Nov. 28, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:44:53
2851 Tinder, Slut Shaming and Relationship Economics - Wednesday Call In Show November 26th, 2014
I keep on having "end-the-relationship" kind of conversations in my head with people who are already gone from my life - why does this happen? I’m a professional nanny – how can I best assist my client’s children with their behavior problems despite the fact I’m not their biological parent? Is it immoral to be a feminist – or to hold other illogical positions? Since those with the lowest socioeconomic status have the most to gain by using “the power of the gun” for the redistribution of wealth – how would a free society prevent this from happening? Includes: the death of a father, thousands of un-had conversations, trying to provoke self-attack in other people, relationship economics, relaxing into reality, philosophy as a life raft, getting excited about hypocrisy, in praise of slut shaming, turning children into property centers, the vagina boomerang, TINDER, people that refuse to learn, the price for irrationality is suffering and injecting cocaine into George Zimmerman’s eyeball.
Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio, 26-11-2014.
Hope you're doing magnificently.
It is a regularly scheduled fireside chat.
Please note, fireside chat only applicable to those north of the 49th parallel and those currently digging themselves out with 19 feet of snow in Buffalo.
All other people, consult your local forecast and enjoy the outdoors.
So, Mike, who do we have first?
All right, up first today is Ruben.
Ruben wrote in and said...
Oh, man!
What?!
Now I'm hungry.
Oh, dear.
The bad joke.
I hope there's no fried eggs and spam coming up later.
Ruben wrote in and said, I keep having these end of relationship kind of conversations in my head with people who are already gone from my life.
I seem unable to control it.
I keep myself in a state of stress and don't really understand why anymore.
Do you have any advice on how to work with this?
Yes.
Yes, it's called having a pulse.
All right.
I know you left 14 years ago, but let me tell you something.
Right.
Okay, so...
Yeah, go ahead.
Well, thanks for taking the call.
Before anything else, I would, you know, I'd really like to get off my chest that I really admire you, and I've been listening for a bunch of years now, and it's, well, kind of turned my life around.
Well, I appreciate that.
That's incredibly kind to say, and I am incredibly pleased that the show is having...
A positive effect.
When you say turn your life around, I hope that you mean you weren't heading for success and wealth and love, and the show turned you around, and now you're a bit of a recluse.
Yeah, now I'm working at Ruben instead of taking your order, right?
I'll take a Ruben for five.
Bye.
Alright, so can you give me an example of – I mean, I think I know what you're talking about and I think I may even know why, but if you can give me an example of a conversation that you're talking about.
My father's death, it kind of put me in an unstable state for a bit.
Not so much because I'm missing him or anything because our relationship was pretty much over for about four or five years.
But it seems that whenever something pops up in life that's really taking a lot of space in my head, all of these ghosts inside of my head just tumble on top of each other to raise a lot of static in my head.
So at the moment when I was phrasing this question a couple of weeks ago, this was actually still occurring that with my father dead, I was still having these conversations in my head.
as to why I simply couldn't have him in my life anymore.
And, you know, all the stuff that ends a relationship had been occurring between us and what my proper reasons were for, you know, just giving up on him.
And this kind of conversation is completely one-sided, it seems to me.
It's just me practicing my end speech to my father, and it would go on for hours and hours in my head.
It's really taking up a lot of CPU power, if that's a proper...
Well, and of course, in particular, now that he's dead, and I'm incredibly sorry that you don't have more to grieve, or rather that what you have to grieve...
Is not the loss of a father in death, but the loss of a father in life.
And I'm incredibly sorry about that.
I have some thoughts about why these conversations in your head may be occurring.
And if it's alright with you, I'll take a swing and you can let me know if it fits.
Okay.
Right.
Please go.
When you have a real need to communicate something to someone, then they have a kind of power over you.
If you're desperate for someone to understand something that you have to say, to listen, to accept, and to really understand what it is you have to say, then you have a need.
And when you have a need, people have power over you because they can accept your need and they can listen or they can reject your need and they can not listen.
In particular with parents, children really need to feel heard.
And I mean, I know this when I was a child.
I know this as a father, how much my daughter needs to be heard.
Like there are times when she wants something and I won't buy it for her.
And she's like, oh, I really, really, and I know that I'm not going to buy it for her.
But I also know I can't cut off her pleas, her need for me to know how much she wants, whatever it is.
So, you know, I listen, I sympathize, I say why, and so on.
But my initial impulse is, look, look, Eddie, I know I'm not going to buy it, so it doesn't matter to me what your pleas and pleas and promises and this, that.
I mean, no.
But that's, you know, I need to sort of catch myself and say, no, she needs to be heard.
And then if I say no, but she's been hurt, she'll be disappointed, but it won't do any damage to the relationship.
But if she says, if I say no without giving her the chance to be hurt, then that's negative.
Now, when you're a child, what you want is security.
And what is security when you're a child?
Security when you're a child is...
Empathy.
Security and safety is empathy.
When someone has empathy towards you, they cannot harm you except by accident.
And we want to not be harmed, of course.
We accept that there's harm by accident as human beings.
That's going to happen.
And everybody trips, everybody falls, and...
There is always going to be harm by accident.
I mean, if you don't want harm by accident, you stay on the couch, and then you just get harmed by heart disease, right?
So, I mean, I've injured myself a bunch of times in sports and exercise and all that kind of stuff, and the only alternative is to turn into a piece of petrified jello from the inside out, so I accept that as the lesser risk and greater quality of life.
Now, what is empathy?
Empathy is, I think, fundamentally defined by listening to that which is disagreeable to us, accepting that which is disagreeable to us.
And accepting doesn't mean approving.
Just, you know, I mean, I accept that my daughter wants to buy X.
Doesn't mean I approve of it.
Doesn't mean I'm going to do it.
But I accept it.
You don't need empathy when things are going well for you, when you're hearing, you know, did I need a lot of empathy to hear that you like the show and it's been very beneficial?
No, you hate the show.
Think I'm a D-bag.
Well, then, of course, I'm going to need a little bit of extra empathy.
Because empathy is a kind of discipline and you need it when things are not pleasing to you.
In the same way that you need to exercise when you don't feel like exercising.
In the same way that you need to eat food that is good for you despite what your tongue tells you is going to be necessary just in case there's a famine around the corner.
So, to feel security as a child...
You need to know that your parents have empathy towards you.
They empathize with you and they care about your feelings.
And caring about someone's feelings is listening to them when it's uncomfortable for you or to you.
And when you wanted to talk to your father, if your father rejected or your mother rejects what you have to say if it's uncomfortable for them, Then, in my opinion and according to this argument, I'm not saying it's proven, but in my opinion and according to this argument, when you talk to someone about something that's uncomfortable for them and they shut you down, it's because they lack empathy for you.
And so if you had a father who lacked empathy for you, then he would reject all that was uncomfortable in what you had to say.
Now, if he rejects all that's uncomfortable in what you have to say...
Then you have about four and a half billion incomplete conversations with your father where you have a need to feel heard so that you can feel secure and so that you can feel love.
You have a need to feel heard and I'm going to assume, and of course Ruben, tell me if I'm wrong, that your father was not an empathetic listener.
In other words, he would listen to you As long as what you said was not very uncomfortable for him, but if it became uncomfortable for him, then he would not listen.
Does that make any sense?
Yes, it sure does.
Well, with the empathy thing, my father was a therapist and...
Actually, I spent years being quite close to him, especially when I was younger.
I spent most of my weekends over at this place just because it's...
Because he was divorced?
He was divorced and he was...
Well, you were divorced too.
I mean, divorce is not a parent-child thing as much as it is...
Well, my mother was really hard to be around.
She was...
Well, that's a whole other kettle of fish.
But my father had stayed behind in my parental house.
Well, I kind of felt secure and at home there.
And I didn't I spent a whole lot of time with him, except for, well, I had some decent talks with him.
I mean, they would have probably been above the average father-to-son talk, or son-to-father talk, really.
Because between me and my other brothers, I was the one who would usually bring up the troubled past and try to make sense of things.
You know, even accuse him of the violent and heartless things that had occurred in the past.
And he would kind of, you know, he would listen and he would do the, well, the empathy show, I guess.
But it's not as if, I never felt like having any traction there, you know.
What do you mean by traction?
I'm not disagreeing with you.
I just want to make sure I know.
At some point, he even apologized once or twice.
And he would say, like, well, I'm really sorry, Ruben.
Things didn't go well between us.
And we were, elsewise, occupied at that time.
And so that'd be kind of it, you know.
I'd have to make do with that.
So I have held this whole list of grievances and proofs of his lack of being there for me as a father.
And he would take the time to listen at me or eat me, you know, cooking a meal while doing so.
Listen at you.
That's an interesting way to put it.
But go ahead.
Is that an odd phrasing?
It's odd, yeah.
Listen to me.
Listen at you.
You speak at someone.
Anyway, it's just interesting that that's the phrase that popped into your head.
But never mind.
So go ahead.
He's cooking.
And so he'd, you know, at the end, just wrap things up by saying, well, we...
We weren't there for you.
It's kind of an acknowledgment but it's not even the start of trying to compensate for anything or to help me deal with it or to make amends or anything.
I never felt that it was getting any emotional response from him.
Okay, so do you have an ideal What response, if your dad says, well, we weren't, I assume it means your mom as well.
So if he says, we weren't there for you, if you're bringing up this stuff, what would his ideal response be for you?
If I'd been asked how things were for me at the time and how I was doing, Feeling confined or trapped or what my state of mind was in certain periods of time, how unhappy I must have been, how terrified and alone.
I guess that would have been helpful if he had shown signs of being willing to work on this with me and to...
To move on from there, or to assess the damage, at least, you know?
To make it a conversation that was continual until you were satisfied.
Right, that's exactly it.
Yeah, there's this odd thing that people have when confronted about wrongdoing in the past, where they think that if they admit and apologize, it's done.
Right.
No, no, no.
It's part of the same selfishness that leads to these problems in the first place, to imagine...
That when you're apologizing for a past wrongdoing, it's not up to you when the apology is done.
It's not up to you when the restitution is made.
If I wrong you, it's not up to me when the restitution is made.
Of course, who's it up to?
And so even if I, like you mentioned earlier...
Who is it up to?
Who determines, if I wrong you, who determines when restitution is made and...
The wrong is righted.
Well, I do, I guess.
You do.
You do.
You fix it until it's fixed, and the fixing is the other person's emotional state of mind.
Right?
It's always bothered the living hell out of me.
The degree to which people say, well, I said I was sorry.
Jeez.
Come on.
Why are you bringing it up again?
I already apologized.
Right.
That is part of the same selfishness that caused the goddamn problems in the first place.
And it would be...
I'm bringing it up again because one apology does not two decades of problems undo.
Right.
Yeah, and...
As you mentioned earlier, accidents happen.
When I accidentally hurt my son or I make a remark that's hurtful or whatever, I'm not going to just say I'm sorry and then move on, even if it's just accidental.
You revisit the topic until your son says he's satisfied.
Exactly.
I have sometimes brought things up two days later, three days later.
In order to say, I just wanted to let you know I was still thinking about this, and here's what I think, and here's what I misunderstood.
I just wanted to let you know how sorry I am again.
Is there anything that you'd like to talk about?
You keep talking about it until the other person says, usually with a can of mace, that's enough, right?
I'm satisfied.
I am content.
I have closure.
You do it until, right?
You do it until it's fixed, and when it's fixed, it's not up to you.
But that's a kind of vulnerability.
That selfish people usually cannot abide.
The vulnerability of saying, you, the person who I wronged, you are now in control of the process.
I have to now satisfy your needs until the problem is fixed, until restitution has occurred.
That is a very hard thing for selfish people to do.
I'm not trying to make excuses, but if you're capable of that, you normally, you don't accumulate these kinds of wrongs to begin with.
Right?
So if you are sensitive to someone else, like if I do something that upsets my daughter, I know right away.
I know right away.
Based on her body language and her face and what she says, I know right away.
And I want to fix it right away.
Because if I have hurt someone or upset someone who I love, I really don't like anything.
I don't like the situation at all.
It feels very uncomfortable and almost can't stand it until it's fixed.
And I have to be vulnerable and admit fault, even if it's accidental, if I've misunderstood something and so on.
I didn't ask for clarification enough.
I have to admit fault.
And I have to submit to the other person's needs and For reconciliation until that other person feels better.
I have to put my own needs aside and really focus on the needs of the other person.
But of course, if I have the capacity to do that, then I'm not going to end up accumulating decades of wrongdoing.
You're going to fix it along the way.
Sure, yeah.
Well, I think part of it may have been that my father, at a deep level, was convinced that, you know, this could never be made well again.
Well, I think that's important, right?
I think, but that's another conversation to have, right?
And so he would, at the surface of things, have an interesting...
Look on his face and let me have my rant and then, you know, just move on.
And it would become kind of a ritual that when I was over at this place and I started up this kind of conversation, there would also be this sly way of making me feel like, oh God, there he goes again.
Yeah, that's like brace yourself.
A day not complained, there's a day not lived, and why, why, yeah.
Yeah, people sometimes post that kind of comment on my videos where they say, I haven't watched this yet, but let me guess how this video is going to go.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
I'm going to see if I'm right.
And that's just like a...
That stuff arrests the soul, right?
Well, it's just vile.
I mean, it's like, okay, well then why watch the goddamn video if you think it's just scripted, if you think it's all completely predictable.
But no, it's just a way of trying to set you at odds with yourself.
It's trying to You know how people say, well, just look at yourself.
Like, they want you to jump out of your brain and your heart and look at yourself with cold, cynical, eye of Sauron skepticism.
And that's a way of then, once you're out of your body, you're in their power.
If you remain seated in your body, if you remain seated in your skin, then you have the power.
If you jump out of your skin and start staring at yourself skeptically, you have no power anymore and you're under – you step out, somebody else is going to step into the help of who you are.
So if he didn't think it could be fixed, let's say that he had accepted that he could not make restitution for your childhood.
What do you think would have happened then?
If he had accepted that he could not make restitution, you mean?
Yeah.
What would have happened?
Well, I think he did accept it and just expected me to deal with it, to have his shrugging things off.
No, I'm sorry to interrupt, but if he continued to make you feel bad, if he continued to not have conversations with you, then he was continuing to inflict more negative experiences upon you, right?
So it was in fact just continuing.
It was piling up on it.
Yeah, it was exacerbating, right?
So let me give you an analogy.
Okay, so many years ago, many years ago, I was in California and I was staying with some friends.
And I had to take a flight back before they arrived.
And we were in the middle of nowhere.
And with my usual level of non-prescient, non-planning back in the day, I realized I didn't have a way to get to the airport from this place, which was like three hours away in the middle of nowhere.
And they said, you know what?
We have a racing Porsche car that we've sold to someone in San Francisco, which is where my flight was leaving from.
You know, you could just drive it, drop it off at the dealership where the guy's going to pick it up, and that way you have a ride back to San Francisco.
And I'm like, ooh, really?
Porsche racing car?
I mean, I'm going to assume this is a stick shift.
Going out on a limb here and assume it's a stick shift.
And they're like, well, yeah, but you've driven stick before.
And I'm like, I have driven stick before.
In fact, I learned how to drive on a stick car.
But that was about...
I don't know, gosh, 14 years ago, and I really haven't driven stick since.
And they're like, oh, you know, it's just like riding a bike.
You know what it's not like?
It's not like riding a bike, I actually found out.
So the next morning, I strap myself into this Porsche racing car.
And you know you're going to have an interesting drive when they give you driving goggles.
You just know this is not going to be a Model T drift down a gentle incline.
And I'm at the bottom of this hill and trying to get a car in gear, particularly a racehorse on cocaine car like a Porsche racing car, getting this thing in gear and having it go up a hill, Not the easiest thing in the known universe.
Anyway, I do eventually manage to get it up the hill.
And once I get it on the highway, it's not so bad, of course, right?
It's just like, please, dear God, let there be no traffic whatsoever.
Because if there's traffic and I'm not good at stick...
So anyway, fortunately, I was driving very early in the morning.
So it was pretty easy going.
Of course, once I get...
To San Francisco.
I mean, the streets in San Francisco.
Oh, God, the hills of San Francisco!
The hills in a 14-year bygone day of stick-shifting on some souped-up Jetsons car.
It was just a complete nightmare.
I mean, I was, like, causing literally traffic jams.
I swear to God, I showed up on television from a helicopter.
Strange man from out of town.
Yeah.
Appears to have stolen a car when apparently all he's done is strap some matchbox racing cars to the bottom of his feet before and strolled around town that way because he has no idea what he's doing.
I remember trying to take a left and actually getting stalled in one of the busiest intersections in San Francisco.
I just couldn't make this.
I was like, fuck it.
I'm going to just put the thing in neutral and push.
Or like, maybe this homeless guy, I'll just get him to come in the car and drive it because I'm sure he's better at stick than I am, even if he's never driven a car before in his life.
Anyway, I finally did get this thing.
I don't know what kind of value it retained after I had ground the gears into a fine interstellar powder underneath the steadily heating hood, but I did get it to...
To the dealership, dropped it off, and then I was like, dear God, I'd like to take a cab.
Please don't let me see a stick shift in the cab because I just want to take a cab with no shift.
And I've never actually driven shift again.
So the reason that I'm telling you that story is because I could not handle that car.
I mean, obviously, if I'd practiced for another couple of days and, you know, been a different human being and swapped brains...
And probably one boob with Danica Patrick, it would be a different situation.
But I could not handle that car.
And I can't tell you how relieved I was to drop it off at the dealership and never set foot anywhere near a high-performance stick car again.
Now, the reason that I'm telling you that is that if I, in a relationship, accept That I cannot add any more value to this relationship.
In fact, I cannot fix what I have broken in this relationship and I won't fix myself.
That makes about as much sense as me continuing to drive that car around the vertical cliffs of San Francisco without ever improving my capacity to drive stick.
I would be destroying the car.
If your father were to accept that he could not possibly make restitution for all the wrong that he did, what would be the kindest thing to do?
To tell me so.
To end a relationship?
Yeah.
I mean, I had to end my relationship with the Porsche.
Because I wasn't doing it any good.
And I think relationships end when restitution becomes impossible.
So a woman I was dating and lived with briefly, well not that briefly, in my early 20s, we broke up And as it turns out, she'd been thinking about another guy for months.
And I wasn't snooping, but in her...
Honestly, it sounds terrible.
I wasn't snooping, but...
But yeah, she left her journal open.
I came home early and she was like drawing pictures of this guy and sigh and all this kind of thing, right?
Now, that wasn't the worst part.
The worst part was that I didn't think he was that great a guy.
You know, hey, if it's Howard Rourke, Go to it.
I understand.
I can get that.
But the reason that we broke up, of course, was because for months it had been a lie, basically.
She'd been fantasizing about some other guy and it was a lie.
And how do you trust someone when they have successfully deceived you for months?
You can't, because then in the future, you don't know whether they're being trustworthy or not.
That way, rampant paranoia lies, right?
Oh, and that stuff hurts like hell, by the way.
I'm sorry.
It does.
It does.
I am incredibly thankful that the relationship did not continue.
That, of course, is hindsight.
What the hell do you know at the time, right?
But the reality is...
Sorry, go ahead.
Oh no, please finish your thought.
No, no, Liz, you're cool.
Yeah, well, so my father, he might have been sure at a deep level that things could not be fixed.
But I think he had no real way to be...
Coherent in his actions, he would be all over the place all the time.
That's confusion, right?
He wants to keep changing the narrative and changing himself so that you get confused and don't see what's missing.
Let me give just one other analogy.
This is more for other people.
I know you get it.
But let's say I was working for a place as a salesman and I cost that company $5,000 a month, salary and whatever, right?
And yet I was only able to produce $2,000 a month in sales.
And it wasn't getting better.
And I wasn't even planning on making it better, on getting better.
I was happy with $2,000 a month, but it was costing them $5,000 a month.
What would be the decent thing for me to do?
Yeah, to quit.
To quit.
Because they are not profiting from their association with me.
Yeah, exactly.
People get surprised about what I say about relationships, but all I'm basically doing is taking economics and bringing them to relationships and saying that emotions are currency, right?
And nobody's that surprised when I say all voluntary relationships must be win-win because you're there, right?
And reminding people particularly of the great taboo, right, which is adult relationships.
Children with abusive parents.
That if there's no profit in the relationship for you, then you're being exploited.
And you must remember that it's voluntary to be there.
And all exploiters want to make you feel that the relationship is involuntary, which is why one of the commandments is honor thy mother and thy father.
You know, if they deserved honor, you wouldn't need a commandment.
You know, if I had a Well, one thing you could be sure of is I would not be that sexy to begin with.
Otherwise, I would not need divine retribution and a column of fire and a pillar of salt and a lake of eternal fire for anyone who dared to not find me sexy.
And if other people are operating at a loss in their relationship with me and I can't figure out a way to make it a plus for them, then either...
I or they need to do the right thing and not have that relationship.
You know, we try or we fix it or whatever, but if it doesn't work, because I won't be in a position where I'm exploiting someone.
I won't.
And if someone is like, I don't know, if someone is trudging over to my house dutifully to come and spend time with me when they'd much rather be doing six million other things, God, yuck.
Yuck.
You know, I mean, I can't complain about people who don't Step up, do the right thing, and donate to a show that they consume, like at FDRURL.com slash donate.
I can't complain about that.
It's an exploitive relationship, which it is.
If you're consuming significant resources in this show without contributing, then you're exploiting the generosity of others and of myself and of the people who work here.
But I can't complain.
This is all part of the same part and parcel.
I want a free market.
In love, even more than I want a free market in the economy.
Because if you have a free market in love, a free market in the economy will naturally follow.
If you don't have a free market in love, tyranny will inevitably follow.
Economy and politics always follow our personal relationships.
And the degree of voluntarism in society cannot long sustain itself in a different way than the degree of voluntarism in personal relationships.
So yeah, if your father feels I have done so much wrong that I cannot make restitution, which is another way of saying I will continue to do wrong, because by denying the basic fact that he'd done you so much wrong that restitution was impossible, he is denying a basic reality and then must be manipulative and continue to be dismissive and scornful of your true perspectives and opinions and keep the truth at bay and dodge and weave and fog and Deny and
just all that manipulative bullshit by not admitting the basic truth that he'd done you more harm than he could undo, then he is subjecting you to further harm and he is continuing the selfishness that defined the early decades of your relationship.
Right.
Yeah.
And you need him to know that, but...
Yeah, I can even remember that.
He is never going to know that.
He's never like...
Sorry to interrupt, but...
The way to end the conversation, the continued conversation you have with your father in your mind is your avoidance of the pain that he never heard and never will hear.
If you accept that he never did hear, there was no possible way for you to get him to hear, and he never will hear, well now you have A solid lump of loss to digest, right?
It is this relaxation into reality.
You know, when human beings are trapped, we always look for a way out, right?
We always look for a way out.
Always try and find some way to calculate a way.
I mean, we're a scheming species, right?
That's great.
That's why we're able to have this conversation.
Technology and all.
We are a scheming species.
And when we face loss and trauma, we scheme.
We plot.
We reason.
We think.
We plan.
We plan.
And then that's a young man's approach and a young woman's approach.
That's perfectly valid.
When you get a little older, me, what, less than two years from 50?
By God!
But when you get older, you realize, and it's an old, old story, right?
Which is, you know, God grant me the courage to change the things I can, the serenity to accept the things I can't change, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Your father never could have listened.
It's not on you.
It's on him.
And now he's in the grave.
It never could have happened.
It never would have happened if he'd lived to 350 years old.
Because the other thing you know when you get older, Ruben, is that people generally become more of who they are, not less.
Right?
Our habits start out as Cobwebs and end up as chains.
Your father was becoming less capable of listening every single day.
Every single time you had that interaction, he became more practiced at not listening to you and rolling his eyes and scorning you.
So he became less likely to listen as time went on.
You know, we think we can pick these locks, but these locks are getting rusty.
And these locks...
Are filling with rocks and these locks are calcifying and then sand is building up and rocks are building up and then you're just picking a mountain.
There's no way to open that lock anymore because it ossifies, it calcifies.
So if you couldn't do it when he was young, this is what I had to accept with my own mother.
I could not connect with her.
I could not open her heart when I was young and when she was relatively young.
And she became less available.
It became less possible to connect with her as I got older, as she got older, because she became more practiced at evasion.
So if you accept that it could never have happened, now of course it never will happen because he's dead, but it never could have happened, then you could begin to mourn the loss because We plot and plan and recite and practice and have imaginary conversations because we think there's a chance.
There's hope.
There's a possibility.
Yeah, and to some degree, the working over the loss and the grief started to pick up once I just stopped even...
Debating him in real time.
But then it shifted to your head though, right?
That's true.
Right.
So what you need to do, in my opinion, I mean, therapy would be a good thing.
I've said this so many times, I'm not going to repeat myself too often here, but therapy would be a good thing.
But I think you need to recognize and accept That you will never win this conversation.
This conversation is what your father wants.
You see, your father wants you to continue to try, because I would imagine that all he had to offer you, as an adult in particular, was the fantasy of connection.
He didn't actually have the capacity to offer you connection, but he had the ability to offer you the fantasy of connection.
So this is a commandment of your father's, to put the onus upon you to try and find some way To open his heart and connect with him and get him to understand and get him to listen.
No!
No, no, no, no.
Not your job.
Not your job.
It is not your job to try and figure out how to connect to cold-hearted people.
It is not your job to try and grow empathy neurons with some sort of imaginary remote-control language machine with people who have no empathy.
It is not your job.
It's like trying to talk a man into regrowing He's missing eyeballs.
It's a fantasy.
And you're a rational guy.
You listen to the show.
So if you have an irrational fantasy, it must come from some crazy person around you.
And it must be their commandments that you're fulfilling.
It's on you, son.
You need to find a way to connect with me.
And that's what he, quote, has to offer.
But it's shell game.
I mean, it's a bunch of whirring coconuts, but there's no ball under any of them, right?
Yeah.
Well, I remember I was in my late teens and that I consciously decided that I would really have to learn how to debate and to talk and to phrase my thoughts in a meticulous way so that I could beat this guy.
And I imagine something similar must have been going on for you.
Oh, yeah.
People wonder why I could walk up a mountain.
Right.
It's because I spent the first 15 years of my life struggling forward in the bitter gale of my mother's madness.
If you swim against the current for 15 years, you're going to beat any swimmer who only practiced in a pool.
For me, philosophy and rationality, it's never been a hobby.
It's never been, well, I'm interested in Schopenhauer!
I mean, Aristotle is interesting.
Plato is a little...
No, fuck that.
I had the same relationship to philosophy as a man lost at the ocean has to the last bit of floating wood that can support his weight.
Philosophy for me was fucking survival.
It was not something I was interested in.
Wow, Rush has some cool lyrics.
I think I'll read The Fountainhead.
The Fountainhead is interesting.
I think I will read...
No.
No, no, no.
It's like, oh my...
It's like...
You know, it's like you're facing the Dark Knight and you're five years old and then someone throws you a lightsaber.
You don't have, like, a mild interest in the lightsaber.
The lightsaber isn't cool.
It's like, great!
Now I'm not gonna fucking die!
Good!
I am very, very fascinated in this lightsaber because if it's not for the lightsaber, I'm dead.
And without philosophy...
I would have gone mad.
Without philosophy, with the madness of my mother and the madness of my family and the madness of my environment, without philosophy, I am consumed by the dark dragons of madness.
No question.
No question about it.
It was absolute, pure and clear survival.
It was the only light in the darkness.
It was the only weapon against the endless demons of history and culture and family.
It was survival.
And that's why I keep reminding people how important it is.
There might even be some aspect of vengeance in the point where you even stop addressing the people that made you drift towards philosophy.
Culture has been hunting the rational for thousands of years.
Religion has been hunting the rational for thousands of years.
We have been prey.
We have been victims.
We have been scared silly.
We have been like gay men in the 19th century.
We have had to pretend to be other than who we are.
No, no, no!
I neither like a sailor's firm buttcheeks nor rational and empirical thought.
I'm all about chicks, boobs, religion, statism, and nationalism.
Oh, and the military!
For thousands of years, The bullshit artists in charge of the world have been hunting down the thinkers, looking, smell in the air, sniff in the air for any scent of rational thought, anything that might threaten the magnificent hell-scent ice castles of their privilege of madness.
And I'm a lightsaber manufacturer, man, and I want four Those in power to recognize it ain't so much fun when the rabbit's got a gun, when the hunted becomes the hunter.
And that is what I'm all about, arming the rational.
Arming the rational with arguments, with evidence, with empiricism, with voluntarism.
Arming the rational.
Because we have spent – we have been the greatest benefactors of mankind and we have been the most hunted – Yeah, that's exactly how I've been feeling ever since I came across Freedom in Radio.
I got ammunition to work with.
It really fit right in place and it's helping tremendously, especially in this.
Yeah, you only need an example of what is possible for it to become probable.
What one man can do, another man can do.
And if you see someone like me speaking the truth, standing firm, saying the difficult things, taking the hits, getting back up, keep on going, keep on plucking, well, I think it strengthens, right?
I mean, one of the things – we're just working on this Bill Cosby presentation – one of the things that people are just desperate for and one of the things that excites the masses the most is – Hypocrisy.
Oh, can I find hypocrisy in any kind of moral leader?
Oh, by God, I need to find that hypocrisy.
I mean, they're like some Wall Street trader in the 80s looking for the last granule of cocaine underneath the urinal.
Oh, God, let me find some hypocrisy!
Because most people make so many god-awful compromises in their lives and surrender so much of any shred of integrity, and they like to think that that's just the rule of the universe.
You grow up and you stop believing and In the Easter Bunny, you stop believing in the tooth fairy, you stop believing Santa Claus, and you stop believing in ethics.
And then if you find someone who's managed to make it to their adult life while still having integrity, you have this automatic laser scope look for hypocrisy.
Oh, Ayn Rand took Social Security.
Therefore, I don't have to be moral.
I mean, people are desperate for it.
They're just desperate for it.
If they can't find it, they'll just invent it.
Because if there is someone who's retained his or her integrity, then other people's hideous moral surrenders become a choice rather than a rational adjustment to the necessary physics of living in society.
Bullshit.
And the moment you can smear someone with a hypocrisy, there's this collective sigh of relief.
From all the broken-backed moral degenerates around the planet.
Oh good, I found someone.
Oh, he thought he was noble.
Oh, thank God he's got feet of clay.
Oh, thank God I can find or invent or make up or smear some hypocrisy against him.
Oh, what a relief.
Oh, my goodness.
That was close!
I almost had to raise my standards or be revealed for the moral cockroach I am!
Oh, thank God I've been able to find some hypocrisy.
Oh, good.
And this is what, you know, anybody who's got any kind of...
Public face, yes, smeared endlessly.
I mean, because that is the natural hunger of the broken.
It's why there are shows like The Walking Dead.
I mean, it's why we believe in zombies and undead and vampires.
I mean, all of the undead are just everyone searching to suck the brains out of integrity so that it can fall into their rotten stomach holes of moral hypocrisy.
Anyway, perhaps a side rant, but...
Yeah, well, this is extremely helpful.
So, you know, this call was kind of a self-test also, really.
And thank you for all this.
This is really helpful and confirms all I got to believe.
Good.
Well, keep it posted.
And, of course, I don't know if you're in therapy or not.
Let me just sort of remind you of that value.
Yeah, sure.
Yeah, the opposite of obsession is acceptance, in my experience and opinion.
The opposite of...
Obsession is acceptance.
It is what it is.
They are who they are, and no amount of fevered, repetitive, wearing-out grooves in my brain thought is going to change one iota of somebody else's defended substitute for a personality.
You cannot change—like, not everyone is alive, and many men and women die long before the earth swallows them.
And to me, to be alive is to process— Sense data, to process the world, to process people in the moment.
And to have a non-programmed response to new information.
And defenses are just programmed.
You know, it's like people who are into one-upmanship.
You know, just like, oh, I've been to Morocco.
I've been to Morocco twice.
That's not a living response.
That's just a knee-jerk one-upmanship, right?
Or, you know, people who are selfish, you know.
I mean, but enough about me.
Tell me what you think of me.
Oh, my God.
Or people who are religious.
I mean, it's just input-output, right?
You give them contradictions and you know that they're just going to be manipulating information according to some core programming that has no aliveness to it, no emotion, no sensitivity to the present.
Input-output.
Garbage in, garbage out.
Non-garbage in, garbage out.
Right?
I mean, just people who are like, you know, somebody who's a patriot in the military and input-output, right?
They're out there defending your freedoms.
I didn't ask them to do that.
Communist!
Or something like that, right?
I mean, Jesus died for your sins.
Really?
I don't think I have any sins.
I don't even know what that word means.
Heathen!
Satanist!
Right?
I mean, it's just...
This is what people do, right?
And that is not being alive.
That's not, right?
And you've got to look for that stuff in people.
And so when you're in these repetitive situations, it's because you're trying to argue with a computer, right?
Because if your father was defensive, if he was not sensitive and alive to what was happening in the moment, then to my mind, these people are kind of like computers.
And I don't try to argue with computers because you never get anywhere at accepting that You have debates with people who are capable of thought.
And if somebody's not capable of thought, you'll know that very quickly.
And if they're not capable of thought, then they are like an adventure novel that no matter what you choose, it has only one ending.
You lose!
And I think accepting that you may not have been dealing with a living human being even before he was dead I think will help.
Yeah.
Alright, gotta move on, but thank you so much for your call.
Do keep us posted about how it goes.
Yeah, I will.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Bye.
Thanks, Ruben.
Up next is Heather.
Heather wrote in and said, as a young nanny, not a member of the family, how can I help the children I care for who are quick to anger and have other behavioral problems, i.e.
thumb sucking, lashing out, and pushing boundaries?
Hey, what's wrong with thumb sucking?
Uh...
Why do you think they have these issues, Heather?
I honestly have no clue.
With the anger, I know that their mother usually is quick to anger.
Okay, okay.
That's definitely a big contribution.
Wait, wait, wait.
Why am I stopping you?
Sorry.
Why am I stopping you?
I don't know.
I say, why do they have these issues?
You say, why?
I have no idea.
Their mother is quick to anger.
Right, but I don't know where they pick up thumb sucking and their pushing of boundaries.
I understand that they have quick to anger issues because the children's mother is quick to anger, but I don't know how to help them.
I've talked to...
Okay, no, hang on.
There's two separate issues, right?
Okay.
I've got to unpack a little bit here first.
How old are the kids?
I work with a 10-year-old boy and a 4-year-old girl.
And the boy is a thumbsucker?
No.
The girl is the thumbsucker.
Yeah.
The boy started picking up, putting his fingers in his mouth, but he's more attentive.
About not doing it.
Sure, sure.
Now, is the father around?
It's a mixed family, I think it's called.
Oh, it's a stepdad.
Yeah.
And the two, the boy and the girl, are not blood-related, right?
Is that right?
They share the same mother.
Yeah.
They do share the same mother, but now there's a stepfather.
Right.
And is the biological father around?
The boy sees his biological father twice a month.
Why so little?
He has a drug addiction and the mom's trying to shelter.
I assume you mean it's the husband who has the drug addiction, not the boy.
No!
Okay!
Just checking.
I wasn't sure if you were in the north of England or something, but okay.
It's odd.
The boy, he's 10, his father has a drug addiction, so he has six other children that he...
Kind of does not take care of either.
What?
Yeah, it's a bad situation.
Okay, so hang on.
I've just got to figure out how this spray-and-pray sperm warrior gets around.
So he has two kids with this mom.
The other four kids, were they before this marriage?
Well, I have no idea.
I think most of his children was after...
The one that I take care of.
After the 10-year-old.
Right.
And the 4-year-old.
Wait, wait, wait.
Hang on, hang on.
Slow down.
I'm sorry.
It's like we're going through a whole season of Montel Williams at Fast Forward.
I need to stop the tape from time to time just to figure out what the hell is going on.
Okay.
So you've got a 10-year-old boy and the dad, who's a drug addict, has a bunch of other kids between the 10-year-old boy and the 4-year-old girl.
The girl isn't even the...
has the same father.
Oh, the...
Is the girl the step...
No, the girl's not the stepfather.
The stepfather doesn't have children.
It's from two different relationships.
So, where does the girl come from?
Her mother.
No, I know...
I understand that part.
No, I'm sorry.
I get that.
The apple comes from the apple tree.
The question is, who's the bee?
I'm quite an intelligent young lady.
Who's the dad of the four-year-old girl?
I'm trying to think of how to word it.
Is he a jar?
Is he a turkey baster?
No, he's very much alive.
He's aware that she exists, but she isn't.
As soon as my boss...
What, she isn't aware that the dad exists?
Right.
As soon as my boss got pregnant...
He got arrested for child molestation, so he is not in the picture whatsoever.
And the stepfather adopted the girl as his own, and she treats him like his father.
And as far as she's aware of, that's her father.
Oh my fucking god!
I'm so sorry.
Oh, Heather!
Oh my god!
I know!
This woman, she's like this egg cannon that fires at destructive men.
It's like, hey, are you dysfunctional?
Here's an egg.
Oh, are you really dysfunctional?
Drug addict, pedophile?
Pow pow!
Here's some eggs.
Makes me some babies.
As soon as she found out, she left him, which, good for her, but, I mean, she was...
No, no, no!
No!
She doesn't get it good for her!
I mean, good for her is not, well, your child is less exposed to the pedophile who sired her.
That is not a go-team moment.
Okay.
But she was married, I think at 18, and then had her son, and then they divorced, and I think at 25...
She had her second child?
Yeah.
It's an awkward situation.
What's she living on there, Heather, just out of curiosity?
What do you mean?
Well, how's she paying you?
I work...
I don't imagine the drug addict is making a lot of money, and I can't imagine the pedophile is making a lot of money.
No.
She has her own job working for the state.
And I do too.
I work through the DHHS state of mind.
Oh, so you're paid for by taxes and her salary is paid for by taxes.
Great.
Yeah.
I'm just glad I don't live in so I wouldn't set fire to my money rather than pay taxes, but all right.
I don't get paid like anything at all.
Working for her, I don't get paid at all.
You can live, right?
You get enough to live on.
You don't get enough to live on.
What do you live on?
I work three jobs doing nannying.
Hey kids, you're not going to finish that meal, are you?
Daddy's kind of hungry.
Come on, give me that sippy cup!
I need some calories!
Applesauce!
I do have...
I work for three families nannying and the only family that I make little with is...
This family in particular.
Yeah.
Oh my god.
Oh my god.
I, uh...
You okay?
I'm not sure.
I mean, dear god.
Now, you're not an overly sensitive young lady, I'm going to assume, right?
I'm working on it.
No, I mean overly sensitive.
I don't mean that in a bad way.
What I mean is you're not like – if you hear a swear word, you won't faint off the line, right?
No.
I don't care.
Go at it.
Can I just give a message out to women like this?
Yes, of course.
Would you mind terribly?
I don't mean to put you out of a job.
I just mean that it would be nice if you were mentoring people not likely to end up in prison.
And I'm actually, I'm just going to, I don't know where Mecca is, but I'm just roughly trying to point that way.
Sweet mother of God, ladies, stop fucking him!
I agree.
If he is a drug addict, stop fucking him.
Put down the penis.
Stand back from the sperm.
Get out of my wallet, for God's sakes!
Stop fucking!
Stop it!
Get better at blowjobs.
I don't care.
Just keep the sperm away from the egg.
Never let the two meet!
Because there are people out here who are actually working, getting up in the morning, doing research, making Bill Cosby videos.
I'm not saying it's easy.
I have to re-record.
I can't take it.
Oh, God.
And there are women out there who are holding out for a good guy, and they're trying their very best not to get impregnated by the people at the bottom 1% of the gene pool.
I mean, what?
What the fuck?
Was Coco the gorilla busy that night?
Did I have to downgrade from that?
Well, you're my second choice because the monkey didn't find me attractive.
Not hairy enough.
Too small an ass.
Something like that.
Sweet mother of God, put down the penis!
Step back from the balls!
Oh, God!
This is a lot less intimidating than I thought it would be, talking to you.
Well, that's because I assume you've not bred...
With the dregs of humanity.
Nope.
So, not too threatening to you.
In fact, you're doing your best to help and good for you.
Yep.
Nope.
I just got engaged, so we're...
Oh, good.
Going good, yeah.
Not a dreg addict, right?
No, no.
He's a fantastic man.
We listen to you all the time.
Good.
Good.
Now, your job is to have 12 babies.
I'm afraid.
Look, I hate to give this to you.
You are a functional young lady.
You're an intelligent young lady.
You listen to this show.
Your fiancé listens to this show.
You people, yes with the fucking.
I'm telling you, more sperm, more eggs.
Breed, breed, breed.
Otherwise, we're just going to have to call you selfish.
Because God knows the idiots are breeding.
Now, it wasn't my fault I met my wife later in life.
I'd like to have had 12 kids myself.
But eggs got a bit dusty.
And you're young and so you must, I'm afraid, bear the burden of populating the world with slightly more intelligence than your average lungfish human beings.
And given that there's a strong genetic component to intelligence, I'm afraid you must lie back and think of the future.
And I'm sorry that your boobs are going to end up hanging around your knees.
I'm sorry that your ass is going to follow you around like a...
Queen Elizabeth's train in her coronation and or wedding.
But, you know, take the bullets for the course.
I'm so sorry that your belly is going to end up looking like a punched out sail.
But you must, I'm afraid, breed like a...
Like a breeder.
That really wants to...
That really makes me want to have a lot...
It's for the future!
Come on, don't be selfish!
Oh my gosh.
Okay.
Alright.
Okay, I'm glad I got that off my chest.
And I'm glad I have no voice left for the rest of the show.
But please, dear God, let's spread those genes because this dysgenics, this idiocracy that we're facing is not going to go well in general.
Okay, so why is the young man sucking his thumb?
You're really not asking me that.
Seriously, right?
You know, right?
I don't know.
It's usually when he's...
Oh, the boy.
Sorry, the girl.
The girl.
Oh, yeah.
I know she's four, and, like...
No, she should have stopped by then, right?
Yeah, well, it's a new thing that she started doing recently.
Yeah, it's called regression, right?
Right.
I mean, she picked it up at what I would assume would be her preschool, because another younger boy does it.
And I just don't know what to do.
I've never been in that situation.
I'm 20.
I don't have children.
No, not yet.
I have been working with this family.
Listen, if you want to start doing the show, that's okay by me.
Oh my god!
Is he in the house?
No, he's at his apartment.
Okay, listen.
It's for philosophy and also for the listeners.
But anyway, okay.
Oh my goodness.
But I need to hear you talking the whole time.
No cheating.
Okay, so the youngest girl, she's regressing because her environment is getting progressively more chaotic and disturbed, right?
I don't mean you, obviously.
I just mean the mom, right?
So when kids go through a lot of stress, they regress.
They go back to earlier stages of functioning, right?
I knew that.
Like rocking and stuff?
Oh yeah, it happens in war.
In wartime, this was I think first really described in the First World War, that the soldiers who were wounded would curl into a fetal position and scream for their mothers.
Okay.
Right?
Which is what you do when you are a little boy.
Right.
Well, I wouldn't know, but yeah.
Okay, well, that's what little boys do, right?
But this regression occurs when a phase of development is blocked.
Okay.
Then people sometimes, they just get stuck in a particular place, right?
I mean, like, all babies are, and I just had this debate, so I'll just do it very loosely.
All babies are, quote, selfish, right?
They don't think about other people's needs.
Right.
Now, if babies aren't nurtured, if empathy is not modeled for them, if they're not listened to, if that stuff doesn't happen, then they get stuck there.
Okay.
And they simply don't develop...
I mean, obviously, their brains get more sophisticated.
They learn language.
They educate themselves, or they are educated, and they grow, obviously, physically, right?
But emotionally...
They remain stuck at a very early age.
This also happens when people get addictions.
They tend to get stuck in particular ages, right?
So, you know, if some kid's 13 or he starts using drugs as a coping mechanism, then they are not using any kind of emotional skills as coping mechanisms, right?
They don't learn how to deal with negative emotions.
They just drug themselves, right?
Yeah.
And so...
The thumb sucking obviously comes out of nipple sucking and breastfeeding and so on, which is an instinctive thing for all simians and many mammals.
It's all mammals, right?
So they all feed from their mom's boobs.
So the sucking is an automatic gesture.
It happens when babies are like right born.
You put a nipple in their cheek, they'll turn and suck it, right?
Right.
And for men, this occurs until...
About four and a half minutes after death, if I remember the documentary correctly.
And so she is regressing back to an earlier phase because her environment is so chaotic that she can't – again, this is all just my theories and opinions.
I don't know for sure.
But it's so chaotic that she can't even be stuck.
She actually is regressing.
Okay.
Even if it's like...
It mostly happens when it's very quiet in the house.
I'll put a movie on for the kids if it's later in the afternoon, usually around lunchtime.
That's when I see it happening.
But as long as I keep her active, then it's not much of a problem.
Right, so...
Probably what happens is that when she is distracted, then she is not as aware of the mess and the chaos around her.
But then when she's in a quiet place, her mind, the emotional reality of her situation is probably becoming real to her.
And that's when she needs self-soothing behavior.
Okay.
That makes so much sense.
I have no clue why I didn't think of that.
Sounds like you had a pretty functional upbringing, so that would not be something that would jump into your mind.
I think I mentioned this on the show before, but I sucked my thumb off and on until I was 16.
And I stopped without any effort.
I mean, I tried many times to stop, but I stopped with no effort whatsoever.
My flying to Africa and spending the very first night in my father's house when I was 16, I stopped sucking my thumb and have never wanted to suck it since.
Good for you.
Well, okay.
But no, it's not really good for me.
Sorry, it's just that there was not an effort of will involved in that.
Right.
That was simply, I was sucking my thumb because I didn't have a father and I had a father and I could let go of the breast, right?
And the thumb sucking is the breast, right?
Right.
So once I had a father, even in the same house, then I could let go of the breast.
Okay.
Now, if you can ask the girl, you know, it's very tough to talk about emotions with kids.
I mean, sorry, it's easy to talk about emotions like, are you sad or whatever.
The hard thing with kids, as of course it is with some adults, is to say or to ask, why?
Um...
I do ask why.
I'm a very open-minded person and I take your advice with parenting videos.
I do love, love to listen to them and to use those forward thinking and the upbringing to my everyday job and usually if I ask her why she's sad or why she's Just sitting alone when her friend's upstairs,
I usually get, I don't know, and then she starts to cry, and I don't know what to do from there.
Well, I mean, comfort, of course, right?
I'm sure you do, right?
Hug and hold and so on.
And, you know, we're always tempted to say to kids, oh, everything's going to be fine and all that, but I've always been skeptical of that stuff because nobody can say for sure, and And so on, right?
You know, I just did this speech about everything's going to be alright, but for a kid in her situation, obviously she's got a pretty crazy mom, right?
And she's got a pedophile dad who's obviously, what, heading to prison now?
And she's got a drug addict dad, I mean, of the boy, and I mean, God knows what the stepfather is.
Don't even tell me.
Like, I don't want to know.
The stepfather is amazing.
He's amazing.
He's really good.
Okay, so...
Okay, I mean, listen, I mean, I'm not going to call you a liar, obviously.
No.
But what would an amazing guy be doing inserting himself into this situation?
They met when they were, I believe, in high school.
And then...
That doesn't answer the question.
No, I know.
I'm trying to think.
I was...
I've told their story a long time ago.
No, no, it doesn't matter.
No, honestly, it doesn't matter what their story is.
What would an amazing guy be doing stepping into this nightmare scenario?
For sure, look, these kids are going to be tough.
You know, poor kids.
Like, unbelievably irresponsible mother.
Having children with men who can't provide means she basically turns into a professional state leech off the healthy body of people who are making better decisions.
I think that's unconscionable.
It's absolutely immoral to have children you cannot afford with men who cannot provide.
That means you basically have to turn into a parasite on everyone else.
And...
That's incredibly wrong.
These kids are going to be very tough, not only for her, not only for you, but for the stepdad and God help us for society as a whole in the future.
Right.
Because, you know, we are a grow and release species, right?
We are not hothouse flowers that stay in the greenhouse.
We go walkabout when we are big and strong.
Mm-hmm.
So, what would an amazing guy, like, does he not have better options?
Does he not have, like, a woman who, like you, who is not encumbered with this hellspawn of a situation?
I don't know.
I don't think he honestly would take the time to look for somebody more level-headed like you.
I was with a good relationship.
Well, you know, there's a woman who's getting married to Charles Manson.
Maybe she didn't look for someone more level-headed than Charles Manson, right?
I mean, come on.
This is a special kind of crazy, right?
Right.
But he has this great relationship with his parents.
I do, too, but my boss, I guess, her parents divorced at a young age.
Oh, no, no, no.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I could be completely wrong.
Okay.
I'm giving you my visceral reaction.
Right.
If I had a son who came to me and said, Dad, met this great woman.
She's got a bunch of kids by a bunch of different men.
One of them is a drug addict.
The other one is going to jail for child molestation.
I'd be like, I have a pair of pinking shears and I will cut your balls off if you go near that poisonous hooch again.
Pinking shears, I'm going to leave you with a fucking awning hanging below your penis.
And nothing but blanks.
Because if you go near that quicksand hoochie coochie from hell, snip snip, young fellow.
I mean, how on earth could healthy parents like, ah, run!
What are you talking about?
I don't know.
I would probably emasculate my child, too, if they said that to me.
Yeah, emasculate is probably not strong enough for a word, but I know what you mean.
I know what you mean.
Yeah, it would be a fairly basic Arabic slave trader kind of emasculation, I suppose.
No, listen.
No, look.
I mean, amazing thing or whatever.
Oh, God.
Look, I'm telling you.
I'm telling you, Shura Sunrise...
It's only going to be a matter of time before you realize why the man is there.
And it's not because he's amazing.
Okay.
It's not.
Amazing guys, guys with any brains whatsoever, guys with any self-esteem whatsoever, are not going to sign up for this situation.
She's a single mom with a bunch of different crazy criminal...
Dads, what sane guy with any self-esteem and any spine is going to say, yeah, this is about the best I can do?
I have no clue.
Maybe amazing was not the best choice of words.
I can't participate in that kind of whitewash.
I'm really sorry.
And look, wouldn't it be great in a way if amazing guys were to step in and try and solve all of these problems, but...
I don't care if she can deep-throat a garden hose.
There's just no way that any sane man is going to stick around in this kind of situation, in my opinion.
Okay.
This is some expensive sex, I'm telling you, right?
And it's not like she's so chock-full of virtues and courage and moral fortitude and admirable ethics.
I mean, this is a profoundly irresponsible woman, in my opinion, who has done enormous damage to her children.
And it was in no way, shape, or form even remotely close to being a mother and has not been able to keep a man despite having more than one kid.
That's not admirable.
That's not...
That's not what it's going to draw.
I mean, look, he's probably – I mean, look, I'm sorry for just supposing all of this sort of stuff.
And again, I could be completely wrong.
But this is just some loser white knight who, you know, the woman is spraying off distress like sweat off a champion horse.
In a high desert, she's just spraying off distress and need and all that, and he's like, okay, I'm coming in with my yogurt hat and my rusty sword and, you know, my broomstick I'm pretending is a horse, and I'm going to come and save you, young lady.
And little does he realize that this is sort of like the fly attempting to save the Venus flytrap.
Sniff, sniff, lick, lick, clamp!
Oh, what happened to my testes?
So, this is not...
This is not a woman who is going to draw a great guy.
She's going to manipulate a guy into white knighting while she slowly feasts on what's left of his last kidney.
Okay, then.
But, you know, if I'm wrong, write to us and tell me.
I'm certainly happy to hear.
But I just don't think that's...
Anyway, I think I've made my case.
Belabor the point.
So, I mean, as far as the girl goes and the boy, I mean, gosh, they've got a lot to be heartbroken about, right?
Mm-hmm.
I mean, does she know her daddy's going to prison?
She doesn't know about her dad.
I mean, they want to...
That he's been convicted, is that right?
She doesn't know that he exists.
They want to wait until she's a little bit older.
Mm.
They.
Oh, this they being now the dads involved in these kinds of, like the stepdads involved in these kinds of decisions now too, right?
Yes.
Excellent.
They all lived together, the four of them.
Mm-hmm.
Yep.
Alright.
Well, did her dad ever live with them?
Who, the daughter?
Yeah.
No.
The daughter's dad?
No.
Oh, so he didn't even live.
So they weren't married or anything?
She just had an affair with a guy who turned out to be a pedophile?
No, it was after her divorce.
She dated this pedophile man and They decided together to have a big child.
And then once she was pregnant, he was arrested for it.
And then she cut ties to everything with his family and him.
Holy shit.
I mean, he wasn't having a kid.
He was drawing a goddamn girlfriend.
That's awful to think about.
It is true.
I see what you're saying.
Yeah, but she...
Breed me some loving, baby!
that she decided to start a new life for her child and for the child that was still growing inside of her.
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right.
Bitches be crazy.
Yeah, I mean, just ask questions if you can.
Just ask questions of the kid.
I mean, the problem you're going to face, in my humble opinion, Heather, is that if you start to get these kids emotionally connected, then the mom is probably going to have a big problem with you.
Well, I've been working with them for three years, and we all have a very close bond with each other.
Already.
So...
What?
What?
I know!
Close bond.
Alright, okay.
I'm fine.
I'm not gonna, you know, I'm not gonna...
I certainly don't want to substitute my theories for your experience.
I was like 17 when I met them, so I wasn't as professional as I am now.
Right.
Yeah, which is, um...
I'm gonna reference this later on, um...
Because I just started working with a new family.
I don't know how to express my concern when it comes to the boy being quick to anger.
He takes me aside and he goes, Heather, I don't know what to do.
Why am I so angry?
All of a sudden...
It's like a light switch.
And I'm like, I don't know, buddy.
I don't know what to tell you.
You do know.
You do know.
Come on, Eddie, you know.
You may not want to sell him, but you know.
I don't know how to go about getting through with his mother to talk about this with her.
Okay.
How is his mother's emotional coping skills?
She's very...
She's all over the scale.
She can be very calm.
And then if something upsets her, she'll let you know.
She'll get very quick to anger or to sadness and happiness.
Did the boy have any exposure to the pedophile datist?
No.
He never even met?
No.
He was living with his father at the time.
Living with his father?
The drug addict?
That he now only sees two weekends a month?
Yeah.
He used to be a drug addict.
Why was he living with his father?
I don't know.
I mean, if the father's a drug addict, why are they sending a child to live with him?
He's not a drug addict anymore.
He used to be.
And he started back up.
And that's why he moved in with his mother.
Wait, who moved in with whose mother?
The boy.
Oh, so the boy was living with his father for reasons we don't know, rather than having shared custody, but something freaky going on.
Maybe she wanted to date a guy, and she's like, oh, I don't want a surly boy around, so I'll send him to live with my dad so I can get my groove on.
Well, I don't know what the situation is.
Yeah, but anyway, so he's living with his dad, and then his dad goes back on drugs, right?
Yeah.
And how long did that occur before, say, the son noticed and said something?
Well, I'm pretty sure that the father's now wife called my boss and let her know, and then they shipped him out a few days later.
And then she married the drug addict?
They were married beforehand.
Oh, while he was sober?
They got married?
Yes.
Right.
Yeah.
I'm telling you, I mean, what the fuck is wrong with these women?
There's so many connections there, it's unbelievable.
Right, so he saw his father relapse into drug addiction.
Yes.
What goddamn thing does he have to respect about his parents?
Nothing.
I mean, he's full of contempt towards his parents.
Does society as a whole say your parents are extremely dysfunctional and I'm so sorry?
They do?
Yeah, I mean, I don't...
But not enough to take him away from them?
No.
Right.
So, yeah, dysfunctional.
Now, good luck.
We're putting them in charge.
So, how is he going to feel about his society as a whole?
I don't know.
Sure you do.
I feel like when he's older, he will kind of grow to hate his parents for their decision making.
Wait, wait, wait.
Why when he's older?
I mean, why not?
I'm not saying you should, but I mean, why not now?
Isn't he about to enter puberty or is just entering puberty?
Yes.
Yes.
Right.
Well, welcome to – and this is – look, I'm sorry to interrupt Heather, but this is another thing where a guy of any quality is going to say, oh, you have an extremely disturbed young man here about to enter puberty.
I'm in!
I have no authority over him and he's going to have nothing but contempt for me for hanging with his mom.
And he's getting bigger and stronger and faster and his voice is getting deeper and he's getting gnarly bits growing out of his midriff.
So I'm in.
I mean, God, who would...
What sane human being would sign up for that?
Right.
But, I mean, they've been together for years, so I honestly...
It's not a new thing.
I get it.
Look, I mean, she had a child with a pedophile.
She had a child with a drug addict.
She sent her son to go and live with a guy who relapsed into drugs.
I mean, who then got another woman.
It's like, God Almighty, can we stop the river of money that keeps these people in their infantilized state?
Have some goddamn consequences.
Let's get back to some downtown Abbey slut-shaming, for God's sake.
My male boss works.
At the jailhouse.
So he's a police officer.
And, yeah, I believe that the mother and him started dating when she was still pregnant.
Like, at the end of her pregnancy.
Like, we're friends, and then after she had a baby, got together.
She's big with the pedophile's child, and he starts dating her.
I think they rekindled their friendship while she was still pregnant and then started dating after she was born.
But yeah.
You know, I'm just going to need a fucking loofah made of fire to scrub myself clean after this.
I'm sorry.
No, don't apologize.
It's not your fault.
Look, I'm glad you're there for what it's worth.
Jesus.
I feel like...
With me being there, I'm the only, like, anchor for these children.
No, I get it.
But you also are not seeing things, I think, as clearly as you could, which I can understand, right?
I mean, we all want this fantasy that Jesus, the functional ball-bearer, is going to come into our life and fix our problems, right?
Mm-hmm.
My last two boyfriends were completely messed up, but this guy is wonderful.
No, he's not.
Unless you've gone through a huge amount of therapy.
I've suggested that they do family therapy.
I'm not going to do that.
No, listen, I'm even happy to send women their money.
Honestly, I mean because it's not the kid's fault that Mama's hoochie hooch is a freeway at rush hour.
Right.
It's not their fault.
Parents choose to have children.
Children don't choose their parents.
Yeah.
Can the women at least feel a tiny sense of shame for ripping off more responsible people?
I would, if that was my position.
Yeah, I mean, can the single moms at least say, well, you know, sorry, I made a mistake, exposed my kids to a huge amount of dysfunction, and I'm taking a huge amount of tax money because I don't have a man to provide for me?
Sorry!
But, you know, there's never any of that.
Oh, they're heroes!
The single moms are heroes!
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, this is what the kid has to look forward to.
The sun.
You ready for some statistics?
Sure.
63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes, five times the average.
90% of all homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes, 32 times the average.
85% of all children who show behavior disorders come from fatherless homes, 20 times the average.
80% of rapists with anger problems come from fatherless homes.
Rape culture is single mom culture, ladies.
14 times the average.
71% of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes, 9 times the average.
Children with fathers who are involved are 40% less likely to repeat a grade in school, 70% less likely to drop out of school.
Children with fathers who are involved are more likely to get A's in school.
75% of all adolescent patients in chemical abuse centers come from fatherless homes, 10 times.
The average 70% of youths in state-operated institutions come from fatherless homes, nine times the average.
85% of all youths in prison come from fatherless homes, 20 times the average.
43% of U.S. children live without their father.
90% of adolescent repeat arsonists lived only with their mother.
There's more.
But father absence is an environmental toxin.
You know, people freak out about ALR in the apples, lead in the paint, asbestos in the ceiling.
No, no, no.
Fatherlessness is the ultimate toxin for a child.
It doesn't mean that every child who grows up without a father is destined to these things.
Of course not.
Not everyone who smokes get lung cancer.
But you still see some pretty ugly pictures on the outside of cigarette packs.
So, anyway, I'm sorry to hear about all of this.
I'm obviously happy that you're there.
It's going to help the kids.
Kids can survive on a tiny scrap of better behavior.
Mm-hmm.
They can.
I mean, I got by and sort of kept the hope and the dream alive on little scraps of better behavior.
And you, of course, are pretty constant force in these kids' lives.
You've been there since the girl was one or two, and that's great.
The boy has a lot to be angry about.
The boy has a lot to be angry about.
And, you know, I mean...
You're obviously not a child psychologist, neither am I, or any kind of psychologist for that matter, but the reality is that, you know, it's what Marilyn Manson, what he said about the, I'm not saying these guys are Columbine shooters, but it's what he said about the Columbine shooters.
Someone said, well, what would you say to those kids?
He said, I wouldn't say anything, I'd listen to them.
Which is what apparently nobody else did.
I remember that.
Listening is very powerful.
And it'll take time.
You know, I mean, it'll take time.
You don't just sort of sit down and ask kids questions and outcomes, everything.
They have to trust you.
They have to understand that they have something to say.
They have to not be in self-protective mode.
And if you just keep asking questions, you know, how's your life?
What bothers you about your life?
What's your future like?
Where do you see yourself when you're 30?
Ask a bunch of questions.
Ask a bunch of questions.
Keep asking those questions even when you have to be persistent.
Especially when you have to be persistent, and I think you'll do those kids some good.
That's an amazing part of my job.
I do love to ask questions to children to see what they would say.
The boy who is 10, he just started to open up to me more.
Probably the past eight months, he's been talking More to me about more personal stuff that happened in his life.
About his relationship with his father.
How he feels with school.
They just bought a house.
How he's sad about not being able to have his friends that lived at their old place.
But that he's afraid to make new friends.
He's just starting to open up a lot more than he ever has.
Which I think is...
Good for you.
Will you keep us posted on how it goes?
Yes, of course.
Fantastic.
Well, thank you so much for your call, Heather, and thanks, of course, for the great work that you're doing.
And we hope to hear back from you.
Mike, who do we have next?
Alright, Evan is up next.
And Evan wrote in and said, I had a conversation with feminists about whether it was moral or not to be a feminist.
Against all the evidence presented and all the logical fallacies I pointed out during the argument, they clung to their feminist beliefs.
My question is, is it morally wrong to be a feminist slash inaccurate?
Okay, but definitions of feminism are pretty broad.
What definition are you using?
Uh...
Hi there, Stefan.
I was going to say thank you for coming out for morality and teaching rational thinking and stuff like that, because it's really changed my life.
Thank you very much.
It's great to hear.
I appreciate that.
Okay.
I was saying more on active feminists, like the ones that actually do stuff for the feminist community.
They tend to objectify men differently.
Did the feminists end to objectify men?
What do you mean?
Like, there was this one feminist that she came out with a rape story about this, like, Republican guy, and she didn't say no.
She actually flirted with him and stuff like that.
You mean Lena Dunham?
Yes.
Oh, Lena Dunham, right.
The woman who...
It's currently canceled her book tour because when some people quoted her autobiography back, they accused her of child molestation, and then she threatened to sue them.
And they said, well, you can't sue us for defamation if we're simply reprinting parts of your book, for God's sakes.
And I think she's since dropped out of public sight.
That's the same woman, the woman who wrote Girls?
Yes.
Is she a feminist?
I think so.
I think she's come out saying that.
I mean, I don't know.
It seems to me, shouldn't feminists be writing heroic women?
I mean, the women of the show Girls, and the men too, are just about the most repulsive group of screwed up human beings you'd ever be so unlikely to meet within earshot.
I mean, I just couldn't pay me enough money to not be in the same room as people like that.
I mean, they're just a completely horrifying bunch of soul-shredding, narcissistic, screwed up monsters.
And I'm appalled.
I mean, the show itself is, it's like the surgery channel in 3D and slow motion.
But without any education that comes out of it.
So, just wanted to sort of mention that.
This does not seem to be feminism to me at all.
But, you know, what do I know?
Apparently I'm not a feminist.
All I do is stay home and raise my daughter.
What the hell would I know about any of this stuff?
Right.
No, the group of people that were trying to tell me that she was a feminist, so I took their word for it.
Oh, right.
Yeah.
Just in general, though, if I present people with rational thinking and evidence suggesting that my sight is true, and they're ignorant towards that, does that make them immoral for standing for a cause that...
I mean, fuck, ethics don't have anything to do with gender relations these days, in my humble opinion.
Right.
Look, if a Brinks truck explodes in a poor neighborhood, and tens of thousands of hundred dollar bills go fluttering through the neighborhood, what can we say about people's ethics in that situation?
It was a misunderstanding, or like, No, look, we can say, look, there's a lot of people who would not go and shoplift or rob a bank who would grab a couple of those $100 bills, right?
Oh, yes.
Right.
So I think that is, like, there's a lot of people who wouldn't normally have an affair, but there are these services that you can buy as a husband or a wife where some incredibly hot person goes up to your spouse and tries to pick them up.
true 10, a gigolo, a stunner, and not a prostitute in that sense because they don't actually have sex.
But they basically go up with recording gear on and they really flirt with an attempt to pick up your spouse.
Really?
Oh, yeah.
No, you can get these services and people sometimes do it for divorce proceedings or whatever.
But, you know, I mean, we've seen the scene a million times where some schlub, some guy is in a hotel bar and some stunning woman comes up and starts flirting with him and he's Finally, a woman who sees my inner George Costanza qualities as some Brad Pitt Adonis type.
I can't believe it took this long for a woman to find me this attractive.
How wonderful.
And then, of course, they go have sex and then she asks for money because she's a prostitute, right?
I mean, this is...
So gender relations, to me...
Looking at the ethics of gender relations these days is, to me, identical to looking at the respect for private property that occurs when untraceable $100 bills are floating through the air of a poor neighborhood, or a rich neighborhood for that matter.
You can't judge the ethics of people in an enormously economically distorted situation.
Does that make...
So, women biologically...
Women need men because women who want kids need men because women get pregnant and breastfeed and get pregnant and breastfeed and get pregnant and breastfeed generally.
So women need men.
Now it's not often that you're going to bite the hand that feeds you.
And men need women and I'm just talking about that.
So women need men biologically.
Yes.
But now that women can vote to take away the property of men largely through the government, through welfare, through child benefits, through government schools, through public housing, through the goddamn roads that they don't have to primarily pay for, through government through the goddamn roads that they don't have to primarily pay for, through government I mean you name it.
The amount of subsidies flowing towards women who have kids who don't have a husband, We were just talking about this, right?
We've got some government job, right?
I think women are 40% more likely to be employed by the government, right?
It's just – it's more of the welfare state.
And they get the food stamps and they get – I mean, it's crazy.
I mean, I think I remember talking about listening to some woman.
At a park talking about another woman saying, well, you know, okay, so I've got this kid and I get this benefit and I get this benefit and I get this benefit.
Now, if I have another kid, I get another $600 from this and I get another $450 from that and you put those two together, that's more than enough to cover additional food.
Plus, of course, I can get food subsidies if I need to and, of course, the schools are free and this and that and the other.
So she basically – children have turned through the state from liabilities to assets.
Which is the most insane thing that could be conceivably imagined.
Because basically you're just paying the dumbest people to breed.
The people with the least opportunities.
I mean, you say to, I don't know, Sheryl Sandberg, well look, you know, you can get $1,400 a month by having a kid from the government.
She'd be like, are you kidding me?
I could go be the CEO of everything and make a million dollars a year.
So it's all the women who are like, well, it's this or a maid.
It's this or waitering.
They have less to lose and more to gain from these kinds of income transfers.
I don't take it personally.
I mean, because the government has stepped in to save idiot women from bad vagina hurling choices.
You're supposed to throw your vagina out Yeah.
like a good guy, a solid guy a provider a decent stable, you know, maybe not the sexiest, nastiest hottest sex you're ever going to have but, you know, crazy sex you pay for for pretty much what feels like an eternity Right So, yeah, I mean the woman's like oh, it came back with a functioning set of balls with a provider attached, yay, good job vagina and let's get a ring on both her fingers That's the job.
Now, I mean, women can just have hobby vaginas.
They can have walkabout vaginas.
They can just go have fun with their vaginas and they can turn the most elemental force of life itself into self-indulgent recreation because they can run to daddy government to pay for all of their idiocies.
And so it's not.
I mean, so you can afford to put down men.
Of course you can.
I mean, because you don't need men.
Because you can go and get the government to pay for all of your mistakes.
As I've sort of pointed out, the equivalent for men is if the government forced women to have sex with men three times a week.
I mean, how many men would go to the difficulties of dating?
I mean, some would, of course, right?
But a lot of men would not, right?
And we see this even with pornography, right?
That men are masturbating rather than settling down, right?
Yes.
So this idea that feminism is anything other than a shadow cast by the gun of the state, at least in its modern incarnation.
I don't mean equality under the law and all that.
That's fantastic, but that was all achieved fairly long ago.
But so, yeah, modern feminism, I mean, it's...
It doesn't have any reference to reality.
It is really the shadow of the crime of the state or the crimes of the state.
So I don't view it as a belief system that needs to be debated.
It is simply a weird tumor that has come out of an incredibly artificial situation that has arisen over the last 40 or 50 years where the government rushes in to save women with stolen, borrowed or printed money from their stupid mistakes.
And therefore, whatever you subsidize, you get more of.
And so you subsidize stupidity and irresponsibility.
You get more stupidity and irresponsibility.
And whatever you tax, you diminish.
And you're taxing responsibility.
Look, one of the reasons why people don't want to have kids and don't want to breed is like, fuck it.
I'm not paying for – like, no, I'm not going to pay for my own kids and half the kids on the block.
As well.
Forget it.
I'm not getting involved in it.
I'm not going to bother.
And it takes a certain amount of IQ and a certain amount of intelligence to be able to understand that.
And so the smartest – this is why we're getting dysgenics and this is why the Flynn effect is diminishing.
This is why advancements in IQ are diminishing.
It's statistically true.
It's very well verified by now.
And this is why it's happening because the smartest people are recognizing that for the most part having children is a suckers game if you are going to work.
And the people who have the most opportunities want the least welfare.
And the people with the least opportunities, the dumbest...
Dumb as a bag of hammers among us, both male and female, well, for them, pump out some kids and live on welfare, that's a pretty good deal.
Sure beats waitering.
And so, to me, like, sort of modern feminism, all this kind of stuff, it's like, yeah, you go have your power, sisterhood, and fine, you know?
But to me...
It is the most retrograde thing that you could conceivably imagine.
I mean, Victorian women had more independence and more self-respect than this because they are running to men to get things for free.
They are running to the state, which they complain is patriarchal, and they're running to policemen who are usually men, who are armed with guns built and made and invented by men.
And so these women are making irresponsible choices and running to men to get those men to give them things so they don't have to live the consequences of their decisions.
To call that feminism is like the sickest joke you could conceive of.
It's like, I'm a feminist and I keep women chained in the basement.
I'm going to call that feminism.
It's like, I don't think that's feminism.
I would respect feminists who said, hey, single moms, are you kidding me?
Stop taking government benefits because the government is the patriarchy.
So you are taking things from the patriarchy so you don't have to be responsible.
Stop that.
Any woman who takes money from the government using cops who extract it from usually men by force is not a feminist.
Is an exceedingly bad bride of the state.
And that to me, I would admire that.
I'd be like, yeah, you know what?
I'm down with that.
You're teaching self-responsibility.
You're teaching women not to rely on the patriarchy, not to rely on the government.
But basically, all that's happened is feminists have peeled women off men and put them giving vote blowjobs to politicians.
I mean, that's sad.
That's pitiful.
How free are these women now?
They can take things and they don't even have to clean anything.
They don't even have to cook anyone dinner.
I mean, so if feminists said, listen, honey, you're taking state benefits?
You are the exact opposite of a feminist.
You are more enslaved than if you had an abusive husband.
Stop doing that.
I would admire that, but of course, feminism doesn't have anything to do with any of that stuff, as we've talked about on this show.
But look, I mean, it's fine.
It's, you know, have your fun.
You know, make fun of men.
Go for it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We're all idiots.
We're all selfish.
We're all greedy.
We're all bastards.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay, fine, fine.
It's okay because the government's going to run out of money soon.
I mean, I don't mean to laugh because the kids, it's not their fault, right?
The kids that these women are having, it's not their fault.
Right.
It's, you know, fine.
Go for it.
I mean, have your fun.
I mean, yeah, make fun of men.
I mean, your government's going to run out of money.
And then all these women are going to try and find some guy to latch onto.
You know, when the benefits stop flowing, when the government runs out of money, and you see this happening.
I mean, you saw this happen with the fall of the Soviet Union, right?
A lot of feminists in the Soviet Union, a lot of feminists in Eastern Europe.
Because they didn't like the Male patriarchy.
And then when the government collapsed, they all latched on to men.
Now we need you!
You guys are great!
We missed you so much!
I can't believe those other women said mean things about you!
Give me some money!
I mean, it's just funny.
I mean, yeah, it's a bunch of noise from a bunch of people who are stealing from the productive.
And fine, you know, but eventually the parasite runs out of host.
And then the women are not going to sit there and say, well, I guess this gig is over.
I guess this free reign is over.
So off we go.
Get a job.
No.
Find another host.
Go find another host.
Go find another host.
It's like all the people who complain about white countries.
Wait, where are the white countries?
Let's go to the white countries.
They have the most freedom.
Imperialists.
I mean, it's just funny, right?
I mean, it's just – it's a bunch of noise and I just – I can't take any of it seriously.
It's just a phase that society is going through during the end times of the democracy we're currently going – like engaged conspicuously, concentratedly on this economic seppuku.
And women are getting a bunch of free stuff now and therefore they can – They have the liberty to scorn men, and it's become a popular pastime to make fun of men, and men are idiots.
That's fine.
It's fine.
It's fine.
And then the government's going to run out of money, and the women are like, oh, shit.
Folk flow job's not working anymore?
Oh, man.
I've got to go find a man, right?
And hopefully the men will do the right thing, which is – well, let's not get into that right now.
Okay.
So – I don't know.
I just...
Why would you debate feminism?
I mean, it's got no basis in...
Like, sort of modern, sort of Lena Dunham stuff and feminism.
I mean, why would you bother?
I mean, it's a passing phase due to extremely weird economic situations.
Right.
I don't know.
I just...
I saw it as a serious thing.
I didn't really see that as the basis of it.
I saw it as, like, these women are actually pushing for these...
Types of things.
Well, what types of things?
Give me an example.
What are they pushing for?
Well, crap.
I heard somewhere that they were pushing for a tax just for being a white male, but I didn't verify that.
Tax for being a what?
A white male.
Sure.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, talk about the taxes.
Make as much noise as you want.
Yeah, go for it.
Tax being a white male.
Absolutely.
I mean, first of all, there is already a tax on being a white male in general, right?
Because white males, I mean, other than white Asians, white males have the highest income, progressive income tax and all that.
Yeah, I mean, in England, they're talking about, I think, taxing unmarried men.
Right.
I mean, and how sad is that?
I mean, what a confession of unattractiveness that is.
I mean, what a confession of unattractiveness that is.
We are such an ugly gender that we need to tax men who won't marry us.
I could do some sit-ups, right?
I could go to the Stairmaster.
I could read some ethics and philosophy.
I could learn how to be a generous, kind, considerate, decent human being.
No!
That's a lot of work.
Let's just tax people who won't fuck me.
Or commit.
Jesus, are you kidding me?
How sad is that?
How sad is that?
It's like the women who complain about pornography.
I mean, good lord, lady, read the Kama Sutra.
Up your fucking game.
Get some flexibility.
Do some Russian gymnast shit.
I don't know.
But compete, for God's sakes.
You don't hear me bitching about, well, you need to ban reality TV because people don't have enough time for philosophy podcasts.
No!
I just have to get better until people listen.
That's my job.
I have to keep getting better.
I don't get to ban the competition.
I don't get to tax sports podcasts for speaking about idiots ramming their thick skulls into each other on a regular basis.
No!
I must up my game!
I must get better!
You know, if I want people to play tennis with me, maybe I should learn how to hit the ball and not throw my racket at them when I lose a point.
No!
No!
People must be taxed who don't play tennis with me!
Oh my god.
Oh my god.
Is that what it's come to?
That people with a straight face are saying?
Ban pornography!
Because I don't want to compete with it.
No!
I'm sorry.
Pornography exists.
Compete with it.
Be so great that your man wouldn't even think of looking at digital shit like that.
It's an opportunity to up your game, for God's sakes.
Embrace it.
Take it.
I shouldn't say take it.
Find out what your man likes and do it in completely unexpected ways.
A man does not look at pornography right after he comes.
That is a basic fact.
Okay, maybe when he's 15, but you shouldn't be having sex with him when he's 15, right?
You're listening, teachers in government schools?
Stop it!
Drop the peach fuzz.
So, I just...
God, up your stupid game, for God's sakes.
Don't tax men who don't want to get married be women that men want to marry.
But that's how sad and lazy we've become.
It's not just women.
I mean, men do it too.
It's fucking lazy.
Yes!
We've got a digital universe now.
Yes!
You know what?
Guys, your girlfriend can go on dating sites if she's not happy.
It used to be pretty hard to go out and get male attention.
So guys, you know, there's like six billion Dating sites out there for every conceivable kink that you can imagine.
So know that that's out there, right?
Tinder!
I don't know why Mike put that in my chat window in an exclamation mark.
Mike, do you want to share a profile?
One of these days I'll explain Tinder to you stuff.
What is Tinder?
Tinder is...
Oh, wait.
Oh, no, I know.
It's what lumberjacks say when the tree's about to fall.
Tinder!
It is the latest dating profile deal, which pretty much just has a picture, a profile that I think is contained to, I don't know, 20 words, and age and gender, and that's about it.
And you can go...
My penis only fits on a widescreen.
Is that...
If you're looking at my penis on a cell phone, it is not to scale!
Oh my god.
You need a 4K Sony Trinitron 72 inches!
Actually, that's probably too much.
Unless it's a female horse.
No, so what is Tinder is basically you just have to, what, in 20 words, say why somebody should go out with you?
It's pretty much picture-focused.
The words are far less important.
But it's pretty much, oh, you're hot, okay, I like you.
Oh, you're not, no, no, no.
And then if two people who like each other's pictures, then they get to chat.
And it's based on your location.
So it's like, alright, I just want people that are within five miles of me.
Five miles?
Yeah, it's pretty much just a giant hookup app.
So this is basically, if you want to get strangled and dumped in the woods, this is the place you want to go, right?
It's for you, yes.
I don't know you very well, but if you could get 220 pounds of me pinned under you, that would be excellent.
Do you fit in the trunk of a Buick?
Do you fit in the trunk of a Buick?
I like the Buick.
That's an important detail.
I think most guys would be looking for someone who fits in the back of a Boxster, but that's perhaps another situation.
So Tinder is basically what looks like patient zero for the transmission of STDs, is that?
I don't know if that study's been done yet, but the future may do it so.
Right.
Bring hyperdermic!
Bring penicillin quickly, Stan!
I have a slow, steady drip at the bedside.
Maybe that'll be an in-app purchase for the Tinder app.
Penicillin, bloop!
Can you lick my phone?
Oh, I'm afraid my phone has died.
I'm afraid I'm going to have to leave.
Right.
And so I'm going to assume that on Tinder, most people's photos are like several years old and sort of like shoulders up for the ladies and all that.
Guys with baseball caps and I don't know.
I think there's websites because I've seen it on Reddit.
There's actual sites dedicated to just bad Tinder profiles with misleading photos and just all types of crazy nonsense.
All the angles, you know, the woman that's 400 pounds or the man that's 400 pounds.
At the one angle where they look like they're somewhat presentable.
300 pounds!
200 sold!
Chevy Chasers, you have met your match.
It's my Eldorado!
Cover me, boys!
I'm going in!
I've got a little miner's cart with a parakeet on the end.
Good luck!
Pitch up the tent folds, boys!
I'm going in!
Push back the flap!
All right.
I'm gonna find where the flesh meets.
There will be my mother.
Okay.
Vagina's a tad loose.
I think she's keeping chickens.
Eggs!
Strong eggs!
Oh my god.
Echo!
Echo!
Marco!
Marco Polo!
That's right!
Oh my god.
Honey, have you seen my keys?
Wow.
A country from whose burn no traveler returns.
Sorry.
I thought I'd throw a little Shakespeare in.
Just to, you know, butch it up a little.
Class it up a little.
Tinder to Shakespeare.
I like it.
Tinder to Shakespeare.
That's right.
All right.
So, yeah, so look, I mean, people are like, yes, there's Ashley Madison, right, which is a site for married people who want to bring home new bacteria to their nest, right?
And, yeah, these things exist, so good, you know, that means up your game.
Like, you don't want to be the big fish in a little pond.
I like the fact that there's more competition.
I mean, the fact that with the help of the listeners, we're growing this show is great.
Because every time we gain somebody's attention span, I know it's not because their only other alternative is to watch their grandfather snore in some Amish backward paradise, right?
I mean, when people listen to this show, they're doing so when there's a digital universe of near-infinite entertainment out there.
So that's good.
That means I have to get better.
I have to continually push the envelope.
I have to find ways to be provocative without being downright insulting to everyone.
I have to find a way to get better ideas, more ideas across to people in more entertaining ways.
I have to keep upping my game.
That's good.
That's what we want.
So yeah, I mean, men with regards to women, The competition for men is the state.
And we have to find a way, if we want to, right?
We have to find a way to outcompete the state.
If we want to get married, we don't have to, right?
And yeah, for women, there's dating sites, there's pornography for men too, right?
I mean, so we have to find ways to outcompete that stuff.
Great!
You know, do you want to be the person of mediocre intelligence among idiots, or do you want to be Einstein?
Well, I suggest, you know, measure yourself by the highest standard you can.
I mean, how the hell do you know what's possible?
How the hell do you know what's possible?
When I first started this show, never imagined.
Never imagined it was going to make me a penny.
Never imagined it could be a job.
When I quit my career to come, it took in this like 75% plus pay cut and all that.
I mean, I was working it out thinking, okay, well, if I can make X dollars amount, I guess that's not bad, right?
Right.
And so, I mean, just keep working, keep doing the best you can, keep growing.
I think that's fantastic.
So to me, the feminist is like, oh, yeah, you know, more government.
Yeah, you can print some money.
You can go into debt.
But that's fine, you know, because idiots think that The tumor of artificial economics has something to do with intellectual superiority.
Why do people buy feminism?
Not in all of its context, but in this sort of Lena Dunham style.
Why do people buy this shit?
Is it because it's believable?
Is it because there's strong arguments and empirical evidence?
No!
Of course not.
It's just because the economy has been so fucked up by statism That it seems vaguely plausible for a short amount of time.
You know, just don't like feminism?
Wait for the crash.
I mean, you don't need to argue against it.
You don't.
I mean, it's like if somebody builds a house of cards and there's a tornado coming, you don't need to kick it over.
Nature will do its work.
Math will do its work.
Reality will do its work.
Fiat currency and end times democracy will do its work.
You don't need to lift a finger.
Okay.
Yeah.
I know.
I'm a woman.
I have paper!
Well, okay.
Okay, good luck with the paper.
You ever see those pictures of the women shuffling Weimar Republic notes into an oven to keep warm?
There's your paper.
Here's some Zimbabwe dollars.
You're rich!
Like, well...
Anyway, so I just wanted to sort of mention that.
I wouldn't...
You know, and at this point, too, I mean...
I've talked about bring the reality of statism to people and I think that's fine too.
Bring the reality of feminism to people, fine.
I hugely respect women who are self-reliant, who are independent.
I watched Michelle Malkin on The View the other day attempting to downshift to the monosyllabic brain of Joy Behar or whatever her name is.
And that is, you know, she's a firebrand.
She is, you know, a huge amount of respect for that, for what she does.
I mean, I obviously don't agree with her in much.
She's a conservative, but I mean, she works hard and she's been a journalist for like 17 years and she's written a book on Obama and corruption, which is actually a good book, very interesting to read.
And she's fierce and I think that's magnificent.
I think she's great and I think this is true of some women on the left.
I think it's true of some women on the right.
But the idea that there are these feminists who basically just, you know, I'm uncomfortable.
Get me a law.
I mean, that's just so – I'm not happy.
Men, go get me something.
I mean, oh my god.
I mean, how ridiculously pampered and narcissistic and cliched woman hysterical could you be?
I mean, these people make the moth figures in Tennessee Williams plays look like Xena the Warrior Princess, for God's sakes.
I mean, it's just so retro and pitiful.
And I just think it's, I mean, what's, I know I've done my arguments against it and so on, so I'm not saying don't do it, obviously.
What the hell would that even mean?
But I get that it's funny more than it is tragic.
You know, like 40 years ago, it probably would have been more tragic than funny.
But now it's just, it's become such a cliché.
I mean, it's like this white privilege stuff.
It's like, I'm privileged to be taxed and hated, and I'm the recipient of all the racist bile that no one will admit.
Oh, I can taste the privilege.
It tastes like batteries.
I mean, it's just ridiculous.
I mean, it's just a bunch of noise.
You know, the crash will come, and the relations between the racists, between the genders, this will all work itself out when the crash comes.
People aren't going to listen to reason.
It's too late in the game.
I mean, look, can you imagine some politician saying, no, you know what?
Welfare doesn't work anymore.
Well, all these crying women will hold up their children under the cameras and the, you know, I mean, people would just go insane.
It's too late.
You know, we've got generations of people where the entire work ethic has been wiped out.
You know, hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution developing a work ethic.
Boom!
Gone in two generations.
People growing up all around the world, they've never seen an adult who has a job.
Can you – I mean that is so staggering.
I mean because in the past, there were people who grew up with money and they didn't necessarily know someone who had a nine-to-five job.
At least they had to manage their money.
They had to know something about economics.
They had to know something about investments.
They had to know something about real estate.
They had to know something about wealth retention.
But it's unthinkable that poor people are growing up and they've never seen a human being who gets up and shaves and goes to work.
They have no example of that.
I mean, imagine, if there were two generations of people who never spoke English, English would fundamentally be gone.
I guess some people would study it like they study Latin.
But Latin is a dead language.
I mean, the accumulated work ethic concentration, all of the very intangible skills that comes from growing up around people who work, all gone.
All gone.
And the only thing that's going to bring this back is a catastrophe.
We are so late in the stage of addiction to fiat currency and debt and vote buying that it is going to be a massive catastrophe and then people are going to have to Firm up in a pretty big goddamn hurry.
And they will.
They will.
I mean, you can get this stuff back for sure.
But holy crap.
I mean, the amount of human capital that has been destroyed through the welfare state and even through the military-industrial complex, although in the military-industrial complex, they still work.
They work for evil, right?
I mean, they're stormtroopers, not couch surfers.
So it'll be a little bit of an easier transition.
They do have some skills and so on.
All of the skills of deferral of gratification and of negotiation and of submission to legitimate authority and all of that, I mean, that's all just been nuked, irradiated out of the souls of tens of millions of people just in America, let alone in Europe.
And so, yeah, I mean, whatever people are talking about, you know, we need to help the poor.
It's like, yeah, you can keep making noise, but running out of money.
Oh, women can go their own way even if they have four kids.
Great.
Okay, fantastic.
Running out of money, you can make all the noise you want and we're just going to wait because, look, reason is not going to correct people.
It's too late in the game.
But we put reason out there so that when people understand that things have to change, they will hopefully pay a little bit more attention to those people who predicted it correctly, right?
Right.
And so, yeah, I mean, you can argue with feminists.
I don't generally argue with feminists.
I mean, I'll make fun of feminism as, you know, again, not all blah, blah, blah, right?
You get sort of what kind of stuff that I'm talking about, you know, like Emma Watson at the UN. Okay, fine, you know, go to the UN. UN's going to run out of money too.
And, you know, I don't know.
It's just, there's just so much, you know, okay, fine, you know.
I mean, it's like being lectured to on financial intelligence and financial responsibility by a guy who's a million dollars in debt and makes 25 grand a year.
It's like, okay, you can lecture me all you want, but I can see the bills behind you.
I mean, I just can't take any of it seriously at all.
I'm against affirmative action.
I'm for affirmative action.
Yeah, yeah, fine.
Yeah.
The government's running out of money.
You think they're going to hang on to affirmative action and let go of the security guards around their compounds?
I don't think so.
You think they're going to be sending the cops to welfare ghettos when they're going to need protection from roving mobs in Washington?
You've got to be kidding me.
And look, I mean, I think it is a genuine tragedy.
I don't mean to sort of make light of this, whatever's going to happen is going to happen.
But when you are into philosophy, you take a long view of things.
And a society that resolutely refuses to listen to reason will go through a staggering change.
And like it or not, that's the way it's going to roll.
And people are going to suffer.
And I think it's a shame that people are going to suffer.
But they deserve to suffer because the price of irrationality is suffering.
Until we really get that lesson...
I mean, what people say, it's just a bunch of nonsense.
Sorry, I've interrupted a bunch, but go ahead.
No, that's completely fine.
I understand.
Like, I get it now.
I didn't really see that as a fundamental core of what it was.
I just saw it as, like, an actual thing to, you know, debate.
No, it's government.
I want the government to give me X. Oh.
Yep.
Okay.
You can save me.
Go ahead.
Say it.
Pretty much just quicken up the process.
Yeah, absolutely.
Just say it.
You can say whatever you want.
But it's not got anything to do with philosophy or anything real.
It's just people have gotten away with a scam for a while and think it can go on forever.
Anyway, listen, we've got to get on to the next caller, otherwise I'm never going to get to my re-record.
Okay, thank you so much, Stefan.
Thank you, man.
Alright, up next is Nicholas, and he wrote in and said, people with the lowest economic value have the most to gain from resorting to the power of the gun.
They can simply go out and steal from others.
How would a free society avoid this from happening?
What?
Hi, Stefan.
Hi.
So you're saying that crime is correlated with poverty?
I'm saying that without some kind of obedience to the law and some kind of threat of being held in check...
Okay, no, no.
Listen, I'm sorry to interrupt, but we've got to get a bit more efficient than this.
So, do you have currently any self-defense against inflation?
No.
I mean, I don't mean like financial, like I go and invest something or whatever, right?
If somebody comes to your house and wants to steal something of yours, your laptop or your TV or something like that, right?
Then if they get away with it, it's going to cost you $1,000, right?
Right.
Now, what measures, let's talk about a free society, what measures could you put in place to prevent somebody from stealing your laptop?
Better house.
You could have a gated community.
You could have a security system.
You could have a thumbprint-enabled laptop that would self-destruct if somebody else tried to hack into it.
You could have a voice-activated laptop or you could have a face-activated laptop where you had to be changing expressions so people couldn't use a photo.
I mean, you could do a DNA-activated laptop.
I mean, there's so many different things that you could do to prevent somebody from stealing your TV. Right?
Now, if you're making $50,000 a year and inflation is 2%, then you're being stolen from $1,000 a year, right?
Right.
So, what can you do about that in the current society?
Not much.
In general, I agree with you.
No, no.
It's important.
It's important because compared to what is the big question in philosophy, right?
So, when individuals come to steal from you...
You can take countermeasures.
You can also have a gun in your house.
You can also have security guards that patrol the neighborhood.
You could inject cocaine directly into the eyeball of George Zimmerman and have him stand on your porch vibrating slowly.
So there's lots of things that you could do to protect yourself from breaking into thieves.
But do we really want to live in a society where everybody is trying to protect themselves against everybody else?
I'm sorry, I don't quite understand what you mean.
I'm thinking about the situation of early days United States, at least what the movies portray.
Oh God, you're not going to give me the Wild West thing, are you?
No, no.
The Wild West is a pure invention of government propaganda.
There was almost no crime in the Wild West.
Almost no crime.
They have this myth which was like, well, you know, there was just chaos until the sheriff and the government came along and reined in the bad guys.
No.
Bad guys didn't go to the frontier.
They stayed in the cities and worked for the government as politicians.
That's what the bad guys did.
They worked as tax collectors.
They worked as customs officers.
They worked as politicians.
They weren't out there trying to steal a pig in a farm in the middle of Wyoming.
I mean that's not what the bad guys did.
The bad guys gravitate to the government and even the private thieves stayed in the cities.
They don't want to go out To some place in the middle of nowhere where people have guns and they can hide the body in a ditch, right?
I mean, there was almost no crime out in what was called the Wild West, just a fiction invented by government to make people afraid of freedom.
But you have modern examples where you – in Africa where the state is non-existent, warlords pop up everywhere and they harass the villagers and take what they produce and so forth.
Can you tell me where in Africa the government is non-existent?
Are you saying that these countries are without government?
Can you just give me...
In the countryside, yes, they are.
Many of them.
Ghana...
No, no, no, no.
Hang on, hang on, hang on.
Okay, so you said Sierra Leone?
Yeah.
Okay, let me just look.
Well, I haven't followed up the last couple of years.
No, no, no.
You're giving me an argument.
You're giving me an argument.
Don't back away from it now.
The argument is...
Let me have a look here.
No, no.
Hang on.
Hang on.
Wait for it.
Wait for it.
Okay, I'm just going to wiki here.
I'm not going to any libertarian sites.
I'm just going to wiki.
Let's see.
What is the government of...
Okay, it's got provinces, so that doesn't seem like no government.
Presidential Constitutional Republic is the government in Sierra Leone.
Yes.
And let's see here.
Oh, sorry, I went to Republic not to...
Okay.
It's considered to be predominantly Muslim and influential Christian minority, one of the most religiously tolerant nations in the world.
That's nice.
Diamonds and all that kind of stuff.
Became independent in 1961.
Government corruption and mismanagement of the country's natural resources contributed to the Sierra Leone Civil War.
1991 to 2002.
Yes, that would be 11 to 12 years.
It devastated the country, left more than 50,000 people dead, much of the country's infrastructure destroyed, and over 2 million people displaced as refugees in neighboring countries.
Does that sound like a not big state to you?
It sounds like the state was falling apart in the countryside and local regional warlords filled that vacuum with more violence and created the civil war.
That's what it sounds to me.
So why were they attempting to establish a civil war?
A civil war is to try and gain control of what?
The government.
Yes, but what I'm saying is that those who have low economic value will Go to the gun instead of being productive members of society.
Give me one argument at a time.
So you're saying those with the lowest economic value will go for the gun, right?
Yes, yes.
I don't necessarily agree with that, but let's just say that that's true.
Let's just say that that's completely and totally true and not even open to dispute.
Right.
Then a stateless society still wins by far because the only thing that controls people's desire to use the gun is a fear of negative consequences in your formulation or in this formulation.
Let's just say people are amoral and let's just say that peaceful child raising has not raised peaceful human beings and the whole theory and experiment and scientifically validated approach of raising children peacefully so that they don't become violent or are tempted by violence and that they're strong and resolute and moral and into win-win negotiations.
Let's say none of that has happened and you have a bunch of amoral people all seeking to gain advantage.
So the only thing that's going to limit people's desire to use violence is negative consequences.
In other words, if you don't have a gun, you'll get robbed.
But if you have a gun, you probably won't, right?
Well, I'll probably get shot if I try to protect myself because I'm not used to violence.
No, that's not true.
That's not true.
Guns prevent, at least in the US, over a million-plus crimes every single year.
And, I mean, the guy who went and shot up the movie theater, he specifically went to a movie theater where guns were not allowed.
He drove out of his way.
He drove far away to get to a movie theater where guns were not allowed because he didn't want to get shot back.
So...
So the only thing that's going to limit the poorest desire to go for the gun is a fear of negative consequences, right?
Which means that in a free society, they have to use the gun themselves, but in a government society, they can vote for politicians to use the gun on their behalf where they face no negative consequences, right?
Right.
So in talking about the woman who wanted the government to give her, I think she worked it out to something like she was getting $2,300 a month.
Yeah.
And this doesn't even count subsidized housing or free healthcare or free government schools or free roads or all of the stuff that's paid for by other taxpayers, right?
Right.
So, if this woman wanted to go and steal $2,300 a month, she'd have to go shoplift, she'd have to go sell, there'd be negative consequences, she'd have to break into people's houses, she'd have to do something, right?
And so she might get shot, she might go to jail.
And that would limit her desire to pursue those actions.
On the other hand, all she has to do is vote for these things...
And generally they will be provided if there's enough people who want to vote for them and so on.
And she gets zero risk, zero personal risk for any of these things.
She has no risk whatsoever.
Yeah, that part I agree with.
So if you're concerned about poor people going for the gun, then you have to be opposed to a statist society because the poor people will go for the gun in a statist society and the government will do it on their behalf and they'll face no negative consequences which will swell that behavior enormously, right?
I am against the state.
I just can't reconcile the problems that I think will happen without it.
Yeah, but you're just making sounds now, right?
Because I've just given you a counter-argument.
Do you want me to say it again?
I'm not sure what we're doing here.
You gave me an argument.
I gave you a counterargument.
Are you acknowledging it?
Are you rejecting it?
Do you find that there's a problem with it?
I mean, what are we doing here?
I still think that you will end up with gangs or robbers.
No, no!
You're not thinking!
I gave you an argument!
You gave me a problem.
I gave you a solution.
I accept your argument for the masses of people that are living off the state today.
That problem will go away.
But what I still think will happen is robber gangs forming.
But now, no, do you acknowledge that you're changing?
No, I'm not changing.
That's because you don't know my full position from two statements initially.
Was your position that the poor have the greatest incentive to go for the gun?
Some of the poor, not all of the poor.
Okay, no, I get that.
Right, and so I countered that.
And then you come up with a counter-argument where the rest of the poor...
Which you accept.
Which I accept.
Okay, so now you want to do a different argument.
From my internal reasoning, it's the same argument.
No, no, it can't be.
Oh, my God, how could you not understand this?
It can't be the same argument.
Because if you say, listen, the poor will go for the gun in a free society, and then I disprove that, and you accept that disprove, you can't make the same argument again.
This is like double jeopardy.
You can't try the man for the same thing twice, and you can't accept an argument and then make it again using different words.
Stefan, some of the poor, not all of the poor, and your counter-argument was of some of the other poors that are not suitable or not...
Rationally expected to be going for the gun.
I'm sorry, I don't understand that.
Of course not all the poor.
Yeah, I get it.
Yeah, and then you bring up a counter-argument of some of the poor that they are non-gun-carrying candidates, let's call it that.
The single mom...
Elderly grandmothers?
I'm not sure what you mean by non-counter.
Yeah, elderly grandmother will not pick up the gun, and you can't use that as a counter-argument.
Yeah, but she's also not part of your category of people who will go for the gun, so it's immaterial to our entire debate.
Yes, but you are using it as a counter-argument that I said the robogangs is likely to, or I think it's likely to happen.
Okay.
If you want to change it from poor people to robber gangs of any economic disposition, that's fine too.
I mean that roughly the people who are forming street gangs or inner city gangs in some countries especially, those type of people are likely or I think is likely to form similar gangs robbing people Wherever they can, especially when they get the numbers in place and so forth.
Okay, but why are there gangs to begin with?
Why are there gangs in a state society?
How do they fund themselves?
How do they fund themselves from the beginning, you mean?
Yeah.
I mean, are there gangs that say, we're going to make baby powder and sell it on the street?
Are there gangs that say, we're going to make beer and sell it on the street?
Are there gangs that say, we're going to make tables and sell them on the street?
What do the gangs sell that funds them?
Or they don't sell, they don't take it.
No, that's not how gangs work.
Gangs sell drugs and they use prostitution.
And they do gambling and they do other vices for which there is no injured party, which they can only do because governments have made them illegal.
I mean, there were no gangs really to speak of in America until Prohibition when they all came over from Italy.
And after Prohibition, when the war on drugs was announced, then the gangs came back with a vengeance and the gangs are in Mexico because of the drugs and the gangs fund themselves through drugs.
And they are profitable because victims of child abuse need drugs for self-medication and because governments make it illegal, which drives up the price, as I'm sure you know.
Yeah, I agree on that.
And there are gangs who also work heavily in government-protected industries, like unionized industries.
There are gangs in Quebec, organized crime gangs.
That work on government contracts and control these kinds of things.
Basically, whenever there is not a strong cost-benefit analysis, you can inject the overhead of organized crime and people would rather pay it because it's not their own money.
And even in places where, like in Sicily, there is a new movement that's actually arisen fairly recently about people who are simply refusing to pay.
The money that the Mafia demands of them for doing business.
And they're being incredibly successful in doing this.
Are you talking about revolt against racketeering?
Yeah, revolt against racketeering.
They simply decided not to pay it.
And I won't get into the whole details.
You can Google it.
But they're being amazingly successful in this.
But of course, the racketeering only exists because the Mafia is able to fund itself through other means.
And also, of course, because the government police don't solve the problem, right?
And whereas in a private security firm situation, they would absolutely solve the problem.
No question.
So why is private security a solution, you think?
Because incentives matter.
People respond to incentives.
And what price does the police pay if they fail to solve a crime?
Yes, none.
But the private security firm that is really successful will go out of business because people think that they don't need them.
So they have an incentive to keep the crime level up as well, don't they?
But so what?
So what if they go out of business?
I mean, people who made rotary dial phones have now gone out of business.
People who made horse-drawn carriages have now gone out of business.
All the people who used to scoop up the shit that was pooped out by the horses before the cars came along.
Of course people go out of business.
People go out of business all the time.
You misunderstood me the consequences and the consequence for the security firm to keep crime in place.
Of course.
Let's say that it is.
Look, the purpose of Blockbuster...
The people who had giant video rental stores, the purpose of Blockbuster was to keep DVDs and Blu-rays on the shelves to be rented by customers.
And then along comes Netflix and Amazon Prime and Google Video.
I mean, there's no Blockbusters left.
They're all gone from Canada, as far as I know.
Gone.
So, of course, the security companies want to keep, I guess, they want to keep crime going and so on.
They may put themselves out of business.
It happens a lot.
Do you know what they'll do?
They'll take all the profits from that and they'll invest in something else.
I'm sure that a bunch of video rental places invested in Blockbuster and are doing just fine.
The capital moves and stuff moves along.
But they don't get to have a monopoly.
What are they going to do?
Are they going to pay criminals to come and rob people?
I mean that would be exposed in a New York minute.
Or have a criminal arm.
Okay, but that would be so obvious.
Because the criminal arm would immediately say, okay, let's say I'm a DRO or a private security company and I want to hire a bunch of criminals to terrorize a neighborhood so that people want to buy my services, right?
Well, first of all, how am I going to know if they're going to want to buy my services when there's lots of people competing to provide the same services?
So how do I know that?
And also, what is my board going to say and my investors going to say about me hiring a bunch of criminals?
The first thing they're going to say is, are you kidding me?
The criminals will simply blackmail you.
Because you see, if you're paying them to go into people's houses, they might get shot.
It's going to be a hell of a lot easier and safer for them to blackmail you to say, listen, I'm going to go on the internet and publish all of our recorded conversations about you hiring me to terrorize your customers to up the demand for your service.
Then you would get sued by all of your customers so you're going to have to pay off these assholes who are going to get millions and millions of dollars out of you every month rather than destroy your entire business.
There's just no way we're going to go down that road.
We're not hiring criminals to go and terrorize our customers and maybe get the criminals shot in which case we would be We would be complicit in the murder of a human being.
If you hire someone to go and invade someone's home and that person gets shot, you go to jail for the rest of your life.
I mean, what sane businessman is going to want to get involved in that kind of scheme?
How can you go to jail in a state of society?
That doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter what the punishment is.
Maybe you're ostracized and can't ever set foot in civilization again.
It doesn't matter.
No sane businessman is going to Get involved in such a scheme.
It's just not going to happen.
You're very common.
And also, imagine if your competitors find out.
Also, what if your competitors are only pretending?
Like, what if the people you're hiring to be criminals are your competitors in disguise?
And it's a sting operation.
I mean, my God, you would be completely destroyed.
And you'd also be a criminal.
And your business...
We'd be completely destroyed.
No, no, no.
It's far too risky.
Nobody would do anything like that.
Even if they felt it was moral to hire people to go and invade the homes of their customers.
I mean, God Almighty.
I mean, you're talking about it.
I tell you what.
Go to a company that provides home security like Alarm Force, right?
And say, hey, I've got a business idea to pitch you.
Let's go hire a bunch of thugs to go and invade a bunch of homes.
And that way, demand for your services will go up.
I mean, just see what kind of response you'll get.
You'll literally be thrown out of the building.
People will think that you're completely insane.
Because what if you were a reporter?
What if you were a reporter who was just trying to catch them on tape agreeing to this?
Can you imagine what that would do to your business if that was published?
I mean, you've just got to think these things through.
I mean, just think of the consequences.
Don't just make up these scenarios with, you know, well, what if Nazgul attack my chimney?
Well, I need another chimney.
I better have a backup.
I mean, you've just got to think these things through and imagine what you would do in the situation if somebody had that as a business plan.
I mean, it would just – it would never happen.
All right.
Well, I think we've had enough about that conversation.
Thank you so much to all of the callers.
I'm sorry we didn't get to the last caller tonight.
But I'd like to thank everyone who calls in.
I'd like to thank everyone who supports the show.
Listen, man.
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Just you and me.
If you haven't supported the show, if you haven't donated, don't make me say it.
You know.
Just listen to your conscience, man.
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Sign up for a subscription.
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Come on, it's $20 a month.
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Come on, we're not like a religion.
We're not asking for 10% of your income.
Is it $0.64 a day?
Pay for me to get better at math.
Pay for some math classes for me.
I do feel that's important.
Look, we're not asking for 10% of your gross.
I mean, we're not a religion here, for God's sakes.
And obviously, if $20 a month is 10% of your gross, don't send us any money.
But rather, get to a home to shelter and get to a soup kitchen.
But yeah, I mean, you know you need to do the right thing.
Stop consuming without producing.
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We need to grow.
And it's in your hands.
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Look, for years, I wanted to sponsor kids.
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I should get around to it.
Finally, you know what?
I sat down and I've like signed up so many kids now.
But you feel better doing it.
You won't miss the money.
We need the money and you'll feel better doing it.
You know, I don't need to tell you this stuff.
And don't say I'll do it tomorrow.
Like, just do it tonight.
Just, you know, do it right now.
I'll talk you through it.
Go to your computer.
Click on the browser.
Once more, clear your browser history.
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Clear your browser history.
Start the VPN. And go to freedomainradio.com slash donate or fdurl.com slash donate.
It's a little page there.
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Thank you so much, which we do.
We hugely thank you.
Just take your mouse, take your touch.
And, you know, on the right, there's a bunch of subscription options.
20 bucks a month.
Ah, come on.
If you listen to...
10 hours of this show a month, that's $2 an hour.
I mean, a movie is going to cost you $13 for an hour and a half.
This is $2 an hour for the finest, most entertaining, distilled, and enjoyable philosophy that there is to consume, in my opinion.
$20 a month.
You click on that.
Got a PayPal account.
Then log into your PayPal account.
Set up the recurring payments.
You can cancel.
You go under recurring payments and you'll cancel anytime.
One-time donation, $100, $200.
Oh, come on.
You've probably consumed a lot of this show by now.
Pay for what you consume.
Don't be the guy who's like, I'm buying a one-time salad, but I keep going back to the salad bar and getting more.
I mean, that's kind of like stealing.
It's not exactly the same.
It's not that far off.
If you don't have a PayPal account, that's fine too.
You don't have to have a PayPal account.
You can just Log in with your visa.
Now, I know there's been some security breaches and so on.
PayPal is, like, insanely secure.
256-bit encryption.
I keep arguing they need to go to 257, and then they remind me that I don't know much about math.
It's not a base-two number.
But you can just enter your visa information.
You can do recurring...
Could you do recurring payments on your visa, Mike?
Is that right?
Oh, you can only do one-time payments.
Okay, so that's fine.
I mean, then...
Then pay – if you're going to do 20 bucks a month, just pay 240 bucks.
We're using the money for good.
We don't have hookers and blow.
We're not like snorting the ashes of Barry and Bradley?
Barry and Barry.
We'd like to but unfortunately, the bid was too high.
But we're using the money for good.
We're buying lights.
We just spent two grand on a camera.
We built a studio.
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We've got bandwidth costs.
It's not cheap.
And we've got to eat.
So if you can't do $20 a month, just do $240 one time.
I mean, it's a Christmas present to the future, is what it is.
Because we grow because you all donate.
And we need to give philosophy a fighting chance.
We need to give the species a fighting chance with as much philosophy as possible.
If you find a better philosophy show, don't give money to me, give money to them.
If this is the best you can find, do the right thing.
Give the money to us.
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And you know we deserve it.
We work hard.
I'm constantly trying to make the show better.
Mike just stayed up 40 hours straight to work on a presentation.
It was 48 actually.
What did I say?
You said 40.
Mike stayed up 48 hours straight to work.
Look, I've just been doing a show for almost three hours and when I'm done, I'm going to record some more.
And, you know, we do the risky stuff.
We do the race stuff.
We do the gender stuff.
We do the Ferguson stuff.
We do the Trayvon Martin stuff.
We do the risky stuff.
We do the stuff that not a lot of other people are talking about, and we are going to have just about the best presentation on Bill Cosby that you can imagine.
And the only reason we can do that stuff is because we don't rely on advertisers.
Yes.
On the subscribers to make it happen.
Yeah.
Yeah, you know how we keep talking about you can't invade an anarchist country because there's no government?
But the show can't be stopped because we have no advertisers.
I mean, try being Rush Limbaugh.
There are like a dozen people insanely dedicated to getting Rush Limbaugh's advertisers to drop him.
And we can't be targeted.
It's like punching fog.
And so because we rely on you and not advertisers, we gain that much more courage thereby because we're just not vulnerable to people targeting advertisers and saying, ooh, this bad atheist, anarchist.
And also it does keep us focused on you.
Put a note in with your donation.
And we listen.
We care.
If you love a certain video and you make a donation, you put a note in there, you're probably going to see more of that because we definitely respond to incentives just like we talk about in the show.
Our hips gyrate towards the $5 bills.
I think that's what Mike is trying to say.
If you want to get into the champagne room, I will do anything on a pole for $20.
So if you're Polish, send me a picture.
Okay.
Can't take it anywhere.
Yeah, so look, we're not changing this business model.
It's never going to change.
We are getting, what?
You gave me some crazy number the other day about book downloads.
It wasn't book downloads.
We had, in like, what was it?
Like 36 hours, we had over 100,000 downloads of the latest call-in show.
120,000, not even counting the YouTube videos, not even counting the torrents.
I think you're getting like 50,000 to 100,000 book downloads a month.
And we're doing, you know, 1.5 to 2.5 million video views a month.
And, you know, 50 to 100,000 books on philosophy, on anarchism, on atheism, on relationships, on family stuff, on libertarianism, that is what is colloquially known as a fuckton.
Sorry, I hate to be crude, but that's what it is.
I think that's metric.
And this is all happening because of what you are doing and your generosity.
So...
Do the right thing.
Support, donate.
What are you saving your money for?
Seriously, it's going to be worthless soon anyway.
Give it to us.
We also take Bitcoins.
All right.
So thanks everyone so much for listening and supporting and donating.
And if you've got no money, just go share the videos.
You know, spend an hour or two a week sharing the videos.
I mean, we can't do it all alone.
Be in the march.
You know, don't be the guy at home watching the march on TV. Come out, get some exercise.
You know, get those clickety fingers working and share the magic.
So have yourselves a great, great week, everyone.
Of course, we will talk to you on the Saturday coming.
