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July 28, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:16:13

2756 Don't Tread on Me! 26 Libertarian Questions Answered!

Stefan Molyneux discusses the Philosophy of Liberty and answers listener questions. What advice do you have for someone interested in pursuing a career in therapy? How does the NAP apply to abortions? Are Freedom and Liberty synonymous? Would you press a button to instantly end government? What's an example of something that recently blew your mind? How long do you think it will take to end the state?

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	Hi, everyone.
	Thank you for coming tonight.
	I see questions are already coming up over in the questions tab.
	We're going to save those until after Steph gives his presentation.
	But first, let me say, you know, Stephan needs no introduction in our circles, of course, but I'll try anyway.
	Stephan is a philosopher, a YouTube sensation, the author of several books, including Everyday Anarchy, Practical Anarchy, and Universally Preferable Behavior.
	He's been the host of Free Domain Radio for almost a decade now, and he's carved himself a major spot in the Liberty Movement as one of the most exciting thinkers we have.
	So, without further ado, I present to you...
	I like that.
	Exciting.
	Correct!
	Not incorrect, not logical, not rational, not empirical.
	Exciting!
	It's philosophy with jazz hands!
	We're very excited about that.
	Well, thanks everyone for dropping by to Liberty.me.
	I hope that you're having a great evening.
	I am very keen to get sort of feedback, so I don't know how it works.
	Maybe you can funnel it to the organizer, or there's a chat here, which I can also see.
	But I really want to get sort of feedback, so get your keyboard hands flexed if you can, because...
	I think the philosophy of liberty is where we need to all start.
	I mean philosophy is where everyone should start.
	Science started with philosophy, medicine started with philosophy, geometry, biology, physics, the whole umbrella of the most successful areas of human thought all started with philosophy.
	Like we know the scientific method from sort of Francis Bacon onwards, but there was literally thousands of years of working out How philosophy could contribute to science beforehand.
	We know now about the double-blind experiment in medicine, we know about evolution and so on, but all of those had groundings in philosophical definitions and philosophical thought.
	So, one of the things that I really want to get across is the degree to which definitions really matter.
	So, in society, when there's massive amounts of human conflict, As there is in the realm of politics, as there is in the realm of religion, it all has to do with definitions.
	So the philosophy of liberty, I would say first and foremost, what it needs to do or what we need to do as a movement is to define what liberty is.
	Now, that can't just be a personal definition.
	It has to be philosophical.
	And by philosophical, I mean it has to be rational, it has to be empirical.
	Most importantly though, I'm sure this is some sort of Masonic sign that I'm not aware of that people then accuse me of being some sort of nose-picking Illuminati guy.
	But the most important thing, you know, rational, empirical, but most importantly, it is universal, universal, universal, universal.
	So I've got this free book on ethics called Universally Preferable Behavior, A Rational Proof of Secular Ethics.
	I won't go into the arguments in detail here.
	But the most important question is, what is liberty?
	Now, I would argue there's really two ways that people define liberty.
	Liberty of opportunity and liberty to avoid the consequences of bad decisions.
	Liberty of opportunity is what we all understand as the non-aggression principle.
	So you simply say you can't initiate force against other human beings.
	That means that the playing ground of whoever wants to go and do whatever they want to do in society is open and available.
	Now, nobody's going to say that the playing ground in human society is perfectly even, perfectly equal.
	There are people who are born rich.
	There are people who are born beautiful.
	There are people who are born poor.
	There are people who are born ugly.
	There are people who are born with funny nasally voices.
	There are people who are born with cleft palettes and unibrows and different colored eyeballs.
	So, it's not like there's genetics, you know, tall, short and all that, propensity towards leanness, propensity towards being overweight.
	These are all things that are just biological variations.
	You can't equal those.
	I mean, you simply can't make those equal.
	You can't take a couple of inches of shinbone from tall people and insert it into the shinbone of short people.
	I guess you could, but it would be pretty horrifying.
	Saw 9, the great height equalizer, comes to town with a giant set of blades and Procrusty's bed.
	So, biological variations we can't really do anything about, but equality of opportunity Which means no force will bar one human being from pursuing his or her goals.
	That is what most of us mean by liberty, by freedom.
	It means don't stand in my way in my pursuit of my happiness, right?
	The pursuit of happiness is the important phrase and a fairly mediocre Canadian band.
	And it means that you...
	You can pursue your happiness and you can be guaranteed the liberty to pursue your happiness.
	That means maybe you'll achieve it and maybe you won't.
	Maybe you'll fail.
	But I think that is really important to focus on.
	Obviously the founding fathers wisely did not say that you were going to be guaranteed happiness but you would be guaranteed the opportunity to pursue happiness however you saw fit.
	Now that's what people who haven't made big mistakes in their life are interested in Promoting as liberty, and I think that sort of makes sense.
	On the other hand, what we have is the liberty that then people start talking about when they have made big mistakes, right?
	I mean, pre-mistakes and post-mistakes, you know, pre-disaster and post-disaster is really important.
	It's kind of the tipping point for philosophy as a whole.
	So, you know, it's like the Titanic before you hit the iceberg is a grand ocean liner full of love and hormones and sex in cars and king of the world screaming Leonardo DiCaprio.
	Afterwards, it's, you know, hair like popsicles, hearts freezing, and I guess ice sharks biting people.
	I don't know.
	I'm not a biologist.
	So the before and the after disaster is pretty important, right?
	So if you're a woman and you know you're married to a great guy and you have a kid you know fantastic you're probably very keen on economic liberty because that means that your husband is most likely to get a good income and have lots of opportunities and be able to provide for his family including you and your kids.
	On the other hand if you are A woman who married the wrong guy, had kids with the wrong guy, or had a one-night stand, didn't use birth control, and now you have a child, then liberty means something very different for you than it does to other people.
	If you are somebody who smokes for 40 years and now you're really sick and don't have a lot of money, liberty probably means something quite different to you than it does mean to other people.
	These two differences are really, really important to understand.
	The people who are prior to big mistakes or who are willing to accept the consequences of bad decisions are very keen on liberty.
	People who've made bad decisions and don't want to accept the consequences of those bad decisions always try to redefine liberty to mean something else, to mean something quite the opposite of what most people would argue.
	That it means.
	And this difference is really, really important to understand.
	A person who's made bad mistakes, a person who got sick while choosing not to buy health insurance is somebody who's made a big mistake.
	Now, if you don't buy health insurance and you don't get sick, yay for you, right?
	You've made a good decision.
	Like if you put all of your money on Red 22 and it comes up Red 22, I guess you made a good decision.
	It's hard to know ahead of time, right?
	But in the fog of the future, the people who have decided not to buy health insurance and then they get sick, well, they're not happy.
	And what happens then is that their freedom diminishes enormously because they've got to run up a huge amount of bills.
	They've got people calling them to pick up their money.
	They've got creditors hounding them.
	They have to go to work after they get better, assuming they get better.
	They have to go to work.
	They've got to work two jobs to pay their bills back.
	And they feel...
	Not free in any real fundamental way.
	And what happens is they say, I am not free because I am so dragged down by my debts.
	I am so dragged down by my student debt or by my visa debt or by my ill health, which is the result probably of like 70 or 80% of health problems are the result of lifestyle choices.
	So I didn't exercise.
	I ate crappy.
	I smoked.
	Now I'm sick and I'm not free anymore.
	And this really is fundamentally essential to understand.
	People don't feel free when either bad luck or bad decisions diminish their choices.
	And they call that a lack of freedom.
	So if you get a job as, I don't know, an engineer, and you go $40,000 into debt, but then you get a job for $60,000 or $70,000 or $80,000, it'll take you five or six years to pay off your debt maybe, and then It's a gravy train or whatever.
	If you get a job in Etruscan vase painting art history in the 12th empire of the sub-Ming dynasty of Jingtau Pauhua, then you try to get a job and you find that it's not really that in demand a set of skills.
	And then what happens is you've got your $40,000 in debt and you're working at Starbucks.
	Well, then you're going to have a very long road ahead of you.
	To pay off your debts.
	What that means is that those people who decided to get a degree and go heavily into debt for something which doesn't have any real marketable value, those people feel I'm not free!
	And it drives people mad.
	I'm a single mom.
	I'm 19.
	I had a baby.
	I am not free to go and do the things that I want to do.
	I'm not free to go to school.
	I'm not free to go partying with my girlfriends.
	I'm just not free.
	And that is really an important distinction to understand.
	When people talk about freedom, it's really important to talk about and understand what they mean by the term.
	Is it freedom to or freedom from?
	I think that's really an important distinction to make.
	And if you don't get that cleared up with people, then you will really be talking at cross-purposes and you won't get anything done in terms of advancing real liberty.
	Real liberty, fundamentally, is just freedom from coercion.
	And it's related for fraud and so on, but freedom from coercion.
	But if you've made bad decisions, right?
	So we'll just take the example of somebody who...
	Got a bad degree and is heavily in debt.
	Well, that's the result of choices, right?
	The freedom to make choices must include the freedom or the responsibility to live with the results of those choices.
	If you smoke, your insurance is going to be higher.
	If you lie on your insurance form and say you don't smoke and then you get sick and they test you and they find that you do smoke, then they won't honor your Contract, because you falsified, right?
	You paid a lower rate and so on.
	And everybody wants to be free to pursue opportunities and everybody takes risks in life.
	Some people don't get health insurance.
	Some people drive too fast.
	Some people smoke.
	Some people parachute.
	Some people have unprotected sex with strangers.
	Some people take drugs.
	Some people drink and drive.
	Everybody takes risks.
	Some legal and some not.
	There are gamblers and so on.
	People who get involved with obviously crazy See romantic partners and so on.
	So everybody takes risks and liberty means take the risk and take the consequences.
	Now everybody wants the risks, of course.
	It's fun to go to a casino, but nobody wants to walk out wearing their long johns and one of those cartoon barrels that you all seem to wear in the 1930s when you're poor.
	And This is natural.
	It's perfectly natural to want to take risks and to want to avoid the consequences of those risks not panning out.
	I mean, if I could tell you, listen, without any doubt, you will not need health.
	I mean, pretend there's no Obamacare.
	You will not need health insurance for 20 years because you won't get sick a day in your life.
	You'd be like, whew, thank you, goodness gracious, I'm going to save myself tens of thousands of dollars by not buying health insurance.
	And if you knew the day you were going to get sick, you would go in a free society.
	You'd go the day before and you'd get your health insurance, right?
	But of course, nobody knows.
	Nobody knows what's going to happen to their future, to their health, to their job, to their kids.
	And this is why most people take out insurance of some kind or another.
	So that they can hedge their risks, right?
	I'll lose a little bit of money now paying for premiums to help me to...
	You don't buy fire insurance.
	If your house burns down, you want freedom from those consequences.
	Because now you're like, damn, I should have bought that fire insurance.
	I'm an idiot.
	Oh my goodness, my house burnt down!
	And so you want to run to the government to avoid the consequences.
	Because if your house is worth like half a million dollars and it burns down and you don't have any fire insurance and you've got like $25,000 or $50,000 worth of furniture and crap in there, well, you've just been set back like 10 or 20 years in your life economically.
	That's heartbreaking.
	That's just awful.
	And people want freedom from the consequences of their bad choices and it's entirely natural.
	Human desire.
	It's what keeps insurance costs low is the fact that people really don't want to pay it.
	So there's nothing wrong with that.
	Now, we need those people in society to remind other people why it's so good to buy things like health insurance and fire insurance, right?
	So, you know, oh, my third cousin, he didn't buy fire insurance.
	His house burnt down and, you know, he's now 10 years later still paying off the debts.
	So you should buy your insurance, right?
	Oh, that guy, you know, he smoked for 20 years and he got lung cancer and he was dead in six months, so you shouldn't smoke.
	We need these human catastrophes, not like we want them, not like they should.
	I would be great if everyone bought insurance and keep the price down for everyone and all that.
	But we need to see those negative consequences in order to help us make Better and more rational decisions.
	I mean, some guy who pays $10,000 a month in insurance for everything from meteor strikes to demonic possession is probably going a little too far the other way.
	And we really do want to make sure that we can guide ourselves by people who make bad decisions and we look at those negative consequences and we can weigh short and long term costs and benefits.
	So, when people say freedom They either mean the freedom to do stuff, which means freedom from coercion and control and regulation and taxation and force of every kind, or they mean freedom from the consequences of bad decisions.
	I trained for this, like, there was a West Wing years ago where some computer guy was like, well, all the computer jobs are going to India.
	We need the government to retrain us.
	Right?
	Well, people invested a lot of time and money in...
	They were becoming computer programmers and then jobs went overseas and then they wanted government money to retrain.
	Well, this is a risk that happens to everyone.
	There were lots of people who cleaned up horse poop in New York City in 1900 and then by 1930 their jobs were mostly gone.
	Same thing with horse and carriage companies and same thing with people who make what the young people may look up as wristwatches, which was what you used before you had a clock you could swipe on your phone.
	So it's entirely natural that people want to minimize the consequences of their bad decisions, but societies do really badly when the consequences of negative decisions are withheld from people.
	In other words, when you subsidize people's bad habits, right?
	So this is really fundamentally what I want to point out in terms of definitions.
	When people say freedom or liberty, what they often mean is just freedom to make bad decisions and avoid those consequences.
	And that's statism, and that's vote buying.
	Because people who've made really bad decisions have a very concentrated incentive to get government money.
	So the guy whose house has burnt down really wants emergency relief money to pay for his house.
	And he's gonna go, he's got like Half a million dollars worth of incentive to go and get the government to do stuff, whereas it costs the responsible people in the town, you know, 20 bucks that year or whatever.
	So they have very little incentive to stop it.
	Now, and I'm just, I'll sort of end up briefly here because I want to sort of get to questions about all of this stuff.
	But let me just make a brief pitch for why it should be liberty to and not liberty from.
	Negative consequences of bad decisions and decisions which are sometimes only revealed as bad through the negative consequences.
	You can't always know ahead of time, which is why insurance is a choice and a risk and a gamble and so on.
	The reason is universality.
	The arguments I put forward in universally preferable behavior, it's fdrurl.com slash free if you want to pick up your free audio and PDF and HTML. And so on.
	You can universalize the non-aggression principle.
	So think of two guys in a room, right?
	Bob and Doug.
	This is another demonic symbol I'm sure that people will.
	Think of two guys in a room, Bob and Doug.
	Two guys in a room can both respect each other's property rights.
	They can both respect the non-aggression principle.
	That can be universalized.
	They can both not beat each other, not rape each other, not steal from each other, not assault each other.
	They can both maintain that just by whittling and playing their harmonica and drinking mint juleps.
	And I don't know, I've run out of Southern cliches.
	But they can do whatever they want and they can both adhere to the non-aggression principle.
	And that can go on to infinity, that can go on ad infinitum.
	You can have six billion people, the whole world over, all complying with the non-aggression principle at the same time.
	Some are in comas, some are sleeping, some are passed out drunk, but fundamentally, you can have the whole world respecting the non-aggression principle at the same time.
	It can be universalized.
	So, respect property.
	Do not initiate force.
	The two pillars of the non-aggression principle can All be universalized.
	Now think of two people in the same room who are trying to adhere to theft is good.
	So we have respect property rights is universally preferable behavior that can all be adhered to by everyone the whole world over.
	Think of two guys in a room trying to adhere to a moral principle called theft is universally preferable behavior.
	They can't Do it.
	Right?
	They can't do it.
	Theft, by definition, is that which you do not want to happen.
	Right?
	I mean, if I say to you, you can borrow my car, then, you know, you take my keys and use my car and bring it back.
	That's not theft.
	I'm lending you my car.
	But if you don't have permission, in other words, if I don't want you to do it, then...
	We have a problem.
	You stole my car.
	So two guys in the same room cannot both hold to the value of violating property rights, of stealing from each other at the same time.
	Because theft has to be what you don't want to have happen.
	So one guy has to not want the other guy to steal from him in order for it to be theft.
	Which means you have one guy not wanting to be stolen from and another guy not wanting to be stolen from in order for it to be theft.
	Neither of them stealing from the other because it's contradictory behavior.
	So you can't universalize, thou shalt steal, thou shalt rape, thou shalt assault, thou shalt murder.
	You can't because murder and theft and rape and assault are all things that one person, the victim, must not want to have happen and therefore it cannot be universalized as preferable behavior.
	Because one person has to not want it to happen while the other person has to want it to happen for it to occur, which means it can't be universalized.
	So the foundation of the non-aggression principle, right, No initiation of force and respect for property can be completely universalized, which is the foundational requirement of any philosophical principle, just as any scientific principle needs to be universalized in order for it to be science.
	You can't say helium balloons rise in Illinois, but not in Chattanooga.
	In Chattanooga they go sideways, and Sierra Leone they drill straight down into the ground.
	That would not be a universal principle.
	So the universalization is the great power of philosophy, of science, of Medicine.
	And if it can't be universalized, it cannot be a valid principle.
	And if it cannot be universally preferable behavior, it can't be any kind of ethic that human beings can either pursue or sustain or should respect.
	So when people say, I want freedom from the consequences of my bad decisions, and I want other people to pay for them, automatically we're basically talking about theft, which means we're talking about A violation of universality, a violation of the non-aggression principle, a violation of property rights can't be universalized.
	Because if I say everyone, everyone must be able to steal from others or use force to take property from others in order to cover the consequences of their bad decisions, I've automatically put a non-universal clause in there called The consequences of bad decisions.
	Not everyone is all the time making bad decisions, so I have different and opposing moral standards for people who are making good decisions and people who are making bad decisions.
	And even within the people making bad decisions, I have two moral categories.
	One is people who make bad decisions who are willing to accept the consequences of those bad decisions without stealing and running for the government or whatever.
	And therefore don't or won't initiate violence to cover their bad decisions and people who've made those bad decisions who refuse or really don't want to live with the consequences and run to the government.
	So, before and after disaster, before and after or whether there is a willingness to accept the consequences of bad decisions, these are things you really need to figure out.
	And it's not just intellectual, it's also emotional.
	It's also emotional.
	I mean, As we all know, we've been debating liberty with some human being, some planet-destroying, state-sucking, flag-worshipping muggle.
	And we say, well, you know, public school is indoctrination, blah-de-blah.
	Hey, man, my mom's a teacher.
	Are you saying her?
	Right?
	Things get very personal.
	And if somebody has made bad decisions and has run to the government, they need in their heads to defy liberty.
	As the opposite of what it is.
	Otherwise, they basically have to say, well, I rolled the dice, and when I didn't get my money, I rolled some kid in the schoolyard for his lunch money and ran home thinking I was a great guy, right?
	Because it's mostly the children who are going to pay for all these unfunded liabilities and national debts.
	So, I just really want to invite you to probe into what people mean by the word freedom, by the word liberty.
	All great sales.
	Start with listening.
	It starts with, you know, you walk into a sales room in a car dealership, they say, hey folks, you know, what are you looking for?
	You know, what was your last car?
	What do you like about certain cars?
	You know, it all starts with listening.
	And first we need to understand what people mean when they say freedom, when they mean, when they say liberty.
	Do they mean freedom to, as we do, or do they mean freedom from the consequences of bad decisions?
	And if you don't have that established, I think it's going to be impossible.
	To make any progress with people.
	So with that having been said, thank you for your patience as I do my wee ramble at the beginning.
	But I'm more than happy to hear questions, objections, criticisms, and massive praise for my hairdo.
	Do we have any questions floating around?
	Let me have a look.
	Brace yourself.
	The questions are coming.
	We have actually a ton of questions.
	I'll bring them on the screen.
	By the way, guys, if you'd like to ask questions in text, you can ask them over in the questions tab to the right.
	Or if you'd like to come on screen to ask a question, you can click video chatting in the upper right and then click start your webcam.
	The best setup for that to make sure all works is to have an updated Chrome or Firefox.
	So, our first question here is from Connor Johnston.
	What reading and general advice do you recommend to someone interested in pursuing a career as a therapist?
	What reading or advice do I... Ah, yeah, okay.
	Well, I think that therapy, at the moment, is, I think, relativistic empathy without principles.
	Now, please understand, I'm no therapist.
	I did take therapy.
	for many years and if you can imagine what I was like before but I think the therapists are very sort of empathetic and and they feel your pain and they sympathize but I don't think that they have principles and I think that the primary principle that they don't understand is the libertarian principle of self-defense of self-defense there are swaths of incredibly toxic and destructive people the world over I mean One out of 20 people are
	outright sociopaths, and since that study came out, I think sociopathy has doubled.
	And so, you know, one in 10 people, one in 20 people are sociopaths, and so in your extended family, just by happenstance or whatever, there's probably going to be at least one.
	And there are lots of people who are abusers, who are lots of people who will undermine you, who won't support you, who will ignore your needs, who will simply use you selfishly, who only call you when they want something, and so on.
	And so, given that we're sort of minnows in some ways surrounded by sharks, I think that the principle of self-defense is very important.
	To defend yourself from people who will prey upon you emotionally and psychologically and materially.
	People who take without giving, who are never reciprocal and so on.
	I mean they'll drain your will to live and they certainly will undermine any grand ambitions that you have.
	So before I went around trying to change the world by building the world's biggest philosophy conversation, I hit a bit of a napalm bomb on the rather toxic Vietnamese jungles of my social circle.
	And I said, you know, this is what I want to do.
	What do you think?
	And people are like, ah, you can't do it.
	Ah, you know, don't be ridiculous.
	Ah, you know, you don't even have a PhD in philosophy.
	Ah, you know.
	And, you know, I sort of had to say to myself, well, I can either stay in the circle of people who don't think I can do it or I can just go and try and do it.
	But I knew I couldn't try and do it with people talking me down all the time, with people sort of saying I couldn't do it or shouldn't do it or it was pointless or dangerous or, you know, irresponsible or I don't have the skill set or whatever.
	Because, you know, everyone who's around you takes up residence in your head and forms subtitles and a running commentary on everything that you do.
	And so I think that therapists are very good at empathizing.
	I think they over-focus on forgiveness.
	I think that they focus on forgiveness being something that people will for others, which is silly.
	Forgiveness is something that is evoked by the behavior of someone else.
	And so I think that therapists are good at the empathy stuff and so on.
	on.
	I don't think that they're good at the rational self-defense stuff about how to stay sane in a world still full of very irrational and often dangerous people.
	I don't think that they know enough about self-defense.
	So that's sort of my focus.
	If you want to focus on, I think, being a very effective therapist, in other words, somebody who genuinely works to change people's lives, focus on principles, which is non-aggression principle, non-initiation of force, respect for property, and reciprocity of emotional investment is key.
	and we can't change others.
	So rather than sit around trying to reform people by spraying You know, cannonballs of imaginary forgiveness at them.
	We need to accept empirically people for who they are, make an effort for sure, try and change people for sure, but don't hang around while they slowly sink into the grave and try and pull you with them.
	So that's my suggestion about how to be a better therapist.
	Do we have another question?
	To say that we've got millions of other questions.
	All right, the next one is from Joseph Everhart.
	We're gonna try to Bring him on air.
	Video off.
	Audio off.
	So he will be miming in the dark.
	Alright, we'll try him again in just a minute maybe.
	Our next try is Adam Schwartz.
	Video off.
	Audio off.
	You can type if you need people.
	Um...
	Do we have Morse code?
	Do we have carrier pigeons?
	Smoke signals!
	Next question.
	Our next text question is from Michael Boston.
	Recently, you said somewhere that you weren't sure about how the non-aggression principle applies to abortions.
	Why is that?
	Oh, good.
	Okay, let's...
	Let's start with the easy one.
	I'll give you the really cheap and avoidant answer, and then I'll move on to the next question.
	No, I'll try and give you a good one.
	So there are massive amounts of social circumstances that contribute to abortion.
	I think it's, what, 50-plus million fetuses have been murdered or killed in the United States since Roe v.
	Wade in the 70s, and that's a whole lot of people who aren't here, you know, some of whom could have found a cure for cancer, some of whom could have solved environmental problems, some of whom...
	Could have done some really wonderful stuff.
	So, the first thing is that there's a lot of social circumstances that contribute to abortion.
	The welfare state, irresponsible sexuality, the hypersexualization of culture, which comes from people not learning any wisdom or depth, either in their families or their religions or in government schools.
	Lord help us.
	So, there's lots of things that contribute to it, but the basic reality is that that is a potential human life that is being Killed.
	And I would love a society where abortions could be reduced through bribery.
	I think it would be wonderful.
	So if a woman gets pregnant and doesn't want to have a kid, wouldn't it be great if someone could pay her $20,000 to bring that child to term and give the child up?
	I mean, what a wonder.
	There's 10%, I think, of married couples are infertile.
	And you know, a lot of those married couples really want kids.
	And wouldn't it be great If they could simply buy the fetus.
	And now people get all kinds of shocked about that.
	You're talking about buying human life!
	It's like, yes!
	That's better than killing it, don't you think?
	I mean...
	If everyone who was alive had been aborted, there'd be nobody alive.
	So all the people who weren't aborted are saying, well, you know, but it's so shocking to think of buying babies.
	It's like, yeah, I think that'd be great.
	We buy human life all the time.
	When you ship mosquito nets to Africa, it costs money and it saves lives.
	We are buying lives by spending money.
	So I think it would be great to have a society where a woman could be paid By the people who want to have kids and can't have kids to have the child and to give the child up for adoption.
	I think that would be fantastic.
	Adoption should be way easier.
	But the reality is that if a man drives a car into a woman's car and kills her, and if she's pregnant, he's charged with two counts of murder, right?
	The murder of the mother and the murder of the fetus.
	Now, you could say, well, but the difference is that the woman wants to kill the fetus and the man does not have permission to kill the fetus.
	But then you have the problem of murder versus euthanasia, right?
	Most of the people who believe in the power of the state have big problems with euthanasia, I guess because God is supposed to choose your time of ending or something like that.
	But euthanasia is a willing murder.
	Most people have a big problem with that morally.
	And that's your own life which you're killing.
	You can't euthanize someone else against their will.
	Now certainly, the fetus does not want to die.
	In fact, you can see, you know, these are pretty horrifying videos, but you can see the fetus trying to scrabble away from the needle or whatever's going in there, the DNC, whatever's going in there to kill the fetus.
	They're desperately, they're scrabbling to try and get away from this thing that is harming them and going to end their life.
	Certainly, the fetus doesn't want to die, and ending a human life in the womb is murder if it's from somebody who's not the mother.
	Again, universality is a bit of a problem here.
	You can't have separate moral rules for a guy in a car and a woman carrying a fetus.
	I think that there are challenges to it.
	The big problem, of course, is you can't punish the mother without punishing the child, because the child is still inside the mother.
	So I'm not sure that punishment or jail or anything like that is the way to go.
	I think we want to minimize situations where women will get pregnant without wanting the child, and there's lots of ways to do that.
	But I think most importantly, we need a market for fetuses because the glorious power of the free market, which has saved hundreds of millions of lives throughout history and in the real world now, will continue to save this holocaust of the unborn and will reach in with the wonderful stork of cash and bring these fetuses out to survival.
	So I hope that's what's going to happen.
	I don't imagine that's going to happen anytime soon because people have this weird belief that somehow money-touching birth is a bad thing, but a child being sucked out of the womb and thrown in the trash is more acceptable.
	So, I hope that helps.
	Alright, our next question is from Brad Edwards.
	Do you believe that, with human nature being what it is, that anarchy could ever have been possible without technology until now?
	Well, that's a very, very good question.
	I think certainly technology is the greatest boost that reason, peace, freedom, anarchy, philosophy, you name it, has had.
	I mean, we're able to have this conversation.
	I've had like 70 or 75 million downloads of shows.
	It's the biggest philosophy injection to the neo-frontal cortex of the planet since there was a planet.
	So technology certainly has a massive amount to do with it.
	But I think, you know, when you look at the anarchies in history, sort of in In the frontiers of the West sometimes or in ancient Ireland or Iceland and so on.
	There was no state but there was no philosophy.
	They were not rational.
	They were generally mystical and tribal and so on.
	So I think that philosophical anarchy Really can't exist without contributing massively towards technology because philosophical anarchy is respect for property rights and free trade and all that self-ownership and moral responsibility and all of those things really contribute towards the growth of the free market.
	So I think like what I would call genuine anarchy which is not merely the absence of the state but a philosophical rational understanding of the non-aggression principle of property rights and a rejection of mysticism and faith and all these kinds of things all of which were catastrophically endemic in the Wild West and in ancient Ireland and in ancient Iceland and so on.
	So philosophical anarchy I think is hugely enabled by technology Remember, technology comes out of the most anarchic elements of what's left of the free market, namely software and hardware, which is unlicensed and largely unregulated and so on.
	Governments can't afford to regulate software because they rely on it to surveil us and figure out how much we owe them in taxes and what we're seeing on conversations like this and so on.
	I think it's a huge boost.
	When we do get philosophical anarchy, the rate of progress will be truly staggering.
	Alright, our next question is from Ashley Agarest.
	If people refuse to acknowledge our definitions, wouldn't it be more useful to come up with new words instead, like libertarian, replacing, and...
	There's no last word on that, but I think we get the idea.
	Well, no, I don't think that it's up to us to redefine our terms.
	I think it's up to other people to start goddamn well thinking.
	You know, the abolitionistic movement didn't say, well, we're going to redefine slavery and we're going to redefine abolitionism as bunnies and carrot-nosed dancing snowmen and unicorns and rainbows.
	They called things by what they are.
	And my proposal and my argument has been for many years that That if you are against Nazism, if you recognize, say, Nazism for the evil that it is, then you cannot hang out with avowed members of the Nazi party.
	If you are against racism and you recognize racism, the great evil that it is, you cannot hang out with KKK members.
	I mean, this is just basic integrity 101.
	If you want to change the world, you have to, by God, live your values.
	Now, people who disagree with me about freedom, statists, they believe that men in blue costumes, armed to the teeth, should kick in my door and drag me off to the rape rooms of modern jails because I wish to follow my conscience.
	They would cheer and advocate and say, good riddance, should I be dragged into the modern gulag hellhole of statist punishments, That is the initiation of force against me.
	They are advocating, applauding, and thirsting for the initiation of force against me.
	I will not hang out with people like that.
	I will not give them sanction.
	I will not give them praise.
	I will not break bread with them.
	I will give them no comfort because I know what they're doing.
	I know that this bank robbery is only possible because of their nationalistic getaway car.
	I am willing to reason with them, I am willing to give them clear arguments, I am willing to give them a month or two to make up their mind, but I am not willing to stand around forever while they hum and whore as the blades descend upon the necks of free people.
	So no, I am not into redefining language to suit other people.
	If you want to change the world, you dig your damn heels into the very center of the earth and you refuse to move.
	Left or right or up or down.
	And sooner or later, either you will be blown away or the world will begin to revolve around your standards.
	That is how all fundamental change occurs in society.
	I am not going to eat a dictionary and crap out different words for the sake of other people.
	I am going to tell them that supporting the state is immoral.
	And supporting the state against me is directly calling upon the airstrike of the Cats in Blue to drag me off to rape rooms.
	If they don't like that, then they can damn well stand with me and work to change the system.
	And if they like it, they can damn well get out of my life.
	So I hope that helps.
	Alright, our next question is from Samuel Yuloa.
	What is coercion in a physical sense?
	Can it be determined by science or through reasonable law?
	Well, there are two forms of coercion.
	One is the obvious and therefore limited, and the other is the not obvious and therefore virtually unlimited.
	So the coercion that people agree with is still coercion, but there's no complaint.
	Right?
	And so the taxation that people agree with is still the initiation of force, because if you don't pay your taxes, you will be dragged off to the aforementioned rape rooms.
	But people agree with it, and therefore a crime is committed, but there's no complaint, right?
	So if somebody steals something from me and I never go to the comps, a crime has occurred, but there's no complaint.
	So there is the obvious coercion, like some guy sticks a knife in your ribs and says, give me your wallet or whatever, and people don't like that, and they report that as a crime.
	That's relatively rare.
	You know, amateurs rob banks, right?
	Professionals run banks because they get via currency controls and...
	Manipulation of interest rates and impossible to overleap regulatory barriers to competition and so on.
	And so coercion can be defined as the initiation of the use of force.
	The obvious coercion is less dangerous.
	The non-obvious coercion, like taxation, like spanking, like national debts and so on, Or the war on drugs or the war against non-violent people.
	There's no war on drugs, it's only war on people.
	It's not like they take the plant to jail.
	And so it can be defined philosophically, but the most important thing is to focus on the ideologies that hide naked coercion from people and pretend it's something like patriotism or taxes at the price we pay to live in a civilized society, you know, the usual garbage that people have been fed and regularly spew up against.
	Yeah, you can define it technically, but the most important thing to do is to get people to wake up to how it is actually being inflicted upon them the world over.
	Once people see coercion for what it is, they generally recoil, which is why coercive agencies like the state spend so much time and energy covering up their aggression.
	Alright, we're going to give the video chat a few more tries.
	We've got Janae Hamlock here.
	Hi.
	Oh, it does seem to be working.
	All right.
	I guess my main question is, you know, you were talking about the haves and the have-nots and for the, well, freedom to and freedom from, I guess.
	Worded that improperly.
	So what if you do have someone that really strongly believes in freedom from?
	And I work with a lot of people who do believe that and are pretty adamant about it.
	And, you know, how do you have that conversation?
	Well, they either will accept the truth or they won't, right?
	I mean, that's kind of binary.
	I mean, give them a little time.
	Obviously, I'm not saying, like, one conversation and that's it.
	My hand's over the trap door.
	You know, a month or two or whatever, but, you know, we don't live forever.
	We've got some triage to do on the planet.
	So either they're going to accept things, which is highly unlikely, or they're going to reject them, and then, you know, they will start to think of you as a bad person and a crazy, unstable, whatever, you know, the usual stuff.
	Most people avoid having that conversation because deep down they know how it's going to turn out.
	For the vast majority of people, it turns out very badly.
	Most people who get unplugged from the matrix bite the hand that yanks the cord and dive back in as fast as humanly possible, kicking as they go.
	It's either going to go one way or the other.
	If you talk about it with people at work, which you don't have to do.
	You're not obligated to be unemployed for the course.
	But if you do, and they reveal to themselves as people who want you thrown in jail for following your conscience in a peaceful manner, then they have revealed themselves as the bitter enemies of all that is good and truthful and honorable and decent and reasonable and civilized in the world.
	They're just another bunch of blood-soaked, warmongering apes who wish to call down the airstrike of historical parental power on anyone who thinks for themselves.
	Your relationship with people who are calling for your destruction, I don't think I need to detail in any particularly deep way.
	But that's really, I think, what it means to—we all have these ideas, but how many of us actually want to live those ideas in a socially open way?
	Open context and having them mean something to our relationships.
	But again, I don't think you can be anti-racist and hang with KKK members.
	So a lot of people do this so they can't see whether anyone's got those pointy white hats on or not.
	I don't think that's a way to respect the ideas.
	I think that we need to work a little harder and firmer than that.
	I'm sorry, this probably didn't answer anything to do with your question.
	Do you want to follow anything?
	Well, I guess the thing is, it's usually never a matter of black or white.
	I get a lot of people where they agree with me on a lot of aspects.
	But it's always not quite far enough, if that makes sense.
	That's because you're not doing first principles, right?
	You're doing, you know, well, I hate the Iraq War too, but social programs are essential for single moms and whatever, right?
	But if you're working at basic principles, it is black and white.
	Do you support the initiation of force?
	Do you support the initiation of force?
	And now people can't say yes to that because then they have to give you their wallet because otherwise you can say, okay, I'm going to punch you in my wallet, right?
	They support the initiation of force.
	They're not going to say yes to that.
	So then they have to say, no, I don't support the initiation of force.
	I said, well, then you must be against taxation, which is the initiation of force.
	Well, no, taxation is necessary.
	Oh, so you are for the initiation of force.
	Yes, but only in certain contexts, right?
	And it's like, okay, then you don't know what a principle is, right?
	Right?
	It's like a doctor saying, well, I'm only interested in healing the sick under certain contexts.
	In other contexts, I think we should put pillows over their heads and choke them to death, right?
	It's like, well, you don't understand the Hippocratic Oath, and you don't understand what it is to be a doctor, right?
	So it just means that they don't understand principles, and you can either work with them to understand principles, or you can just back away slowly, know that they're a broken-brained propaganda robot who is probably only going to lash out if you push them further.
	Yeah, I do the principles, but I mean, a lot of people are very, they want to see it.
	They want to know what that means.
	And if what that means isn't something that fits in line with their, you know, view of the world.
	Wait, so they say, well, show me a free society, right?
	Is that right?
	Right, right, right.
	Yeah.
	Now, do you have this conversation with women?
	Um, no, not really.
	Mainly men.
	If you do have conversations with women, then you could say, okay, so in the 1920s, when female suffrage was being proposed, then you would have opposed it because nobody could then show you a society where women voted.
	And therefore, we should never have given women the vote because there was no society where women voted.
	Or in the 19th century, you would have been virulently opposed to To ending slavery because you could not really point to a historical society that had not employed slavery at any time, or at least in the 18th century.
	So all human progress is unprecedented.
	I mean, it's like, there can't be cell phones because there never have been cell phones.
	It's like, uh, really?
	Is this?
	I don't believe in condoms because in the ancient world there were no latex condoms.
	They had to use sheep's bladders, which actually probably would be sexy.
	But anyway, it's another thing.
	So, I mean, the fact that people say, well, show me ahead of time is not even remotely rational.
	All that they would then have done is opposed to every unprecedented human progress.
	So they'd be the a-holes, frankly, sitting around the campfire saying, what do you mean we shouldn't have child sacrifice?
	You show me any society in the world, any tribe that doesn't kill its children for the sake of Morlock, and if you can't, I'm down with the child sacrifice.
	I mean, that's just people who are frightened of the implications of an ethical life and are just waving up this ghost called doesn't exist, therefore won't believe in it.
	But, I mean, nobody lives like that anyways, right?
	You can't show me a car that drives itself.
	I've never been in an industry.
	No cars ever.
	I mean, people like new cell phones, and then they suddenly think a new society is impossible because it's never existed before, despite the fact that there were no smartphones 10 years ago.
	Anyway, so it's just an emotional defense.
	It's not a rational argument.
	I've always thought it was a lack of creativity in some respects, too, if you can't.
	Let your mind imagine something that isn't here.
	It's difficult.
	Well, but that's a testable hypothesis.
	And to test that hypothesis, you would try and figure out whether creative people are generally pro-government.
	And if creative people are generally pro-government, and they are, partly because they're bought and paid for, partly because the government runs the unions that make the films, and partly because they need the military to produce a lot of their explosions, But I found that creative people tend to be very bad at processing philosophical arguments.
	They may be great at writing plays and coming up with clever Super Bowl ads, but as far as actually rationally processing principles, creativity is only a small part of it.
	It just takes a lot of exposure and rigor and training to get good at philosophy.
	Philosophy is like a ghost in the attic.
	People are just like, hey man, did you hear something?
	Did you hear that?
	Oh my god, this bloody footprint's going to the future!
	Run!
	That's what most people get.
	Anyway, I hope that helps.
	And who's our next question, Cole?
	Thank you, Janae.
	Our next question comes from Liam Cardenas.
	I don't think that's making my chin look any smaller.
	Okay.
	Yeah, we got audio.
	Go for it, man.
	You can hear me?
	Yeah.
	Okay, yeah, sorry.
	I'm on my Linux laptop, and the Flash player isn't really connecting very well.
	No, no, Linux is perfect.
	It never fails.
	It's open source.
	It's anarchy, so no patents.
	Right, exactly.
	So, I had an original question about UPB, but when you were talking about abortion, it kind of...
	I kind of wanted to change it.
	I don't think you really answered the abortion question fully.
	You said the question pertained to the statement you made where you don't understand how the non-aggression principle applies to abortion.
	Is that correct?
	It definitely is the initiation of force.
	Right.
	Well...
	Nobody aborts in self-defense.
	You know, there's no quick-clawed fetus that's trying to rip the woman's heart out that she has to kill because it's turned to the dark side or has joined the crypts or something.
	Right.
	No, I understand that it...
	But the question was saying that you don't understand how the non-aggression principle...
	Like, it said that you said that you did not understand how the non-aggression principle...
	Well, no.
	Sorry.
	What I was trying to say, however badly I may have expressed it, what I was trying to say is that...
	If I'm going to invoke violation of the non-aggression principle, then I must be willing to shoot to kill.
	Violation of the non-aggression principle triggers the capacity for self-defense.
	It also triggers the capacity for self-defense on the part of another, right?
	So if I see some granny being mugged, I can shoot the mugger, right?
	I don't have to be aggressed against myself, right?
	Right.
	Yeah, I understand that.
	Well, I guess...
	So, hang on.
	Let me finish the point and then let's get to the question.
	So, the challenge is that the woman has the fetus as a hostage.
	Right?
	So, can I shoot the mugger If I have to shoot through the granny to shoot him, well, no, not really, right?
	So it's kind of a big problem.
	And that's why I'm not willing to pull the grenade of violation of the non-aggression principle on a woman who's pregnant who's considering aborting the child.
	because there's no way to legitimize the use of force against a pregnant woman who's planning on ending the life of the fetus without ending the life of the fetus.
	She has a hostage, which makes it a very complex and difficult situation, if that makes any sense.
	I mean, if she was going to murder a child, then you would be justified in shooting her, right?
	Right, right.
	Yes.
	Because that would be an initiation of force against the child.
	But if the child is in her and can't survive without her, then she has that hostage.
	So it's complicated.
	But go ahead.
	It's interesting how you say hostage.
	When I look at it, and I read something that Rothbard said about this a long time ago, and I'm not sure if I completely remember what he said.
	But when you say hostage, I think of it kind of as a reverse situation.
	I think of it more as a parasitic relationship.
	Not necessarily...
	It has a bad connotation.
	Of course, it can be good, but the baby's...
	But it's not parasitic.
	No, it's not parasitic because the woman chooses to get pregnant.
	Okay, so you're saying that since it's...
	Okay, I'm not sure I understand.
	So you're saying that the woman chooses to get pregnant...
	A parasite is something that is unwanted in the transmission of, right?
	So, no, it's not like every pregnancy results from a...
	Sorry, it's not...
	No, but it's not like every...
	It's not like every woman gets pregnant because she chooses to get pregnant, but all unprotected vaginal intercourse with a fertile male...
	It has within it the risk of pregnancy.
	Right.
	Right?
	So every time I choose to drive on the highway or in my car, I am risking death.
	Everyone understands that, right?
	Because it's small risk or whatever, right?
	But choosing to drive means choosing to die sometimes for a few people a day.
	I guess for many people a day in America.
	Every time you have sex, you are taking the risk of pregnancy.
	Now, there are 18 different types of birth control for women, so it's almost impossible to get pregnant if you're really trying not to.
	But you can't call it a parasite if you choose to have that.
	You know what it's like?
	It's like if I open up a hotel...
	Okay, but is that really true, though?
	Sorry, let me finish my point, then I'll shut up.
	So if I open up a bed and breakfast, and then all these people come into my house, right?
	Can I really say...
	I call the cops and say, what the hell are these people doing in my house?
	You send some patrolmen over.
	These people are squatting in my house.
	There's a home invasion!
	They say, well, how did they get there?
	Well, they put a bed and breakfast ad in the newspaper and then I accepted these people's reservations and then they came over.
	It's like then it's not a home invasion because you chose to have them in your house.
	You can't say it's a violation of the non-aggression principle if you invited people in and all vaginal intercourse is an invitation to pregnancy, you know, because it can happen.
	Yeah, and I understand that.
	And also, keep in mind, I'm inclined to actually agree with you now.
	I'm going to continue kind of probing you on this, but I think I'm agreeing with you.
	But I think that the way that you're looking at this is you're saying that, okay, so this was...
	You're defining a parasitic relationship.
	That's not actually what a parasitic relationship is.
	So, for example, a child in Africa drinking the water.
	Oh, well, they drank the water, so they got a parasite.
	They got a worm in their body.
	Stomach or whatever.
	Therefore, they invited the worm because they chose that action and therefore that's not a parasite.
	No, no, no.
	But that's the same exact logic.
	It is.
	It is the same exact logic.
	No, no.
	Because if...
	We're talking about adults, not children, right?
	Because children can't get pregnant.
	So let's take away...
	An adult drinks water in Africa.
	Secondly, if I give you two bottles of water One, I say, has a parasite in it, and the other one, I say, does not have a parasite in it, and I'm right, and you drink the one that has the parasite in it, then you can't say, oh my god, I'm the victim of a parasite.
	Well, no, no, that's not, no, yes, yes, you can.
	That is still a parasite in your body.
	It still is a parasite in your body.
	No, I'm not saying that force has been...
	You can say, oh, you did not poison me with a parasite.
	That's a different argument.
	That's equivalent to saying, oh, I was not raped.
	Because you still have a parasite whether you consent to having a parasite or don't consent to having a parasite.
	Right?
	So you can say, oh, I choose to drink this water.
	Consent is important.
	Consent is important.
	Consent is the only difference between a crime and a non-crime.
	So if you don't consent to someone coming in your house, then you can use force against them.
	But if you do consent to someone coming in your house, you can't use force against them.
	Hey, everybody, come on in.
	Bang, bang, bang, bang.
	They were home invading.
	It's like, no, they weren't because you invited them in.
	It's the vampire thing, right?
	So if the woman invites the baby into her body, she cannot act against it in an aggressive manner in the same way as if Somebody just comes into your house against your will.
	Um, well, okay.
	I, I'm not, I don't want to take up too much of this question time or anything, but I, I just don't think the analogies, those analogies, I don't think that they, I don't think that they necessarily are really applicable.
	And, um, but I do, I do see a point.
	Is the baby also a parasite?
	I mean, the baby requires her mother's milk to live and so on.
	Well, Um, in a sense...
	Well, no, not really, because the mother is choosing to...
	Like, um, the baby is feeding off...
	Like, if the mother doesn't milk the baby, the baby can still survive.
	Hang on, hang on.
	Hang on, I think you may have skated past the solution to the problem, right?
	Did you just talk about the mother choosing?
	No, no, no.
	I totally agree.
	I totally agree.
	So, in the instance...
	No, it's true.
	The mother is choosing...
	So, we're talking about the origin of the baby inside the mother, right?
	So, you're saying that...
	So, in the pregnancy context, right?
	So, she's consenting to have sex.
	That's a risk, right?
	And so, all that consenting to have...
	Almost every single time a woman gets pregnant, it's not because of a failure of birth control.
	It is because she either wants to get pregnant or she's going to give us the care.
	100%.
	I totally agree.
	100% her fault.
	I'm not trying to take blame away from that.
	I'm just saying that the reality of a baby being inside of a woman's body is that the baby is feeding off of the woman.
	Mm-hmm.
	Okay?
	So that is, by definition, a parasitic relationship.
	Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on.
	No, no.
	So if my wife feeds me a meal, I'm suddenly a parasite?
	No, no, no.
	Okay, okay.
	Let's just look at one of those house examples, right?
	So, for example, say that...
	Okay, so someone's in your house, right?
	Now, if they're in your house...
	As you said, you can't start shooting them, right?
	Because that would just be, like, a complete, unproportional...
	Maybe you don't even want them in your house.
	Maybe you do.
	No matter what the situation is, right?
	No, no, no, no.
	There's never an excuse to shoot them.
	No, you can't start conflating these two examples.
	Well, maybe you don't, or maybe you do, or whatever.
	Okay, so...
	I'm sorry?
	No, but I said if you can't invite people into your house and then shoot them for a home invasion.
	And the baby is always invited into the mother's body.
	Again, unless she's the victim of rape.
	I mean, that's just another situation.
	But listen, listen, you're allowed to rescind your invitation.
	So, for example, it doesn't matter if they're invited or not.
	You can never just shoot someone for peaceful living in your house.
	You can remove them from your house.
	Correct?
	Oh, we're getting into such hypotheticals now.
	I don't know if someone breaking into the middle of my house is peaceful or not.
	And we've got another question.
	Okay, I don't want to take up more time, but I like...
	I can only assume that you've not been a dad if you're going to refer to babies as parasites, but anyway, let's move on to the next question.
	Okay.
	Thanks.
	All right, we've got one more question on video, and then we'll go back to text questions.
	Oh, I can stay late, by the way.
	I mean, this is great fun, so...
	This is what I live for, so...
	Yeah, any time you want to cut this short, that's fine.
	It's only my bladder that should bring an end to these proceedings, but go on.
	Richard, we'll come back to you if you can turn your camera back on.
	Joshua Stevens.
	There we go.
	Hi, how's it going?
	Hello, you technological god, Hugh.
	How are you?
	Fine, thank you.
	Yeah, so real quick, I just wanted to add just a little bit of depth, briefly, to what the previous gentleman was speaking of, about the abortion bit.
	And Rothbard covers it in The Ethics of Liberty, all right?
	Free e-book, obviously, on Mises or whatever.
	But I think it basically, it's like, yeah, he spoke rescinding the invitation of the baby.
	And again, in regards to, I used to be an advocate of anti-abortion.
	And it's like, you can say, well, we need to treat babies like human beings.
	You can't kill a human being, therefore, you know, don't kill the baby in the womb.
	But it's like, well, Rothbard says, well, fine.
	If we want to treat infants in the womb like humans, well, then let's treat them like humans.
	I can't suck out the blood and the nutrients out of my wife if she says, no, don't do that.
	I can't do it anymore.
	So now why wouldn't that be applied to the same thing that the baby does?
	And he says, yes, it does sound kind of sickening, but basically a baby is in the mother's womb a blood-sucking parasite.
	I'm just saying, I kind of get what he's saying.
	I don't know.
	What is your take on that?
	Well, look, you can treat someone as a human being without giving them all the rights of an adult human being.
	And people who are comparing fetuses to adults, I just, I mean, it's bizarre.
	They're fetuses, right?
	I mean, I can't expect other people to feed and take care of me.
	But a baby can, because the baby is a potential human being.
	They're a human being on the way to being an adult.
	And if not killed, will almost certainly grow up to be the adult who has full rights.
	It's like saying, well, when I'm asleep, I am not a human being because I can't knit a sweater and vote and whatever it is, right?
	I'm just asleep.
	Or a man in a coma.
	Or people who are mentally retarded where there's some possibility or not.
	Of a cure and expansion to their brains or whatever.
	So babies are not parasites.
	A parasite is something that gives no positive reward, right?
	I mean a parasite is something that just like eats your food, makes you sick, and doesn't give you any positive reward.
	There are not many brain parasites or intestinal parasites that are going to come and wipe your ass when you're in the old age home dying of some god-awful disease when you're 90 years old.
	But a baby who grows up will, right?
	I mean, there's not many parasites who will go and get you, as my daughter did today, will go and get me a glass of water.
	I mean, there's a lot of reciprocity.
	There's not a lot of parasites who will give you great pleasure when you educate them about the intricacies and glories of the human and natural world.
	There are not many great parasites that you can engage in tickle and pillow fights with until you're both laughing so hard that you feel you're about to sneeze your brain out through your nose.
	It's to me quite mad.
	That's like saying, that spleen of mine, it's a total parasite.
	I mean, what has it ever done for me?
	I don't know what a spleen does.
	My appendix or whatever.
	It's like they are human beings.
	They are human beings on the way to becoming human beings.
	We don't give them full rights because they don't have full independence.
	Their brains are immature.
	Their bodies are immature.
	And that's fine, but the idea that we can somehow compare them to adult situations is mad.
	It's like saying, those kids, they're so short compared to adults.
	I mean, why are they just short adults?
	It's like, no, they're average-sized children.
	Anyway.
	And real quick, very briefly, one other thing, because I hate to take up all your time.
	But my real question, well, I just want to add depth to that, but real quick.
	First of all, I love all the work you put out.
	I'm looking forward to speaking to you soon, and I'm glad I'm a donator.
	All right?
	You're brilliant.
	Thank you.
	But regardless of all that ass-kissing, so it's like this, man.
	UCD did therapy.
	I've been doing therapy about nine months now.
	It's brilliant, wonderful, great.
	But I've been covering some stuff in regards to personality type and that sort of thing.
	In regards to therapy, did you cover a personality type?
	I know you cover dream analysis, but my question for you is, what is your take on personality type?
	Do you know what you kind of like flow more towards?
	You seem like the extrovert to me.
	You seem like a reformer.
	Somebody wants to change things.
	But can you add any depth to that?
	Or like, what do you think about, you know, dream analysis compared to personal type in regards to self-knowledge?
	Okay, thank you.
	Yeah, I mean, I think annoying gadfly.
	I'm not sure if that's a personality type, but that sort of...
	I'm just that guy who floats around and gives you annoying perspectives and hopefully somewhat rational arguments that provoke you into thinking.
	And yeah, my sort of goal is to provoke people into thinking, certainly not to try and give any kind of final answers on most things.
	I haven't really studied personality types.
	I went to a libertarian conference when I was about 16 or 17 where they went over personality types and how to debate with various personality types.
	I think that they've been somewhat disproven.
	I think they came out of the Jungian model.
	I had a very Jungian therapist and we did a lot of inner work and a lot of very deep metaphor work and dream analysis work which I think was just fantastic and incredibly enlightening and something I still pursue to this day.
	I think it's I think it's interesting and it's useful, but it's sort of like cultural stereotypes.
	They have some validity, but once you have true self-knowledge and you self-actualize, you break out of the mold.
	You break out of the types.
	Once you fully individuate, you can't really be categorized very well.
	And I think that the goal of self-knowledge is to transcend typecasting.
	Freedom and spontaneity, right.
	Absolutely.
	Thank you.
	You're welcome.
	Thank you.
	Great question.
	All right.
	Thank you, Joshua.
	We've got two related questions in text.
	The first from Andreas Kohl-Martinez.
	From a libertarian perspective, do you think your overall happiness level would be higher in a freer country than Socialist Canada?
	Oh, go ahead.
	Wait, wait, one at a time.
	Well, I will tell you this, that my life is here because of a freer country, right?
	So, as you may or may not know, about two and a half years ago, I got a swelling.
	I still got the scar.
	I ended up with lymphoma.
	It was misdiagnosed, undiagnosed, postponed diagnosis for about a year.
	In Canada, I was told it was benign.
	I was told it was nothing to worry about then I was told it might be something to worry about and then I was told it was gonna take months to get any kind of operation and They didn't call me when I had appointments and then got mad at me for not showing up and it was just a complete usual socialist nightmare so then I fled to America and I got a procedure done within two days and I paid for it very happily and And therefore, I'm not dead.
	So, yeah, I mean, the idea that life is great in socialist Canada, if I had not had less socialist America to go and spend money on not dying than...
	I would not be here to talk about whether life would be better in socialist Canada.
	So, no, if you have this free country, there's going to be a little Wile E. Coyote hole in the back of this studio so that I can get to that country as quickly as humanly possible.
	I would trade all of the suffocating socialist safety news here in Canada for breathing the air of true freedom, autonomy, individuality, charity and responsibility any day of the week and twice on Sundays.
	But what was the next question?
	The next question is, in this stateful earth, where do you think is the best place to live?
	With those who love you.
	With those who love you, with those who share and respect rational, humane, civilized values, who don't use aggression, who don't yell at you, who don't call you names, who don't put you down, who don't ignore you, who don't bore you to death with bullshit and trivia and sports and weather and junk like that.
	I would rather pay 50% taxation and have a happy marriage than live in the freest society in the world and come home to a woman I hated every day.
	So the best place to live is Utopia.
	Y-O-U. Utopia.
	The world that you can build with the people who love and respect and cherish you, who make you laugh, who make you think, and who stand by you and watch your back as you stand by them and watch their back as we attempt to drag kicking and screaming humanity to a higher plateau of of moral idealism.
	The best place to live is not physical.
	The best place to live is with a tribe that doesn't even know that it's a tribe because it is wedded to rational values.
	So you can only fight to change the world from a stable platform and you can only win against the greatest army with the greatest cohorts and the bravest and most skillful warriors of truth.
	So you build your paradise in your values, in your tribe And the price of admittance to my tribe is reason and evidence and hopefully a good sprinkling of good humor.
	So that would be my argument.
	Alright, our next question is from Rob James.
	If government is a collective of individuals, who should be held responsible for the actions of the government?
	The group of politicians?
	And it gets cut off there, but I think we get the idea.
	Well, I mean, that's the whole beauty of government.
	It's that you can't hold anyone responsible.
	I mean, that's the whole point.
	I mean, because the government is this giant hall of mirrors where the laser light of responsibility gets shuffled around and dissolves into nothing and dies, expires in the back somewhere.
	No, you go to the politicians and you say, why did you do this?
	And they say, well, the polls and the voters told me to, right?
	And you go to the voters and you say, well, why did you do this?
	And they say, well, we were told by the school teachers that this is the right way to do things.
	And then you go to the school teachers and say, why did you do this?
	And they say, well, we were told by our teachers and our parents and the priests.
	And plus, we've got this union.
	You go to the union people and say, why did you do this?
	And say, well, we had a signed collective agreement.
	That was put into place 30 years ago and therefore you can't break that without breaking the law.
	And so the whole point is you can't land the helicopter of responsibility on the cloud castles of the government.
	That's the whole point.
	There is no one to blame.
	The only person fundamentally to blame for the government is the person who when exposed to arguments against the morality of statism Rejects those arguments for the sake of weak-kneed, personal, spineless social comfort Who refuses a taste of brains in order to hang out with other zombies in search for the brains of fellow voters, which they will never find, that person holds the moral responsibility.
	The person who gains knowledge through exposure to philosophy rejects that knowledge for no reason other than it doesn't feel good.
	That person is responsible.
	And that's why people so studiously avoid the knowledge of philosophy, the knowledge of the non-aggression principle.
	That's why when you bring up The non-aggression principle with people, they're kind of like, ah, shy away.
	Quick, something shiny.
	Here, have a tablet.
	Oh, look, a baby.
	Would you like to hold my baby?
	No thanks, I'm a vegetarian, right?
	All the things that people, all the noise that people make to avoid the truth is because they know that with the truth, with knowledge, with virtue comes responsibility.
	And comes the sudden promotion of you from brainless surf to highly Zen-powered moral agent of mankind.
	And people don't want that role.
	They want to watch movies about superheroes.
	They don't want to be a superhero, which everyone can do every day of the week.
	And, as the aforementioned statement goes, twice on Sundays.
	And so people will avoid knowledge, and the avoidance of knowledge...
	It's the destruction of the future.
	And the exposure to knowledge that is then irrationally rejected is the true end of mankind if we don't turn it around.
	So I would say that those people are the responsible ones, and they know it, too.
	All right, let's try Richard Campbell on video again.
	You know, it's really funny because every single time I see your show, it answers the question that I just had in my mind.
	And my question was...
	Well, hang on a sec.
	So, I don't know, for those of you who can see, Richard did order those headphones from the Free Domain Radio mothership, and they therefore come with brain lasers, and we actually just...
	We do read your brain to figure out the show.
	You are driving the entire conversation, so don't ever take those headphones off.
	So, that's just something to remember.
	It's just like my philosophy has been ever since I've wakened up to liberty instead of progressivism is question everything.
	And why is it that everyone gets annoyed or mad when I say that?
	When you say question everything?
	Yeah, when I say question everything.
	Well, I mean, by what standard, right?
	I mean, there has to be a standard you don't question.
	Otherwise, you question everything is just, again, running around the hall of mirrors, never getting any answers.
	That leads directly to relativism.
	So in science, they say question everything by the scientific method, right?
	In math, they say question everything with reference to mathematical logic and so on, right?
	So there has to be some standard with which you're going to be deploying the questions and knowing whether they're answered in a valid manner or not.
	So, question everything according to reason and evidence, right?
	Bring to the oracle of reason and evidence all humanity and all of humanity's thoughts and whatever stands the test of reason and evidence shall stand and whatever does not shall be cast aside.
	That's a good principle to go by.
	But yeah, absolutely.
	And I'm still going through that process.
	I mean, I've been I've been working the philosophy mojo for, like, low these three decades, and I'm still constantly breaking new ground and going like, whoa!
	Blowing my brain!
	Can't handle another matrix!
	I thought I was out!
	So, yeah, I mean, I'm still going through this process of thinking I have some clue about the world and then finding out that there's still many more layers to go of really understanding what's going on.
	Yeah, but it is annoying for people, of course.
	Of course it's annoying for people.
	People aren't designed to pursue truth.
	People are designed to get along with other people, to have sex with fertile women, and to feed their children.
	People are designed like cows with an annoyingly extra layer of brain that allows you to hook up a VCR. Go ask your parents.
	So, you know, guys, we can't cook eggy toast, but we can put together a nine-dimensional stereo unit.
	But...
	So, you know, people are designed to get along with other people and they're designed to have sex and they're designed to raise their kids so that the whole thing can happen all over again.
	You know, I mean, people say, oh, I don't know, life doesn't have any meaning.
	It's like, are you a sea slug?
	No.
	Are you a flea on the back of a chimpanzee's ass?
	No.
	Then for you, meaning is probably not so hard to get a handle on.
	But at the same time as we're just sort of these blind photocopying machines of making new photocopiers, at the same time as that, we have within us the great glory and power of our brains as universalization.
	And universalization allows us to do all these fantastic things, you know, like build houses and cars and computers and seascapes and paintings.
	I mean, you can do the most amazing things with your brain.
	Virtue is one of those things that hooks into universalization in the most powerful way.
	And so the same brain that has allowed us to become such productive serfs to exploit by the ruling classes is the same brain that is so incredibly susceptible to and yearns for moral self-justification.
	And so most people are just bumbling through their lives, obeying all of the prejudices that came before them and believing all the lies that were force-fed to them by their elders as their elders were force-fed the same lies by their elders.
	But calling themselves virtuous.
	But calling themselves good.
	I'm loyal.
	I'm patriotic.
	I support the troops.
	I vote.
	I'm good.
	I'm a good person.
	And people are desperate to believe that.
	And philosophy comes along and bitch slaps the hell out of that delusion.
	And people can sense it coming.
	It's like, wait, wait, wait.
	Uh-oh.
	Hang on a sec.
	I think someone's coming along who's going to destroy my illusions of being a good person and help me to understand that I'm a willing slave of the autocratic masters that run the world.
	Ooh, crisis of identity.
	I can't take it, right?
	So people want to conform because it's easier, but they want to be good because it makes them feel better.
	But conformity and virtue are opposites, unless you're conforming to virtue, but let's not overcomplicate things.
	And so people are just going to conform with everyone else, but call themselves virtuous.
	And when a real thinker comes along, they realize that virtue and conformity are opposites.
	And therefore, they can either choose the comfort of conformity or the happiness of virtue.
	But they cannot have both in the current world, and they don't like that choice.
	So that's my guess.
	That pretty much answers your question.
	Thank you.
	All right, we've got another video question from Addy Shearer.
	Yeah, I'm back.
	I finally thought about a question.
	My question is regarding defining terms.
	English is not my first language, actually my third, I guess.
	And in the English language, you guys have liberty and freedom.
	Is there a difference between these two terms or are they totally synonyms?
	Personally, I don't really like the word liberty because I associate it with the liberty that the military get.
	In my mind, personally, I think of liberty as something that somebody else gives you, while freedom...
	But that's just me.
	I was wondering...
	I think you're onto something.
	I don't have a dictionary here, but I tend to sort of go with words as I feel them, and maybe that meets other people's needs or it doesn't.
	To me, freedom means freedom from constraint.
	And to me, liberty generally refers to liberty from restraint.
	And so there's a word libertine, which is not the same as liberty, but it means somebody who basically is a hedonist and just does what they please in a sense regardless of consequences.
	And I think in a lot of ways, liberty means freedom from restraint, which means freedom from self-control and self-discipline and so on.
	Whereas to me, freedom generally means freedom from constraint, from violence, restrictions upon my actions and choices and so on.
	So I think you're into something there.
	Again, all of these are very problematic terms If you don't apply philosophy to them, because without philosophy, people can just redefine these terms to mean whatever suits their propagandistic purposes.
	Freedom for the masses!
	Generally means, for a lot of people on the left, subsidies and free stuff stolen from other people by government.
	So freedom for some people is enslavement for others.
	Free healthcare and so on, right?
	I mean, as if there's anything free on this planet.
	I think you're onto something, but again, if we define these terms practically and from the ground up, I think we can use either one as long as the definitions are agreed upon.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	All right, thanks for adding.
	We're going to take a few more questions if Steph is willing, but I know since some people probably have to go.
	Is it getting late for you?
	Are you tired?
	It's definitely not too late for me, but I do want to pitch what we've got going on this week for anybody who's heading out.
	Here at LibertyMeU, we've got on Wednesday night, Sam Patterson is going to be doing a guide release for his up and...
	it's called Getting Up and Running with Bitcoin.
	It's a A basic guide to getting started with Bitcoin.
	He's going to be here to answer questions.
	Thursday night we've got a class on advanced Bitcoin security.
	Now this is like the really advanced stuff talking about different types of attacks.
	If you've got one of those early stashes and you just have a ton of Bitcoin, come to that.
	He'll teach you how to take care of it.
	And then Saturday, we've got Walter Block.
	He's going to be talking about pollution and property rights, and he promises he's going to talk about Mr.
	Burns from The Simpsons and his Oh, the source of state power is parenting.
	The source of state power is...
	What is state power?
	State power is the imposition of rules...
	On the subjects that the rulers are excluded from, right?
	So Lois Lerner is supposed to be turning over all these emails to Congress because of the argument or the suspicion that the IRS has been targeting conservative groups, particularly during the last election cycle, and not allowing them charitable status and thus skewing the effects of the election.
	In fact, I think Barack Obama's brother had a charity that got approved within a couple of days and was backdated.
	The approval was backdated, which is unprecedented.
	So they've been asking the IRS for lowest learners' emails and the IRS has basically said, um, yeah, we'll get right on that.
	Trust us, we'll be all over that like white on rice.
	And now they've come back a year later to Congress and they've said, oh, gee, that's a real shame.
	We had a server problem and none of lowest learners' emails to people outside the IRS have been preserved.
	They're just gone, baby, gone.
	And, of course, they're supposed to have backups and off-site backups and hard copy backups.
	And the idea that a server glitch would only delete selected emails with no possibility of recovering them that are not available on her local machine, that are not available on the local machine or local servers or whoever they sent them to, is completely impossible.
	It's an absolute complete and total lie.
	Now, you try telling the IRS that you've just lost a couple of selected documents, only the ones that they're interested in.
	I mean, they just throw your ass in jail.
	You try lying to Congress and see what happens.
	But this is the IRS. They can audit anyone, even congressmen, right?
	So there are all these rules that are imposed on the subjects that you get into government so you're not subjected to.
	That's the whole point, right?
	Now, how on earth can people believe such nonsense?
	How on earth can people obey it?
	How on earth can people accept it as anything other than the moral and legal and emotional insanity that it is?
	Because they're raised by parents who generally hit them while telling them not to hit other kids, right?
	Who generally yell at them while saying, don't yell, don't raise your voice, right?
	Who will, I mean, as studies have shown recently, right, moms in America hitting their kids 18 times a week from the age of seven months to three and a half years of age, initiating hitting their children within 30 seconds of the conflict beginning, so not a lot of reasoning going on.
	And so people get used to People in authority imposing their wills by force in a fundamentally hypocritical manner.
	People get so used to it that then when they're introduced to the government later on, it seems completely...
	Natural.
	I mean that's just one example.
	I mean look at teachers in government schools.
	They're always saying don't use force to get what you want.
	Don't bully.
	Well we're gonna go on strike to get what we want and no kids can go to school because we've got a violent coercive monopoly over the brains, lives of the children and the money and lives of the parents.
	So the idea that the teachers should ever say to kids don't use force to get what you want when they hold a violent monopoly where you have to pay whether you like The schools or accept the schools or morally approve of the schools or even send your kids to the schools at all or even have kids.
	The idea that teachers would say to kids don't use force to get what you want when the whole damn structure is based on force is again just so insane.
	So you have to develop a psychological mechanism to not see the incredible hypocrisy and bullying of your parents if they're that way inclined, of teachers no matter which way they're inclined.
	And, you know, you could extend this to other authority figures that children are exposed to, coaches and priests and so on.
	And so then when you become an adult, the government is just an extension of that.
	And we don't notice how insane it is because so much of our upbringing is equally insane.
	And we don't struggle to understand it any more than we struggle to understand the language that we're raised in.
	I don't struggle to understand English.
	I could struggle to be clear, but I don't struggle to understand the words.
	And so, as I've argued for many years, if you change parenting to be peaceful, to be consultative, to refuse to use size, power, authority, Independence, whatever you have as an adult,
	as the parents, and you treat your children with respect and as much egalitarianism as you can and you negotiate with them and you refuse to raise your voice and you refuse to hit them or intimidate them, you stay home with them, you don't put them in crappy government daycares or private daycares or schools, then those children will grow up.
	And the state will make no sense to them, and they'll be like, why would we have this crazy institution?
	This is not how I was raised.
	They'll notice the difference because they have not been acclimatized to the sameness.
	So that, to me, would be the fundamental source of state power.
	Alright, our next question comes from Quinn Rudolph.
	Why have so many god-awful status societies developed and virtually no anarchic ones?
	It's sort of like saying, why were there no cell phones in the 15th century?
	Because the conditions for their development were not there.
	You know, if you drop your seeds on tarmac, you won't get any sunflowers because they're just not in the right environment.
	You know, you throw a fish into a frying pan, it's not going to have a very good day, right?
	And so the conditions for the development of A rational and free society are only in the progress of beginning to be laid.
	You know, as far as the revolution goes, it's always earlier than you think, which is what happens when you go out into muggle land and try and bring reason to the frightened primitive masses.
	You had religious structures, terrifying children and brutalizing children and creating the ultimate dictator in the sky who can read your every thought, who punishes you on a whim, who kills all the planet, who commands the death of unbelievers and homosexuals and unbelievers and believers of other religions and sorcerers and witches and basically anyone who doesn't look like you and that guy over there.
	And who also is going to threaten to burn people in hell for not thinking certain things.
	The ultimate thought police, thought crime, something that no earthly dictator can ever possibly achieve.
	And so what foundation was there in that society for independent thought and critical thought and so on?
	Most times people would get killed for questioning religious or superstitious edicts of the tribe or the nation state or whatever.
	And then there was anyone who questioned A secular power, a kingly power and so on, which of course was divinely ordained.
	The king was put there by God and expressed the will of God and so on, like the Pope is now.
	And what possibility was there for independent thought, for egalitarianism of opportunity and mutual self-respect and self-ownership and all that?
	And the development of reason.
	Reason was, for the most part, that which got you killed in history.
	I mean, think cholera or smallpox was dangerous.
	Try thinking for yourself and talking to people about it.
	You know, we only now have a society where if you speak truth to power, if you bring reason to the masses, now you get hate sites, you get slander, you get negative articles about you, but you're not actually killed.
	You're not actually dragged off to prison, unless you're a kid, in which case you're usually drugged.
	But...
	Now we're getting, we've advanced to the point where society won't kill the truth teller.
	I mean, they'll still hate him, but they won't actually kill them.
	And they won't, you know, give Socrates the hemlock and all that.
	And that's, you know, this is significant progress.
	I mean, it's slow and bitter and difficult and dangerous, but it is significant progress.
	And From here, we're in the position now where we can begin to have a conversation with humanity about the future without fear of death.
	That, I think, is a huge step forward.
	From here, given the technology we have, It can be incredibly rapid, but people were just too traumatized.
	And you can go to psychohistory.com and read more about this sort of stuff.
	But in primitive societies, I mean, children were so traumatized.
	I mean, they regularly saw other children killed, they were raped, they were beaten within an inch of their life, they were sacrificed to the gods.
	Children were so traumatized and suffered from such PTSD and other forms of psychological disorders That the idea that they could learn reason and peace and happy negotiation with each other was not credible, was not possible.
	Now we're slowly starting to be capable of a conversation where reason and evidence can hold sway.
	And that gives me great hope.
	It's been a long time coming.
	But really, we can go very far from here, because once we have a voice, the most consistent principle will usually tend to win, absent the reaction of violence from those around us.
	All right, our next question is the famous button question posed by Leonard Reed and then continued by Murray Rothbard.
	If you could press a button right now that would end your country's government suddenly with no easing into it, would you do it?
	Absolutely not.
	Oh, man.
	I would throw myself in front of anyone who's trying to do that.
	Because that's saying that if you remove the structure of society, then what we now call human nature, which is really adapted to that structure, will suddenly change.
	And some people will, but no.
	Look, they got rid of Saddam Hussein.
	What is happening now?
	Literally now in Iraq.
	What is it, 12 years later?
	I mean, now you have...
	Caliphates and religious extremists moving in.
	You've got massive warfare.
	The government that was installed by the Americans was the ones that kicked the American government out.
	And you're going to go to another internecine hell state of endless civil war.
	They got their entire government, their entire dictatorship removed, yet everybody's childhoods had been the same.
	And my argument is that society forms around early childhood experiences.
	And getting rid of The government, without changing people's childhood experiences, which you can't really do after the fact without a lot of therapy and money, will simply cause society to reform around people's early childhood experiences because most people would rather adapt society to their early childhood trauma than deal with their trauma in a rational, adult and mature way and move on to a better world.
	And so if you push the button to get rid of the state, You would have power-hungry warmongers.
	You'd have sophists.
	You would have all of the evils and ills and manipulators of mankind immediately scrabbling to recreate that power.
	You'd have fear-mongers.
	The media would create every terrifying story and promote every possible ill that you could even remotely associate with freedom.
	And they would scare the living hell out of people.
	And people would then immediately go back to trying to find some ruler because people have not been raised to be independent.
	And the idea that you could get rid of government and then they just have completely different upbringings, completely different brain structures.
	and they would immediately adapt to freedom is a delusion.
	We need to evolve our way out of this.
	Now we are only and forever five years away from a free society because if all the children born today were dealt with in a peaceful, reasonable, rational, connected manner for the first five years, we would absolutely have a free society.
	But that's not about to happen because there are too many parents who are still inflicting their own childhood traumas on their children and the resulting scar tissue creates the edifices of the state and of religion and all of the other unjust institutions that are reflections and built upon the premises buried into people's amygdalas in their early childhood experiences.
	So the idea of pushing a button and having everything magically change as if people It's like pushing a button and saying, now when I push this button, everybody who grew up speaking English will no longer be able to speak English.
	It's like, well, you can push whatever button you want, but the language I grew up with is the language that I grew up with and I'm going to still continue using English no matter what button you push.
	And so the idea that we can remove the state and create freedom is the idea that we can push the shadow of a statue and think we're moving a statue.
	It's a fool's quest.
	Alright, our next question is from Rob James.
	Is it morally acceptable to assist someone who has had their rights violated, or would it be considered an initiation of aggression, what legal theory calls the question of defense of others?
	Oh, yeah, no.
	I mean, self-defense is a universal right, which means it's not specific to any individual.
	And so you can certainly act on behalf of another.
	And they don't have to sign any contract with you and so on.
	Remember, you know, the questions of moral and immoral, there's certainly lots of theoretical things that are important, but I would really caution you to worry about stuff which nobody would be bothered about in a free society.
	I mean, it doesn't matter.
	I mean, if some granny is getting mugged and I go and, you know, clock the mugger and so on, And the mugger then, in a free society, and the mugger says, hey man, I wasn't attacking you.
	I mean, whatever they have to resolve these disputes, let's just call it a jury.
	The jury's just going to laugh at the guy and say, look, you were mugging.
	That could have been my grandmother.
	She couldn't defend herself.
	She's 90 years old.
	So I'm glad that some strapping young 47-year-old guy came in and clocked you on.
	Hell, if I'd have been there, I'd have clocked you too.
	Nobody's going to have a problem with third-party Self-defense.
	So I don't, you know, it is, and philosophically it's perfectly justified.
	The right of self-defense is universal, and you can intervene in the situation of attack because it is a universal right.
	It's not specific.
	If you say that the right of self-defense is only specific to one person currently under attack, then you have created a localized, i.e.
	a non-universalized right, and that is not valid.
	Alright, our next question is from Kevin Victor.
	Is the justification of property rights or self-ownership necessary for a free society?
	I think he's asking...
	Yeah, I think it is.
	I think it is, because we don't want to base philosophy on opinion.
	You know, there's a great line, a terrifying line, for me at least, from Hamlet, where Hamlet says to Horatio, there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
	And that, of course, is...
	No, he was a playwright, not a philosopher.
	And people say, your philosophy or your ideals or your libertarianism and so on.
	No!
	No, it's either good philosophy or it's bad philosophy.
	It's either true or it's false.
	Right?
	And so, you know, somebody...
	There's Euclidean geometry, but it's not right because his name is Euclid.
	They're not his opinions.
	They're...
	Establish they are universal, they are logical, and so on.
	And so we don't want to base the foundation of a free society, of a rational society, on anybody's opinion.
	It has to be provable.
	It has to be universal.
	Not because you'll change the mind of irrational people.
	I mean, there are still people who believe that the earth is flat and nobody went to the moon.
	So, it's not that you'll change the minds of crazy people.
	It's that it gives you the certainty to stand really deep into the ground until the earth orbits the truth, right?
	I mean, the reason why we work things out, at least the reason I work things out to the nth degree and admitted a prior ignorance of ethics prior to working on my theory of ethics, is because I wanted to be damn well certain enough That I could plant myself right to the core of the ground until the world orbited the truth.
	Not my truth, because my truth is a contradiction in terms.
	It's an oxymoron.
	If it's mine, it's not truth.
	If it's truth, it's not mine.
	It's the truth.
	Two plus two is four.
	It doesn't belong to anyone.
	It's not stamped with the DNA of the person who came up with it.
	It simply is the truth.
	And so the reason we strive for truth in our movement is because it gives us the certainty To understand that we have the truth, that we know the truth, that this is the truth.
	And that gives us the certainty that will shake other people's irrational certainty to the core.
	So it is very important that we work on definitions, that we work philosophically from first principles to make sure that we are right in what it is that we're doing.
	Because I sure as heck would not want to dedicate my life and suffer a significant loss of income when I started.
	And take all the slings and arrows of outrageous trollery in pursuit of the amoral or the immoral.
	And that's why I really had to be certain to be right before embarking on this course.
	So I would recommend everybody do that.
	And once you know you're right, you're generally kind of unstoppable, which is great.
	It's where you want to be.
	This is a fun question.
	Janae Hamlik asks, what's an example of something that recently blew your mind?
	What's an example of something that recently blew my mind?
	Well, I mean, I just did this presentation.
	I've sort of been interested in men's rights stuff because I didn't really know much about it when I first started to hear about it, and I kind of got more into it.
	And I find it a fascinating subject.
	I think it reveals a lot about society as a whole.
	And so I just put out a presentation about the prevalence of female violence in domestic violence incidents.
	Now, when people say domestic violence, they always generally, you think of like a man beating up his wife.
	But there's more incidents of women beating up and initiating violence against men than there is of the obverse.
	Male rape is a subject that completely blew my mind.
	Like, in my immature 12-year-old brain, I couldn't figure out the physics of it until I realized that a man can...
	Achieve an erection even when he's terrified.
	It's just physical reaction and so on to the stimulation and a man can even have an orgasm when he's terrified and some women, a few women, achieve orgasm when they're being raped.
	That doesn't mean that they want to be raped.
	It's just there's a physiological reaction in response to it.
	So finding out the prevalence of male rape, which is very high, even outside of prisons, male victims of rape Finding out that at least 20% of pedophiles are women.
	So finding this stuff out is really blowing my mind quite a bit.
	I have to be careful though because it accords with my personal experience Of females' capacity for violence.
	But because it accords with my personal experience, I have to be skeptical of the numbers and I have to check them six ways from Sunday because wherever something accords with my personal experience, that's where these skeptical shields need to go to maximum to make sure that confirmation bias doesn't sway me too much.
	So I hope that helps.
	And tracking IQ around the world, too, is also quite an interesting subject of study, but I don't have enough confidence to speak on it to any depth yet.
	But yeah, that stuff is just blowing my mind at the moment.
	Rob James asks, he clarifies this earlier question.
	It was the who do you blame question.
	Who should you respond to with aggression if aggression is initiated by a collective?
	Well, no one, I would assume.
	I mean, I don't think you should respond to aggression because I don't think that suicidal martyrs is going to do anything other than discredit what we're doing.
	So no, I think it's terrible.
	I think that if you go out and say, aha, there's this non-aggression principle that not one person in 10,000 understand and not one person in a million can justify and which nobody, which everyone thinks is the complete opposite of virtue, so I'm going to go out and defend myself against these costumed people and then you get shot.
	Or you go out and shoot people, I think fundamentally you are initiating the use of force at the moment.
	Because people are so propagandized with these lies and this nationalism and the police are there to serve and protect that it's literally like going up and thinking you're having a fistfight with a one-armed man.
	I mean, it is...
	Look, if he headbutts you, you can just walk away.
	You know, if he headbutts you and then you go around and you punch him until he's got a concussion or is dead, well, you could have just walked away.
	There's so many options that are important for spreading truth.
	We have so far to go to unpropagandize the masses that the idea of using force against state, I think, is fundamentally suicidal and there's an immorality to it as well because most people are mentally kept as children.
	If a child hits you, you don't clock the child.
	The mental capacity and the mental life of most people is almost virtually identical to children.
	They're kept in a state of perpetual childhood by always having an authority above them that tells them what to do, by having people around them who attack them for any independent and original thought.
	I view society as strangely let loose children in funny costumes.
	Therefore, I think that That peace and reason and communication is the way that you work.
	I think the idea of taking up arms against the state is immoral at the moment.
	I think it will be immoral for generations to come and fundamentally all it will do is get you killed and discredit the cause.
	So I think it is a desperately bad idea.
	Alright, our next question is from Chris Malloy.
	Do you prefer voluntary socialist slash communist or capitalist structures for small groups or businesses?
	I'm sorry.
	We're going to have to come back to that one minute.
	Maybe you can ask him to clarify that.
	There's such a big hole I could pour my own particular thoughts into and miss completely, so if you could ask him to reframe if there's another one.
	Well, actually, I'll ask a related question.
	Do you prefer a hierarchical business setup or one that's more flat?
	You know, people have talked a lot about how Valve, the video game company, has a very flat setup and just teams who work with each other rather than a rigid house.
	Oh, yeah.
	No, as flat as humanly possible.
	You know, with the understanding that there's different age groups and different levels of experience and different skill sets, I think is as flat as possible.
	I mean, for those who don't know, for 15 years, I was a software entrepreneur.
	I co-founded a company and built it to fairly significant size and then sold it.
	And I've been an executive for most of my career.
	I started off as a junior programmer, but showed good social skills, good sales skills, good marketing skills, and good management skills and grew a company to Fairly significant size, not huge.
	And yeah, my goal was always to have it as flat as possible, and I always refused to impose my will based upon authority.
	I had to make a really good case, and everyone else was welcome to make a really good case.
	Now, dealing with difficult customers is something I was fine with, but the 25-year-old programmers or the 22-year-old programmers usually were a bit intimidated by it, so they would be happy for me to go and do that.
	Some people wanted to travel, and I'd take them with me on sales trips.
	Some people didn't want to travel, particularly when we were kids at home, which I thought was great.
	So I think as flat as humanly possible is great, but I think pure egalitarianism is a subsidy for the less experienced.
	So I think you try not to have any formal structures in place, but you do recognize that you can't expect everyone to end up equal.
	Sort of like the free market, you have an egalitarianism of rules, but not of outcomes.
	Alright, our next question.
	Philip Dorsey asks, do you employ or advocate any formal family government structures, partnership agreements, family constitution, mission statement?
	I think that You should be able to enter into verbal agreements with the people you love.
	I don't think you need formal agreements.
	In other words, if a handshake in an agreement isn't good enough between you and your girlfriend, I don't think you should get married if you feel the need for some very formal agreement.
	Kind of structure.
	I mean, I have a guy I work with at Free Domain Radio, Michael, who's a great friend, and we've never ever written anything down about our business arrangements.
	We negotiate and we figure out how the money's going to work and what the hours are going to be and what the responsibility is going to be on the fly.
	Because if I need something written out for 50 pages that we both sign and threaten each other with lawyers with, well, we just shouldn't be doing business together.
	So I don't get involved with people that I feel I need all these formal structures around.
	With my daughter, we are a constant state of negotiation about what is best and what the rules are and what works best for everyone.
	But the idea of writing something down, I mean, before I got married to my wife, we discussed a huge variety of topics and possibilities, you know, whether we wanted kids, how in-laws were going to work, what friendships we were going to accept, and what our standards were going to be for housework.
	All that kind of stuff.
	Now, the idea that we would write it down and get it notarized, I think, would be a kind of paranoia that would indicate a lack of trust and love in the relationship.
	And some things, of course, have been renegotiated, you know, i.e., I'd be happy to bring in an income.
	You're going to do what now?
	A podcast?
	So some things do get negotiated.
	But I think that with the people that you love, there should be enough trust that a handshake, eye contact, and a commitment to...
	To keep your word is enough.
	Because if that's not there, I don't think that there's love there either.
	Alright, our next question is from Andreas Cole-Martinez.
	Given that government needs to stop existing as a coercive or monopoly enterprise, does it need to disband your opinion on voluntary government?
	What is the transition?
	Well, the transition is...
	That government rests upon our fear of each other.
	Right.
	So when you talk about no government, people freak out because they assume that their fellow citizen is this ravenous, rabid beast that is going to just, you know, if the governments aren't there with guns, you know, pointed at them, you can or throw you in jail.
	You know, they think that they take the cork off the vile demons of human nature are going to come out and raven the landscape.
	Somehow these vile demons of human nature never seem to inhabit the people in charge of government.
	But that's a topic for another time, perhaps.
	So we have to lessen our fear of each other in order to lessen our perception of the need for the state.
	And how do we do that?
	Well, to toot my regular horn, we raise our children peacefully, and when children are raised peacefully, they will not grow up to be criminals.
	They will not grow up to be fear-mongering sophists and politicians.
	Well, I repeat myself.
	They will not grow up to be addicted to superstition.
	They will not grow up to be a hair trigger.
	They will not grow up focusing on win-lose The government is fundamentally predicated on the prevalence of win-lose situations or negotiations in society.
	When we raise children peacefully, we develop their win-win negotiations.
	You know, if we all did this, so in a generation, there would be virtually no crime.
	There would be virtually no single motherhood.
	There will be virtually no drug use.
	There would be virtually no alcoholism.
	There'd be virtually no smoking because all of these things, and you can go to FDRURL.com slash BIB for the whole presentation about all this, the science behind it.
	Smoking, drug addiction, promiscuity, violence, dysfunction of almost every kind that you can imagine arises directly out of early childhood trauma, particularly the first five years of a child's life when 90% of the brain is directly formed by the experiences of the child.
	And so if you grow up and you've never even heard of a criminal, you don't know of any criminals, your property is perfectly safe, you can leave your house unlocked, people negotiate with you, they're friendly, they're positive, your children can play safely, then you just, you know, when the government comes along and says, you need us to protect you, it's like, from what?
	My neighbors aren't dangerous.
	Nobody I know is dangerous.
	There are no sociopaths, manipulators, psychopaths, psychotics.
	I mean, nobody's high on drugs.
	Nobody's drunk driving.
	I mean, it just won't be there.
	I mean, this is very well established that if you raise children peacefully, you get this kind of outcome.
	So you raise your children peacefully.
	We're no longer terrified of each other.
	And therefore, there's no hobgoblins with any basis in reality that the government can use us to scare into a little circle huddled under the umbrella of state power.
	So we simply outgrow the state by starving it of that which is the foundation of its power, which is early childhood trauma.
	Alright, our next question is from Ken Taylor.
	Do you think the capitalistic slash anarchic model of society is an inevitability given how much moral progress we've made over the course of history?
	Well, I'm here, aren't I? If I thought it was an inevitability, I wouldn't do anything about it, right?
	I mean, it's not an inevitability.
	I mean, this is one of these dangerous things.
	Well, it's inevitable that a free society is going to emerge, so I'm going to go play Warcraft, right?
	It's like, well, then guess what?
	A free society is not going to emerge.
	No.
	A society...
	It's the result of the willpower of extraordinary individuals and I don't mean like naturally gifted or I don't consider myself naturally gifted in any particular way.
	I've just worked really damn hard to try and become good at what I do.
	So people who are willing to put in the work, people who are willing to take the risks, people who are willing to walk the talk, they will change the world and if those people don't show up the world doesn't change or if they show up and they're bad people the world changes for the worse.
	The future is going to be what you decide it's going to be if your decision is foundational enough for you to really change your life and for you to really change your circumstances and your social circle in pursuit of that goal.
	Then you will achieve a better world if your goal is goodness.
	And if you think that it's inevitable, it's probably going to be going quite the opposite.
	Alright, Marcella asks, how do you talk to your kiddo about liberty, to think outside the state?
	Well, I mean, I don't lie to her, right?
	I mean, so we get a tax bill and I say, oh, we have a tax bill.
	Well, what are taxes?
	Well, taxes are as a group of people who call themselves the government and some people think that they're necessary and some people think that they don't, but they're not necessary and we have to give them their money.
	Otherwise, you know, daddy will not Be here.
	I'll have to go to jail, which I don't want to do because I love being your father and so on, right?
	And so we talk about that and I say, yeah, they use the money for some things that I would agree with, but most of it I don't.
	Oh, what's that?
	Well, there's this war and this and that and the other and so on.
	But, you know, I would like to have the money for myself so that I could choose who to help and how to do it and what good stuff to do with it and so on.
	So I just, you know, it's a complicated parental strategy called tell the age-appropriate truth to my daughter.
	The only flaw that I've made as a father when it comes to talking to my daughter about liberty is she was for a time very eager to work for the Federal Reserve because typing money into your own bank account seems a whole lot easier than working for a living.
	So aside from that critical error which will probably have her being Alan Greenspan's more shapely ghost as the chairwoman of the Fed at some point, I think I've done a fairly good job.
	Our next question Do you think that people in Congress would want to relinquish their power?
	You know they try to get re-elected every term.
	Power is physically addictive.
	I don't understand cocaine addiction.
	I've never tried any drugs other than caffeine.
	I don't really know what it's like.
	But I understand that it's physiologically addictive.
	I understand it comes from, again, early childhood trauma.
	People are just trying to feel normal and all that.
	But I get that it's addictive, and I have sympathy for the victims of the addiction.
	Political power has been proven in psychological studies to be more addictive than cocaine, which is why we have drug addicts trying to wage war on drug addicts.
	And so the idea that people in power will voluntarily want to give up that power is like saying that A gambler on a winning streak can be talked out of leaving the casino, or a guy who's getting free cocaine and hookers is going to want to give up free cocaine and hookers.
	Even people who are suffering enormously from addictions find them very, very difficult to give up.
	Very difficult.
	Of all the people who try to lose weight in this world, maybe two or three percent lose the weight and keep it off.
	Two or three percent of people who are suffering Like life-shortening health effects, joint pain, potential or existing diabetes, physical unattractiveness, lack of mobility.
	People who are facing all those negative consequences can't seem to change their lifestyles to the point where they can lose weight and keep it off.
	And weight loss is a complete fiction, except for certain kinds of stomach stapling.
	But weight loss is just this magic mirage.
	It's like you might as well be promised a seat in heaven.
	And so even the people who want to lose weight, who have all this incentive, find it almost impossible to change their habits.
	People who are suffering negative consequences from addictions, they've lost their homes, their wives, their kids, their jobs, a lot of them are still pursuing the drugs, the cocaine, the heroin, the crack, or whatever it is.
	So in Congress, You have an even stronger addiction than cocaine and you get paid for it and you get all the high of the pursuit of political power and people think that you're great and you're immune to all laws.
	I mean there's simply no possibility in any way shape or form that the people in power are gonna give up their power.
	I mean people will shoot heroin into their toes in an alleyway And that's completely the opposite of the positive reinforcements that people experience for political power.
	You know, all that kiss the ring, I'm so important, I get ticker tape parades, I get money, women throw themselves at me, men throw themselves at me.
	I mean, there's simply no possibility that these highly positively reinforced drug addicts are going to give up their drug of choice called politics.
	It's just not going to happen.
	So the idea they're going to push that button is a fantasy.
	Hey, go try that, you know, go to The Downtown Eastside in Vancouver or Skid Row and try and talk addicts out of their drug and you'll see you've got way more chance with them than with politicians.
	Philip Dersey asks, how long do you think it will take for blockchain-based distributed autonomous organizations, trusts and companies to catch on and end the state?
	Well, again, that depends on how well, you know, do you share the videos about Bitcoin?
	You know, I've got some of the most popular videos on YouTube about Bitcoin with like a million views and probably in total.
	Do you share those videos or other videos of other people that you find compelling in the Bitcoin community?
	You know, a lot of, well, how long do you think this thing is going to happen?
	My first question is, well, what are you doing to make it happen?
	Now, if you are doing a lot to make it happen, then it's going to go as fast as it possibly can if the most people are doing the most that they can.
	But if you're not doing the most that you can, then it's just going to take longer.
	And if you're not doing anything, then you're kind of in the way of it happening.
	So I really don't know.
	But all I can do is put the very best work that I can into trying to get the message out, which I've been doing with Bitcoin since like 2010 or 2011.
	Which in, you know, Bitcoin years is like pre-history, pre-geological history.
	So you don't worry about how long it's going to take.
	Just focus on sharing and getting the word out and making this something that's really important to you that you spend a significant amount of time doing and get other people and encourage other people to get off their butts and do the same thing.
	And it's going to go a heck of a lot faster.
	And then hopefully it'll be quicker than we think.
	All right.
	Martin Lucas asks, aside from peaceful parenting, what do you see as a possible exit strategy?
	The P2P economy?
	SeaWorld?
	What do you put your hopes on?
	SeaWorld?
	You know, hope is a very dangerous emotion.
	I think optimism is good.
	Optimism is...
	I'm pretty good at driving, and so I'm optimistic I'll achieve my destination alive.
	Hope is...
	I'm strapped to a Formula One car.
	The pedal is to the maximum.
	I've never driven one before.
	I hope I make it.
	I don't really pin my hopes much on anything because I find hope is one of these things that if you believe in it, it paralyzes you because it's not a specific kind of action.
	Optimism is the things usually that you can do to get things going, right?
	Anything that's even remotely close to cross your fingers is usually pretty risky when it comes to personal change.
	I mean, there's this sea world I think is interesting where you've got these giant platforms out in the ocean, that seasteading that you can hopefully get some freedom.
	I'd love to go visit one of those places if they get up and running.
	I was very excited when in Honduras they were going to try and create a free port or a free city with the stateless society.
	I'd love to go and visit that.
	There'll be documentaries all over it.
	I know that Jeff Berwick is doing stuff in Chile and Doug Casey is doing stuff in Argentina, which you can look up.
	I think that they're pretty interesting communities.
	I don't know that they're that great for people with young kids.
	It seems to be, you know, where guys can go and smoke cigars and talk about the end of the world.
	I think there's lots of interesting stuff.
	I have the best life that I can possibly have around me now.
	I have people in my life who love me, who I absolutely worship and adore.
	I have great friendships.
	I have a great relationship with my wife.
	I have a great relationship with my daughter.
	I have a great relationship with my listeners.
	I have a great relationship with my haters because it's exactly what should be happening.
	So I think I can't really work that much to improve my life.
	And I'm sort of a, I don't know if I'm a born fighter or whether it's just something that, you know, I think in a free society I might be a little restless.
	You know, I'd probably say, let's bring back the states and we have something to fight again.
	I don't know.
	I'm probably just making that up.
	But I have, for me, the perfect life.
	And so the idea that there's some external place I could go to to improve it is a little hard to imagine.
	So I would really focus on trying to find As powerful, as meaningful, as deep, as rich, and as loved in existence as you can, and then, in a sense, it doesn't really matter what's happening in the world.
	You know, I'd rather be in prison with my family than free with my enemies, and thus, I can never be in prison.
	So, I hope that makes sense.
	Alright, before I put this next question up, I want to pitch something related to the question.
	We've got a great book free this month for members of Liberty Me in the library section that I'll link to in just a minute.
	It's by J.P. Medved, called Granite Republic, and it's kind of about a sort of transition to a freer society.
	Pedro Calixto asks, Is producing more fiction novels, films, and art effective in helping us getting closer to a free society?
	Yeah, I think it's great.
	I will sort of caution you though, like again, not to sound like the jack of all trades, but I was a poet and novelist and a playwright.
	I wrote like 30 plays and produced a couple as well.
	When I was younger, I spent two years at the National Theatre School studying acting.
	Playwriting and dance!
	And I think that art is great.
	The problem is that art generally only has meaning to prior prejudices.
	In other words, if you write a story about the virtue of freeing slaves in the 18th century South, you're not going to get very far because it's not appealing to prior prejudices.
	Now Harriet Beecher Stowe in the mid 19th century with Uncle Tom's Cabin could take a bit of a different tack, right?
	Or as Lincoln said, he is the little lady who started the big war, as if it wasn't him.
	But I think you can make some progress in art, but the world is not even remotely ready for anarchic art.
	What's interesting is that anarchy is showing up occasionally in movies.
	I went to see Maleficent and they talk about a society where everyone trusts each other and there's no government.
	Of course it's all women because Estrogen bigotry is one of the last refuges of collectivism these days.
	And in the Lego movie, they talked about some society.
	It's a crazy town where there was no government and so on.
	So it's called crazy, but at least the concept of no government is slowly seeping its way in.
	But the idea that you could write a story about no government and have it resonate with people emotionally, I think is really, really tough.
	Maybe you could do it.
	But I think it would be really, really tough because it goes so much against people's programming that it would only baffle and confuse and make them feel hostile.
	So I don't think you could really make it very...
	I don't think you could make it too far, but I think if you were to write stories...
	You know, one of the things that began moving children's rights forward was Dickens' portrayal of children in Oliver Twist and David Copperfield and other novels where the inner life of a child...
	I think that began to sensitize people towards treating people more peacefully as children, though of course we've still got a long way to go.
	It's tough.
	I couldn't make it work.
	I couldn't make it work, but there certainly may be lots more skilled writers out there than I am.
	On that line, if you're interested in literature that depicts freer societies, definitely check out Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
	It's one of the Most popular sci-fi novels of all time from the most popular sci-fi author of all time.
	Definitely check that one out.
	It's great.
	Philip Dersey asks, How would you encourage a loved one or close friend to pursue therapy to process trauma, and what type of therapy do you recommend?
	Well, the first thing is, when it comes to therapy, I think it's important to lead by example.
	I mean, I have convinced thousands and thousands of people to go into therapy through my conversations with people, both privately and through Free Domain Radio.
	And I think one of the things that is helpful to people is to see the after picture, right?
	I mean, if you want to lose weight, if you believe in that, then you can look at the after picture.
	That can be your motivation.
	I'm certainly not a perfect human being but I came from a very violent and traumatic upbringing and I have been able to do what I'm able to do and I put that a lot a lot of that credit goes to my work for years in therapy so I think when people say well you know Steph has a pretty good life and you know he's got a happy marriage and he's a good dad and he's got this important show I want me some of that.
	So you kind of have to be the fitness trainer who's not 300 pounds, right?
	I mean, you kind of have to be the guy who's selling face cream that isn't covered in zits or whatever, right?
	So the first thing to do is to inspire people.
	And a lot of people want to jump over that and just try and convince people without inspiring them.
	So the first thing you need to do, you know, like in the airplane, you lose cabin pressure, you put the mask on yourself and then you help other people.
	So if you want to convince other people to go to therapy, go to therapy.
	And tell them about therapy if you want.
	Not to proselytize them, not to sell it to them, but just saying this is really powerful or whatever's happening for you.
	And then don't hide the successes that therapy will provide to you.
	Therapy has been shown to be many times more effective than raises or even winning the lottery in terms of long-term happiness.
	So don't hide the happiness.
	Don't hide your light under a bushel.
	You know, if you're among a bunch of fat people, lose weight.
	And keep the weight off and then some people who want to lose weight will ask you how you did it and will be interested and then will probably pursue what you did.
	But you can't push change on people.
	The best way is to shoot yourself high like a flare, inspire as many people as humanly possible, and then tell them how you did it.
	And I think that's the best way to get it going.
	What type of therapy do I recommend?
	I don't know.
	I mean, it's hard for me to say because I've only really sampled one kind.
	And most therapists will say they're eclectic and take from a variety of sources.
	I think that cognitive behavioral therapy is very good where irrational thinking is challenged.
	I think if you are creative or artistic, I think some of the Jungian therapy approaches are very good.
	I'm somewhat skeptical of Freudian therapy, although that skepticism has been eroded by some significant I think Jung is also quite fascinating.
	I'm also a big fan of...
	Internal family systems therapy, Dr.
	Richard Schwartz is very big on that, in that we are a collection of alter egos that are sort of warring, if not listened to, and we need to sort of get all of our different alter egos around a table to negotiate, and everybody gets a seat at the table, nobody gets to dominate, which is great, because it's like internal anarchy, right?
	There's no final whip-tossing authoritarian within us, but everybody, all of our perspectives get a seat at the table to negotiate.
	And I think if people had that as their inner life, Yeah, those are the ones I would recommend.
	And if you don't afford therapy, you can do journaling, you can talk about your issues with friends.
	Dr.
	Nathaniel Brandon has a bunch of workbooks that I think are quite helpful.
	And there are other people who have Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Our next question from Andreas Kohl Martinez.
	Who do you think will colonize a planet other than Earth first?
	A government or a private agency?
	And will this affect the path to liberty?
	Well, I mean, if the government gets out of the way of private agencies, then I think it will be private agencies, if there's profit.
	To be made.
	And the profit doesn't mean minerals.
	I mean, it could just be the experience.
	Wouldn't it be great?
	I'd love to walk on the moon or Mars.
	I think that'd be fantastic.
	So I think that if government gets out the way and there's resources that people want to devote to it, then the free market will produce a solution.
	If the government doesn't get out of the way, then the government may get there first.
	But I think that the economy is going to collapse long before governments get to Mars because I think we don't have decades to go.
	Alright, I think we're going to wrap it up there for the night.
	Sorry to any questions that we didn't get to.
	I don't think there were many.
	We definitely powered through a lot.
	We'd love to have you back.
	Thank you so much for coming.
	Thank you everyone for coming out tonight.
	This was definitely our biggest turnout of Liberty Me U history.
	I'd love to see you all back.
	I told you what's going on this week.
	Next week we've got Julie Borowski, Ilya Shapiro, the editor of the Kato Supreme Court Review.
	We've got just a ton of stuff coming up, and always we've got Jeff Tucker, and we've just got a crazy lineup.
	We're doing about 25 or so sessions a month right now, and that's only going up.
	So definitely check us out.
	Stick around.
	Yeah, thanks so much.
	And just for those who are dying to get questions answered, we do two call-in shows, freedomainradio.com, Wednesday nights 8 p.m.
	and Saturday nights at 8 p.m.
	Eastern.
	And if you want to get involved, you can just email Michael, operations at freedomainradio.com, just to follow up questions that we talk about, anything under the sun that you're interested in.
	So thanks very much for the hosting of this.
	I really appreciate it.
	Again, check out Liberty Me.
	And I guess we'll see you next time around here.

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