How is it possible to be positive and enthusiastic given all of the bad news around the world? Stefan Molyneux looks at some of the incredibly positive news and trends which show ways the world is getting better. Includes a look at: violent crime, assault, property crime, gun crime, violence against children, life expectancy, infant mortality and much much more!
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| Hi everybody, it's Stefan Wolling from Free Domain Radio. | |
| So I often get this question. | |
| The question goes something like this. | |
| Steph, you're a bald mother hugger. | |
| How is it possible that you remain positive and enthusiastic about the possibilities for a free world and a free society despite what seems like an endless tsunami of imminent apocalypses occurring throughout the world? | |
| Well, I'll give you a bit of an answer. | |
| I was born in 1966. | |
| And when I grew up, well, there was quite a bit of violence around. | |
| There was a lot of aggression going on in the world. | |
| This particularly was true in the late 80s, early 90s. | |
| These numbers have been falling enormously. | |
| Now, you don't see this from the media. | |
| By the time a kid has reached the end of his early schooling, he's often seen thousands of murders on television. | |
| And, of course, the media and the police and the state as a whole is kind of invested in keeping you So, violent crime is declining enormously. | |
| We'll talk a little bit about countries other than the U.S., but let's talk about the U.S. in particular. | |
| So in 1993, there were 747 violent incidents per 100,000 people, down to 387 incidents in 2012. | |
| That's the most recent year there's complete data for. | |
| The homicide rate has fallen in this time period, right, a little less than 20 years, the homicide rate has fallen by 51% robberies. | |
| Have decreased by 56%. | |
| And the rate of aggravated assault has gone down 45%. | |
| Property crime rates are also sharply down. | |
| So in other words, crime is back to the level it was when gasoline cost 29 cents a gallon. | |
| Crime is back to the level it was before there was color television. | |
| And the 2013 gun crime rates in the US are back to the level of the early 1960s. | |
| And 2014, violent crime rate is down another 4.4%. | |
| Also, pedestrian, bicyclists, and car deaths are also at the lowest rate in decades. | |
| Now, that is a staggering and massive and positive achievement, but it is one of the least positive achievements that has occurred in the world over the last couple of decades, which we'll talk about in a moment. | |
| But let's talk about violence against children. | |
| Violence against children 2 to 17 is going down 2. | |
| Physical assaults have been reduced by a third from 2003 to 2011. | |
| Well, it's 8 years or so. | |
| It's down 33%. | |
| Rape attempted or completed down 43% 2003 to 2011. | |
| Here in Canada, the crime rate is back down to the level of 1972 and continues to fall. | |
| Britain has had the lowest murder rate since 1978. | |
| In Australia, it's a tour of the colonies. | |
| Since the peak of 344 murder victims in 1999, the number has continued to go down. | |
| 2011 was down to 244 victims. | |
| Infant mortality is down enormously. | |
| Child mortality is down enormously. | |
| We're just constantly told about the wrong kind of dangers, right? | |
| So, stranger danger for children. | |
| Well, number of children aged 2 to 14 who were killed in car accidents as passengers, 1,300. | |
| Number of children killed each year by their family members or acquaintances, about 1,000. | |
| Number of children abducted in stereotypical kidnappings, which is kidnappings by a stranger for sexual assault or transported away. | |
| In 1999, 115. | |
| The number of children killed by the abductor, about 50. | |
| So, of all children under the age of 5 murdered from 1976 to 2005, 31% were killed by fathers, 29% were killed by mothers, 23% were killed by acquaintances, 7% were killed by other relatives, and only 3% were killed by strangers. | |
| So, basically, your safest bet is to leave your child with a stranger. | |
| Stranger safety. | |
| And of course, in all the missing children that go on, there's about one child abduction murder for every 10,000 reports of a missing child. | |
| Of the 800,000 children reported, quote, missing in the U.S. each year, 115 are the result of stereotypical kidnapping, strangers snatching the child. | |
| About 90% of abductees return home within 24 hours, and the vast majority are teenage runaways. | |
| So, despite what is constantly blared at you through the media and through TV shows, 99.5% of Americans will never experience any violent crime. | |
| And, of course, as the crime rate has dropped, the media have stepped in to continue the panic and fear. | |
| The number of people who told Gallup that crime is getting worse climbed to 74% last year, a figure higher than any year since the carnage of the early 1990s. | |
| National Crime Victimization Survey says that the rate of violent victimization has declined by 67% since 1993. | |
| This is a 70% decline in rape and sexual assault, 66% decline in robbery, 77% decline in aggravated assault, and a 64% decline in simple assault. | |
| So some of this data is not going to match. | |
| Some of it is police data, and some of it is people just getting phoned up and asked, were you the victim of a crime? | |
| Infant mortality only 50 years ago, more than 100 children out of every 1,000 who were born perished within a year. | |
| That figure has plunged 80%. | |
| What about war? | |
| In the 1500s and 1600s, the world's great powers were generally at war against each other more often than not, and almost constantly during particular periods, in particular during religious warfare. | |
| Over the past several decades, great power conflict has been the exception rather than the norm. | |
| I don't mean to get all tragic macho on you, but when I was growing up, the fears of nuclear war were catastrophic and imminent, and it made it really, really hard to study for vector calculus exams. | |
| Why bother, man? | |
| I'm just going to be a nuclear shadow and dust motes floating in a radioactive wasteland. | |
| Now, I mean, people are worried about global warming, whose effects have generally been economically positive rather than negative, and are projected to be economically positive at least until 2080, even if we accept the worst-case scenarios. | |
| So, over the past several decades, Great Power Conflict? | |
| Well, first it moved to proxy wars like Korea and Vietnam and so on, and now it's really... | |
| For the most part, gone. | |
| They're engaged in economic fiat currency nagging, which is a vast improvement from world wars that killed tens of millions of people. | |
| Average global life expectancy at birth. | |
| Hmm. | |
| So from the Upper Paleolithic era till about 1900, it was about 30%. | |
| So, not great. | |
| And, you know, if it wasn't a childhood disease that was going to kill you or a saber-tooth tiger, it would be your teeth, the great enemies of mankind. | |
| So, for about the last couple of billion years, life expectancy have been about 30. | |
| In 2010, the global average of life expectancy was 67. | |
| So, it's more than doubled in 110 years. | |
| That is really quite astounding. | |
| According to the Center for Global Development, more than half the world's people live in places where the gross domestic product has increased more than five-fold over 50 years. | |
| India's economy has increased tenfold since 1960, China's has grown 17-fold, and even those in the underdeveloped world are seeing their lot improve. | |
| In Sub-Saharan Africa, it's not massive, but it's not insignificant. | |
| From 1990 to 2012, daily caloric intake per person increased from 2180 calories to 2380 calories. | |
| Worldwide, the mean number of years of schooling an adult has received In 1980, it was 4.7. | |
| By 2011, it was 7.6. | |
| So not quite a doubling, but a substantial improvement. | |
| Let's, again, let's just take the wide lens perspective, which is kind of what a philosophy show should be all about, a wide lens perspective. | |
| Let's look at these numbers of violent crimes, particularly murder, from 1300 up until the present day. | |
| Let's just look at that nice, wonderful ski slope of diminishing coercion. | |
| From 1990 to 2010, substantiated cases of sexual abuse dropped from 23 per 10,000 children under 18 to 8.6 per 10,000, a 62% decrease. | |
| And there was a 3% drop from 2009 to 2010. | |
| The Minnesota Student Survey charted a 29% decline in reports of sexual abuse by an adult who was not a family member from 1992 to 2010 and a 28% drop in reports of sexual abuse by a family member. | |
| And that is absolutely wonderful. | |
| Reports of child abuse and neglect have dropped nationwide in the U.S. for the fifth consecutive year, and abuse-related child fatalities are also at a five-year low, according to new federal statistics. | |
| The latest annual report from the Department of Health and Human Services estimates that there were 681,000 cases of child abuse or neglect across America in the 2011 fiscal year. | |
| That's down from 695,000 in 2010 and from 723,000 in 2007. | |
| So, big picture stuff. | |
| All U.S. homicides down 40% 1992 to 2005. | |
| Juvenile homicide down 36%, 93 to 05, kids under the age of 14. | |
| Juvenile homicide 14 to 17 down 60% from 93 to 2005. | |
| Forcible rape down 28% from 92 to 06. | |
| Sexual abuse substantiations of children 1990 to 2005 down 51%. | |
| Physical abuse substantiation of children, 1990 to 2005, down 46%. | |
| Juvenile sex victimization trends, 1993 to 2003, down 79%. | |
| Isn't that amazing? | |
| The last few decades have seen the greatest reduction in poverty around the world that has ever occurred throughout any kind of human history. | |
| So, for instance, in 1980, half of the world's population lived on a dollar a day or less. | |
| Now it's one in seven who live in a dollar a day. | |
| There's lots of places to go, but down from one in two on a dollar a day or less, down to one in seven. | |
| That live on a dollar a day or less. | |
| That is really, really astounding. | |
| And the level of progress when you sort of look outside the West, when you look outside the empire, the level of progress in humanity is truly staggering, unprecedented throughout human history. | |
| Now, you don't hear a lot about this because it generally involves the extension and expansion of economic and economic. | |
| political freedoms which goes against that kind of lefty thing which means that foreign aid and paternalism and the new imperialism of taking money from the poor people in rich countries and giving it to the rich people in poor countries, which is also known as foreign aid, that is not what has caused it. | |
| The income redistribution is not what has caused it. | |
| It is the liberalization of the economies, particularly in China and in India, that has occurred. | |
| India, of course, was Deposited lefty socialism after the independence in 1949 under Nero, all educated in England. | |
| Most of the upper class was educated in England. | |
| England was going through its significantly lefty phase that was briefly interrupted by Margaret Thatcher and has since tragically continued. | |
| But India has broke the back of socialism and has instituted some free market reforms. | |
| China, of course. | |
| I went to more of a free market economy after many decades of communism, which was tragic and brutal. | |
| I remember I was actually in China in the year 2000, right after Y2K. I was in China for business for about two weeks, I think. | |
| I remember going down to the market and haggling for things to buy. | |
| We'd use calculators because, you know, we couldn't haggle in each other's language. | |
| We'd use calculators too. | |
| And it was just amazing to see that incredible energy, this uncorked, unleashed energy of the Chinese population in terms of having more access to free trade. | |
| So, crime is down enormously. | |
| Child abuse is down enormously. | |
| These are immensely positive situations to be occurring in. | |
| Also, I don't think that there's been any time in history where a central currency system has been threatened while there is another currency system waiting in the wings that is vastly superior. | |
| Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and so on, they're waiting in the wings for what might happen. | |
| So beforehand, when there would be a financial collapse, there generally would be nothing in place except totalitarian despots waiting in the wings, telling everyone how freedom was such a huge problem. | |
| And boy, by God, we gave freedom a try. | |
| Now it's time for some iron discipline and all that. | |
| But we have alternatives floating around waiting to take over when the fiat currency system It takes a nosedive. | |
| So that is an unprecedentedly positive situation. | |
| I've been arguing on this show for many, many, many years that when we stop harming children, we end up with a more peaceful and free society. | |
| The kids don't grow up to be criminals or politicians, but I repeat myself, there are going to be fewer people preying on society and fewer sociopaths offering pseudo protection from the other sociopaths, and so we're going to end up with a much more free society if children are treated positively. | |
| Now, starting in the late 70s, particularly into the 80s and so on, there was kind of a weird thing that happened. | |
| This is not causal. | |
| This is not proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. | |
| It's just my thoughts. | |
| But there was a huge amount of peaceful parenting instructions that occurred in the form of sitcoms. | |
| And that was enormously positive. | |
| So if you think of all the sitcoms, and you can, I think, is there a reboot of Full House coming now? | |
| I'm not saying I'm proud I know these things. | |
| I'm just saying that I do. | |
| But there were lots of sitcoms out there that taught, in general, peaceful parenting techniques. | |
| If you go back to sort of Little House on the Prairie, you could still be taken out behind the woodshed and spanked or beaten within an inch of your life. | |
| But in the more modern sitcoms, Sitcoms there was more peaceful parenting. | |
| People watch these and consume maybe hours and hours of basically peaceful parenting instruction through sitcoms. | |
| I think that had an effect. | |
| I think that had an effect. | |
| There are other arguments as to why crime began to diminish. | |
| The Freakonomics guys say that it's because of Roe v. | |
| Wade in the early 70s causing fewer unwanted children and so on. | |
| I think that there may be something to that. | |
| I've heard arguments of the contrary. | |
| I've also heard, of course, a reduction in lead exposure has reduced criminality, particularly among younger people, and there is some evidence for that, in that states in the U.S. outlawed lead in gasoline and in paint at different times, and they did see some associated reduction in a fixed time period later. | |
| In the growth of crime, I think that could have something to do with it. | |
| Cocooning video games, there's some evidence that pornography reduces incidents of rape, and so that has a potential for explaining some of this data and the other thing, of course, is that there is a proliferation, particularly in the US, of guns and guns have been very strongly associated with reductions in crime because the criminals fear the victims more, particularly when there are concealed carry permits, so that may be another factor. | |
| Nobody knows for sure. | |
| I've got an interview with Dr. | |
| Kevin Beaver that's going to come out on this channel where he basically also says nobody knows for sure, but there are lots of factors. | |
| But nonetheless, I think that the better treatment of children is going to continue to accelerate a more peaceful and positive society, and working for the protection and humanization and extension of the rights of protection to children is something that we can all get involved in. | |
| Now, last but not least, and I hope you don't mind if I put a bit of a pitch in for philosophy here, but last but not least... | |
| You're listening to this. | |
| You're watching me. | |
| What an incredibly positive thing. | |
| And I say that because there's always been these gatekeepers between original thinkers and The masses and the gatekeepers have been those who evaluate whether what you say goes in line with the current propaganda requirements of the ruling classes. | |
| Now those gatekeepers, which have been those in the mainstream media, those in academia, those in publishing, those who book speeches and so on, the mainstream media, sorry, these gatekeepers have always kept original thinkers away from The general population. | |
| And now, I mean, I'm just one example of course of many, many, many people who have the capacity to reach people in an audience. | |
| I mean, we've had over a hundred million downloads and views of this philosophy show. | |
| This is the biggest philosophy injection that has ever been seen before in human history. | |
| I think that since philosophy is fundamentally what we need to build a peaceful and rational world in the same way that you need the scientific method to have a scientific revolution, you need philosophy to have a philosophical revolution, my capacity and the capacity of other people, some of whom do an even better job than I do, | |
| The capacity that we have to reach you, to speak to you, to listen to you, like I do six or seven hours of philosophical call-in shows and conversations every week where we talk about meaty issues that go out to countless people and help them to think more critically, to examine data, to think rationally, to break free of the matrix, to take the red pill. | |
| Hopefully orally, but you never know how it's going to get in there. | |
| So the fact that philosophy has had its biggest boost In history, through this show, through your participation, through your support, I think, of course, is enormously positive. | |
| Perhaps I'm prejudiced, but this is what I've dedicated my life and intellectual energies and finances to, so I, of course, am going to be behind whatever gets philosophy out. | |
| To more and more and more people. | |
| So I think that there's enormous reasons to be optimistic and to be happy. | |
| The fact that human beings can have conversations with each other virtually for free all over the world, video, audio, that is truly astounding. | |
| This connection that we can have through this medium, through the internet, through podcasts, through videos, the fact that we can have this connection and we can have this conversation is unprecedented. | |
| In human history, original thinkers have always been kept away from the masses. | |
| Now we can speak to each other directly, which is about as wonderful and unexpected a development that could be imagined. | |
| So be happy, be positive. | |
| We've never had a bigger chance. | |
| And if we blow it, with all of these tools and technologies at our disposal, which have never existed before, human freedoms have been won before without these technologies. | |
| So if we can't use these technologies to win, to make a free society, it's really nobody's fault but ours. | |
| This is Stephen Molyneux for Free Domain Radio. |