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Aug. 20, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:19:33

2777 The Death of Michael Brown - Peter Schiff Radio Show August 19th, 2014

Stefan Molyneux hosts the Peer Schiff Radio show and discusses the death of Mike Brown, Officer Darren Wilson, the latest evidence and the ensuing riots in Ferguson, Missouri.

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	The Peter Schiff Show.
	Good morning, my brothers and sisters in the deep thought of radio and podcast land.
	I hope you're doing well.
	My name is not Peter Schiff, but I am playing him on television today.
	Hope you're doing well.
	I guess since Peter is ending the Peter Schiff show to pursue his lifelong dream of becoming a thong-based rockette, We will not be talking through this medium, I guess, after the end of August.
	I think that's when it's going down.
	So, of course, I'd like to say thanks to Tom, to the control room guys, to Peter, for allowing me to sully the good name of his radio show with my tour of the colonies gayish accent.
	So, thank you very much for the opportunity.
	If you want to hear more of what I have to say, you can always go to freedomainradio.com or youtube slash freedomainradio.
	But, it doesn't seem like there are many stories going down these days.
	Except the ongoing tragedy in Ferguson, Missouri.
	Where, I guess a little over a week ago, a young man named Michael Brown was shot, according to the autopsy four or five or more times, they can't tell because the wounds, of course, somewhat blend together, in the street by a white officer.
	From the time of that shooting until now, Riots, looting, protests, politicians of every stripe and hue are getting involved.
	And like all that happens in these kinds of situations, there is a wrestling of the narrative.
	A wrestling of the narrative.
	One of my greatest...
	I have a graduate degree in history from the University of Toronto.
	I studied English literature at York, and then I went to National Theatre School, if that's relevant, but McGill undergraduate history and University of Toronto graduate degree in history.
	My very first day in a history class...
	I guess I had just come back from spending, I guess, about 14 or 15 months as a gold panner and prospector to make some money for college or university, as it's known here.
	Very first day, my very first course or class in Canadian history.
	Oh, sorry.
	Sorry.
	Must stay professional.
	Canadian history.
	I'm an expert in Canadian history.
	How would you like to sit next to me at dinner?
	Hello, anybody.
	So, I was asking a lot of questions.
	I was so eager to be there.
	I'm telling you, you spend a whole bunch of time in the woods being eaten by bugs, chased by bears, and frightened by Native Americans with guns.
	You are quite eager and happy to be in a classroom.
	Oh, I could just, I was there thirsty for the knowledge.
	I remember a girl asked me out.
	First couple of weeks of school, and I said, no, no, I'm working on one of my papers for the midterms.
	She's like, I can't believe it.
	We just started.
	It's like, yeah, and I'm so hungry to be here.
	There's nothing like a taste of manual labor to make you appreciate higher education.
	And it was more than a taste.
	So I was asking all these questions, enthusiastically getting involved.
	And the professor, a woman, she threw her glasses at me.
	I caught them.
	Always ready.
	Always ready.
	No matter what.
	You never know when some middle-aged woman's going to hurl her glasses at you.
	Or her top.
	Anyway.
	I caught the glasses.
	There was a pause.
	And the professor said to the class as a whole, What just happened?
	You would not believe the answers that came out.
	He threw his glasses at you.
	You threw a coffee cup at him.
	You took off your top and threw it at him.
	That was mine.
	But she went around the class.
	And first of all, no one got it right.
	And secondly, the number of interpretations that occurred of what had actually just happened were staggering.
	It was incredibly eye-opening how little people's eyes are open.
	And she said, that's history.
	That's history.
	Perspective is everything.
	Getting to the facts in history is impossible.
	Perspective is everything.
	And in this shooting, this tragedy, this horrible, horrible way for a human being to die, the wrestling over the narrative is the fundamental battle that is occurring.
	One narrative has Michael Brown...
	As you constantly see the phrase, an unarmed teen.
	An unarmed teen.
	First of all, he had arms.
	And that sounds facetious, but it's not.
	I'm not trying to be funny.
	He had arms, and his size is significant.
	Six foot four, almost three bills in weight, 300 pounds.
	If you've got arms and you're that big, you're kind of armed.
	The fact that they refer to him as a teen, and initially, just like with Trayvon Martin, the media referred to him as a child.
	You know, lots of 18-year-old...
	He just turned 18.
	Lots of 18-year-old soldiers get killed in the line of duty.
	I have never once, once seen the media refer to an American soldier who is 18, killed in the line of duty, as a teen soldier.
	Or soldiers who are 18 as armed teens.
	No, they're adults.
	They're adults.
	You can't just pick and choose your words to fit a narrative.
	I mean, you can, but it's pretty obvious.
	He was a gentle giant.
	He kept to himself.
	He looked dangerous, but he wouldn't have harmed a fly.
	That's the narrative, right?
	The narrative of his friend who was in the street with him and he was shot.
	That he was shot on his knees with his hands in the air, saying he wasn't a threat, begging for his life, shot execution-style in the back, lead pumped into him by a cold-faced, cold-eyed, racist whitey.
	And these narratives have power in the world.
	They have the power to move people to violence.
	They have the power to move people to protest.
	They have the power to frame an entire interaction in the world.
	Now, it's because we have alternative media that we can also see the other side of the coin.
	Was he a gentle giant?
	Was he...
	Begging for his life, was he shot down execution style in cold blood in front of multiple witnesses?
	Was he a victim?
	Well, it's important not to replace one narrative with another.
	But we can't get to the exact truth of what happened that day because there doesn't seem to be any video footage of the event itself.
	But we can get closer to it.
	Just because there's no black and no white in history doesn't mean that there aren't different shades of grey.
	So, we're going to talk about some of the facts in the case.
	I did a video about this, which you can find on my channel, but more information came to light literally hours after we published the video, which I'd like to talk about here.
	Because with facts come calm.
	With falsehoods come hysteria.
	With facts, generally, comes calm.
	What is closure in human events?
	Closure in human events is having some more access to the facts and a little less returning away From those who sell false narratives in order to sow the seeds of human conflict and destruction.
	So we'll be right back after the break.
	We'll talk about the other side of Michael Brown.
	Stefan Molyneux for Peter Schiff.
	When will we meet?
	We'll be right back.
	Since the Peter Schiff show was last on the air, the national debt added another $7.89 million.
	Luckily, Peter's intelligence is growing twice as fast.
	That's incredible.
	Welcome back to your source of sanity in an insane world.
	It's the Peter Schiff Show.
	Good morning, everybody.
	Stefan Molyneux sitting in for Peter Schiff, I imagine, unless he's hit again by an asteroid.
	Bad luck.
	I guess for the last time, as the Peter Schiff Show winds down, again, you can find out more about what I do at freedomainradio.com.
	So we're going to talk about the other side of Michael Brown.
	The shooting victim that was obviously gunned down recently in Missouri.
	So, the Daily Mail wrote he was a gentle giant, timid and quiet, yet six foot four and three hundred pounds.
	His aunt, he wasn't a violent person.
	He was peaceful.
	He was a gentle giant.
	He looked like he could really do something, but he wouldn't.
	And...
	Not necessarily the case.
	So there's video, and again, this is all unproven, at least as far as these things can be proven, so this is to some degree speculation, though there's a good deal of evidence behind it.
	Shortly before his tragic interaction with the officer, he was with a friend strong-arm robbing a convenience store For something called a Swisher Sweet Cigar.
	And apparently this is, I don't know a lot of people who smoke cigars when they're 18, but there are apparently a lot more people who turn these cigars, they empty out at least the majority of the tobacco, they put marijuana in and so on.
	So he was buying drug paraphernalia.
	At least it appears that he was buying drug paraphernalia in the same way that Trayvon Martin appears to have been buying the ingredients for lean.
	And then he was walking down the middle of the street.
	The officer told them to move off the middle of the street.
	And then X happened.
	The stories really collide.
	So we do know that from the reports of those who claim to be witnesses, and of course also who claim to be telling the truth, that he was shot in the back.
	Shot in the back is one of these, I mean, terrible.
	If the person is to your back, then claiming a self-defense is tough.
	If the person is running...
	And you shoot them in the back.
	That's also tough.
	Although, to my admittedly amateur understanding, there are situations in which the police are allowed to shoot someone.
	A police officer is allowed or permitted to shoot someone.
	If that person is directly threatening the officer's life or the life of somebody, the officer, somebody who's around, an innocent bystander or something like anyone.
	Also, if the subject flees and the officer has reason to believe...
	That the suspect has committed a violent felony, then the officer is permitted to use lethal force.
	So, according to the variety, the mishmash of narratives, Michael Brown and his friend Dorian Johnson walking down the street, middle of the street, not the best way to be inconspicuous after a robbery.
	And I say robbery, not shoplifting, because shoplifting is usually a stealth act.
	You just walk out with something under your jacket kind of thing.
	Not right.
	And in Missouri, it's punished the same as a crime.
	But a clerk at the convenience store saw them and said, basically, you've got to pay for that stuff.
	And Michael Brown shoved him against the display rack.
	And then when the guy came back, basically glowered over and intimidated him with his 300 pounds of intimidating man meat.
	And so the officer, Officer Wilson, told them to get off the road.
	Apparently they insulted him or whatever, but he drove on.
	And then he remembered that there had been a robbery that he'd heard on the radio with cigars, and he noticed that, I guess in his rear view or something, or maybe he remembered what he'd seen, that Michael Brown was carrying or Dorian Johnson was carrying these cigars.
	So he's like, hmm, I probably should have a chat with these fine young fellows and make sure that they have a receipt for those cigars.
	And so he backed his car up.
	And we don't know what happened, except that some people say that the officer was trying to pull a 300-pound man in through the window by choking his neck.
	I'm just telling you, I find that hard to believe.
	I mean, this is an officer who's been on the force for seven years.
	To my knowledge, he's not had a complaint, was actually, I think in February, recently commended for bravery in the line of service.
	Who is going to try and pull a 300-pound suspect through the window?
	I mean, to me, I'm just telling you, it doesn't make much sense to me.
	I'm not saying it didn't happen, I'm just saying it doesn't make much sense to me.
	But Brown ended up inside the car, inside the officer's car, Where there was a fight.
	The officer's face was bruised.
	How badly, I don't know.
	And a gun went off.
	Now, that is some serious stuff going down.
	There is a common law tradition that if you set events in motion that resulted in the death of that person or a person, then you are responsible for that murder even if you didn't pull the trigger.
	So if you go and rob a convenience store and the clerk tries to defend himself and misses you and hits an innocent bystander, you, the thief, are charged with the murder because you set the events in motion that resulted in Somebody's death.
	The clerk is not charged with the murderer.
	You are charged with the murderer.
	As the thief.
	If you jump into, or even if you're pulled into, if you're inside a police car and a gun goes off, you're kind of responsible for that.
	Which means that the situation has now escalated beyond all common sense and rationality.
	Because if you have assaulted a cop and the gun has gone off, again, I'm no lawyer, but it seems to me you're kind of in the vicinity of attempted murder of a cop.
	After the gunshot, Michael Brown left the vehicle and ran down the road.
	Again, this is all third-hand, second-hand.
	The officer says, FREEZE! And Michael Brown turns around, and according to the officer, and according to another witness at the site who was caught by accident and saw somebody videotaping, Michael Brown circled back and, let's just say as nicely as we can, advanced upon the officer at significant speed.
	Now the officer, of course, remember, he doesn't know if this guy's high on PCP, he doesn't know if he's completely insane, he doesn't know if he's a psychopath, he doesn't know if he's possessed by all the devils of Beelzebub's armpit.
	He just knows that there's a guy who just assaulted him and a gunshot just went off.
	He may in fact be wounded.
	He doesn't even know.
	In that kind of adrenaline, he's got about two seconds to make a decision.
	According to the autopsy report, Michael Brown was shot in the front.
	And he was shot on the extremities first.
	He was shot in the arms.
	And according to the reports, which again, you can take with as much of a grain of salt as you want, He was shot in the extremities and then he was shot in the head because the shooting in the extremities were non-fatal.
	He could have survived them according to the autopsy report.
	He could have survived the shooting to the extremity, but he continued to charge and the last shot was to the head.
	And again, according to reports, he then fell only a few feet in front of the officer.
	So what could this mean?
	We'll be right back and talk more about this after the break.
	We now return to the Peter Schiff show.
	Call in now.
	855-4SHIFT. That's 855-472-4433.
	The Peter Schiff Show.
	Alright, good morning everybody.
	I hope you're doing fantastically.
	We are chatting about the Michael Brown incident.
	And we're going to go just over.
	I want to take your calls after this segment.
	I just want to go over a few more facts today.
	You may agree or disagree with the laws that justify the use of deadly force in the policing community.
	I mean, I obviously get at all of my issues I have with the existing system, but those are the rules.
	And they're not rules that are specific to the police.
	Anyone can use deadly force in self-defense, as was the case with...
	Why the jury found George Zimmerman not guilty.
	You can use deadly force in self-defense, whether you're a private individual or a police officer.
	Philosophically, I agree with the principle of self-defense.
	I won't get into all of the boring rational reasons why, or logical reasons why.
	But if this narrative of The assault.
	The question is, people say, well, why would Michael Brown do all of this?
	Well, let's look at the history of Michael Brown's decision-making that morning.
	He woke up, and it was a day like any other day.
	He'd just turned 18.
	Now, we don't know if he'd had any criminal charges prior because his juvenile records were sealed.
	He'd just turned 18.
	We do know he was hanging out with this Darian Johnson fellow who was 22, I think, years old, and Was also, had been charged with a crime in the past.
	We also know that he recorded hyper-violence, you know, glorifying in murder rap lyrics.
	Not illegal, obviously a crime against good taste, but not illegal.
	He loved his fight videos on YouTube.
	Again, it's not that any of this is wrong, of course.
	Like the fight videos.
	But then don't tell us that people who record hyper-violent rap lyrics and who like fight videos and who subscribe to High Times magazines and scream out joyously in a rap studio about how much they love murdering people who mess with them and how great it is to mow down on an entire blunt up your nose.
	Well, then the gentle giant narrative takes a bit of a blow.
	That's all.
	This is illegal.
	Nothing morally, fundamentally wrong with it.
	It's just...
	It contradicts the narrative.
	That's all.
	We need to push back against narratives unsupported by evidence.
	So why?
	Why would he do?
	Why would he do this?
	Well, so he woke up in the morning.
	The, um...
	The autopsy found THC or marijuana in his system.
	They haven't said, to my knowledge, how much was there.
	And of course, can stay in the body for days.
	But I would imagine, can't prove, but I would imagine that he smoked drugs that morning.
	Because the decisions that he made...
	We're so nonsensical.
	I can't imagine a person who's not high would think they're a great idea.
	People say, oh, well, marijuana makes you peaceful.
	Not always.
	Sometimes it makes you paranoid.
	I'm speaking...
	I'm so...
	I don't know anything about drugs, fundamentally, other than my caffeine of choice.
	But from what I've heard, it can make you kind of paranoid.
	So why...
	Going to rob a convenience store where there are cameras?
	Are you kidding me?
	Are you kidding me?
	Walking down the middle of the street after you stole something from a store with cameras holding the contraband items in your hand?
	Not smart.
	This guy apparently was going to higher education.
	He was going to some sort of college.
	So he's not dumb.
	So why would you make such terrible decisions?
	I'm going to go rob a place in broad daylight without covering my face where there are cameras.
	What could go wrong?
	And walk down the middle of the street...
	Holding the contraband.
	What could go wrong?
	I'm going to attack a police officer.
	What could go wrong?
	And of course, I would imagine, or I would argue, that the reason that he freaked out was because he had the goods on him.
	So now he's 18, so if he gets charged with theft, and it was...
	I mean, it's hard to say violent, but it was really aggressive.
	And you can watch the video on YouTube.
	It's all over the place.
	I mean, he's shoving this tiny little guy into a display rack and swaggering off after intimidating him.
	So I don't know if that's violent theft.
	I don't know.
	Again, I'm no lawyer.
	I'm no prosecutor.
	But the cop is like, hey, wait a minute.
	Where'd you get those cigars from?
	And he's like, oh, crap.
	I believe that's the official rap term for it, oh crap.
	A lot of rap songs which have, uh, oh gosh darn crap in a bucket.
	That's terrible.
	What has happened to my life?
	And apparently they all seem to have a lot of female dogs around.
	And garden implements.
	Anyway, we'll get back to that another time.
	So now the cop is questioning him.
	He's an adult.
	He's going to have a permanent record.
	He may be high on drugs.
	He certainly had drugs in his system.
	And he's in the company of an older man who's not got the best decision-making matrix in the world.
	And he attacks the cop.
	And where do you go from there?
	Let's say that my rank amateur speculation is correct and he would have been charged with the attempted murder of a police officer.
	Where do you go from there as an adult, as an 18-year-old young man?
	Well, you go to prison...
	I'm pretty much guessing for a long time.
	The moment he decided to attack the police officer, his life was over, as he knew it.
	What was going to happen there?
	Does he surrender to the police officer and go to jail, probably for most of the rest of his life, or at least half of it?
	Or does he charge the police officer, dying a glorious rap star death?
	Also, he knows, because there's so many people who side with police victims in this area, without getting the facts, and of course the police are abusive sometimes, and of course they abuse their power sometimes.
	If he gets shot, he knows the whole community is going to rally around him and call him a victim and a nice boy who didn't do anything wrong.
	So he charges the cop.
	And people say, well, why wouldn't, you know, a cop's got his gun out, a cop's shooting, why wouldn't he stop?
	You know, expecting common sense to kick in in the last two seconds or the last second and a half, I think, is asking a bit much.
	And people say, well, why didn't the cop shoot at his legs?
	Well, according to the people who contacted me, who claim to, and I believe, from what they say, have significant experience in the matter, it ain't that easy to shoot somebody's legs out from under them.
	I mean, the guy had been bludgeoned in the head.
	He was dazed.
	He was confused, fight-or-flight mechanism, adrenaline coursing through his system.
	Hysterical, as I would be, as you would be in that situation.
	Are we going to calmly aim at someone's legs?
	Look, if a 300-pound man picks you up and headbutts you, you can just die.
	Like, right then and there.
	If he uses the heel of his hand to drive your nosebone into your brain, you are dead.
	I'm just unarmed.
	Some studies have shown that somebody who's good with a knife at 30 feet or less does better than a police officer or somebody who's armed.
	50 Cent took, what, eight bullets and survived?
	I mean, this is not the Westerns where a guy falls off his horse, right, and lies still.
	Somebody's running at you, shooting at their...
	Nobody runs in a straight line, and their legs are moving, moving target.
	You've got two seconds.
	It's not that easy.
	And if you're wrong about something that's really hard to do, you're most likely dead.
	Because if the person, the 300 pound guy, is on PCP or something else and is insane enough to charge an armed cop that he just assaulted, he's going to kill you.
	He's going to kill you.
	I mean, you can't assume anything else.
	Why didn't he use his taser?
	Why didn't he use his mace?
	A lot of cops get killed by unarmed people.
	And I don't know.
	Again, I'm no expert.
	I'm not sure that mace is going to do that great on somebody who's high.
	Again, as far as the cop knows, who would make these decisions?
	It had to be somebody who was high.
	I mean, that would be my assumption if I were in that person's overpolished shoes.
	Man wrote to me and said, in my 31 years on the job as an LEO, law enforcement officer, I assume eight officers were killed in my state with their own weapons.
	One fellow officer I worked with was chased down and executed by the, quote, unarmed suspect.
	It's my contention that if a suspect is willing and crazy enough to take on a uniformed armed police officer in a physical fight, then he has to realize that he has become a deadly threat to that officer.
	Know this.
	Even the strongest, toughest cop can lose a fight.
	All it takes is one lucky punch.
	One punch!
	And now you're dazed and maybe unconscious, and now the attacker is armed with your weapon.
	Ask yourself, what would you do?
	You have already been assaulted once, and the suspect has attempted to take your gun away, and it has discharged once, almost hitting you.
	Now you have the suspect at gunpoint and are trying to make an arrest.
	Suddenly, the six-foot-four, 290-pound man charges you at full speed.
	In two seconds or less, he will be on you, and now you must decide in one half a second your response.
	My goodness.
	What a terrible situation for everyone to be in.
	It's horrible what happened to the young man.
	It's horrible what's going to happen to the officer.
	Of course, I'd rather be the officer than the young man.
	But these things don't come out of nowhere.
	I'd like to put the call-in number out of the next one.
	I'd like to get your thoughts on all of this stuff, because there is this contention that it's poverty that causes crime.
	The ghetto and the ghetto people are poor and this causes criminality.
	I don't think that's true.
	And I think there's lots of good reasons to believe that that's not fundamentally true.
	And I don't like the idea that when one particular group of people does something wrong, that immediately everybody rushes to excuse them or find reasons as to why they're not moral agents in their own lives.
	I think that's pretty racist.
	In fact, I know that's pretty racist.
	I don't think the black man did this or a white man did this.
	I think a human being did this.
	What do I think?
	I can't strip moral agency of people who have functioning cognitive abilities.
	Now, if he was high, then his functioning is reduced.
	But that does not mean we do not hold him culpable for that.
	I mean, if you're a drunk driver, your ability to drive is reduced.
	That makes whatever mess you get into even worse.
	So we'll be right back to talk more about this essential issue and why I think it's so essential right after the break.
	Thank you so much for listening.
	guitar solo
	To President Obama,
	Madam Pelosi, and all of the socialist econ professors across America.
	We're sorry.
	Peter Schiff is back on the air.
	Good morning, everybody.
	I'm going to miss you people so much when this show winds its way down, so I just wanted to let you know.
	I've really, really enjoyed these conversations we've been having together.
	We're going to get to a caller in a second.
	But the question is, well, why?
	Why has this become such a huge deal?
	Obviously, there are tragic shootings that occur every day.
	I mean, it just seems in Chicago, basically, there's just bullets flying around, like carrier pigeons and people dropping dead.
	A lot of them are blacks, of course.
	Most of them shot by other blacks.
	Why has this become a big deal?
	Well, let me put forward a very, very brief theory, then we get to a call.
	What's going on?
	The media is left-wing.
	Oh, there, I said it.
	The media is left-wing, and this is an election year.
	And the Trayvon Martin George Zimmerman brouhaha also occurred during an election year.
	So there are Democrats, and the Democrats in the media are ginning up the population and rousing the base and trying to make sure that they get as many votes out for Democrats as humanly possible.
	So the strategy basically is you create some racist hysteria, and then people on the right point out the facts And then the media says, those people on the right are so racist, they're so racist, that you better vote for us, right?
	Because, you know, they're racists.
	Yeah, like the Democratic Party isn't the one with the vast majority of history of racism in this country, steadfastly refusing to even look at the Civil Rights Act.
	The Democrat Party began as an offshoot of the KKK, for God's sakes.
	And now they're...
	I argue that they're not exactly doing much different.
	Man can tell you, that guy's out to get you, but I'll protect you.
	That guy's out to get you, but I'll protect you.
	Isn't that why people take husbands in prison?
	That guy, whether it's Whitey or the devil or who knows, that guy's going to get you, but don't worry, I'll protect you.
	Creating this narrative of the enemy.
	In which you will sell your freedom for a protection that never materializes.
	It's one of the oldest scams of mankind.
	And it's occurring right now.
	Michael, from Washington State, you have some thoughts.
	Sorry, Matthew, from Washington State, you have some thoughts on this.
	What's on your mind, brother?
	Yes, sir.
	I appreciate you, Stephon.
	I thank you for all of your wisdom.
	I've been listening to you for a few months and whatnot, and Yeah, I just want to say thanks.
	But on topic, so last year we had the Boston bombing and, you know, they started taking away our guns and everything like that.
	And now we just have this shooting and they're making a big deal about it.
	um so i just feel like um you know what's the next agenda that they're gonna um start going after next i mean because they're really going after the guns and um you know that's pretty much like you know almost i don't want to say a gun deal but you know they're you know playing really hard on that but i feel like they're about to start doing something else yeah no it's a good I mean, I don't know.
	I don't know.
	There's some possibilities.
	You know, and I'll tell you, though, my friend, that when people say what's going to happen next, What they're telling me is they feel like a passenger in the car of life.
	Where is the crazy driver going to turn the wheel next?
	Well, I'd say, let's get into the driver's seat.
	Let's not say what's going to happen to us, but what can we make happen?
	I think that this could go one of two ways.
	Like all crises, it can be used in a sense, or it can result in good, or it can result in evil.
	So yeah, they may say, let's take away guns.
	This is a tougher one to pin on, let's take away guns, because they keep saying he's unarmed.
	So unless they're going to talk about taking away the guns from cops, which I'm telling you the ruling class is not going to do in America, because they kind of need the cops to keep them safe.
	So this is going to be a tough one to put on anti-gun.
	Look, my hope, my hope is that this will help people recognize, ooh, you ready?
	Let's say something controversial.
	I hope that this will help people recognize that if the black ghettos in America were a country, they would be called a failed state.
	Unemployment rate is more than twice as high in general among blacks and whites.
	Same thing with the underemployment rate.
	The average white household in America has 22 times as much wealth as the average black household.
	African-American households, 13% of the population, more than 26% of the food stamp benefits.
	82% of white students graduate from high school, only 63% of blacks.
	The income gap between white Americans and black Americans has continued to grow ever since the late 1960s.
	Ooh, what happened in the 1960s?
	Let me just see.
	Well, there was a war.
	That can't be it.
	A lot of drugs.
	I don't think that was it.
	Easy Rider.
	No, no.
	Oh, that's right.
	The war on poverty began.
	Remember how the war on terror has completely eliminated human conflict around the world?
	Remember how the war on illiteracy has really improved education?
	See how Head Start has made all of the underprivileged kids perform really well in school?
	Well, it's the same thing.
	War on poverty.
	Black households were getting richer and richer in the post-war period.
	The families were intact, in some places more intact than white families, and having intact families is pretty foundational to getting to the middle class.
	Black poverty was going down, was going down, was going down.
	Then they put in a war on poverty, and since then it's been going up.
	In the U.S., 12% of white kids live in areas of concentrated poverty, 45% of African American kids do.
	19% of white kids live in single-parent homes.
	Black children, the number is 52%.
	The incarceration rate for black men is more than six times higher than it is for white men.
	And that's not just racism.
	God, can we just stop talking about racism as the magic solution to everything?
	It's like talking about imaginary sky ghosts as to where we came from.
	It doesn't answer anything, but it prevents exploration of further knowledge, which can actually be helpful.
	Epilepsy is not demonic possession, and not everything that's bad that's happening in the black community is the result of white racism.
	I mean, if whites who are supposedly in charge and supposedly so racist, why do we have a low upper capita income than many Asian groups?
	Not just racism.
	Racism is one of these things, and fortunately, I think people are getting tired of this.
	I mean, I hope that this...
	Racism!
	Oh, sorry.
	Come on.
	It's not an answer.
	It's not an answer.
	Got a black president.
	I don't know anyone.
	I have a few white friends, and I don't know anyone who said, Oh, wait, man.
	Morgan Freeman's in that movie?
	Oh, I'm not going.
	He's black.
	Sam Cooke?
	No way!
	Not racism.
	But let's talk about what it might be.
	We've got one more caller.
	We'll be right back after the break.
	This is Fat Molyneux for the Peter Schiff Show.
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	The Peter Schiff Show.
	Good morning, everybody.
	Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio, sitting in for Peter Schiff.
	I hope you're having a wonderful, wonderful day.
	We have been talking about the riots, the racial tension, and the death of Michael Brown.
	And I've got a lot more to say about it, but it's your show, too, my brothers and sisters.
	Danny from New York City, you have some thoughts on the matter.
	What's on your mind?
	Take a hold, take a hold.
	Well, what's on your mind appears to be a little bit scattered from the data.
	Can you try one more time?
	We're not getting much audio from you.
	Hello.
	Thanks for having me on.
	My pleasure.
	There's two things I wanted to point out.
	One is that you kind of were only talking about the cop side of the story, which is, I think it should be fair if you say the other side of the story, because there's multiple eyewitness accounts that suggest that Brown was surrendering at the time that he was shot.
	And the other thing is, there's a huge flaw in the cop side of the story that you haven't talked about, and that's that the autopsy reports that have been done so far, they found no gunpowder residue on Brown's body, which suggests that there was no shots fired in close proximity to Brown.
	Well, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on.
	So, one at a time.
	So, just to deal with your last point, my understanding is that there has no gunpowder residue has been found on his body, but they have yet to test his clothing.
	And gunpowder residue will only travel a couple of feet.
	So, if he was...
	There was a shot inside a car.
	It's hard for me to imagine that an enclosed space of a car with a gunshot going off...
	Well, no, but he was...
	Look, he was fully clothed, right?
	So, I mean, it could have been...
	Anything could have happened.
	We don't know.
	Like, if there's...
	If the gun was underneath the officer when it went off, if it was pointing down into the backseat of the car, I mean, any number of things could have occurred that would result in no gunpowder residue.
	Plus, he was, as far as I understand it, fully clothed.
	So once they test his clothing, that will be more of an indication either way.
	But are you trying to say that there was no shot inside the car?
	Is that what you mean?
	That's what it's suggesting to me because a close gunshot, that would almost certainly leave gunpowder residue on a person's body.
	If it's pointed directly at the person, then yes, but the gunpowder residue follows the bullet, right?
	No, it doesn't because even the person shooting the gun usually has gunpowder residue on them.
	Okay.
	Okay, if you know more than I am, that's fantastic.
	Okay, well, then that will be...
	And also, of course, if there's a gun that goes off in the car, then hopefully, unless it just went out the window, the bullet, then hopefully there will be a bullet hole in the car.
	There will be inside the car as well.
	Yeah, and this is why, yeah, absolutely.
	But hang on a sec.
	There's no good reporting about that.
	Well, yeah, but we don't know yet, right?
	I mean, the police have withheld information, and the DOJ was pressuring the cops in Ferguson to not release the convenience store tape of the guy.
	But there does seem to be pretty strong evidence that the officer was assaulted, right?
	Do you think that might not have happened as well?
	I think it might have happened.
	I'm not sure.
	But one of the other things, too, is that It's very likely that when he was actually shot, he was at a large distance.
	So you said before that he charged at him and then at the end when he fell, he was within a couple feet of him.
	I find that also completely unlikely because of the lack of the gunpowder residue on the body.
	So when he was shot, it's very likely that he was at a distance, not very close.
	Well, again, we'll have to wait for more information to come up.
	Just got some information here.
	Law enforcement investigators test the clothing and skin of people for gunshot residue to determine if they were near a gun when it discharged.
	Gunshot residue can travel over three to five feet from the gun.
	At the farthest distance, only a few trace particles may be present.
	So, again, what happened inside the car?
	If there's gunshot residue on the clothes, then that would support the gunshot in the car.
	If there's no gunshot residue on the officer's clothes or on the clothes of Michael Brown or in the car, then it seems to me that would rule out The gunshot, and we'll have to wait for that to occur.
	It seems, again, it seems to me that if the officer's going to claim that there was a gunshot in the car...
	And there wasn't.
	That would be quite an astonishing thing, because, I mean, officers would know that that would be very easy to disprove.
	So I guess we'll have to wait for the residue examination of the car, of the officer, of the officer's skin and clothing.
	Michael Brown's skin has been tested, as far as I know, but not his clothing as yet.
	So, again, you could be entirely correct.
	The officer might have been completely lying.
	about the gunshot in the car, but hopefully the evidence will bear that out one way or the other.
	I think it would be a crazy thing to lie about, and also not particularly necessary, because it was not the gunshot in the car that really was the justification.
	It was the charge at the end.
	Now, the examiner, the autopsy guy, the doctor, has no access to Michael Brown's clothing.
	And so they can't test it.
	Hopefully they will get access to the clothing.
	Hopefully it will be tested and that will be resolved.
	But yeah, you bring up excellent points.
	I mean, again, this is all in a state of flux.
	And if it turns out that the officer was lying about the gunshot in the car, then to me that would cast significant doubt on the officer's No, I just wanted to spring up, because it's good to look at both sides, I think, in my opinion.
	Well, yeah, I mean, I think you're polarizing things unnecessarily, though, if you don't mind me saying so, because you're saying, well, you're just talking about the officer's side of things.
	No, no, no, no, no.
	The THC in Michael Brown's blood is not the officer's side of things.
	The fact that the gunshot wounds went in from the front and out through the back is not the officer's side of things.
	The convenience store footage is not the officer's side of things.
	The fact that they were walking down the middle of the road is not the officer's side of things.
	The fact that Darian Johnson did not even mention to the cops when they began to question him about the robbery that he and Michael Brown had just been involved in is not the cop's side of things.
	So I said at the beginning, there are narratives, but that doesn't mean there are no facts.
	So it kind of bothers me when I bring up facts and people say, well, that's just the officer's side of things.
	Like the officer somehow created the convenience store footage and created the THC in Michael Brown's body and created the entry and exit wounds magically through mind power after the event.
	There is also facts as well as sides of things.
	So please don't accuse me of just giving the officer's side of things.
	That, I think, is unfair.
	So...
	I'm sorry, go ahead.
	Those things have nothing to do with the actual shooting event, though.
	They do.
	Yeah, you're wrong about that.
	No, they do.
	Yeah, the stealing, absolutely.
	The stealing speaks to motive, right?
	Why was Michael Brown so upset when the officer stomped him?
	Why did he get so angry that, according to the officer, he assaulted the officer?
	Because he was in possession of stolen merchandise.
	Of course it has relevance.
	It speaks to motive.
	Saying that one has nothing to do to the other speaks about such fundamental ignorance of how human psychology and the law works that you really shouldn't be talking about this stuff at all.
	Of course it matters.
	It speaks to motive.
	We'll speak more to motive when we come back after the break.
	This is Van Molyneux for Peter Schiff.
	Thank you so much for listening.
	Thank you.
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	Except it's not.
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	Well, it still is.
	I guess I'm just sitting in.
	Stefan Molyneux from the number one philosophy show on the World Free Domain Radio, sitting in for Peter Schiff.
	We are talking about, oh Ferguson, what's on everyone's mind these days.
	And we got a call just on the break from a fellow who said that Dorian Johnson, the loosely called friend of Michael Brown, also said that there was a gunshot inside We were just talking about that with a guy who said, well, maybe there wasn't.
	I can't imagine he would be lying about that.
	Maybe one of the few things he hasn't lied about.
	But blacks, particularly young black men, are upset about the cats in blue.
	In general.
	This is all, obviously, generalizations.
	But there's reasons for that.
	And the reasons for that Ain't just all about white racism.
	Blacks, young black men in particular, commit a heck of a lot of crimes, my friends.
	And I don't know that it's white racism that makes them do it.
	It seems like a bit of a cop-out.
	2012 U.S. Census Bureau estimated 44.4 million African Americans in the U.S., It's about 14% of the total U.S. population.
	Black only category is 41.2.
	The rest are mixed race.
	So black only, 14% of the population.
	And young black males, it's hard to find information about that.
	Blacks, we can assume a half of that, 6.5% of the population.
	Young black males, I don't know, a couple of percentage points of the population.
	According to 2012 FBI crime statistics, blacks commit 38.5% of violent crimes and 29.3% of property crimes.
	Blacks are responsible for 54.9% of robberies and 49.4% of murderous and non-negligent manslaughterers.
	Since the FBI statistics up until 2013 don't include Latino crimes, the percentage of crimes committed by non-whites is even higher.
	If you look at the FBI crime statistics and you look at interracial rape, blacks raping white women, thousands a year, there's actually no data or it's less than 10 or basically can't be recorded and as close to zero as you can imagine of whites raping black women.
	Now, if it's racism, then why is so much of this violence black on black?
	More than 90% of the victims of black murders are blacks.
	How is it that white people in the Hamptons are making black people in ghettos murder each other?
	I'm open.
	Tell me all about it.
	Tell me all about it.
	A strict statistical analysis of poverty and crime reveals that there is no positive correlation between poverty and crime.
	There is, in fact, a weak negative correlation.
	Poverty and crime.
	So you cannot statistically and factually make the claim that poverty causes crime.
	I think you can more easily make the claim that crime causes poverty.
	I mean, what are the employment prospects going to be like in Ferguson after this seppuku of nihilistic self-annihilation of the neighborhood?
	The problem of black crime is a significant problem.
	Sorry, that's pretty tautological.
	The problem, you see, is a problem.
	See what I bring to the discussion?
	Just repeating myself with different syllables.
	But how many people are really talking about this as a problem that needs to be addressed within the black community?
	How many people are holding the black community accountable for the crimes that are being committed?
	And just the word racism doesn't answer anything.
	There's some statistical analysis that you can run that answer these questions, at least to some degree.
	If you normalize black criminality by marital status of the mother, then black crime significantly reduces.
	Single mothers are well known to be criminal factories.
	I hate to say it, I wish the data were different.
	I myself was raised by a single mother and I've only strangled three hobos this morning, so yay me!
	But single moms statistically are wide-legged criminal factories.
	Lots of nice people raised by single moms, I'm just talking statistically.
	In general, there's no single worse predictor of a child's outcome, not race, not socioeconomic status, not anything, than whether he comes from a single mother household or not.
	Why is President Obama, who claims to care so much about the black community, not saying, hey, I've got a good idea, why don't you do what I did and get married to the mother of your children?
	Why?
	Well, because unfortunately single moms of all races become such a significant voting block that politicians dare not cross them with any of these inconvenient facts.
	Well, it's a good thing I'm not running for office now, isn't it?
	On so many levels.
	I'd get one block out of the gate.
	When black families were together in the post-war period, black crime was relatively low.
	But, as Charles Murray pointed out, many years ago, in, I think it was losing ground, now it's become like you have to make $50,000 or $60,000 to be able to buy what the welfare state gives you for quote free.
	It's catastrophic.
	The Democrats have been in charge of these black cities and these black neighborhoods for decades.
	From Detroit to Philadelphia to Chicago to St.
	Louis, the devastation is the same.
	You cannot bribe people into living well.
	Choices must be met with objective consequences for people to learn and do better.
	How many kids are going to study hard for a test they know they can pass, no matter what they do?
	Well, I'm going to tell you, I don't think it's that many.
	The welfare state has failed.
	Massive income redistribution, the minimum wage, debt, income supports, government housing, government schools, government rent controls.
	The entire biosphere of state power has Which the underclasses of which there are significant numbers of minorities live is a catastrophe.
	And it's my hope that we can begin to learn this from watching people tear up their own neighborhoods and loot the very store that Michael Brown stole from.
	And again, I'm not saying all the protesters are looters.
	Of course not.
	Some of the protesters are, in fact, guarding these stores.
	But...
	The incidence of crime, the prevalence of single motherhood, the incidence of drug use, of delinquency.
	These are the results of the welfare state.
	And as Thomas Sowell, a fantastic economist who, I don't care, but happens to be black, says that the welfare state has done what even slavery could not do.
	The welfare state has done what even slavery could not do, which is destroy the black family.
	And until that is addressed, we're just going to be playing whack-a-mole with all of the ill effects that come out of a family disintegration in a community that could be doing so much better without all of the drugs of supposedly free stuff that creates a system that is going to collapse and take the most underprivileged and disadvantaged down with it.
	We will be right back after the break.
	Got a couple of more segments.
	That's it.
	Talk to you soon.
	We now return to the Peter Schiff Show.
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	The Peter Schiff Show.
	Good morning, everybody.
	Stefan Molyneux from Peter Schiff.
	For Peter Schiff.
	From Peter Schiff.
	That's right.
	I came out of his lower intestine.
	We are talking about the rioting and peaceful protests that are going on in Ferguson.
	John, calling from St.
	Louis itself, the epicenter.
	You had some questions or comments?
	Yeah, thanks for taking my call.
	I'm from about four miles away.
	I work and live four miles away from what's happening.
	I don't see too much because I'm in a more isolated area, but I can't watch TV anymore because it's always constantly interrupting for the riot that's happening in the evening.
	I just want to talk about the other narrative to this whole incident.
	That's the police response to the rioting.
	I'm a libertarian-minded person, and I constantly get any data when I do my web surfing about Libertarians often saying that the police are responding in an over-militarized manner.
	As someone who lives in this area, I sort of take exception to that because I'm viewing the military as responding in a manner in response to the level of the event that's taking place.
	People are throwing Molotov cocktails and And bringing guns and, you know, they're trying to protect the businesses of the area.
	So, I guess, the reason why we pay taxes is to, you know, to the police forces so they can protect, you know, these very institutions that probably will help these communities out.
	So, you know, I want them to be successful.
	So, I mean, I guess, why would libertarians, I mean, what is your opinion on the responses?
	Is the police response appropriate?
	Is this...
	Are libertarians got this wrong?
	I mean, don't we need to protect property?
	Yeah, look, I mean, you raise great questions, and I'm getting a lot of flack from the libertarian side for my stance on this.
	This is not the time or place to talk about the ideal society.
	Let's talk about what we've got.
	The first night of the protests, there was massive looting.
	Massive looting.
	You see pictures of Walmart stores putting...
	Oh, it's sad.
	I mean, putting carts, shopping carts in front of the doors and people putting, like, stacking up bottles, like the big cardboard boxes of water bottles, trying to prevent people from coming in and stealing all this stuff.
	My God!
	And the police did nothing!
	The police...
	Oh, hey, whoa, hey.
	Good luck with that.
	Uh...
	We'll probably arrest you if you use your firearm.
	Right?
	It was open season on the businesses to some degree in Ferguson that first night.
	And you got tweets and you got messages from the store and I was going, hey, the cops are fading into the night.
	They're here but they're not arresting anyone who's breaking into my store.
	Right?
	Right, but I'm hearing a lot more that now they're wearing too much equipment, they're bringing tanks, and now they're too much like the military, even though they did bring in the National Guard just yesterday.
	Well, look, it's tough.
	Look, the question is why is there no aerial footage?
	I mean, you've got aerial footage of everything else on the planet, including me picking my nose in my garden.
	No aerial footage because there's a no-fly zone.
	The St.
	Louis County Police Department asked for the FAA to put a flight restriction over Ferguson.
	Why?
	A police helicopter was fired upon multiple times during the civil unrest on Sunday.
	You know, to me, once you're shooting at helicopters, you're kind of in a different zone from throwing a brick through a Starbucks window, which is bad enough.
	But when you're shooting...
	At a helicopter, you are really kind of declaring war, right?
	I mean, if you shoot a helicopter and it explodes, if you shoot a helicopter and you hit the pilot, if you shoot a helicopter, everyone on board is likely going to die, and it might plow into a damn daycare, for all anybody knows.
	So once you've got shots fired, you've got military cocktails, you've got people shooting at helicopters, you are in a tough situation.
	I've got lots of issues with the police, so I'm not sucking up to the cats in blue.
	But the reality is, what are they going to do?
	What are they going to do?
	They're either going to let the riots happen and try and mediate some of the worst damage and hope it burns itself out over time.
	That's one option.
	Or the other option is that they're going to go in and arrest everyone who's violating property rights and do their job.
	What happens then?
	What happens then?
	You've got cell phone footage, you've got videos, you've got, right...
	I mean, you heard how out of reality people are.
	This guy just called in saying, well, maybe there was no shot in the car when the criminal who was there said there was a shot in the car.
	He was shot in the back.
	No, he was shot in the front.
	Even people who claim they were there...
	Are making stuff up to conform to prior prejudices, which in fact is racism against whites.
	Well, he must have shot him in the back because he's white and that guy's black, so he's got to be a murderer, although why he didn't shoot Dorian Johnson, who's the witness, and everyone else if he's such a racist.
	Anyway.
	So I don't know.
	You know, put me in charge of the, my worst job in the world for me, put me in charge of the cops tomorrow, what do you do?
	What would you do?
	I mean, that's a real question, John, and I'm not trying to put you on the spot here, but what would you do?
	I think the response is appropriate to the level of damage that the rioters and protesters are doing.
	I mean, if they're throwing essentially what are grenades at people, then you've got to have a tank to defend from the grenade.
	I mean, if it's just a little, you know, rocks and stuff, then maybe shields or...
	But I keep hearing everywhere, and it's really bothering me, since I call myself libertarian, that, oh, the police are even over-militarized.
	This is just a sign of the coming...
	You know, tinfoil hat theories that the government's going to start taking over and moving things.
	Get your guns, get your gold, get your canned goods.
	No, I get it.
	Look, again, my sort of question is, what would happen in a really free society?
	Like, I'm a voluntarist or an anarchist, so for me, as a society without a government, what would happen?
	Well, in a society without a government, if some guy beat someone up and then charged them down, that person would be able to use lethal force to defend themselves.
	Of course they would.
	And in a free society, the police response would be a hell of a lot stronger than it is now.
	And again, I'm using the word police kind of loosely, but it would be stronger.
	Because anyone who had signed a contract with someone to protect their store and that person let that store get looted, they would get sued for failure to fulfill their contract.
	Can't sue the police, of course, in any functional way for this kind of stuff.
	So in a free society, if there's shooting at helicopters, rioting, Molotov cocktails, and looting, then people are going to be removed from that situation very promptly and very effectively.
	I'm a big one for preventing criminality through peaceful parenting and all of that kind of stuff, and that is the world we're going to get in the future if we work towards it.
	That's not the world we have right now.
	When I first moved to Canada, I was 11 years old, 1977.
	Oh my word, that's a long time ago.
	And we flew, Freddie Laker, flew from London Heathrow to New York.
	New York was kind of like a cesspit at the time in the 70s.
	I think it was under Dinkins or something.
	I can't remember the guy's name, some Democrat.
	And nobody was going to jail and the court systems weren't working and it was a mess.
	Crazy numbers of murders in New York.
	And you get other people coming in who've got a tougher approach on crime, Giuliani being one of them, just starts locking people up.
	Crime rate collapses.
	I'd love it if there were no criminals.
	I'd love it if everyone was raised peacefully and negotiated with, never yelled at, never hit, never spanked, never...
	I don't even do timeouts as a parent.
	It's all negotiation.
	It's great.
	My daughter, I was just saying to the other day, you know, you've never lost your temper.
	And it's true, she's never lost her temper.
	It's better than me.
	But if there is a strong response and people are arrested who are harming property and persons, the concern, I imagine, on the part of the police is that this is a collage that's going to be put together with, you know, F the police rap lyrics and hitters. you know, F the police rap lyrics and hitters.
	into hysteria and double down, and they may in fact end up with like a neighborhood-wide siege on their hands.
	That's... well... probably not going to happen.
	Look, public sector unions are pro-democrat and the police are run by public sector unions.
	Are they going to want to provoke some massive amount of conflict on Obama's watch and reveal him to be the spineless miscreant that I think he is?
	No.
	They're going to want to keep it down low.
	They're going to want to keep it calm.
	They want to do minimal amount of stuff.
	Ah, to hell with the store owners.
	I mean, there are more protesters voting than store owners.
	They outnumber, it's mob rule, it's democracy, don't you know?
	The Republic lasted about eight minutes.
	It's like everyone just beamed up to the Death Star eight minutes after the Constitution was written, and like, hey, fool them!
	Let's set course for old Eberron.
	So, I think that it's all political.
	It's all about getting votes.
	It's all about buying votes.
	It's got nothing to do with what actually helps these communities.
	I can't imagine how frustrating it must be.
	Now, people say, well, why didn't the store owner just call the cops?
	Why didn't he want to call the cops?
	Because Dorian Johnson was supposed to have been arrested before, but the cops never came to the next neighborhood to pick him up or something like that, and he was just released.
	So the people in the neighborhoods don't trust the cops to be strong enough!
	And everyone else is saying they're too strong!
	Because they're afraid that he's going to call in, and these two guys are going to get arrested and questioned and let go very quickly, and then they're going to come back and wreak vengeance.
	That's why they don't.
	Functioning without police protection, I would imagine, by and large as it is.
	The cops are right there and let stores get looted.
	And then people are saying, well, it's a highly militarized police that are doing too much.
	They're too harsh.
	A little harshness would be okay.
	If I had a store in there, my life savings were wrapped up in that store.
	I think a little harshness is okay.
	Can you maybe stop the people who are ripping the shelves out of the wall and ripping the copper piping out of the toilets and help save my life savings?
	Please, be a little harsher.
	I'll survive.
	We'll be right back after the break.
	Greg, thank you so much for listening.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Stay plugged in.
	Stay brilliant.
	This is the Peter Schiff Show.
	Oh, it's my last segment on the Peter Schiff Show.
	Possibly for all time.
	Hope you're doing well.
	So this show will come to an end, both mine and Peter's show.
	You can, of course, find me at freedomainradio.com or youtube.com slash freedomainradio.
	I guess that's it for my radio career, though I think I am still available for weddings and bar mitzvahs.
	So, James, you can be the last caller on my show here.
	You have some thoughts about what you call the unrest.
	Yes, sir.
	Hey, Stephan.
	I really want to say thank you for all you do.
	Your work is instrumental to people figuring out what's really going on.
	You did a presentation on American Thailand, a really seminal presentation, important for everybody to watch it.
	It touched upon some really important issues, particularly the welfare state and its contribution to the entire African-American community in the United States, pretty much degrading into Serfdom slash chaotic mess of reality.
	But I wanted to place blame even further back than the welfare state, because the welfare state itself is really just a product of labor protectionism and, you know, things like minimum wage laws and union legislation and things of that nature.
	And so really, you know, you hear the argument all the time, okay, you want to get rid of the welfare state, go ahead, get rid of it.
	And what happens now?
	What do you do next?
	And the reason that there's no real answer to that is because of the regulations, the systematic prohibition of employment opportunities for the lower class that we've created in this country.
	I wanted to hear your comments on that.
	Yeah, it's funny, you know, people are so into a command and control mindset, James, that when you say, well, get rid of the welfare state, what next?
	Well, what's next is freedom, for God's sakes!
	Freedom!
	It means you're not forcing people to fund stuff they disagree with.
	You're not waving guns around and counterfeiting money in order to buy votes.
	You're not having the money slosh back and forth along society at gunpoint from politically motivated politicians like some cheap 70s wave machine.
	What you get next is freedom.
	Freedom.
	And with freedom comes responsibility.
	And people, sometimes they're not so much fans of the responsibility.
	I want the freedom, as long as freedom comes with free stuff and allows me to disengage from this really troublesome gremlin called personal responsibility.
	And you're right.
	Not many people know that the primary drivers behind the institution...
	After minimum wage laws were white unions who didn't want to compete with blacks, who could work for less and would work for less.
	Look, there's always tension in society between the rich, the middle class, and the poor.
	Of course, because the poor are willing to work for less.
	What a shock!
	You know, you make money.
	Everybody knows this.
	You start making some coin and your expenses go up, right?
	Maybe buy a nicer house or a nice house or a house of any kind.
	Nicer car, whatever, right?
	Maybe it's a better 10-speed.
	But as your income goes up, your expenses go up.
	As your expenses go up, your capacity to work for less goes down, especially when you have kids.
	Get married, have kids, get into the middle class.
	And then the poor, which is maybe where you came from, become those chiseling rat finks who'll work for less than you.
	And this is what happens.
	And, you know, we say black unemployment is really high.
	Then the natural next question is, okay, well, then why don't people go in and exploit blacks by paying them less than whites?
	Because they're not allowed to.
	Bingo.
	And that does not help the people who can get work.
	I got my first job when I was 10 years old.
	I mean, I don't want to sound all kinds of Dickensian, but I got my first job when I was 10 years old.
	I painted...
	These little, I guess it was Queen's Jubilee, silver anniversary of the Queen Elizabeth II, who apparently has just turned into the Crypt Keeper Undead Lich Queen.
	But it was 1977.
	She was 25 years in power.
	I think it was 1952 or something.
	And I was painting these little plaques and I sold them and I made money.
	And then when I was 11, I got a job in a bookstore.
	And when I was 12, I got a job cleaning offices.
	And when I was, you know, I got a paper route and I was a waiter and a gold panner and I worked in a hardware store.
	And I mean, you name it.
	Right.
	And I needed that.
	It broke!
	Everyone thinks, oh, he's got an accent.
	He must have been born with a silver spoon up his armpit.
	Maybe two.
	Maybe he clacks when he runs in place.
	But no, back then I could get a job.
	My first job was two bucks and forty cents an hour.
	That was my first sort of paid, paid job.
	Two dollars and forty cents an hour.
	I don't know what the minimum wage was way back in the day, but if the minimum wage had been any higher than that, guess what?
	I wouldn't have had a job.
	I wouldn't have got that valuable work experience.
	I wouldn't have learned how to sublimate my own desires to lounge around playing on my Atari 800 and actually go and do some work.
	I worked in a bookstore on Sundays.
	I had to be there by 8 o'clock in the morning.
	I had to get up at 6 o'clock in the morning to take the subway for an hour, take the bus and subway for an hour, hour and a quarter to go and work at a bookstore.
	I mean, that's not good, man.
	I mean, that was hard work.
	On the plus side, I did get some free books, which was great.
	But, you know, the poor are a massive, mindable resource for people who want to come and pay people less.
	There should be massive demand for the poor.
	Why isn't there?
	They're not allowed to.
	They're not allowed to.
	No, but it's two.
	It's the hammer and the anvil.
	You're right, and I'm sorry to interrupt you, but it's the welfare state bribing them to not work, and it is the barriers to...
	A third of America requires a license to earn a living.
	That's like having a license to live.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Well, so, you know, you kind of hit my point exactly at the nail on the head.
	If they were really concerned about the poor having enough money to survive, then they would let all the poor on welfare work off the books without penalty.
	If, you know, we're already subsidizing their lives, so they've...
	They've already reached the minimum required amount of subsistence, and now they should be able to go out and work for free.
	I mean, instead of being a drain on society, they can go out and work without penalty, work off the books, and their employers can pay them off the books, but that's not why we have a welfare state.
	It's not there to get people out of poverty.
	It's there to buy votes, and it's there to create dependency.
	Every priest who wants to save you from something has to damn you first.
	And everyone who claims they want to set you free is going to end up enslaving you first.
	And the welfare state is there.
	It's like the roach motel.
	You can check in, you can't check out.
	Functionally, for people who are on welfare, any income they earned is taxed at 100%, which is communism.
	In fact, it's even worse than communism.
	It's these little pockets of communism only for the underprivileged, only for the poor.
	And right now, unfortunately, it's gone on long enough that a massive voting base is there.
	But the productive people, the smart people, the people who genuinely care about the poor, I grew up among these people.
	There's nobody who can tell me anything about what it's like to be poor and to grow up underprivileged I know what it's like.
	I know what they're looking for.
	I know what can help them.
	I grew up in that.
	I got 20 years under my belt of growing up in exactly that kind of low-rent, ghettoized environment.
	These people do not need all of this stuff.
	It is killing them.
	It is killing them, and we can do better.
	This is Stefan Molyneux.
	Thank you so much.
	Freedomainradio.com.
	We will talk to you soon on that forum, I guess.

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