2836 An Algorithm of Permissible Hatred - Wednesday Call In Show November 5th, 2014
The capitalist property owners have historically structured a state to protect their land and oppress their workers. How would an anarcho-capitalist society avoid the arising of this state? In a universe that is ruled by physical law with models of reality that can predict future events without fail, how is the human brain any different and not subject to cause and effect? In one of your videos you discussed what an argument is, but I'd like to know when arguments are necessary?Includes: anarcho-communists crashing the party, using state power to keep your family fortune, changing the rules of the game, forced charity, communicating with people who don’t give a damn about philosophy, the opposite of deterministic isn't random, consciousness is required to participate in a conversation, concept formation, language development in the brain, knowing if you’re making an argument, knowing your methodology, humans are universalization machines, ideology tells people who they can hate and configuring yourself into an algorithm of permissible hatred. Also includes a special premium podcast sample from Terrorism, War and History: Propaganda Decoded.
I hope you are having a wonderful, wonderful Wednesday night.
And I hope, if you're listening to this, say, on Thursday, that it makes your Thursday absolutely spectacular.
Mike, who do we have first?
All right.
Up first today is Keith.
Keith wrote in and said, the capitalist property owners have historically structured a state to protect their land and oppress their workers.
How would an anarcho-capitalist society avoid the arising of this state?
Would you like to elaborate?
I think I get the general idea.
Did you want to go any deeper into it?
Yeah, so basically I was at a Students for Liberty conference.
I'm like a full-blown anarcho-capitalist myself.
And we had some anarcho-communists come and like bash the party.
And they were talking about how capitalism...
What the U.S. currently has is complete capitalism because you first have entrepreneurs and then the state arises because they need the state to protect their large amounts of property, which they otherwise would not be able to protect themselves.
So like big Walmart corporations could not protect themselves unless there was a government.
Therefore, capitalism precedes the state, not the state happens and then you have capitalism and then cronyism.
So their argument is that anarcho-capitalism was the norm at some point in the past and then a state grew out of concentrated economic interests to protect the property, right?
Yeah, basically.
And do they have any evidence for this unfettered, untrammeled free trade?
Because one of the things that's a challenge with making the case that there was somehow a free market in the past was, until the last couple of hundred years, the worldwide acceptance and prevalence of slavery would be one thing that would be kind of a challenge to the argument that we had some wonderful free market in the past that then got co-opted by corporate interests.
Did they provide any evidence or was this just a bunch of words chasing a bunch of prejudices?
Oh, well, no.
It, of course, is a bunch of prejudice, but, I mean, that is the, like, bottom line Peter Joseph argument for, like, to oppose capitalism.
It's that you have capitalists who own property, and, like the government, if you don't pay taxes, you die or go to jail.
Or if you don't work for a boss, you die or...
Or basically just suffer unless you work for them as a slave.
Right.
So this is, I mean, I know you're just sort of repeating their arguments, but this is a lot of highly emotional trigger words for people masquerading as some sort of historical analysis, right?
Oh, yeah.
So, yeah, if you want to be a good anarcho-communist, then the first thing you have to do is you have to co-mingle economic power and political power.
You have to sort of pretend that they're both the same thing.
If you can conflate raping with dating, then you've muddied the waters to the point where I guess your ideas seem relatively clear.
And so the first thing you have to do is say, well, corporations are like the government, or corporations and the government blend into each other, or that they're in an unholy alliance and will be forever because corporations give money to the government and the government in turn gives protection to corporations and so on.
And so concentrated economic power Must invariably lead to monopolistic political power in this argument, if I understand the argument correctly.
Yeah.
Right.
Right.
So, I mean, the first question I would ask is, is there any difference between economic power and political power?
And they do their damnedest to say that there isn't, right?
So the government can put you in jail, right?
If you don't obey it, and corporations can put you in jail, or can put you in economic jail, can sort of effectively have you homeless and starving and begging for jail if you don't obey their edicts, right?
Yeah.
Right, right.
Well, I mean, I think there's a lot of challenges, I guess is the nice way of putting it, to this formulation.
So...
I guess the first question I would have is, is there any permeability between worker and owner?
And again, owners are workers in general and usually work harder than owners, but, you know, can you rise up?
Is there social or class mobility, I guess, would be the question.
Can the poor become rich?
Can the rich become poor in a free market?
Is there upies and downies, right?
And statistically, there is, right?
I mean, they used to call this Shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations, right?
Like if you work your physical job like Nicolas Cage in Moonstruck, you don't wear any shirt sleeves.
You're in a wife beater, right?
And then you tough it up for a while, but then everybody goes nuts and blows all their money and so on, right?
And so there is social mobility in the free market, but of course, those at the top don't like to slide, right?
They don't like to go down.
They don't want a lot of competition from the people who will work cheaper for them.
And they don't want the possibility of being out-competed or out-innovated and so on.
Because it takes a lot of effort to initially accumulate a fortune.
And that effort tends not to be transmitted dynastically very well without the state.
So I don't know if you've heard of something called a regression to the mean.
And what that means is that if you have an IQ of like 140 or 150 and your wife has an IQ of 140 and 150...
You are not at all likely to give birth to a child with an IQ of 140 or 150.
You're more likely to give a child...
I mean, more intelligent, we would imagine, but in the same way, if you have an IQ of 80 and your wife has an IQ of 80, you're not likely to give birth to a kid with an IQ of 80.
There's always this tendency to drift back towards the mean, the sort of the 100.
And so the energy and enthusiasm and initiative and intelligence that...
is brought to bear on the aggregation of the first fortune is rarely matched by offspring and because there's just a regression to the mean and so in the absence of a state it's very hard to create a dynasty because all it takes is a you know a couple of not so smart kids and the fortune will pretty much dissipate and so on so everybody who wants to found any kind of dynasty knows that the best way to do it is to buy the favors of the state and once you bought the favors of the state And
you've got the protections of the state and you raise the barriers to entry and so on.
Then you have a wonderful situation wherein you can maintain your dynasty regardless of how many idiot offspring you are more likely, compared to the initiator, more likely to have.
So there is, of course, a tendency to want to use a political power and that's sort of inevitable.
But I guess the closest analogy would be, well, when the state...
If they enforced the slave trade and socialized the cost of going to catch the slaves, then people used slaves.
And then when the state stopped doing that, lo and behold, slaves were no longer slaves, at least not in the way that they were before.
Of course, there was Jim Crow and so on, but there was no slavery when the government stopped enforcing it.
That, to me, is analogous to what's called corporatism or crapitalism now, the sort of crony capitalism that goes on.
So when the government stops enforcing the privileges and benefits that corporations enjoy, then they will be released to the free market and they can survive or not survive as they see fit.
Now, of course, the business owners, the employees, the investors, the shareholders, they all represent concentrated economic power.
But in the absence of a state, that then falls on the mercy of the voluntary choices of the marketplace.
With the state, they can enforce this, that, and the other.
I mean, Walmart gets, as far as I understand it, tons of subsidies and I'm sure lobbies for particular protections, as do all companies.
And of course, that's to some degree driven by overseas.
Overseas companies get huge amounts of subsidies sometimes from their respective governments and then engage in what is sometimes called dumping.
Which is, of course, shipping subsidized goods in a way that local businesses can't compete with and so on.
So I think that they have a challenge in that if you go back further and further in history, I mean starting from sort of the 19th century going backwards, you tend to get less and less of a free market.
So this idea that there was freedom and then spontaneously there arose a government – I think is not valid, and I would like to see evidence of this magical hierarchy-less society.
I mean, it doesn't even have to be stateless, right?
I mean, I don't think that, say, the aboriginals in the outback of Australia were doing all kinds of anarcho-capitalism before, I don't know, the market came along with the With the colonial, with the colonists.
So I think that it's tough to make the case that in the past there was this big free market.
It certainly is true that corporations will use and most people will use the market to, sorry, the government to further their own economic interests and you can reliably predict voting blocks in this way and of course members of a board and a corporation have a legal and fiduciary responsibility to maximize shareholder value and if that It means that lobbying does that, then that's what they have to do according to the rules of the game.
I mean, if you have a rule in chess which says that your queen can travel in any direction as far as she wants to go, expecting people to say, well, I'm going to limit her to two squares is not particularly realistic and will end up with you getting a lot of games lost.
If those are the rules of the game, then people will act within that game to maximize their own advantages.
If you change the rules of the game, then saying, well, those rules will just spontaneously reemerge is a tough case to make.
And also the idea that you are enslaved to somebody with whom you can voluntarily exchange value.
In other words, if you're young and you want to work as a waiter, then you can go into a restaurant and you can be a waiter.
The idea that that makes you a slave...
I think is quite challenging.
And I think that would only really occur...
The idea would only really occur to very low-skilled people or people with very poor emotional or social skills.
In other words, people whose economic value is quite low.
In other words, their economic options or opportunities are very small.
I mean, I don't think that Brad Pitt feels like a slave because he has to go to work on a movie set because he's paid $10 or $20 million a movie and he can basically pick whatever projects...
He wants to work on.
He doesn't feel like a slave because his economic value is very high.
If Bill Gates were to indicate that he was interested in returning from setting out mosquito netting to Africa and said, I would really like to get involved in running a high-tech company.
I mean, can you imagine how many people would be dying to get him on their board?
I don't think that he would feel like a slave.
Because he has very high economic worth or value.
So I think it's hard to make the case that someone's a slave in the economic system unless they have very low economic value, in which case your options are quite limited.
I mean, if I were to go to Italy and try and get a job, maybe I could be a busboy.
I don't speak Italian, right?
Maybe I could be a busboy or maybe I could be a street sweeper or A dishwasher.
My options would be very limited because not knowing the local language, I would have a tough time getting any kind of work, right?
So the question then becomes, how is it that adults get into the marketplace after 12 years of government education with virtually no skills?
Well, I mean, because it's the government.
And they, for a wide variety of reasons, we don't have to grind our way through here.
They're just not Motivated or interested in adding to the economic value of the young people in their care and So again here we have a big problem of The state right so the states raising people the states enforcing corporations and Of course there's huge amounts of vested economic interests that have aligned themselves to state power and have hardened around that alignment that now Wish to use state power to maintain their value all of which is perfectly understandable But the idea that
people Who have accepted a new and foundational moral truth will just suddenly swing right back into some ancient moral untruth, I think is not hugely valid.
I mean, there's not a lot of people with the t-shirt that says Miletus was right, the guy who brought charges against Socrates for corrupting the youth and not believing in the gods of the city.
You know, we kind of get that now.
There's not a lot of people who are like, yay Holocaust.
You know, I mean, so once people have accepted, and nobody is advocating for a return to out-and-out slavery, right?
I mean, tax slavery, debt slavery, but not let's bring back the ownership of human beings by other human beings.
And nobody's saying, let's take away the right of contract from women and so on, right?
Let's put children back up the chimneys and down the mines and so on, right?
I mean, once people have moved beyond a moral paradigm, it takes a massive catastrophe for them to slide back, so to speak.
But once people have accepted a new moral paradigm, It really doesn't work to try and go against it.
And so once people have accepted the true universality of property rights and the non-aggression principle, then for some company to have a meeting where they say, I don't know, something like this.
Man, I'm so tired of competing with people.
Ah!
Customers are fickle.
I mean, someone's coming up with new stuff all the time.
I'm tired.
Don't you get bored?
I mean, don't you want to just keep releasing the same crap every year?
And calling it new and improved?
Oh wait, that's this show.
So, I've got a better idea.
I've got a better idea.
Let's fund a giant army.
You know, let's take 5 billion or 50 billion dollars and let's go fund a giant army.
And we are going to use that army to gain control of the entire geographical region and then we will be able to impose our wills on everyone.
Not to do a monologue, can you think of what other people in that boardroom meeting might say?
No.
The whole argument around using the state to hold your dynasty is you can always look at the lottery winners who have won millions of dollars and then lose it right away because it's not like they earned it and they're the people who the market has sent money to.
It's more like a luck of the draw thing.
Yeah.
money through the state.
It's not like they're going to hold on to it for long amounts of time once the market's freed up because consumers are going to allocate their dollars elsewhere, just like how when the Fed expands credit through lowering the interest rate and then people don't buy as many just like how when the Fed expands credit through lowering the interest rate and then people don't buy as many houses or don't buy as many stocks and No.
It's not like these big statist corporations can last that much longer if we have a free market.
No, and that's why they invest in lobbying.
Now, again, to be fair, corporations can't directly give – at least in America and I think most places can't directly give to political candidates.
So, I mean, if you're in a meeting and someone comes up with that, I mean, I'm telling you, people would just think you're insane.
Because they'd say, okay, well, even if we were to accept that what you say is even remotely feasible, where are we going to get the $50 billion for to get and train a giant army?
Well, it's like we'll raise prices for our consumers.
You know, we'll charge them double for everything and invest the extra profits in an army.
Well, what's the problem with that?
Oh, yeah.
Well, people don't really care about conquest that much.
It's kind of like how the government was saying, well, the Industrial Revolution was hurting the workers, and so we should have had regulation.
Meanwhile— Oh, no, no.
Hang on.
Sorry.
The guy says we'll double the prices to build an army.
Oh, I'm sorry.
So what would the other business people say about that?
Yeah, the people in the room would say, so you're doubling the prices while reducing our investment in R&D because you're diverting money to an army.
So you're doubling prices while providing the same or less value.
So immediately, right?
I mean, price, supply, and demand, right?
Immediately, your customer demand is going to collapse, right?
And other people are going to move in.
So you can't get it by raising prices.
Maybe you can get it by borrowing, right?
Okay, so then you have to go and borrow $50 billion, okay?
And then you have to pay interest on that money.
And it is now a liability which destroys the value of your shares, right?
Because, you know, share price is somewhat related to assets and liabilities and all that other kind of good accounting stuff.
And so you've just taken on a $50 billion liability.
Well, your shareholders are damn well going to want to know what that $50 billion is for because they just saw the price of their stocks collapse, right?
And if you're going to say, oh no, don't worry, the price of your shares are going to collapse, but don't worry, I'm building a giant army so we can take over the entire geographical region and impose our will on everyone.
Well, are your shareholders going to be very keen on that?
No.
Not a lot.
No, of course not.
No, I mean, they don't want some giant army that, I don't know what's going to happen to it in the long run, but, you know, even if you want to do good with it, who knows what the next...
Guy is going to do with him, be like some African warlord and keep heads in a fridge or something.
Who knows, right?
So, I mean, you could go through a variety of different scenarios.
You could issue more share prices.
You could sell off assets and all this.
But basically, you are going to be negatively impacting your company's value by at least $50 billion.
Now, how are your customers going to feel about you building a giant army?
They're not going to see it as good, like, exactly good PR for...
No, it's pretty bad PR. Yeah.
And where are you going to get all of this stuff from?
Are people not going to notice that you're assembling a giant army?
Like, I mean, the whole...
Again, in a state of freedom, in a free market, the idea...
And I go into this in more detail in Practical Anarchy, which is free.
You can get it at freedomaderadio.com slash free.
I've read it, yeah.
Yeah, okay.
So you know, I won't go into the details further, but we get the general argument that if you said, let's borrow $50 billion and make some giant army, you would just be admitted to an asylum for economic incompetence.
I mean, that only works when you're a government.
If you try and do that as a private corporation, it's not going to work.
So there's, you know, they need to counter these arguments, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, what the and comes, and I'm honestly fearful of people today, if they don't completely change their mindset, if a corporation had said, you know what, I know we're private, But it looks like this other corporation is going to invade us because of our freedom and how great our products are.
So we're going to have to have everyone in this area chip in just a dollar.
Just a dollar.
If you don't like it, you can move.
And just chip in a dollar to us, and then we're going to protect you.
And then that is the slippery slope into a state forming and a form of taxation arising within a geographical area.
I understand that.
That to me is sort of similar to a completely free market being threatened by a slave economy.
Do you think that a free market in agriculture could be outcompeted by a slave economy in agriculture?
No.
No.
Well, because that's direct slavery where you have the person working completely for the plantation owner.
Yeah, it's horribly inefficient.
You don't invest in capital equipment to increase productivity.
You don't optimize because you've got slaves, right?
So it's horribly inefficient.
Slavery economically is horribly inefficient relative to the free market.
And so if you have some statist country that wants to invade you, basically that is – and you have a free market in defense, that is the same as saying, well, let's have a slave farm compete with a completely free market farm.
Like it's just not going to happen.
They don't just appear out of nowhere.
Right.
And you would, of course, want to unite the two geographical regions economically as much as possible because, as Bastia pointed out, when goods stop crossing borders, soldiers start crossing borders, you know, when you have economic ties, right?
So you'd want to set up all these economic ties.
Things would be incredibly proactive, right?
Like whatever issues that came up would be dealt with by dispute resolution organizations, which could work with governments as well, and they would be very proactive.
And if there was any murmurings towards war and so on, I mean, I'd put my money on the free market defense organizations than I would some giant, sloth-filled, drafted government monstrosity of bureaucracy and coercion.
I just don't think it would get very far.
Sorry, you were going to say something?
Oh no, and that's why I really dislike when libertarians are called isolationists, as in, we are not isolated from China.
We completely trade with them.
We trade billions of dollars with them in Canada, but we don't have military there.
In other words, the true isolationists are the Republicans and the Democrats who Yeah, and vice versa.
In terms of isolationists, the people I feel are most isolated are the victims of the drug war and other unjust government laws that are isolated in prison.
I mean, that to me is much more important in terms – isolation is just one of these – now that I'm older, and I didn't really like this too much when I was younger either, but – When somebody just starts throwing words around like wage slave and isolationist and racist and misogynist, I'm just like, okay, so you're just basically going to push emotional buttons until you get your way, but I'm not going to pretend that that has anything to do with recent debate.
Okay, so that's actually something else I wanted to touch on.
99% of the people that I talk to have no interest in the philosophical, well, taxation is theft, therefore it's immoral.
They're really just on the level of America's rich if the government takes by force from some people.
Those people aren't starving.
Therefore, it's justified.
We don't need to get into a philosophical argument.
So it's all right to take from people who have a lot and give to those who don't have as much.
communicate to those people who don't care about philosophy at all they just see on the surface a little bit of money taken in their opinion and then poor being i i mean i i really don't know if they truly believe the poor are being helped by what's happened since lgb's since lbj's great society but assuming they think these welfare programs help the poor what how do you respond to them who
Well, it depends.
I mean, if they have more money, I just ask them to give me some money.
Right?
I mean, I'd say, well, what do you make?
I'd say, well, it's private.
It's like, well, do you make more than X whatever I make?
Oh, okay, well then, so you're richer than me, so give me some money.
If this is a principle that you think is right and fair, then it's like, oh, well, it has to be more extreme than that, right?
So they'd sort of say that.
Okay, it's okay.
So then we have kind of like a sliding principle, right?
So what percentage does it go from being wrong to being right, right?
So if somebody's 10% poorer, is that wrong?
If they're 40%, 41%, you know, I mean, get them to understand that the adjectives do not a definition make, right?
Right.
Like, take from the rich and give to the poor.
It's okay.
Well, who's the poor?
Who's the rich?
I mean, would they...
I mean, would you rather be poor now or rich 50 years ago?
I'd rather be poor now.
Yeah.
I mean, rich 50 years ago.
I mean, just look at dentistry, for God's sakes.
I mean, look at chemotherapy.
I mean, look at...
I mean, God, you're trying to live through things that you never would have lived through before, right?
So, what is rich and what is poor?
Yeah.
And also, so that's one aspect of it, right?
To get them to people, at some point when people are trying to play the shaded game, then at some point they have to slice and dice it into incomprehensibility, right?
So, okay, somebody's 60% poorer, it's moral, let's say, right?
59.9% evil, theft.
60% moral, redistribution.
Right?
I mean, if somebody – and if somebody doesn't even blink an eye at that, well, then I find that to be kind of incomprehensible.
Like, if people are playing that sort of game of degrees, then you have to try and start to get them to nail it down.
Because this stuff has to be in law, right?
I mean, you can't just sort of say, well, take from the rich and give to the poor.
That's not a law.
You have to say at what proportion, at what percentage, at what – you know, does it become moral and so on, right?
So – And of course, also then the rich take from the poor as well in a variety of ways.
Sorry, you were going to say?
Well, yeah, and the degree game, obviously, I feel is completely legitimate in that sense.
But when it comes to guys like Matt Zwolinski who say, okay, so the non-aggression principle is moral, okay, so you wouldn't scratch the tip of my fingernail to save a hundred human lives, even if I said you can't touch my fingernail, okay, well, therefore, the non-aggression...
Oh, hello.
Like the non-aggression principle.
Oh, I'm sorry.
You just vanished and came back for a sec there, but...
Yeah, so they played the argument of scratch my fingernail to save a hundred lives?
Yeah, yeah.
Well, that was...
Remember Matt Zewalinski?
You read an article of his?
How do you...
Yeah, okay.
No, but...
Okay, so, I mean, if Matt was here, then I would say...
To him that when he proposes taking from the rich and giving to the poor through the power of law, he's talking about a universal law that will be enacted against billions of people every day, forever.
Nobody will be able to evade it.
Nobody will be able to escape it.
So he's talking about the literal enactment against billions of people for all time of coercive redistribution.
So that's going to be 100% of people's existence.
And then to counter that, he says some completely made-up scenario that never will happen about scratching someone's fingernail and 100 people dying.
Like, I mean, that can't be a serious comparison.
You have billions of people on one side and then one thing that might occur once every million years on the other.
Like, that's just not a valid way scale, you know?
Does that sort of make sense?
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But they legitimately think that that is, you know, like Peter Singer.
You're walking across a pond and you see a boy drowning.
Do you help him?
Ah, therefore Social Security, Medicare, food stamps are all justified because you would help a boy out of a pond.
I mean, that's literally Peter Singer.
No, but that's the equivocation of taking charity and turning it into force, right?
Again, that's...
Would you shoot someone who didn't help the boy?
Oh, okay.
Right?
That's the question.
The moment they start, I mean, social security, all these cuddly words, you know, it's like the gun-toting teddy bear of socialism is usually not very convincing to people who think in principles.
Because the question is not should you save or should you help and so on.
I mean, yeah, I mean, I think generally you should if you can, but I am not willing to shoot someone who doesn't.
So is there any justification for Prohan saying property is theft?
As in, if you die and you have two kidneys and you are not an organ donor and I have two lives that can be saved by donating your kidneys against your will that you have left, is it okay for me to take the kidneys out of your dead body and save two lives?
Yeah, see, I mean, again, all of this stuff is kind of nonsense.
I mean, the more accurate analogy is to say, is abstinence rape?
Oh, okay, but in reality, there are people...
No, hang on, hang on.
Let me just explain that one for a sec, right?
So, if I have a vagina, say, in my pocket.
Now, if I have a vagina, and I choose not to bestow my sexual favors upon men...
Then I am keeping my vagina for myself, right?
Okay.
And is that right?
Well, of course it's not.
Of course it's not.
So why is a kidney different from any other organ?
See, people always want to talk about kidneys and stuff because you could theoretically give some of it, right?
But people always short-circuit them when you start talking about, say, vaginas or kidneys.
in prison or something like that, right?
Well, because a butt crack isn't going to save a life.
Where they see as kidneys, if someone dies today, even if someone dies today, they could take their kidneys by force, granted against their will, and give it to two people on the kidney list.
Obviously, the reason there's a kidney list is because there's not a free market for organs, and it's illegal to sell them.
But either way, it's illegal to take a dead man's kidneys and give them to two people who could survive by giving them the kidney.
So that's where the argument property is theft has any legitimacy, I feel.
You mean if I keep my kidneys, I'm stealing somebody else's?
I'm saying if you are dead and two other people would die, that is the only justification for a doctor taking out your kidneys after you are dead.
Oh, after you're dead.
Sorry, was it before or after?
I'm sorry, yeah.
So you've died, and there are two kidneys there with you, and you're dead.
There are two other people.
This could literally happen today, where someone dies and their kidneys are able to be transferred, and there are two other people on the kidney waiting list.
Is it okay?
Sorry, but I think we've explained it.
But as you pointed out, I mean, if people are paid...
$2,000 to offer up their kidneys after death?
Do you think we'd have any shortages of kidneys?
Of course we wouldn't, right?
Oh, no.
Obviously, the government is the problem by outlawing organ sales, but I'm trying to get to the base of, you know, if you have kidneys and you're dead and you don't give them to someone, is that theft?
And then it goes to Peter Joseph's.
If you have an extra room in your house and there's a homeless person, you are the cause of that person being homeless, which is obviously ridiculous, but I'm really trying to find the equilibrium between Property rights and to the point where you have a duty to give another human being, as maybe Immanuel Kant would argue, you have a duty to give someone else something that you have if it means life or death for them.
Have you ever faced that situation?
I have not.
Fortunately, I'm in a lower middle class neighborhood, but believe it or not, my parents are, well, divorced, but they're postal workers and my mom's a government teacher.
So I'm drowning in a status swamp here.
I've actually had two family members say that they will no longer speak with me because I'm not a Democrat.
Wow.
Sorry to hear that.
No, it's...
Doing me a favor.
Maybe.
So, yeah, I mean, this idea that, yes, people can certainly invite homeless people into their house.
Absolutely they can.
And to me, that's perfectly fine.
If people want to do that, people can give money to charities to help out the homeless and so on.
But as far as I understand it, a lot of homeless people, of course, suffer from significant mental problems.
And it may not be wise or safe or hygienic or medically helpful to bring homeless people into your house, right?
I mean, you'd want to take them, if you could, take them to see some sort of professional, right?
The homeless person, of course, might not want to be in your house.
I mean, lots of different things that occur.
And I understand the emotional impetus behind these arguments.
Which is, you know, but this person's dying, or this person's homeless, and this person's right, and so on, right?
And I understand all of that.
My issue is not, you know, philosophers should think in the long term, right?
My issue is not this person right now.
I mean, there were so many homeless people in the Middle Ages, it was ridiculous, right?
And everyone putting the homeless people up in their houses would have just made more people starve to death.
So, the purpose, I think, of a long-term goal in society is to increase the wealth of society so that all but voluntary poverty remains pretty much obsolete.
I mean, nobody dies of scurvy anymore or polio, really, I mean, at least in the West, or smallpox or, you know, these sorts of things.
That has occurred as a result of science and the free market and all the good stuff that medicine has produced.
And so to me, if somebody is upset about homelessness, I mean, I get it.
There's people who need help in the here and now, and I think that's a fine thing to do.
But the generation of wealth is by far the best way to deal with homelessness in the long term.
The reduction of the barriers to the creation of wealth and to the creation of jobs and to the expansion of the economy is the best way to deal with poverty and homelessness and so on, and even missing kidneys by allowing a marketization of organs.
Absolutely.
People can set up these emergency scenarios in the short run if they want, but if people understand the difference between the Middle Ages and today, just in terms of lifespan and height and health and number of teeth by the time you're 30 kind of thing, I think they would understand that there's a longer picture than playing whack-a-mole with all the dysfunctions in society at the moment, that what we want to do is to make more job opportunities available.
And, of course, decriminalize.
There was some guy in the U.S., 90 years old.
He just got arrested for feeding the homeless and stuff, right?
I don't know why.
I didn't even read the article, but you can read this kind of stuff all the time.
Just reduce the better parenting.
I mean, I think better parenting helps in terms of mental health and fewer of what I consider to be pretty negative medicines for mental health, the psychotropics and so on.
It's just my particular opinion.
And better schools and better support systems, which, you know, as the government has waded in with, you know, Medicare and Medicaid and welfare and Social Security and so on.
It's just elbowed aside all of the beneficial social connections and institutions that you used to genuinely support people rather than just give them checks.
And so there's lots of things that have been displaced that have increased that.
And so, yeah, for people who want to help homeless people in the moment, I think that's fantastic.
You know, I donate money to help kids around the world.
I know it's not going to change their societies into anarchic paradises, but, you know, they do need food and medicine in the moment.
So I think that's good and helpful.
But it is also important to recognize the value of working to grow the economy and reduce the barriers to trade and occupation.
I mean, how many people would be less poor if a third of Americans didn't need permission from the government to earn a dollar through some sort of licensing or something like that?
I mean, it would be much better.
So, I mean, again, I don't want to sort of say, well, then screw the poor right now.
We're going to build a paradise in 50 or 100 years or 200 years.
I get that that doesn't really help people who need help in the here and now, but yeah, help people in the here and now, but the moment you start dragging the government in, you really have unleashed something that you can't control anymore.
You can't.
So this idea, well, we're just going to get, you know, we're going to take money from the top 10%, we're going to give them to the bottom 20%, it's like, that is not the nature of political power.
I mean, you are lighting a match in, you know, neck deep in gasoline.
Well, I'll just light this little bit of gasoline over here.
It's like, well, but that's not the way political power works.
The great temptation is to say, well, a little nudge here and a little nudge there and suddenly everything's better.
But that's not how political power works.
So Social Security was, as far as I remember, originally supposed to be self-funding.
And then, of course, governments just came along or politicians came along and stole like crazy and And left these dusty old IOUs in the bank vaults, and now it's just a forcible transfer of wealth from the poorer, i.e.
the younger, to the richer, i.e.
the older.
And that is what happens when you set these events in motion.
Because people talk about these incentives.
Well, corporations have this incentive to maximize for Hamana Hamana.
Well, the same thing is exactly true of everyone you put in power of this awesome political system, of this awe-inspiring capacity for machinery of violence called the state.
That everyone you consider to be corrupt in a corporate sense will be equally, if not more so, corrupt in a political sense.
And the idea that you can just wave these magic words in the abstract void of human space and have them spell out the words you want from here to eternity, despite all of the immense corruption of power, is a fantasy.
So when people talk about, you know, well, kidneys, this, and it's like, well, that's all great.
I mean, you can design whatever you want, but we're not talking about robots or computers or mechanosets here.
We're talking about ego-driven, incentive-driven human beings.
And power corrupts.
And so whatever you design, it's not going to stay that way.
I mean, this has been true of everything that I've ever seen with regards to the government.
So I think it's important to give people a bit of historical perspective and to remind them that all the people they rail against in the market are going to be exactly the same people that are going to be in charge of their system.
And are going to have exactly the same, if not more, incentives to do ill.
Anyway, I'm going to move on to the next caller, but some great, great questions.
I really, really appreciate you bringing them up.
I always find it fun to chat about these kinds of issues.
Alright, awesome.
Thank you so much, Stefan.
And just one last thing.
I mean, Noam Chomsky talks so much trash about right libertarians.
I really wish you would debate him on anarcho-capitalism.
That would be like the greatest thing ever.
Again, I just want to thank you for putting on the best philosophy show that I've ever watched.
And thank you again for taking time for me.
I know it's been a long call.
Thank you again.
Oh, I appreciate that, and I would be very happy to debate.
Noam Chomsky, I'm just not going to do it in 15 minutes when he's got no advance warnings.
I'm not a big fan of jumping people, but thanks.
I appreciate that.
And Mike, who do we have next?
All right.
Up next is Nathaniel.
He wrote in and said, In a universe that is ruled by physical law, with models of reality that can predict future events without fail, how is the human brain any different and not subject to cause and effect?
So the brain is made of matter, matter is deterministic, therefore the brain is deterministic?
It would seem so.
Why would you talk to me then rather than a chair?
No, because if all matter is deterministic, then there's no fundamental difference in talking to me versus talking to a chair.
Oh, yes there is, because if I talk to the chair, it's not going to say anything back.
No, I understand that, but...
You can't change my mind because the outcome of our conversation is predetermined.
So I'm not sure what you would be engaged in.
I'm no more capable of changing my mind than a chair is of changing its position, right?
I mean, I don't go over to a chair and coax it to move forward.
Come on!
I don't put down little bits of chair kibble saying, come on, boy.
Come on.
Here you go.
Good love seat.
Come on.
Get into a nice position for daddy to watch Downton, right?
I mean, that's not – I don't do that.
And if I did that, people would say, well, the chair is matter and it can't move, right?
It has no will.
It has no choice.
Its position is determined by physical forces, right?
Right.
And the same is true for me in the deterministic universe, right?
So you're basically trying to convince a chair to move.
Not in the same way, because I'm not trying to convince you that determinism is true.
My object is not to convince you.
I find it that you say that free will is true, when everything else in our universe seems to follow these sets of laws.
Free will is true?
That's your summary of my argument.
That can't be what you think I really just said.
I did a three-part series, and it wasn't me just putting my head to my ears and repeating free will is true for an hour and a half.
Yes, and I've watched that.
I believe that your definition of free will is the human capacity to – let's see.
I have it.
Write it down.
It doesn't matter if you remember it off the top of your head or not, but it's the capacity to compare proposed actions or theories to ideal standards.
Yes.
Because without that, the word truth has no meaning.
Right.
And so I don't think I've ever said something as reductionist as free will is true, because that basically is a tautology of What is free will?
Well, it's defined as true.
What is true?
Well, it's defined as free will.
Okay, well, you just said A is A, but you haven't really added anything, right?
So I wouldn't make that argument.
That's along the lines of property is theft.
It's like that doesn't really add anything to the intellectual mix.
But what I would say is that in the same way that it's impossible to argue against self-ownership without exercising self-ownership, I think it's impossible to argue against free will without having a standard of truth,
a higher value of truth, and a desire to have your mind or the mind of other people conform to the standard called truth, which is my definition of free will.
See how that kind of works?
I mean, I'm not saying it proves, but it—so I just—I really resist—yay to my very dying breath—I resist like crazy.
Self-detonating arguments, right?
So in a deterministic universe, there can be no such thing as truth.
And so if people say to me, determinism is true or valid, then they're saying, that which is impossible in a deterministic universe is necessary to a deterministic universe.
Well, that can't work.
I mean, just logically, that can't work, right?
And so that's my...
That's my argument in a very brief nutshell.
Okay.
And that's how I understood it.
I'm just very nervous.
My thoughts are kind of jumbled.
Oh, no, no problem.
My – and I think we've got sort of on the wrong foot is my issue is not whether determinism is true.
My issue is that when we look for models of reality, we see how they act in reality.
When we propose them.
So it seems that everything in the universe follows laws.
And then we get to the human brain and the human consciousness, we say, no, no, no, no, no.
There's an extra thing there that's going on.
Right.
And that does not mean that it's lawless, right?
Right.
Right.
Oh, okay.
The opposite of determinism is not randomness, right?
Right.
And so, I think we can reasonably say there's something very unusual about the human mind, and it's singular in the universe that we know of.
And we treat the human mind as different from inanimate matter, always.
And we treat the human mind as different from...
argument the lower animals, like the protozoas and trilobites and all that kind of stuff.
And so the reason why I think it's worthwhile not creating exceptions, because that's magical thinking to say, well, we've got this rule and then we have a magical exception, right?
Right.
I mean, The reason why I think it's worthwhile thinking that there's something quite different with the human mind than there is from everything else that we know of in the universe is that we treat it so enormously differently.
Because think of a row of ten balloons, and the fifth balloon is a human mind.
But it looks like all the other balloons.
Because in the deterministic universe, there's no difference between the balloon and the human mind.
Right.
It's more complicated, but it doesn't mean it's any more chosen, right?
Now, if these are all balloons, and everyone who walks in only talks to the fifth balloon, only gets upset at the fifth balloon, only tries to woo the consciousness or the mind of the fifth balloon...
And would imagine talking to any of the other balloons to be completely insane.
And will only consider talking to the fifth balloon, where if you talk to the first, second, third, fourth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth balloon, that would be the actions of an insane person.
For the determinist to only talk to the fifth balloon and consider talking to any of the other balloons insane, and then to say the balloons are all the same, doesn't make any sense, right?
Sort of.
We're saying that the fifth balloon has consciousness, right?
Yes.
Okay.
Well, then it is not the same because, well...
No, no, no.
In a deterministic...
I agree it's not the same.
But in a deterministic universe, it is the same as the balloon.
It's more complicated, but so is the weather.
The weather is very complicated.
We can't predict it with any accuracy.
We can predict general trends in the same way we can general trends in human society...
We can't predict the weather.
It's very complicated, and nobody says the weather is conscious, and you don't get angry with the weather for raining on your wedding, right?
But all these things aren't conscious, and when I say conscious, I'm not saying it has some other attribute besides what happens in reality.
So let me go back.
I would say I wouldn't argue with the fifth balloon that has consciousness, because there's no way I could know if it does.
It has no way of interacting with me, so I wouldn't talk to that balloon because there's no way I could know it has consciousness.
Okay, but you're defining consciousness as just another behavior of matter, like the weather?
Yes.
Okay.
You would never talk to the weather, right?
Right.
Even though it's very complex and you can't predict it?
Right.
Okay.
You would never talk to...
Right.
Like Talking Bob on the – Talking Carl.
Talking Carl.
I haven't used it in years, but my daughter liked it when she was younger.
Talking Carl on the iPhone or whatever, right?
And in order to have a conversation, you would require consciousness on the other side.
Yes.
Right?
And to have a conversation with something that was not conscious would be insane.
Yes.
Right?
I mean, I know people talk to plants, so just, you know, but nitpickers, forgive me for a Or the people who think that plants have consciousness.
Right, right, right.
And so, but yeah, people talk to plants, but they don't have conversations with plants, right?
Right, right, right, right.
Unless they have really...
In which case, check your merits, man.
But, so my only point is that determinists cannot say that consciousness is the same as everything else, while treating consciousness as uniquely different from everything else.
I would have to agree, but it has an attribute which is different, right?
Yes.
And singular.
And nothing else even comes close.
Right.
So I'm not trying to argue that consciousness is different.
I see it as an evolutionary step that we have taken.
It is still determined.
Well, no.
But see, then you're back to the problem that if consciousness is determined, then it's exactly the same as every other complex system that you cannot predict but can generally understand.
Yeah.
So then – You're saying it's the same as sunspots.
It's the same as the weather on Jupiter or on Earth.
It's the same as Brownian motion.
It's, you know, whatever it is.
It doesn't matter whether you can predict it all or not.
The fact is that you are only having a conversation with an entity you say is the same fundamentally as everything else.
That's not rational, though.
I'm giving inputs to the only thing in the universe which can react in a sort of complex way to those inputs.
If I throw a rock, it falls to the ground.
If I throw you, you react in a totally different way.
Okay.
But I'm still a rock.
I'm just an unpredictable rock.
No, you're a pretty predictable rock.
No, if I was as predictable as a rock, you would be interested, right?
Right.
It's because there's some level of unpredictability, right?
Some level of unpredictability, yes.
And that is also true of other animals.
I mean, sometimes if you chase a wolf, it will run away, and sometimes if you chase a wolf, it will chase you back, right?
Right.
But that doesn't mean just because it's unpredictable that there's not a set of laws that it could follow.
That the action between input and output, there is no laws.
When you tell me that there's free will, you say that there...
To me, it kind of says you say there are no laws.
No, no, no.
See, and when I say there is free will, again, I think that's...
Look, I'm sure I've said it, so I'm not trying to...
Ah, you're misquoting me.
I'm sure I've said it.
But that's an imprecise way of putting it.
What I would probably say to you at this moment is I cannot figure out how to argue against volitional consciousness without using and talking to volitional consciousness.
I can't figure out how to say the brain is the same as everything else while treating it as specific and unique in its own right.
Well, we do that with, like, all the chemicals are specifically different unto themselves, right?
But they are similar to other things.
I understand that, but there's nothing that's similar to human consciousness, right?
Like, you don't sort of say, well, this guy's engaged in conversation, so I guess I'll strike up a chat with the potted plant, right?
I mean, there's no backup to conversation with a human being, right?
Right.
I mean, you could, I guess, make some hand signals with Coco the gorilla or whatever.
But the reality is that as far as philosophy goes or concepts go, that there's really no, to my knowledge, right, there's no significant backup.
Like, I mean, maybe you could speak about something with a monkey.
I don't know.
People are telling me all these kinds of things every time I talk about animal rights, and I just haven't had time to research it.
But I don't think that anyone would say, well, Noam Chomsky couldn't make it, but Noam Chomsky...
The ape is here instead, so okay, right?
Right.
So what I'm saying is that you say the chemicals are like each other, but the human consciousness is not like anything else that we know of.
Right, and that's because we have this capacity to set universal standards, right?
Right.
And I think that why we have that is because it is preferable to have, like for once, if we are able to establish these standards, then our actions change.
Where to other animals, they have to develop biologically over time to have a chemical impulse in their brain to cause them to have different actions.
I think that we have evolved this consciousness because it is a quicker evolutionary step to those previous actions.
Yeah, I think neuroplasticity and this kind of adaptation that we do on the fly is, I mean, one of our most amazing capacities as a species.
It may be one of the most defining capacities that we have as a species.
So I think you and I are in agreement on that.
Right.
So I'm not quite sure if we're arguing sort of the same thing because when you – and I know you've went over this, but when people say that – We have free will.
What I see is an action going into our brains, a neuron being fired, chemicals being released, and we either have positive traits to do a certain action.
That's what I see.
And I can't call that free will.
I have not definitively proven free will from a neurological standpoint, right?
Yes, yes, I looked at you.
And if I had, I don't know, I'd be sitting down the Danube with, I don't know, some Nobel Prize bikini model on my lap, which would be my wife.
On your three-part series, you actually mentioned that.
It was like I haven't definitively… Yeah, so when you say, well, the brain operates this way, I'm like, okay.
I'm not a neurologist.
I'm a neuroscientist.
I mean, I'm fine with that.
So my arguments are not biological.
My arguments are philosophical.
Okay, okay.
If it's a philosopher rather than a biologist.
So my arguments are basically I can't treat the human brain as unique while saying it's fundamentally the same as everything else.
Like I just – And nobody can, because you have conversations with people, not plants.
Right, I would agree.
I mean, it's not the same.
And so all that means is that, sorry, and all that, I'm sorry to interrupt, but all that means doesn't prove free will from a biological standpoint.
That may happen at one point.
It may not, I don't know.
Probably will at some point.
But what it means is that, like, in the same way, can you biologically prove self-ownership?
I guess you can in a way, right?
Because it's your brainstem, your spine, and all that kind of stuff, right?
But...
I mean, to me, that's not particularly interesting or useful because if everyone requires a PhD in neuroscience to understand if it's ever figured out free will, that doesn't explain how we have it or why people instinctively treat human beings as fundamentally different from everything else on the planet.
And so my argument is self-contained.
You know, philosophy works best when it's self-contained, when you don't need a reference to some other body of knowledge.
And so this is why...
In the formulation of my arguments, wherever possible, I don't mind bringing in empiricism, and empiricism is the foundation of reason, but wherever possible, I like arguments that are self-contained.
Okay.
And so my argument is not, well, we have free will, and if you push this button here, you know, it magically reveals itself as a pixie in the brain.
What I'm saying is that nobody can logically say the brain is like everything else, because everybody treats the brain differently.
As uniquely different.
That's my entire argument from a sort of philosophical standpoint.
Now, it gets into then truth and changing people's minds and so on, but it really is saying these balloons are all the same.
To talk to those nine balloons would be completely insane, but to talk to this balloon is perfectly sane.
Well, then the balloons can't all be the same, just logically, right?
Right.
And that doesn't prove it.
It doesn't answer the question.
But it means that nobody can say the brain is like everything else.
I mean, they can say it if they want, but they've just contradicted themselves because they're saying it to another brain, pretty much, right?
Right.
Okay, that gives me, because I was wondering on your last, the last call you did on determinism, it was kind of weird to me because there was a lot of things that got misconstrued.
There was this whole thing on antimatter that was completely misrepresented.
Yeah, I really have to do – I used to read a lot more about physics.
I really did.
I used to be pretty boned up on Pocket Protector 3D worlds, but – Holy.
I mean, I'm so far behind the times these days.
It's ridiculous.
It's really hard to discern what is pop physics from actual academic physics.
And then it's really hard to see who's actually saying what's right.
Well, and what they're talking about now is, you know, a little bit beyond Copernicus, right?
I mean, it's, you know, hey, Ptolemy, the Ptolemaic system, Copernicus, got it.
You know, Human Genome Project, yeah, I can kind of follow a good chunk of that stuff.
But, you know, 27 dimensions, string theory with dark matter thrown in and a topped whipped cream of I don't know what the hell's going on anymore.
I don't know.
I'm sorry.
I just have to let go of that ship that sails into the dark because I just don't know if it comes back.
It's kind of like what I do with philosophy sometimes is that if I don't really understand it, I defer to another source until I do.
No, but good philosophy you should be able to follow, I think.
Right, right.
I mean, there's some, I mean, you know, like, I don't know, like, introduction to objectivist epistemology is pretty technical, and there's some other stuff that's kind of technical.
Right.
But good philosophy, I think you should, I mean, I've I've always tried to work on that principle.
Good philosophy should be comprehensible because philosophy should serve the vast majority of people.
In other words, you should be able to break it down to somebody with an IQ of 80 to 85.
And not that I'm doing that in this conversation, but in general, I try to make it as approachable as possible.
That's the beauty of the self-contained arguments.
If you've got to Google it, it probably isn't philosophy anymore, so to speak.
Right.
But the science, I mean, where science is these days, particularly physics, is just so far out there, for me at least, and so far removed from the sense-based philosophy that I think is important to people, and certainly from ethics.
It's immaterial to ethics.
Fascinating though it is.
Sorry, go ahead.
As someone who studied physics, the majority of what you learn, you go into more advanced physics and find out that's not quite true.
Yeah, yeah.
That was an approximation for the masses.
Now we take you into the Platonic Temple of Truth and you'll never be able to go back.
That was a leading...
Well, so where we have got with this argument is that free will is sort of true in a conceptual...
Philosophical sense, but in a biological sense, that still remains to be found.
Again, true is...
It's hard.
True is a tough, right?
I mean, true has a number of different forms, which I sort of won't get into here.
Definitional, etc.
Yeah, I mean, so analytic, synthetic, and so on.
But true here would be you can't You can't both say – you can't act as if the brain is unique while claiming it's not.
That's a self-detonating argument.
That's like me saying you don't exist and language is meaningless.
Oh, yeah.
I also thank you for your show.
I'm speaking to you and I'm using the meaning – the comprehensibility of language.
I thank you for your show because that concept you started – the one you just brought up is where I started with philosophy.
I started as a Wittgensteinian absurdist.
Duh.
I know, right?
What a long strange trip it's been, right?
Yes, a long strange trip.
And that just so happens because there was a philosopher – I've been looking into philosophy for about seven years, and seven years ago there was these pseudo-intellectuals who don't even do philosophy anymore.
And the only other objectivist that kind of challenged them was – his name was Mr.
Cropper, but he talks with this really monotone, annoying voice, so it was kind of hard to actually take him seriously.
And the other two were named Meridian Frost and Azrinocq.
I don't think if you've ever heard of them, you would have to look up them seven years ago when you first started posting stuff to YouTube.
But yeah, that's the – because it made sense to me because Wittgenstein has this concept of a beetle in a box, and even though if we have – you have your beetle and I have my beetle, if we try to talk about it, they're not exactly the same thing because we can't see our – we don't know what each other's word means to us.
And from there, I found Jacques Fresco, who's not really a philosopher.
But made the point that language can be translated completely between people because when we have mathematics and we have scientific instructions, one scientist doesn't take that one way and another scientist doesn't take it another.
So from there, I found that words can have effective, transferable meaning.
Yes.
Yes.
No, they can.
And I was talking with my daughter up Asking my daughter about her experience with concept formation the other day.
And, you know, the great challenge of language to things is how bloody good we are at it.
And how amazing children are at it.
Like, I don't know how my daughter learned to speak so well, you know, to the point where she's explaining to me what happens in her brain when a concept is formed.
You know, like, how do you know this is a chair?
Well, we went into the variety of definitions and all of that.
She's five.
I mean...
And we are so good at it and so instinctual at it.
I don't remember teaching my daughter all these words, let alone how to put a sentence together, but she just picks it up and rolls with it.
And she asks like 20 times a day what some word is or whatever, but she rarely needs to ask twice.
And so even when she was two years old, or even earlier, I could say, pass me the cup, and she would go and get me the cup and pass me the cup.
You know, and that if you put a different colored cup there, she wouldn't say, I don't know what that is.
Like, we're so good at it.
And so, you know, the idea that we just can't transfer meaning and so on, I mean, that seems to me too extreme a position.
Of course, there's definitions and so on that everybody needs to work on.
But...
I mean, we're so amazing at building language in our brains.
It is just...
I mean, a baby's brain is voracious.
I mean, I think a third of a baby's energy goes into just growing its brain.
Growing its brain?
Yeah.
I mean, it's immense and huge and bizarre.
But sorry, go ahead.
I do have to ask the question because your daughter is actually kind of a model for me to see how your particular parenting style or...
What is it?
I'm having a brain fart.
Peaceful parenting?
Peaceful parenting works.
So know that I'm looking at your child knowing how to raise my children.
No pressure, honey.
No pressure.
With your child, did you ever do the milk in a glass test where one glass is wide and the other one is tall and asked if they knew the difference?
Right.
I don't think I did, no.
Okay.
I was just wondering at what age you might have – because you know what the test is, right?
No, I'm not aware of it.
Okay.
Children can't differentiate.
They always think something that's taller is larger.
So if you get a glass of milk with the same volume and pour it into a wider glass, they will think the wider glass is a smaller amount.
Oh, right, right, right.
Yeah, because of course they measure their bodies against their parents' bodies and taller always means bigger.
Right, and figuring out when they can differentiate, even if they don't have really good communication skills, can measure where they are, what is their intellectual age, which generally happens around four or six is when they can differentiate that on average.
Right.
Now, I assume that when you first do the test, it has to be significantly wider.
It's not like half an ounce bigger or anything, right?
Yeah, they can't be anywhere near the same size.
I mean, if you look up this video, there's a drastic difference, and it has to do with height, and it has to do with how we perceive things.
We perceive things longer if they're tall.
We literally do this.
Like if something's standing up, we perceive it longer than if it is horizontal.
However, we as adults have a – we know about object permanents.
So we know that when we take a volume of one thing and add it to another, it's the same.
Right, right.
Right.
I wonder if you convey that to them through communication.
Does the concept just stick?
It's like, oh!
Right, right.
Like if I explain that sort of height-width thing.
Right.
Do they start applying that to everything?
That would be an interesting thing to see.
Yeah, that's a good point.
I will certainly think about it.
Could be a worthwhile...
Boo-ah-ha-mad Dr.
Frankenstein experiment.
All right.
Do you mind if we move on to the next caller?
A hugely great call.
I really, really appreciate this opportunity to further annoy people who should never be annoyed, i.e.
determinists.
Just kidding.
But thanks very much for calling.
Thank you.
You've clarified my mind on some things.
Excellent.
Alright, up next today is Jamie.
And Jamie wrote in and said, in one of your videos you discussed what an argument is, but I'd like to know when arguments are necessary.
Necessary.
Interesting word.
What do you mean?
Oh, hey Stefan, can you hear me?
Yes.
Necessary.
I don't know if that is the...
Maybe it's hard to think of an ideal word, but I can actually give you an example.
This might be a bit of a long explanation, but I think I'll give you a better idea of where I'm coming from, because I actually found your channel fairly recently, but I consumed a large amount in a fairly short period of time.
I must have watched about 20% of your videos in a span of Eight weeks, and I would occasionally look down at comments, and I got the impression that you have a bit of a catchphrase.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to be a bit of a catchphrase.
You'll say, that's not an argument to people.
So that's what I'd like to question.
Because it actually seems a bit assumptive to me, because Maybe the person doesn't know what an argument is, but there's also the chance that they do know what an argument is, they just don't care to make an argument.
So I'll stop right there and see what you think about that.
I have more to say.
Alright, well let's go to YouTube here.
Don't do it!
Alright, are you ready?
Shall we lower ourselves into the YouTube cesspool?
I shouldn't say that.
I'm sure there's some fine comments in here.
Put on your Ebola-proof suit, everybody.
I'd rather breathe my own farts than...
Okay, so here's one from John Stewart vs.
Bill O'Reilly.
This comes from Corpse1.
Notice all the SJW, that's social justice warrior, notice all the social justice warrior faggots can't disprove any of his claims but just dismiss him as a racist or privileged, a great insight into a brainwashed mind.
Not really an argument.
Right underneath.
I'll just read a couple of these and then we'll say why.
So let's see here.
Let's see here.
It's all about money with these animals.
Bad parenting is why this 325-pound person, let's say, is dead.
That's on a Mike Brown video.
Let's see.
I'll just do one more here.
Just looking for one that's not too long.
So MGTOWs are bad for society for choosing their own path?
That's on the sex and polyamory one.
And, uh...
Why is it Steph almost reduces whatever he's talking about to the state pointing a gun at you or don't hit children?
That's on the truth about voting, I think.
So none of these are arguments.
Which doesn't mean that they're completely uninteresting or irrelevant or anything like that.
They're just not arguments.
So is your question sort of when would it be necessary?
Yeah.
Well, yeah, I understand those are not arguments.
I am essentially asking, is it bad to not have an argument, or is it sometimes good to say things that aren't necessarily an argument?
Oh yeah, that's totally fine.
I mean, honestly, I spend a good portion of my day not making arguments.
I mean, not necessarily on this show, but sort of in the rest of my civilian life, I spend a good deal of time not actually making any arguments.
The only important thing is that you know whether you're making an argument or not.
That's what I like, right?
Yeah.
So if people think they're making an argument when they're not, then that's something for a philosopher to remind them of.
I understand, yeah.
That makes sense.
That was my main point.
It did seem assumptive because maybe some of these people do know they're not making an argument but they don't care.
But there is the chance that maybe they genuinely don't know That what they're saying is not an argument.
I can actually go into more detail just in case anyone listening actually has interest because I read this article by Steven Reese in 2004.
It's called Multifaceted Nature of Intrinsic Motivation, Theory of 16 Drives.
And to summarize, essentially, he studied humanity To try to figure out what basic fundamental drives that humans actually have.
I think it's difficult to say with any high degree of confidence that it's exactly 16 drives, but that's a fair estimate that he found that seems to encompass most people.
I think most people recognize this for some drives, like with the food drive.
People know that if you try to go without food, you're going to suffer, and they also know that it's intrinsically rewarding so that most of the time when you do eat food, you feel good.
People know this about the food drive.
They know this about the sleep drive.
But I think there's perhaps other drives that maybe people don't even really think about because maybe they've never really tried depriving themselves of it.
For example, like with the food drive, you might go on a diet so you know exactly what it's like to do without.
But one of the drives that Steven Reese noted was for social contact.
And at the extreme end, you know, there are probably autistic people that don't have this drive.
Then on the other extreme end are people...
That need a lot of socialization, that feel compelled to tell people About their everyday trivial experiences.
For example, some people might stub their toe and they don't feel compelled to tell anyone, ouch, I stubbed my toe today.
But some people might.
Some people might.
It might happen.
They feel like, I gotta confess or tell this to somebody.
So that's what I thought about YouTube comments.
I think I'd like to consider the possibility that maybe some people actually...
I feel they need an outlet.
If they watch one of your videos and you express some viewpoint that surprises them, they might say something like, I can't believe Stefan actually said that.
And it might not necessarily be that they disagree with you or agree with you or whatever.
It just might be they felt surprised and they felt compelled to have an outlet.
A social outlet for that feeling they felt.
So they leave a comment like that.
I don't know what you think about all that.
Yeah, I mean, I agree that they obviously want to leave a comment.
But I would like people to...
I don't get the sense that people know that they're not making an argument.
I see.
You think a lot of people might genuinely be clueless about what an argument is?
Oh, I can tell you that I think a lot of people on this planet are pretty clueless about what an argument is.
And, I mean, the number of logical fallacies have scarcely declined from the days of Socrates.
And arguments are hard.
You know, they're tough.
Arguments challenge arguments.
Because no argument is ever fundamentally about itself.
This is the great challenge that people have with arguments.
This is why it is like you pull that thread and the whole sweater comes undone.
Because no argument is fundamentally about itself.
Arguments, it's like saying that the scientific method is fundamentally about one theory or one hypothesis or one experiment.
No, those experiments have science, but it is because of the overarching value and validity of Of the scientific method that somebody would even be pursuing that.
In other words, you have to accept the scientific method before you do science.
And everything you do is not about itself.
It's about the scientific method.
Because that's why you're doing everything that you do as a scientist is through the scientific method.
So no argument is fundamentally about itself.
And it took me a long time to understand this because I could never understand why people would get so upset about an argument and that's because and I don't even want to tell you when it came to me but that's because all arguments are about the methodology of thinking and people get upset about any particular argument because
they're upset at the methodology of thinking what does it mean What does it mean to reason?
What does it mean to know?
What does it mean to convince?
What does it mean to be truthful about something?
To be honest?
I mean, science can't work with fraud.
I mean, honesty is the prerequisite for, I think, any decent or reasonable human interaction.
So, people get emotionally invested in their perspectives.
And they will argue them very strongly and vociferously and sometimes aggressively.
Yeah, you know what...
Sorry, go ahead.
Well, they do that, though, because if they start...
Like, if they have a lot of opinions and they feel strongly about some stuff, then they're already invested in a perspective.
Now, if...
A rational and strict methodology comes along, like philosophy or science or math or whatever, then they have to take a step back and evaluate all of it unconsciously, because we're universalization machines, basically.
And it is deeply disorienting to people who've built their personalities or who have had their personalities inflicted on them through opinions, through ideology, through Bigotry, nationalism, party affiliations, and so on.
Like, in the past, like 50 years ago, only 4 or 5% of people would be upset if their son married the opposite political party, like married someone at the opposite political party in the US. Now it's like 70% or 80%, or I just read this today, but it's some massively higher number.
This is how polarized things have become.
And, you know, we read comments on the internet, and it's always, you know, And libtards this, and it's not Fox News, it's faux news, and then the Koch brothers come up, and all this stuff, and the Tea Party is scorned on.
I mean, it's all unthinking prejudice from both sides, in many ways.
Now, if you try to back away from that, and if you say, you know what, it could be that the entirety of my mind is filled with Sophistry, with unthinking prejudice.
Well, what does that do to someone's sense of self, sense of identity, sense of personhood, sense of belonging?
What does it do to their social circles?
To evaluate that possibility is deeply disorienting.
And so for most people, it's just easier to double down on the prejudice than it is to clear their mind of the clutter and really start to think from first principles.
So I think on YouTube or other places, I don't in particular see people getting upset about any particular argument.
I see them continually being upset about the methodology of thinking, which they don't have.
And I think that's what animates a lot of what people's comments are.
And there are, you know, some great thinking, useful, helpful comments that have really struck me deeply.
But, you know, obviously they're in the...
I see.
I wanted to note, because you mentioned how you found it interesting how upset people will be at hearing an argument, and that reminded me because Stephen Reese, one of the other drives he noted that's fundamental to most humans is...
The vengeance drive.
People often feel compelled to have vengeance on someone that harms them.
A lot of people feel quite stressed if they don't get their revenge.
That's something else interesting to consider.
For example, on YouTube comments that some people will not only leave a comment like maybe disagreeing with you, but attack you.
Say you're an idiot, you're an asshole, or whatever.
And what I find interesting is that, and this is somewhat similar to what you're saying, is that it's very rare at least to hear people To get that emotional or to personally attack others.
If they're, for example, if they have a mathematical formula that disagrees with their answer, you know, they don't get upset over differences of mathematics.
But they do, over a difference of a moral opinion.
And I wonder if part of it is maybe having that difference of opinion, maybe because they get so emotionally invested in their moral views that they actually do see it as an attack and that they then want revenge.
Kind of like if someone just randomly slaps you on the back of the head, you might feel compelled to have revenge.
I wonder if they feel a similar kind of feeling when someone provides a different viewpoint.
So yeah, that was just something else I thought that's interesting to consider when people leave these comments like, you asshole, you idiot, or whatever.
Yeah, well, of course, a lot of people are...
Enrolled in an ideology, and ideology in many ways is giving you permission to hate.
Here's who you can hate.
You know, I mean, here's who you can hate.
And when people have an ideology that gives them permission to hate...
You know, like, I mean, so the Democrats, they hate the Koch brothers.
They hate them.
I don't know.
I don't even...
They probably bankroll some right-wing think tanks or something like that.
I don't even know.
But those...
Now you can hate these people, right?
Fox News, I hate those guys, right?
And, I mean, it happens on the right, too.
I'm not trying to sort of...
I'm trying to be even-handed and so on, but...
But once you have bought into something which allows you to hate...
And I mean, I get angry at stuff.
I certainly don't spend my days consumed by hatred or anything.
But when you have a polarized, I hate those guys, it could be sports teams too.
I mean, it could be any number of things, right?
But once you've configured yourself into an algorithm of permissible hatred, it becomes very hard to pull back because now it's a moral thing.
So if somebody questions the patriarchy, then, well, must be a misogynist, right?
That's the way I think it goes for a lot of people, yeah.
Yeah, if somebody questions the whatever, right?
If somebody says that the poor are not always victims, well, now you're allowed to hate the person who says that.
Because that's just someone who hates the poor or someone who's heartless and cold and cruel and all that kind of stuff, right?
I mean, people who are kind of shocked to find out that I grew up poor because it doesn't jibe with sort of what I say.
And the same thing, you know, you're allowed to hate a racist for the most part, right?
So if you can put someone in that category, that allows you to release some hatred.
And, you know, people, they get...
Everything you do is a habit, right?
And if you've got a habit of, well, my team are the good guys and the other team are the bad guys.
And our team is good and contains in it no evil.
And the other team is evil and contains in it no good.
I mean, this polarization is, I think, quite primitive.
It is...
It's very tough for people to break out of that habit once you've got ethics.
Sports usually doesn't have ethics and so on.
Like a video I watched a little while back ago.
It's called Direct Evidence That Feminists Hate Facts.
It's by Pam Mayer, M-A-R-E. And it's not in English, but it's interesting.
And it's a guy, I think he used to be a comedian, or maybe he still is.
And he goes to a bunch of non- If I remember it rightly, it's been a while, but he goes to a bunch of social scientists and talks about, you know, is there any difference between men and women?
And they're all like, no, no, there's no difference between men and women, blah, blah, blah.
And then he goes to people who are more in the biological sciences, and they go through all the biological differences that they believe exist between.
Men and women and all the studies and so on.
And then he goes back to the social scientists and plays some videos of the more hard scientists contradicting a lot of what the social scientists said.
And you can see it.
They just flat out reject what the other people are saying.
They don't question.
They don't ask to see the studies.
They don't ask to look at the data.
It just doesn't work.
It just doesn't work for them.
And this is not – look, I mean, we have to fight ourselves all the time.
It's important.
You have to, I think, consistently undermine certainty in oneself.
And I'm, you know, someday, you know, somebody's going to come up with, you know, maybe some fantastic arguments against one of my core theories.
And I'd be like, holy shit!
You know, let's see if we can repair the whole bridge, Captain.
And so that will need to – and that will be fantastic.
I mean, that's how you get things brighter by polishing them.
And so I do think that it is a very difficult and dangerous thing to get into a polarizing ideology.
I mean, it's okay to, I think, dislike immoral people.
In fact, I think it would be kind of weird to like them as much as you like moral people.
But the hatred thing, too, is pretty tough.
It's a pretty tough emotion to get into and to sustain.
Because the problem is, you know, anger is usually a self-protective measure or a measure to clear your space.
Hatred tends to be much more chronic.
And hatred...
It tends to really settle into a soul and sort of squat there and take up residence.
Because if you've got angry, you know, I mean, the sort of fight or flight mechanism is designed to solve, right?
But the sort of stewing in hatred thing, I think, tends to last and last and last.
And so, yeah, hatred is one of these, maybe I'll do a podcast on this at one point.
Hatred is a very, very dangerous emotion to get into.
I think it demands pretty specific and direct action, which is usually not what you want to be doing when you're in that mood or mindset.
But the great danger of hatred is that it takes up residence and it, I think, really distorts one's view of the world.
And I also think that it tends to create self-fulfilling prophecies, which is why people get drawn back to videos they dislike.
You know, it's sort of like a A way to provoke their hatred and so on.
Anyway, I don't want to get off on a big tangent.
Those are a lot of good food for thought.
From the sounds of it, it's kind of like you're saying there's sort of an in-group versus out-group mentality, not just in terms of physical traits, but also in terms of moral views.
We have an in-group, out-group mentality.
Is that right?
Yeah, we do.
And it's not based upon principles.
It's based upon prejudice.
And it is very tough for people then to think of things objectively.
So, I mean, you know, if there's racism in a white person, people are like, well, that's racist, right?
But a lot of people on the left have a tough time identifying racism in non-white communities.
Yeah.
And that is where partisanship rather than anti-racism comes into play.
And that, I think, is – because, I mean, racism, which is, you know, the dislike of any race for, you know, whatever subjective or irrational or nasty – I'm not saying there are good reasons to dislike any race, but that is sort of That is a universal definition.
I mean, you can't say it's white racism, right?
And so you have to say racism as a whole, then you have to look at racist incidents around the world.
You'd look at sort of interracial crime, you'd look at interracial rape, and you'd sort of try and figure out what's going on proportionally and so on.
And if you do that kind of stuff, the answers won't get into them here, but the answers can be quite surprising.
But in general, racism is something that's trotted out Basically, only white people are capable of racism.
And any racism that occurs in minorities can only be a reaction to white racism, which I think takes a huge amount of essential agency away from entire races, which I think is a problem, right?
So...
And there's so many things around the world where this happens in religions, it happens in political parties, it happens in sports teams, it happens in neighborhoods, it happens in races, it happens.
I mean, the in-group, out-group stuff, I mean, it's very foundational to who we are as a biological species, you know, as Apes 2.0.
And it is a tendency that is important to – I mean, because our tribes are a survival mechanism.
In the past.
And why were we loyal to our tribe?
Well, because we needed to live, we needed to reproduce, and the genes that weren't loyal to the tribe didn't usually get passed on because nobody wanted to guard you while you sleep or anything like that, right?
And so we just, you know, they're closer, so we like them.
And the tribe across the other side of the valley, we hate those guys.
You know, those guys are terrible.
I mean, they may look pretty much like us.
They may eat pretty much the same food.
They may wear pretty much the same stuff.
They may live in pretty much the same grass huts or whatever, but we hate those guys, right?
So there is that polarizing tendency in human nature.
And I think for once, I'll forgive myself.
I'm constantly opposing human nature.
I'm not saying it's innate, but it certainly is part of enough people's thinking that we can call it at least contemporary human nature.
And certainly, I think we would call it in the past even more so.
Yeah, I mean, it's a natural inclination, but one that's perhaps possible to reduce through knowledge, through understanding.
Yeah, that certainly is the goal.
And in particular with ethics, you know, if people are going to define...
Universal values like anti-racism and so on, then they need to be universal.
And I have always felt it to be quite subtly racist to not grant full moral agency to...
Any race or group.
I just think the moment you withdraw that from anyone, I think you've done them a huge disservice.
But yeah, it's tough for a lot of people because it's like, well, who are you allowed to dislike?
Well, white racists or whatever, right?
Ah, those guys.
Terrible.
Blah, right?
Patriarchs.
But it's not particularly rational or helpful, I think, in the long run.
Yeah, perhaps people should view moral and philosophical issues more like to view a math problem with less emotional investment, you know?
Yeah, I think so.
I think so.
And I think people are naturally that way inclined, or at least my experience as a parent has been that way.
But they get pulled off the path often pretty early and pretty hard.
And it's hard to find your way back, I think.
Oh, can I plug my site real quick before I go?
What is your site about?
I do research on moral issues, and I post articles mostly on gender differences and sexuality.
My name is Jamie Stroud, S-T-R-O-U-D, and my site is gloryhood, G-L-O-R-Y-H-O-O-D.com.
All right.
I hope you get some hits.
Thank you.
Thank you.
And thank you, everybody, so much for your thoughts, time, care, attention, and maximum verbosity, as it used to say in the old Zork computer game.
Oh, yeah, we're going that far back.
It was a PS minus 6,000, I think it was called.
So have yourselves a wonderful, wonderful week.
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Sign up for a 5, a 10, or more if you can spare it.
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we will talk to you soon hey hey are you still there it's Mike back with a little post show action since we had a bit of a short show My goodness, we did not go four hours.
The shock and horror!
But no, because we had a bit of a short show this week, I thought this would be a good time to kind of give people a bit of a sneak peek into some of the stuff that's available for the kind people that make the show possible, that help the show survive, those that...
We do offer some pretty cool stuff for all the people that support the show.
If you sign up for a $5 a month subscription, we call that our bronze level.
And there are 50 premium files, most of which are podcasts.
Sometimes there's PDFs or books mixed in there.
But there's 50 premium files for the people that sign up for the $5 a month subscription, including cool things such as Teaching Children Critical Thinking, a podcast on polyamory and history, an interview stuff did on the philosophy of leadership, and a whole bunch more of really cool stuff for $5 a month.
Pretty good deal.
Can't really beat that.
Then we have our silver section for the people that donate $10 a month, and they wind up getting 45 special silver files in addition to the bronze files, so that's like 95 additional premium things for $10 a month.
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At that level, you get a PDF of Steph's historical novel, Almost, which I really encourage you to check out.
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Steph's still working on churning through the rest of it, but the first 22 chapters are there.
For example, there's another podcast called Psychological Antibodies for Toxic People.
And then there's a three-part series that Steph did way back, this is probably three years ago, on objectivism.
Three-part series on objectivism.
So if you've enjoyed The Truth About Ayn Rand so far in that series, it might be interesting to go back, listen to that objectivism series, and, you know, contrast the two, see if Steph's perspectives have changed over the years.
It's well worth going into checking out.
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If you listen to that, I'd love some feedback.
Let me know what you think.
Also has a PDF copy of Steph's historical novel, Revolutions, which has gotten some high praise on the board.
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Steph actually recorded a meditation a while ago, which, man, I haven't done that in a while, but it was pretty interesting at the time, and I'd like to do some more of that stuff, but it's up there.
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What are the eight steps you go through on your road from indoctrination to freedom?
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existence.
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Wholeheartedly worth checking out.
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Hi, everybody.
It's Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Main Radio.
I hope you're doing well.
So, a fine young man, or I guess man, I don't know how youthful he is or isn't, has written in to say that he has conflicts with his girlfriend.
He sort of started off on the zeitgeist spectrum, I suppose, looking at how awful what he thought the free market was and then accepted the arguments that what is currently called the free market is not that at all.
You know, the term that's been used is capitalism and, you know, just crony capitalism and so on.
You know, just like I got a message the other day from someone who was saying, well, You don't understand that prisons have been privatized and this is an example of how the free market doesn't work because there's an incentive for judges who may have investments in prisons to send more prisoners there.
And I think one judge in America was recently convicted of this, that he had investments in private prisons and was continually – or teen ranches or something like that was continually sending more prisoners there.
So, yeah, but that's not the free market.
The government defines the laws.
The government persecutes the laws.
The government has a terrible system wherein most people in the states end up merely giving plea bargains rather than having any day in court.
And they are threatened or rather bribed with years of freedom and threatened with years of incarceration.
if they don't toe the line and confess.
And this is exactly what used to happen in the Soviet Union.
Solzhenitsyn writes about this, that as a captain, I think he was a captain in the Second World War, he was threatened with insane punishments.
He had to criminalize Right out his guilt and confess, and then his punishment, I think, was ameliorated to some degree.
And it's insane.
And it, of course, all paid for.
Government control and tax dollars do not a free market make.
So the moment something is paid for...
With tax dollars, you are not in the realm of the free market.
So anyway, he and his girlfriend have disagreements about things like World War I, World War II, and they also have disagreements about America's involvement in Vietnam, and they also have sort of the question of how do you define terrorism and so on.
Well, America has had the goal of promoting the free market all over the world for, you could say, sort of at least the last century.
Now, the two biggest advances in the free market, which is really basically why the whole system is still standing, the two biggest advances in the free market were India and China, which America had absolutely nothing to do with.
America had nothing whatsoever to do with the growth of the free market in China and had absolutely nothing to my knowledge to do with the growth of the free market in India.
The growth of the free market over the last few decades really in these two countries has had a massive impact on world poverty.
Hundreds and hundreds of millions of people have pulled out of poverty in the greatest creation and production of wealth and alleviation of poverty the world has ever seen.
And what did this have to do with the military-industrial complex in the U.S.? Well, it had nothing whatsoever to do with it.
The other place where free market principles were at least extended from brute communism was the late 80s fall of the Russian Empire.
And now you could argue, and some people have argued, that Reagan won the Cold War by...
By pushing Russia to, by having an arms race and pushing Russia to invest more and more in its arms, I don't see how America making arms forces Russia to buy arms.
I think it had a lot more to do with Afghanistan and just the general illogic of a priceless productivity system.
Priceless meaning that without price.
But what did America have to do with the transition of a Soviet or communist style of economy to a relatively somewhat vaguely free market-ish economy?
Well, nothing.
Nothing.
The movement of sort of the Southeast Asian countries and those two more of a free market had to do with what?
Where American involvement occurs, where does freedom go?
Does freedom increase or does freedom decrease?
Wars are the health of the state, as has been ably noted, and as I've pointed out, the state is the health of war.
You can't have wars without fiat currency, at least modern wars, limitless democratic wars.
And so, if you want to evaluate American foreign policy, you look at the goals and you look at the facts.
And that's what you do, right?
I mean, the goal was to bring democracy and peace and the market to Iraq.
I mean, the place is just a moonscape of hellish, no matter how well-intentioned, hellish human results, inhuman results, really.
Do Europeans have more economic freedom now than before the Second World War?
Do Americans?
Of course not.
After almost a hundred years of fighting communism, I mean, the Americans and the British first got involved in the 1920, 1921, if memory serves, fighting against the Russians, against the Bolsheviks.
It's been almost a hundred years of fighting communism, and how's that working out, right?
Communism from each according to his ability to each according to his needs.
So those who make more should pay more, and those who have the greatest needs should receive more.
Well, the whole idea of a graduated income tax was Marxist.
It was Karl Marx who first came up with it.
And America that implemented it in 1917, if I remember rightly, slightly before going to fight Marxism, they implemented the core aspect of Marxist ideology.
Eight of the ten planks of the Communist Party have been enacted since Russia was fighting communism.
So if you look at foreign policy, you simply look at the goal, which is to spread freedom and the free market and democracy and republicanism.
I mean, America is a republic, was founded as a republic, which is supposed to be, you can vote on the periphery, but the core Bill of Rights, the core human rights are inviolable by the majority.
How's that worked?
If you look at the whole welfare state and the degree to which the rich are taxed and the degree to which the poor receive benefits, from each according to his ability to each according to his need has been implemented on a scale and spending such a sum of money from each according to his ability to each according to his need has been implemented on a scale and spending such a sum of money that Marx's head would literally explode if he could see the trillions and
just in the last 40 years have been transferred just in America to the poor.
He would be astonished.
So you look at the intentions and you look at the results.
The stated goal of the welfare state in the 1960s was to eliminate, to accelerate the elimination of poverty.
Poverty was already being eliminated and to accelerate the elimination of poverty.
And what happened?
In Cambodia, which the US dropped close to 3 million tons of explosives, which is almost 50% more than the Allies dropped during the entire Second World War everywhere, America dropped on...
A country about the size of Oklahoma with a population roughly equivalent to New York at the time dropped 3 million tons of bombs, destroying vast tracts of the country and killing 7% of the entire population of the country.
And this, of course, helped create destabilization and created the Khmer Rouge, who were anti-American and anti-capitalist and all that.
And so they ended up, what, further slaughtering 20-25% of the country's population, driving everyone out into cities and creating the killing fields of Cambodia.
Not sure I miss you, Spalding, but some pretty good work.
So that's, I mean, just in a very brief tour nutshell, that's the result.
Is there a country that America set its sights on to keep it free of tyranny that it kept free of tyranny and made free?
I mean, they've been fighting against Castro for 40-plus years.
They've been fighting against Al-Qaeda for 13-plus years.
And how's all that going?
And that's just, I mean, a very brief tour of the externalities of American foreign policy.
What about the internalities?
If they are aiming to make external countries more free, it must be because the American government, at every level, at all its levels, must be really excellent at making Americans more free.
Right?
And so they must have learned how to do this at home and then brought all of this wonderful expertise to foreign countries.
And, of course, it's complete nonsense.
I think in the 90s, a black in Washington, D.C., which is really right outside the window of the Capitol, the White House, a black man in Washington, D.C. was 770 times more likely to be murdered than a man or woman living in Austria. D.C. was 770 times more likely to be murdered than 770 times.
It seems to me that the Austrians would have a good case on U.S. foreign policy principles of invading the U.S. and saving us or saving them from the American government.
The American government can't run schools.
Can't run the post office with any kind of efficiency.
Can't maintain roads.
Can't keep bridges running.
Has a hugely decaying infrastructure.
Has created a vast dependent class.
1.6 million Americans last year were arrested for drug offenses.
Since the war on drugs, global consumption of opiates has gone up almost 40%.
So even when they have, they can't even keep drugs out of prison.
So even if they turn the whole world into a prison, they can't get rid of drugs.
The astonishing immoral incompetence and...
The catastrophic results of government programs will in the future be something so astonishing to historians that they will not be able to understand how we could have called for government involvements or cheered yet another government initiative.
I simply won't understand it.
How could we possibly believe this?
So, in other words, if the American government was very good at bringing freedom to other countries, we would assume that it would be even better at bringing freedom to its own citizens.
It's good at not educating them, but propagandizing them.
It's good at buying votes by shoveling imaginary money from one group to another.
We used to have civil rights, and now we have snivel rights.
It's good at breaking things and blowing things up, destroying families.
But it's got no interest whatsoever in bringing freedom to the masses, I mean.
As far as terrorism goes, and I've got a true news about this, I think it's number five.
There was, of course, back in the day, a couple of decades ago, a whole bunch of countries got together and really wanted to define terrorism so they knew their enemy, but they had to give it up because they could not find a definition of terrorism that didn't include what they themselves were doing.
Terrorism, broadly defined, is generally the use of violence to achieve a political goal.
A political goal is a goal to adjust the laws or processes of the country or leadership.
And by that definition...
All government activity is terrorism because all government activity is the use of violence to change the laws, structures and leaders of society.
Farmers say we want more subsidies for soybeans and they lobby for that.
Well, that's the use of violence or the attempt to use violence to manipulate the public purse to get money they have not earned from people who do not wish to provide it.
You could say the only non-terrorist government activity is failed lobbying, in which case the bribe didn't work.
So it's pretty hard to look at, I mean, just the US in the 20th century and find out where it has used its might, Muslim power, to expand freedom domestically or in other countries.
And this all is because of the lack of courage of philosophers, the lack of willingness of philosophers to, in a very deeply principled way, interject themselves into the public discourse.
Look, if you want to make people free, you educate them about actionable freedom.
Political freedom is something that arises out of a deep abhorrence of the non-aggression principle, and a deep abhorrence of the non-aggression principle is when you understand and are willing to advocate and accept this principle without shying away from it because of childhood trauma wherein you were hit or beaten.
In other words, if you were raised through violations of the non-aggression principle, you're going to shy away from consistent application of the non-aggression principle.
Which means that you will shy away from limitations in state power.
Just the moment somebody says the non-aggression principle is immoral, deep down in your subconscious, the parents' hands and fists and belts and spoons, they all heave into view and you recoil from the conversation.
You have been Conditioned.
You have been averse conditioned to principled non-aggression through your parents violating non-aggression in their raising of you.
If you wish to instruct other people on freedom, the first thing you must do is live your values yourself.
And the second thing you must do is provide them There's peaceful, voluntary, actionable ways for them to be free or to pursue freedom.
If you say, blow people up, then I think it's immoral and most people won't do it anyway.
So you're just teaching people a few times.
You tell them to pursue the political process, well...
The political process is still about imposing your will on others.
Even if your will is that their will should not be imposed upon you, if people don't understand that philosophically, then you'll just get this Scott Walker of Wisconsin-style revolt where people feel entitled.
It's my money.
Social Security.
I paid into it.
I've paid my taxes.
I'm a citizen.
I deserve.
It's entitlement.
It's what they're called.
I'm entitled to this money.
It's my money.
Mine!
And people then think that you're stealing their property because they don't understand.
But if you give them personally actionable, peaceful ways to pursue and achieve freedom in their own lives, and you are an example of what that looks like, well...
You know, if you have a factory on some island producing the most terrible food imaginable and everyone's getting fat because it's just full of sugar and fat and tastes good and all that, you know, do you tell people you've got to go and take over that factory, you've got to bomb the factory, you've got to try and get yourself elected to the board on that factory?
No!
You don't do any of that stuff, right?
You simply stop eating that food.
You become healthy.
You lose weight.
You exercise.
You become enviable to others.
And you tell people just you don't have to eat the food.
In fact, it's bad for you to eat the food.
You do whatever you want.
It's bad for you to eat the food.
And that's what I do.
With predatory illusions and those who are the carriers of them.
Illusion is an STD. Literally.
And that's what you end up hated for, right?
By some.
It's peaceful.
It's actionable.
Anyone can do it.
And you find out whether people actually really believe and are committed to What they claim they believe and are committed to.
Should I get off the pot?
Put up or shut up?
Or as they used to say in Texas, he's all hat and no cattle.
Just pretend cowboy.
Well, the hat is the words, the cattle are the actions.
Are you all hat and no cattle?
People don't like that.
I get that.
I understand that.
But so what?
So what?
Ooh, people don't like it.
You know what they'll like even less?
Social collapse.
Yeah, I think they might have a little bit more of a problem with not being able to eat than having to confront their own addiction to supporting the violence of the state and the verbal abuse of religion.
Well, yes, I think they'll find a little bit more tricky things in their lives than being criticized or maybe even ostracized for immoral and destructive beliefs after months and months of trying to be convinced otherwise.
So, I hope that helps.
I, of course, hugely appreciate these questions.
Please keep them coming.
Always enjoyable to know what's on the hive mind of the listenership.
