March 16, 2015 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
40:50
2930 Wage Fixing and Collusion! Listener Mailbag Questions - Answered!
Stefan Molyneux answers listener questions including: Do you think strict rules designed to change future behavior are a good thing or a bad thing? How can a market properly deal with the issue of wage fixing and illegal collusion among businesses to keep wages down? Is the non-aggression principle like a social contract? Why do children develop impulsiveness? Do you have advice for raising boys? Can there be such a thing as anarcho-socialism? If someone was hoarding the only antidote to an epidemic that was exterminating the human race - would it violate non-aggression principle to seize the antidote?
Hi everybody, it's Devan Molyneux from Freedomain Radio.
Hope you're doing well.
These listener questions, I'm afraid, have laid on the back burner for entirely too long.
I apologize for that.
We will try and get them a little bit more queued up next time.
Ty writes, When I was a kid, my parents didn't allow me to have a TV in my room.
At the time, I didn't like it.
But now that I'm older, I realize it benefited me because now I have a good habit of reading before bed.
Do you think strict rules designed to change future behavior are a good thing or a bad thing?
Well, children have a very short window by which they look at the consequences of their actions.
I mean, a lot of adults do as well, but with children, it's like physically the brain is smaller, their horizon of consequences is much shorter, and so on.
So yes, you have to make the case repeatedly with children, but you can't wait until they accept the case to change their behavior.
Children want to consume ridiculous amounts of sugar because it tastes so good, and they don't process that what their tongue loves, their body hates and fears.
And so the best way, of course, is to just simply not have stuff around.
I think it's reasonable to not have a child having a television in the room.
Reading, in general, has very positive effects relative to television consumption.
I'm not a foe of television, but reading is better in many ways for the brain.
And reading, of course, you can participate in writing, but it's hard to make a TV show, I suppose.
So there's an echo effect from reading.
If you read great work and you attempt to write great works, your language skills are going to enormously improve.
So don't have sugar in the house, don't have junk food in the house, allow treats.
When you're out and simply explain to the child and make deals with the child.
And I think that's important.
Yeah, there are rules that are designed to change future behavior that are a good thing.
And parents, I think, should be responsible for that.
It is a violation.
Of the initiation of the use of force to allow your children to engage in behavior dangerous to their future selves, where there is not some concomitant benefit.
So, for instance, if your kids are in gymnastics, they could get injured, but it's very, of course, healthy and all that for their bodies and so on.
So, you know, if you allow your kids to ride a bike, they might fall off it, but nonetheless, it's a good skill to have and it's healthy and lets them socialize and get around town and so on.
So I think, on the other hand, you know, letting them eat four candy bars for breakfast every day, it does not give them an associated benefit, but merely harms their body and puts them at risk of significant health issues in the future.
So you are in charge of your children's bodies and it is your job to deliver to your children as adults a healthy body.
And the degree to which this can be achieved through negotiation and through simply the prevention of not having these things around is the degree to which you should impose it.
And so, yeah, I have rules with my daughter with regards to food.
I have rules with myself with regards to food.
I have a bit of a sweet tooth.
Perhaps it's an English thing.
I don't know.
Free dental care?
Let's sugar it up, baby!
So, yeah, I think strict rules designed to change future behavior are a good thing, but the point, of course, is to have the child internalize those rules.
There's no point having the rules external and imposed upon the child without the continuing negotiation and education to transfer those rules to internal standards within the child.
Alan writes, how can a market properly deal with the issue of wage fixing and illegal collusion among businesses to keep wages down?
It's a very interesting question.
And there's a short answer, which I will grit my teeth and attempt to provide.
And there's a long answer, too, which is, you know, wage fixing and illegal collusion and so on are all negatively charged words that are kind of framing the discussion.
But let's take it at face value.
Wage fixing.
So wage fixing is when a bunch of companies get together in some smoky backroom and say, we're only going to pay our programmers $20,000 a year.
They're worth $40,000.
It's been a while since I've been in the IT field.
Let's say we're going to pay them $30,000, though they are, in fact, we would be willing to pay them $60,000.
That's the market going rate.
But we will only pay them $30,000.
Well...
There is nothing wrong with companies getting together to drive down wages.
There's absolutely nothing wrong With people getting together to drive down wages.
You do that all the time.
Every time you say, well, it's for $5 at this store, but it's for $4 at this store, and you go to that store where you pay $4, you are colluding to drive down wages, right?
Because you are going with the cheapest product.
The cheapest product, in many ways, will flow through to lower wages somewhere.
Or it could be higher efficiency or many sort of things.
But you are involved continually.
In driving down the prices of things, which has an effect all over the place in the economy.
So if you're allowed to make decisions about what you like to buy and how cheaply you like to buy it, I don't see why companies can't either.
You can also organize boycotts and you can say, well, I don't like what this company is doing, so I'm going to organize a boycott.
And how is a boycott different from wage fixing?
A boycott is a bunch of people saying, we are not going to engage in this economic activity.
And when companies get together, there could be an agreement for them that says, we're not going to engage in the economic activity of hiring programmers at $60,000 a year.
So...
You don't want to look at corporations and employees as separate moral categories.
Are people allowed to voluntarily engage in Well, of course they are.
Of course they are allowed to do that.
Now, what happens if people try to artificially drive down wages is that they will create a huge vacuum for other people to come in and swoop up those employees.
So, the reason you pay someone $60,000 A year is because, rule of thumb, very rough estimate, because they produce $120,000 worth of value.
And that doesn't mean that it's 50% profit, because of course you have to pay benefits, you have to provide them computers and a work environment and pay for their travel if they're doing that, and pay for their vacations and all.
So just rough rule of thumb, it doesn't really mean anything, but...
Somebody's providing $120,000 worth of value, then you'll pay them $60,000, which is why wages are not decided by employers.
Wages are decided by the value provided from the employee.
That's who determines.
You determine your wages, the amount of skills and commitment and integrity and hardworkingness and positivity or whatever it is you bring to the workforce.
That is what determines your wages.
It's not arbitrarily set by some...
Darth Vader row of executives.
And so, if you can provide $120,000 worth of value to an employer, but that employer is only going to pay you $30,000, then you will simply keep shopping around until you get a better offer.
Now, one of the reasons why these cartels or collusions never work, unless they can enforce it through the state, the reasons that these never work...
It's because if you have five companies all willing to underbid, then the first company to break that rule and pay someone $35,000 or $40,000 is going to get huge amounts of talent at hugely reduced wages.
Which is why these deals are generally not public.
The reason they don't sign all this contract and say, we're now going to, quote, underpay.
And it's hard to say, what does underpaid even mean?
If you're willing to work for it and if somebody's willing to pay for you, I don't know what it...
Everyone's underpaid.
Everyone would like to make a jillion dollars an hour.
Everyone's underpaid.
And everyone's overpaid because employers would like to pay you less.
And that's the negotiation that you have to make.
It's like saying...
My girlfriend is under-attractive.
I mean, what does that even mean?
You're willing to have her as your girlfriend, so she's as attractive as you can achieve or are willing to accept.
So saying that, well, my girlfriend is under-attractive and that's a problem that needs to be fixed by minimum attraction laws.
Well, that's just kind of silly.
So, the reason that companies don't make these deals public is it would provoke a lot of negative reactions.
So, they have to be kind of handshake deals that are not enforceable, which means that if it's successful, the first company to break ranks can massively scoop up the marketplace.
It's like if all the tablet manufacturers said, well, we're all going to sell our tablets for $5,000 each.
First of all, that would be huge.
It would create a huge vacuum for competitors to come in.
And secondly, the first tablet manufacturer that was willing to drop the prices back down to $300 would gain massive amounts of market share.
So there's a whole bunch of economic forces that work against these kinds of things.
So I hope that helps.
Vedran writes, Thank you.
That's very kind.
You know, I go back and forth on this, and I don't have any clear answers.
I think that...
There are some differences between boys and girls, like in emotional makeup and in...
Like I was somewhere the other day and I saw this boy just punching, punching, punching, punching.
I don't know if that's nature or nurture, but I've never seen a girl doing that kind of stuff.
And so...
I think that the best approach for boys and girls, of course, is to expose them to as many opportunities for developing preferences as you can and then just help get behind whatever they like the best.
But with boys, the thing that I think men can bring to boys in particular that is really essential is make them proud of being boys.
Make girls proud of being girls.
There's a lot of cultural and social forces that are negative and down and hostile towards boys these days.
In many ways, boys are viewed as broken girls.
Boy, if we can only make boys more like girls, that would be so much more convenient to the power structures that envelop us all.
So tell boys about the amazing history that men have brought, the contributions that men have made to civilization, both artistic and philosophical, technological, medicinal, and so on.
And help a boy understand that he is the latest in a domino of a gender that has brought massive, massive value To the human race.
And, of course, say this to girls as well.
And help give the boy the strength and confidence to counter the general propaganda about boys are bad.
Boys are mean, let's throw rocks at them kind of stuff.
Devin writes, is the non-aggression principle like a social contract?
No.
Well, I guess it is in that neither of them exist.
The non-aggression principle, the non-initiation of force, thou shalt not initiate force against thy fellow carbon-based bipedal Frontal lobe inhabiting life form.
And I go into this in much more detail in my free book, Universally Preferable Behavior, A Rational Proof of Secular Ethics, available at freedomainradio.com slash free.
The non-aggression principle is the only...
Universally preferable behavior that can be universalized.
In other words, if you're going to talk about ethics, they have to be universal.
You know, ethics are to philosophy as a physical law is to science.
Not all science deals in objectivity, but all physical laws must be universal.
And so...
The non-aggression principle is the only universally preferable behavior.
It is the only behavior, or I guess you could say non-behavior, since it's a negative demand, that fulfills the requirement of universality that is necessary for morality.
So, morality is to philosophy as physical laws are to science.
They must be universal.
And the initiation of force cannot be universalized, and the initiation of murder and rape and assault and theft, the four major big bands in all ethical systems, they can't be universalized.
And again, I won't go into the arguments for it, but you can find out more about it in the book.
So, it's sort of like saying, is a rationally valid and empirically proven law of physics like a social contract?
No.
No, it is not.
A social contract is relatively subjective.
It's kind of whatever you agree to in the society that you're in, and that's not how philosophy works.
Whatever is subjective, it may be the realm of aesthetics.
But it certainly is not the realm of moral philosophy any more than what is subjective in the social sciences would be the province of physics.
All right.
Allen writes, I'm struggling with impulsiveness.
Impulsivity?
Could Steph talk about why children develop impulsivity as a defense mechanism?
Well, children don't develop impulsivity.
Impulsivity is the definition of early childhood.
The question is why don't children outgrow impulsivity?
And usually, I think, the reason that children don't outgrow their impulsivity...
Is because the purpose of, you know, you remember those, I don't know if you've ever seen these stretchy things that you're supposed to use to exercise your upper body.
They look like twist cable ties with these handles.
So the purpose of parenting in many ways is to stretch your children's short-term focus on immediate needs.
Stretch it to a longer-term focus.
And so we are all born impulsive.
But the reason that we extend our horizon of consequentialist thinking is because it's stable and predictable.
Our environment is stable and predictable.
So, for instance, if you make a deal with your mom and dad, which says...
You know, I will clean out the yard, and in return, I want an hour of video gaming or something, right?
So you go and clean out the yard, and then that's, of course, looking for longer-term rewards with shorter-term unpleasantness.
You go clean out the yard, then you go and say, all right, I'm ready for my video gaming.
And they say, we've changed our mind.
No video games for you.
And we dropped a brick on the Xbox.
Well, what does that tell you as a child or as a youth about the value of deferring gratification and making deals in the future and extending your horizon of consequentialism?
Well, it doesn't help.
So if you're in an environment where...
Incentives and disincentives, you could say punishments and rewards, but incentives and disincentives are chaotic.
Deals you make now may not be valid tomorrow.
I mean, I remember when I was a kid, my mom got upset with me as a teenager, and she grounded me in the afternoon, and that night she wanted me to come and see a movie with her.
I was supposed to be grounded for a week, and she went...
So this is kind of chaotic.
And so the stability of parents...
And the trustworthiness of parents for any deals or any promises or any threats or whatever it is that's made.
I'm not a fan of threats, but this is the general way that parenting is done these days is, you know, sticks and carrots.
The more stable and predictable the parental environment, the more children will feel comfortable and develop their capacity to defer gratification and achieve rewards in the long run.
So, in a way, parents need to be as predictable as physics for their children.
And then I believe that children then will outgrow impulsivity.
Impulsivity is, I have to grab it now because I'm in a situation of chaos.
Right?
If you've seen Indiana Jones and the Temple, the first Indiana Jones, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Raiders of the Lost Ark.
So at the beginning, Indiana Jones is trying to get some icon and he puts a bag of sand on it, but it doesn't work.
And he has to flee.
It's a spoiler, I know, but it's the first five minutes of the movie.
And the movie is 1,200 years old.
So then he runs, and he just grabs, and he reaches out and grabs his hat, and that's very clear, and it's not exactly impulsivity, but it's not long-term.
He tries the long-term planning thing, oh, if I replace this idol with a bag of sand, then I'll be fine.
I'll get out gracefully and look around and pick up all this cool stuff and look for treasure.
But because the ball starts rolling and the spear starts shooting, he's got to just run out, and he grabs his hat and flees.
Well, that's because he's in a situation of chaos and danger, and so he just...
Impulsivity.
And impulsivity works really well in certain situations.
I mean, if you're in hand-to-hand combat in wartime, you know, impulsivity and going with the flow and so on is usually a very good idea.
So impulsivity to me is something that we're all born with, and we don't outgrow it if the environment does not support outgrowing.
Impulsivity.
In other words, if it's not beneficial for you to outgrow your impulsivity because you can't trust things in the future, then you generally won't.
So, can there be such a thing as anarcho-socialism?
This guy tells me he's a anarcho-socialist.
He hasn't defined that yet.
Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Doesn't socialism require a state?
And doesn't anarchy imply private property rights?
Or maybe it doesn't.
Apparently there are so-called primitive populations living without private property rights, or so I'm told, and without a state.
Well, sure, and there are lizards who live without a state, but we would not call them ideal anarchists.
Protozoa, I believe, and my gut bacteria also work in the same way.
Well, see, it depends what you mean by socialism.
If by socialism you mean the forced redistribution of wealth I mean, you can go around and convince everyone you've got to give up 50% of your income, give it to a giant agency which will keep 80% of itself, and use the remaining 20% to buy votes and lock the poor into a permanent underclass of endless poverty, but that's going to be a hard case to make.
From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs, is an accurate description of parenthood, particularly when your children are young.
My daughter did not earn her keep, and still does not.
I mean, she does some chores now, but she doesn't earn her keep.
And so, one of the reasons why socialism is appealing to people is it mirrors the family.
And to some degree, it mirrors the tribe when we were like 50 or 100 people.
When the women, the young, fertile women would be endlessly pregnant and would not be able to contribute much to the tribe, pregnant, breastfeeding, whatever, right?
And so the men or the older women or the younger women, the girls would go out and get resources and give them to the women who were raising the children.
And so at a personal level, from each according to their ability to each according to their need is perfectly valid.
If you have a working woman and a stay-at-home dad, then she goes out and gets the money and he takes care of the household and the children.
So it's her ability, and it's the children's need, and the need is for the father, and the father needs resources as well, and so on.
So if you confuse the state for the family, then socialism is going to seem appealing to you, because all families are fundamentally, with children in particular, but all families are fundamentally socialist.
Most families are fundamentally socialist.
I mean, it's not all, but most families are fundamentally socialist.
And the degree to which we confuse the state for parents is truly astounding.
Truly astounding.
And it does not speak well to the degree of aggression that parents use in raising children, that they're so easily confused with the predatory violence of the state.
So yes, you can perfectly have anarcho-socialist if there's a group of people who want to get together.
And or pool their money and take it from or pool their resources or pool whatever they've got, give it to those who have need and take it from those or those will voluntarily provide it.
Perfectly fine.
Perfectly fine.
My daughter lives in a socialist paradise, so to speak.
But if you're talking about a state-run initiation of force redistributionist system, then you can't do it.
In your opinion, asks Matthew, would a free market alleviate or exacerbate the effect of property investors, landlords, pricing other people, those wanting to buy their own homes, out of the real estate market?
These questions, I understand where they're coming from, because everybody has their particular wrinkle based upon history and experience of concern about the free market.
But...
It doesn't matter.
I mean, these questions don't matter.
And I don't mean to imply that they're not important to you, but I just give you an analogy, hopefully.
Let's say we had a society where the government forced everyone to get married to whoever the government chose.
You would be assigned a spouse and you'd be forced to marry that person and live with that person and have sex with that person and so on.
And let's say me or someone else came along and said, that's utterly immoral.
There ought to be a free market in dating.
And then you said, well, yes, but wouldn't the prettier people just get more dates?
And wouldn't the ugly people or the nasty people or whatever not get married?
I'm like, don't know.
I don't know.
Does it matter?
Of course there are people who would in some ways benefit from an enforced marriage market, from a government-enforced marriage market.
Yeah, there's some people who would benefit from that.
I understand that.
Nasty, ugly, I mean spiritually ugly people would have people forced to marry them.
People really terrible at sex would have the government force people to have sex with them.
So what?
The question isn't who benefits.
The question isn't what balance will be achieved in a free market.
The question is...
Is it moral to initiate the use of force against people?
That's the only question that fundamentally matters.
The consequences of ending an enforced rape market known as government marriage, the consequences are immaterial.
The consequences are immaterial.
It's sort of like saying, well, you see, if we end slavery, how are we going to ensure that farmers invest the optimum amount in capital versus labor?
Capital machinery versus labor.
I don't know.
Does it matter who cares who could judge such a thing?
What matters is that people are free.
So, property investors pricing other people out of the real estate market, well, what will happen is if there's a lot of rental spaces and people really want to buy stuff, then they will offer more than the rental income.
And there's no such thing as property investors.
There's no such thing as the rich.
There's no such thing as blacks or women.
Right?
So some property investors want to divest.
They're getting older.
They want to retire to St.
Lucia or whatever.
So they're going to want to sell.
Now, there'll be other people who might want to buy as landlords, but there are other people who are going to want to buy the individual houses.
So just, if you bid more, bid more!
That's what people will do.
All right.
Let's see what other people have to do.
I love Stefan's philosophy.
Oh, no, you don't!
Oh, you didn't!
It's not my philosophy.
I love Richard Dawkins' biology.
I know you're not trying to be mean or anything, but that is a real insult to me.
I mean, I get it, right?
But that is a real insult to me.
Like, if my daughter is learning to write, and she writes stuff down, and I say, well, that's pretty much a language all your own, isn't it?
That's not a compliment to the understandability of her writing.
And if you say it's my philosophy, that's like, you know, I really like Bob's science.
Like, no, no, it's either science or it's not.
Like, it's either good philosophy or it's bad philosophy.
Sure as heck, it's not my philosophy.
So, I find it to be all-encompassing and inconsistent.
I have a thought experiment.
What if someone was hoarding the only antidote to an epidemic that was exterminating the human race?
Would it violate the non-aggression principle to seize the antidote?
It would seem that you must seize the antidote, and this disproves the idea that violating the NAP is always morally impermissible.
How would Stephan respond to this?
I expect there is a good answer, not a strong enough philosopher to see it.
Well, thanks, Andrew.
I appreciate the question.
I've got a show about this, so I'll just give you a very brief response to it.
This almost, it couldn't happen.
It couldn't happen.
So, why would somebody develop an antidote and not choose to distribute it?
There's not one person who's going to end up with an antidote.
Developing an antidote requires a huge amount of money and investment and time and so on.
So there's not one individual who's going to develop all on his own some antidote and end up in possession with that antidote.
It's going to be part of a larger entity, whatever corporations look like in a free society.
Not like now, but who knows?
So...
So there's not one person who's going to end up with this antidote.
Now, people will pay, of course, to save the human race, right?
People will pay huge amounts of money.
I mean, if something's going to kill me, I'll give every last dollar I have to save myself because money doesn't help me in the grave.
I'll go into debt and so on.
So the amount of money this person would receive would be nothing short of The entire wealth of the planet, so to speak, right?
So that would be enough for them to release the antidote.
If the person were mentally insane...
Well, that's a different matter, right?
So, if no amount of money, you know, unless you can bring me the beating heart of a unicorn, I'm not releasing the antidote.
Well, in business structures, in corporations, there are ways of dealing with insane people, right?
They are removed from power, their property rights are diminished or stripped, and so on.
And this is true in a free society as well.
If somebody's obviously insane, then there would be ways of dealing with that, nothing.
That may involve the initiation of the use of force.
So, for instance, if somebody is genuinely insane and is, you know, hoarding kitties and is threatening to set fire to them, well, you can go in and save the cats or whatever, right?
So, if they're threatening violence.
Now if somebody who is insane in a business environment no longer has the power to buy or sell or hold or not withhold particular company assets, then the company would be justified in initiating force to go in and retrieve those assets.
So, no, it's not a violation of the non-aggression principle to initiate force against people who are obviously insane or people who have broken their contract.
So anyone who developed this antidote would have in their contract ways of getting it to the marketplace.
And if somebody defied that, then somebody would be in violation of contract.
And if I lease a car and then don't return it or continue to pay after the lease, then the company has the right to come and get the car from me and initiate force should I resist.
My guess is it would be more through economic ostracism, and you can look at my free books, Everyday Anarchy and Practical Anarchy, again at freedomainradio.com.
But if somebody's breaking contract, you can use force against them.
And so a company would sell this, and if they didn't sell it, then if somebody was hoarding it, then that person would be in violation of contract, which would be to get something to marketplace.
So I don't think this would ever occur.
But again, I've got a show about this, which you can do a search for.
I think it's called The Ethics of Emergencies or something like that.
So hopefully that will help.
I've always admired, writes Anthony, Ron Paul's non-interventionist I personally see Obama's foreign policy as about the closest I've seen to this.
What would you say about his hands-off approach?
And could you see a guy like Rand Paul, if elected president, continuing this?
Or are we forever the world police?
Thanks, I listen to every podcast.
Well, I'm glad that you are now part of that which you have been consuming.
You're making your own levels.
So, Obama's foreign policy...
I would not consider myself at all an expert on Obama's foreign policy.
I mean, I know he's been winding down to the wars.
I know that he's thawed relations with Cuba and so on.
America will not forever be the world's police.
The only way to imagine that is to have a very narrow view or a very narrow understanding of human history.
Nobody has remained the world's police.
Rome did not remain the world's police.
England and Germany and France did not remain the world's police.
They all strove in many ways to try to achieve that.
You simply don't remain the world's police forever.
The hands-off approach for foreign policy is...
is not related to foreign policy.
The hands-off approach is the non-initiation of force, as I may continue to beat that drumbeat.
It's the non-initiation of force.
A non-interventionist foreign policy would mean not selling arms overseas through the government.
It would mean not sending foreign aid to countries, mostly Israel, but other countries as well.
It would mean reducing and eliminating trade barriers with other countries, because everything where the gun ends up overseas or is pointed at someone overseas is...
An interventionist foreign policy.
It would be to get out of NATO, to get out of entangling alliances, to withdraw from the United Nations, and so on.
And this is called isolationist, which is weird when you think about it.
Like if there's some serial killer who's out strangling hobos, but one night he stays home and bids for, I don't know, rope on eBay.
Well, he's an isolationist serial killer.
It's like, no, actually kind of happy that he's home.
He's trading, I guess, but at least he's not out killing people.
And there are estimates that American foreign policy since the Second World War has resulted in the death of tens of millions of people.
So, having a purely defensive military, which is extremely cheap, particularly for a country like America, bounded as it is by two huge oceans and friendly neighbors more or less to the north and south, At least until Canadians become the friendly cannibals that is in the heart of every Canadian.
So it would be the non-initiation of force as a principle as a whole.
But the amount of work I'm of course closing down All of the bases in Germany, Okinawa, Japan, and so on.
The 700-plus military bases the U.S. has around the world would be pretty important.
Changing to the gold standard or to some sort of Bitcoin-founded standard or some sort of cryptocurrency standard which could not be inflated would also be a significant part of withdrawing from foreign policy.
None of that is about to happen in the United States.
So, I would not assume that...
It would be something that any particular politician could approve of at the moment.
So I hope that helps.
Let's do one more and see if this makes sense.
It would be great if you could ask Stefan, writes Mitch, what his process of acquiring starting capital was and what his biggest challenge was in doing so.
I'd also like to know how he dealt with his challenges.
Well, If you, you know, this whole thing, if you build a better mousetrap, the world will be a path to your door.
What that means is, if you can provide value to people, then people will want to do business with you.
And so, acquiring starting capital, I was, so I co-founded a company and grew it and worked there for, I think, seven or eight years and then was involved in other companies.
Ventures of various sizes.
And you don't acquire starting capital.
You provide return on investment, right?
What you do is you say to people, you know, give me $10,000 and I will grow that business.
And I will return to you, I can't remember, the initial investors in my company made like 8,000% ROI or something like that, if I remember rightly.
And so you're not taking money.
You're not acquiring capital.
Planning on returning capital.
It's not food that you're going to eat, right?
It is something that you're going to grow and return.
So, if you think of it as acquiring capital, you won't get very far, but if you think of it as, here's an offer you can't refuse because it's so positive, so then you just need to do the market research, and you need to figure out how big the market is, what the competitors are, what their size is, and you just need to work out how, in fairly significant detail, how you're going to provide a return on investment to the people who acquire you money.
I mean, you don't go to the bank to beg for a loan.
You go to the bank and you say, I'm offering you some interest, right?
And that's what really happens.
If you can't offer the interest back, then the bank will not lend you the money.
And this is part of a foundational aspect to relationships as a whole, which is, you know, if you want someone to go out with you, then you need to make it more pleasurable for them to go out with you than not go out with you.
And if you want to get a job, then you need to show whoever is going to hire you that you will provide the most value to that organization than anyone else in the room.
The provision of value is something that, of course, is not talked about in particular in two foundational institutions.
I guess three.
So, in government schools in particular, The idea that the teachers are there to provide more value and woo you into coming to school and make it more fun for you to come in school than to stay home is incomprehensible because you're forced to be there.
Your parents are forced to pay for it.
So the idea of providing value is like being kidnapped and complaining that it's not a stretch limo.
They're not interested in your comfort because you're a tool to them for the extraction of money from others.
In religion, of course, the idea that the priest is there to provide you value and make you want to be there rather than somewhere else from a positive standpoint is generally incomprehensible.
The priest, in general, creates this massive giant voodoo curse upon you, which you then must pay for them to remove on a continual basis.
So they take real money for the imaginary cure for imaginary ailments like Like sin.
And parents, of course, I ask this for my daughter every day.
How was your day?
How could it have been better?
And we talk about ways in which her day could have been better, and then I work to implement those so that she can be happier.
I am a service provider to my daughter, and she may not have a choice now, but she sure as heck is going to have a choice in the future about whether she wants to spend time with me, so I need to provide value to those around me.
And I don't know a lot of parents who take That approach, who are continually canvassing their children to find out how they could do better jobs as parents.
You know, Pizza Place down the road will give you a survey and even pay you to take that survey to find out how they're doing.
Pizza is a little less important than parent-child relationships.
It's the same thing, you know, people say, oh, I was married for 10 years, I just woke up one morning and didn't want to be married or whatever.
Well, there's a continual process of, did you feel loved today?
How could I have been a better husband?
How could I have been a better partner today?
What could I have done differently or better?
These questions of the provision of value are foundational to all of your relationships.
And I mean, I think every day, every day, I melt my brain every day thinking, how can I provide better value and better shows and more interesting shows, more challenging shows, more unusual shows?
To you, to the listeners and to the watchers of this conversation.
And I'm getting feedback all the time in terms of donations, in terms of emails or messages.
I'm getting feedback all the time about how I'm doing.
So I hope I did a good job today.
But please remember that the best relationships are where you are providing value.
This does not mean being exploited.
This doesn't mean going to the bank and saying, I'll pay you interest, but don't give me a loan.
I'll just pay you the interest on it.
Don't give me any money, though.
That would be silly, right?
But the best way to find selfish people in your life is to be generous.
Because if you're both hoarding, if you're both being, ooh, I'll wait for the other person to be in, you're kind of locked in this null zone.
You're kind of locked in this grim orbit.
But if you are generous to other people and you provide them with value, it's very easy to see.
If they're providing value back or they're willing to provide value back.
The best way that I ever got out of exploitive relationships was to unlock my heart, be generous, and then see what happened.
And when other people were basically like these giant black holes sucking up my resources and not providing anything in return, it became very obvious.
Generosity is the Houdini move that gets you out of the padlocks of exploitation.
Just be generous and then really see and observe what comes back or what doesn't come back.
Sometimes your generosity will spark generosity in others.
Yay!
Win-win.
Other times...
You will very quickly see what is missing in your relationships and you will recoil from being exploited.
But again, it's not some sort of universal rule.
I've just found that generosity is very much the best way to find the exploiters in your life and give you a clear choice of what to do next.
So thank you very much for your questions.
Please keep them coming.
And I'm sorry that we took a while to get to these.
If you could, please help out the show.
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Particularly, this is after Christmas, so I know, I know.
Please, I'm going to ask nonetheless.
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