah, be careful what you stare at it.
It leaves an afterimage and can take over everything.
And that Obamacare thing was a pretty bright light for your vision, right?
Yeah.
It's a daily thing.
And look, also, pace yourself, you know?
When I was at the conference in Detroit, there was a panel I was on with Dr.
Warren Farrell and Paul Elam and a bunch of other great people, and They said, what should activists do?
And Dr.
Farrell said, first thing you do is you take care of your health.
You pace yourself.
Take care of your health, right?
You know the stress, this anger is not good for your health, right?
Yeah.
And it's completely fine to take a break from the fight.
Trust me, the bad things will still be here when you get back.
We're not going to take care of the whole problem while you take a break.
You can take a break from whatever.
This show, whatever is putting you at odds with the universe you're living in, take a break.
Go for a walk.
Enjoy the sunset.
There are butterflies in the world whether the government is here or not.
There are high Clouds that look like they've scraped over the bowl of candy floss and then been flung, spattered against The setting sun.
Beautiful things to see.
There are meteor showers, whether the government is here or not.
The clouds turn, the birds are born, and the worms crawl over your toes, making you go, ooh, that's slimy and tickly.
All of that happens.
Your children laugh.
They play their games.
My daughter makes her floral arrangements, whether the state is here or not.
And me not enjoying my daughter's floral arrangements, sure as shit, is paying way more tax than I ever want to pay.
There is such deep and wonderful beauty in the world.
There are great poems.
There are great movies.
There are great songs in the world.
Some of them aren't somebody to love by Queen, but that's okay.
There are great and powerful people to meet in the world.
There are great thoughts to have that have nothing to do with the state.
There are insights.
There's self-knowledge.
There's connection.
There's truth.
There's emotional breakthroughs.
There's deep love connections that occur regardless of the state.
But you stare at the state too long.
You burn your eyes out.
And then you can't see the people right next to you because you're involved in the cloud combat of a future we will never live to see.
Take a break.
Enjoy the world.
Drink deep of the beauty that is everywhere in the world if you look for it.
It's not all mace in the eyeballs from unfeeling, mirror-eyed cop-bots, right?
Don't let statism cock block your joy.
That's what I'm trying to tell you.
My wife posted in the chat, so I should probably take her advice.
All right.
All right.
Thanks very much for your call.
I really appreciate it.
- I'm good at your step. - Thank you.
Okay.
All right.
So let's do one more call.
I'm afraid you may not get my full time and attention because it's a little late.
But let's give it a shot.
All right.
Who's up next?
Ancy, how about I reschedule for the future since I want you, since your question is more personal related, to get the full time.
And Michael, who's next, has a question that is a little more short.
So Michael's up next.
And Michael said...
On a recent Peter Schiff show, you said the Republicans never met a defense budget that couldn't have its death-dealing capacity increased.
This slightly irritated me because I think history has demonstrated that the worst genocidal dictators and oppressive regimes around the world could only be dealt with militarily.
It took World War II to defeat Hitler, Mussolini, and the Empire of Japan.
It took a U.S. effort in Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
It took a NATO bombing campaign to ultimately rid the Balkans of Milosevic, etc.
My point being, evil can only be confronted with a military force.
How could you apply the non-aggression principle in dealing with the history's monsters who have used a sword and gun of state power to commit mass murder and genocidal attacks?
Great question.
Did you want to add anything to it?
Can you put that in the sky?
Hey, Sam.
Hey, did you hear it?
It's a great question.
Did you want to add anything to it?
No, I mean, originally that was something I responded.
You put out something on Twitter, I responded negatively to it.
And I remember when I replied on Twitter, the questions I posed to you was, you know, which of history's genocidal dictators were defeated using the non-aggression principle?
And I said, I felt that the answer was none.
Because if you look at, you know, World War II and That usually, you know, a lot of oppressive regimes and dictators had to be taken out militarily, so the point I was kind of making...
Oh, come on.
Wait, wait, no.
Come on, come on, come on, come on.
How old are you?
I'm 32.
32, okay.
Tell me what shots were fired in the fall of communist Russia.
Oh, no, that was an economic collapse.
Oh, come on, don't split hairs with me.
You are switched dictatorships who were brought down without the use of military force.
Russia, the Eastern European tyrannies, those are brought down without.
How about the switch of China from a command and control economy where tens of millions of people starved to death and where there were mass genocides under Mao's Cultural Revolution in the 60s In the early 90s, they switched over to the free market.
Was that the result of military intervention?
No.
What about India, which went from a command and control socialist economy implanted by the British intellectuals in the post-Raj period after 1949, switching to free market reforms, which is getting 50,000 people a month out of poverty and really ended which is getting 50,000 people a month out of poverty and really ended the socialist semi-tyranny of the post-Raj era under Nehru was that achieved through violence or through peace?
The only country that ever ended slavery through a civil war was America, All other countries ended slavery simply by refusing to catch the slaves, basically, making it illegal for sure.
But trust me, things have been made illegal before, and they haven't gone away, like immigration, like prohibition, like the war on drugs, like taxing cigarettes really highly, which simply has people cruise around Yorkville with them in hockey bags, apparently.
So...
Ending slavery was the result of a non...
There was some British Navy interference and so on, but fundamentally slavery was ended by simply the government saying, well, we don't catch slaves anymore, it's up to you.
And they did make it illegal, but fundamentally it was around not catching them anymore, and that's how slavery ended.
There was no giant world war to end slavery.
Right.
Conversely, though, I would like to ask you...
For examples of the violent overthrow of a dictator that resulted—well, no, I can think of one—Germany.
Yeah, World War II. I'm thinking of the violent overthrow of dictators that result in sort of peaceful situations.
And Germany, of course, was the case, as was the case in Japan.
So, yeah, I'm just thinking of that, but then I thought of counter examples, so never mind that.
But I can certainly think of examples wherein the presence of dictatorship results from violations of the non-aggression principle, right?
So, if violations of the non-aggression principle produce dictators, Then saying we have to violate the non-aggression principle in order to get rid of them is sort of different, right?
So, for instance, I mean, I've mentioned this before a few times on the show, so I'll just touch on it briefly.
The revolution in Russia was largely triggered, in fact, some argue exclusively triggered by America's entry into World War I and the massive support that it gave to The Western Front, which caused Germany to ship Lenin to Moscow through Finland armed and with huge amounts of money so that he could start a revolution in Russia,
which would end the Russian involvement in the Eastern Front, which it did, and then allow Germany to concentrate its resources on the Western Front because fighting a two-front war was destroying their capacity for any chance of victory.
Now, because America threw all of its resources in to the First World War on the side of the Allies, you ended up with a revolution in Russia, which caused 70 million deaths and caused...
There's almost no conceivable way that something like the Cambodian killing fields or Cuba could have existed without Russian foreign aid because they had the incentive to create a worldwide communist revolution that North Korea, that Vietnam, none of these things would have occurred.
Now, America's entry into World War I also created this crazy disproportionate victory on the part of the allies against Yeah, the Treaty of Versailles.
Which meant that they could impose a brutal Treaty of Versailles, right?
And this set the stage for the Second World War.
So, if you look at, just in particular, American foreign policy under Woodrow Wilson during the First World War, you can see massive examples of how them initiating the draft And forcing people to pay for their war efforts and so on created the dictatorships.
I mean, the three major dictatorships that occurred out of the First World War, the Russian dictatorship, which spread, of course, after the Second World War or through the Second World War, through all of Eastern Europe and in places in Asia and in South America.
Mexico is the first communist country outside of the Soviet Union.
The repercussions of which are still being felt today in their economy.
So America directly intervening in World War I created this massive communist virus that spread all the way around the world and caused the deaths of hundreds of millions of people and then also triggered in the post-war collapse and destroyed economies and the Christian fear of the communists' murders of Christians in Under Lenin in the 1920s,
the Kulaks created the dictatorships that you were talking about, the Hitlerian dictatorship, the Mussolini dictatorship.
And so you're saying, well, we've got to use violence to end these dictatorships.
But I'm saying it's violence that brought these things about in the first place.
Just saying...
Like, missing that part, I think, that you don't just arise out of nowhere, like, oh my god, there's a ghost in my yard, I need a Ghostbuster.
It's like, no, you summon these ghosts by the previous or prior applications of violence.
And so the dictatorships are products of violations of the non-aggression principle.
I think then saying, well, we always and forever have to have the access to the violations of the non-aggression principle to deal with the tumors of totalitarianism that arise out of prior violations of the non-aggression principle, I'm not sure is too clear to me.
Hello?
Hello?
Sorry, you're garbling up there, brother.
Hello?
Can you hear me?
Yeah, go ahead.
I think we'll have to abandon this one.
Call back in if you want another time and we can continue the debate but I think will give me the technically advantageous though not necessarily fair last word on that.
Thanks everyone of course for a fantastic and wonderful show.
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It is a deep and abiding privilege for me to be able to Talk to people in these deep and meaningful ways.
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